History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

Internal Medicine 1091850The typical medical practitioner of 1850 still employed bleeding, emeticsand purging. These methods were considered and taught as standard treatmentbased upon dogmas which had been current for many years. BenjaminRush had been one of their main promoters, and his was a name widelyknown and respected throughout the country.At this time, too, patent medicines came into use, widely advertised bythe newspapers and by medical sideshows, quacks and fakirs. Only a fewmedical meetings of ethical physicians were held because not many suchdoctors had as yet reached this country. But soon they did arrive in considerablenumbers, and it was not long before the State Medical Society,organized ten years earlier but now almost defunct, was again organizedand rapidly became a forceful and permanent group in the state.The first meeting of this reorganized Society was held in Springfield, atwhich time a Committee on Medical Practice was appointed with instructionsto report at the next annual meeting.The first annual meeting of the State Society was held in Peoria withthe President, Dr. William B. Herrick, Professor of Anatomy and Physiologyat Rush Medical College, in the chair. He spoke on "The RemedialProperties of Alimentary Substances and the Changes Produced by Oxygenin Health and Disease." Among other things he said: "The time is not fardistant when the truly scientific physician will use as remedies such substancesonly as help to constitute in health the solids and fluids of thebody. . . . Regard manifestations of disease in the human body as evidencesof want of harmony in the performance of functions consequent uponexcess or deficiency in some of its parts or elements which may be andoften are more promptly restored by the addition or abstraction of one ormore of its normal and proper constituents than by introducing into thesystem, powerful or even poisonous foreign substances." He characterizeddisease, chiefly in the north, by excessive oxidation, and gave pneumonia,pleurisy, croup, rheumatism, tuberculosis and skin affections as examples,whereas those diseases characterized by deficient oxidation—more commonin the south—were yellow, remittent and intermittent fevers, jaundiceand malignant erysipelas, which he attributed to "an accumulation of unoxidizedeffete matter in the blood and tissues." It was his opinion thatthe use of animal oils,remedies, even in most serious forms of disease.lemon juice, common salt and soda were effectiveDr. N. S. Davis of Chicago fought for improved sanitation as a publichealth measure. No sewage system worthy of the name existed inIllinoisin 1850; garbage and refuse were thrown into the Chicago River or wereallowed to accumulate in alleys, while drinking water came from shallow