Fevers, from all their causes, and in all their forms, with the exception of the bilious yellow fever, now yield to medicine. Even that most malignant form of febrile diseases is treated with more success in Philadelphia than in other countries. It would probably seldom prove mortal, did a belief in its being derived from an impure atmosphere, and of its exclusive influence upon the body, while it prevailed as an epidemic, obtain universally among the physicians and citizens of Philadelphia.
The pulmonary consumption has been prevented, in many hundred instances, by meeting its premonitory signs, in weakness and feeble morbid excitement in the whole system, by country air, gentle exercise, and gently stimulating remedies. Even when formed, and tending rapidly to its last stage, it has been cured by small and frequent bleedings, digitalis, and a mercurial salivation.
The hydrocephalus internus, the cynanche trachealis, and cholera infantum, once so fatal to the children of our city, now yield to medicine in their early stages. The two former are cured by copious bleeding, aided by remedies formerly employed in them without success. The last is cured by moderate bleeding, calomel, laudanum, and country air.
The gout has been torn from its ancient sanctuary in error and prejudice, and its acute paroxysms now yield with as much certainty to the lancet, as the most simple inflammatory diseases.
The dropsy is cured by renouncing the unfortunate association of specific remedies with its name, and accommodating them to the degrees of excitement in the blood-vessels.
The tetanus from wounds is now prevented, in most cases, by inflaming the injured parts, and thereby compelling them to defend the whole system, by a local disease. Where this preventing remedy has been neglected, and where tetanus arises from other causes than wounds, it has often been cured by adding to the diffusible stimulus of opium, the durable stimuli of bark and wine.
Death from drinking cold water, in the heated state of the body, is now obviated by previously wetting the hands or feet with the water; and when this precaution is neglected, the disease induced by it is generally cured by large doses of liquid laudanum.
Madness, which formerly doomed its miserable subjects to cells or chains for life, has yielded to bleeding, low diet, mercury, the warm and cold baths, fresh air, gentle exercise, and mild treatment, since its seat has been discovered to be in the blood-vessels of the brain.
The last achievement of our science in Philadelphia, that I shall mention, consists in the discovery and observation of the premonitory signs of violent and mortal diseases, and in subduing them by simple remedies, in their forming state. By this means, death has been despoiled of his prey, in many hundred instances.
In this successful conflict of medicine with disease and death, midwifery and surgery have borne a distinguished part. They derive their claims to the gratitude of the citizens of Philadelphia from the practice of each of them being more confined, than formerly, to a few members of our profession. It is in consequence of the former being exercised only by physicians of regular and extensive educations, that death from pregnancy and parturition is a rare occurrence in Philadelphia.