Produced by David Widger
MEDICAL ESSAYS
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
1842-1882
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
A SECOND PREFACE.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER
CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE
BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
SCHOLASTIC AND BEDSIDE TEACHING.
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MASSACHUSETTS.
THE YOUNG PRACTITIONER
MEDICAL LIBRARIES.
SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS
APPENDUM
NOTES TO THE ADDRESS ON CURRENTS AND COUNTER CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.
PREFACE.
The character of the opposition which some of these papers have met with
suggests the inference that they contain really important, but unwelcome
truths. Negatives multiplied into each other change their sign and
become positives. Hostile criticisms meeting together are often
equivalent to praise, and the square of fault-finding turns out to be
the same thing as eulogy.
But a writer has rarely so many enemies as it pleases him to believe.
Self-love leads us to overrate the numbers of our negative constituency.
The larger portion of my limited circle of readers must be quite
indifferent to, if not ignorant of, the adverse opinions which have been
expressed or recorded concerning any of these Addresses or Essays now
submitted to their own judgment. It is proper, however, to inform
them, that some of the positions maintained in these pages have been
unsparingly attacked, with various degrees of ability, scholarship,
and good-breeding. The tone of criticism naturally changes with local
conditions in different parts of a country extended like our own, so
that it is one of the most convenient gauges of the partial movements in
the direction of civilization. It is satisfactory to add, that the views
assailed have also been unflinchingly defended by unsought champions,
among the ablest of whom it is pleasant to mention, at this moment of
political alienation, the Editor of the Charleston Medical Journal.
“Currents and Counter-Currents” was written and delivered as an Oration,
a florid rhetorical composition, expressly intended to secure the
attention of an audience not easy to hold as listeners. It succeeded
in doing this, and also in being as curiously misunderstood and
misrepresented as if it had been a political harangue. This gave it more
local notoriety than it might otherwise have attained, so that, as I
learn, one ingenious person made use of its title as an advertisement to
a production of his own.
The commonest mode of misrepresentation was this: qualified
propositions, the whole meaning of which depended on the qualifications,
were stripped of these and taken as absolute. Thus, the attempt to
establish a presumption against giving poisons to sick persons was
considered as equivalent to condemning the use of these substances.
The only important inference the writer has been able to draw from the
greater number of the refutations of his opinions which have been kindly
sent him, is that the preliminary education of the Medical Profession is
not always what it ought to be.
One concession he is willing to make, whatever sacrifice of pride it
may involve. The story of Massasoit, which has furnished a coral, as it
were, for some teething critics, when subjected to a powerful logical
analysis, though correct in its essentials, proves to have been told
with exceptionable breadth of statement, and therefore (to resume
the metaphor) has been slightly rounded off at its edges, so as to
be smoother for any who may wish to bite upon it hereafter. In
other respects the Discourse has hardly been touched. It is only an
individual's expression, in his own way, of opinions entertained by
hundreds of the Medical Profession in every civilized country, and has
nothing in it which on revision the writer sees cause to retract or
modify. The superstitions it attacks lie at the very foundation of
Homoeopathy, and of almost every form of medical charlatanism. Still
the mere routinists and unthinking artisans in most callings dislike
whatever shakes the dust out of their traditions, and it may be
unreasonable to expect that Medicine will always prove an exception to
the rule. One half the opposition which the numerical system of Louis
has met with, as applied to the results of treatment, has been owing
to the fact that it showed the movements of disease to be far more
independent of the kind of practice pursued than was agreeable to the
pride of those whose self-confidence it abated.
The statement, that medicines are more sparingly used in physicians'
families than in most others, admits of a very natural explanation,
without putting a harsh construction upon it, which it was not
intended to admit. Outside pressure is less felt in the physician's own
household; that is all. If this does not sometimes influence him to give
medicine, or what seems to be medicine, when among those who have more
confidence in drugging than his own family commonly has, the learned
Professor Dunglison is hereby requested to apologize for his definition
of the word Placebo, or to expunge it from his Medical Dictionary.
