Thomas Beddoes to the Editor of the Philosophical Magazine, [March] 1800
Dear Sir
I am sure it will give you pleasure to hear that gas which you noticed in your Magazine has fully maintained its character. The inference I could not fail to draw from the first effects, with regard to its power in curing palsy, has turned out just. You will undoubtedly believe that I do not mean to affirm that it will prove an infallible remedy in paralytic complaints; but in the most inveterate cases of hemiplegia, originating in apoplectic seizures and confirmed by repeated strokes, it has restored feeling and the power of voluntary motion to the affected side; and I am persuaded it will continue to do as much in a large proportion of instances. The full details will be given in a work by Mr Davy and myself, now in the press. No untoward accident has occurred in the many hundred trials lately made with the gas: but a few hysterical females having cautiously respired it, there has been reason to think that a larger dose would have given rise to fits as stated in my Notice.
A popular exposition of the principles of the animal economy, with their application to the purposes of individual and domestic welfare, upon a plan widely different from that of any existing publication, has long seen necessary by many people.
Heretofore an acquaintance with the causes of his personal condition has seldom been numbered among the accomplishments of scholar, or the qualifications with which the man of business is fitted out for success in the world: yet it will be confessed, that neither success in business, nor proficiency in the sciences accounted liberal, are separately sufficient for rendering the condition of human life desirable; and, in fact, to endeavour, by any combination of these materials, to construct a system of personal happiness, is to project an edifice which shall stand secure without a foundation. Of a truth, so long and so generally neglected, a portion of the public, it is believed, begins to feel that degree of conviction which operates upon conduct. In this belief, the present opportunity of instruction is offered to those who may be desirous of it.
Numbers fall victims to their own impatience under illness, or to the wavering conduct of their friends. Frequently on the onset of dangerous diseases, people, by suffering themselves to be amused by trifling domestic expedients, lose an opportunity which no medical skill can ever retrieve. Upon these evils the prevalence of juster ideas would act as a check. Nor is it paradoxical to suppose that the mortality among infants would be smaller, and debility of constitution at all periods of life more rare, if parents (however instructed in other things) were not in common nearly upon a level with nurses in that which it so much imports them to possess – an acquaintance with the powers that operate to the injury or advantage, the destruction or preservation, of the objects of their affection.
Published: The Philosophical Magazine, 6 (March 1800), 189–91