Physician and patient

by Worthington Hooker

This situation of the body shows the need of medicine, and the kind needed; which is such as will clear the stomach and bowels, and restore the digestive organs. When this is done, the food will raise the heat again and nourish the whole man. All the art required to do this is to know what medicine will do it, and how to administer it, as a person knows how to clear a stove and the pipe when clogged with soot, that the fire may burn free, and the whole room be warmed as before.

The medicines best calculated to have the desired effect are such as will raise and retain the vital heat of the system, remove obstructions, promote perspiration, clear off the canker, and restore the digestive powers. These can only be found in vegetable substances; and there can enough be found in all countries to answer every purpose needed. I have devoted the greatest part of my life to ascertain those articles that are best to answer the above purposes; and these may be found in my Book of Practice, properly classed under the heads of the different numbers, with directions for preparing and administering them in curing all cases of disease, which has been secured to me by patent. Family rights will be sold, and the necessary information given to enable those who purchase to practice with safety and success, by application to me or any of my agents duly authorized.”

Such is the statement of the principles of Thompson’s theory. The principle contained in the last sentence, touching the sale of family rights, was the favorite one, the golden one in his eyes, and he fought for it manfully. He made no blunder in putting this among the principles of his practice.

Appended to this ‘statement’ are some ‘Remarks on Fevers,’ which it is not necessary to copy entire.

“No person,” says Dr. Thompson, “ever yet died of a fever! for as death approaches, the patient grows cold, until in death the last spark is extinguished. This the learned doctors cannot deny; and as this is true, they ought in justice to acknowledge that their whole train of depletive remedies, such as bleeding, blistering, physicking, starving, with all their refrigeratives; their opium, mercury, arsenic, antimony, nitre, &c., are so many deadly engines combined with the disease, against the constitution and life of the patient. If cold, which is the commonly received opinion, (and which is true,) is the cause of fever, to repeatedly bleed the patient, and administer mercury, opium, nitre, and other refrigerants, to restore him to health, is, as though a man should, to increase a fire in his room, throw a part of it out of the house, and to increase the remainder, put on water, snow and ice!”

And again—“There is no more difference in all cases of fever than what is caused by the different degrees of cold, or loss of inward heat, which are two adverse parties in one body contending for power. If the heat gains the victory, the cold will be disinherited, and health will be restored; but on the other hand, if cold gains the ascendancy, heat will be dispossessed of its empire, and death will follow of course.

“The higher the fever runs, the sooner will the cold be subdued; and if you contend against the heat, the longer will be the run of the fever, and when extinguished, death follows.”

When a patient dies of fever, Thompson says, “the question whether the heat or the cold killed the patient is easily decided, for that power which bears rule in the body after death, is what killed the patient, which is cold—as much as that which bears rule when he is alive, is heat.”

Again he says, “At the commencement of a fever, by direct and proper application of suitable medicine, it can be easily and speedily removed. Twenty-four, or forty-eight hours, to the extent, are sufficient, and often short of that time, the fever may be removed.”

Now see how confident this bold reformer is in the truth of these assertions. “These declarations,” says he, “are true, and have been often proved, and can be again, to the satisfaction of every candid person AT THE HAZARD OF ANY FORFEITURE THE FACULTY MAY CHALLENGE.”