NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Washington Founded 1836 U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Public Health Service ADDRESS TO THE OFFICERS COMPOSING THE m®®i©^m sviiwv * BY ^AffiWTO ]L% WtXWBMO» Bt« H>. ft IP. SURGEON GENERAL of the MILITIA, IN THE STATE OF NEW-YORK. NEW-YORK : PRINTED BY E. CONRAD, FRANKEORT-ST. 1820. At a Meeting of the New-York Military Medical Staff Society, held at the College Hall, on the evening of the 14th inst. It rvas resolved, That a Committee, consisting of two, be ap- pointed, to wait on the Surgeon General, Doctor Mitchill, and request him to publish his Cir- cular. It was further resolved by the Society, That the said Committee consist of Doctors D. L. Ro- gers, and Baxter. JOHN W. STERLING, Sec'y, CIRCULAR. C»^ GENTLEMEN, DURING a season of peace and prosperity, when every citizen is occupied in his individual pursuits, more than in guarding against public danger, there appears a pe- culiar propriety in presenting to you, a few subjects for con- sideration. Although, at present, there is no field for the great ope- rations of Military Surgery, the Surgeon General believes the talents of the Surgeons attached to the Hospital De- partment and to Regiments, and those of their respective assistants, may be constantly and worthily employed, in promoting the great objects for which they are commission- ed, and in contributing to the advancement of the profession at large. We live in a section of the globe, where at all times, dis- eases and painful accidents are frequent, and where the aid of professional men is sought with great solicitude. The de- ference thus paid to the opinion and character of Doctors, places them on elevated ground. By common consent, they are the guides and directors of health. To the honour of our country it has been remarked, that where to intelli- gence and activity, there is united a correct morality, a suf- fering individual and his family rest upon their Physician with perfect confidence ; and veil they may. A seat in the House and in the Senate ; high commands in the Army and Navy; and the dignity of Governor in the States, has fre- quently been conferred, by the voice of the people, the legi- timate source of authority, upon medical men. ( 4 } The public sentiment in favour of the faculty, has been strongly expressed in as many places, as there are schools of medicine. It is right, in our condition of society, to adopt the measures necessary for forming able Physicians and Surgeons. No person is exempt from the casualties that may render their help important. All rational creatures pray that the healing powers may be propitious. So they ought. Distempers often assail with vehemence, domestic and settled life. More severe and formidable are their attacks upon the exposed, and sometimes unsheltered soldier. Both kinds of malady require your particular study. During the absence of tumult and war, you can improve the opportuni- ties afforded for observation. You can watch sympjoms with calmness and care. There are none of the marchings nor counter-marchings of a campaign to interrupt you. In this posture of things, I recommend to you, the ob- servance of Epidemic Diseases. They come and they go, in a way that is not yet well understood. It ought to be comprehended, if possible, how far they are connected with solar influence, terrestrial effluvia, atmospheric change, corporeal predisposition, or other causes. Your opportu- nities are excellent. You traverse all the inhabited parts of the commonwealth. The commencement, progress and termination of such maladies, are open to your view. You know into what they degenerate, when wholly neglected or unskilfully treated. That my meaning may be comprehended, I offer a few examples. Our Winter Fevers may possibly visit us again. Though they were skilfully described, among other writers, by North, Gallup and Wilson, their re-appearance deserves the utmost vigilance. It is not their mortality alone, that de- serves attention. Their obscure origin, when snow and ice lock up the miasmata of marshes, and where the sequester- ed abodes of the siek forbid the entrance of contagion, ought to be illuminated by the torch of science. It is deemed e«- ( « ) sential to trace the operation of animal food, and of ardent spirits, upon constitutions thus invaded. Should the Pneumonia Typlwides, so fatal to our armies during the late war, break out once more, every memora- ble fact concerning it ought to be recorded. A disease at- tacking the vital organs with so much fury, merits the most particular notice. There will be no small satisfaction in discovering the morbid predisposition and cause; in ascer- taining the injury done to the bodily organs, and the value or ineffieaey ol prescriptions. The writings of Mann, Heus- tis and Waterhouse, will afford you encouragement and di- rection on these and similar inquiries. The Influenza, or General Catarrh, has had an extensive prevalence during the present autumn. Additions are want- ed to complete its rational history. The prevalence of such wide-spreading disorders, their fore-runners, their concomi- tants, and their consequences, are all of high moment to medicine and to mankind. Dysenteries merit the most particular attention. Con- nected with the food and drink received into the alimentary canal, they rage with a distressful, and frequently, a de- structive sway. The amount of disorder in the stomach and intestines; the degree and type of the fever; the con- nexion of both with the air respired, invite the most careful inquiry : as also do the circumstances relative to their ori- gin and communication. Who are more capable than you, to observe every thing that relates to the Bemitting and Intermitting Fevers, which almost every season prevail to some degree and extent, over certain districts ? Whether they assume the solemn aspect of the Bilious, Malignant, Autumnal, or Yellow, or the milder complexion of Quotidian, Tertian or Quartan ; there are circumstances that often solicit the regard of the medical philosopher. It must be