New guide to health ; or botanic family physician : containing a complete system of practice, upon a plan entirely new; with a description of the vegetables made use of, and directions for preparing and administering them to cure disease : to which is added a description of several cases of disease attended by the author, with the mode of treatment and cure : to which is annexed, A narrative of the life, &c. of the author / by Samuel Thomson.

  • Thomson, Samuel, 1769-1843.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New guide to health ; or botanic family physician : containing a complete system of practice, upon a plan entirely new; with a description of the vegetables made use of, and directions for preparing and administering them to cure disease : to which is added a description of several cases of disease attended by the author, with the mode of treatment and cure : to which is annexed, A narrative of the life, &c. of the author / by Samuel Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    hot day, when we are not, any more than we should wonder at another being hungry, when we have just been eating; or that others can be in pain, when we are enjoying good health? The one is as plain and simple as the other, when understood. The want of inward heat is the cause of their being cold, just as much as the want of food is the cause of hunger, or the want ol health is the cause of pain. One person may have lost the natural power of heat, by an effect which others in similar situations may not have experienced, and will suf fer the consequences of cold in proportion to the loss of in- ward heat; this is manifest in the different degrees of sick- ness. If the inward heat loses its balance of powder sudden- ly, death is immediate; which is the case in spotted fever, and in drowned persons. When the inward and outward cold is balanced, life ceases, and the blood being stopped in its motion, settles in spots, which appearance has given name to what is called spotted fever. The same appearances take place on drowned persons, and from the same causes. The practice of bleeding for the purpose of curing disease, I consider most unnatural and injurious. Nature never fur- nishes the body with more blood than is necessary for the maintenance of health; to take away part of the blood, there- fore, is taking away just so much of their life, and is as con- trary to nature, as it would be to cut away part of their flesh. Many experiments have been tried by the use of the lancet in fevers; but I believe it will be allowed by all, that mostof them have proved fatal; and several eminent physicians have died in consequence of trying the experiment on themselves. If the system is diseased, the blood becomes as much diseas- ed as any other part: remove the cause of the disorder and the blood will recover and become healthy as soon as any other part: but how taking part of it away can help to cure what remains, can never be reconciled with common sense. There is no practice used by the physicians that I consider more inconsistent with common sense, and at the same time more inhuman than blistering to remove disease, particularly insane persons, or what the doctors call dropsy on the brain; in which cases they shave the head and draw a blister on it. Very few patients, if any, ever survive this application.— What would be thought if a scald should be caused by boil- ing water, to remove disease? Yet there is no difference be- tween this and a blister made with flies. I have witnessed many instances where great distress and very bad eflects have B