The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-02-19

~Coveries have been brought into use
for suffering humanity in the last
half of the century. Chief among
the many additions made to the
armamentary of the surgeon and
physician, is chlorOfOrm. Surgeons
of the present day cannot e how a
difficult and tedious operation could
be performed without the anesthetic.
ChlorOform was first used in 1916, and
Rther about the same time. Vacci-
nation was discovered almost a half
century before it became popular
aud with all the light shed upon its
benign influence upon the most lOath-
som of diseases, it is still resisted
by many people. New medicines
have come into vogue with such ra-
pidity that it take an expert druggist
to keep up with the continual stream.
The h~vpOdermic needle seems to
have captured the world in twenty
five years. But l must say many
morphine eaters, or rather takers,
owe their vitiated taste and complete
downfall to the hypodermic syringe.
Among the changes that have
taken place in the last one hundred
years, but now we'll nigh forgotten,
is the medical application of leeches.
In the Olden times they e used
so extensively that Shakespeare calls
a doctor Il 'Eleech." Bleeding was
so popular that a leech was COnsid-
cred too slow, and the surgeon, OF
EEbarber,' was applied to first, and
if he failed to restore the patient to
health by copious hleedings then the
physician was called in, who fire.
quently finished the case with jalap
and tartar emetiC. For the last
fifty years the practice has become
obsolete; like many other things,
when it did not prove good in every
case, It was relegated to the rear,
although it maintained great prOmi-
nenCe for many years. l very we'll
can conceive of cases, that would be
logically treated by the application
of leeches, more happily than by any
other means. But the leech-frOm
its appearance-wOuld be expected
to be found in the armamentary of
the ''ho0-dOo" doctor. 1 can remem-
Der hack in the ffties, it was con
siderCd an ornament for a drug store
to have n jar of leeches swimming
around in the water. Now you never
see them probably they have had
their day.
Forty years ago ~antiseptics were
unknown TO physicians, or scientific
people in any walk of life. 1t is true
that antiSeptiCs were used in the
preservation of meats from time
immemorial but it had not occurred
to Us that a wound could he pre-
vented from suppuratiOn by the use
of an antiseptiC till the last thirty
years. Hundreds of men were drained
to death for the want of this knOwl-
edge II the war between the States.
Every wounded soldier had simply
cold water applied-and nothing
else. IOdOfOrm was unknown to Our
best surgeons corrosive sublimate
was looked on as only a violent
poison, too deadly to use on a fresh
wound. So we let nature take its
course.
Again, we did not know fifty years
ago that malaria, the great poison
ing agent that inhabits all the
swamps and alluvial soils of the
South country, gets into the system
through the water drank by the
people-in one way or another. 1t
may be so violent as to produce dis
ease by sleeping in exposed places !;
but water, contaminated by the
poison and drank, is the usual way
in which it gets in it's work, and no
attention was given to obviate it's
cause. Our people would rather
work than think.
1t has been probably more than
fifty years since artesian wells have
been bored for drinking water, but
not till the last quarter of this cen
turv we're driven wells used for the
purpose of avoiding malaria, and the
germs peculiar to certain forms of
fever. The idea is to drive an iron