One thing is certain. A loud outcry on a slight touch reveals the weak
spot in a profession, as well as in a patient. It is a doubtful policy
to oppose the freest speech in those of our own number who are trying to
show us where they honestly believe our weakness lies. Vast as are
the advances of our Science and Art, may it not possibly prove on
examination that we retain other old barbarisms beside the use of the
astrological sign of Jupiter, with which we endeavor to insure good luck
to our prescriptions? Is it the act of a friend or a foe to try to point
them out to our brethren when asked to address them, and is the speaker
to subdue the constitutional habit of his style to a given standard,
under penalty of giving offence to a grave assembly?
“Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions” was published nearly twenty
years ago, and has been long out of print, so that the author tried in
vain to procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with
the only one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that
he was attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it.
This edition was in the press at that very time.
Many of the arguments contained in the Lectures have lost whatever
novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions have been submitted
to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far,
about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them
require much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ
in their readings of the ancient Prophets.
If some statistics recently published are correct, Homoeopathy has made
very slow progress in Europe.
In all England, as it appears, there are hardly a fifth more
Homoeopathic practitioners than there are students attending Lectures at
the Massachusetts Medical College at the present time. In America it has
undoubtedly proved more popular and lucrative, yet how loose a hold it
has on the public confidence is shown by the fact that, when a specially
valued life, which has been played with by one of its agents, is
seriously threatened, the first thing we expect to hear is that a
regular practitioner is by the patient's bed, and the Homoeopathic
counsellor overruled or discarded. Again, how many of the ardent and
capricious persons who embraced Homoeopathy have run the whole round of
pretentious novelties;--have been boarded at water-cure establishments,
closeted with uterine and other specialists, and finally wandered over
seas to put themselves in charge of foreign celebrities, who dosed them
as lustily as they were ever dosed before they took to globules! It
will surprise many to learn to what a shadow of a shade Homoeopathy
has dwindled in the hands of many of its noted practitioners. The
itch-doctrine is treated with contempt. Infinitesimal doses are replaced
by full ones whenever the fancy-practitioner chooses. Good Homoeopathic
reasons can be found for employing anything that anybody wants to
employ. Homoeopathy is now merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box
of pellets pretending to be specifics, which, as all of us know, fail
ignominiously in those cases where we would thankfully sacrifice all our
prejudices and give the world to have them true to their promises.
Homoeopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration. Perhaps it was
well that it should not, for it has taught us a lesson of the healing
faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made
proper acknowledgments. But it probably does more harm than good to
medical science at the present time, by keeping up the delusion of
treating everything by specifics,--the old barbarous notion that sick
people should feed on poisons [Lachesis, arrow-poison, obtained from a
serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus, rattlesnake's venom (Neidhard). The
less dangerous Pediculus capitis is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the
English “Apostle of Homoeopathy.” These are examples of the retrograde
current setting towards barbarism] against which a part of the Discourse
at the beginning of this volume is directed.
The infinitesimal globules have not become a curiosity as yet, like
Perkins's Tractors. But time is a very elastic element in Geology and
Prophecy. If Daniel's seventy weeks mean four hundred and ninety years,
as the learned Prideaux and others have settled it that they do, the
“not many years” of my prediction may be stretched out a generation or
two beyond our time, if necessary, when the prophecy will no doubt prove
true.
It might be fitting to add a few words with regard to the Essay on the
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. But the whole question I consider
to be now transferred from the domain of medical inquiry to the
consideration of Life Insurance agencies and Grand Juries. For the
justification of this somewhat sharply accented language I must refer
the reader to the paper itself for details which I regret to have been
forced to place on permanent record.
BOSTON, January, 1861.
A SECOND PREFACE.
These Lectures and Essays are arranged in the order corresponding to
the date of their delivery or publication. They must, of course, be read
with a constant reference to these dates, by such as care to read
them. I have not attempted to modernize their aspect or character in
presenting them, in this somewhat altered connection, to the public.
Several of them were contained in a former volume which received its
name from the Address called “Currents and Counter-Currents.” Some of
those contained in the former volume have been replaced by others. The
Essay called “Mechanism of Vital Actions” has been transferred to a
distinct collection of Miscellaneous essays, forming a separate volume.
I had some intention of including with these papers an Essay on
Intermittent Fever in New England, which received one of the Boylston
prizes in 1837, and was published in the following year. But as this
was upon a subject of local interest, chiefly, and would have taken up a
good deal of room, I thought it best to leave it out, trusting that
the stray copies to be met with in musty book-shops would sufficiently
supply the not very extensive or urgent demand for a paper almost half a
century old.
