Cupping was
used to provide suction to remove pressure from various parts of
the body. Also used were poultices, ointments, and herbal
treatments, notably quinine. Opium was given to deaden pain. There
were about 70 drugs in use. Charms, spells, astrology, and folk
remedies still played a major role in medicine. A physician
attended surgeries to give advice. Physicians could visit
apothecary shops once a year and throw away any drugs falling
below an arbitrary standard of excellence. In 1703 the House of
Lords decided a jurisdictional contest between the College of
Physicians and the Society of Apothecaries. It permitted the
apothecaries to direct the remedies as well as to prepare them,
although they could only charge for the drugs they provided. The
poor sought advice from apothecaries.
There was progress in health. Scurvy virtually disappeared as a
cause of death due to the eating of more vegetables. And people
were cleaner when wearing cotton, which had to be washed. In 1721,
free inoculations for smallpox began in England, pioneered by Lady
Mary Wortley Montague, also a poet and letter writer. She led the
way by having herself and her son inoculated. Theologicians
denounced this practice as a diabolical interference with disease
sent by Providence for the punishment of sin. In 1727 surgeon
William Cheselden, whose master was specially licensed to perform
the operation of removing stones in the hospital, reduced the
death rate for removing stones due to hemorrhage, shock, and
infection down to 17% by his invention of a lateral operation.
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