MedChi was founded in 1799 to “promote and disseminate medical and chirurgical knowledge throughout the State and in future prevent the citizens thereof from risking their lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners or pretenders to the healing arts”.
You might think that it would preclude someone like this from practicing medicine!
Hi Meg, Doctors in old English comedies were never without their clyster pipes (i.e., enema), obviously a source a low humor.
ReplyDeleteCalomel was a deadly compound that in an age with few really effective medicines, often seemed to help the patient before it started killing. There was a satirical song about a patient dosed with calomel, of which these were the last few verses (tune=Old 100):
The man in death begins to groan—
The fatal job for him is done;
His soul is winged for heaven or hell—
A sacrifice to calomel.
Physicians of my former choice,
Receive my counsel and advice;
Be not offended though I tell
The dire effects of calomel.
And when I must resign my breath,
Pray let me die a natural death,
And bid you all a long farewell,
Without one dose of calomel.
Just goes to show you--when I typed in "calomel" and "clyster", those previous cure-alls, neither was even in my spell-check!
Merry Christmas, almost,
Jim