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ADDENDUM.
A REVIEW OF "CHRIST AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION,"
IN THE "CHRISTIAN UNION."
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF A PHYSICIAN.
CHAPTER I.
We all admit that every one who attempts to act as a physician, should
strive to qualify himself, or herself, for the work by obtaining the best
education which our medical schools afford; for to physicians are
intrusted, not simply the property or money, but the very lives of their
fellow-citizens. As the responsibility is great, so the duty of preparing
one's self before commencing practice, and of keeping fully abreast of all
new and valuable discoveries in the art of healing, is equally great. A
physician should not be led blindly by his teachers and prominent medical
writers, and so strongly confirm himself in the theories and views which
they proclaim that he cannot, without prejudice, examine new views and
theories with due care. It has been said that when Harvey discovered the
true course of the circulation of the blood, there was not a single
professor in the medical colleges of England over fifty years of age, who
ever believed "the heresy," as his discovery was called. However this may
have been, it is certain that professors and prominent medical writers are
not always the first to see and recognize the truth, even when it is
clearly presented to their notice.
A native of western Massachusetts, I studied medicine with an intelligent
and worthy physician in my native town, and attended two and one-half
courses of medical lectures at the Berkshire Medical College, at
Pittsfield, Mass., and graduated in 1841; and during the following winter I
attended the Medical College at Albany, N. Y., devoting a large portion of
my time to dissecting. After finishing at Albany, I visited various places
in western and central Massachusetts, and operated on eyes for strabismus
or cross-eyes,--an operation which had then been recently introduced for
that deformity; after which I settled at Chesterfield (Mass.), and
commenced practicing medicine, where I remained about one year.
One day I visited Northampton, and, calling on a physician with whom I was
acquainted, I found upon his table a homoeopathic book. "Why," I exclaimed
with astonishment, "you are not studying homoeopathy, are you?" "Yes," he
replied, "I am studying it, and trying the remedies cautiously;" and he
went on to describe cases which he had treated satisfactorily by the use of
the remedies, and among them a case of pleurisy and one of intermittent
fever, and he wound up by saying: "Now, if you will go down the street to a
book-store and purchase 'Hull's Jahr,' in two volumes, I will give you half
a dozen homoeopathic remedies, and you can try them for yourself."
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