The duties of physicians in relation to popular medical delusions : an address delivered before the Covington and Newport Medical Society, June 14, 1859 / by Charles S. Tripler.

  • Tripler, Chas. S. (Charles Stuart), 1806-1866.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The duties of physicians in relation to popular medical delusions : an address delivered before the Covington and Newport Medical Society, June 14, 1859 / by Charles S. Tripler. 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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    of whatever sect, to produce one such instance from the writings of medical men from the year 1640, when bark was first discovered, to the present day. One swallow does not make a summer, nor can one or a dozen cases establish the efficacy or impotency or the modus operandi of a medicine. The uncertainty of medical expe- rience has always been a fruitful source of error and disappoint- ment. There are certain peculiarities, says Bostock, neces- sarily connected with the subject, which render it extremely diffi- cult to appreciate the value of experiment and observation. In our experiments we are seldom able to ascertain with accuracy the previous state of the body on which we operate, and in our own observations we are seldom able to ascertain what is the exact cause of the effect which we witness. The history of medi- cine, in all its parts, and especially that of the materia medica, affords ample testimony to the truth of these remarks. In mod- ern times and more remarkably in Great Britain, no one thinks of proposing a new mode of practice without supporting it by the results of practical experience. The disease exists, the remedy is prescribed, and the disease is removed ; we have no reason to doubt the veracity or the ability of the narrator; his favorable report induces his cotemporaries to pursue the same means of cure, the same favorable result is obtained; and it appears impossible for any fact to be supported by more decisive testimo- ny. Yet in the space of a few short years the boasted remedy has lost its virtue, the disease no longer yields to its power, while its place is supplied by some new remedy, which, like its prede- cessors, runs through the same career of expectation, success and disappointment. And so Boyle remarks— Indeed, in physic it is much more difficult than most men can imagine, to make an accurate experiment; for oftentimes the same disease, proceed- ing in several persons from quite different causes, will be increased in one by the same remedy by which it has been cured in another. And not only the constitutions of patients may as much alter the effects of remedies, as the causes of diseases, but even in the same patient and the same disease the single circumstance of time may have almost as great an operation upon the success of a medicine, as either of the former particulars. Here we see, from men of able and reflecting minds, how diffi- cult it is to establish any point in medicine. Unless we can be sure of all the circumstances of a case, a multitude of experi- ments, made under all conceivable conditions and by many differ-