Fallacies of the faculty, with the principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : in a series of lectures originally delivered in 1840, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly / by S. Dickson.

Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869.

Date:: 1843

Credit: Fallacies of the faculty, with the principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : in a series of lectures originally delivered in 1840, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly / by S. Dickson. 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.

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$Fevers by driiikii)g as mucli spring water as the patient could bear; [Priessnitz’s plan?] at another time swallowing up a spoonful of pow- der of sea biscuit after meals, was infallible for all indigestion, and so preventing diseases. Then coffee and tea began their successive reigns. The infusion of powder of steel has had its turn; and certain drops of several names and compositions. But none that I find have established their authority, either long, or generally, by any constant and sensi- ble successes, but have rather passed like a mode which every one is apt to follow, and finds the most convenient or graceful while it lasts, and begins to dislike in both these re- spects when it goes out of fashion. Thus men are apt to play with their healths and their lives as they do with their clothes; which may be the better excused, since both are so tran- sitory, so subject to be spoiled with common use, to be torn by accidents, and at last to be so worn out. Yet the usual practice of physic among us runs still the same course, and turns in a manner wholly upon evacuation either by blood-letting, vomits, or some sorts of purga- tion; though it be not often agreed among physicians in what cases or what degrees any of these are necessary, nor among other men Avhether any of these are necessary or no. Montaigne questions whether purging ever be so, and from many ingenious reasons. The Chinese never let Blood.” Gentlemen, you now see the correctness of a remark of the late Dr Gregory, that medical doctrines are little better than “ stark-staring absurdities.” And God forgive me for saying it, but their authors, for the most part, have been very nearly allied to those charlatans and impostors, who \\Tap nonsense round In pomp and darlmess, till it seems profound; Play on the hopes, the terrors of mankind With changeful skill; * * * * While Reason, like a grave-faced mummy, stands With her arms swathed in hierogl}q)hic bands. Moore. As for the Schools, at this very moment, the whole regime of medical teaching is a system of humbug, collusion, and trick—embracing intrigue and fraud of every kind, with the ne- cessary machinery of Periodical Journals and Be views, by which the mastersare enabled to keep down truth, and mystify and delude the student and country practitioner at their pleasure. In physic, now as formerly, the very clever world bows the knee to Baal, And hurling lawful Genius from his throne. Erects a shrine and idol of its own,— Some leaden Calf— w'ho, by virtue of his puppet-position, main- tains a reputation and a rule in matters medi- cal, to which neither his merits nor his learn- ing in the very least entitle him;-—nevertheless he reigns the Esculapius of the day, and it is only in the next age that, the vulgar stare, When the swollen bubble bursts and all is air! But, Gentlemen, what do the Faculty of our own time mean by the term Gout? What do they mean by it I You may ask them that indeed. Crabbe, who studied phy- sic, but left the profession in early life to take orders, when describing some of the doctors of his day, among other things, tells us. One to the Gout contracts All human pain, He views it raging on the frantic brahi. Finds it in fevers all his efforts mar. And sees it lurking in the cold catarrh. Gout, then, may be any thing you please; for according to received opinion, this offspring of Nox and Erebus, this vox et preterea nihil, takes shapes as many and Protean as there have been authors to treat of it. This much I may venture to tell you, that nothing will so soon help a man to a chariot as to write a book with Gout for its title—for being sup- posed to be a disease peculiar to aristocracy, every upstart is fain to affect it. You cannot please a mushroom squire, or a retired shop- keeper better, than by telling him his disease is “Gout”—“Gout suppressed”—“Gout retro- cedent”—“ Gout in this place, or “ Gout” in that! And wdiat is Gout?— Of all our vanities the motliest— The merest word that ever fooled the ear. From out the schoolman’s jargon!—Byron. In sober seriousness, is there such a disorder as Gout? Gentlemen, as a “counter to reckon by,” you may use the word; having first so far made yourselves acquainted with its real$