The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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tered, he puked, he saHvated his patient, he never cured
him."^^
Since the medical theory of the regulars as well as that
of the irregular sects, rested upon an empiric rather than
a scientific basis, one man's opinion was about as good as
another's. From the days of Hippocrates, doctors without
number had based their practice on the idea of the four
elements in man— earth, water, air, and fire. Corresponding
to these were the four natural humors— melancholy
or black bile, cold and dry (earth) ;
phlegm, cold and moist
(water) ; blood, hot and moist (air) ; and choler, or yellow
bile (fire). The general theory was that man's normal constitution,
or "complexion," represented a balance among
these natural humors, but that an excess of any one would
lead to trouble. More serious still were the effects of the
unnatural humors, of which there were a number.
Although medieval medicine was aware of certain specific
diseases, such as smallpox and leprosy, and Thomas
Sydenham (1624-89), "the father of bleeding," described
measles, dysentery, syphilis, and gout, most doctors in the
mid-seventeenth century still thought in terms of humors
and one disease. Further progress was made during the next
century in differentiating diseases and causes. William
Cullen (1710-90) of Edinburgh listed hundreds of diseases;
his pupil, John Brown, classified all into two types: those
due to tension and those due to extreme relaxation. Dr.
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), the most famous and influential
American doctor of his day, went a step further.
He stated to his students that "there is but one disease in
the world." This being assumed to be true, the depletion
treatment— blood-letting and purging — was universally
applicable.
Dr. John Esten Cooke of Transylvania and Louisville,
who published an eleven hundred-page, two-volume treatise
on 'Pathology and Therapeutics in 1828, carried the
Rush purge and calomel theory to the extreme. He believed
that all diseases, particularly fevers, arose from cold or
malaria, which weakened the heart and thus produced an