found sleep, and his eye, in the morning, to his astonishment, was free from pain, and only slightly vascular. He had been repeatedly bled, leeched, purged, and blistered, without even temporary benefit-indeed, the gentleman who attended him, in the first place, plumed himself upon the activity of his treatment. But how, you may ask me, can PLEURISY and PNEUMONIA be cured without Blood-letting? What are Pleurisy and Pneumonia ? Any rapid tendency to change in the substance of the lungs, from the real pain and presumed increase of temperature at the same time developed, is termed Pneumonia-vulgo Inflammation of the lungs. A similar tendency to change in the substance of the membrane (pleura) which covers the outer surface of the lungs or of that portion of it which is continued over the inner surface of the chest, is called the Pleurisy. Now, authors have thought it a fine thing to be able to tell pleurisy from pneumonia, but the thing is impossible; and what is more, if it were possible, so far as the treatment is concerned, it would not be worth the time you should spend in doing it. Such distinctions only lead to interminable disputes, without in the least tending to improvement in practice. This much, however, I do know,-both diseases are developements of intermittent fever, and both may often co-exist at one and the same time. And in the Medical Gazette there is an excellent case of the kind, which, as it in a great measure illustrates the chrono-thermal doctrine and treatment in both, I shall give to you in the words of its narrator.-"The patient's symptoms were difficult respiration, dry cough with stringy expectoration, pulse full. The disease commenced with an intense fit of shivering, followed by heat and a severe cough. Every day at noon there was an exacerbation of all the symptoms, commencing with very great shivering, cough, and intolerable pain in the chest, a fit of suffocation, and finally a perspiration;-at the end of an hour the paroxysm terminated. Ammoniacal mixture was first given, then two grains of Quinine every two hours. The very next day the fit was scarcely perceptible; the day after, there was no fit at all. An observation worthy of remark is, that the symptoms of PLEURO-PNEUMONIA, —which continued throughout in a very slight degree, it is true, in the intervals of the paroxysms-disappeared completely, and in a very short time, by the effect of the sulphate of quinine." Who are the persons most subject to inflammatory disease of the chest? Medical theorists answer, "strong healthy labourers, and people much exposed to the air.” much exposed to the air." How these gentlemen deceive themselves! If I know anything at all upon any subject, I know that the fact in this case is just the reverse. The subjects of chest-disease in my experience have been almost all persons of a delicate habit, many of them confined to badly-ventilated rooms, and the greater number broken down by starvation, blood-letting, or previous disease. Some of you may have heard of M. Louis of Paris, a physician who for many years has made chestdisease his study. Speaking of his consumptive patients, who became the subjects of inflammatory disease, he has this observation :"As we have already remarked in speaking of Pneumonia, the invasion of Pleurisy coincides in a large proportion of our patients with the period of extreme weakness and emaciation.”. [Dr. Cowan's translation of Louis.] Now, what is the usual treatment of Pleurisy and Pneumonia ? Does it not almost entirely consist in blood-letting, starving, and purging-with blisters and mercury sometimes? But what are the results?-relapse or repetition of the paroxysm from time to time,-long illness,-weakness ever after, and death too often. Even in these cases of extreme emaciation, M. Louis applies leeches! Contrast the case I have just given you from the Medical Gazette, with the case and treatment of an individual, whose omnipotent power of setting a theatre in a roar may be still fresh in the recollection of many of youthe celebrated Joe Grimaldi. The very name excites your smile!—but upon the occasion to which I refer, the poor clown, instead of being in a vein to move your laughter, very much wanted your sympathy. "Monday, the 9th of October," says Mr. Charles Dickens, was the day fixed for his benefit, but on the preceding Saturday, he was suddenly seized with ness with which the same medicines can alter the state of an inflamed part may be actually seen by their effects on the eye, in the inflammatory affections of that organ. You have only to try them in chest-disease to be satisfied of their inestimable value in cases of this kind. Instead, therefore, of talking of the temporary good you have occasionally seen done by the lancet in inflammations of the chest, call to mind the many deaths you have witnessed where it had been most freely used,—to say nothing of the long illnesses which have been the lot of such as have escaped the united bad effects of chest-disease and loss of blood. Whatever salutary influence, as a present means of relief, blood-letting may produce, it is infinitely inferior to what you may obtain by emetics-a class of remedies which possess the additional advantage of giving that relief, without depriving the patient of the material of healthy constitutional power. Their influence, moreover, as