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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    would have been otherwise; and during the lifteen months that I have been resident in this neighbourhood, only one died—a case of pulmonary consumption, with diseased sto- mach of about three years’ standing ; and it maybe a start- ling fact to state, that in no single instance have I abstracted blood for general or local inflammation or congestion ; the organs engaged, however vital in their nature, yielded (under God’s blessing) to the modern method of treatment. Indeed, I consider the abstraction of blood, under any cir- cumstances, not only an unnecessary operation, but a decided relic of a barbarous age in medicine. “ It is the life”—and surely the diseased action is encroachment enough on one side, without receiving violence from ignorant hands on the other! In like manner, with respect to aperients and purgatives, I consider their administration not only a gratuitous act on the part of the physician, but seriously calculated to retard convalescence, if they prove not directly injurious to the de- licate organs submitted to their violent operation. Many acute and chronic diseases of indescribable torture have their origin in this ignorant officiousness of the practitioners of the old school. Their errors and contrast with the practice of orthodox or modern medicine, may be thus simply illustrated: — The human body suffering under general or local inflam- mation may not be inaptly compared to the boiler of a loco- motive engine in a state of high congestion by steam, for the reduction of which one of five alternatives is necessary. The subsidence of the furnace heat, and the slow opera- tion of the cold external air; or, the sudden and violent rupture of its weakest part: these are what may be consi- dered the two natural terminations—such as would occur in the absence of the engineer. But if a person ignorant of the provision made for the discharge of the expansive element, and of the quantity of