On the discovery of leucocythemia, (being a reply to a letter on that subject by Professor Kölliker, in the Monthly journal of medical science for October 1854) / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D.

  • Bennett, John Hughes, 1812-1875.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the discovery of leucocythemia, (being a reply to a letter on that subject by Professor Kölliker, in the Monthly journal of medical science for October 1854) / by John Hughes Bennett, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    upon us in unrivalled splendor, and vre are surrounded by inventions and improvements that have projected us ages, as it were, in advance of our immediate predecessors; and yet the debasing reflection is forced upon us, that at no period has quackery been more rife; and at this moment, in our very midst, a vast monument of its success- ful prosecution like a tall bully lifts its head in close proximity to those lines of electric communication, which are the triumph of physical science,—as if in mockery of the position, that credulity is to be abolished, or materially diminished, by the advancement and diffusion of knowledge! And is it to simple credulity or to faulty observation, to too pro- lific imagination, or to unworthy motives, that we are to ascribe published results of experience to which the uninformed are apt to give their implicit belief ? Take, for example, those provings, as they are called, quoted by Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, from a volume issued by the Hahnemann Publishing Society, of London, in which we are assured that the presence of a delusion that thieves are in the house, is a symptom of arsenic; a delu- sion, that men are swine, a symptom of henbane; an imaginary vision of cats, an effect of asthusa; an imaginary vision of rabbits, an effect of stramonium; pretending to crack nuts, a symptom of henbane; pretending to count money, a symptom of belladonna; pretending to drive away peacocks, a symptom of hyoscyamus; eats his shoes, an effect of veratrum; tries to climb up the- stove, an effect of henbane; dancing in the churchyard, a symp- tom of stramonium; and an inclination to pull people's noses, a symptom produced by mercury ! But is there no sunny spot in this clouded atmosphere of delu- sion—no encouragement in those cycles of follies to hope for future improvement? Is the human mind in the same enthralled condition as in ancient or even in mediajval periods? Far from it. In those distant days, knowledge was confined to the few; and mystery, the offspring of imperfect knowledge, itself, indeed, imperfect knowledge, pervaded the 'oi rtoxjioi; whilst both superstition and credulity tainted