ON THE TREATMENT OF A SEVERE C'ASE OF 
LIGNITUDO CAPUTS. v, 
BY DR. CARL BOTH. 
' i, j } i * l 
my publisher, Mr. Moore, of Boston, I received a copy of 
the New York Medical Journal, for August, 1873, containing (page 
201) an attack upon my book on Consumption, which is written in a style 
neither scientific nor professional, but personal; intentionally misrepresent- 
ing my book to mislead others, who have not seen it, in their judgment. I 
should hardly have noticed the article did it not give me occasion to prove 
a sweeping assertion made in my book, and to show the total incompetency of 
that very class of men whom I intend to hit in my book, and who, like 
the Tammany ring, pretend to rule medical opinion by combination, thus 
making it almost impossible to introduce anything tending to eradicate 
that superficial, farcical knowledge which is taught from the Cathedra as 
scientific medicine, and which in practice results in a legalized quackery, 
called allopathic or homoeopathic, a disgrace to science and a scourge to 
the country. The style of this article permits me to set aside all courtesy 
and to use severe language, but knowing that the editor is used as a catspaw 
for others who are afraid of handling the chestnuts, I shall confine myself 
to show the superficiality and utter incompetency of the editor, Dr. Wm. 
T. Lusk, Professor at Bellevue College, at the same time giving him occa- 
sion to prove me mistaken by answering better than I have done, the diffi- 
cult and unknown points in question. 
The object of the article is to stigmatize my book as a quackish fabri- 
cation. That “the book abounds in new views ” is admitted, but “they lack 
any particular support,” and are presented in such a way that I, myself, 
should fail to recognize them as my work. If such was really the facit of 
my book, I would throw it into the fire at once ; but Dr. Lusk not only fails to 
represent my views, but he utterly fails to show or point out a single mistake in 
them. The results of twenty-two years of toilsome work and costly study, 
partly under the best teachers the world affords, partly under the greatest 
difficulties imaginable, results which have run the gauntlet of private, 
public, professional and practical investigation for fifteen years, without a 
spot of damage, he condemns upon his authority by one glance; especially 
my views of disease and my treatment; he also charges me with “not being 
familiar with the views of Max Schultze, Strieker and Rolett, and the latest 
observation of German authors generally.” 2 
Let us see what justification my views lack: When I first announced 
cellular theories and their consequences in Boston, 1 was ridiculed and my 
views pronounced a humbug. The very men who then thought themselves 
justified in treating my views with contempt, and who refused even to inves- 
tigate them, think differently now. I will subject my views, to-day, to the 
following men of Boston, to Prof. Henry I. Bowditch, D. H. Storer, Henry 
I. Bigelow, Winslow Lewis, Horatio R. Storer, Samuel Cabot, Prof. Wy- 
man, in Cambridge, and other men of unquestionable reputation ; who 
know how hard it is to produce any new fact, and if they think my views 
are quackish I will begin seriously to consider the matter. 
What was quackery in Boston in 1858, is to-day the hard nut on which 
the younger professors at Harvard College nibble without results, in spite 
of importation and great advertisements. What was laughed at in Boston 
in ’63 was published in the New York Medical Record in ’68. Is the 
Medical Record a quackish paper? or, has anybody refuted an iota of my 
ideas ? 
My views have been published, with plates, in the Journal of the Gynae- 
cological Society of Boston. I)r. Aufrecht, of the staff of Schmidt’s Jahr- 
biicher in Leipzig, has my work under consideration for scientific criticism. 
My views have appeared with original wood cuts in the Journal of the 
Imperial Faculty of Vienna. They have been presented before the Gynae- 
cological Society in Boston ; before the Society of Medical Improvement in 
Cambridge; before the Boston Society of Natural History. Prof. Gaillard 
Thomas, of New York, quotes one of my papers in his latest work. 
All my papers are mentioned in the regular list of Medical Authors in 
Leipzig. My name is known all the way from San Francisco to New York, 
and from London to Vienna, in scientific quarters. My views have been 
assailed by the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal; by Professor Hors- 
ford; by the Scientific American. Have they proved anything quackish 
or wrong ? If my views do not stand in such general approbation as they 
deserve, is it my fault ? or, is it the fault of those who ignorantly refused to 
test them, either froifi ill-gotten prejudice or from conceited ignorance ? 
Can nonsense or quackery keep itself for fifteen years before scientific 
societies, in the very first medical journals, and before the whole world, 
without being once exposed and proved as such ? 
Let us see how little I know about Max. Schultze, Strieker and Rolett: 
The “Oestreichishe Zeitung fuer practiche Heilkunde,” the organ of the 
Vienna faculty, 1871, No. 9, begins with an article by Dr. Carl Both, of 
Boston, showing, with wood-cuts, the three existing opinions on the minute 
anatomy of the lungs. Dr. Lusk will find there that I am not only familiar 
with Schultze’s anatomy, in Strieker’s histology, but that I have shown 
good reason why I disagree with Schultze, and how he made a mistake in 
observation, and how the anatomy really is, and why it must be so. 
