Hydropathic aphorisms : the simple treatment of disease contrasted with medicinal abuses, or, The why and wherefore of the water cure / by John Balbirnie.

John Balbirnie

Date:: [1856]

Credit: Hydropathic aphorisms : the simple treatment of disease contrasted with medicinal abuses, or, The why and wherefore of the water cure / by John Balbirnie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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celebrated in their day. But the reputation proved false ; the dogma fruitless; the fashion vain ; the theory empty. The2}ost hoc ergo propter hoc logic is the greatest vice of medical speculations, and the source cf tlie most grievous practical errors. 35. The obscurity and uncertainty of physic have, indeed, in all ages been fearfully destructive of human life. Boerhaave said it had been bet- ter tliat Peruvian Bark had never l)een known, for it had killed more people tlian all the armies of Louis XIY ! What shall be said of mercury, fhen? Have Napoleon's armies immolated more victims ? 36. The favorite standard, and much vaunted ■w eapons of medical warfare, are all elaborate poi- sons ; e. (j., mercury, antimony, opium, colchicum, foxglove, aloes, elaterium, hemlock, hellebore, henbane, stramonium, scammony, gamboge, colo- cynth, rue, jalap, broom, lead, copper, tin, silver, prussic acid, and arsenic. Their being poisons would be no valid argument against these sub- stances being used as remedies : for the plainest articles of diet, if vMuly used, would act per- niciously. The difficulty is, precisely, to know the due use of the articles in question—their doses, their modes of use, the circumstances under which

Hydropathic aphorisms : the simple treatment of disease contrasted with medicinal abuses, or, The why and wherefore of the water cure / by John Balbirnie.

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