CONCLUSION.
The liability of iodine to excite great disturbance in the constitution, has been made an objection to its use. I fear that this reproach must be shared by all powerful medicines whatever. If unattended to, or used with levity, any medicine which is capable of doing good, may also do harm. But if used with due discretion and properly watched, I have no hesitation in affirming, that iodine may be employed with as much safety as any of the powerful remedies which are daily in the hands of the least skilful members of the profession. But it has been also made a subject of reproach to this remedy that it is quite inert and useless. I shall not give any further reply to such a statement than what the foregoing pages contain. But I am credibly informed that it has been used by several eminent practitioners of London; who finding it quite inert, had laid it aside as useless[10].
I have already pointed out one source of such mistakes (page 3). I fear, however, that it has also been used by physicians who have not leisure of mind nor time enough for conducting such inquiries as they ought to be conducted. When we consider the silly pretences on which medicines are sometimes forced into fashionable practice, it will not appear wonderful that the investigation of their virtues should not be conducted with much zeal. But I know also that it has been hastily rejected, and without trial, by some persons grown old in the practice of physic, who have made their interests decidedly to consist in defending all that is old, and repudiating all that is new. Such persons expose themselves to ridicule when we see them reject a remedy so activeas iodine, and continue to trust, for the cure of the severest diseases to which the human frame is liable, to medicines allowed on all hands, and even by themselves, to be absolutely useless.
The value of iodine as a remedy, however, does not depend on the testimony of any individual, however high his name. Its use is established by a long series of facts observed by physicians and surgeons of different countries. Wherever it has received a fair trial from unprejudiced persons, its effects have been so striking and undeniable as to force assent. It is not one of those remedies which is adopted by one man, and rejected by another, according to the accident or caprice of the moment; but one whose effects are written in such clear and intelligible characters, thathe that runs can read. Its applications also are in cases of such common occurrence, that all practitioners have an opportunity of satisfying themselves of the real nature of the remedy, and the extent of its powers.
This medicine has also been called an empirical remedy. Of what importance isit that it should bear this or any other name, by which the enemies of every thing that is new endeavour to keep others in the same state of happy ignorance which satisfies their own indolence, and answers the demands of the common routine of their practice? But in what respect is it an empirical remedy? Do we know any thing more of the action of a purgative? It is said to stimulate the larger or the smaller intestines, and iodine may be said to stimulate the absorbent vessels; and after we have said this, are we at all wiser than we were before? The only questions now before us, those which alone appear worthy of discussion, are, Do we in iodine possess a remedy for the diseases in which I have said it is useful? and if we do, on which of the living textures does it seem most particularly to exert its action? These questions settled, all the rest is of comparatively trivial importance.
The medicines which exert their action on particular textures or systems are extremely few indeed, and the few we possess are so uncertain in their operations, they are liable to such frequent failures, that scepticalphysicians doubt of their efficacy altogether, and even of the efficiency of medicine. There is something peculiarly gratifying to their vanity in supposing themselves freed from the common errors, and above the credulity of the vulgar. Iodine, however, is not liable to the sneers of such narrow minds. It is a real “heroic remedy”—a true present from the science of medicine to mankind.