Learned quackery exposed, or, Theory according to art : as exemplified in the practice of the fashionable doctors of the present day / by Samuel Thomson.

  • Samuel Thomson
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Learned quackery exposed, or, Theory according to art : as exemplified in the practice of the fashionable doctors of the present day / by Samuel Thomson. 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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    man nature. The husband can attend to all the concerns of his wife, go far as aid or advice is necessary, and the wife can be the administratrix or dispenser of both food and medicine to her children, and thus do away with all the foolish and learned ignorance of scientific, knowledge, the effects of which may be seen in our city daily, by only witnessing the many crip- ples and other invalids, both, male and female, crawling, as it were, about our streets, caused undoubtedly by giving poisons instead of medicine, and to females force instead of aid. My friends, these things ought not so to be. The method I have adopted in establishing Infirmaries, is good in its place, and necessary for the time being, while so many are sick, and so many to make people sick. But, after all, it does not come to the essential point. If they are necessary and useful, they are not exactly the thing, or the only thing needed. They are working on the effect, and not on the cause. They do not prevent sickness; but they are only calculated to cure sick- ness, which never ought to have existed. While, at the same time, they often make sick those who attend them, (for it is very hard, laborious, disagreeable, and unhealthy work), and who otherwise would have enjoyed good health. This, it is true, is according to scripture, making the strong bear the in- firmities of the weak, or it is exchanging health for sickness. Another evil growing out of the Infirmary system, is, as long as people can go to Infirmaries, or else have a doctor come into their families, they do not see the importance of trying to obtain the knowledge for themselves ; not thinking, per- haps, that in time, Thomsonian doctors may become as had as any other doctors, and take the advantage of them as much. It gives the superintendents of these Infirmaries, if they are so disposed,—anJWf there be nothing to check it, in time they wj]l he,—to ma^| a monopoly of it, and to go into all manner of speculations concerning it. This was the case with Jesse Thompson and others, making the students serve them from three to six months, and then to purchase of their master one hundred dollars' worth of medicine, in order to set up for themselves. In this way these speculators would do away With the Right, and take to themselves the privileges which I intended for the people. Some of them, also, make their patients objects of speculation, as I am informed was the case With Benjamin and Jesse Thompson, Badger, Winchester, and others, by crowding their patients with unnecessary courses of medicine, one after another, in cold, winter weather, for the sake of spunging out of them, I have too much reason to be- lieve, three or four dollars for each course. It has been stat- ed to me that Mr. Badger, at his house, carried one weak fe- male through nineteen courses of medicine, accompanied by steam, in six weeks last winter, and then left her in a very weak and low condition. (No wonder.) Her bill, at the common price for a course and board, would amount to seventy-five 4*
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