Thomas Beddoes to John Pearson, 10 October 1800
Sir,
I should in vain endeavour to make any impression upon you, by expressing my regret that you should have joined your authority to that of those who deny the anti-venereal power of acids. You are satisfied with your own conclusions. To me they appear unwarrantable. In my apprehension you ought to have inferred that certain saline substances are true anti-siphylitics, but that they fail in some cases, because we do not possess them in a sufficient variety of forms. Indeed, at the conclusion of your work, you do make a small concession of this kind in favour of nitrous acid.
But it is useless to multiply words. And you have proved yourself too candid and inquisitive to oppose the accumulation of facts. But let the accumulation of facts be at last effectual: let it relieve from their perplexity those who are embarrassed by contradictory testimony: let it put our conclusions above the cavils of men whose productions are stained with the variation of each soil in the districts of wrong-headedness, misrepresentation, and chicane. I do not; indeed, yet pretend to know the power of acids, in comparison with that of mercury. But I affirm (what you deny) that acids will cure the venereal disease, both in its primary and secondary form; and that their pretensions ought to be contrasted with the performances of mercury. I challenge you to co-operate with me in bringing this point to an authentic determination. Do you select a certain number of patients, labouring for the first time under the symptoms of secondary lues, and such as have taken no mercury, or none lately. If you accept my challenge, I request you also to let two or three other surgeons attest the cases.
I challenge you further to select a number of other patients who have relapsed, after one or more apparently proper courses of mercury. The writings that have appeared during the present controversy, swarm with relapsed cases. From this and other sources of information, it appears to me, that after a succession of relapses, small dependance is to be placed on mercury; for a single course does not secure the patient, and often the medicine cannot be repeated, because it saps the constitution with little mitigation of the disorder.
I need not say that you should be nice in your choice. We must have persons of regular conduct, and concerning whom we may be able to obtain information at a considerable distance of time. Such as would be content to live at their own expence, and to receive gratuitous treatment, would be most desirable. The expence, however, of maintaining a few patients, shall not be an obstacle to the experiment. I hope to find persons willing to join their contributions to my own, for the sake of solemnly deciding so great a question.
I should be extremely obliged to you for the communication of means for guarding against the secret use of mercury. I will speedily acquaint you with such as appear to me the most effectual, with other particulars. And whether you concur with me or not, I will endeavour to execute this scheme. In such a problem, when I think myself within a single step of incontrovertible certainty, I am not disposed to stop short.
I do not expect from you the objection that acids may perhaps be permanently effectual in India, but not in England. The necessity of swallowing a large bulk of liquid, is indeed more severely felt in colder countries; and I am happy that we have obtained the convenient resource of external application, a method which I expect will daily come more and more into use with other medicines. But, indeed, I believe the army of reserve of affirmative facts in Europe, is too strong for any one to venture an attack in this quarter.
In consenting to confine the experiment to secondary cases, do not imagine that I admit the insufficiency of primary cases, in a certain number, and of a certain inveteracy, as a test for anti-venereal remedies. Whatever will cure such primary cases as I have seen cured by acids, such as have been cured in Plymouth Hospital and elsewhere, will also cure secondary cases. These, indeed, seem sometimes to be as much exceeded in intensity by primary cases, as they may themselves exceed primary cases in extent.
Should it prove that the host of observers, who affirm the power of acids, have not been deceived, I will not dissemble with you that I have further views. I hope, in this case, that some spirited enquirer will have the courage to try, by inoculation upon his own person, whether certain acids diluted only so far as to be tolerable for a short time by any surface of the body, will not destroy the specific quality of venereal matter. In the acid that should do this, we might possess the double advantage of rendering innocent this morbid poison, and of determining the living parts to an action different from the venereal action. Such a substance, especially if it be at the same time volatile, may furnish an instrument effectual for diminishing the frequency of the venereal disease.
I have not taken upon me thus to throw down the gauntlet, as thinking I exclusively possess the medical prowess necessary for the atchievement: but it is the part of the upright and consistent man not to shrink from the strictest probation of what he believes true and useful.
One of those surgical sages, who, with scarce any sanction from experience, have stepped forward to pass a general condemnation upon the acids, remarks, that ‘what was done successfully at Plymouth, at Woolwich, at Bristol, &c. ought to have been done at the Lock Hospital; for truth is the same every where.’ I have shewn, from the evidence of dates, that in the first decision at the Lock Hospital, truth was not waited for. And if it may be supposed that the nature of the venereal disease is the same within the limits of our island, still the art of treating it by the new remedies may have differed as widely as the climates of Greenland and Bengal. But if you send me triply and quadruply attested London cases, and I effect cures at Bristol in the most public and authentic manner that can be devised, will not the suspicion, that in the event of contradiction, always attaches to individuality and locality, inevitably vanish, and with it every other form of doubt be dissipated? But, indeed, upon the whole, there already appears to have been a much more public inspection of the successful cases than of the unsuccessful.
I am, Sir,
very respectfully, Yours,
Thomas Beddoes.
Rodney Place, Clifton,
October 10, 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. lx–lxiii.