Physician and patient

by Worthington Hooker

I have but a remark or two to make upon this theory of Dr. Thompson.

It is rather a rude and unscientific theory. There is a trifling mistake in calling such compounds as earth, air, water and fire elements. Still, as a theory, it is quite as rational as most of the theories spun from the more refined brains of some of Thompson’s enemies, the ‘regulars,’ as they are styled by his erudite followers; and I may say too that it is quite as good a guide in actual practice. But this point I shall speak of in another place.

Thompson makes great account of ‘obstructed perspiration’ in his theory. ‘All diseases,’ he says, ‘arise directly’ from it. It is difficult to conceive what he does in his theory with the cold sweat of death; with the sweating sickness, as it was called, once so extensively prevalent and so fatal; with the colliquative sweat, always so bad a symptom in disease, though there may be heat enough with it to satisfy the most ardent Thompsonian; or with the sweat of rheumatism, so unapt to bring relief to the disease. In all these cases, there is certainly unobstructed perspiration, and yet it does not remedy the disease, as it should do, according to the Thompsonian theory.

While he considers fire or heat as life, he thinks that the ‘obstructed perspiration’ always ‘originates from cold,’ which he seems to personify as a sort of master spirit, producing all disease—it is the ‘legion,’ which his medicines, and his alone, are fitted to overcome and dispossess. With him, heat and cold are the two combatants that fight in the battle of disease. And while the doctors, he says, ‘assist the cold to kill the patient,’ under his practice, ‘the heat gains the victory, the cold is disinherited, and health is restored.’

The fact, that the ‘obstructed perspiration’ is often made free by cooling medicines, or by the direct application of cold to the skin, and thus, disease is relieved, (a fact which is as well known to common observers, as it is to ‘doctors,’ and which is directly in the face of his theory,) I suppose he flatly denies, as he asserts in regard to fever, that ‘if you contend against the heat, the longer will be the run of the fever, and when extinguished, death follows.’

It is rather difficult for the unskilled mind of a ‘regular’ to reconcile with the ‘simple and plain theory’ of Thompson, these facts—that persons sometimes die with a great degree of heat upon them—that heat sometimes remains in the body for a long time after death—that in the cholera there is occasionally found after death a great amount of heat, though the patient’s body was very cold for many hours before death, &c. I once asked a Thompsonian the reason of this last fact. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘that is plain enough—the disease was so powerful it kept down the heat, but when the patient died, the disease let go, and then the heat came out.’ The answer was at least ingenious. But Thompson says, ‘if the heat gains the victory, the cold will be disinherited, and health will be restored.’ The warm corpse of the cholera patient ought, therefore, to have revived.

It is asserted by the followers of Thompson, that there is no need of ‘learned doctors.’ They declare that ‘the whole theory and practice, is perfectly plain and simple, requiring no study of the dead languages to comprehend it, thereby enabling any person of common capacity to practice with a certainty of success, in all ordinary cases of disease, and this too with but a few hours instruction.’ And, Thompson himself speaks of the art of medicine, as being as plain and as easy, as the clearing of ‘a stove and the pipe, when clogged with soot.’

The Thompsonian system dispenses with the services of ‘learned doctors,’ for another reason also. It claims that, while other medicines invariably injure the system, the Thompsonian remedies always benefit it, both in sickness and in health. No matter how much they are used, nor at what times—they always do good, for they have, it is claimed, a natural relation to the system. Many Thompsonians carry this idea still farther than this. A prominent physician of this class, one sufficiently orthodox and accomplished to be for a long time an editor of one of their papers, attributed a sort of selecting power to lobelia. He said, that it would never bring up anything that it ought not to bring up, and that if a man with a foul stomach, should eat a good dinner, and then take lobelia, nothing but the bad matter would be thrown off, and the dinner would stay there to nourish the system.

Such views as these, being prevalent among Thompsonians, both in regard to education and to the administration of medicine, it is not strange that Thompsonian practitioners should be a very ignorant set of men. In the remarks, which their special hatred for mineral medicines, leads them to make, they sometimes confound mineral and vegetable substances together. A Thompsonian of some considerable note, finding that a patient was applying hot camphor cloths to her side to relieve pain, said with an air of authority, ‘away with your camphor—none of your minerals where I am.’—‘What shall we put on doctor?’ asked a by-stander. ‘A hot bag of salt,’ said he. What vegetable mine the salt came from I did not learn. So too, a Thompsonian lecturer told his hearers, that he disapproved of all mineral medicines, such as mercury, opium, arsenic, &c.

We occasionally hear some singular reasoning from Thompsonians in regard to the modus operandi of medicines. Though this is confessedly a very difficult subject, they claim to know all about it, and give their opinions in regard to it without any hesitation. A patient once told me that, among the many physicians of whom she had suffered many things was a Thompsonian of considerable celebrity. He assured her that he could effect a cure in a very short time. He began his treatment with the process of steaming. Some heated bricks wrapped in wet flannel were placed around her in bed. Presently some one asked ‘what is it that smells so?’—‘O’ said the doctor, ‘it is the smell of the disease coming out through the pores—things are working nicely—this is just as I want to have it. Disease very often comes out in this way, through the pores, and sometimes I have known the smell to be so strong, that you could hardly stay in the room.’ As he went on to give his clinical lecture on ‘disease coming out through the pores,’ the smell grew worse and worse, as if to give emphasis to his remarks. But at length some one suggested that it was a little like the smell of burnt flannel, and on examination, it was found that one of the bricks had scorched the flannel which was around it. She at once told the doctor, that she had no farther use for his services, for if he did not know enough to distinguish between the smell of ‘disease coming out through the pores,’ and the smell of burnt flannel, he did not know enough to doctor her.