Wilmington Daily Gazette

Mistakes in Medicine.

The history of medicine for the last fifty years tells a tale either of great errors in the early practice of the period or of just as great in the present, or it shows that methods of practice professedly at variance can be alike successful. Not many years ago calomel was considered the indispensable drug in practice. The physician without calomel was the artillery-man without his ammunition—Samson shorn of his locks. The tongues that were swollen, the teeth that were loosened, the gums that were made tender, modern physicians say, will present a horrible array of testimony when doctors get their deserts for malpractice. But the men who believed the patient was nothing unless he was bilious—who believe that there was but one organ in the body, and that this was to be unlocked at stated intervals, and entered and swept and garnished with mercury—who believed that in half of the known diseases salivation and salvation were synonymous terms—these were men undoubtedly of great observation, fair judgment and great skill. For aught that we know, they were just as much respected by their patients, just as successful, as the modern Esculapius, who says that they were unmistakably and seriously in error. Patients recovered under their treatment, as patients recover under that of later physicians, who assume to possess the true Koran and to be its only interpreters. Thirty years ago a patient would be bled in diseases where now it would be considered egregious malpractice, but the patient bled and the patient unbled alike recover or alike die.—Lippincott's Magazine.