Practical observations on the use of oxygen, or vital air, in the cure of diseases: to which are added, a few experiments on the vegetation of plants / By Daniel Hill.

  • Hill, Daniel, M.D.
Date:
1820
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on the use of oxygen, or vital air, in the cure of diseases: to which are added, a few experiments on the vegetation of plants / By Daniel Hill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lication. It will certainly give you some satisfaction to know that it has been lately translated into the German language, and extolled by the literary critical medical papers of Germany as much as it deserves to be. They desired that you might early publish a continuation of it, and therein explain the method of preparing and treat¬ ing the mixture of common and Oxygen Air ; and these are the wishes of all those Physicians that are not pre¬ vented by prejudice from accepting every good counsel, which is tending to the enlargement of science, as well as to the promotion of human health and happiness. And the number of these is certainly not so small, as the champions of the Brunonian doctrine are pretending. I therefore hope that your experiments will be repeated by the most ingenuous of my countrymen, as soon as you will have the goodness to give a plain description of the hitherto unknown sides of your method; and you may fairly believe, that I* shall not be the last in propagating and extending such an easy, and meritorious method of treating diseases. I had yet, at a very early period, (in 1/0^) begun to make numerous trials of curing various diseases, especially of the lungs, by means of the inhala¬ tion not only of the pure oxygenous, but also of various other pure sorts of air; but having been deceived in my expectation I desisted from continuing them till now, except in putrid and low nervous fevers, where I ever since made use of the acid vapors of common salt and saltpetre, (muriatic and nitric acids) ; and although Dr. Trotter declares himself, in vol. ii. of his Medicina Nautica, against the fumigations of Dr. C. Smyth, yet I do not hesitate a moment to make a trial of them as soon as I deem it necessary, or have occasion for them. Since the publication of your Treatise I see how far 1 have ever been from attaining to the true point of view, as