Essays On Fashionable Diseases 1790 - Extract
Page 177/8
Should it be enquired by what motives I
could be induced to undertake so invidious
and unavailing a task, as the publication of
the present Essay; I reply, that I not only
deemed it to be my duty as a physician;
but have been incited thereto by resentment:
Some years ago a most valuable and respectable
friend of mine put himself and his
wife under the care of a German watercaster.
Their complaints were trivial, or
perhaps totally imaginary; the lady died a
victim to MEYERSBACK'S ignorance; and her
husband, from a broken constitution, and a
broken heart, soon followed her. Beside
their instances, many others have occurred
to me of the injurious, and often fatal, consequences
of empirical practice. ....
Page 181 - footnote
The celebrated dramatic poet, Aristophanes, terms these
water-casters ????, term which implies something more
indelicate than the English word. MAYERSBACK, having lately
examined a patient of mine who is deeply consumptive, declared
that the disease was in the kidneys and sweet bread!
Page 185/6
MEYERSBACH,* who, availing himself of
the credulity and cullibility of the good
people of this kingdom, has acquired a fortune
equal to that of a German prince, offered
himself as a rough-rider to a riding-house
in London, but being rejected, commenced
doctor.
*The ignorance and effrontery of this fellow has been
properly exposed by Dr. LETTSOM.
Page 247
MEYERSBACH undertook the cure of a
celebrated city magistrate and his wife. He
put them upon a profuse use of lemon juice,
and spare diet, with the use of some of his
dangerous nostrums. Through an apothecary's
apprentice could have discerned that
he was undermining the power of life, he
persevered: She was suddenly destroyed, and
the husband died of the effects of a broken
constitution.
Essays on fashionable diseases. The dangerous effects of hot and
crouded [sic] rooms. The cloathing of invalids. Lady and gentlemen
doctors. And on quacks and quackery. ... By James M. Adair, ...
London, [1790?].
Source: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Gale Document Number: CW3307361579