A treatise on irritation of the spinal nerves as the source of nervousness, indigestion, functional and organical derangements of the principal organs of the body, and on the modifying influence of temperament and habits of man over diseases ... and on the therapeutic use of water / by J. Evans Raidore.

Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on irritation of the spinal nerves as the source of nervousness, indigestion, functional and organical derangements of the principal organs of the body, and on the modifying influence of temperament and habits of man over diseases ... and on the therapeutic use of water / by J. Evans Raidore. 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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    even drunkards generally digest their food well; these facts ought to be very cheering to the dyspectic or the anxious, unhappy, hypochondriac beings, who deem it necessary, if their circumstances will permit, to seek excitement by novelties, by progressively visiting all the celebrated watering places, and at each place consult their popular Priessnitz, Hahnemann, animal magne- tisers, and other humbugs, who it is to be feared, but too often successfully regard them as sportsmen do wood- cocks—as birds of passage, and fair to let fly at them at all distances, so that they do but bag their game. Thus the few that are permitted to return home, are so cut, maimed, and plucked, that their old, sincere, unpre- tending medical adviser scarcely knows which affliction is most urgently requiring his sanative skill, now sought and accepted with pleasure; having dearly bought knowledge that medical skill is not necessarily possessed by a man who boasts of his hundreds of patients; though it may be regarded as a fair inference that his talents are un- questionable in humouring his patients, and guiding them to shed their golden lustre. Nervous and dyspectic patients generally make anxious enquiries as to the manner they should live—for instance, at what time they should retire to rest, and rise in the morning, and at what period of the day, and kind of exercise they should take, and what they should drink, and even how many times they should twirl their food, to secrete sufficient saliva, &c, just as if the all- merciful Being had not given as much sense to his human creatures as he has given instinct to the beasts of the field, to know what articles of diet to select and