The analytical system of medicine, or, The treatment of disease according to the principles and requirements of nature / by J. Clawson Kelley.

  • Kelley, John Clawson, 1793-1863.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The analytical system of medicine, or, The treatment of disease according to the principles and requirements of nature / by J. Clawson Kelley. 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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    Until the time of Paracelsus, physicians placed their whole dependence on vegetable remedies. The plants—the roots and herbs so profusely interspersed throughout the garden of nature, were their only agents for subjugating disease—they being be- lieved to be most congenial to the human system. The regular physicians of that day were in possession of all the knowledge respecting vegetable remedies in their innumerable combinations, and in all the various forms of disease which the experience of 1700 years could impart. But the time had arrived when all the experience—all the knowledge accumulated respecting the utility of vegetable remedies, throughout this long period of time, was now to be overthrown and consigned to oblivion. We subjoin a few of the leading facts concerning the founders of the mineral system of medicine, and the means adopted by them to give permanency to their doctrines. THE ALCHEMISTS. For a long while a class of men called Alchemists had, from their boldness and arrogance, been acquiring notoriety. Their object was the attainment of that knowledge by which they might transmute the baser metals, as copper and lead, into gold and silver. They boasted widely of their scientific attainments, and were very secret respecting them. They called each other adepts, and adopted a peculiar phraseology by which they could converse among themselves, whilst a bystander, uninitiated into their dialect, could understand nothing they said. They origin- ated passwords and signs, by which they could secretly know each other. Many of their opinions were highly tinctured with fanaticism: one of which was, that the adept who should dis- cover how to make gold from the baser metals should be rendered immortal on earth—he should never die. The same knowledge when attained, would likewise enable him to prepare an elixir that would cure all diseases in an instant of time, and prolong