Part 1

Transcribed from the 1839 W. Tylee edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

NEW ERA IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.

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CONSUMPTION CURABLE: OBSERVATIONS ON THE TREATMENT OF PULMONARY DISEASES;

CHARACTERIZED BY ASTHMA, AND OTHER DISORDERS OF THE CHEST,

PRECEDED BY, OR ATTENDED WITH

VIOLENT COUGH AND WHEEZING,

EXTREME DIFFICULTY OF BREATHING;

AND THE

METHOD OF EFFECTUALLY ERADICATING EVERY SYMPTOM OF THOSE COMPLAINTS,

AND

PULMONARY CONSUMPTION,

BY MEANS WHICH

NATURE HAS PROVIDED,

HITHERTO EMPLOYED ONLY BY THE AUTHOR.

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Patronized by the Nobility and Medical Men of the highest distinction.

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TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. TYLEE, BOLT-COURT, FLEET-STREET. PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR (H. CONGREVE, SHEPHERD’S BUSH) BY HANNAY AND DIETRICHSEN, 63, OXFORD-STREET, LONDON; AND MAY BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1839.

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OBSERVATIONS ON PULMONARY DISEASES;

DEFINING THE CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS, AND DIRECTING TO THE MODE OF TREATMENT, AND MEANS OF CURE OF

INFLUENZA COLDS AND COUGHS, HOOPING COUGH, ASTHMA, AND PULMONARY CONSUMPTION, &c.

IT is a matter of notoriety how slightly regarded or little known are the medicinal properties concentrated in the plants which adorn the vegetable kingdom. Such negligence of the means of healing, by the remedies which are sent by the immediate hand of Providence, and rendered most abundant and common, and the substitution of others of a more doubtful, and often highly injurious, character, evinces a love of change, not simply to promote a greater benefit, but to render the art of healing more complicated and obscure.

It is probable that many disorders, for the relief of which medicines are sought for from the remotest parts of the globe, which act with harshness and violence, would be averted, were the same attention paid to the investigation of the properties, and the best mode of extracting the qualities, incorporated in the leaves, seeds, roots, and juices, together with the balsams, which in some cases exude from them, to be found in the soil of Nature’s platform on which we traverse.

There was a time, and not very remote, in the annals of the past, when disorders of the Chest and Lungs, so alarmingly prevalent in the present day, were scarcely known; when Consumptions were seldom heard of; when obstructions of the viscera were hardly ever seen, and when chronic diseases were but rarely witnessed. The reason is obvious: the simples which adorn the pages of our ancient authors on medical science, are no longer resorted to for relief by the student or practitioner, however valuable their properties have heretofore been manifested; and other compounds, emanating from the laboratory, have been preferred, and thus the simplicity of the science has been gradually lost in its complications.