A defence of the medical profession of the United States : being a valedictory address to the graduating class at the medical commencement of the University of New York, delivered March 11, 1846 / by Martyn Paine.

  • Paine, Martyn, 1794-1877.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A defence of the medical profession of the United States : being a valedictory address to the graduating class at the medical commencement of the University of New York, delivered March 11, 1846 / by Martyn Paine. 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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    this country, where a practitioner has been addicted to th§ i expectant' plan of treatment. Again, after referring in my Commentaries to the same kind of obloquy upon the American medical profession which the Chair- man of the Committee, in behalf of the State Medical Society, has heaped upon ninety-nine outof every hundred of the American Faculty, and when contrasting the success of their treatment of dis- ease with that of the English and French nations, I said,— Such is the practice of hundreds in our wilderness. But, they do more, and more wisely. They abjure bark and wine, and carry out a vig- orous treatment of inflammations, and of their terribly prostrating fevers,by the lancet. And may I not inquire, also,howall this com- pares with the dominant treatment, in France, of the same diseases by i gum potions,19 'a decoction oftriticum' orof the 'fveroots? 1 bullock''s gall,' * millipides? 'magnetized steel? ' a pinch of chervil? * aromatic fumigations under the bed-clothes? as set forth in my Essay on the Writings of Louis. Or, is it a less efficient system than the treatment of the worst forms of fever by table salt,' as commended and practised by some of the mostdistinguishedofthe British Faculty? Ifsuch patients says one of their own commentators, the eminent Beddoes;— If such patients had a Rush by the side of their bed, they would not be transferred from it to the grave. 1 The pleurisy,' says the same English philosopher, ' which I am informed was so destructive among our soldiers and sailors till the lancet was used with a boldness almost totally abandoned in this country, proves that it is not American diseases and American constitutions only that require such treatment.' ' But our own !' exclaims Beddoes, ' The first existing !— Well, then, our own, some of our own, scandalized at the dis- grace of the common art, (just as now with our State Medical Society,) did begin to give lessons amain across the Atlantic. The lessons, indeed, were received as the irrelevant effusions of men who set themselves to harangue against facts. And Amer- ican pride was destined ere long to have a fearfxd revenge. Gibraltar, Gibraltar, is pitted against Philadelphia !y I need not tell you what fearful odds drew from a Briton the honest declaration, that, — 'After all British reproaches against the American government and American physicians, for permitting the yellow fever to commit such ravages, this yellow fever made incomparably greater proportional ravages in a Brit- ish garrison, where the authority of medical police was unlimit- ed.' '.And yet again,' he says:—'In the West Indies, on the Continent of Europe, at home, wherever the British Army was posted during the last war, its history of health has offered not only pretexts to a challenged rival, to scorn the arrogated supe- 2