The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1897-06-11

rose, and they went on to the conflict
God has honored this profession all the
way through. Oh, the advancement
from the days when Hippocrates tried
to cure the great Pericles with hellebore
and f1aXseed poultices down to far later
centuries when Halter announced the
theory of respiration, and Harvey the
circulation of the blood, and Asceli the
uses of the Emphatic vessels, and Jen.
ner baked the worst disease that ever
scourged Europe, and Sydenham devel-
oped the recuperative forces of the ply
steal organism, and cinchona bark STOP
ped the shivering agues of the world,
and Sir Ashley Cooper and Abernethy,
and Hosack and Romeyn, and Griscom
and Valentine Mott, of the generation
just past, honored God and fought back
death with their keen scalpels.
If we who are laymen in medicine
would understand what the medical
profession has accomplished for the in
sane, let us look into the dungeons
where the poor creatures used to be in
arcerated-madmen chained naked to
the wall, kennel of rotten straw their
only sleeping place, room unventilated
and unlighted, the worst calamity of
the race punished with the very worst
punishment-and then come and look
at the insane asylums of Utica and
Kirkbride-sofaed and pictured, libra
ried, concerted, until all the arts and
adornments come to coax recreant rea-
CON n accI1rOn bar tbrppo TOO1y of I'd
ward Jenner, the great hero of medi-
cine. Four hundred thousand people an
nually dying in Europe from the small
pox, Jenner finds that by the inocula-
ton of people with vaccine from COW
the great scourge of nations may be ar
rested. The ministers of the gospel de-
nOunCed vaccination, small wits cariGa-
tured Edward Jenner as riding in
great procession ON the back of COW
and grave men expressed it as their
opinion that all the diseases of the brute
creation would be transplanted into the
human family, and they gave instances
where, they said, actually horns had
come out Oh the foreheads of innocent
persons and people had begun to chew
the cud. But DR.. Jenner, the hero of
medicine, went on fighting for vaccina-
tiOn until it has been estimated that one
doctor in 80 years has saved more lives
than all the battles of any one century
destroyed.
Medical Progress.
Passing along the streets of Edin-
burgh a few weeks after the death of
Sir James Y. Simpson, saw the pho
tOgraph Of the doctor in all the win
dows of the shops and stores, and we'll
might that photograph be put in every
window, for he first used chloroform as
an an8sthetic agent. In other days they
tried to dull human pain by the hasheesh
of the Arabs and the madrepore of the
Roman and the Greek, but it was left
to DR.. James Simpson to introduce chic |
reform as an anRsthetiC. Alas for the
writing subjects of surgery i'll other
centuries! Blessed be God for that wet |
sponge or vial in the hand of the oper-
ating surgeon in the clinical department |
of the medical college or in the sick
room of the domestic circle or on the |
battlefield amid thousands of amputa-
tions.
Napoleon after battle rode along the |
line and saw under a tree standing in |
the snow Larrey, the surgeon, oper-
ating upon the wounded. Napoleon
passed on, and "a hours afterward came
along the same place. and he saw the
same surgeon operating in the same
place, and he had not left it. Alas for
the battlefields without chloroform. But
now the soldier boy takes a few breaths
from the sponge and forgets all the
pang of the gunshot fracture, and
while the surgeons of the field hospital
are standing around him he lies there
dreaming of home and mother and heav-
en-. No more parents standing around
a suffering child, struggling to get
away from the sharp instrument, but
mild slumber instead of excruciation,
and the child wakes up and says: ga
Their, what's the matter? What's the
doctor here today fort" Oh, blessed be
God for James Y. Simpson and the
heaven descended mercies of chloroform
The medical profession steps into the
and after conflicting wit
1esses have left everything in fog, by
chemical analyses shows the guilt or in
1ocenoe of the prisoner, as by mathe-
NAUTICAL demonstration, thus adding
1onors to medical Jurisprudence.
This profession has done wonders for
public hygiene. How often they have
itoOd between this nation and Asiatic
cholera and the yellow fever. The mon
lments in Greenwood and Mount Au-
)urn and Laurel Hill tell something of
he story of those men who stood face
% face with pestilence in southern cit
es, until staggering in their own sick
less they stumbled across the corpses of
hose whom they had come to save.
This profession has been the successful
dvocate Of ventilation, sewerage,
lrainage and fumigation, until their ,
entiments were well expressed by Lord ,
oalmerston, when he said to the Eng :
ish nation at the time "a fast had been
proclaimed to keep off a great pesti- '
ence: "Clean your streets or death
will ravage. Notwithstanding all the ,
rayers of this nation. Clean your :
treets and then call on God for help"
See what this profession has done for
uman longevity. There was such a ,