Thomas Beddoes to William Reynolds, Joseph Reynolds and William Yonge, 14 September 1795
To William Reynolds, of Coalpit Bank, Joseph Reynolds, of Ketley, and William Yonge, of Shefnal, Shropshire.
You see how far the undertaking, which you so liberally encouraged, has advanced. We all looked for opposition; nor have we been disappointed. But it was hardly to be expected in the shape in which it came from the enraged London Apothecary. Sir Jeremiah’s statement of this transaction, I know on the best authority, to be exact. The alternative was offered to one of the patients, whose case you have read above in his own words. As to the young lady, Sir Jeremiah’s conjecture was right; she never became the subject of experiment. A few days before her death, her father applied to me in an agony of distress; he inquired if it was possible to assuage her sufferings by any means. But nothing was attempted.
When I write the secret history of the pneumatic practice, I flatter myself I shall afford you some entertainment. Among the Doctors whom high-born patients imagine to opine with full cognizance of the subject, you will wonder to find one taking oxygene for fixed air, and another for the phlogisticated air of Dr. Priestley. Such is the alliance between intrigue and information. How do you think a surgeon in the metropolis went about to apply fixed air to a cancerous ulcer? I should never have guessed, But I am assured that he held the mouth of the retort, spouting acid foam, to the part. The liquor dropped on the lady’s cloaths; the sore set to smart: and how could the poor tortured patient refrain from wondering that there should be in the world people wicked enough to recommend such abominable applications? She did not, I dare say, know that her surgeon might have equally succeeded in burning her gown and increasing her sufferings with his vitriolic acid, even though he had not taken the trouble to work it up into froth with fixed air.
In spite of such mishaps, aided by the propagation of untruths and the terror of imprisonment, the following reasons persuade me that factitious airs must have a full trial in medicine and surgery. 1. No body will imagine that all the persons who have transmitted to me their narratives, could mistake or would mistate their own feelings. 2. In different cases of the same disease, the results, whether favourable or unfavourable, are analogous. 3. There must be discernment enough out of the profession to enable many persons to perceive that no detriment to the public can result from the inquiry, the trial being perfectly safe with a small portion of prudence and intelligence. 4. Men of science abroad have entered with alacrity into the proposal, and foreign academies are offering premiums for an investigation of the virtues of factitious airs. 5. That ingenious people, which have nearly conquered leisure for cultivating the arts of humanity, will assuredly not neglect a study so closely allied to the pursuits in which it has already excelled. 6. The reports respecting Atwood, Danby, Miss L---, Mrs Munt, Miss. S---, Trayhern, with a variety of asthmatic and phthisical cases, shew that the pneumatic treatment has alone performed or materially promoted the most splendid cures. Now it is evident that the practice is in the most helpless period of its infancy. We scarce know what kinds or combinations of air are best suited to the different stages of different diseases. I do not therefore think, that the facts hitherto observed form any criterion of the merit of the method. Failure should be an incentive to exertion, and partial be regarded as the omen of more complete success, in consequence of the improvements which will infallibly suggest themselves.
If I should publish the secret history, of which I have spoken, would you not advise me to dedicate it to a certain fashionable physician, who has the happiness of being the supreme favourite among fine ladies? Do you think a dedication would be a spell potent enough to confine his tongue within the circle of fact? I am not much inclined to stoop to an exposition of his artifices. It would be difficult to avoid the imbecility of complaint; and personalities are always more or less odious. So I believe flattery will be the best resource. – As to minor opponents, were I a wit, it would be as easy to manage them by lampoon as their superiors by dedication. Observe for instance how naturally the apothecary’s cool and flowing address runs into rhyme.
You breathe indeed! do d-mme if you dare,
Take one ounce measure of their cursed air!
Look, here’s your bill—pay that, Sir—if you fail.
You take, by G—d, your next night’s air in jail!
T.B.
CLIFTON, Sept. 14, 1795.
Published: Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, Considerations on the Medicinal Use and Production of Factitious Airs, Part III (Bristol: printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for J. Johnson, 1795), pp. 108–10