a preventive against return of the paroxysm is very considerable ;* while blood-letting, so far as my experience goes, has only, on the contrary, appeared to render the patient more liable to a recurrence. severe illness, originating in a most distressing || be sufficiently bold to deny; and the quickimpediment in his breathing. Medical assistance was immediately called in, and he was bled until nigh FAINTING. This slightly relieved him, but shortly after he had a relapse, [return of the paroxysm?] and four weeks passed before he recovered sufficiently to leave the house. There is no doubt (continues Mr. Dickens) but that some radical change had occurred in his constitution; for previously he had never been visited with a single day's illness, while, after its occurrence, he never had a single day of perfect health." If you reflect that medical relief was immediately called in, you may be inclined, like myself, to ascribe poor Grimaldi's damaged constitution, not so much to the effect of the original disorder, as to the sanguinary treatment adopted in his case. Whether or not he had the additional medical advantage of being starved at the same time, I do not know; but lest it might be inferred that his continued illness was owing to the neglect of this very excellent part of antiphlogistic practice, I may just hint that there have been such things as inflammation of the lungs brought on by starvation. Witness the verdict of a coroner's jury, in the case of a pauper, who died not long ago in the Whitechapel Workhouse. "That the deceased died from inflammation of the lungs, produced by exposure and want." The verdict in question was only in accordance with the evidence of the surgeon of the workhouse. In acute disease of the chest-whether involving the pleura simply, the interstitial substance of the lungs, or the mucous or muscular apparatus of their air-tubes, your first duty is to premise an emetic. So far from acting exclusively on the stomach, medicines of this class have an influence primarily cerebral, and they therefore act powerfully upon every member and matter of the body. By emetics you may change the existing relations of the whole corporeal atoms more rapidly and effectually than by any other agency of equal safety in the Materia Medica. Every kind of chestdisease being a mere feature or developement of fever, whatever will relieve the latter will equally relieve the former. The value of emetics in the simpler forms of fever, few will Lord Bacon tells us in his Works, that if disciples only knew their own strength, they would soon find out the weakness of their masters. What led him to this conclusion? What but the fact that, with all his ability, even he, Lord Bacon, had been duped by his teachers?-and why did Des Cartes say, that no man could possibly pretend to the name of philosopher who had not at least once in his life doubted all he had been previously taught? He too had been hood-winked by his pretended masters in philosophy. you, perhaps, will say all this took place in old times-the world is quite changed since then; professors are now the most enlightened and respectable men alive; they go to church, where they are examples of piety; they never were found out in a lie; are not subject to the But *This statement, when I first published it, was denied by physicians, but it has been since confirmed by Dr. Seymour of St. George's Hospital, who recently made some remarks upon the power of Emetics in "altering the Periodicity of Disease." passions of other men; have no motives of interest or ambition,-in fact, they are all but angels. Now, I only wish you knew the manner in which most of these very respectable persons get their chairs-the tricks, the party-work, the subserviency, meanness, and hypocrisy practised by them for that and other ends--and you would not so tamely submit your judgment to their theoretic dreams and delusions. Young men, be MEN,—and instead of taking for gospel the incoherent and inconsistent doctrines of the fallible puppets whom interest or intrigue has stuck up in Academic Halls,- -use your own eyes, and exercise your own reason! Here, then, I give you a test by which you may know the best practice in inflammatory diseases of the chest-a test that cannot possibly deceive you. Take a certain number of pleuritic and pneumonic patientsbleed, blister, and physic these after the most orthodox fashion; so that you shall not be able to tell, whether the continued disease be the effect of the primary cause, or the heroic measures by which your patients have been worried during their illness. Take another equal number similarly afflicted, and treat them chrono-thermally,-that is to say, premise an emetic, and when, by means of this, you have obtained a remission of the symptoms, endeavour to prolong such period of immunity, by quinine, opium, or hydrocyanic acid; and then compare the results of both modes of practice. If you do not find an immense saving of suffering and mortality by the latter mode of treatment, I will consent to be stigmatised by you as an impostor and deceiver—a cheat—a quack—a person, in a word, who would rather teach error than vindicate truth. Remember, however, before you begin, that the Chrono-Thermal System professes, as its chief feature of superiority over every other, to make short