The great sulphur cure brought to the test : and workings of the new curative machine proposed for human lungs and windpipes / by Robert Pairman ; preface by J. Christison.

Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great sulphur cure brought to the test : and workings of the new curative machine proposed for human lungs and windpipes / by Robert Pairman ; preface by J. Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    WHAT IS THE GEEAT SULPHUE CUEE? From the Glasgow Daily Herald, November 25, 1867. The Great Sulphur Cure’ has divided public attention in this quarter during the last few days with the Fenians, the opening of Parliament, and the reported submersion of Tortola. Everybody has been asking his neighbour, ‘ Is there anything in it?’ and we believe there has been a very extensive application of ‘ brimstone fumes ’ and ‘ sulphurous acid spray’ to the sore throats and stuffed nostrils that axe not uncommon at this foggy season of the year. Have we got hold of a new specific that is to revolutionize the Pharmacopoeia? Have we only now discovered the virtues latent in a medicine which has been known to us for three hundred years ? Or is the ‘ Sulphur Cure’ only another example of the ‘ infallible remedies’ after which the world, and sometimes the profession itself, has run mad ? The remedy comes endorsed, as yet, only from Kirkcaldy and Biggar, neither of them regions from which one might expect much new light on medical science. But then we know that it is not always from the centres of science that discoveries come, but rather from obscure nooks, where ingenious men have the opportunity of unbiassed experi- ment and reflection. Dr. Dewar, of Kirkcaldy, and Dr. Pairman, of Biggar, are neither quacks nor charlatans, and would not have written their pamphlets if they did not believe that their cures had been fairly effected by the aid of the sulphur remedy. There need be no unne- cessary prejudice, therefore, against the ‘ cure,’ because it comes from the unknown, and not from the classic shades of medicine, though at the same time it must be admitted that its obscure parentage is no- thing in its favour. “ Some of our readers who have not read the pamphlets of the Kirk- caldy and Biggar medical men, or our analyses of them, may ask ‘What is the Sulphur Cure?’ Philosophically speaking, we do not know that there has been any attempt to answer this question. Dr. Dewar’s impression seems to be that a great many of our worst dis- eases have their origin in animal or vegetable growths, in the presence