Fallacies of the faculty, with the principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : in a series of lectures originally delivered in 1840, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly / by S. Dickson.
- Samuel Dickson
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Fallacies of the faculty, with the principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : in a series of lectures originally delivered in 1840, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly / by S. Dickson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![tation, no constitutional revolution, without a change of temperature of some kind. Butler in his Hudibras, tells us. Love’s but an ague fit reversed, The hot fit takes the patient first. Seriously, you will do well to ponder on the relations w^hich the effects of the various pas- sions bear to ague. Throughout them all you may observe the same tremor and thermal changes; and in many cases the diseases which they may cause become equally periodic and recurrent. A young lady w^as to have been married on a particular day; but on the very morning of that day the bridegroom was acci- dentally killed. The grief of the lady ended in insanity. The Jit in this case, came on every day at the same time; but during the remainder of the twenty-four hours, she had, in scholastic phrase, a lucid interval.” She was then perfectly sane. Gentlemen, may I ask what are the lucid intervals of mania but intermissions'^ Prolong them to an indefinite period and you produce sanity! Prolong the intermission of any disease to an indefinite pe- riod, and you have Health. Your owm com- mon sense will tell you that. What are the constitutional effects of a fall or a severe blow? Do w'e not perceive the same tremor in the first instance—the same pallor and loss of strength so remarkable in the cold fit of ague ? Have we not the same hot or febrile fit succeeding? “ The fevers,” says Abernethy, produced by local disease [local injury?] are the very identical fevers which physicians meet with when there is no external injury.” How can they be otherwise, since it is only by the matter of the body changing its motive relations and consequent thermal con- ditions in an identical manner in both cases, that we obtain the group of symptoms includ- ed by physicians under the abstract wmrd Fever?” The agents which cure fever from a blow, are the same agents which cure fever from a passion, a poison, or a viewless and un- known cause. When a man is hot, and his skin dry all over, no matter w^hat the cause be, you may bring his condition to the state of health by throwing cold water over him. You may do the same by an emetic. Oh! an emetic has a w^onderful power in the case of fever; and the old physicians treated all fevers in thefirst instance by emetics. They did not trouble themselves much about the cause. The state of the patient was what they cared most about. When he was cold, they warmed him, sometimes with one thing, sometimes with another. When hot, they cooled him—not in the Sangrado fashion of these days, by drain- ing him of his life’s blood; but by the employ- ment of an emetic, or by sponging him over with cold water! By bleeding a man in the hot stage of fever, you may cool him certainly; but unless you cool him to death, you cannot thereby keep the fit from returning. When it does return, you may bleed him again, it is true; but how often may you do this safely? So far as my experience of medical matters goes, few people in these times are permitted to die of disease. The orthodox fashion is to die of the doctor! Gentlemen, we daily hear of the terms constant and continued fever, but there never was, nor can there be a fever with- out a remission, without a period of comparative immunity from suffering, more or less marked. Every writer of name from Cullen dowmwards admits this; but what does it signify whether they admit it or not? use your own eyes, and you will find it to be the truth. You have only then to prolong that period of immunity to an indefinite time, and you have health. By bark, opium, and the various chrono-ther- mal medicines, you may in most cases succeed. But instead of trying to prevent recurrence, practitioners now-a-days only temporize during the fit; and this is the most profitable prac- tice; for a long sickness makes many fees! The honest physician will do his best to keep the fit from returning. Now if blood-letting were certain to do that, how could we possibly hear of people being .bled more than once for fever? Do we not hear of repeated applica- tions of the lancet, and of the patient dying notwithstanding? When I come to speak of Inflammation, you shall find how little that in- strument is to be relied on in fever, or rather you shall find that its employment at all, is one of the greatest and most terribly fatal of medical mistakes! How then is it, that this practice has so long maintained its ground? By the same influence that for thirty centu- ries determined the Indian widow to perish](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28037789_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