work with disease, -a circumstance not likely to recommend it to those whose emolument, from the manner in which things are now ordered, arises principally from long sickness and much physic! I am often asked how I treat Enteritis,Inflammation of the Bowels,-without the lancet? Before I give my answer, I generally ask-Can medical men boast of any particular success from depletion in this disease? If so, why have they been always so solicitous to get the system under the influence of calomel,-or why do they prescribe Turpentine in its treatment? Is it not because the nature of the relief afforded by the lancet has either been temporary or delusive; or, what I have myself found it to be, absolutely hurtful in the majority of cases? "The symptoms of Enteritis," says Dr. Parr, " "are a shivering, with an uneasiness in the bowels, soon increasing to a violent pain, occasionally at first remitting, but soon becoming continual. Generally, the whole abdomen is affected at the same time with spasmodic pains, which extend to the loins, apparently owing to flatulency. pulse is small, frequent, generally soft, but sometimes hard, and at last irregular and intermittent-the extremities are cold-the strength sinks rapidly." "Perhaps," he adds, "bleeding is more seldom necessary in this disease than in any other inflammation; for it rapidly tends to mortification, and should it not at once relieve, it soon proves fatal." In a letter which I received from Staff-Surgeon Hume, he says: "I am satisfied that Pneumonia and Enteritis, diseases which are at present the bugbears of the faculty, are indebted for their chief existence to the remedies employed in ordinary ailments, namely, bleeding and unnecessary purging. I never saw a case of either, (and I have seen many) of which the subject had not been the inmate of an hospital previously, where he had undergone the usual antiphlogistic regimen,' — or had been otherwise debilitated, as in the case of long residence in a warm climate." Now, Gentlemen, this is the language of an experienced Medical Officer of the Army, one who, having no interested end to serve, and who would not take private practice if offered to him, is at least as worthy of belief as those whose daily bread depends upon the extent and duration of disease around them. own practice in Enteritis I will illustrate by a case. I was one evening requested to see a person very ill I found him with severe pain of abdomen, which would not brook the touch, furred tongue, hard pulse, and hot skin; he told me he had shivered repeatedly, that the : My "What from this barren being do we reap? Mantles the earth with darkness—until right pain was at first intermittent, but at last || things must be its measure." In the same constant. He had been seen in the morning spirit, Lord Byron asks: by a gentleman, who had ordered him Turpenti e and Calomel-a proof that he also considered the case as one of inflammation of the bowels. The patient having obtained no relief, I was called in. I gave him an emetic, and in about twenty minutes I again saw him. The vomit had acted powerfully, and with such relief that he could then turn himself in bed with ease, which he could not before do. I then prescribed prussic acid and quinine. a few days he was as well as ever. Instead of bringing theoretic objections to this method of treating inflammation of the bowels, let practitioners only put it to the proof. Is it possible that they can be less successful with the new practice than with the old, under which, when they save a patient in this disease, they are fain to boast of it as a wonder! In I shall now enter at some length upon the subject of BLOOD-LETTING. While with one class of practitioners, Medicine is reduced to the mere art of purgation, with another class it consists in the systematic abstraction of blood; every means being resorted to in the mode of doing this, from venesection, arteriotomy, and cupping, to the basest application of the leech. In the remarks, Gentlemen, which I am now about to make on the subject, instead of discussing the preferable mode of taking blood away, I shall bring before you some facts and arguments that may convince you of the perfect possibility of dispensing with the practice altogether. "The imputation of novelty," says Locke, "is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads as they do of their perukes, by the fashion-and can allow none to be right but the received doctrine." Yet, in the words of the same acute writer:-" An error is not the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected; and if it were put to the vote anywhere in the world, I doubt as things are managed, whether Truth would have the majority; at least while the authority of men, and not the examination of The operation of Blood-letting is so associated, in the minds of most men, with the practice of physic, that when a very sensible German physician, some time ago, petitioned the King of Prussia to make the employment of the lancet penal, he was laughed at from one end of Europe to the other. This you will not wonder at if you consider that the multitude always think "whatever is is right;" but a little reflection will teach you that there must have been a period in the world's history when the lancet was unknown as a remedy;and that many centuries necessarily elapsed