Reply to Dr. J. Dickson Smith's pamphlet on "Lobeliaism" / by M.S. Thomson.

  • Thomson, M. S.
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reply to Dr. J. Dickson Smith's pamphlet on "Lobeliaism" / by M.S. Thomson. 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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    he is playing off upon his readers, by which, he says, they are greatly deceived?, and impressed/aWy/ Now, if that were true, we should feel very badly on the sub- ect,—but we have no wish to deceive any body, nor the slight- est desire to hoax or impress any one falsely—and to prove that we do not, we with confidence point to the very statements Dr. Smith has made, and show that there is not a word of truth in the accusation ! ! The first announcement to which he refers and characterizes as any thing in the world but correct is That Prof. Bennett the 'highest medical authority' hailing from the 'highest seat of medical learning' has sounded a new 'key note,' and that the whole medical choir is striking up the same tune. Having thus quo- ted he goes into an elaborate statement with quotations and refer- ences to show that the medical men of Great Britain have not endorsed Bennett's views, and are not striking up that same tune, predicating the whole, splenetic words and all, upon the un- fair, tricky, deceitful and false quotation that he himself has made, in which by slipping in an is for a will he has changed the whole sense, and thus he himself has made the only part of that statement that is not correct , and the question natur- ally arises is this done from ignorance or design. If from the for- mer, which is the most favorable construction we can put upon it, then it but furnishes another proof of what we stated in refer- ence to Dr. Arnold's recommendation to study the classics, which is often done at the expense of a common knowledge of good plain English. If on the other hand, this substitution was made from design, then it shows that the Doctor himself is the trickster, and is chargeable with one of the most unwarrantable attempts to impress falsely and deceive his readers that any writer could be guilty of, and which but ill becomes the dignified position to which he aspires or the character for fairness that we have been disposed to award him. But though Dr. Smith must in this instance admit that the state- ment he characterized as not correct is the very opposite and true as truth itself, he yet brings up another instance in which he tries to make the reader think he has me sure, and discourses at considerable length upon the presumption that what he says is so. This too is the text on which he predicates his statements to show the pending down fall of Medical Reform throughout the country!! That those who have not read our former pamphlet may under- stand the point involved in these statements it will be proper to premise that in Dr. Smith's first he charged among other naughty Thomsonian practices, the want of strict adherence to truth, vitu- perative expression, slander, &c, to which we replied thus : The most vituperative expressions we ever indulge in, are quotations from his own or his brethren's writings ; and unless truth be slander, we claim en-