Yale in its relation to medicine : An address delivered October 21, 1901, at the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Yale College.

  • William Henry Welch
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Yale in its relation to medicine : An address delivered October 21, 1901, at the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Yale College. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    in writing of this town in his History of New England, recorded: The gentle conductitious aiding of nature hath been found better than sudden and violent means of purgation and otherwise; and blood-letting, though much used in Europe for fevers, especially in the hotter countries, is found deadly in this fever, even almost with- out exception.^'' In all probability the unusual success achieved by Benjamin Gale and certain other Connecti- cut physicians in the inoculation and treatment of small- pox is to be attributed to the mild, cooling, and open treatment which they adopted rather than to the pre- liminary mercurial treatment to which they ascribed it. These tendencies, for they were only such, did not find, however, their full expression until the appearance of Nathan Smith's work on Typhous (Typhoid) Fever in the next century. Connecticut physicians were pioneers in the work of organization of the medical profession, and in this work graduates of Yale were prominent. The oldest exist- ing medical society in this country is the still active and flourishing Litchfield County Medical Society, founded in 1765, and preceded by only two short-hved volun- tary organizations, one in Boston and the other in New York. The first organized effort on the part of the profes- sion to secure effective legal regulation of medical prac- tice in the colonies was in 1763, when physicians of Norwich, Connecticut, petitioned the General Court for an act of incorporation, which was, however, not granted. The name of Ehsha Tracy of the class of 1738 appears
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