BY
WILLIAM WITHERING, M. D.
Physician to the General Hospital at Birmingham.
—— nonumque prematur in annum.
Horace.
BIRMINGHAM: PRINTED BY M. SWINNEY;
FOR
G. G. J. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row, London.
M,DCC,LXXXV.
After being frequently urged to writeupon this subject, and as often decliningto do it, from apprehension of my owninability, I am at length compelled to takeup the pen, however unqualified I may stillfeel myself for the task.
The use of the Foxglove is getting abroad,and it is better the world should derivesome instruction, however imperfect, frommy experience, than that the lives of menshould be hazarded by its unguarded exhibition,or that a medicine of so much efficacyshould be condemned and rejected as dangerousand unmanageable.[vi]
It is now about ten years since I first beganto use this medicine. Experience andcautious attention gradually taught me howto use it. For the last two years I have nothad occasion to alter the modes of management;but I am still far from thinkingthem perfect.
It would have been an easy task to havegiven select cases, whose successful treatmentwould have spoken strongly in favour of themedicine, and perhaps been flattering to myown reputation. But Truth and Sciencewould condemn the procedure. I havetherefore mentioned every case in which Ihave prescribed the Foxglove, proper or improper,successful or otherwise. Such aconduct will lay me open to the censure ofthose who are disposed to censure, but itwill meet the approbation of others, who arethe best qualified to be judges.
To the Surgeons and Apothecaries, withwhom I am connected in practice, both inthis town and at a distance, I beg leave to[vii]make this public acknowledgment, for theassistance they so readily afforded me, in perfectingsome of the cases, and in communicatingthe events of others.
The ages of the patients are not alwaysexact, nor would the labour of making themso have been repaid by any useful consequences.In a few instances accuracy in thatrespect was necessary, and there it has beenattempted; but in general, an approximationtowards the truth, was supposed to besufficient.
The cases related from my own experience,are generally written in the shortestform I could contrive, in order to save timeand labour. Some of them are given morein detail, when particular circumstancesmade such detail necessary; but the casescommunicated by other practitioners, aregiven in their own words.
I must caution the reader, who is not apractitioner in physic, that no general deductions,decisive upon the failure or success...