Thomas Beddoes to Erasmus Darwin, [April or May 1795]
Dear Doctor,
I did not think you would care much about objections to your theory of the shape of ideas deduced from the non-existence of bodies. I am much pleased with your idea of introducing mill-work into the materia medica. But if you go on at this rate, and if I succeed in any part of my project, the profession will be ruined, or at least fewer human beasts of prey will be able to find support from half-animated carcases. I hope the rotatory motion will be tried upon animals, at least. Would it do for horses having the staggers? Your reasoning on the propagation of effects from the swallowing of contagious matter I like exceedingly. It is extraordinary however that the sensorial power of the stomach should be so insidiously wasted by contagion as to produce no synchronous actions; for the accumulation of excitability in the heart and the other actions you mention, are successive operations. It has appeared to me that the first assignable effects of contagion in one or two cases have been like those of alcohol; and in the account just published of the fever in Grenada (which was the most fatal I ever read of) intoxication is mentioned as an effect of the contagion by no means uncommon. The next in point of date seems nausea, and this I suppose you reckon a sign of exhausted excitability of the stomach; as nausea in worn-out sots follows the more slow exhaustion by alcohol: perhaps when nothing like intoxication or excitement appears, the effect is as sudden as of a stroke of lightning and so escapes observation. Fevers must differ widely according to the various stimulating power of the contagion that excites them.
You observe it is difficult to produce sensorial power and not expend it. The difficulty perhaps is not in the nature of the thing, since such an operation must take place in all accumulation of sensorial power. When cold is applied to the surface, the expenditure seems greatly diminished, while the deep-seated secretory organ for a time yields nearly its former supply. Might not opium and cold (the cold bath) be combined with good effect? I have thought that by such a plan the cold bath might be serviceable in cases where it now produces dull head-ach and debility. I suppose in such cases the secretion of excitability is stopped along with the action of the superficial vessels so as not to go on for several hours. If this is not, what is the theory of its ill effects (the cold baths) on weak girls?
I remain your’s truly,
Thomas Beddoes
Published: Stock, Appendix 6, pp. xlvi–vii.