A letter to the allopathic doctors of Dayton / by H. Wigand.

  • Wigand, H. (Henry)
Date:
1849
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the allopathic doctors of Dayton / by H. Wigand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    astonishment, have we never cured a disease? No Gentlemen, you never have cured a disease radically upon allopathic principles. You sometimes remove the products of a disease, but never the disease itself. You evacuate bile, in cases of bilious fever, by Emetics; you prescribe voinits inthe so nam- ed foul stomach; you give Cathartics for costiveness; you purge away mucus and intestinal worms in worm complaints; you remove a polypus by ligature; extirpate a tumefied gland; you amputate a cancerous breast, or a limb where the bone has become carious, and imagine you have cured the maladies in a radical manner, and destroyed their cause. You also im- agine the same thing, when y»u dry up an old ulcer in the legs, by lead, copper and zinc; when you cauterize changres; drive back the itch or other eruptions from the skin by sulphur oint- ment, lead, mercury or Zinc; when you cure inflamations of the eyes with solutions of lead, or remove ulcers and pustules inthe eye by Lunar Castic; when you drive away pain by opiates, volatile liniment, opodeldoc &c. In all such cases you think you have annihilated the evil; triumphed over the dis- ease and performed a rational treatment, directed against the cause. But mark what follows! The same disease returns, or, new forms of diseases will manifest themselves sooner or later, and which, when they appear, are taken for fresh mala- dies, being always ivorse than the primitive affections. Look at a fever and ague patient, who has been under your rational mode of treatment, and to whom you have adminis- tered large doses of quinine! You have suppressed the type of the disease by means of enormous doses of that medicine, but is the disease removed? No, the poor patient is left in a worse condition after such suppressions of the periodical re- turn of the fever than before. We behold him moving slowly along, his countenance sallow, his breathing asthmatic, the di- gestive system diseased, frequently the abdomen and limbs in a bloated condition, without healthful appetite or refreshing sleep, weak and low spirited, he is discharged from you, in this state of complicated sufferings, as cured] Read the proofs of the rationality of your allopathic cures, the proofs of your recklessness in the hagard countenance of one; the disfigured face of another, the palzied limbs of a third, the rotten teeth, the filthy gums of hundreds; all these trophies of Calomel; of