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

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

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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    practice, under the pretence, that being a popish remedy, it must necessarily be of the deviFs invention ! With these facts before our eyes, can we wonder that many should doubt the whole art of medicine, as practised by the faculty; or can we blame them for flying to the charlatan for that aid, which they have too often solicited at the hands of the profession in vain ? “ The great success of quacks in England, says Adam Smith, “ has been altoge¬ ther owing to the real quackery of the regular physicians. Lady Mary Montague, an equally shrewd observer of mankind, writing from Adrianople, upon the subject of small-pox inoculation, expresses no very high opinion of medical disinterestedness. 66 I am patriot enough, she says, 66 to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of his revenue for the good of mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to them, not to expose to all their resentment, the hardy wight that should under¬ take to put an end to it. That she did not judge too harshly of the profession of her day, may be gleaned from her Life, by Lord Wharncliffe. “ Lady Mary, says his Lordship, 66 protested that in the four or five years im¬ mediately succeeding her arrival at home, she seldom passed a day without repenting of her patriotic undertak¬ ing ; and she vowed that she never would have attempted it, if she had foreseen the vexation, the persecution, and even the obloquy it brought upon her. The clamours raised against the practice, and of course against her, were beyond belief. The faculty all rose in arms to a man, fore¬ telling failure, and the most disastrous consequences. The clergy descanted from their pulpits, on the impiety of thus seeking to take events out of the hands of Providence; the common people were taught to hoot at her as an unnatu¬ ral mother, who had risked the lives of her own children; and notwithstanding that she soon gained many supporters amongst the higher and more enlightened classes, headed by the Princess of Wales, [Queen Caroline] who stood by