Considerations on the medicinal use, and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes. Part II / by James Watt.

  • Beddoes, Thomas, 1760-1808.
Date:
1796
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on the medicinal use, and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes. Part II / by James Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    ( *5* ) III. By feveral who viewed this project with an evil eye, it was doubtlefs expe&ed that it would be defeated by its own difficulty. But it has efcaped this danger, and others, according to the courfe of medical tranfactions, await it. That which will arife from the following caufe I regard as moll to be dreaded. Unlcls the enemies to improvement facrifice their fees to their ftubbornnefs, they will be compelled by the urgency of patients to employ the new method or to make believe they do. In what difpofition of mind they will fet about the trial may be conceived by thofe who recollect the oc- cafion on which the Jew in Shakfpeare demands « On what compulfion mud I, tell me that ? Modern inftances might eafily be adduced where an a&ive and well-recommended mate- rial has been prefented to the public, as unfit to be prefcribed, on the authority of cafes in which it had been converted by the enormity of the dofe into a poifon. When factitious airs fall into the fame hands, we mall, I dare fay, be fur- nifhed with inftances in plenty of their injurious effeas; for I repeat what I have already taken fome pains to inculcate, that like all efficacious remedies they are capable, when mifapplied, of producing the moft fatal confequences. IV. Knowledge is never exaa but when it involves abfolute or comparative quantity. To