Consumption curable : the manner in which nature and remedial art operate in effecting a healing process in cases of consumption, and by which the development of tubercles may be prevented / by Francis Hopkins Ramadge.

  • Ramadge, Francis Hopkins, 1793-1867.
Date:
[1839?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption curable : the manner in which nature and remedial art operate in effecting a healing process in cases of consumption, and by which the development of tubercles may be prevented / by Francis Hopkins Ramadge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    been denominated the approbrium medicorum. That it is a most fatal and very prevalent disease, we should be ready to infer, from the many nostrums advertised in the different papers for its cure, and this, too, in despite of the fact, so generally admitted in the medical world, from the days of Hippocrates, down to the present time, that, over the excavations formed in ttie lungs by tubercular phthisis, medicine has no power. Nevertheless, that multitudes should be so easily induced to hope for relief from this alarming malady, is not at all strange, when we consider the de- sire for health and life which is so natural to every human being. But it is humiliating to reflect, that 6uch multitudes of our spe- cies should be so readily deceived, in a matter so important, and consequently that they should have their mortal existence short- ened, as no doubt it is, in many cases, by the pills, syrup?, and patent compounds, which are so freely administered upon their mistaken credulity. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the history ofmedi- cine, to form any probable estimate of the number of distinguished medical men who have advocated the curability of consumption. We are certain, however, that the number is very small. Mr. Charles Whitlaw, the celebrated botanist, we know, when he was last in this country, professed to cure consumption, in its incipient stages, by the use of his patent Medicated Vapor Bath. To that bath, the writer of this article has before acknowledged himself indebted, for a permanent cure of a most severe case of bronchitis, nor have we now any doubt but it may be used as an effectual cure for most of the diseases for the cure of which it is offered by the inventor. We published an extract from Dr. L. T. Warren, in our 74th number, in which he argued the possibility and safety of curing consumption by a surgical operation, opening the chest, and cut- ting away the diseased part of the lungs. However, we suspect that most persons would prefer the risk of death by a natural pro- cess, before submitting to be butchered in this way. Francis H. Ramadge, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Senior Physician to the Infirmary for Asthma, Consumption, and other Diseases of the Chest, published a learned work in London, in 1836, on this subject; a copy of which is now before us ; it bears the following title : ' Consumption Curable ; and the Manner in which Nature, as well as Remediable Art, operates in eff cting a henling process in cases of Consumption, explained and illustrated by numorous re- markable and interesting cases. To which is added a Mode of