1800

Thomas Beddoes to Helenus Scott and others, 12 August 1800

GENTLEMEN,

PERMIT me thus to acknowledge the fulness of satisfaction you have afforded me, and the honour you have done me.

On receipt of your packets, I will confess regretting that they came too late for the Collection I published early last year. My experience then, joined to the effect of other pursuits, had deprived me of all ardour for engaging again in the same task. My regret was, however, of short duration. Opposite feelings arose, and I hereby acknowledge the publication of your new reports, as my willing act and deed.

It is needless to account for my change of sentiment. The reader who shall set out with unfavourable prepossessions, and he also who shall feel but languid hopes, will experience the same.

To suppress what you deemed worthy to see the light, would have been too presumptuous; and private negotiation with a bookseller is an office too slight to be refused to persons at so great a distance from the mart of British literature. But had you confined yourselves to the path trodden by your predecessors, I should most undoubtedly have excused myself from appearing in your train. Simply to reiterate assertions yet ringing in the public ear, could add little to their credibility. Perhaps the cry, as a greater number of voices joined in it, would have sounded more importunate.

It was, it seems, reserved for India to rear the plant after sowing the seed. I blush for those in Europe, who in their pride would trample it under foot, or in their rage would tear it up by the root. I lament that the very moderate difficulties, attached by the necessity of nature to the occupation, should have deterred impartial but indolent men from its culture. In this corner of Europe so pre-eminent in intellectual exertion, heretofore so devoted to liberty, so open to truth, so dignified by its advances in that noblest of sciences, the science of man, it is mortifying that so few should have foreseen what glorious fruits would spring from your first labours. To behold other regions, usually less favoured by the genius of science, in the full enjoyment of these fruits, cannot, for the moment at least, but add to the mortification.

You speak of observations which for the present you keep back; and there are others, who have proceeded with similar success along the same career with yourselves. Should the scientific world, with one consent, hail a phenomenon so uncommon in climates like those which you inhabit, as the spirit of investigation which you have displayed, I hope you will soon open all your stores of knowledge. To withhold testimony now, is not to disregard the call of vain curiosity, but to resist the urgent cry of humanity.

Let me bring one consideration before your minds. The tropical regions of another quarter of the globe abound with British practitioners. For the sick committed to their care, do you not suppose it would be happy if they often imitated your late proceedings? And will they not be more likely to follow you, the more assurances they shall receive that the path in which you have trod leads to the desired object.

In the West Indies, indeed, what you had done has not been beheld with entire indifference. By degrees greater activity may arise. The information published by Dr. Rollo and myself has reached you. You will perceive, by the following extract of a letter from Dr. Crosse of Nevis, to one of my friends, that more may be expected.

‘I have given the Nitrous Acid with great success in cases of yaws; and its effect has been greatly accelerated by giving two or three drachms of the four of brimstone at night.

I forget not to remind you of the benefits resulting from the vegetable acids applied externally, diluted or not, according to circumstances, leaving the conduct & of it to the ingenuity of the practitioner.

As to the particulars, it will not do for me to place them here, for want of room, but they shall find a place, with some other observations, when I have more leisure than the present to communicate them to the public.’

I have at this instant the further satisfaction of learning that Dr. Chisholm is about to confirm, by numerous examples, the efficacy of our new means in several diseases of the West Indies.

The controversy in which we are at present engaged (if it terminate in the way I presume it shortly must) will be the last medical controversy in which cabal will be able to find so many subterfuges. It cannot fail to be the last in which timidity will be so difficult to tranquillise, or scepticism to convince. You will judge of the method by which I propose to come at once to a decisive issue. Those who incline to the opposite opinion, but at the same time have a sincere attachment to truth, will apparently be obliged (and why should they feel reluctant?) either to accede to my proposal, or to advance another, better suited to the attainment of public conviction.

The occasional failure of Mercury is conceded: nor has any one denied that this noble remedy at times undermines the constitution of the patient and his disease with equal activity. From these premises irresistably follows the reasonableness of pursuing into certainty every hope of a milder anti-venereal remedy.

We have arrived, if enquirers ever did arrive, at incontestible certainty. But I would not at present urge the unwilling too strongly. In Europe I would be content that they should consider what we have proved only as an eligible alternative. I would say to them: ‘Where you have your free choice; follow your ancient habits; but follow them not blindfold: turn aside before you have led those who shall commit themselves to your conduct into the grave, into gulph of inextricable misery. Turn aside into a surer path, and be thankful to those predecessors who have explored and smoothed it for you.’ Not doubting but you will adopt this language, and that you are disposed to treat with indulgence that scrupulousness which in so grave a concern waits for superfluity of demonstration,

I am,
Gentlemen,
With sincere esteem,
Your obliged servant,

Thomas Beddoes

Clifton
12th August 1800.

Published: Communications Respecting the External and Internal Use of Nitrous Acid; Demonstrating its Efficacy in Every Form of Venereal Disease, and Extending its Use to Other Complaints: With Original Facts, and a Preliminary Discourse (London: printed for J. Johnson, 1800), pp. iii–vi