1793

Thomas Beddoes to Erasmus Darwin, 8 October 1793

My dear Sir

I am at present attending a patient who once consulted you – Mr. Thomas Partridge of Bristol – He is at the same time <& was before> attended by another physician. We have, as is the nature of Doctors, some difference of opinion, though we agree that the case is hopeless. On the left side you distinctly feel a blunt ridge descending from the ribs almost down to the pelvis; this we suppose to be the spleen enlarged & indurated; but a regular hectic fever is formed, with evening exacerbations, P. 120 &c As the only satisfaction you can have, when the disease is incurable, is to understand the symptoms, I am desirous of understanding of the hectic. Simple tumefactions of the viscus are never, as far as I know or can learn, attended with much feverishness, much less with so high a fever as we have to cope with in the present case. It is the opinion of the other physician that suppuration of the spleen has taken place; this I think improbable, because it has seldom happened, because there is no particular indication of it & because pus in a close abscess seldom excites tantas turbas. – The patient coughs a good deal, has dyspnaea & expectorates a very suspicious kind of matter, very frothy mucus with dense, dark-coloured clots or globules. These latter symptoms lead me to imagine that the fever is connected with ulcerated lungs. The disease of the lungs may have been produced by mercury, against the use of which you advised him. Pulmonary consumption certainly often follows the exhibition of mercury, though in general some other circumstance, as the application of cold while the mercury is in full action, has within my experience preceded the ulceration of the lungs. – If this reasoning be right, I sh^d be cautious how I gave mercury in similar cases hereafter.

I have at present a patient who miscarried near the end of her 4^th month & lost much blood – Whenever she goes to sleep, she has convulsive twitchings of many of her muscles. Some experiments of Mr Fowler very satisfactorily illustrate this control of the voluntary power over the irritative motions. You must recollect that while the frog was alive, he c^d produce no convulsions, unless he applied the metals unawares to the animal. Those experiments of Valli, where he found that after one part of a nerve was exhausted he c^d, excite new motions by removing his coating lower down upon the nerve are very instructive. They shew that each portion of the sensorium has independent sensorial power, & I suppose afford a sufficient answer to Dr Ferriar’s argument against the materialists (Manchester Memoirs Vol IV Part I).

I am Dear Sir
Yours sincerely

Thos Beddoes

Qu? Ought you not in your chapter on sleep to take into the acc^t the above-mentioned controul of the voluntary power as well as the accumulation of excitability? Your elegant young man (p. 211) when he took opium in large doses c^d not, one w^d think, have his excitability accumulated much in half an hour & the lady abovementioned has twitchings in the very act of going to sleep – no uncommon event, I believe – If I had more room, I c^d apply the principle I have stated to various phænomena – Luckily you can do this for yourself – I shall be glad to hear what you think of it. I have received a letter of yours since I began to write this – & sh^d have thought the axillary phlegmons were produced by the poison of sour cream adhering to the butter.

Address: D^r Darwin / Derby
Endorsement: Doctor Beddoes / 1793 / Oct^r the 8^th // To Doctor Darwin
MS: Cornish Archives MS DG 41/49