Fallacies of the faculty, being the spirit of the chronothermal system. In a series of lectures / [Samuel Dickson].

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869
Date:
1839
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fallacies of the faculty, being the spirit of the chronothermal system. In a series of lectures / [Samuel Dickson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the theory know that you may bleed the most healthy man till he shall become constitutionally haemorrhagic ? that you may starve him, moreover, into the same state? This last we shall, in our next lecture, put beyond the shadow of a doubt—for we will shew you, when we come to consider the effect of abstinence, that the inmates of the Penitentiary were, in many cases, starved to death, and among the diseases which resulted from such starva¬ tion, “ apoplexy” was a common one, and that when post-mortem examinations were made “ fulness of blood’5 was found in the brain !—Gentlemen, can you doubt, for a moment, that the coats of the blood-vessels, like every other tissue of the body, must be equally implicated in the general debility that cannot fail to be produced by whatever abstracts from, or prevents the entrance of, the material necessary to the healthy organization of every part of the human frame ? To bleed or otherwise debilitate a person having a hereditary predisposition to spitting of blood or apoplexy, is the most certain method to develope these diseases in their worst forms !—Yet this is the daily practice of the most eminent physicians ! one among many proofs, that in the medical profession, Eminence is less frequently attained by successful re¬ sults in practice, than by the dexterous employment of all those petty arts and petty intrigues which tell best with weak minds in the ordinary game of life. So far as practice is concerned, the eminent physician generally confines himself to the fashion of the day—the more especially, if that fashion be profitable to the apothecary; for in that case he is sure to become the fortunate puppet of those whose bread depends, not so much upon the cures they shall effect, as the quantity of physic they shall manage to sell. What a happy nation of fools must that be, which supposes that any class of mankind will put the interests of the public in competition with their own. Benighted and misguided people ! you call upon men to relieve you from your sufferings, while you hold out to them the most powerful of temptations, to keep you on your sick-beds ! You pay for physic, what you deny to talent—for long illnesses, what you refuse to a speedy