before it could even be imagined that loss of blood might alleviate or cure disease. Nations, nevertheless, grew and prospered. To what daring innovator the practice of physic owes the Curse of the lancet, the annals of the art leave us in ignorance; but this we know, that its introduction could only have been during the infancy of Medicine, when remedial means were yet few, and the mode of action of remedies totally unknown. It was the invention of an unenlightened,-possibly, a sanguinary age; and its continued use says but little for the after-discoveries of ages, or for the boasted progress of medical science. It was once a question whether or not the blood be alive. That question is now definitely settled. John Hunter, to the conviction of everybody, proved that the Blood lives ;and every drop that artificially leaves the system is admitted, even by those who take it away, to be a drop of life. He who loses a pint of blood loses a pint of his life. Of what is the body composed? Is it not of Blood, and Blood only? What fills up the excavation of an ulcer or an abscess? What reproduces the F I bone of the leg or thigh, after it has been thrown off dead, in nearly all its length? what but the living BLOOD, under the vitoelectrical influence of the Brain and Nerves! How does the slaughtered animal die? Of loss of blood solely. Is not the blood, then, in the impressive language of Scripture, "the life of the flesh?" How remarkable, that while the value of the blood to the animal economy should be thus so distinctly and emphatically acknowledged, Blood-letting is not even once alluded to, among the various modes of Cure mentioned in the sacred volume. We have "balms," "balsams," "baths," "charms," "physic,"-" poultices," even,but loss of blood, never! Had it been practised by the Jews, why this omission? Will the men who now so lavishly pour out the Blood, dispute its importance in the animal economy?—will they deny that it forms the basis of the solids ?-that when the body has been wasted by long disease, it is by the Blood only it can recover its healthy volume and appearance? Has not nature done every thing to preserve to animals of every kind, "The electric Blood with which their arteries run?" BYRON. She has provided it with strong resilient vessels-vessels which slip from the touch, and never permit their contents to escape, except where their coats have been injured by accident or disease. Misguided by theory, man, presumptuous man, has dared to divide what God, as a part of creation, united ;3 to open what the Eternal, in the wisdom of his omniscience, made entire ! See, then, what an extreme measure this is! It is on the very face of it a most unnatural proceeding. Yet what proceeding so common, or 'what so readily submitted to, under the influence of authority and custom? If, in the language of the Chemist Liebig, the blood be indeed "the SUM of ALL THE ORGANS that are being formed," how can you withdraw it from one organ without depriving every other of the material of its healthy state? Yet enter the crowded hospitals of England-of Europe -and see how mercilessly the lancet, the leech, and the cupping-glass, are employed in the diseases of the poor. Look at the pale and ghastly faces of the inmates. What a contrast to the eager pupils and attendants thronging around their beds-those attendants with bandage and basin, ready at a moment's notice to take from the poor creatures whatever quantity of life-blood, solemn Pedantry may prescribe as the infallible means of relieving their sufferings! Do that, I say, and refrain, if you can, from exclaiming with Bulwer, "when Poverty is sick, the doctors mangle it!" What are the causes of the disorders of this class of people? In the majority of cases, defective food, and impure air. By these has their blood been deteriorated-and for what does the (so termed) man of science abstract it? To make room for better? No!-goaded on by the twin-goblins, "congestion" and inflammation," to deteriorate it still further by starvation and confinement. Gentlemen, these terms play in physic much the same thing as others, equally senselessly misused, play in the common affairs of the world— Religion, Freedom, Vengeance, what you will, A word's enough to raise mankind to kill,— Some party-phrase by cunning caught and spread, That GUILT may reign, and WOLVES and worms be fed ! BYRON. The first resource of the surgeon is the lancet the first thing he thinks of when called to an accident is how he can most quickly open the flood-gates of the heart, to pour out the stream of an already enfeebled existence. Does a man fall from his horse or a height, is he not instantly bled?—has he been stunned by a blow, is not the lancet in requisition?—Nay, has an individual fainted from over-exertion or exhaustion, is it not a case of FIT-and what so proper as venesection! You cannot have forgotten the fate of Malibran-the inimitable Malibran-she who so often, by her varied and admirable performances, moved you to tears and smiles by turns. She was playing her part upon the stage-she entered into it with her whole soul, riveting the audience to the spot by the very intensity of her acting. Just as she had taxed the powers of her too delicate frame to the uttermost at the very moment she was about to be rewarded with a simultaneous burst of |