Correspondence and editorial comments on the points at issue between Dr. Tweedie & Dr. Murchison concerning identical passages in their respective works on fever.

  • Charles Murchison
Date:
1863
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence and editorial comments on the points at issue between Dr. Tweedie & Dr. Murchison concerning identical passages in their respective works on fever. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    15/44 (page 11)
    1] Dk. Murchison. were admitted.” “ It is the compa- rative absence of typhus of late yeai's that has accounted for the small number of admissions. « Relapsing fever resembles typhus in being essentially an epidemic dis- ease. In 1851, the number of admis- sions for relapsing fever (250) ex- ceeded that of any other fever ; but during the last seven years, not a single case has been observed. ’ Dk. Tweedie. “ Of relapsing fever, essentially an epidemic disease, not a single case has been observed during the last seven years.” HI. LETTER, FROM DR. A. P. STEWART TO DR. TWEEDIE. Shortly after the publication of Dr. Murchison’s work, Dr. Tweedie, on Dec. 2nd, deputed a distinguished Fellow of the College of Physicians to see Dr. Murchison, in reference to the statements in his preface above quoted. Dr. Tweedie’s own referee, after carefully investigating the whole of the documentary evidence, and hearing what Dr. Tweedie and Dr. Murchison had to state, wrote the following letter to Dr. Tweedie:— 74, Grosvenor Street, W. 8th Dec. 1862. My dear Dk. Tweedie, It is not forgetfulness of my promise that has caused my delay in commu- nicating with you, on the subject of our conversation last Wednesday fore- noon. I called that afternoon, as I intended, on Dr. Murchison, but found him from home. He, however, called on me in the evening, and both then and next morning, we entered fully into the subject. As he drew my atten- tion to several important points, I thought it due to all parties to examine and compare at leisure the different passages to which reference was made. Dr. Murchison lays much stress on the precise terms of his reference to the coincidences existing between his paper in the Edinb. Monthly Journal for August 1858, and your remarks in pages 215, 16, and 17, of your Lec- tures. It is only the alleged change of type in Continued Fevers, and not the general question of change of type in disease, that Dr. Murchison’s paper professes to treat. Now he urges that in that part of your lectures, which refers to the same subject, the difference between your remarks and his own is merely verbal. The arguments being so nearly, and the figures so abso- lutely identical, it might naturally be supposed by those who had never seen or heard of his paper—more especially as you do not mention it—that he, being so much your junior, had borrowed from you. If, therefore, he felt conscious that he had been guilty of no such impropriety, the least he could do was simply to assert the fact, and to adduce his previously published views, in support of his allegation. But he has pointed out to me another fact, which is of even greater importance. You recollect my statement that a friend, to whom Dr. Mur- chison had shown the proof sheets of his work, had remarked that he seemed to have copied largely from you. It appears that there existed printed evidence to prove that a similar impression might prevail in other quarters. Dr. Murchison has shown me a Report of the Cork Fever Hos- pital, in which a passage from your Lectures, as published in the Lancet (corresponding to page 202 of your book), is quoted ns yours, the passage in question being, with the exception of ono word, an exact transcription of one in his Medico-Chirurgical Paper on the Etiology of Continued Fevers (vol. xli, pp. 290—291). Here, you see, is a striking instance, notwithstanding