A letter to the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P. R. S., on the causes and removal of the prevailing discontents, imperfections, and abuses, in medicine / from Thomas Beddoes, M.D.

  • Thomas Beddoes
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P. R. S., on the causes and removal of the prevailing discontents, imperfections, and abuses, in medicine / from Thomas Beddoes, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    from health must escape us during our fugitive visits. The number of victims to consumption, madness, and all complaints of obscure origin and slow progress, will keep up, if it do not in- crease : and medicine still stagger along on dis- jointed ideas, as upon so many ill-placed step- ping-stones, ever and anon dropping its charge into the slough. Dr. Currie in that letter to you which he has prefixed to his reports, says : (C It were better per- ,c haps that medicine, like other branches of natu- ral philosophy, were brought from its hiding ] place, and exhibited in the simplicity of science, and nakedness of truth. To this, popular lec- tures on anatomy and physiology are, I think, in- dispensable. Were these encouraged by persons of influence in society, and at the same preventive medical institutions set on foot, you would soon see some check to our professional and unprofes- sional frauds in medicine ; nor should I be sur- prized if those who profit most by the former, were to come forward in active opposition, and can- vass, from house to house, against the design ; no insignificant proof of its utility. That you would succeed with the public, I have a right to assert from the result of actual trials in a place perhaps the most unfavourable possible for the purpose. Dr. Currie, many years^ before he wrote the letter above quoted, had very strongly ft
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