54. Observations preparatory to the Use of Dr. Myersbach's Medicines: in which the Efficacy of certain German Prescription (given in English) is ascertained by Facts and Experience; with Cases tending to shew the Possibility of acquiring the Knowledge of Diseases by Urine By J. C. Lettsom, M.D. F.R.S. and S.A. Member of the College of Physicians, and Physician to the General Dispensary in London. Second Edition. Dilly.
"ENGLAND (says this writer) is famous, through Europe, for waterconjuring and bottle-conjuring." A melancholy truth which we cannot controvert; else, could an ignorant savage in the medical warfare, have been so successfuul, as to render it necessary for this regular warrior to take the field against him? Else could a German water-doctor have raised in two years a princely fortune, by administering similar remedies to all ages, constitutions, and diseases? Yet that such has been Dr. Myersbach's constant practice cannot be doubted by any who peruse the unhappy cases here recited, many of them fatal, in which he was followed by Dr. Lettsom. Either a red powder, which is principally salt-petre, or green drops, which are a tincture of tansy, or sweet drops, which contain chiefly sugar, or black pills, the seventh part opium, we are here assured, were prescribed indiscriminately for a fever, a dropsy, an asthma, the stone, a consumption, pregnancy, rheumatism, inflammation of the kidneys, hysterics, deafness, and even the venereal disease. Dr. L. has given the formulae of these and other medicines administered by this Urinarian, and has annexed a letter from his apothecary, Jean Ulric Hauffman, communicating some of the means employed in duping the English, at whose folly and credulity the Doctor himself has expressed his astonishment; and also some remark on the manner in which the medicines were compounded. Some instances of Dr. M.'s deception1, such as mistaking Lisbon wine and elder flower water for the urine of women, and prognosticating from the stale of a horse, that "her disorder was in the womb" and from the urine of a cow, that "the party had been too free with the ladies of the town," would excite a smile, were not the consequences too serious for raillery, and did not the lives and constitutions thus destroyed require commiseration, and the interpolation of a court of justice, in which we are told and hope this imposture will soon appear. As an honest man, and a conscientious physician, Dr. Lettsom is entitled to the thanks of the community for thus endeavouring to rescue their lives and constitutions from fraud and imposition; and at the same time that we commend his zeal so laudably exerted in exposing one empiric, we must applaud the candour of his medical friend, in allowing that the faculty are indebted to empiricism for the knowledge of a solvent for the stone2, the safety of opium3, and the restoration of antimonials4.
1. In one instance Dr. L. himself seems mistaken. Mentioning (p. ii.) a deception practised on Dr. M. by H. F. in exhibiting the urine of two other persons as his own, on the Dr.'s saying "he had taken too much mercury," &c. our author remarks, "My friend, however, was in health, and had not taken any mercury," &c. What then? The urine, confessedly, was not his.
2. Mrs. Stephens.
3. Ward.
4. Dr. James.
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