Some of these papers created a little stir when they first fell from
the press into the pool of public consciousness. They will slide in very
quietly now in this new edition, and find out for themselves whether the
waters are those of Lethe, or whether they are to live for a time as not
wholly unvalued reminiscences.
March 21, 1883.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
These Essays are old enough now to go alone without staff or crutch
in the shape of Prefaces. A very few words may be a convenience to the
reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to
find in it.
HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.
Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so
will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods
of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and
womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging
among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as a
curious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its
influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm
investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under
the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its
founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago,
we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite
inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is
that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are
“cured” by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger
number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting
well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider
equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every
form of drugging and put their whole trust in “nature.” Thus experience,
“From seeming evil still educing good,”
has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of
pseudo-therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of
practitioners in breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging
which has been one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While
keeping up the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be “cured”
by drugging, Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they
would very generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean
time the newer doctrines of the “mind cure,” the “faith cure,” and the
rest are encroaching on the territory so long monopolized by that most
ingenious of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its
whole ground should be taken possession of by these new claimants with
their flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to
such attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if
Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-born rivals.
It takes a very moderate amount of erudition to unearth a charlatan
like the supposed father of the infinitesimal dosing system. The real
inventor of that specious trickery was an Irishman by the name of
Butler. The whole story is to be found in the “Ortus Medicinae” of Van
Helmont. I have given some account of his chapter “Butler” in different
articles, but I would refer the students of our Homoeopathic educational
institutions to the original, which they will find very interesting and
curious.
CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS
My attack on over-drugging brought out some hostile comments and
treatment. Thirty years ago I expressed myself with more vivacity than
I should show if I were writing on the same subjects today. Some of
my more lively remarks called out very sharp animadversion. Thus
my illustration of prevention as often better than treatment in the
mother's words to her child which had got a poisonous berry in its
mouth,--“Spit it out!” gave mortal offence to a well-known New York
practitioner and writer, who advised the Massachusetts Medical Society
to spit out the offending speaker. Worse than this was my statement of
my belief that if a ship-load of miscellaneous drugs, with certain
very important exceptions,--drugs, many of which were then often given
needlessly and in excess, as then used “could be sunk to the bottom of
the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse
for the fishes.” This was too bad. The sentence was misquoted, quoted
without its qualifying conditions, and frightened some of my worthy
professional brethren as much as if I had told them to throw all physic
to the dogs. But for the epigrammatic sting the sentiment would have
been unnoticed as a harmless overstatement at the very worst.
Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial
change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the
English “general practitioner” of making his profit out of the pills and
potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the
dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he
must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him,
he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that
his drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable
to him. This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was
doubtless the source in some measure of the errors I combated.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.
This Essay was read before a small Association called “The Society for
Medical Improvement,” and published in a Medical Journal which lasted
but a single year. It naturally attracted less attention than it would
have done if published in such a periodical as the “American Journal of
Medical Sciences.” Still it had its effect, as I have every reason
to believe. I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young
mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of
“Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence,” and laying down rules for
taking the necessary precautions against it. The case has long been
decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote
two of the most celebrated professors of Obstetrics in this country
opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and
position.
This paper was written in a great heat and with passionate indignation.
If I touched it at all I might trim its rhetorical exuberance, but I
prefer to leave it all its original strength of expression. I could not,
if I had tried, have disguised the feelings with which I regarded the
attempt to put out of sight the frightful facts which I brought forward
and the necessary conclusions to which they led. Of course the whole
matter has been looked at in a new point of view since the microbe as
a vehicle of contagion has been brought into light, and explained the
mechanism of that which was plain enough as a fact to all who were not
blind or who did not shut their eyes.
O. W. H.
BEVERLY Farms, Mass., August 3, 1891
HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS
[Two lectures delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge. 1842.]
[When a physician attempts to convince a person, who has fallen into the
Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often
answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought
to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these
Lectures is to show, by abundant facts, that such statements, made by
persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies
of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value
in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility of a
method of practice.
Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious
complaint, that he “Had better try Homoeopathy,” are apt to enforce
their suggestion by adding, that “at any rate it can do no harm.” This
may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does
very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or
deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our
fellow-creatures. Whether or not those who countenance Homoeopathy are
guilty of this injustice towards others, the second of these Lectures
may afford them some means of determining.
