An inauagural discourse : on the policy of establishing a school of medicine in the city of Memphis, Tennessee / by the editor.

  • Cross, James Conquest.
Date:
1847
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inauagural discourse : on the policy of establishing a school of medicine in the city of Memphis, Tennessee / by the editor. 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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    belief. Throughout, however, the whole region of country in which the pathological phenomena and therapeutical indications present peculiarities, which serve to distinguish its diseases from those that prevail in higher latitudes, and where too, the respec- pective results of Southern and Northern treatment can be ob- served, no difference of opinion exists amongst the professional or popular public on the subject. Indeed, a long and multiform ex- perience has caused such distrust of the principles of Northern teachers, when reduced to practice in the South, that planters proverbially prefer to entrust the lives of their slaves to the skill and judgment of an experienced overseer, to the science of a Northcrnly educated physician upon his first settlement in the country. The cause of this is obvious, and has been already sug- gested. In the schools of the North, as well as in those of Ken- tucky and Ohio, not a single teacher is to be found, who, from personal observation and experience, is qualified to impart a cor- rect knowledge of the nature and treatment of the diseases that prevail in the South. This fact which is utterly incontestible, has failed to attract the attention to which it is entitled, and although there may be those disposed to over look or underprize it, in my humble judgment, it is of very great if not para- mount importance.* *Dr. Johnson in his work on Tropical Climates, informs us that there can scarcely be conceived a situation of greater anxiety and distress, than that in which a young medical man of any sensibility is placed, on arriving at an unhealthy spot in a foreign climate, unfortified by experience, unaided by advice, and, as is too frequently the case, but scantily supplied with books containing local accounts of the country and pre- vailing discuses. In such cases he is forced to explore his way in the dark, agitated and alarmed by the mortality around him; a great share of which he attributes, perhaps with more re- morse than justice to his own misconduct, or ignorance of the proper treatment. On another page of the same work the same author remarks:—Many days did not elapse before I had an opportunity of trying my strength against so formidable an op- ponent, andveriiji w trials convinced me 1 hud. , itliout my host.'1'' Dr. Monette in his 06 n the Pathology mid treatment of the Endemic Fe- vers of the South-west,'''' occ. to be found in the first volume of the New Orleans Medical Journal, remarks:—I have resided in Washington, Miss., and practised my profes- sion regularly for more than twenty year.':. Every year, in that time, has given us one or two physicians from the North, who have fora time succeeded in obtaining more or less practice. Thecharacler of. the disease has varied according to tht physician vn- der whose treatment they happt nedtofalL The newly arrived practitioners, with a few exceptions, have always had the fortune to have an extraordinary proportion of des- perate and protracted cases; and. ij their patients at length recovered, [which we judge was seldom,] they had of course performed the great* st miracles. Two persons in the houi e, or on opposite sid< s of a street would be attacked in the same manner, and with the sarm Each, ha\ i dical attendant, and a differ- ent course of medical treatment would presenta different result in its course, duration and termination. A new form of disease hasfi ■prune up, and continued, wi- th r thecal ian. From personal observation we are pre- pared to confirm substantially the al ment of Dr. Monette. In Ins Observations on the use of Largt Hoses -f Quinine in the Treatment of Bilious