Chapter 29 - Medicine

Summary

ME′DICINE. n.s. [medicine, Fr. medicina, Latin. It is generally pronounced as if only of two syllables, med’cine.] Physick; any remedy administered by a physician.

I wish to die, yet dare not death endure;

Detest the medicine, yet desire the cure. Dryden.

The history of medicine in the eighteenth century can be viewed either as a period of stagnation and confused beliefs between the ancient and the new, or as the adolescence of modern medicine. The present generation may look back with a mixture of amusement and disdain on the physician’s complex medications containing arsenic, strychnine, turpentine, and beetroot, and with revulsion – even horror – at the harsh purging, bleeding, cupping, blistering, and application of leeches. But the physicians of the past, functioning in their belief systems, were no less clever than those of today, and, as Lester King notes, no more or less muddleheaded, obtuse, grasping, prejudiced, or contentious.

Although sometimes called a “lost age in medicine,” and “interesting, but not very interesting,” this period ushered in new ideas about medical education, professionalism, medical ethics, the care of the mentally ill, public health, occupational illness, hospital care, and advances against smallpox, scurvy, and heart failure. It was the springboard for many more momentous changes in the next century.