Daily National Intelligencer

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

Gentlemen: If the observations which have been made, respecting the first who suggested the introduction of a tube into the stomach to extract poisons, should make physicians and others more attend to the remedy when required, the public will be compensated for that room in your columns which they occupy. For the general introduction of very simple remedies, it is often requisite to resort to many auxiliaries, which, when successful, appear afterwards to have been irrelevant. Discussions about the authors of discoveries have frequently brought the discovery into use, when otherwise it would have remained dormant. It is, therefore, without hesitation that I answer the remarks of the editor of the National Gazette contained in your paper of to-day: acknowledging myself the author of the pieces signed "Friend to Justice," as all must infer from the last part of the first: and declaring that while I have felt the ambition to improve my profession, I have (like most medical men, and especially like Dr. Physick) been so regardful of the estimation of my fellow-citizens, that I wished them to know me as the improver. It is useless to condemn such vanity, if vanity it be: physicians will indulge it. They even attach so much importance to it that they plunder each other of "fair renown," as has been more exemplified in Philadelphia than in all the other cities of the Union.

With respect to the panegyric on Dr. Physick, I have to remark that it has no relation to the subject; yet I will add to the editor's estimate of the Doctor by declaring my belief that he has almost half the learning of the great Wistar, and is now almost as good a surgeon as Dr. Hartshorne, who fills his station in the Pennsylvania Hospital, and who would have filled it in the University but for Dr. Physick's management, as is notorious in Philadelphia. That city will long deplore the result of his prejudices in the instance stated, as it is rapidly aiding in the death of the medical school; and in causing the public to discover there are better teachers in other places—a fact which will be too miraculous for these self praising Philadelphians to believe, as they so well know that all medical skill, all genius, all learning, all the world, in short, is in that motley town or wonderful city.

The editor asserts that Dr. Physick described the method in his lectures which I heard in 1804 and 5. This I declare not to be the truth. I have attended four courses of Dr. Physick's lectures very regularly, and never heard one word upon the subject. When last in Philadelphia I asked my fellow graduates, Drs. Hartshorne and Parish if they had, and they said they had not. Dr. Hunt of this city, late one of the Hospital Surgeons of the United States army, attended lectures with these gentlemen, and he states as they do; and so does Dr. Causin, of this place, with Dr. Washington of the Navy, now here, who attended lectures in 1808 and 9. But the following is conclusive. Winter before last, while I was attending a course of lectures in Philadelphia, Dr. Parish had occasion to lecture on the subject to a large class where were many of the best read physicians and he named Dr. Physick as the author. I reminded him of the error, and at the next lecture he publicly corrected the mistake, and read from the medical repository my remarks. This fact made a strong impression, and was published in my work, entitled "Statement of Improvements in Theory and Practice of Physic," printed at the time, with animadversions on the conduct of the Philadelphia Professors sufficient to draw forth their champions in exposition, were it possible they could have been so destitute of principle and common sense as to attempt an imposition so easily detected. The editor's assertion, that Dr. Physick did not publish his plan for twelve years, because no case occurred in which it could be used, does not deserve an answer; for, if that were the case, the remedy is not worth what has been written about it. But it cannot be doubted that, in consequence of mistakes and intentional administration of poisons, there is not one year in Philadelphia—no one week in our country—in which more than one life would not be saved by the seasonable use of the remedy. I have to add, that Dr. Physick does not need such a defendant as the editor of this Philadelphia paper; his injudicious support causing him to forget that Dr. Dorsey performed the operation in 1809; that Dr. Physick's strong grounds in the profession are boldness and expedition in operation; so much so that, after taking "a bucket of blood," he would ram down the throat of the editor a tobacco-stick, if he thought the remedy necessary; that so far from not having hastened to publish his discoveries, he has been so much occupied with the daily duties of his profession, that he has forgotten where he received some supposed inventions; has published them as his own, with good intention; and in no case is this truth better verified than in the present; set forth, claimed, and renounced in one year!

Notwithstanding, then, the unfounded assertion of this editor, it is certain that the first suggestion in this country was made in 1808 by me; then in 1809 by Dr. Monro in his Morbid Anatomy where he claims having published the suggestion in his Latin Inaugural Essay of 1797—not probably read by twenty persons: lastly, in 1812, Dr. Physick publishes, calling it his new method! In a peaceable, friendly manner, Dr. Physick was requested to do justice to me. He did not do it and deserves those strictures I have made on his conduct, which, in consideration of the good he has done the faculty, I would gladly have withheld: for I have constantly considered him as a very great surgeon, and a very spoiled medical Dictator.

The conclusion relates to the Editor of the National Gazette and myself. He has departed from the conduct of a gentleman, as he has that of a man of truth, in asserting positively that I had heard of the suggestion previous to my publication in the Medical Repository. A like spirit is exhibited in his sarcasm, of "admirably ingenious and cruelly despoiled Dr. Ewell." Not to him, but to the many who read your paper, would say, I have never boasted of my ingenuity never done any thing to warrant such unfounded insinuation; never claimed the improvements of others; being satisfied with endeavours to improve. That, so far from feeling pain on being "despoiled," I have rejoiced at the success of my despoilers in medicine and the arts, only wishing them to be satisfied with the advantages received, without traducing the author.

THOS. EWELL

June 9, 1820.