Address in refutation of the Thomsonian system of medical practice : delivered in the lecture room of the Chester Co. Cabinet of Natural Science, West Chester, Pa., on December 31, 1836 / by Sumner Stebbins.

  • Stebbins, Sumner.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address in refutation of the Thomsonian system of medical practice : delivered in the lecture room of the Chester Co. Cabinet of Natural Science, West Chester, Pa., on December 31, 1836 / by Sumner Stebbins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ( 2? ) are all of the same stamp ; and possess equal importance. They remind me of one of Dean Swifts characters, (a venerable philosopher,) who supposed, that sunbeams might be extracted from seed cucumbers, and who labored eight years to prove it. The subject of malaria is one which has engaged the attention of physicians ever since the days of Hippocretes. Dr. Macculloch, one of the most learned and talented me of Great Britain, has lately written a profound and masterly work of 448 pages, on the production and propagation of this poison, and on the na- ture and localities by which it is produced ; with an enu- meration of the diseasos caused by it, and the means of preventing or diminishing them both in England and in the Naval and military service of that country. He con- siders malaria, as the destroying angel, the real pestilence that walio at noon day ; and to which all the other causes of mortality are but as feeble auxiliaries in the work of destruction. In speaking of its effects on the inhabitants of some part of Europe, he holds the following language: Let us turn to Italy: the fairest portions of this tair land are a prey to this invisible enemy, its fragrant breezes are poi- son, the dews of its summer evenings are death. The banks of its refreshing streams, its rich and flowery meadows, the borders of its glassy lakes, the luxuriant plains of its overflowing sgri- cuiturn, the valley where its aromatic shrubs regale the eye and perfume the air, these are the chosen seats of this plague, tbe throne of Malaria. Death here walks hand in hand with the sources of life, sparing none: the laborer reaps his harvest but to die, or he wanders amid the luxuriance of vegetation and wealth, the ghost of a man, a sufferer from his cradle to his im- pending grave ; aged even in childhood, and laying down in misery'that life which was but one disease. He is even driven from some of the richest portions of this fertile yet un b&ppj country; and the traveller contemplates at a distant:©, dosartg, but deserts of vegetable wealth, which man dares not approach, —or he dies. Such are the opinions of Dr. Macculloch. How tini'or. I tunate|for him & his country that he had not read Thomson's hook before he wrote his own ! He would there have seea that cold and not malaria, was the universal cause of dis- ease ; that it is au enemy to mankind more terrible than