Remarks relative to Dr. Paine's commentaries upon the writings of M. Louis / by H. I. B.

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks relative to Dr. Paine's commentaries upon the writings of M. Louis / by H. I. B. 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.

    18/32 (page 18)
    we have seen two cases, at least, and if we had resided farther south should probably have seen many more, of chronic diarrhoea from long residence in the West Indies; and in these cases,in which we examined the lungs with the utmost caution, making the minute subdivisions of them with especial reference to Louis’s remarks, we found no trace of tubercle, but the intestines were studded with ulcers. We explain the fact of the error of Louis from this circumstance, that the diseases of warm climates rarely, if ever, appear in the Paris hospitals. We never saw one during our residence in that metropolis. We do not, however, consider Louis as being unworthy of confidence because he has chosen to say—“ It is now more than 8 years since my Researches [on phthisis] were published, and I have not met, during that period, with a single subject who has died of a chronic disease, and with ulcers in the small intestines, in whom there was not at the same time tubercles in the lungs.”* But the climax is coming:. We cannot forbear smiling to view the overweening self-complacency of our commentator when commencing his plan of “rapidly glancing at the prolific results of those 50 cases of typhus.” Observe the bathos ! “ But it is indispensable to the success of our enterprise, and when we shall have brought them to the solemn consideration of the reader, yet leaving them mainly to his intelligence, we cannot but think that they will be regarded as a fearful beacon to the present and coming generations ” ! (Page 694.) Let us see how Dr. Paine has succeeded in proving that he deserves immortality for having proved that Louis is an arch traitor to truth, and that his works ought to be regarded as a warning to all future generations ! In the first paragraph after this flourish of “ solemn ” trumpets, we find a radical error in the statement of Louis’s opinions—as follows. “ Our author, for instance, has no conception of disease which he cannot trace out through some lesion of structure ; and when he endeavors to insinuate the belief that diarrhoea cannot exist ‘ without appreciable lesion of the intestinal mucous membrane,’ he fears that his hypothesis may find some opposition from analogies supplied by the natural condi- tions of the body.” (P. 695.) Our readers would scarcely believe us if we were merely to state that all this assertion by Dr. Paine is radically false, and that in the above paragraph in which Dr. P. pretends to quote from Louis s work on phthisis, Louis really says exactly the reverse of what Dr. P. states that he does, and that instead “ of having no conception of disease which * Examen de l’Exomen dc Broussais. Paris: 1834. P. 18.