To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and
regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be
very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted
as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up
the so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to
regulate the circumstances which influence the human body in health and
disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary
practitioners.
To deny that some patients may have been actually benefited through
the influence exerted upon their imaginations, would be to refuse
to Homoeopathy what all are willing to concede to every one of those
numerous modes of practice known to all intelligent persons by an
opprobrious title.
So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device,
even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing
occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial
faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as
applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to
his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a
poor man's necessities.
Homoeopathy has come before our public at a period when the growing
spirit of eclecticism has prepared many ingenious and honest minds to
listen to all new doctrines with a candor liable to degenerate into
weakness. It is not impossible that the pretended evolution of great and
mysterious virtues from infinitely attenuated atoms may have enticed a
few over-refining philosophers, who have slid into a vague belief
that matter subdivided grows less material, and approaches nearer to
a spiritual nature as it requires a more powerful microscope for its
detection.
However this may be, some persons seem disposed to take the ground of
Menzel that the Laity must pass formal judgment between the Physician
and the Homoeopathist, as it once did between Luther and the Romanists.
The practitioner and the scholar must not, therefore, smile at the
amount of time and labor expended in these Lectures upon this shadowy
system; which, in the calm and serious judgment of many of the wisest
members of the medical profession, is not entitled by anything it has
ever said or done to the notoriety of a public rebuke, still less to the
honors of critical martyrdom.]
I.
I have selected four topics for this lecture, the first three of which I
shall touch but slightly, the last more fully. They are
1. The Royal cure of the King's Evil, or Scrofula.
2. The Weapon Ointment, and its twin absurdity, the Sympathetic Powder.
3. The Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley.
4. The History of the Metallic Tractors, or Perkinism.
The first two illustrate the ease with which numerous facts are
accumulated to prove the most fanciful and senseless extravagances.
The third exhibits the entire insufficiency of exalted wisdom,
immaculate honesty, and vast general acquirements to make a good
physician of a great bishop.
The fourth shows us the intimate machinery of an extinct delusion, which
flourished only forty years ago; drawn in all its details, as being
a rich and comparatively recent illustration of the pretensions, the
arguments, the patronage, by means of which windy errors have long been,
and will long continue to be, swollen into transient consequence.
All display in superfluous abundance the boundless credulity and
excitability of mankind upon subjects connected with medicine.
“From the time of Edward the Confessor to Queen Anne, the monarchs of
England were in the habit of touching those who were brought to them
suffering with the scrofula, for the cure of that distemper. William
the Third had good sense enough to discontinue the practice, but Anne
resumed it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation
upon a child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel
Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary for
the monarch to hang a gold piece around the neck of each patient. Very
strict precautions were adopted to prevent those who thought more of the
golden angel hung round the neck by a white ribbon, than of relief of
their bodily infirmities, from making too many calls, as they sometimes
attempted to do. According to the statement of the advocates and
contemporaries of this remedy, none ever failed of receiving benefit
unless their little faith and credulity starved their merits. Some are
said to have been cured immediately on the very touch, others did not
so easily get rid of their swellings, until they were touched a second
time. Several cases are related, of persons who had been blind for
several weeks, and months, and obliged even to be led to Whitehall, yet
recovered their sight immediately upon being touched, so as to walk away
without any guide.” So widely, at one period, was the belief diffused,
that, in the course of twelve years, nearly a hundred thousand persons
were touched by Charles the Second. Catholic divines; in disputes upon
the orthodoxy of their church, did not deny that the power had descended
to protestant princes;--Dr. Harpsfield, in his “Ecclesiastical History
of England,” admitted it, and in Wiseman's words, “when Bishop Tooker
would make use of this Argument to prove the Truth of our Church,
Smitheus doth not thereupon go about to deny the Matter of fact; nay,
both he and Cope acknowledge it.” “I myself,” says Wiseman, the best
English surgical writer of his day,[Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal, vol. iii. p. 103.]--“I my self have been a frequent Eye-witness
of many hundred of Cures performed by his Majesties Touch alone, without
any assistance of Chirurgery; and those, many of them such as had tired
out the endeavours of able Chirurgeons before they came hither. It were
endless to recite what I myself have seen, and what I have received
acknowledgments of by Letter, not only from the severall parts of this
Nation, but also from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Garnsey. It is needless
also to remember what Miracles of this nature were performed by the very
Bloud of his late Majesty of Blessed memory, after whose decollation
by the inhuman Barbarity of the Regicides, the reliques of that were
gathered on Chips and in Handkerchieffs by the pious Devotes, who could
not but think so great a suffering in so honourable and pious a Cause,
would be attended by an extraordinary assistance of God, and some more
then ordinary a miracle: nor did their Faith deceive them in this there
point, being so many hundred that found the benefit of it.” [Severall
Chirurgicall Treatises. London.1676. p. 246.]
