The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner.

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner. 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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    perature. Such is the groundwork of the Chrouo-Thermal System—so called from Ckronos, Time or Period; and Therma, Temperature or Heat. This I gave to the public in 1836. Then, for the first time, I announced the appalling fact, that up to that hour the Professors of the Healing Art had been, to a man, in all but utter darkness on the subject they pretended to teach. From the days of Hippocra- tes, I indisputably proved, that when the Physician succeeded in the Cure of Di- sease, he did so—in Irish phrase—by accident, on purpose ! Thirty centuries and upwards the Blind had been leading the Blind in Medicine—the right way some- times—more frequently the wrong ! Was it wonderful that a revelation so startling should come upon the Profession like a thunderbolt ? Silently, secretly, however, it has been gaining converts ever since from their ranks. Like the Religion of the Reformation in its earlier straggles, the Chrono-Thermal System has been embraced and practised by thousands who have neither the courage nor the honesty to dare the avowal. To those gallant men, who have openly come forward to bear tec timony to its worth, I want words to express my gratitude. How but for them could I have so long stood against the organised opposition of the Schools—the Bro- dies, the Chambers', the Clarks,—who, with their clique of pedantic, sycophantic supports, conspired to cry me down for my efforts to cleanse the Augean Stable of British Medical Practice of its filth and corruption ? Could the London world but know the arts by which certain men have got a name, with what astonishment would it stare to find itself precisely in the position of a deluded savage, when, for the first time, he discovered the utter worthlessness of the red and green glass, for which, year after year, he had been unsuspiciously bartering his wealth ! In the dark, pigmies seem giants; Britain only knows her great men when they are dead. On Harvey and Jenner, while they lived, the beams of her warming sun never shone;—she all but deferred to acknowledge their merits till she saw them on their deaths, surrounded with that halo of immortality which all the nations of the earth united to bestow on them. The Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine has shared the fate of eveiy truly great discovery. Translated, reprinted, and lauded abroad, it was first denied, decried, then plagiarised at home. And now, at the eleventh hour, (or year!) when France, Germany, Sweden, and America, have each come forward to speak to its worth, I its author, find myself here in England exposed to the hourly abuse of men who gain their bread by practising in secret, or under some paltry disguise, the very principles they have surreptitiously pilfered from me ! Who does not remember the London Practice of Physic only ten years ago—the barbarities practised under the name of medicine ? Leech, lancet, and calomel—where are they now those so-called sheet-anchors of the Medical Art ? The change that in that short time has been accomplished in Physic, is not less great than what has taken place in our mode of locomotion through the agency of steam. Ten years ago, where was the madman so foolhardy as to declare that the Lancet could be dispensed with in Apo- plexy ? Nearly ten years it is, however, since I first had to run the moral gauntlet for explaining, not only that this could be done, but that the employment of the Lancet is the most certain course to render that disease fatal! And here have we now in 1845, Books, Pamphlets, and Reviews all corroborating the fact, but studiously con- cealing the name of him who first announced it! The Editor of the Medical Times, for one, will not deny, that when he first printed, as a marvel, a case of Apoplexy that had been successfully treated without Bleeding by Mr. Baldy, of Devonport, such was his dread of the professional conspiracy against me, he was obliged to draw his pen through the passage in the narration that alluded to Dr. Dickson as the first teacher of the new treatment! Nothing can more forcibly show the value of an article, than attempts to steal it. Would a pickpocket risk detection for an empty purse ? The first who committed