Thomas Beddoes to the Editors of The Medical and Physical Journal, 12 December 1800
Gentlemen,
Since the publication of those observations, which I have ventured to call demonstrative of the anti-venereal power of acids, I have received further testimonies. I enclose a specimen.
I have made some progress in a collection towards defraying the expence of a set of public experiments. Mr. Pearson thinks with me, that a separate establishment is best suited to the decision of this question. Among other regulations, it seems necessary for satisfying the public mind, that a person of unsuspected probity should be fixed upon to administer the acids; that this person should swear to the fidelity of his reports; and that the nurse and patients should swear, the one not to supply, or cause to be supplied, any article not directed; the other, not to take any such articles.
It is not merely for the sake of bringing our controversy, important as it is, to an issue, that such a plan is desirable; the contradictory reports place before our eyes the existence of a most criminal levity in observing a disregard to truth in reporting. What human being, who considers that he himself, and those he most values, are one day destined to become the subjects of medicinal processes, but must tremble when he perceives that there must be, at the present time, in this enlightened country, a considerable number of reputable medical practitioners, incompetent to the decision of one of the easiest and most palpable problems belonging to their art; who cannot, or will not use their senses with a little coolness, patience, and impartiality? When such a person is to be treated for an obscure internal disease, in what hands shall he deem himself tolerably secure?
It appears from an hundred examples, that any man may publish almost any thing concerning any remedy, with some chance of a lucrative reputation, and at scarce any hazard ruinous disgrace. Not only, therefore, will a public scrutiny expose that party, which, in the dispute concerning the acids, is chargeable with such portentous incapacity; but it will serve as a wholesome lesson to those who are ready to discharge their crudities upon the public.
For my own part, I feel assured that the inquiry will confirm the favourable attestations. And there are two arguments arising from a comprehensive view of the documents on both sides, which must strike impartial judges. The affirmative cases were very open to inspection; and at Plymouth, Woolwich, and in India, they were actually inspected by a number of medical men, in no respect biased in favour of acids. 2. Among the assertors are persons equally versed in medical observation, and in experiments on inanimate matter; an exercise which habituates the eye to examine with accuracy, and the mind to reason strictly, and which ought to be made an indispensable requisite in medical education.
So much having been said in Europe on the subject of relapses, the East India practitioners have been induced to attend particularly to this objection. And Dr. Helenus Scott, in a letter too late for my last pamphlet, thus states the result.
‘With regard to relapses, when recent cases have been cured by the nitric acid, I believe they occur less frequently than after mercury. Mr. Stuart, Dr. Keir, Mr. Macgregor, and myself, have cured by it, within these eighteen months, above one hundred patients with primary symptoms, one only of whom has relapsed. This man, a patient of Mr. M‘Gregor, came back to him with a small chancre on the prepuce, but it is doubtful if this did not arise from a fresh infection. No practitioner surely will assert that so great a number would have continued well, who in this country had been treated by mercury.’
I am glad of an opportunity to mention that my pamphlet is much disfigured by errors of the press. In many places of the preliminary discourse, in spite of my corrections, the London printer has made me write strange English. There are few places, however, where the sense cannot be made out; and I hope by this time, that all the copies are provided with a list of errata. I only beg leave to mention here, that at p. 51, 1. 21, citric acid should be read in place of nitric. I am,
Gentlemen,
Respectfully, your’s,
Thomas Beddoes
December 12, 1800.
Enclosure:
To Dr. KIER, from CHARLES FORBES, Esq.
My dear Sir,
Agreeably to your desire, I now send you the particulars of the cure effected by Dr. Scott on one of our servants, by the use of the nitric bath.
About a twelvemonth ago, the servant alluded to (a native boy of 16 or 17 years of age) was seized with violent pains all over his body, but particularly in his head and loins, which were most severe in the night time, and entirely deprived him of rest, except what he procured with the assistance of tobacco or opium, he soon became reduced to a skeleton, and so ill that he had nearly lost the use of one of his legs and thigh, the muscles of which were so much contracted that he could only put his toes to the ground, and his skin was covered with white scabs or scales. Hitherto he had persisted in denying that he was ever infected with the venereal disease, and attributed the pains in his bones, and contraction in his leg and thigh, to a stroke of the land wind, which was corroborated by the opinion of the other servants; he now confessed, however, that he had caught the venereal disease about a year before, which he described to have been a running and ulcers, and that he removed those symptoms by drinking milk, which had been recommended to him by one of his friends, but that he took no mercury nor any other medicine. On describing the boy’s case to Dr. Scott, he was so good as to visit him, and recommended the nitric bath, which was immediately commenced in the usual way, at first twice daily, and about half an hour at a time; but it was remarkable, that in the course of a week, the boy found himself so much relieved, that he repeated the bath half a dozen times in the day of his own accord, and at length would frequently sit two or three hours at a time up to the neck in it, until his skin became so fore that he could hardly bear to put on his clothes. His head-achs had now left him, he rested well, and only complained of the pain in his loins, which, by a moderate use of the bath, was also removed in the course of about a month from the time he first began it, and he gradually recovered the use of his leg. He is now in perfect health, and has had no return of his complaints. He never took mercury, but his mouth was considerably affected by the use of the nitric bath.
I take this opportunity of mentioning two other instances of the efficacy of the nitric acid, which have come within my immediate observation. The first is that of John Hibernia, a Caffree, aged about forty, who was servant to the late Colonel Nugent, and whom Mr. Forbes put under Dr. Scott’s care about two years ago; he was afflicted with venereal pains in his bones, for which he had been repeatedly salivated by mercury, but received only a temporary relief from it, for when the effects of the mercury ceased, his pains returned. Dr. Scott administered the nitric acid internally, and in the course of a few weeks compleatly cured him. I lately met him on the road, and on questioning him respecting his health, he informed me that he was perfectly well, and had been for a twelvemonth past.
The second instance alluded to, is that of an officer of one of our ships, for whom I requested Mr. Boag’s advice. Having accidentally scratched his finger, it turned into an ugly sore, which gave him excessive pain, and although timely applications were made, it seemed to defy them all, and at length put on so putrid an appearance that Mr. Boag thought the bone was assessed, and that the loss of the finger must ensue. He now recommended a trial of the nitric acid upon it; and by bathing the finger in it, three or four times a day, as strong as it could be borne, the sore was soon healed up, and the finger got perfectly well.
I remain, your’s,
C. FORBES.
Bombay, Jan. 1800.
Published: The Medical and Physical Journal, 5 (December 1800), 71–72.