Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson.

  • Dickson, Samuel Henry, 1798-1872.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory lecture delivered at the commencement of the fourth session of the Medical College of South Carolina, November 1827 / by Samuel Henry Dickson. 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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    them, subtracted from them the frequency of occurrence of some that are confessedly irremediable. When these do occur, we have found means too to diminish the necessary suffering in all such cases, smoothing for the patient his passage to inevi- table death; and in many instances we have succeeded in protracting cases that we could not cure, through the ordinary duration of human life, as in many instances of Consumption upon record. All this we have done, and I do not doubt by similar assiduities we shall accomplish much more in saving human life and alleviating human suffering. Yet neither do I doubt that men will continue to die prematurely; and, as they do now, die in greatest proportion of curable diseases too. Why this should be so forms an interesting question, discussed so far as I am aware by no one beside Rush, who has offered some ingenious and useful remarks on the subject. Without dilating upon the tendency to death occasioned by the intemperance and excess to which men are so naturally prone that we can hardly anticipate their entire liberation from these habits—I am persuaded that men will die pre- maturely and of curable diseases in the expected millenniush or golden age, simply on account of the fallibility of human judgment and the imperfection of human means. In looking over our bills of mortality you will find few deaths number- ed there from Hydrophobia or Cancer or Tetanus, the majority have fallen victims to Fevers and other maladies not in their own nature or essentially fatal, but fatal simply by their vio- lence or the disproportion between the force with which they acted on their victim's constitution and the powers of resis- tance exerted against their influence. Now I cannot help thinking that there is much truth in that maxim of the Ger- man transcendental philosophy which declares the thing re- ceived to be always as or in reference to the receiver, and thus I explain the mortality of most of our complaints by a reference to the state of the patient at the time of contract- ing the disorder. It is on this account, namely, that maladies, of which even the Faculty speak lightly, carry off annually immense num- 2