Consumption and its treatment in all its forms / by Carl Both.

  • Both, Carl.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption and its treatment in all its forms / by Carl Both. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    161/182 (page 153)
    r53 considerable amusement, especially since this same nonsense has been indorsed and published by the Imperial .Medical Faculty of Vienna By invitation of Prof. H. R. Storer, I demonstrated the theory of respiration and tubercle formation before his class of physicians, and afterwards before the Gynecological Society, who twice appointee! a committee of investigation on the subject; but without results. By invitation I also demonstrated the same before the Society of Medical Improvement at Cambridge. A report of the lecture can be found in the Journal of the Gynecological Society of Boston, No. 4, 1869— also a paper on Blood Poisoning, in No. 6, 1869. Although these papers contained views of absolute correctness, and of great impor- tance to the profession, they did not create the smallest degree of in- terest. The escape of blood globules, which in 1860 and 1863 I had dem- onstrated (also published with plates in 1867), and for which I was only laughed at, was afterwards discovered and published in Berlin, by Dr. Cohnheim, indorsed by Virchow, and seemed for him a world's reputation; the United States Government having at consid- erable expense published this important discovery, which, after beino- publicly demonstrated in the Suffolk District Medical Society, was claimed by myself as being precisely the same thing I had demonstra- ted m 1863, and for which I was laughed at. I did not, however, receive due credit from this Society. Although thus deprived of the credit of a discovery which by priority legitimately belongs to me, I immediately demonstrated before the same Society my discovery of the true position of the capillary blood-vessels of the lungs, and the consequences resulting from it. Not without difficulty was the Soci- ety made to take notice of the matter, and to refer the subject to the section on Microscopy as a proper committee, which consisted of the most educated of the young medical men, all of whom had studied in Europe. To this committee I gave the fullest explanations, and also injected lungs from which to cut sections for examination; neverthe- less, they could not see it. Thus- my views were again refused by the Boston Medical Society, although on this occasion with a little more professional courtesy and caution. (See Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Feb. No. 2,1871.) I then wrote to Leipzig, crit- icising somewhat several views advanced on Consumption, claiming the priority of Cohnheim's discovery, and asking for criticisms of my other advances. This letter can be consulted in Schmidt's Jahr- biicher, No. 1, 1871, page 124. Giving up America as incompetent to judge of scientific medical mat- ters, I appealed, in 1870, to Prof. Brown-Sequard, in Paris. Avery kind note was received in reply, stating that if I would send on my views he would cause them to be laid before the Academy, and afterwards noticed in all the French Medical Journals ; but before I could get my papers ready the unhappy war broke out, and everything of this kind came to an end in France. The paper, as far as then completed, has since been published in the Journal of the Gynaicological Society of Boston, for June and July 1871. Dr. F. Steindachncr, Curator of the Imperial Cabinet of Natural