Thomas Beddoes to James Currie, 2 January [1794]
Dear Sir
My curiosity is raised by the summary of your case, which must be highly interesting to practitioners & to phthisical patients. I am sorry that your engagements prevented it from being added to the communications with which some ingenious medical men have favoured me. – I have ventured in some miscellaneous observations to quote from your letter these words: ‘I find it <(my case) > contains nothing that seems to be me applicable to your theory – the sole inference to be drawn from it are that in the florid consumption a change of air from the sea shore to an inland & mountainous situation is highly useful – & that the hectic paroxysm on it approach may be prevented by the swing in some instances & by exercise on horseback in still more, to which last, persevered in with a degree of pertinacity that is not common, I chiefly ascribe my recovery’. I did not quote what you say of the prevention of hectic by affusion of warm water, supposing you wd choose to state this with other facts relative to the effect of heat & cold in your expected publication. Medicine has great resources in these powers, but practitioners are in general deplorably ignorant of their operation; & the best understand it but imperfectly. I hope you will teach us much & put us in the way of learning more. Have you any good mechanical method of applying warm or cold water. Were I to have warm water poured on a hectic patient, I shd be at some loss how to set about the operation so as to make it comfortable to the patient –
The printing of the little pamphlet you may have seen advertised will be finished tomorrow. But it wd be idle to send you a shilling pamphlet by way of present, unless I had franks. Dr Darwin’s Zoonomia will in my judgement be the greatest work every published on medicine – His ingenuity in this work even to one who knows him & his other works appears astonishing. He has, I think, unalterably fixed the principles of animal nature. What will be done hereafter therefore will have the same relation to his work, as the late labours of astronomers to the Principia of Newton. I suppose the book will be out in 2 or 3 months. I am <Dear Sir> yours with great esteem
Thomas Beddoes
2nd Jany
I have made many curious experiments on animals, but do not publish them at this moment. P.S. Since writing the inclosed letter, an asthmatic patient with most deplorable symptoms has applied to me – I shall try air – but it strikes me that the fit may be put off by affusion of warm water – If you will tell me how to use you shall hear the result –
Address: Dr Currie / Physician / Liverpool
Endorsement: Wedy one oClock
MS: Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale Medical Historical Library, MSS, Letters: 1802