CONSUMPTION—MR. ST. JOHN LONG'S CURES.
which the literary and pictorial doctors would set up. I have not been de: ceived. I knew I had only to give them rope enough, and they would hang: themselves ; I had only to present the sword of truth, and they would rush on its point ! Mr. St. John Long is at once the most fortunate and miter:ob. nate of mortals,—fortunate in discovering an infallible specific for ceasinnp- tion; unfortunate in the death of his patients, just at the moment. that their cure was almost completed ! These patients seem to have seo,•ed him in the way the Frenchman's horse served his master—the said horse having died, just when he was taught to live without food! A co!aonn and a half of last Sunday's John Bull contains a mass of the most cheering attestations from the dead and the dy;ng, respecting the infallibility of St,. John Long's cures of consumption ! Every patient was cured; and although mast of them. are dead, atol all the rest dying, the fault was not in Dr. Long! The pa- tients relapsed; and (think the ingratitude of mankind!) they put them.. selves under other doctors, who, of course, killed them out of pure spite to Dr. Long. When we read the black catalogue in the John Bull. the lazaretto in Harley-street reminds us of the cave of Troplionius—"NoThe vestigia retro."
The case of the Rev. Mr. N—, OH which Mr. Lone and his literary coadjutors place their great dependence, will, at once, illustrate the gulli- bility of John Bull, the nature and credibility of the attestations put forth by the Doctor, and the treatment by which lie pretends to cure consumption. For the truth of the following statement, I appeal to the afflicted clergyman himself; and to two physicians, Dr. M'Cabe and Dr. Haden), the former of whom saw the patient before he went to Mr. Long, and the latter afterwards.
The Rev. Mr. N came up from the country last summer laheuring
under ague, in addition to pulmonary consumption. By this complication he was worn down to the state he describes ; and just when the ague was - stopped, and when nature was craving for food, he put himself under MI% Long. The latter, conceiving that the ulcer in the lungs was nothing, and • that the emaciation was every thing, desired him to eat as much animal food as he could possibly get down his throat—a quantity amounting to from four to five pounds daily I He also applied his specific to the chest ; which is a combination of caustic acids, and other substances, that occasion the most dreadful agonies, and excoriate the parts to which they are applied. Well,. what was the consequence ? In seven weeks the Rev. Mr. N— gained. twenty-eight pounds in weight; the purulent expectoration, and conse- quently the ulceration in the lungs, remaining in stam quo, if not worse than - before. It was at this period that the amiable and confiding clergyman signed: a declaration in Mr.- Lon,g's book, that "hue felt assured he might return into the country without danger." The ink with which this declaration was written had scarcely time to dry, when his hopes " vanished into thin air."' The mine exploded. Nature could bear no more of the cannibal system e the whole internal surface of the stomach and bowels became inflamed ; dysentery came on ; and now the regular physician was summoned to stop. the ravages produced by the grossest ignorance and quackery I When I ex- amined the patient, at this time, I found a new ulceration of thc lungs, or large extent, from which purulent matter was issuing in considerable quanti- ties! This is the "internal complaint," which Mr. Long states to have taken place in the country ; whereas it occurred while the patient was under his own care, and residing in Salisbury Place, Regent's Park! After this spe- cimen of Mr. Long's veracity and good faith, it will not be necessary to in- vestigate the claims which he has to credence in his extracts from private letters, It is somewhat remarkable, that the Rev. Mr. when cured of his dysentery, would not again put himself under Mr. Long, though the latter came almost daily to Salisbury Place, to solicit the honour of once more curing him of consumption !
It is in the above way that Mr. Long draws from his credulous patients a declaration of their cure, when he has bloated them up with bad flesh ; after which they may descend quietly to the tomb, as their cures are registered with their own hands in his book ! Since the days of Baron Munchausen, there never was a book in this world containing such a mass of veracious state- ments as the BOOK OF FATE in Harley Street l—whoever is booked there, should not neglect to say his prayers regularly. There is one other book which may probably appear at no distant period—nainely, "the Dialogues of Ike Dead." It must be an amusing scene (if amusement ever reaches Pluto's gloomy realms,) to behold the meetings of Dr. Long's patients there, each accusing the other of misleading him by the declaration of his cure recorded in the Bo4 of Fate in Harley Street !
I should not have ventured to introduce a single expression of levity on so grave a subject ; but if InNORANCE will clothe itself in the garb of science, and make human life the subject of its rash experiments--and if men of edu- cation will prostrate their reason at the shrine of presumption and quackery, risking their own lives and misleading their less-informed fellow creatures— then the pen of the satirist cannot be dipped in gall too bitter or ink too black.
The public press will do well to consider how far it is responsible for aid- ing the cause of empiricism, however convinced its editors may be of the truth of what they give currency to, on matters which they are necessarily unqualified to decide upon. A day will come, and that very soon, when the Harley Street bubble will burst—but not before great mischief is done to suffering humanity, by the indiscriminate system of treatment which is there adopted, without any knowledge of the diseases to which it is applied. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
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