A proposal for the settlement of the homoeopathic controversy / by J.F. Paisley.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A proposal for the settlement of the homoeopathic controversy / by J.F. Paisley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    their sick offspring. The unwholesome, often pestilential, atmosphere in the confined dwellings of the poor, cannot fail to exercise a prejudicial influence on the constitution of the young convalescent, when everything tending to in- vigorate should be in active operation. The fifth should be for the apparently incurable, as these form a large class of the afflicted sick, which we must not exclude from our medical ministrations, although it would not be consistent with wisdom or humanity to mingle them with the curable ; and I believe even here the superiority of the practice I contend for would be strikingly manifest. Not only would these advantages, and others that 1 cannot now find time to name, accrue to the poor, but the students of medicine—the physicians in embryo—now or in future time attending the medical schools of the city, would (so far as they are disposed to observe and learn with unprejudiced minds) carry to their appointed fields of professional labour medical truths pre-eminently calculated to benefit both rich and poor,—thus rendering their future career, above all past experience, happy, prosperous, and useful. But notwithstanding all the efforts we mav and should employ to enlighten the present race of medical practition- ers, we must not be too sanguine as to results, all past ex- perience demonstrating that comparatively few men, after forty years of age, have a willing mind or attentive ear to learn. Pride, vanity, selfishness, indolence, or not unfre- quently pecuniary necessity, chain them as to a log, till their persons vanish from the busy scenes and contests of this life. But if we are, by this projected scheme, instru- mental in obtaining a larger measure of practical humanity, truth, and peace, by ministering to the needs of the suffer- ing, teaching the advancing race of medical practitioners valuable facts hitherto despised, and terminating the pre- sent unseemly controversy, we have neither suffered or laboured in vain.