Ether and chloroform : their effect in quieting the pains of parturition and surgical operations ; article VI within entire issue of The Scalpel: a Journal of Health (volume 1, number 1, January, 1849) / edited by Edward H. Dixon, M.D.

  • Dixon, Edward H., 1808-1880.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ether and chloroform : their effect in quieting the pains of parturition and surgical operations ; article VI within entire issue of The Scalpel: a Journal of Health (volume 1, number 1, January, 1849) / edited by Edward H. Dixon, M.D. 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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    but not after the improved method of the Academy of Medicine, vide the list of genuine doctors, that is to say, twenty-five dollars worth of them in the New York Directory :* to church we can rarely go, to clean linen we confess a continued attachment from our youth up, in stethoscopes and bleeding we have little faith, but as to baiting our office with an anatomi- cal preparation, with grinning mouth and extended hands, verily, reader, we have done it, and for no earthly purpose but to catch patients ; well do we remember the rainy night when, with a dear class-mate who now Moulders in a distant grave—but not A cold, forgotten thing, we unearthed the body from beside a hedge : start not, reader, if you are unprofessional ; no parent, wife, or sister's heart was grieved by the act; 'twas a poor sailor from a foreign clime, whose spiritless tenement of clay we appropriated. There it was deposited by stranger hands, with many others long since scattered to the winds by heartless speculators in lots and streets; we will tell you the story at some future time—for there was fun in it. But the disposition we made of it! Truly we did stick it up (and 'twas no ordinary monster, for it was nothing short of a nervous, arterial, and venous preparation of six months' toil), directly in front of our office door ; so that the first object visible to the incomer, was this horrid relic of mortality. Many was the paddy whose broken leg we set in consequence thereof; and some, too, of gentler blood and deeper purse, for we are all greatly governed by appearances, fell into our decoy, and saved us from actual starvation. Well, well, reader, this was all well enough ; it did no great harm to any one, unless, perchance, it frightened a few children : but, certainly, there is some definition of this odious tiling to which we all can agree. What says Webster; he at least is unpre- judiced, and will speak truth. Quackery, says he, is pretension to skill or knowledge not possessed; how simple and how palpably true! Yet what an ordeal to pass through ! to be tried by that definition ! Verily, verily, the Mene, mene tekel upharsin ! could not have been more terrifying to him of old, when, drunken with wine, the hand appeared upon the wall and traced the ominous words. Does not he who stands between the grave and that grim monster behoove to look well to himself? There have not been wanting, and that, too, among the true ornaments of our profession, noble spirits, adorned with learning and refinement, and no strangers to the details of daily and laborious practice, those who, un- der all existing circumstances, have confessed their doubts whether medi- cine, as now practiced, was not a curse to the human family, rather than a blessing. Sentiments very nearly approaching these, if not actually embodying the entire thought, if we mistake not, we heard in an intro- * The financial department of that august assembly either does or should show such an item of expenditure.