Address in refutation of the Thomsonian system of medical practice : delivered in the lecture room of the Chester Co. Cabinet of Natural Science, West Chester, Pa., on December 31, 1836 / by Sumner Stebbins.

  • Stebbins, Sumner.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address in refutation of the Thomsonian system of medical practice : delivered in the lecture room of the Chester Co. Cabinet of Natural Science, West Chester, Pa., on December 31, 1836 / by Sumner Stebbins. 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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    the collected wisdom of ages—and hunching, without eompass or rudder, upon the ocean of empiricism, with no guide but blind and ignorant conjecture—have a tendency to improve the healing art? Are the indefatigable labors, the anxious toils, and the generous efforts of the sons of science and genius, in different countries and ages of the world, who have spent their whole lives in the dissecting rooms, interrogating the dead, that they might discover the true pathology of the diseases of the living;—are the gold- en sands of knowledge that have been accumulating for thirty centuries, to be thrown away, or exchanged for the raw conceits and stupid drivellings of Samuel Thomson ? Will the sole and indiscriminate use of lobelia, red pepper, alcohol, and steam, in the hands of crafty knaves, and ig- jvorant charlatans, have a tendency to lessen the mortality of disease, or '• establish the practice of medicine upon a more scientific basis. This is not the first system of empiricism, although it is unquestionably the one most disreputable to the intelli- gence of the country. The land is full of it. We have Bone setters, and Water doctors, and Indian doctors, and Cancer curers, and Pow-wowers ; and those who work by all kinds of Magic ;to say nothing of an innumerable host of Pill makers,many of whom find the business muchmore lu- crative than the physician whose practice is governed by scientific principles. Quackery always has existed, and always will exist, as an excrescence on society, until the people in general are convinced that the proper study of mankind is man—until the rudiments ot anatomy and physiology are taught in our common schools, as they might be to the greatest advantage. It springs up in the soil of ignorance, it feeds upon gaping credulity, it grows rank in mental darkness. The quack, like his prototype, the buzzard, perches himself upon every dry limb, snuffing the tainted breeze in quest of prey ; he fattens upon the carrion of the community. But neither Thorasonianitm, nor Mormomsm, nor witchcraft, nor any other kind of foolery, can be put down by Legislative enactments, by fines, or imprisonments* and they *hould not be if th%r.