THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 399 



or religious person believes that one truth can contradict an- 

 other ; or that a tru-th can lead to any thing but good. But, 



Oh ! it 's just the thing for Elliotson to rave about ! " Yet good sense and truth 

 have prevailed. This physician is now addressed as one who had the candour 

 to examine auscultation at an early period, when others despised it, and who 

 materially assisted to spread its adoption. Even Dr. Spurzheitn was as un- 

 philosophical on this point, as others were in regard to phrenology. On seeing a 

 stethoscope one day upon my table, he said " Ah ! do you use that hocus 

 pocus ?" And on my replying that it was highly important to employ the ear, 

 he added, " You learn nothing by it ; and if you do, you cannot treat diseases 

 the better." Both which remarks were incorrect, and showed an unhappy state 

 of mind. An old physician, on seeing me use the stethoscope, began our con- 

 sultation by informing the practitioner, whom he had never seen before, and 

 myself, that he " never made use of these French fooleries." Yet ignorance of 

 percussion and auscultation is now considered a sufficient proof that a man knows 

 but half his profession, and Laennec's name has become imperishable ; and I am 

 happy in looking back upon the assistance I rendered to the establishment of 

 auscultation and percussion in this country by making the numerous physicians' 

 pupils of St. Thomas's Hospital ear-witnesses of facts which others in vain at- 

 tempted to bring into contempt. 



For years after I published my work on Prussic Acid, in 1820, referred to 

 supra, p. 223., very few persons would employ it ; and I was not only ill spoken 

 of for recommending what was useless, but till very lately condemned for using 

 dangerous poisons. Not three years ago, a practitioner whom I had never 

 seen or even heard of, urged this in an argument with a nobleman to prevent me 

 from being consulted in the case of his lady. While the last edition of the 

 Pharmacopoeia was preparing, in 1824, the committee drew up a Latin formula 

 for its preparation : but when they presented their sketch of the new list to the 

 College, they begged to withdraw the formula for prussic acid, because they had 

 received so many letters from fellows against its utility and safety. It was 

 consequently not admitted j and it was said in a medical journal, ten years ago, 

 to be no longer employed by the profession. Yet it is now employed universally 

 and daily by good practitioners of all ranks, for some pectoral complaints, for 

 which it had been recommended on the Continent, but chiefly for stomach affec- 

 tions, in which I had discovered its great utility ; and all my statements of its 

 properties are established. And, although for my knowledge of its properties in 

 regard to the stomach I was indebted to no one, I was compelled to show a 

 second time how accident first made me acquainted with its power over the 

 stomach, and how I was led on step by step to investigate and discover its great 

 virtues in affections of this organ. [(See the Lancet, Feb. 24. 1827, p. 671. sqq.) 



Three months after I had first published (in the Transactions of the Med. and 

 Chir. Society, for 1823, vol. xii.) a full report upon Quinine (the first that appeared 

 in this country), I heard, at a meeting of the College of Physicians, an hospital 

 fellow on one side of me, ask another hospital fellow, who is now in high practice, 

 what he thought of this Quinine. The reply across me was, Nothing ; the very 



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