Interesting quote by one of the nations founders regarding medical care

[pnutbutr]

"The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. . . . Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers." Dr Benjamin Rush, at the Constitutional Convention

This is not being posted as an attack on universal care. I just came across it and found it to be interesting and worthy of being shared.

[supernova]

1. Name and source?

Arguably it could be used to support UHC, i.e. "to restrict the art of healing to one class..."

edit: It appears this person is saying you should be able to go to whatever "healer" makes you happy, be it legit MD or more alternative practiioners. Still even in Germany and Austria today, you can go to the spa, if needed, all paid for by the gov't plan. Just as an example.

[pnutbutr]

3. name and source

were in there but the [] around it didn't let it show for some reason. It's fixed.

[supernova]

4. Ah, I see it

thx. :-)

[DireStrike]

11. Yeah, [ are used for html

You can use () or <>, but not ][.

[Vickers]

2. I think I'm reading it differently than you.

:shrug:

[Donnachaidh]

5. medicin has already morphed into an undercover dictatorship

Just look at the rulers of the medical care in this country -- huge hmo's and medical insurance companies. And the wealthy doctors who have huge practices and can pay for lobbyists to keep *their* form of *medical freedom*.

The dictating outfit is the insurance companies. They are a cancer in this country - and should be kicked out of business.

[JimWis]

6. The way I read it , I don't see it as an attack on universal care,

but just the opposite. In my opinion.

[Winterblues]

7. Evidently he was overruled because it doesn't appear in the Constitution.

:shrug:

[Spinzonner]

8. Weren't these the times that George Washington

died possibly because his 'treatment' included bloodletting ?

Nothing personal against bloodletting (with someone else's blood) but using times when medicine was much more art and much less science hardly provides a good basis for a responsible standard.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

[supernova]

9. Bloodletting was a worthless and harmful practice

which would eventually fall out of fashion. But in that era, they didn't know that. He also described a slave who probably had vitaligo (where skin pigment is lost), as being diseased and deserving of compassion, i.e. that skin color is something that is a disease and that man was now "cured." of his dark skin. :silly: now, of course.

Rush was actually pretty forward thinking for his time, despite the enthusiasm for bloodletting, esp on issues of mental health:

* He realized that alcoholics where physically addicted to alcohol, rather than just immoral or weak.

* He realized the value of occupational therapy for the institutionalized. It's better to have something to do rather than sit there on your hands all day.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush

[happyslug]

15. Blood Letting was the main PAIN reliever of the time period

When the hypodermic needle came into use in the years AFTER the Napoleonic Era, direct shots of Morphine could be given to people for the first time (Smoking opium was NOT as effective as pain relief as is Morphine via a Needle). Thus Bloodletting for pain relief was gone by the time of the US Civil War (Doctor's prefer to give people shots of Morphine instead). Until that time the best pain relief was to make some "High" by withdrawing blood (This seems to be why Washington has so much blood removed on his death bed).

For more on the Hypodermic needle:
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/people/alexander-wood.html
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/people/charles-pravaz.html
http://www.discoveriesinmedicine.com/Ra-Thy/Syringe.html

Blood-letting survived in Britain till WWII, as can be seen in the 1908 Medical Article:
http://chestofbooks.com/health/materia-medica-drugs/Roberts-Bartholow/Practical-Treatise/Bloodletting-Venesection-Arteriotomy-Cupping-Leeching.html

Rush on Bleeding (He was an advocate of it):
http://www.geocities.com/bobarnebeck/defence.html

Recent research indicate that blood letting did work for fevers for it drew Iron from the Body (This was unknown to the doctor who did do Bleeding, but explains why it survived for 2000 years, it worked, please note the authors are NOT advocating a return to Blood letting just explaining it may have been the best solution to an infection prior to WWII):
http://men.webmd.com/news/20040910/bloodlettings-benefits

Finally the final word for 1500 years on Blood letting, 2nd century AD Doctor:
http://books.google.com/books?id=DQY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=Bloodletting+pain+relief&source=bl&ots=HYgD0hGK3R&sig=gIZJjeZVNEH292-ljkCOxsb10Z8&hl=en&ei=iTYcSsPXCJHMMofe3ZEP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8

[LeftinOH]

10. Leeches, bone saws, and phlebotomy knives were cheap

-which mostly sums up the medical technology of the era.

[DireStrike]

12. I think his statement isn't useful to our cause; it's a broader thing.

He is talking about being forced to go to particular doctors, whereas we are talking about getting people to ANY doctor (out of a reasonably sized selection of cooperating doctors) affordably.

I bet if you asked Dr. Rush whether all patients who could not afford care should be constitutionally provided for, he would tell you it was a crazy idea. And it would have been, back then.

[votingupstart]

13. very far sighted of him at that time period nt

[JackRiddler]

14. Historical consensus is that Benjamin Rush killed more patients than he saved.

He was a firm believer in bleeding, and never let the constant failure of this treatment and resulting death of his patients keep him from tapping into the veins of his next victim. Also, he was an authoritarian, misogynist (even by the standards of his time), racist (more in keeping with those standards) and a raging ass who tried to drive other practitioners from the field. The quote you cite was probably opportunistic ass-covering. You should read up on who you cite.

Here's the first piece I found, it jibes with what I remember from other readings about him:

Benjamin Rush was a brilliant man (mentioned already in our previous essay). It’s quite funny how lightly some historians treat him, considering the probability that his medicine killed more people than it ever saved. Rush graduated from the college we now know as Princeton at the youthful age of 15. He then studied medicine as an apprentice under a Dr Redman in Philadelphia and attended the first course in anatomy to be taught in this country. In 1766 he went to Edinburgh, Scotland and received his medical degree in 1768. He took Cullen’s theories back to the colonies where he, according to Mary Gillet, "eventually modified Cullen's doctrines, which he had originally so much admired, and discouraged the study of separate disease entities by blaming all disease on excessive tension which caused disturbance in the blood vessels. By 1793, he was openly contending that there was but one single disease in existence." She goes on to say:

The method of treatment upon which Rush insisted with increasing inflexibility called for a low diet, vigorous purges with calomel and jalap, and bleeding until the patient fainted. Rush apparently did not hesitate to remove a quart of blood at a time, or, should unfavorable symptoms continue, to repeat such a bleeding two or three times within a two- to three-day period, it being permissible in his opinion to drain as much as four-fifths of the body's total blood supply. In time, Rush's system and treatment became, in the words of a noted medical historian and physician, "the most popular and also the most dangerous 'system' in America.

Rush later became the middle army’s first Surgeon General. However, the story of the Director General and Chief Physician of the Hospital of the Army, from July of 1775 through Oct of 1775, is much more interesting.

[Uncle Joe]

16. This quote seems to be in support of public universal health care.

"The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. . . . Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers." Dr Benjamin Rush, at the Constitutional Convention"

Nothing "restricts the art of healing to one class" more than for profit health insurance corporations; whose primary, dominant motivation is seeking to make a buck from the people's illness and injury.

The French Revolution and the storming of the "Bastille" were sparked from on going oligarch/nobility abuse against the interests of the French People as a whole.

I believe the same dynamic is happening here with our oligarch/corporate for profit institutions used to disenfranchise the American People from their government either by bankrupting the people with exorbitant health care costs due to the middle man needing a profit and using their power to dictate medical care over the medical professionals, or breaking world records with an exploding prison population by turning what should be an educational, medical and or personal privacy issue of drug use/abuse in to a criminal one as a means to fatten the wallet of for profit prison corporations while dis-empowering American Citizens by turning them in to felons.