Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-03-26
THE HUMAN BODY.

THE HUMAN BODY.
DR.. Greene's Lecture-His Prosecution BY
tho Lancaster County Medical
society.
DR.. c. A. Greene, whose recent prosecu
tion by the medical society caused gooc
deal of comment, lectured at the opera
house last night, his subject being "The
Human Body" DR.. Greene opened by
saying that he had lectured in the same
hall twenty five years before, and saw in
the audience now present few of those
who attended his former lecture. After
giving some account Of his study in medl-
cine, his graduation at Berkshire medical
college, at Pittsfeld, Mass, in 1S4S, his
dissatisfaction with the professional mode
Of treating disease, his researches for bet
ter methods and his adoption Of them
when found, the doctor took up the
several parts Of the body separately
the eye, the ear, the nose, the brain, the
mouth, throat, stomach, intestines, &C.,
and briefly described their construction
and functions, their diseases and the reme-
dies therefor. He said that many lectures
might be made OF any one Of these organs
without exhausting the interesting topic.
He claimed that great mistake OF the
regular practitioners was cramming the
stomach with medicines, external remedies
being much more effective and less dam
gerous.
OF some 90, 600 medicines known to the
profession, he used only about so, and all
of these, except two or three, were used
externally. DIR. Greene made a general
assertion that in all ages original thinkers
in the medical profession who had at
tempted to make innovations in the estab-
lished practice had been prosecuted, de-
nounced as empires and quacks and not
infrcquently made martyrs of. He named
many of them from Aristotle down
to Jenner, who in 1898 discovered
preventive of smallpox by means of inocu-
lation and vaccination. Against Jenner,
the whole body of practitioners were ar
rayed, and placarded England with car
toons representing Jenner as vaccinating
his patients, who in under the process
were rapidly transformed into COWS and
bulls DIR. Henry A. Martin, the Jenner
of this county, who introduced young cattle
from France, thus securing pure virus
for vaccination, and thus avoiding
the transmission of scrofula and other
diseases from child to child, which is so
often done when the human vaccine scab is
used and who had been denounced and
ridiculcd by many Of the profession, was
highly eulogized by DR.. Greene who also
feelingly referred to the sad fate Of Dr..
Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, the discov-
crer of anGsthesia, who is now hopelessly
insane by reason of tho wrong done him
by dcpriving him Of the honor of his dis
covery and placing his laurels on the brow
of another
DR.. Greene was very severe on the men,
bers of Lancaster medical society who
the genuineness of his diploma of
graduation. To prove that he was no
empiric, as his accusers would have the
public believe, he read a letter from Dr..
ID. II. Barden, now of Philadelphia,
who states that he is surprised
to learn that members of the Ian
caster county medical society should
announce their ignorance of the
existence of Berkshire medical college,
within sight of whose walls he CDR. Bar
DEM was born, and where he had attend
ed his first course of lectures, and in 1s4j
had met DR.. Greene as a student. DR..
Greene also read 4 letter from the Park,
man professor Of anatomy at Harvard uni
versity, DR.. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who
also expresses his surprise that members
of the Lancaster county medical
society should not have heard of Berkshire
college, an institution that was incorpor:
ated in 1922 and only went out of existence
in 1869 on the death of its president, Dr.
Henry II. Childs. Had the Lancaster
medical men put themselves to the trouble
of referring to Appleton's Encyclopedia,
under the head of " Pittsficld " they would
have found that there was such college,
and that in its day it ranked second
to none in the United States that
IL lAu oSOl 1OO pSiSoAo ooihS
of them very distinguished men in the
profession. DR.. Holmes adds that he
spent several summers in Pittsfield, knew a
number of the faculty of the college among
others DR.. Childs, DR.. Palmer and DR..
Alonzo Clark, then distinguished as path
ologist in Pittsfeld, and now no less dis
tinCuished in New York.
DR.. Greene said he could conceive of 10
other reason for the discourteous and un-
just treatment he had received at the hands
of the medical society, except that he was
interfering with their practice and curing
diseases that they could not reach. He re-
ferred to quite number Of cures effected
by him after the patients had been given
up as hopeless by distinguished physicians
of this and other cities.
Warrington borough Items.
On Thursday at 2o'clock the funeral of
Miss Helen Wolk was held in tho NJ. E..
church of this place. Rev. Geo. Gaul, a
former pastor of the church, but now of
Millersville, officiated, assisted by Rev. G.