Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
During the late war, I saw three instances of persons in confirmed
consumptions, who were perfectly cured by the hardships of a military
life. They had been my patients previously to their entering into
the army. Besides these, I have heard of four well-attested cases of
similar recoveries from nearly the same remedies. One of these was
the son of a farmer in New-Jersey, who was sent to sea as the last
resource for a consumption. Soon after he left the American shore, he
was taken by a British cruiser, and compelled to share in all the duties
and hardships of a common sailor. After serving in this capacity for
twenty-two months, he made his escape, and landed at Boston, from whence
he travelled on foot to his father's house (nearly four hundred miles),
where he arrived in perfect health.
Doctor Way of Wilmington informed me, that a certain Abner Cloud, who
was reduced so low by a pulmonary consumption as to be beyond all relief
from medicine, was so much relieved by sleeping in the open air, and
by the usual toils of building a hut, and improving a farm, in the
unsettled parts of a new country in Pennsylvania, that he thought him in
a fair way of a perfect recovery.
Doctor Latimer of Wilmington had been long afflicted with a cough and an
occasional hæmoptysis. He entered into the American army as a surgeon,
and served in that capacity till near the end of the war; during which
time he was perfectly free from all pulmonary disease. The spitting of
blood returned soon after he settled in private practice. To remedy this
complaint, he had recourse to a low diet, but finding it ineffectual, he
partook liberally of the usual diet of healthy men, and he now enjoys a
perfect exemption from it.
It would be very easy to add many other cases, in which labour, the
employments of agriculture, and a life of hardship by sea and land, have
prevented, relieved, or cured, not only the consumption, but pulmonary
diseases of all kinds.
To the cases that have been mentioned, I shall add only one more,
which was communicated to me by the venerable Doctor Franklin, whose
conversation at all times conveyed instruction, and not less in
medicine than upon other subjects. In travelling, many years ago,
through New-England, the doctor overtook the post-rider; and after
some inquiries into the history of his life, he informed him that he
was bred a shoe-maker; that his confinement, and other circumstances,
had brought on a consumption, for which he was ordered by a physician
to ride on horseback. Finding this mode of exercise too expensive, he
made interest, upon the death of an old post-rider, to succeed to his
appointment, in which he perfectly recovered his health in two years.
After this he returned to his old trade, upon which his consumption
returned. He again mounted his horse, and rode post in all seasons and
weathers, between New-York and Connecticut river (about 140 miles), in
which employment he continued upwards of thirty years, in perfect health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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