Dr Todd and the late member for Ashton : fatal effect of the stimulating treatment of disease (in a letter to the editor of the Medical Circular, February 29, 1860) : to which is added a short account of Dr Todd's professional career, and an epitome of his stimulating doctrine, with an answer to the fallacious charges brought against the author / A.B. Granville.

  • Granville, A. B. (Augustus Bozzi), 1783-1872.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr Todd and the late member for Ashton : fatal effect of the stimulating treatment of disease (in a letter to the editor of the Medical Circular, February 29, 1860) : to which is added a short account of Dr Todd's professional career, and an epitome of his stimulating doctrine, with an answer to the fallacious charges brought against the author / A.B. Granville. 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.

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    But my counsel did not prevail; the stimulants were ordered to be continued, and I came away in sadness and disgust. We were never to meet again. The sufferer ceased to suffer that same night, thus verifying my prognosis. He had deliberately been made to swallow one hundred and twenty ounces, or six imperial pints, of brandy in about seventy-two hours. I refused to sign the certificate of his death: Mr La^des did so—Game, Cerebral Affection.(!) After that declaration. Sir, and my own exposition of the case, how will the advocates of the stimidation doctrine, and the j)upils of Dr Todd, including yoiir more recent correspondent B. (another anonymous), defend the characteristics of his practice, or admire his diagnostic and therapeutical judgment? It stands now recorded on the pages of those awful folios in the catacombs of the Eegistrar-General of England, wliich I brought so promi- nently forward in a recent volume ' On Sudden Death,' that the late Member for Ashton died of cerebral affection. Now, either this cerebral affection was a primary disease—and then my system of cupping, pur- gatives, and diaphoretics was the most appropriate for its recovery, and the opposite, or Brunonian plan, likely to hasten its fatal result—or the cerebral affection was a secondary disease; and in that case the 120 ounces of brandy was an experiment which gave rise to it, leading to an equally fatal result. There is no escaping from the dilemma. It may be all very well for the Corypheus of a new medical doctrine to make such experiments in corpwe vili, but in our case the experiment has been far too costly. The results have not only affected an individual and his family, but for a moment involved the interests of the nation. The death of a most excellent man, twelve years at least before his natural time ; the loss to society of a well-kno\\'n and enlightened philanthropist, and to Parliament of one of its most assiduous members, who had served twenty- two years ; the siidden removal of a kind master and benefactor to hundreds of workmen and their families: these were the immediate and sad results of an obstiiiate adlierence to one of the most pernicious practices ever palmed upon an ignorant public. The remote results were not less disastrous, perhaps. My fatal anticipations, men-