Memorial of Prof. Charles Hooker, M.D : the inaugural address of Leonard J. Sanford, M.D., as professor of anatomy and physiology in Yale College, delivered, September 17th, 1863.

  • Sanford, Leonard J. (Leonard Jacob), 1833-1896.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorial of Prof. Charles Hooker, M.D : the inaugural address of Leonard J. Sanford, M.D., as professor of anatomy and physiology in Yale College, delivered, September 17th, 1863. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    allowed at the regular meal times, and then, in such quantity as could be conveniently borne. If this allow- ance did not at once supply all the support which the patient required, he would make up the deficiency by a more bracing medication; but he contended that, by per- severance, a healthy appetite could ordinarily be soon reestablished, which would render an entire discontinuance of medicine safe at an earlier period than would be possible under the other system of dietetics,—in other words, the case would be sooner and more perfectly cured, and with less medicine, with the solid diet, than it could be if slops were fed to the patient. This regimen, it must be admitted, proved very successful in Dr. Hooker's hands; his best results from it were in cases of Typhoid Fever. But, in the use of aliments, his strongest leanings were towards fat meat; he recommended it to all well persons, as being indispensable to the preservation of health, and insisted on its employment, as the stomach would bear, in all chronic cachectic cases. In the latter, it was a sine qua non to recovery, and so he was inflexible in direct- ing its use. A question which he was sure to put to every walking case of sickness that applied for his assist- ance was, do you eat fat meat ? and in prescribing for such patients he would sooner have dispensed with medicine than omitted the fat meat, provided, always, that the stomach could be brought to tolerate it. It is not strange that our friend should have been pertinacious on this point, for a long course of observa-