Obstinate and incredulous men, as he tells us, accounted for these cures
in three ways: by the journey and change of air the patients obtained
in coming to London; by the influence of imagination; and the wearing of
gold.
To these objections he answers, 1st. That many of those cured were
inhabitants of the city. 2d. That the subjects of treatment were
frequently infants. 3d. That sometimes silver was given, and sometimes
nothing, yet the patients were cured.
A superstition resembling this probably exists at the present time
in some ignorant districts of England and this country. A writer in a
Medical Journal in the year 1807, speaks of a farmer in Devonshire, who,
being a ninth son of a ninth son, is thought endowed with healing powers
like those of ancient royalty, and who is accustomed one day in every
week to strike for the evil.
I remember that one of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh
son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the
scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the
neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly
affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time
worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary
treatment; but I must add that my schoolmate drew a bow of remarkable
length, strength, and toughness for his tender years.
One of the most curious examples of the fallacy of popular belief and
the uncertainty of asserted facts in medical experience is to be found
in the history of the UNGUENTUM ARMARIUM, or WEAPON OINTMENT.
Fabricius Hildanus, whose name is familiar to every surgical scholar,
and Lord Bacon, who frequently dipped a little into medicine, are
my principal authorities for the few circumstances I shall mention
regarding it. The Weapon Ointment was a preparation used for the healing
of wounds, but instead of its being applied to them, the injured
part was washed and bandaged, and the weapon with which the wound was
inflicted was carefully anointed with the unguent. Empirics, ignorant
barbers, and men of that sort, are said to have especially employed it.
Still there were not wanting some among the more respectable members of
the medical profession who supported its claims. The composition of this
ointment was complicated, in the different formulae given by different
authorities; but some substances addressed to the imagination, rather
than the wound or weapon, entered into all. Such were portions of mummy,
of human blood, and of moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains.
Hildanus was a wise and learned man, one of the best surgeons of his
time. He was fully aware that a part of the real secret of the Unguentum
Armarium consisted in the washing and bandaging the wound and then
letting it alone. But he could not resist the solemn assertions
respecting its efficacy; he gave way before the outcry of facts, and
therefore, instead of denying all their pretensions, he admitted and
tried to account for them upon supernatural grounds. As the virtue of
those applications, he says, which are made to the weapon cannot
reach the wound, and as they can produce no effect without contact, it
follows, of necessity, that the Devil must have a hand in the
business; and as he is by far the most long headed and experienced of
practitioners, he cannot find this a matter of any great difficulty.
Hildanus himself reports, in detail, the case of a lady who had received
a moderate wound, for which the Unguentum Armarium was employed without
the slightest use. Yet instead of receiving this flat case of failure as
any evidence against the remedy, he accounts for its not succeeding
by the devout character of the lady, and her freedom from that
superstitious and over-imaginative tendency which the Devil requires in
those who are to be benefited by his devices.
