Every Man His Own Doctor / The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

by R. T. Claridge

Jenner, to secure himself from the fury of a mob, sought refuge in the house of Colonel Wilson; and there is still a minute in the books of the Foundling Hospital, the first public establishment that adopted Vaccination, stating that as its application could not be entrusted to the faculty, the Committee recommended that the operation of vaccination should be performed by the Clergy.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague was so persecuted, that she always regretted having introduced inoculation into the country.

VII.—The Lancet.

The use of the Lancet is a subject that ought to interest every friend to humanity in an especial manner. By this, our mortal foe, more have fallen than by the sword. The use of one is as unjustifiable as the other. “Blood is the life,” this is the language of holy writ; he who sheds that, deprives us of a part of our existence.

“The use of the Lancet,” says Dr. Dickson, “was the invention of an unenlightened, possibly a sanguinary age; and its continued use says but little for the after-discoveries of ages, or for the boasted progress of medical science.

“Will the men who thus lovingly pour out the blood, dispute its importance in the animal economy? Will they deny that it forms the basis of the solids,—that when the body has been wasted by long diseases, it is by the blood only it can recover its healthy volume and appearance?

“Misguided by theory, man, presumptuous man, has dared to divide what God, as a part of creation, has united; to open what the Eternal, in the wisdom of his omniscience made entire.

“It is on the face of it a most unnatural proceeding. How can you withdraw blood from one organ without depriving every other of the material of its healthy state?

“The first resource of the surgeon is the lancet. The first thing he thinks of, when called to an accident, is how he can most quickly open the flood-gates of the heart, to pour out the stream of an already enfeebled existence.”

Capt. Owen, in detailing the mortality which took place among his people on the coast of Africa, by yellow fever, says, “he had not one instance of perfect recovery after a liberal application of the lancet. And in the subsequent report of the Select Committee on the Western Coast of Africa, there occurs the following passage. “The bleeding system has fortunately gone out of fashion; and the frightful mortality that attended its practice, is now no longer known on board our ships.”