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
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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.

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    of the estimation in which the fathers of medicine have been held by all learned successors should, in some measure, counteract the growing pre- judice against this source of much of our best experience and many of the best principles in science, we shall consider ourselves justified in having made this defence.” Oh that the venerable forms of Hippo- crates, Galen and Celsus could appear and duly thank their “ learned successor,” Dr. Paine, who in this 19th century thinks that his mission is to defend their memories from the attacks of the “ bigoted numeral- ists ! How much ought medicine to be grateful that its fathers have been preserved from oblivion by such a cogent writer ! But let us commence with the special object of our labors—a review of Dr. Paine s ideas upon the effect of Louis’s writings, and of the numeri- cal (or anatomical, according to Dr. P.) school. The first sign we have of the terror of our commentator in conse- quence of the prevalence of the writings of the “ anatomical school,” ap- pears in Vol. 1, when criticizing Marshall Hall’s views of venesection, for the London and t rench pathologists are both classed under one head, although in our opinion entirely distinct characters. However, we will not quarrel with his classification of authors. Dr. Paine quotes the fol- lowing from Armstrong’s Lectures on Fever. The quotation will serve to show the “ generalizing ” powers of the Dr., as well as his dislike for Louis. “ A patient, at the point of death from acute inflammation of the pleura and lungs, was bled to the extent of 50 ounces, when he obtained no relief. If we had stopped here, in two hours the patient would have died. After abstracting six ounces more blood, syncope came on, from which he recovered convalescent.” We might complain of some dogmatism here, but listen to Dr. Paine : “ If this patient had been bled in an erect posture, and from both arms, and had syncope fol- lowed the loss of 15 or 20 ounces of blood, it is scarcely probable that he would have been saved. Here the importance is fully shown [no gene- ralizing here, we presume], not only of abstracting a certain quantity of blood, but of obtaining a full impression from the cerebral influence, in many cases of inflammatory affections,” &tc. Dr. P. continues, and speaks of Marshall Hall’s recommendation not to bleed to perfect synco- pe, as being erroneous. In a note to all this, he says that he (Dr. Paine) has known many to die “ from neglect or the inefficient use of” the lancet, since our author’s [Dr. Hall’s] and M. Louis’s works have been extensively circulated amongst us. (p. 230.) We have a few remarks to make. Considering our commentator is so very wroth, as we shall see hereafter, at Louis’s love of generalizing from