Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868.

  • Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    to have consulted him. It cannot be a matter of surprise that, by the bold use of active medicines, especially mercury, antimony and opium, he should have effected some remarkable cures; these cases were displayed with the usual exaggerations, while those in which he failed or did mischief, passed unnoticed. His reputa- tion, however, became so great, that the magistrates of Basle engaged him, at a large salary, to fill the chair of medicine in their university. Accordingly, in 1527, he began delivering lee- tures, sometimes in barbarous Latin, oftener in German; but, though he gained at first some enthusiastic adherents, the ridiculous vanity which he displayed, despising every other authority in medicine, whether ancient or modern, soon created such disgust, that he was left without an audience. A quarrel with the magis- trates on account of a decision against his demand of fees, which was deemed exorbitant, decided him in the following year to leave the place. He subsequently resided in Alsace and other parts of Germany, leading a life of extreme intemperance, in the lowest company; yet occasional instances of extraordinary success in his practice, still preserved him some reputation, notwithstanding numerous failures. But the most striking proof of the folly of his pretensions was given in his own person; for, after announcing that he was in possession of an elixir, which would prolong human life to an indefinite period, he died at Saltzburg, in 1541, of a fever. Says a writer: “He may perhaps be called, with justice, the most distinguished quack who ever made a figure in the world.” He practiced medicine with the boldness of a wandering empiric, and mingled his medical and chemical knowledge with the specu- lations of the cabbala, and with a theosophy of his own. He first introduced mercury, or quicksilver, as a medicine; and all who thus administered it were denominated quacks, in allusion to the name quacksalver given to this metal by the Germans. He became intolerably vain-glorious, boasting that there was more knowledge in his beard than in the whole of Galen. He was likewise shock- ingly impious, declaring, that if God would not impart to man the secrets of medicine, it was right to consult the devil. Such, then, was the personage to whom we are indebted for the introduction of the mineral practice, which has continued to the present day, entailing misery on the human family to an amount beyond all computation. The great anatomists of the sixteenth century had paved the [Assem. No. 25.] 4