Public hygiene in America : being the Centennial discourse delivered before the International Medical Congress, Philadelphia, September, 1876 / by Henry I. Bowditch ... / together with a digest of American sanitary law by Henry G. Pickering.

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public hygiene in America : being the Centennial discourse delivered before the International Medical Congress, Philadelphia, September, 1876 / by Henry I. Bowditch ... / together with a digest of American sanitary law by Henry G. Pickering. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    tice have replaced each other in the faith of multitudes at least several times in a century. As may be readily believed, such stalwart blows, given by such a teacher, upon the medical practice of the day, had potent influ- Scepticism ence upon medical opinion, at least of the augmented. North. The scepticism caused by Louis was greatljr augmented ; and not only were Dr. Rush's lancet and heroic remedies recklessly thrown away, but, in- stead of these, we have had the absurdities of infinites- imal homoeopathy sustained by vast numbers of the most intelligent of the laity, and by the States, with a drivelling scepticism or palsied fear on the part of the profession, while administering even the smallest doses of those medicines, which the men of the previous epoch glo- ried in, and used with powerful effect, — often, I doubt not, for evil, but sometimes, I feel sure, for infinite good, to their patients. Whilst Bigelow was thus sap- ping our faith in mere drugging, and during the interval between his first and last essays upon the subject, there was sent forth from the chief medical journal of that day (1846) in London, under the sign manual of its editor, one of the boldest and ablest defences of the same views that has ever been written. I allude to „ , the extraordinary article by Dr. Forbes, en- John Forbes. . J J titled Homoeopathy, Allopathy, and Young Physic.1 I well remember the effect produced upon the medical profession in this country; and, from some allusions to the subject, made eighteen months after- ward, by Dr. Forbes (October, 1847, p. 594, vol. xxiv), I infer that a similar one was caused in England. Admired by the few, ignorantly and violently opposed or wholly ignored by the many, it has nevertheless 1 British and Foreign Medical Review, January, 1846. Vol. xxi. p. 225.