A treatise on pyrosis idiopathica, or water-brash : as contrasted with certain forms of indigestion and of organic lesions of the abdominal organs, together with the remedies dietetic and medicinal / by Thomas West.

  • West, Thomas, 1948-
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on pyrosis idiopathica, or water-brash : as contrasted with certain forms of indigestion and of organic lesions of the abdominal organs, together with the remedies dietetic and medicinal / by Thomas West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    96/112 (page 92)
    wise it is difficult to conjecture what reasonable hope they could have entertained of curing a popular disease depending upon popular errors of diet without amending the condition of the people. Thus Dr. Cullen sees a great portion of his fellow countrymen suffering under this malady, and re- cognizes it as accruing from the deficiencies already noticed. He records his regret, and recommends his countrymen to take bark, which is ten times as dear as the animal food for which their bowels are yearning. Linnseus, another physician, and no less a philoso- pher, visits and personally converses with a population in Lapland, of which the majority were thus afflicted, and he tells them to take nux vomica, or crow-fig, for their relief. Nux vomica as a substitute for flesh- meat ! and this, the legacy of Linnaeus, is their popular remedy to this day. The majority of a population chewing nux vomica because they have no animal food (in whatever state such a condition may occur) is a circumstance that may well demand the con- sideration of statesmen. In our own more favoured country, indeed, no such extent of the evil need to be apprehended. Nevertheless, sporadically in some parts of England, and very generally in the moun- tainous districts of North Wales, the proportion of cases is very large. If such luminaries of their day and generation as the two great men just named have contributed so little to the removal of this troublesome affection,