President. You must abide by the letter of the indictment. Counsel for the Prisoner, proceed.
Couns. for the Pris. Gentlemen of the jury, I was going to observe, when I was interrupted by the counsel on the other side, that unless we suppose the Prisoner peculiarly, or especially, or uncommonly guilty of preserving the lives of the King’s subjects, this will appear, at least, to be a malicious prosecution; and that it really is so, can admit of no doubt, when you recollect, from the general tenour of our evidence, how many other inoculators might, with equal justice, have been indicted for the same offence. Doctor Dimsdale, in particular, in the course of twenty years extensive practice hath lost no patients; and I will venture to affirm, that there are now in this metropolis, and in the neighbourhood, a very considerable number of inoculators, who have been equally successful with the Prisoner at the bar. Certainly, therefore, this is a malicious prosecution, and ought to be considered as such.
As to that article of the indictment, which relates to the means of perpetrating the crime of which the Prisoner is accused, namely, by secret medicines and modes of practice unknown to this College, and to all other practitioners, we have proved very clearly, by Dr. Ruston’s experiments, that the composition of the medicines is certainly known. But that they consist chiefly of a mercurial preparation, is sufficiently evident from their effects. Now that mercury hath been very commonly used as a preparative to inoculation, we have proved to you by the testimony of several witnesses of indisputable character. And with regard to the vegetable diet, enjoined by the Prisoner at the bar, it is so far from being peculiar to him, that it hath very long been the common practice. As to his manner of communicating the infection by means of the lymph taken before the eruptive fever, whether it be the invention of the Prisoner, or not, is a matter of no importance, as it is now a very common, and therefore not a secret mode of practice.
I come now to that part of his practice, in which he hath been thought most singular, and which hath generally been imagined to be his own invention: I mean his cool regimen; that is, the practice of exposing his patients to the open air, and giving them cold water to drink. But, though this practice may not have been carried to the present extreme by regular physicians, it is nevertheless most certain, that they could not be ignorant how strenuously it was recommended, in the natural small-pox, by many writers of the first distinction.
Rhases, an Arabian physician, who wrote some hundred years ago, in his chapter De præservatione, et de modo impediendi, &c. expresses himself, concerning the use of cold water, in order to extinguish the variolous fever, in these words: Bibendam præbe aquam in nive refrigeratam in summo frigiditatis gradu, effusim et affatim datam, et brevibus intervallis; ita ut ea prematur, et frigiditatem ejus sentiat in intestinis suis ægrotus. Quod si posthac febricitet, et in illum redierit ardor; potui illam dato secunda vice, videlicet a libris duabus ad tres, et amplius, in semihoræ spatio. Quod si adhuc calor redierit, et venter aqua repletus fuerit; fac ut illam evomat: tum denuo aquam bibendam præbe. Thus, gentlemen of the jury, you hear, that this early, this celebrated writer on the small-pox, carried the use of cold water far beyond the practice of our most adventurous inoculators. He not only ordered his patients to drink cold water till they were full, but made them spew it up, and drink again. Now, though our learned and regular physicians, who had some tenderness for their patients, and some reputation to lose, did not dare to try what appeared to them a dangerous experiment, it is, nevertheless, a practice of which they could not be ignorant; and of which the Prisoner is undoubtedly guiltless of being the inventor.
Our immortal Sydenham is so universally known to have been a strenuous advocate for the cool method of treating patients in the small-pox, that to quote him upon this occasion, were unnecessary and impertinent.
The learned Boerhaave, in aphorism 1399, advises the cool regimen in these words: In primo initio apparentis inflammationis externe, videtur requiri cautela, ne vergat in suppurationem, aut curandum ut minima fiat, procul a capite, & tarda; quod fit, victu tenuissimo putredini resistente; potu diluente, blando, subacidulo &c. regimine frigidiusculo, maxime admissu puri & frigidi aëris. So that in this aphorism we discover not only the liberal admission of pure and cold air, but also, the sub-acid liquor, and antiseptic regimen, of which the Prisoner at the bar hath so unjustly been supposed the inventor.
The celebrated Dr. Mead, though he does not advise the extreme cold regimen, nevertheless, in regard to cool air, says, In primis autem curandum est, ut purum aërem, eumque frigidulum, ubertim trahere possit.
Dr. Kirkpatrick, in his Analysis of inoculation, though he thought it not advisable to attempt an entire extinction of the ordinary process of the disease in question, says, “Notwithstanding we have little to oppose to it’s most virulent operation but powerful acids, styptics, and not only free ventilating air, but, perhaps, the strongest potential cold we can generate and apply.”
Thus, gentlemen of the jury, it appears, beyond all dispute, that the Prisoner at the bar is so far from having preserved the lives of his Majesty’s liege subjects, by secret medicines and modes of practice unknown to the faculty in general, that all his medicines have been generally prescribed, and every article of his process either practised or recommended by a great variety of authors, whose works are universally studied.