Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson.

  • Dickson, Samuel Henry, 1798-1872.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson. 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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    merit of external disease, that they now form an essential part of the implements ofChirurgery, and a pure Surgeon—a mere Operator,—is a character no longer to be heard of—no longer known to exist as I believe in the civilized world. Yet the time is but shortly past when this character belonged to a great body of the most esteemed surgeons. If we turn to the condition of ordinary Therapeutics, our retrospect is no less gratifying. If we should lay claim to nothing more than the mere admission, that the proportion of deaths in certain specified masses of population is no greater than it former- ly was, (and this will scarcely be denied us,) we say much in favour of our profession—for the causes of death and dis- ease have been multiplying in modern times with a fright- ful and lamentable rapidity, and our art must be little less than divine, to have successfully resisted this headlong tor- rent of destruction. Excess of all kinds in the indulgence of passion and appetite has flowed upon us with the refine- ments of civilization, and men seem to have been maddened Dy the restraints which they voluntarily imposed upon them- selves. The arts of cookery, and the chemical improve- ments in distillation and fermentation, have spurred on the dispositions to gluttony and intemperance. Thus some new- forms of disease have been introduced ; many ancient and well known maladies have been modified, and their malig- nant intensity increased ; and the constitutions of whole fa- milies, races and nations, have been so deteriorated as in a notable degree to be less fitted to resist the invasion, and repair the ravages of ordinary disease. Yet with the exi- gencies thus pointed out, have increased also the resources of our art. Fever, the principal ailment of Savage, as well as of Civilized men, has lost much of its terror, and much of its malignity. Who can doubt this if he reflects for a moment on the slender stock of rude remedies made use of by bar- barous tribes ; their sick, if not relieved at once by the harsh alternations of heat and cold, in the humid sometimes and sometimes in the dry form, were consigned to the conjuror with his spells, charms and incantations. Yet this was pro- bably a more successful series of applications to the sturdy frame and credulous spirits of savages, than the more modern