"Ode to Health;
Date: 1896-1903
Series: N2009-5 - Civil War veterans medical journal, 1896-1903.
Civil War Veterans Medical Journal.
(Page 16 of 24)
Transcript
[page 16]
Blood Letting and Calomel
In 1831, I travelled on North Manlius circuit,
in the Oneida Conference of the M.C. Church N.Y.
I lived in Fayetteville, where my wife was confined
with her second child. Drs. Pulford and Shipman,
who were in partnership attended her. They gave her
calomel. Dr P. said to me after he had given it
that it was a very fine medicine. The next evening after
the birth of the child, they bled her. Women, who were
present spoke of the sudden change which the bleeding produced, as she immediately
began to run down, and before twelve O.C. the next day, she was a corpse!!
So much for calomel and bleeding in my family.
Well might Dr. Hunn say, "Abominable is the mur-
dering quack, who, forever impatient to unsheath his bloodthirsty lancet, draws
from a fewer patient the irreparable balsam of life."
"Mercury, the lancet, and the knife, are now almost
the only means made use of to cure disease, notwith-
standing their deleterious effects are evidently fatal
to multitudes." Prof. Rafinesque.
"An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." It is high time
this old rotten, evil tree, was cut down, and cast into the fire.