owned, we are at this mo- ment in want of a satisfactory theory of Fever, notwith- standing the labours of Boerhaave, Cullen, Darwin and Rush. You arc called upon to furnish information, in this C 6 ) exigency. Perhaps from some quarter whence it is least ex pected, the long-sought light may shine. I should exult with a joy greater that I can express, if, in my day, the phe- nomena upon this momentous but abstruse subject, could be generalized into a science. It would be useful to make correct entries in a book, of all the memorable events, medical, surgical or colla- teral, that come within your observation. From this they may be copied from time to time, and forwarded for inser- tion in one of the respectable journals published quarter- yearly in New-York, Boston and Philadelphia. It is suggested as a steady rule of conduct, in all impor- tant cases, to inquire, by actual inspection, into the morbid alterations wrought by disease. The situation and employment of many of you is favour- able to a knowledge of our indigenous simples, and an ac- quaintance with their virtues. The forests and fields are rich with vegetable productions of almost every sort. The Physician, as he rides through the woods, beholds sanative plants on the right and the left; and the Surgeon, as he journies along the highway, may be said to pass through an avenue of vulnerary herbs. In ascertaining their names, localities and uses, you will not only act worthily for your- selves and your patients, but advantageously for the whole profession, and the human race. The residence of some of those whom I address, is favour- able to a more minute acquaintance with the distemper in rabid brutes, which, by their bites, excites hydrophobia in man. Your attention is particularly invited to mad foxes and mad wolves, as well as to mad dogs. The gazettes, for several years, have contained shocking recitals of attacks made in their paroxisms of fury, upon man and domes- tie animals. It is hoped we shall obtain an embodied his- tory of those mournful occurrences, written at full length by competent members of the staff, instead of being left to the authors of casual paragraphs, soon to be forgotten and lost. ( -< ) From men so happily located as you are, we naturally ex- pect intelligence concerning the topography of the country. After the excellent descriptions of New-York County, by Akerly ; of Jefferson County, by Henderson; and of Saratoga, by Steel; more may be expected. Would the sons of ^Escu- lapius really perform as much as they are capacitated to atchieve, a shower of information would descend upon us. For such exercises, yourselves are better qualified, by rea- son of your scientific education, and your enlarged opportu- nities for survey, than any other persons. The former pre- pares you to understand, and the latter enables you to ar- range and narrate. In examining the soil you tread, you will not fail to note the composition of the strata, of the issuing waters, and of the incumbent air. I exhort you to eollect and preserve those monuments of the former gene- rations of created beings, the remains of antediluvian vege- tables and animals, which are distributed in many places through the ground and the rocks. It cannot be considered foreign to my purpose, to invite your attention to the effects of certain deleterious agents upon oursehes and other creatures. The poisonous opera- tion of the Sumachs, for example, by their effluvia and juices, has not been thoroughly investigated. The slabber- ing disease of horses, deserves a more profound inquiry than has been bestowed upon it. If it arises from the acrid juice of succulent plants, in the pasture, it becomes us to know, by a series of well-conducted experiments and observations, what those productions are. When detected, it may, per- haps, be possible to eradicate them from the meadows. The facts concerning the death of oxen, after eating the leaves and twigs of the wild-cherry-tree, ought to be properly- stated. The effects of the venom of the rattle-snake and of the black-adder, deserve a more minute and careful inquiry, from the citizens of a country infested by those serpents. Their history, their seasons of greatest virulence, and an ac- count of the he*< remedies among the great number recom- ( 8 ) mended, ought to be given in a form worthy of the age, and the society in which we live. Spurred rye has become a fashionable remedy. Yet inju- rious effects are ascribed toergotted bread-corn, when used in diet, by the inhabitants of France and of some other parts of Europe. Its action upon the health of our citizens ought to be fully investigated, and to you I commit the inquiry. Such diseased grain, or a fungus sprouting up in the place of grain, is at best, suspicious. There is no doubt, in my mind, that all the spurred rye and wheat, ought to be sepa- rated from the grist, before it is carried to the mill. But if careless persons omit this precaution, and eat bread contain- ing such an improper ingredient, the operation ought to be traced by Physicians. Its alleged noxious action upon do- mestic animals, cannot fail to attract your attention. For the present. I shall content myself with the hints con- tained in the preceding paragraphs ; while I request that your liberality and patriotism may receive them in the same spirit that they are written. You are young, with the world of business and usefulness in broad display before you. Act as becomes yourselves and your stations, and you will receive the reward due to excellent deeds. I congratulate you on the completion of the National Phar- macopaeia, which may be shortly expected from the press. Every order to me from the Commander in Chief, touch- ing the Medical Staff, shall be immediately communicated to you. 1 beg you to remember, that on all occasions, in peace and war, I shall labour to promote our country's welfare, and to discern and appreciate merit in the individuals belonging to my department. SAMUEL L. MITCHILL, Surgeon General, &c: State of New-Fork, Nov. 18,1820. MecL. Hist. VIZ MfcWU ino C.I SHranHHSBBM: - IS mi III