An introductory address delivered in King's College, London, October 1, 1857, at the opening of the winter session of the Medical Department; also, An inaugural lecture on materia medica and therapeutics given May 1, 1857 / by George Johnson.

  • George Johnson
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory address delivered in King's College, London, October 1, 1857, at the opening of the winter session of the Medical Department; also, An inaugural lecture on materia medica and therapeutics given May 1, 1857 / by George Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by no means the case, and that he met with fierce opposi¬ tion in his endeavour to introduce his new mode of treat¬ ment. Thus he says in one place: — ^ This is the true and genuine method of treating this sort of small-pox, and how¬ ever much it may be opposed by the great and unfounded prejudice of the partizans of an opposite practice, it is the method which will prevail when I am dead.’ And expres¬ sions similar to this occur in other parts of Sydenham’s writings on this disease. Here then, gentlemen, in the case of small-pox, w^e have one illustration of the practical evils which may result from an erroneous theory, and of the obstinate tenacity with which men will often cling to a theory which they honestly believe to be true, and upon w^hich they have long been accustomed to act. Another illustration of the same principle may, as I think, be found in the subject of inflammation and its treat¬ ment. It must be generally known even beyond the limits of our profession, that the treatment of inflammatory diseases has undergone very considerable change during the last twenty or thirty years. The practice of abstracting large quantities of blood, the free use of mercury, and a rigid adherence to the so-called antiphlogistic regimen, find comparatively few advocates at the present day. The question then arises— what has been the cause of this change of treatment ? This question has lately been much discussed. There are some physicians of great eminence who maintain that inflammatory diseases have undergone a change of type, as it is called; so that whereas a few years since very active measures of deple¬ tion were beneficial and necessary for the cure of inflamma¬ tion, this mode of treatment is now, as a rule, uncalled for, and injuvious. On the other hand it is argued, that there is
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