A collection of cases illustrating the restorative and sanative properties of Swaim's panacea in a variety of diseases.

  • Swaim, Wm. (William)
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A collection of cases illustrating the restorative and sanative properties of Swaim's panacea in a variety of diseases. 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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    the same virtue. With equal hardihood, they have used for their benefit, the very certificates which the real Panacea had, by its wonderful operation, drawn forth both from patients and medical practitioners. He ought not, perhaps, to complain, since the pro- prietors of all celebrated remedies have been attacked and wronged in like manner. He places his trust in the fruits of experience, for a complete triumph over all the devices of enmity and cupidity. There is one topic, however, among the invidious strictures of the day, which has been so frequently urged, that he may by some be expected to pay it a passing notice.—He al- ludes to the concealment of the composition of his Pa- nacea. Inasmuch, however, as it is universally ac- knowledged, and has satisfactorily proved itself to be perfectly innocent and harmless, he can see no occasion for publishing to the world, a list of the ingredients, to which it owes its celebrity and virtue. The disinter- ested will rest satisfied with the assurance, that it con- tains nothing, in the least degree injurious, to the most tender and delicate constitution. With respect to the use of the term Panacea as the title of this medicine, there is, in fact, nothing ostenta- tious or empirical in the designation. This name has been often used, both by the ancients and moderns, in the restricted sense of a remedy for a large class of diseases, and not in its literal and more comprehensive meaning, as an infallible remedy for every malady which may af- fect the human system. The proprietor of the present remedy has never deemed nor really styled it an univer- sal specific; but he became convinced that it was appli- cable to a greater variety of morbid cases than any other medicine of which he had heard or read; and he thought himself therefore entitled to invest it with the name which Avould best express its peculiar merit, and under which it had been common to announce and dis-