An address at the opening of the session of 1847-8 of the Indiana Medical College / by E. Deming.

  • Deming, E. (Elizur), 1797-1855.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address at the opening of the session of 1847-8 of the Indiana Medical College / by E. Deming. 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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    manner, for the exploration into the causes of diseases, as well as the adaptation of remedies to counteract their influence on the living system. None but bold navigators ever push out into an unknown ocean, and let their plummets down into its resounding depths. Those who confine their barks near the inlets of an- cient shores, never discover new and populous islands. It is so with scientific and professional mariners—they must qualify themselves to sail out of the beaten track in order to make new discoveries to benefit the race. Medical men must have lofty and comprehensive views, as well as the faculty of profound observa- tion, or persistent and philosophic research. They must have the power to collate, and arrange, and classify facts in all their bear- ings, and in every aspect, as they are presented in the various and ever changing forms of disease. This is illustrated by the exhibitions of individual character, together with their scientific claims—their real utilitarian knowl- edge in the application of remedial agents in the healing of dis- eases. I will make selection of an individual who claims the discovery of a new system, and who proposes to revolutionize the whole sci- ence. Proceeding on the assumption that remedies that in health induce the chain of morbid symptoms that constitute disease, are the true specifics for human ailments, he has presented a Pharma- copiae of infinitesimal therapeutic agents to resist the varied forms of disease from febrile ephemera to the small pox, from the mild tertian intermittent, to the desolating jungle fever of India. The practical utility of the system has been tried on a large and liberal scale, with the needful facilities, and results have proved the sys- tem to be in all respects one of those splended fallacies of an ingen ious fanatical mind. The strength of its claims to public confi- d ence can only be in its boldness and novelty, and so far from pre- senting any barrier to tlie onward march of active disease its only exhibition has been the feebleness of the spider's web. Its vaunt- ed cures and prophylactic powers have served, when of any use at all, to amuse the patient by the potency of its globules, while nature has performed the cure. It may answer among the fash- ionably nervous of artificial society, but can be of no avail when violent disease lays its strong hand on frail humanity. In that dread hour, homoeopathy has been found only another name for powerlessness. • Contrast this with the discovery of another individual, the men- tion of whose name is like the lifting up of a shield of defence,