Lord Bacon speaks of the Weapon Ointment, in his Natural History, as
having in its favor the testimony of men of credit, though, in his own
language, he himself “as yet is not fully inclined to believe it.” His
remarks upon the asserted facts respecting it show a mixture of wise
suspicion and partial belief. He does not like the precise directions
given as to the circumstances under which the animals from which some of
the materials were obtained were to be killed; for he thought it looked
like a provision for an excuse in case of failure, by laying the fault
to the omission of some of these circumstances. But he likes well that
“they do not observe the confecting of the Ointment under any certain
constellation; which is commonly the excuse of magical medicines, when
they fail, that they were not made under a fit figure of heaven.” [This
was a mistake, however, since the two recipes given by Hildanus are both
very explicit as to the aspect of the heavens required for different
stages of the process.] “It was pretended that if the offending weapon
could not be had, it would serve the purpose to anoint a wooden one made
like it.” “This,” says Bacon, “I should doubt to be a device to keep
this strange form of cure in request and use; because many times you
cannot come by the weapon itself.” And in closing his remarks on the
statements of the advocates of the ointment, he says, “Lastly, it
will cure a beast as well as a man, which I like best of all the
rest, because it subjecteth the matter to an easy trial.” It is worth
remembering, that more than two hundred years ago, when an absurd and
fantastic remedy was asserted to possess wonderful power, and when
sensible persons ascribed its pretended influence to imagination, it was
boldly answered that the cure took place when the wounded party did not
know of the application made to the weapon, and even when a brute animal
was the subject of the experiment, and that this assertion, as we all
know it was, came in such a shape as to shake the incredulity of the
keenest thinker of his time. The very same assertion has been since
repeated in favor of Perkinism, and, since that, of Homoeopathy.
The same essential idea as that of the Weapon Ointment reproduced itself
in the still more famous SYMPATHETIC POWDER. This Powder was said to
have the faculty, if applied to the blood-stained garments of a wounded
person, to cure his injuries, even though he were at a great distance at
the time. A friar, returning from the East, brought the recipe to Europe
somewhat before the middle of the seventeenth century. The Grand Duke of
Florence, in which city the friar was residing, heard of his cures, and
tried, but without success, to obtain his secret. Sir Kenehn Digby, an
Englishman well known to fame, was fortunate enough to do him a favor,
which wrought upon his feelings and induced him to impart to his
benefactor the composition of his extraordinary Powder. This English
knight was at different periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a
critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is
not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at
the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to
England than he began to spread the conflagration.
An opportunity soon offered itself to try the powers of the famous
powder. Mr. J. Howell, having been wounded in endeavoring to part two
of his friends who were fighting a duel, submitted himself to a trial
of the Sympathetic Powder. Four days after he received his wounds, Sir
Kenehn dipped one of Mr. Howell's gaiters in a solution of the Powder,
and immediately, it is said, the wounds, which were very painful,
grew easy, although the patient, who was conversing in a corner of the
chamber, had not, the least idea of what was doing with his garter. He
then returned home, leaving his garter in the hands of Sir Kenelm, who
had hung it up to dry, when Mr. Howell sent his servant in a great hurry
to tell him that his wounds were paining him horribly; the garter was
therefore replaced in the solution of the Powder, “and the patient got
well after five or six days of its continued immersion.”
King James First, his son Charles the First, the Duke of Buckingham,
then prime minister, and all the principal personages of the time, were
cognizant of this fact; and James himself, being curious to know the
secret of this remedy, asked it of Sir Kenelm, who revealed it to him,
and his Majesty had the opportunity of making several trials of its
efficacy, “which all succeeded in a surprising manner.” [Dict. des
Sciences Medieales.]
The king's physician, Dr. Mayerne, was made master of the secret,
which he carried to France and communicated to the Duke of Mayenne, who
performed many cures by means of it, and taught it to his surgeon, who,
after the Duke's death, sold it to many distinguished persons, by whose
agency it soon ceased to be a secret. What was this wonderful substance
which so astonished kings, princes, dukes, knights, and doctors? Nothing
but powdered blue vitriol. But it was made to undergo several processes
that conferred on it extraordinary virtues. Twice or thrice it was to be
dissolved, filtered, and crystallized. The crystals were to be laid in
the sun during the months of June, July, and August, taking care to
turn them carefully that all should be exposed. Then they were to be
powdered, triturated, and again exposed to the sun, again reduced to a
very fine powder, and secured in a vessel, while hot, from the sunshine.
If there seem anything remarkable in the fact of such astonishing
properties being developed by this process, it must be from our
short-sightedness, for common salt and charcoal develop powers quite as
marvellous after a certain number of thumps, stirs, and shakes, from the
hands of modern workers of miracles. In fact the Unguentum Armarium and
Sympathetic Powder resemble some more recent prescriptions; the latter
consisting in an infinite dilution of the common dose in which remedies
are given, and the two former in an infinite dilution of the common
distance at which they are applied.
