Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating and drinking,—no matter what the disease,—he should be surprised at a mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should not be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction should finally recover.
I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia, thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave, Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"
Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last destroys it."
CHAPTER C.
AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.
The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April 15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "We would regard every approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of humanity and scientific medicine."
A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.