Published: 2017-01-07
Total Pages: 630
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Excerpt from The London Magazine, Vol. 4: January to April, 1826 As to the facts, the truth of all this, and much more, of all that we have said and much that we might have said, we leave it to the expe ricuce of those who have had experience in the Bountiful practice. We have seen mothers kill their children, as effectually as if they had administered poison and this, even in defiance of advice and caution. We could name an instance where a mother exterminated in succes sion her whole family, of seven children; and it is an instance not known to ourselves alone. The truth is, that instead of being innocent, their practice is often extremely and dangerously active. When they take to the lancet, they will com lete it. In a minor way, perhaps, it is notorious to the whole worl that the great mass of failures in vaccination has arisen from the interference of women and country curates, or of others attempting what they could not understand. Thus chie y has discredit been brought on this useful discovery. And thus also does a collateral mischief arise from the prevalence of this dilettante vanity and conceit. Every woman, and now most men, have learned to read their prescriptions, and to reason in their own way about them, with numerous evil results. As far as the power of medicine in uences the disease through the imagination, it is often rendered useless or pernicious. Thus also they decline that, of which they pretend to judge better than the practitioner, or alter or increase the doses, or, to use a fashionable phrase, cheat the doctor, forgetting that it is themselves they are cheating. Thus also a physician is often deterred from the use of a powerful or a probable remedy, knowing that the blame of failure will be laid on himself and the medicine, not on the disease; and thus also any bad change in its symptoms or progress, is attributed to the medicine administered, to the loss of the physician's reputation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."