Annual address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : February 6, 1839 / by Laurens Hull.

  • Hull, Laurens, 1779-1865.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of New York : February 6, 1839 / by Laurens Hull. 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 the consequences to health, life, or happiness. I do not pretend to know the extent to which medical imposture has arrived in other countries, having never had the op- portunity of travel, but if we may form a judgment from its prevalence here, its ravages must be incalculable : like a pestilence it manufactures the subjects on whom it preys, and no experience will teach them, till too late to be of service. The miserable victims of the delusion are led step by step to their graves without the moral strength to inquire into the pretensions of the imposture, or the good sense to balance the evidences which their own condition presents. It is only necessary to refer to a few of the absurd theories with which the public are amused and cheated, in order to shew the truth of the above remarks. Every man knows that sweating is a function of the hu- man system essential to health, and most men know that the suspension of this discharge from the skin is speedily followed by symptoms which leave no doubt of existiug disease, and upon this single fact it is attempted to build an entire system of curative medicine. This monstrous absurdity is the Thompsonian practice. Sweating is the end to be obtained, and so far as we are enabled to judge from testimony, adduced on the trials for homicide, of some of those sweating agents, it is the only end to which all their violent remedies are directed; emetics of the most violent and dangerous nature are exhibited as auxiliary to this object, and the exhaustion consequent on their operation, is attempted to be controlled by stimuli as acrid and as violent as the medicine which produced it. Lobelia and cayenne pepper in pills, pow- ders and infusions — hot baths, hot bricks and blankets make up the sum of the treatment of the ill fated patient, and this too in every variety of disease. It would seem impossible that these assertions could be true were it not that evidence, winch wc arc bound to believe, because