The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-05-25
WON PROGRESS,
NINETEENTH CENTURY IN MEDI-
CINE-GLANCE TWENTIETH

An Interesting Paper by DR.. l.. il. Amy
of Norwich on Medical Progress De-
nyered Before the Connecticut Medi-
caI Society In Hartford.
DR.. l.. B. Amy, of Norwich, read a
very interesting paper at the one nun
dred and ninth annual meeting OF the
Connecticut Medical society In Hart
ford Thursday, May o. His subject
was: 1.-THE Nineteenth Century IN
Medicine, with a Glance lmo the
Twentieth" In the course OF his ad-
dress DR.. Amy said.
Let us go back to the beginning of
the century and see what the condition
of medicine was then. There were
only, three medical schools in the coun-
try at the time when the last century
was new, and the embryo physician
learned his art from some more or less
famous doctor of his day. To-day l
find that the physicians enrolled IN
Folks Directory graduated from three
hundred and fifty medical schools.
The lancet was used and abused but
it is to be questioned whether the pie
thoric farmer with pneumonia a hum
dred years ago did not do better, ne
certainly got we'll as often, under
bleeding, as he did in later years un-
der the treatment by stimulation. The
abuse of bleeding caused it's dlsuse
Homeopathy was brand new, and
was to some relief from the nauseous
doses of our forefathers. Animal
magnetism had begun to be known,
the forerunner of hypnotism and
Christian science, and our early ply
sicians spoke boldly against the
"quacks, and empirical pretenders of
their day, and the legistors believed
them, just as much as they believe US
now when we try to help the public
by and incidentally spoil our business,
s by keeping out quacks, ct id omne ge-
NUS
We can hardly realize the growth Of
medicine in the last century. Patho-
logical anatomy began with Morgan
and was developed by Rokitansky,
Virchan, Sonnen and Others
The great discovery of vaccination
belongs to the previous century, but 1t
was only five years before the nine
tenth century began. in 1896, that DR..
Waterhouse, of Cambridge, vaccinated
4 his first patient, who, l believe, was
his own child, and it was performed
again by DR.. James Jackson, Of Bos-
D Ton.
For many years yellow fever raw
aged our coasts, and DR.. Deveze, OF
Philadelphia, about the middle of the
century, asserted and maintained that
the disease was not contagious, In the
ordinary sense of the term. This, as
YOU we'll know, has been thoroughly
demonstrated by the experiments in
Cuba recently. We all thought yellow
fever was acquired either by contact
A with patient or by living in infected
dwellings,.
We have lately found that kind of
mosquito is the carrier of malaria. 1t
has occurred to me that preventive
of both these diseases might be had in
the "tarring UP" used by sportsmen
and guides in the woods, where insects
abound, covering the face and hands
with a preparation which is distaste-
full to the mosquito, will keep him, or
rather her, from biting one, and there
will be no contagion
One of the greatest contributions to
our knowledge was given us when Dr..
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote his ar
ticle on the "Conta giousness of Puer-
( peral Fever" To him should be credi-
ted the lives of thousands Of women.
who otherwise would have died from
infection brought to them by their
trusted physicians.
The great discovery of the century
was ,anaesthesia,, and again we are in
debted to DIR. Holmes, who coined the
name.
You all know that the discovery of
) ether as anaesthetic, opened up vast
fields in surgery, which were before UNI
known. We, of to-day, find it difficult
to realize what operating was before
anaesthes,a. when speed was the ''sina
qua nom of a surgeon.
Since the first discovery, numerous
volatile substances have been used as
anaesthetics, but the fact remains that
the old original nitrous oxide gas and
ether are the safest and best anaesthet-
les of the present day.
The first operation where the Gamma
carotid artery was litigated in two
places, in this country, was right here
In Hartford by DR.. Mason Fitch Cogs-
we'll in 1903.
The most common method of amputa-
ton to-day was the idea of DR.. Stephen
Smith, of New York, supersedng the
old flap operation of pre-anaesthetic
DAYS. The first successful case of pa
racertesis for Misrepresentation oc-
Cured in the practice of DR.. J. c. War
rem of Boston.
The subject of bacteriology would re-
uuire a paper by itself, and the names
Of Pasteur, Kock and Cohn are famil-
lar to physicians of to-day, and we
have had to relearn our pathology.
The discovery of the anti-toxines was
made possible by bacteriology.
There is now no cavity of the human
body which IS not evaded by the knife
of the surgeon, and people are giving
up their viscera without much apparent
trouble Stomachs, kidneys, intestines
and so forth are apparently useful, but
not necessary portions of our anatomy.
What we now do in surgery and gyne-