An address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society, at its first anniversary meeting, Boston, April 27, 1850 / [John Jeffries].

  • John Jeffries II
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered before the Suffolk District Medical Society, at its first anniversary meeting, Boston, April 27, 1850 / [John Jeffries]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vogue, after having beguiled a large number of physicians in the old, paid not a few in our own country, before most of us' entered upon our pro¬ fessional studies. A few of us witnessed its expir¬ ing gasp. Broussaism, which made the digestive organs the origin of all disease, never prevailed here, as a general system—-nor other phases of the Physiological doctrines, which were hypothetical. Nor has Solidism, even when modified by modern improvements, been the exclusive system of the day; although, in this last, a broader foundation was laid, in truth, and the superstructure, in some parts, would bear the test of observation. As a body, the physicians of this city cannot be justly distinguished, at any period, as Humoral Pathologists, as Brunonians, as Broussaists, or as Solidists. These, as systems, have come, and, for the most part, gone; but they have each “left its trace behind.” No system, which could at any time receive the sanction of a considerable portion of the medical world, could be utterly devoid of truth. There must have been something worth retaining in each of these; and there have been hands among us to pluck the flowers, and reject the weeds. Of the humoral pathology, something has been retained even to the present day; and that it contains yet more that is true, animal chemistry and the micro¬ scope have recently shown, in exhibiting those actual changes in the blood in disease, which were before taken on presumption; and it may, if I mis-
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