After being frequently urged to write upon this subject, and as often
declining to do it, from apprehension of my own inability, I am at
length compelled to take up the pen, however unqualified I may still
feel myself for the task.
The use of the Foxglove is getting abroad, and it is better the world
should derive some instruction, however imperfect, from my experience,
than that the lives of men should be hazarded by its unguarded
exhibition, or that a medicine of so much efficacy should be condemned
and rejected as dangerous and unmanageable.
It is now about ten years since I first began to use this medicine.
Experience and cautious attention gradually taught me how to use it.
For the last two years I have not had occasion to alter the modes of
management; but I am still far from thinking them perfect.
It would have been an easy task to have given select cases, whose
successful treatment would have spoken strongly in favour of the
medicine, and perhaps been flattering to my own reputation. But Truth
and Science would condemn the procedure. I have therefore mentioned
every case in which I have prescribed the Foxglove, proper or
improper, successful or otherwise. Such a conduct will lay me open to
the censure of those who are disposed to censure, but it will meet the
approbation of others, who are the best qualified to be judges.
To the Surgeons and Apothecaries, with whom I am connected in
practice, both in this town and at a distance, I beg leave to make
this public acknowledgment, for the assistance they so readily
afforded me, in perfecting some of the cases, and in communicating the
events of others.
The ages of the patients are not always exact, nor would the labour of
making them so have been repaid by any useful consequences. In a few
instances accuracy in that respect was necessary, and there it has
been attempted; but in general, an approximation towards the truth,
was supposed to be sufficient.
The cases related from my own experience, are generally written in the
shortest form I could contrive, in order to save time and labour. Some
of them are given more in detail, when particular circumstances made
such detail necessary; but the cases communicated by other
practitioners, are given in their own words.
I must caution the reader, who is not a practitioner in physic, that
no general deductions, decisive upon the failure or success of the
medicine, can be drawn from the cases I now present to him. These
cases must be considered as the most hopeless and deplorable that
exist; for physicians are seldom consulted in chronic diseases, till
the usual remedies have failed: and, indeed, for some years, whilst I
was less expert in the management of the Digitalis, I seldom
prescribed it, but when the failure of every other method compelled me
to do it; so that upon the whole, the instances I am going to adduce,
may truly be considered as cases lost to the common run of practice,
and only snatched from destruction, by the efficacy of the Digitalis;
and this in so remarkable a manner, that, if the properties of that
plant had not been discovered, by far the greatest part of these
patients must have died.
There are men who will hardly admit of any thing which an author
advances in support of a favorite medicine, and I allow they may have
some cause for their hesitation; nor do I expect they will wave their
usual modes of judging upon the present occasion. I could wish
therefore that such readers would pass over what I have said, and
attend only to the communications from correspondents, because they
cannot be supposed to possess any unjust predilection in favour of the
medicine: but I cannot advise them to this step, for I am certain they
would then close the book, with much higher notions of the efficacy of
the plant than what they would have learnt from me. Not that I want
faith in the discernment or in the veracity of my correspondents, for
they are men of established reputation; but the cases they have sent
me are, with some exceptions, too much selected. They are not upon
this account less valuable in themselves, but they are not the proper
premises from which to draw permanent conclusions.
I wish the reader to keep in view, that it is not my intention merely
to introduce a new diuretic to his acquaintance, but one which, though
not infallible, I believe to be much more certain than any other in
present use.
After all, in spite of opinion, prejudice, or error, TIME will fix the
real value upon this discovery, and determine whether I have imposed
upon myself and others, or contributed to the benefit of science and
mankind.
_Birmingham, 1st July,_ 1785.