Inquest on Miss Sophia Dallett held at Putney on the 8th and 14th July, 1847, printed from the notes of one of the jury : with an appendix / Edited by John Rose Cormack.
- Date:
- 1847
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Inquest on Miss Sophia Dallett held at Putney on the 8th and 14th July, 1847, printed from the notes of one of the jury : with an appendix / Edited by John Rose Cormack. 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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![is a practitioner of tliirty-four years’ standing,) as were named to Mr. Farmer, by the sisters of the deceased, (and into which, he stated on oath to the Coroner, he “ minutely inquired, before he” suggested the treatment,) a different course would have been adopted. No attention whatever would have been paid to the diagnosis of the young ladies, that it was “ a slight bilious attack no medicine or medical treatment of any kind would have been suggested till the patient had been visited ; and then, assuredly, such measures as were deemed good by your correspondent would not have been relied on. The paragraph from which the above sentences are taken is scarcely worth more comment; but your readers may look back at it for a moment, as a good specimen, in its way, of a druggist’s pathology, literature, and logic. They may there notice, at the same time, how the “ minute inquiries” and the various drugs are spoken of, as if only one “ black draught,” and as if there had been no prescribing, but simply the selling of a certain drug asked for. Mr. Farmer fancies that his allusion to “ misdirecting pills” may confuse some people who have not read or heard all the evidence ; but this is not likely to be the case with the regular readers of The Lancet, who rely on your not having suppressed any one essential fact in your report. Mr. Farmer knows quite well that all my medicine was proved to have been given exactly as I prescribed ; and that neither in time of admini- stration, nor in what was administered, did any deviation from my instructions arise, through “ misdirecting pills,” or from any other cause whatsoever. The next paragraph, I beg you to reprint entire, as it must be viewed as containing, inter alia, the verdict which Mr. Farmer thinks ought to have been given ; and which my cruel conduct, or dislike of Jedburgh justice, prevented his recommending, in the capacity of a juryman. “ I [Mr. Farmer] may know but little of the practice of medicine, (as a druggist;) you seem to think I can- not possess capacity enough to embrace even the first rudiments of the science; but I flatter myself I may know sufficient to form a judgment, in common with the public, upon the possible result of a different mode of treatment, had it been pursued, in the unfortu- nate case that has given rise to so much discussion—that is to say, had the patient been treated during her latter hours for the pros- tration and collapse consequent upon fever, instead of being hurried from room to room, slapped, pinched, &c., under the impression that the poor girl was labouring under narcotism, by the doctor’s own confession, and, as he said, arising from his own remedies.” Had I known that the deceased had had so much of Mr. Farmer’s purging medicine to contend against along with her disease, (fever and supervening inflammation of the intestines,) the probability is, that I should not have imagined it possible (for “ possible” was all I said) that the stupor and contracted pupils arose from opium ; but were such symptoms to occur this hour, in the course of a case to which I might be called, in like desperate circumstances, I could not conscientiously act otherwise. The insinuation of Mr. Farmer](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28268167_0040.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
