The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper.

  • William Pepper
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with his character it has since his death, disposed me to respect and love all the branches of the family. . . . . . . Dr. Priestly dined with me. His conversation was highly instructive. He said that he had been very intimate with Dr. Franklin and that from his often saying he should like to peep out of his grave a hundred years hence he concluded that he did not believe in a future state. ... In the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography for January, 1905, will be found other references to Franklin in Dr. Rush’s Diary. One letter has been quoted about lead poisoning and another as important is here given in full, a letter that could aptly find a place in any modern text-book on the subject. Philadelphia, July 31, 1786. To Benjamin Vaughan. Dear Friend: I recollect that, when I had the great Pleasure of seeing you at South¬ ampton, now a 12 month since, we had some Conversation on the bad Effects of Lead taken inwardly; and that at your Request I promis’d to send you in writing a particular Account of several Facts I then men¬ tion’d to you, of which you thought some good use might be made. I now sit down to fulfil that Promise. The first Thing I remember of this kind was a general Discourse in Boston, when I was a Boy, of a Complaint from North Carolina against New England Rum, that it poison’d their People, giving them the Dry Bellyach, with Loss of the Use of their Limbs. The Distilleries being examin’d on the Occasion, it was found that several of them used leaden Still-heads and Worms, and the Physicians were of Opinion, that the Mischief was occasioned by the Use of Lead. The Legislature of the Massachusetts thereupon pass’d an Act, prohibiting under severe Penalties the Use of such Still-heads and Worms thereafter. Inclos’d I send you a Copy of the Acct. taken from my printed Law-book. In 1724, being in London, I went to work in the Printing-House of Mr. Palmer, Bartholomew Close, as a Compositor. I there found a Practice, I had never seen before, of drying a Case of Types (which are wet in
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