Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888: Volume 1, Number 12 — John Shaqi
Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888: Volume 1, Number 12
Religion
Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888: Volume 1, Number 12
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Monopoly is one of the most formidable enemies of American liberty. It
is now assuming the form of "Trust" combinations to raise prices, but
there is no monopoly so grasping as the medical,--none which assumes
to suppress competition by law.
The plea of promoting education is as false as a proposal to elevate
the pulpit by compelling every clergyman to pass through a Roman
Catholic college. The existing medical colleges hold the same relation
to the practice of the healing art as the Sectarian Theological
Seminary to the practice of Christianity. One may be a very good
Christian without the help of a theological seminary, or a very good
doctor without the help of a medical college, but no one can be a
first-class physician who goes through a medical college and adheres
strictly to all the knowledge and all the ignorance administered by
professors, without learning anything from other sources.
MAYO'S ANAESTHETIC.
The suspension of pain, under dangerous surgical operations, is the
greatest triumph of Therapeutic Science in the present century. It
came first by mesmeric hypnotism, which was applicable only to a few,
and was restricted, by the jealous hostility of the old medical
profession. Then came the nitrous oxide, introduced by Dr. Wells, of
Hartford, and promptly discountenanced by the enlightened (?) medical
profession of Boston, and set aside for the next candidate, ether,
discovered in the United States also, but far inferior to the nitrous
oxide as a safe and pleasant agent. This was largely superseded by
chloroform, discovered much earlier by Liebig and others, but
introduced as an anaesthetic in 1847, by Prof. Simpson. This proved to
be the most powerful and dangerous of all. Thus the whole policy of
the medical profession was to discourage the safe, and encourage the
more dangerous agents. The magnetic sleep, the most perfect of all
anaesthetic agents, was expelled from the realm of college authority;
ether was substituted for nitrous oxide, and chloroform preferred to
ether, until frequent deaths gave warning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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