Considerations on the medicinal use and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes, M.D. : part II ; by James Watt, engineer .... ; to which are added communications from Doctors Carmichael, Darwin, Ewart, ... and others.

  • Beddoes, Thomas, 1760-1808.
Date:
1795
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on the medicinal use and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes, M.D. : part II ; by James Watt, engineer .... ; to which are added communications from Doctors Carmichael, Darwin, Ewart, ... and others. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    8/384 (page 6)
    the difficulties it hasbecn neceffiary to furmount before the mod powerful articles of the Materia Medica cou](lhc brought into train. To dif- cover an efficacious method of adminiftering ’quicklilver^ without inflidingthe moft fevere torture upon the patient, required the fuccef- tive efforts of many generations. Opium has ■been longer known and much more frequently ^exhibited ; yet the number of thofe, who under- ftand its properties fo as to employ it fafely and with its full effefl, is at this day incredibly fmall. Nor would a ffranger to the records of medicine ever conceive by what fufferings and, to palliate nothing, by what facrifices our pre- fent knowledge of thefetwo fubftances has been obtained. This is a melancholy retrofpefl; but before you give way to your fenfations, hear what the alternative would have been. We poffefs the moft authentic documents; and from them we may coHeft that the number of miferable lives and miferable deaths would have been many million times greater, if our predeceffors had not perfevered in their en- deavours to mafter thefe a6live bodies. Such is univerfally the condition of human affairs ; and the miferies of the prefent age will work out die redemption of pofterity. If you purfue this train of thought, you will, after fome hefitation perhaps, be led to a con- clufion oppofitc to that of the acute author of the