Bloodletting not necessary in the treatment of pneumonia / by D.W. Young, M.D.., Aurora, Ill.. ; a contribution to the report on practical medicine.

  • Young, Delos W., 1829-1874.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bloodletting not necessary in the treatment of pneumonia / by D.W. Young, M.D.., Aurora, Ill.. ; a contribution to the report on practical medicine. 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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    opposite direction. A most distinguished French author, M. Louis, has endeavored to show that venesection has not much control over the progress or the issue of Pneumonia in any of its forms; and in our own country that doctrine has been adopted by at least one very accomplished physician —adopted, for Dr. Hughes Bennett maintains that antiphlogistic remedies in gen- eral, and bloodletting in particular, are unsuitable and even hurtful in all acute inflammations. I believe that I might ascribe similar opinions to physicans and surgeons of eminence in this town. My own experience teaches me that such flagrant and Bthenic forms of Pneumonia have become very rare among fears have pasxed by since 1 have met with an instance of that dueaae which has required phlebotomy. I may say much the same of inflammatory diseases in general. They have all, as I firmly believe, been much less tolerant of bloodletting since the. cholera first swept over this country in 1832. I may be fan- ciful, but I think that great epidemics, such as those of cholera and influenza, leave traces of their operations upon the health of a community, long after they have ceased to prevail as epi- demics. That certainly is a frank and positive confession or admission that the bloodletting plan of treatment did not successfully stand the test of comparison with the non-bloodletting and sustaining plan — but certainly a very curious, and I apprehend flimsy attempt to explain away an inexorable result, an unscien- tific and an illogical attempt to cover up and account for an unalterable and a necessary failure. Happy would we be if we could at all times avert the evil of protracted suffering by timely and judicious medication. In the treatment of disease, if we are making any advancement, we must be able to understand cause and effect, we must know something of the dynamics of our profession. We must find out the character of the disturbance and attest our skill by the application of remedies calculated to give speedy and perma- nent relief. We want systems pregnant with common sense theories that, when it becomes necessary, will remove impaled humanity from the fatal stake, and not the stake from them that