Concluding Appeal to Medical Sceptics.

(For Thirteenth Edition.)

The foregoing pages present some evidence that the sulphur system is no hoax, but a great reality, which no medical man, in the interests of the important trust committed to him, dare thoughtlessly reject. Let it not, however, be conceived as a panacea for all 'the ills that flesh is heir to,' or in many diseases applicable at all. It is only as an adjunct to other treatment that any rational man should view it. I for one never trust to its unaided power in combating any serious disease whatever. In consumption we must still cling to cod-liver oil, nutritious diet, counter-irritation, etc.; in diphtheria to chlorate of potash, warm fomentations, wine, and beef-tea, etc.; in asthma to all the various prophylactic means, and treatment specially directed to the stomach; in fevers and all malignant diseases to everything likely to assist Nature in her arduous struggle; in a word, we must select weapons wherever we can find them, and too often confess that all of them combined are of little avail. Still the evidence is irresistible that sulphur, sulphurous acid, and the spray-producer, are weapons of great, yea of telling power. Why then does the whole profession not cordially and at once embrace the system? So far as I can learn, one answer only is ever assigned—a toss of the head, and the supercilious remark, ' I have no faith in it.' Now let me seriously ask any well-disposed physician who utters such a sentiment, How can you justify your want of faith? Is the evidence afforded by Professor Polli's experiments, Dr. Dewar's pamphlet, and my own, not worth your trouble to attend to, though the reading of them may save the lives of your patients? Or, having read them, do you seriously believe that Polli's sulphites are mere myths, having no sulphurous acid in their composition, and that the facts alleged in the two pamphlets are pure fictions? Leaving others to speak for themselves, this is to suppose in regard to me, that a Scotch country surgeon already grown grey with the toils of practice, and whom a condemning breath from any of the eminent heads of our profession could annihilate in a moment, is a likely person to utter medical untruths; to suppose that four of our most distinguished Edinburgh physicians, and others that could be named, have taken such a barefaced quack kindly by the hand; to suppose that my venerable Preface-writer should so far forget the page 53 sacred name by which he is called as to vouch falsely for the truth of many of the cases; i.e., it is to suppose that the objector himself has a judgment so imbecile in diagnosing evidence that it is not fit for diagnosing symptoms, or fit to be trusted in any matter whatever of life and death. If it comes not to this, the only alternative is, that believing the system to be true he won't embrace it, a confession of moral delinquency that only makes matters worse and worse, by acknowledging himself a traitor to the interests of man.

From this dilemma one escape only is apparent—"Having tried the system, I have found it false." Words like these, uttered by any honest lips, I would feel myself called upon and bound to credit, and could only account for the discrepancy in our experience by supposing that he had been using either worse sulphurous acid, or a worse spray-producer, or been dealing with a worse class of patients than had fallen to my lot; or that the same bungling inexperience to which all of us are liable had been applying it in modes and in diseases quite unsuitable. The practical conclusion is, if you find from experience that you can combat disease sufficiently well with your present weapons, by all means continue; but as for myself, sooner would I retire from that profession which I love, and in which for nearly thirty years I have found windpipe and chest affections difficult to conquer, than think of proving treacherous to the welfare of my patients, by discarding from my weapons an arm of such tried and varied utility. Nor is this grand conclusion at all affected by such a trivial objection (sometimes urged) as that my style is that of an enthusiastic partisan instead of a sober medical writer. This objection may affect one's character as a writer, but cannot touch his veracity as a man. The style is that of a faithful witness-bearer notwithstanding, who in rushing into print perhaps acted imprudently in firing off his shots with little regard to anything but truth. While admitting my theories (if the reader can find any) liable to challenge, and holding myself ready to alter or correct them should good reason be assigned, I cling to facts as the ground of my appeal, and hold myself responsible for every one alleged in the pamphlet. And why after all should enthusiasm be condemned if the cause be good? In this world of ours was anything grand ever done without it? Did frigid argumentation abolish the Corn Laws, a mere cranium philanthropy strike the fetters from the slave, or orthodoxy, starched, stately, and precise, ever give forth a cry of earnestness that could disturb the tympanum of a drowsy world?

That the pamphlet should have appeared in a popular form instead of the pages of a medical journal is probably a blunder, giving rise as it has done to some popular effervescence, and flooding the market with many trashy appliances, which in ignorant hands are fitted to bring the whole system into discredit. With human nature as it is, such evils are almost necessary concomitants of every step in advance, which time alone can be expected to cure. Vaccination was surely a great discovery, though not till recently was any old matron who chose to practise it debarred from trying her hand at the operation. And page 54 in moorland districts far away from any medical skill, why should the farmer or the lonely shepherd not be allowed to check diseases in the bud, either in his family or his cattle, by every appliance he finds useful for his purpose? In all our colonies what may the spray-producer or inhaler not accomplish for the squatter in the bush, the woodsman in the wilderness of our Canadian forests, or the tenants of the remote Australian prairie? The truth is, the profession may expect a time (and who knows how rapidly it may be approaching?) when many things required of it now may be done by others,—a time when diseases heretofore found intractable by the best physicians may be forced to yield to weaker hands; when all epidemics may be stamped out of existence, as some of them have been well-nigh done already; when bleedings and amputations and surgical operations of every kind will form the exception rather than the rule; when disease as a thing ashamed shall hide its head, and streams of health, blending their waters with streams of righteousness, shall roll down our streets like a mighty river, to flow forth for the purifying of every land. As old revived gospel truths, long hid by the mists of darkness and superstition, shall certainly have one part of this work to do, so valuable revived medical truths, fished up from the dust of ages, and hitherto ignored by the wisdom and self-sufficiency of many generations, may have another. Now of all such forgotten medical truths nothing can be more clearly established than this, that among all the lists of therapeutic agents employed by sage physicians in every age (who had no idea of parasites and fungi, septicides and septicimeæ, anti-catalytics, and all the rest of it), none had a wider range of application, or compelled a firmer faith in its virtues, than cheap, despised common sulphur, either as a 'balsam' or 'sulphur fumes.'

This record of my experience, then, I fearlessly commit to the profession and the world, to fight its battle or to find its grave, without further note or comment from me; but fortified by the knowledge that as a record of truth, 'magna est Veritas et prœvalebit.'

R. P.

Biggar, 27th February 1868.