HKB
terminations, to God or Satan, friend or foe,--to some agency exterior to themselves,--than to consider themselves as the probable cause, and proceed to make diligent search for their own errors.
Thus it was, in a remarkable degree, in the region where it was my lot to meet and palliate and try to cure diseases. I say, here, cure; for the idea would hardly have found a lodgment, at that early period, in any human brain which could have been found in that region of rural simplicity, hardly in my own somewhat more highly enlightened cranium, that medical men never cure; and that when people get well, it is the result of the operations and efforts of nature, or of nature's God, who is doing the best thing possible to set matters right.
It was even deemed by many as not only foolish, but almost sacrilegious, to say much about the causes of disease, and especially about lead. And then to talk about lead as connected with the use of their favorite red earthen, which had been in use time immemorial, and which had never, in all past time, killed anybody, as they supposed, was the dictate of almost any thing else rather than of good, sound, sober, common sense.
You can hardly imagine, at this day, in the year 1859, what an air of incredulity the gaping countenances of the family and neighbors of my young friend and patient presented, when I told them stories of lead disease in different parts of the country, especially of such cases as were then recent and fresh in my memory. One of these stories may not be out of place in the present connection.
About the year 1812, the people of Elizabethtown, Penn., put up what they called their apple butter in these same red earthen vessels, glazed, as almost everybody now knows, with an oxyde of lead. There had been a pottery established near the village that very year, and it was thought not a little patriotic to purchase and use its products, thus favoring the cause of home manufacture. Nearly every family, as it appeared in the sequel, had bought and used more or fewer of these vessels.
This was, of course, some time in the autumn. In the progress of a few months a dreadful disease broke out in the village, which baffled the skill of the best physicians, and consigned some forty or fifty of the inhabitants to the grave. The cause, at first, was not at all suspected. At length, however, from a careful examination of facts, it was ascertained that the disease which had proved so fatal must have had its origin in the glazing of these vessels. The sickness abated only when it had attacked all whose bowels--already weakened by some other cause or causes--were duly prepared for the poisonous operation of the lead. It is indeed true that the physicians supposed the disease came to a stand on account of the overwhelming tendency of huge doses of calomel, which they gave to almost everybody who had used the apple butter; but of this there was no satisfactory evidence. It ceased, as I believe, and as I have already intimated, because--except in the case of those who were enfeebled by other causes, nature was too strong for it, or her recuperative powers too energetic.