Lanterna Rally

Author: Books Group

Publisher: General Books

Published: 2012-02

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781458968210

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: From Scrophulosis To Tuberculosis. A Lecture delivered at the St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons. By Louis Bauer.m. D., M. R. C. S., Eng., Prof, of Principles and Practice, Clinical and Orthopedic Surgery; Consulting Surgeon to the City and Female Hospitals, St. Louis. There was indeed a time when the profession stood sorely in need of a pons asinorum to cover its shortcomings. The term scrophulosis has served as such for generations. Koch has discovered another Shibboleth in the shape of the bacillus tuberculosis, exploding the strumous theory and leading to the very same extravaganza which the latter, up to a recent date, occupied. We have been in the medical arena nearly three decades, hence, have waded through a good part of its history and shared in its erroi s We have lived through the sanguinary period, in which the lancet was the main benefactor to suffering humanity and we have sacrificed the precious blood of our patients and our own, under absurd pretences. The scientific dissertations to which we have devoutly listened in the lecture-room, we have more or less retained in our memory and we meet them incidentally in that portion of our library which refers to that period. The amount of learning employed in the special pleading, in favor and eventually against depletion, is certainly amazing and worthy of a better cause. The strumous theory was carried even beyond the limits of rational endurance. The entire human race was of course infected with this deus ad machina. Blonde hair indicated the florid form of scrophulosis, black hair the torpid type; the only person above suspicion was the one without hair at all When we left Europe in the year 1853, the strumous idol had undisputed sway over the professional mind On our arrival in the Un...