Kentucky Gazette

For the Kentucky Gazette.

MR. BRADFORD, by giving the following quotation from Professor Short's Introductory Address, as published in the 6th vol. Transylvania Journal, an insertion in your paper you will confer a favor on one who is anxious that this lucid production should be further disseminated.

"But here, gentlemen, I must pause, and candidly acknowledge that I almost blush to call the name of my favorite study (Botany)—so shamefully of late has that name been prostituted. It is known to all of you, that within the last few years, a sect of empyrics has arisen in our land, familiarly known, in popular parlance, as steam doctors, in their own self-created nomenclature, titled 'Botanic Physicians!' debasing the noble science of Botany, of which they absolutely know nothing, by daring to associate its name with their system of quackery, these unblushing and ignorant pretenders have raised a popular outcry against calomel, tartar, and other mineral medicines, professing to restrict themselves to vegetable substances, as being more innocent and friendly to the human system; not knowing, or if knowing, knavishly concealing the fact, that many of the most deadly poisons known to us are of vegetable origin—witness the hydrocyanic or prussic acid, the strychnine, the wourara, and many others, of any one of which, a few drops or grains destroy life as instantaneously as a stroke of lightning; and yet these are innocent vegetables! friendly to the human system!!

"These worthy pretenders to the art of healing, as it would seem for the purpose of gaining greater popularity to their project in this age of steam, have oddly brought that agent into requisition in their treatment—I will not say their cure of diseases; and by a sort of unholy alliance, Botany and steam are blended together in their unique therapeutics. Happy age! Thrice happy generation!! In which the surgeon's knife is to be wholly dispensed with: the poisonous minerals, and chemical preparations are to be utterly exploded; and in their stead the pure element of water, still further purified by fire and the unsophisticated roots of the forest are declared amply sufficient for the cure of all the diseases and accidents which flesh is heir to.

"Spirits of Fulton, of Watt, and of Bolton! How little did ye dream that so soon as this, your invisible and all-powerful agent would have accomplished so much! That not only would it be made to move the most massive machinery with the rapidity and power of a whirlwind—that it would stem the torrent of opposing rivers with more than a shark's impetuosity—that it would transport us over land with speed outstripping the flight of birds—that the palate of epicures should be feasted on the richest viands cooked by steam—that the purest drink of the men of temperance, and the fiery potations of the drunkard, should both alike be distilled by steam—that the physic of the regular practitioner, and the panaceas of the quack, should each acquire additional virtues from being prepared by steam; and to consummate the catalogue of good and evil thus teeming upon us, we may, whenever we choose, by the aid of lobelia, the boiling caldron, and number six, be steamed into eternity!

"But perhaps I owe an apology to my audience, and especially to you, young gentlemen, for having detained you for a single moment, by a serious allusion to so absurd a mockery. Yet, when you are informed of the widely extending influence of the evil—that, originating in the eastern section of our union,—the prolific land of universal invention—it has spread, with the insidious and blighting influence of the mildew, over all the west and south; invading not only the retirement of secluded country situations, but obtruding its blushless front into towns and cities—rearing its standard of presumptuous pretension under the very portals of the sanctuaries of science, even founding a school in a neighboring State for the systematic diffusion of its ignorance and errors; obtaining letters patent under legislative sanction for this new mode of murdering; and, worst of all, finding votaries and advocates among men who otherwise have the semblance of respectability and common sense;—when, I say the evil is thus gaining every where and among all ranks, it behooves us to raise our hands and voices, too, in solemn protestation against it. If the profession of medicine is thus to be debased, and losing every attribute of respectability, it is to be followed by the most ignorant hirelings, let every high-minded and honorable man abjure it forever." 6 vol. Transylvania Journal pages 462-34.