Remarks of S.H. Tewksbury, M.D. on the bill for the promotion of medical science : also, an appeal to the members of the legislature in behalf of the Maine Medical Association, in the Senate chamber, Feb. 27, 1855.

  • Tewksbury, S. H. (Samuel Henry), 1819-1880.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks of S.H. Tewksbury, M.D. on the bill for the promotion of medical science : also, an appeal to the members of the legislature in behalf of the Maine Medical Association, in the Senate chamber, Feb. 27, 1855. 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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    daily allowed to be buried in the grave, because of the idle superstition which sees in these examinations a vio- lation of the supposed sanctity of death. In fact all ana- tomical research and investigation which has for its object the preservation of life and health, and is the great high way to medical discovery, has been continually baffled and persecuted by society and its rulers. Public senti- ment and written laws have always discouraged it; they have regarded it as a kind of irreligious and infernal study, — hateful to God and man, and endangering the souls as well as the bodies of all that were engaged in it. But however much men may scoff or scorn it in the pride of youth, — of health and strength, — in the hour of need and danger, if they have a limb to save, or a life to preserve, they own its power in alleviating the pain that is almost inseparable from disease, and in restoring to ease and comfort a body that is racked in suffering. It needs but the touch of affliction,—the agony of disease, the terror of impending death, —to put an end to it at once and forever ! It is in reality nothing but a blind and excited impulse, having its origin in'ignorance and super- stition, and unsanctioned by reason. This feeling of re- pugnance is entertained most strongly among the illite- rate and unreflecting. In highly civilized communities it yields to the just claims of humanity, and a clearer percep- tion of the exigencies of society. I do not deny but that this prejudice and superstition has its origin in a com- mendable respect for the dead, but the question is, whether you are not called upon to sacrifice it on the altar of science and humanity. If by subjecting it to the test of enlightened reason and dispassionate judgment, you find it unsubstantial and infirm, and if upon a-careful consi- deration of the benefits likely to flow from the passage of this bill, they should appear to you of paramount impor- tance, then you are required by the plainest dictates of duty to comply with the request of a large number of your felloAv-citizens, — belonging to a numerous and most respectable profession,— who come before you as peti-