Whether philosophers, and more especially metaphysicians, have any
peculiar tendency to dabble in drugs and dose themselves with physic,
is a question which might suggest itself to the reader of their
biographies.
When Bishop Berkeley visited the illustrious Malebranche at Paris,
he found him in his cell, cooking in a small pipkin a medicine for an
inflammation of the lungs, from which he was suffering; and the disease,
being unfortunately aggravated by the vehemence of their discussion, or
the contents of the pipkin, carried him off in the course of a few days.
Berkeley himself afforded a remarkable illustration of a truth which
has long been known to the members of one of the learned professions,
namely, that no amount of talent, or of acquirements in other
departments, can rescue from lamentable folly those who, without
something of the requisite preparation, undertake to experiment with
nostrums upon themselves and their neighbors. The exalted character of
Berkeley is thus drawn by Sir James Mackintosh: Ancient learning,
exact science, polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts,
contributed to adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished man. All
his contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing
“'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.'
“Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an
interview with him, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much
innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of
any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.'”
But among the writings of this great and good man is an Essay of the
most curious character, illustrating his weakness upon the point in
question, and entitled, “Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections
and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of TAR WATER, and divers other
Subjects,”--an essay which begins with a recipe for his favorite fluid,
and slides by gentle gradations into an examination of the sublimest
doctrines of Plato. To show how far a man of honesty and benevolence,
and with a mind of singular acuteness and depth, may be run away with by
a favorite notion on a subject which his habits and education do not fit
him to investigate, I shall give a short account of this Essay, merely
stating that as all the supposed virtues of Tar Water, made public in
successive editions of his treatise by so illustrious an author, have
not saved it from neglect and disgrace, it may be fairly assumed that
they were mainly imaginary.
The bishop, as is usual in such cases, speaks of himself as
indispensably obliged, by the duty he owes to mankind, to make his
experience public. Now this was by no means evident, nor does it follow
in general, that because a man has formed a favorable opinion of
a person or a thing he has not the proper means of thoroughly
understanding, he shall be bound to print it, and thus give currency
to his impressions, which may be erroneous, and therefore injurious.
He would have done much better to have laid his impressions before some
experienced physicians and surgeons, such as Dr. Mead and Mr. Cheselden,
to have asked them to try his experiment over again, and have been
guided by their answers. But the good bishop got excited; he pleased
himself with the thought that he had discovered a great panacea; and
having once tasted the bewitching cup of self-quackery, like many before
and since his time, he was so infatuated with the draught that he would
insist on pouring it down the throats of his neighbors and all mankind.
The precious fluid was made by stirring a gallon of water with a quart
of tar, leaving it forty-eight hours, and pouring off the clear water.
Such was the specific which the great metaphysician recommended for
averting and curing all manner of diseases. It was, if he might be
believed, a preventive of the small-pox, and of great use in the course
of the disease. It was a cure for impurities of the blood, coughs,
pleurisy, peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, carchexia,
hysterics, dropsy, mortification, scurvy, and hypochondria. It was of
great use in gout and fevers, and was an excellent preservative of
the teeth and gums; answered all the purpose of Elixir Proprietatis,
Stoughton's drops, diet drinks, and mineral waters; was particularly to
be recommended to sea-faring persons, ladies, and men of studious and
sedentary lives; could never be taken too long, but, on the contrary,
produced advantages which sometimes did not begin to show themselves for
two or three months.
“From my representing Tar Water as good for so many things,” says
Berkeley, “some perhaps may conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, however it may be
taken. Men may censure and object as they please, but I appeal to time
and experiment. Effects misimputed, cases wrong told, circumstances
overlooked, perhaps, too, prejudices and partialities against truth, may
for a time prevail and keep her at the bottom of her well, from whence
nevertheless she emergeth sooner or later, and strikes the eyes of
all who do not keep them shut.” I cannot resist the temptation of
illustrating the bishop's belief in the wonderful powers of his remedy,
by a few sentences from different parts of his essay. “The hardness
of stubbed vulgar constitutions renders them insensible of a thousand
things that fret and gall those delicate people, who, as if their skin
was peeled off, feel to the quick everything that touches them. The
tender nerves and low spirits of such poor creatures would be much
relieved by the use of Tar Water, which might prolong and cheer their
lives.” “It [the Tar Water] may be made stronger for brute beasts, as
horses, in whose disorders I have found it very useful.” “This same
water will also give charitable relief to the ladies, who often want it
more than the parish poor; being many of them never able to make a good
meal, and sitting pale, puny, and forbidden, like ghosts, at their own
table, victims of vapors and indigestion.” It does not appear among the
virtues of Tar Water that “children cried for it,” as for some of our
modern remedies, but the bishop says, “I have known children take it
for above six months together with great benefit, and without any
inconvenience; and after long and repeated experience I do esteem it
a most excellent diet drink, fitted to all seasons and ages.” After
mentioning its usefulness in febrile complaints, he says: “I have had
all this confirmed by my own experience in the late sickly season of the
year one thousand seven hundred and forty-one, having had twenty-five
fevers in my own family cured by this medicinal water, drunk copiously.”
