I answer unhesitatingly, that his cures are
very remarkable, indeed, and that I look upon him as a
sort of Napoleon of medicine. His view is that the
pharmacopaeal doses are in nearly every instance much too
low. Excessive timidity has cut down the dose until it
has ceased to produce a real effect upon the disease.
Medical men, according to his view, have been afraid
of producing a poisonous effect with their drugs. With
him, on the contrary, the whole art of medicine lies in
judicious poisoning, and when the case is serious,
his remedies are heroic. Where, in epilepsy, I should
have given thirty-grain doses of bromide or chloral every
four hours, he would give two drachms every three. No
doubt it will seem to you very kill-or-cure, and I am
myself afraid that a succession of coroners' inquests may
check Cullingworth's career; but hitherto he has had no
public scandal, while the cases which he has brought back
to life have been numerous. He is the most fearless
fellow. I have seen him pour opium into a dysenteric
patient until my hair bristled. But either his knowledge
or his luck always brings him out right.
Then there are other cures which depend, I think,
upon his own personal magnetism. He is so robust and
loud-voiced and hearty that a weak nervous patient goes
away from him recharged with vitality. He is so
perfectly confident that he can cure them, that he makes
them perfectly confident that they can be cured; and you
know how in nervous cases the mind reacts upon the body.
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