Book of health for the million : with practical remarks on bathing, diet, exercise, disease, and the water cure / by La Roy Sunderland.

  • Sunderland, La Roy, 1802-1885.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Book of health for the million : with practical remarks on bathing, diet, exercise, disease, and the water cure / by La Roy Sunderland. 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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    CHAPTER III. DRUGGING. In no one thing, probably, not even in religion, have the world of mankind been more deceived and injured, than in the views which have gov- erned the multitude in the use of medical drugs. Indeed, the history of the healing art, as it has been miscalled, begins with the most silly fa- bles, and, for centuries, it rests upon nothing better than dubious tradition. Nor is it two centuries since the rationale of the materia medica began to contain scarcely anything either of science or com- mon sense. No trade, no art, was ever made to combine more of rank nonsense, glaring absurdi- ties, and disgusting ignorance, than may be affirmed of the medical profession. Whether we consider the number and varieties of their drugs, sometimes thirty and forty combined into one dose, or the loathsomeness of their prescriptions, such as pul- verized Egyptian Mummy, bezoar said to be from the intestines of animals, the moss from a dead man's skull, and the like, one is at a loss to conceive how it could have been possible for one of the learned professions to be so shamefully igno- rant of the laws of life and health,* or how any *As a specimen, read the following:— To cure the gout, take the hair and nails, cut them small, mix them with wax, and stick them to a live crab, casting it into the river again ! ! ! The first court physician in London, when attending the 2*