A proposal for the settlement of the homoeopathic controversy / by J.F. Paisley.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A proposal for the settlement of the homoeopathic controversy / by J.F. Paisley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ture of attenuated parts, and death : these, the two common and natural terminations corresponding with those of the steam-engine,—the condensation of the steam, in conse- quence of the reduction of the fire and the influence of the cold atmospheric air; or the violent explosion, utterly de- structive. But should a physician of the old school of medicine (Allopathy) he consulted, he would forthwith either plunge a lancet into some life-conveying vessel—“ for the blood is the life”—or he would so reduce, by the leech, purge, blister, or emetic, that unless the vital force were of no common standard, the patient must sink below the possibility of re- suscitation, or, as with living material, chronic disease, tedious suffering or danger, may result from these ignorant (although well-meant) appliances. And it not unfrequently happens that the ligature with which the bleeding vessel is secured may be wilfully or ac- cidentally removed, and hemorrhage, issuing in death, may ensue,—a calamity that once befel a patient of the author's when a practitioner of the old system. Here again have we the analogy continued, the practice of the Allopathic physician being identical with the clumsy and ignorant device of the first operator on the engine. But if one rightly informed as to the wise and natural provision for the general or local congestion of the human system be consulted, he would at once proceed to put the proper safety-valve (the pores of the skin) into action, allow- ing free perspiration, proportionate to the strength of his patient to prevail, till the suffering, or it may be impending danger, is removed, cautiously controlling the vascular ex- citement consequent on such a state by a constant or peri- odical application of pure water, internal and external, of a proper temperature, at the same time retaining a sufficiency of the vital power to carry on the various functions of being. Sometimes, however, cases are met with where the safety-