Note 67 — CANTO II. CONJURATIONS!

Broke a whole gallipot of wrath!

I beseech you, gentlemen, to suspend your impatience relative to this wonderful achievement, till you have soared through a few stanzas. In the meantime, however, I wish that this my favorite hero, and burthen of my song, should stand high with your worships, and be the object of the humble admiration, not only of your honorable body, but of mankind in general: and I, myself, shall take the liberty to trample on all those, who dare call in question his infallibility. I have a knowledge of but few, who more deserve to be trodden upon on this occasion than the conductors of certain foreign literary journals, who, not aware of the inconceivable services which Dr H. has rendered the medical host by his ardent zeal against their common enemy, Perkinism, have expressed their sentiments of him, and his works, with that indifference, which must have arisen from their want of knowledge of his achievements.

Among the most prominent of this junto should be mentioned the Medical Repository, at New York, conducted by professors Mitchell and Miller, of that place, the former of whom I understand is a representative in the Congress of the United States, an eminent physician, and the celebrated author of what is usually termed the “Mitchellian Theory of Contagion,” alterations in the French Chemical Nomenclature, &c. The latter, I am told, is likewise a physician of great respectability.

Now that two such characters should presume to represent Dr H. as a man, whose “vanity is more conspicuous than his ability,” is a circumstance which, while it excites my surprise, rouses my resentment. However, to accomplish their disgrace and his renown, I shall concisely state his magnanimous conduct to them, and their ungracious return.

Dr H. in great condescension to the poor wretches of the United States, who, through the ignorance and inexperience of their medical practitioners, were likely to be extirpated by the yellow fever, addressed them in an affectionate letter, and proclaimed the barbarity and unskilfulness of their physicians, in a very appropriate and becoming manner. He even kindly apprized the Academy of Medicine, at Philadelphia, that their proceedings and reasonings on the disease among them were “frivolous, inadequate, and groundless,” and communicated many other facts equally useful and important.

Now, whether his statements were true or false, those foreigners ought to have been grateful to Dr H. for honoring them with the information. But on the contrary, they say that “a poison, which, in the city of New York, has destroyed, within three months, the lives of more than twenty practitioners of medicine, well deserves to be traced and understood by the survivors.” They even have the audacity to assert, that “American physicians and philosophers, who have viewed the rise and progress of pestilence, walked amidst it by day and by night, year after year, and endured its violence on their own persons, almost to the extinction of their lives,” ought to be as competent judges of the cause and cure of the disease as Dr Haygarth, who has never seen a case of it.

After entering into a copious (about 20 pages) and what they seem to think a learned investigation of my great friend’s theory and sentiments, they have dared to refute his reasoning, and turn it to ridicule.

These presumptuous writers finally close their unreasonable account of Dr Haygarth, in quotations from Dr Caldwell, who, it appears, is a fellow of the college of physicians of Philadelphia, and a very ungentleman-like fellow too, for he has also had the rashness to descant on some of the works of Dr Haygarth in terms following.

“Perhaps he (Dr Haygarth) may found the boldness of his pretensions as an author on the maturity of his years. Many writers less youthful are more modest; and it is to be lamented that grey hairs give no infallible earnest of either wisdom or liberality. We will not positively assert that he is not a man of profound erudition; but we have no reason whatever to convince us that he is. Perhaps he may pride himself on being a native of the same country which produced a Harvey, a Sydenham, a Cullen, and a Hunter. We entreat him to remember, that weeds may infest the same ground which has been overshadowed by the lordly adansonia, and that the same clime gives birth to the lion and the jackal.” Medical Repository, vol. v. p. 333. Oh, fie! fie!