Petition against blood-letting : to the legislature of the State of New York.

  • Turner, William, -1858.
Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Petition against blood-letting : to the legislature of the State of New York. 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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    man of science abstract it? To make room for better ? No! goaded on by th« twin-goblins, congestion and inflammation, to deteriorate it still further by starvation and confinement. Gentlemen, these terms play in physic much the same thing as others, equally senselessly misused, play in the com- mon affairs of the world— Religion, Freedom, Vengeance, what you will, A word's enough to raise mankind to kill,— Some ^arty-phrase by cunning caught and spread, That guilt may reign, and wolves and worms be fed!—Btron. The first resource of the surgeon is the lancet—the first thing he thinks of when called to an accident is, how he can most quickly open the flood-gates of the heart, to pour out the stream of an already enfeebled existence. Does a man fall from his horse or a height, is he not instantly bled ?—has he been stunned by a blow, is not the lancet in requisition ? Nay, has an individual fainted from over-exertion or exhaustion, is it not a case of fit—and what so proper as venesection ! You cannot have forgotten the fate of Malibran—the inimitable Malibran ; she who so often, by her varied and admirable performances, moved you to tears and smiles by turns. She was playing her part upon the stage ; she en- tered into it with her whole soul, riveting the audience to the spot by the very intensity of her acting. Just as she had taxed the powers of her too delicate frame to the uttermost; at the very moment she was about to be re- warded with a simultaneous burst of acclamation, she fainted and fell; fell from very weakness. Instantly a medical man leapt upon the stage,—to ad minister a cordial ? No—to bleed her ! to bleed a weak, worn, and ex- hausted woman ! And the result ? she never rallied from that unfortunate hour. But, Gentlemen, Malibran was not the only intellectual person of the thousands and tens of thousands who have prematurely perished by the lancet. Byron and Scott—those master-spirits of their age—those great men who, like Ariosto and Shakspeare, not only excited the admiration of tempo- rary millions, but whose genius must continue, for generations yet unborn, to delight the land that produced them—they, too, fell victims to the lancet— they, too, were destroyed by hands which, however friendly and well-inten- tioned, most undoubtedly dealt them their death-blows. Is not this a subject for deep reflection ? To the cases of these great men we shall recur in the course of this lecture ; but for the present, we must turn to other matters— to events that have just passed before our eyes. The affair of Newport, in Wales, is still the topic of the hour. You must, therefore, remember it to it9 minutest detail—the attack by the rioters upon the town—the gallant and successful stand made by Captain Gray and his little detachment of the 35th regiment—the prisoners captured, and the investigation which afterwards took place. In the course of that inquiry, a prisoner, when under examina- tion, fainted. What was done with him ? he was carried out of court and immediately bled ! On his return, the newspapers tell us, an extraordinary change had come over his countenance. From being a man of robust ap- pearance, he had become so wan and haggard, so altered in every lineament, the spectators could scarcely recognise him as the same prisoner. Yet, strange to say, not one of the many journals that reported this case, intro- duced a single word in condemnation of the utterly uncalled-for measure, which brought the man to such a state ; so much has Custom blunted the sense of the public to this the most dangerous of all medical appliances ! Gentlemen, a coroner's inquest was held upon a person who died suddenly. I shall read to you what followed from the Times newspaper of the 20th December, 1839, suppressing, for obvious reasons, the name of the witness. Mr. , surgeon, stated that he was called upon to attend deceased, and found him at the point of death. He attempted to bleed him, but in- effectually, and in less than a minute from witness's arrival, deceased expired. Witness not being able to give any opinion as to the cause of death from the