And to finish these extracts with a most important suggestion for the
improvement of the British nation: “It is much to be lamented that our
Insulars who act and think so much for themselves, should yet, from
grossness of air and diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people,
who, by virtue of elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve
their faculties to extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps
be approached, if not equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water,
temperance, and early hours.”
Berkeley died at the age of about seventy; he might have lived longer,
but his fatal illness was so sudden that there was not time enough to
stir up a quart of the panacea. He was an illustrious man, but he held
two very odd opinions; that tar water was everything, and that the whole
material universe was nothing.
*****
Most of those present have at some time in their lives heard mention
made of the METALLIC TRACTORS, invented by one Dr. Perkins, an American,
and formerly enjoying great repute for the cure of various diseases.
Many have seen or heard of a satirical poem, written by one of our
own countrymen also, about forty years since, and called “Terrible
Tractoration.” The Metallic Tractors are now so utterly abandoned that
I have only by good fortune fallen upon a single one of a pair, to show
for the sake of illustration. For more than thirty years this great
discovery, which was to banish at least half the evils which afflict
humanity, has been sleeping undisturbed in the grave of oblivion. Not a
voice has, for this long period, been raised in its favor; its noble and
learned patrons, its public institutions, its eloquent advocates, its
brilliant promises are all covered with the dust of silent neglect;
and of the generation which has sprung up since the period when it
flourished, very few know anything of its history, and hardly even
the title which in its palmy days it bore of PERKINISM. Taking it as
settled, then, as no one appears to answer for it, that Perkinism is
entirely dead and gone, that both in public and private, officially
and individually, its former adherents even allow it to be absolutely
defunct, I select it for anatomical examination. If this pretended
discovery was made public; if it was long kept before the public; if it
was addressed to the people of different countries; if it was formally
investigated by scientific men, and systematically adopted by benevolent
persons, who did everything in their power to diffuse the knowledge
and practice of it; if various collateral motives, such as interest
and vanity, were embarked in its cause; if, notwithstanding all these
things, it gradually sickened and died, then the conclusion seems a fair
one, that it did not deserve to live. Contrasting its failure with
its high pretensions, it is fair to call it an imposition; whether
an expressly fraudulent contrivance or not, some might be ready to
question. Everything historically shown to have happened concerning the
mode of promulgation, the wide diffusion, the apparent success of this
delusion, the respectability and enthusiasm of its advocates, is
of great interest in showing to what extent and by what means a
considerable part of the community may be led into the belief of that
which is to be eventually considered as an idle folly. If there is any
existing folly, fraudulent or innocent in its origin, which appeals to
certain arguments for its support; provided that the very same arguments
can be shown to have been used for Perkinism with as good reason, they
will at once fall to the ground. Still more, if it shall appear that the
general course of any existing delusion bears a strong resemblance to
that of Perkinism, that the former is most frequently advocated by the
same class of persons who were conspicuous in behalf of the latter, and
treated with contempt or opposed by the same kind of persons who thus
treated Perkinism; if the facts in favor of both have a similar aspect;
if the motives of their originators and propagators may be presumed
to have been similar; then there is every reason to suppose that the
existing folly will follow in the footsteps of the past, and after
displaying a given amount of cunning and credulity in those deceiving
and deceived, will drop from the public view like a fruit which has
ripened into spontaneous rottenness, and be succeeded by the fresh bloom
of some other delusion required by the same excitable portion of the
community.