Thomas Beddoes to the Editors of The Medical and Physical Journal, 4 October 1799
Gentlemen,
The etiquette of authorship, I suppose, requires me to answer the correspondent who, in your last Number, maintains that he has not falsely represented me. My answer is reducible to two short and easily proved propositions. 1. The quoted passages do not necessarily imply coincidence with Dr. Girtanner. 2. There has existed, for some years, incontrovertible proof that I always differed from him materially.
1. That hyperoxygenated blood is more stimulating, and hyperoxygenated muscle more irritable, I trust I have assisted in rendering probable. But if the oxydable animal base be altered by diminution or loss of any of its principles, the new compound, however charged with oxygene, may become less irritable, or altogether incapable of irritation. This was my view in penning the quoted passages: I had no idea of oxygen being the absolute principle of irritability. In saying that ‘attention is not less due to the other elements of organised bodies,’ I surely never dreamed of apologising for a conjecture similar to Mayow’s relative to muscular action – The passage has nothing apologetical in sense or sound. – The conjecture needed no ‘kind of apology’ at the time. It needs none now.
In what I first wrote, no man can find two opposite opinions. Any man might find much disagreement with Dr. Girtanner; and the question (if the philosophical linguist will allow the distinction) respects diversity, not opposition, of doctrine.
2. In your Journal (p. 203) a formal protest is mentioned, the term formal being interpolated by your correspondent. It is true, I do not anywhere say
‘Know all men by these presents, That I, Thomas Beddoes, M. D. do disagree with Christopher Girtanner, M. D. in manner and form following.’ But almost two years before the appearance of your correspondents’ book, I wrote as follows: ‘Mr. Herdman is said to have refuted the opinion that the excitability of the animal fibre depends on oxygene. Dr. Girtanner, with whom no individual perhaps in this country has expressed his concurrence, may indeed have been refuted. The task was truly easy. – But that the oxygene received in respiration, and distributed to the muscles, combines with azote, hydrogene, and carbone, to form water and various saline compounds, is a supposition which no one has yet shewn to be at variance with fact. The two hypotheses differ essentially’ (Cons, on Factitious Airs, Part last, or V. page 39.) The passage respecting the other elements of organized bodies is then produced; and must it not be considered as thus converted into a protest, if any thing (which I do not admit) had been before wanting to its formality? – How far your correspondent’s remissness in not making himself acquainted with the latest explanation of those whom he quotes to refute, or as virtually refuted, may be culpable, or his assurance in persevering to fix upon one man the notions of another, may ‘equal his other powers,’ it is not for me to decide.
The term false I apprehend to be often synonimous with erroneous – mot just. What is hinted about irritation is as irrelevant as it is unfounded in fact. – Among the misfortunes which I have learned to bear without impatience, I can honestly reckon the dissent or censure of authors of works like that on Mental Derangement.
Your correspondent’s smartness, or solemnity, I aspire not to imitate. It is not for me to summon the medical world to sit as jurors on the history or the nature of my opinions. The idle in general, and the curious about trifles, will be amused with a squabble like the present. In my reply, and in the paper which occasioned it, they will find enough to inform their judgment; at least, I hope so; for I have done with the subject; and, in all brevity, remain
Gentlemen,
Your’s
Thomas Beddoes
Oct. 4, 1799.
Published: The Medical and Physical Journal, 2 (October 1799), 308–09