Behold WASHINGTON, who had passed through the battles of his country unharmed, and who in his last illness had, in the brief space of twelve hours, ninety ounces of blood drawn from his veins, and in the same space of time taken sixty grains of calomel!
Who wonders that he should request his physician to allow him to "_die in peace_"?
Andrew Jackson was another victim to calomel, as well as to the lancet, as the following letter shows:--
"MY DEAR MR. BLAIR: On the 12th inst., I had a return of hemorrhage, and two days after, a chill. With a lancet to correct the first, and calomel to check the second, I am _greatly debilitated_.
Was not this double quackery? First, it was the _Similia similibus curantur_ (like cures like), of the homeopathists, which the Academy of Medicine has termed quackery. Second, it was exhibiting calomel to the injury (debilitating) of the patient.
Are not these historical facts? Nevertheless, it is treason to mention them. "And why should any truth be counted as treasonable?" the honest and intelligent reader is led to inquire. "For truth is mighty, and must prevail," eventually.
Yes, yes, truth will prevail. When bigotry and old-fogy notions are uprooted from the profession, and all educated and benevolent physicians strike hands and join fortunes to eradicate and discountenance all forms of quackery amongst themselves, they will then possess the power to suppress outside quackery. Far too many make a _trade_ of the _profession_; and just so long as educated physicians countenance or practise any one form of quackery, so long will they be powerless to check the abominations of charlatans and impostors outside of the profession.
We have not introduced the foregoing facts in the interest of any persuasion. With the bickerings of the various schools of medicine we propose to have nothing to do, except to seize upon such truths as those otherwise useless quarrels are continually revealing. Opposition will not weaken a truth, nor strengthen a falsehood. You who are in the right need, therefore, have no fear as to final results.
It is hard to kick against the pricks of custom, and custom has perverted the word which is the text of this chapter, and it is now more commonly applied to the ignorant, boastful _pretender_ to the science of medicine.