James Currie (1756-1805) advocated the cold-water treatment of typhus fever patients, and thus introduced a method of treatment which in one form or another is used at the present time for reducing the temperature of the body in such cases. Currie determined the temperature by the thermometer.
Lady Wortley Montagu (1690-1762) is famous in the annals of medicine for her courageous adoption of the Turkish practice of inoculation for small-pox in the case of her own son. By her zealous advocacy she was instrumental in causing the practice to be introduced into England in 1721. Dr. Keith having subjected his son to the operation, experiments were conducted upon criminals by Maitland, and these having been successful, the Prince of Wales and the royal princesses were inoculated by Mead. On behalf of the Almighty, whose province was supposed to be trespassed upon by these and similar proceedings, the practice was violently opposed by the clergy and others.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) introduced the practice of vaccination as a preventive of small-pox. He commenced his investigations concerning cow-pox about the year 1776. The practice of inoculation with the virus of small-pox, which had been introduced into England through the suggestion of Lady Wortley Montagu, indirectly led Jenner to his grand discovery. His attention was excited by finding that certain persons to whom he attempted to communicate small-pox by inoculation were not susceptible to the disease; on pursuing his inquiries he found that these persons had undergone cow-pox—a complaint common among the dairy-servants and farmers in Gloucestershire, and that these people were aware that cow-pox in some way was a preventive against the small-pox. Local medical men had long been acquainted with this idea, but had paid no attention to it, considering it merely a popular and groundless belief. Jenner’s genius, however, led him to divine the truth of the matter and turn it to practical advantage. The disease which affects the udder of the cow was found to be inoculable in the human subject, and could be propagated from one person to another, rendering those who had passed through the complaint secure from an attack of small-pox. Having confided the fact of this discovery to some medical friends, it was taken up in 1796 by Mr. Clive, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, who introduced vaccination into London. Vaccination was adopted in the army and navy, and Jenner was honoured by professional distinctions and a parliamentary grant of £20,000. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his fame and the benefits of his discovery were rapidly extended to continental nations.
BOOK VI.
THE AGE OF SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
THE NINTEENTH CENTURY.—PHYSICAL SCIENCE ALLIED TO MEDICINE.
Exit the Disease-Demon.—Medical Systems again.—Homœopathy.—The Natural Sciences.—Chemistry, Electricity, Physiology, Anatomy, Medicine and Pathology.—Psychiatry.—Surgery.—Ophthalmology.
With the dawn of modern science was sounded the death-knell of the disease-demon and its twin brother “Visitation.” When the French Revolution, having at first intoxicated men, had had time to effect its really beneficent aims, the age of modern science was fairly inaugurated, and daily conferred some fresh blessing on the race. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw the steam engine rapidly approaching perfection. In 1801 took place the first experiment with steam navigation on the Thames. In 1814 steam was first applied to printing in the Times office. In 1829 locomotive steam-carriages were employed on railways at Liverpool. In the early years of the century the electric telegraph was being developed. Machinery began to take the place of hand labour in numberless branches of trade and industry. Nobler than these material blessings, however, was the awakening of the English people to a new and higher humanity. It seemed that as Science began to shower her gifts on our nation, it yearned to become the almoner of mankind, and in its turn to bless the world with the precious gifts of freedom, education, improved sanitation, and the means of developing the dormant higher powers of the species. The slave trade of England was abolished by Parliament in 1807. In 1834 the English government began to make annual grants in aid of education. Sanitary commissions were appointed in 1838 and 1844, which were of incalculable benefit, not only to our own national health, but in suggesting to other countries the means of improving the health and combating the ravages of preventable diseases. In the early years of the century Dr. Birkbeck founded Mechanics’ Institutions, thus commencing the era of enlightenment for the working classes, which has resulted in raising the mental condition of our labouring and lower middle classes to a higher level than that of any other nation of the old world. Everywhere schools sprung up, books and newspapers were multiplied, until everybody who could read had mental provender provided at a merely nominal rate.
In relation to the history of medicine, the science of the century has perhaps on the whole done greater service to the healing art by that which it has taught doctors to leave undone than by what it has taught them to do. It has arrested the murderous lancet of the blood-letter; it has stayed the hand of the purger, who merely bled in another manner; it has rescued the unhappy victims of mental disorders from their dungeons, their beds of straw, and the cruel lash of their keepers; it has liberated the invalid from the tyranny of the medicine-monger; it is no longer possible to force down any patient’s throat such a mass of filthy concoctions as the following items of medicine enumerated in an apothecary’s bill for attending one Mr. Dalby, of Ludgate Hill, which in five days amounted to £17 2s. 10d.