Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Review of the History of Chemical Therapy in Cancer
As illustrating the attitude of the regular sur geon at that time toward the use of caustics, Young narrated the story of a published correspondence between two surgeons of the time. A regular sur geon, Mr. Guy, had purchased a nostrum, known as the Plunket remedy, which he had been using extensively and apparently successfully without dis closing its composition, but claiming it had none of the qualities of a caustic. The surgeon to the King, Mr. Gataker, who, it afterward was ascertained, had also been using a caustic without the same suc cess as had his colleague, publicly and vehemently denounced Mr. Guy because he was using a secret remedy. The efficient ingredient of the Plunket remedy was eventually ascertained to be arsenic. Young says: Thus posterity seems equally obligedto these two gentlemen; to the one for condemning a thing which it is very evident he was totally ignorant; and to the other for the warm support of what it is equally clear he did not understand, or (which would seem still less innocent) of what he did not choose to understand. Young indicates that a more general use of caustics became intro duced from this remedy, which considering the nu qualified and indiscriminating way in which they were applied, were attended with more success, he says, than could have been looked for.
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