FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 353:535 August 4, 2005 Number 5 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited E-mail When Letters Appear

By Stephen H. Gehlbach. 273 pp., illustrated. New York, McGraw-Hill, 2005. $19.95. ISBN 0-07-143790-8.

In 1793, a massive epidemic of yellow fever terrorized Philadelphia. Frustrated by fruitless trials of sundry remedies, Dr. Benjamin Rush finally hit on a putative cure: plentiful bloodletting and purging with the use of the potent laxatives calomel and jalap. As Stephen Gehlbach dryly notes in his new book, the first patient "lost 3 pints of blood, the entire contents of his gastrointestinal tract, and any shreds of dignity. But he survived." Not everyone believed in Rush's gospel of phlebotomy and catharsis. The gloriously abusive journalist William Cobbett, writing under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine, pointed out that obstinate Philadelphians persisted . . . [Full Text of this Article]

HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org Comments and questions? Please contact us. The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2008 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.