Long before I ever heard of the existence of Dr. Lusk, I was consulted 
by a patient and pupil of Prof. Rolett, a tubercular medical student, who 3 
came all the way from Austria to Boston, and who returned after seven 
months with cured lungs, much to the astonishment of his former attend- 
ants at Wuerzburg and Vienna. 
If my views on cells and their growth “ do not correspond with the latest 
German authors,” they undoubtedly dissent from them, which to know is 
quite instructive for Dr. Lusk. But I will show instantly how much better 
it would be for Professor Lusk, instead of boasting of acquaintance with the 
latest observations of German authors, to study the fundamental knowledge 
laid down by older German authors, or the A, B, C of scientific medicine. 
He says: We are reminded, in reading the author’s views of disease and 
its treatment, of the passage in Macbeth, “Fillet of a fenny snake,” etc. 
Dr. Lusk wrote this thinking the view of disease, as given in my book, 
originated with me; but he will be much astonished to learn that what 
“reminds him of hellbroth,” is a verbal translation from Foerster's Patholog- 
ical Anatomy, Jena, 1856,page 8, and is the foundation which made Foerster 
the greatest pathologist of his time. And it is significant that the very paper 
which Dr. Lusk so bitterly condemns, earned, when first published, in 1869, 
a very flattering letter from Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, Professor at Bellevue, a 
man of whom America may justly be proud. Here the reality of the surgeon 
recognized at once what the unreality of Dr. Lusk so utterly failed to see. 
He next ridicules my treatment, which I claim to be unfailing in its 
application. 
In 1863 I offered to show it in Boston, 1868 at the Bellevue College in 
New York. Without any reason, against the rules of American Ethics, 
against professional custom since Hippocrates, against all principles of 
science and humanity, it was refused in spite of my offer to pay for extra 
expenses ! What entitles Dr. Lusk now to ridicule a treatment which he 
never saw applied, of which he knows actually nothing, and which does not 
rest upon drugs but upon physical, chemical and physiological known laws ? 
Can Dr. Lusk state an instance where my treatment Jailed upon applica- 
tion ? Is it likely that a man offers a humbug for test before his adversaries 
and at Bellevue Hospital ? My treatment is a method, and as unfailing 
as the methods of surgery or of analysis; that it is difficult in its applica- 
tion, that it is in my possession only, that it is not known by all, is it my 
fault? Because everything else has failed yet, is it justifiable to condemn 
my method without test and without knowing it ? What I have tested in 
practice for fifteen years,and found without fail, is it to be insulted by men 
who, theoretically or practically, do not outweigh a Homoeopathic dilution ? 
Dr. Lusk, as much as I know of him, was a student at Bellevue, was 
called to Boston as Professor of Physiology, where he was a favorite of a 
class of men of whom Dr. Storer in Boston told me “ he considered it a 
disgrace not to be hated by them.” In as much time as it takes the train 
to go from Boston to New York, the Professor of Physiology turned into a 
Professor of Midwifery and Diseases of Woman, at Bellevue. He next 
appears as editor of Appleton’s Medical Journal, and now as the latest and 4 
and conclusive authority on Consumption. If another mortal should 
perform such salto mortale, he would be considered an idiot or a second 
Cagliostro—but, of course, Dr. Lusk stands far above such insinuations, 
and he will prove what he is by answering the following questions, which 
to answer I have so badly failed :— 
He will explain to the world: I. The minute anatomy of the lungs. 
II. The true theory of respiration. III. What consumption is. IV. Clas- 
sify the lung diseases. V. He will show how to cure consumption. VI. 
What whooping cough is. VII. What scarlatina is. VIII. How to cure 
both of them. IX. He will demonstrate what disease is, and prove Foerster 
an ignorant quack. X. He will tell us all about cell-growth. XI. He will 
bring the cellular pathology into actual practice. XII. He will not fail to 
do all this, better, of course, than I have done. 
As soon as Dr. Lusk has accomplished this, I promise to throw my book 
into the fire, become the pupil of this modern Hercules, and will spread 
with loud voice his ideas, his discoveries, and his results! Amen. 
In anticipation of this great scientific revolution, and in conformation, 
with the great Dr. Lusk, by ending with poetry, I conclude with a con- 
coction of my own, which is not so classical as Shakespeare, but much 
more to the point and the truth : 
Heraus mit Eurem Flederwisch 
Ihr Cundurango Helden ! 
Wie sie sich raeuspern und wie sie spucken 
habt Ihr gelernt schnell nachzudrucken. 
Aber — dummer noch als dumm — 
mit umgedrehten Paradoxen, 
Swapnia, Sporen, Clima, Noxen, 
zieht man Euch an der Nase ’rum. 
Mit Facten koennt Ihr nichts gestalten, 
Mit Faxen nur und leeren Worten 
Gutglaeubige zum Narren halten. 
Fuer ganzes Wissen und Denkerthum 
heisst: Ego sum. — M. D. silentium. 
Rochester, N. Y., September, 1873.