The principles and practice of medicine : founded on the most extensive experience in public hospitals and private practice; and developed in a course of lectures delivered at University College, London / by John Elliotson ... ; with notes and illustrations by Nathaniel Rogers.

  • John Elliotson
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of medicine : founded on the most extensive experience in public hospitals and private practice; and developed in a course of lectures delivered at University College, London / by John Elliotson ... ; with notes and illustrations by Nathaniel Rogers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vian bark. After the practice of exhibiting bark had been approved, the good opinion formed of it was entirely lost; so that it became a drug in the market; and inoculation was almost disused in England, from 1730 to 1740; and in France it was absolutely forbidden. The truth was, however, that inoculation caused a great loss of life. It saved the lives of a great part of those who were inoculated; but it kept up the pestilence to such an extent, that far more caught it than otherwise would have done so; and it increased the general amount of the disease. With regard to the success of the practice, I may remark that those who were not medical men, were frequently the most successful. Some Carmelitish friars inoculated the Indians of South America, very successfully; and the most successful inoculators, in every part, were non-medical men. A planter, at St. Kitt’s, is said to have inoculated three hundred of his slaves himself; without having lost one. Medical men made a great preparation for inoculation, by purgatives, emetics, and various drugs; and employed all these things also in the course of the disease. They likewise confined their patients to bed, and kept them in a hot room, with a view to encou- rage perspiration. This practice aggravated the feverishness, and in- creased the mortality from the disease. Great fury prevailed against it when, in 1754, the London College of Physicians published a de- claration in its favour. Inoculation, however, met but with slender success, till the time of a person named Sutton. This quack used purgatives, and common-sense treatment, and succeeded wonderfully; so that he spread inoculation, more than the College of Physicians and all the doctors together. Sydenham practised free ventilation and refrigerants; but Sutton omitted the opiates which Sydenham was in the habit of giving; and gave calomel and tartar emetic. Sutton also restored the Turkish practice of making only a slight scratch with a lancet. The practice, indeed, fell very much into the hands of quacks. Medical men ceased to have recourse to it; but quacks took it up, and endeavoured to turn a penny by it. Such is the curious history of inoculation. Its efficacy was first doubted; the practice was afterwards approved; then violent dis- union and party feeling were excited; the most virulent abuse was poured forth ; and the plan dropped altogether. Then it was taken UP by quacks; and quacks were frequently much more successful than the doctors; because they did not employ a number of medi- cines, which did harm. When inoculation was first practised, it is said that only one patient out of fifty died ; but now, not above one in two hundred dies; and some have calculated it at not more than one in five hundred; whereas the mortality from natural small-pox was as much as one in six; even where medical aid was rendered; and where there was no medical assistance, the mortality was frightfully great. In fact, at one time, nearly all died where medical aid was not resorted to. The annual deaths from small-pox in England, during thirty years of the last century, were from thirty-four to thirty-six thousand. Before vaccination was practised, and after