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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
No. 1374 1839 July 19, G. F. H. CROCKETT, VISTA PLACE, YAZOO COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, TO M. B. LAMAR, [HOUSTON, TEXAS] 79
Vista Place July 18h. 1839.
His Excellency, the President of Texas; Sir:
Permit me to premise the assurance, in the introduc- tion of the subject of this note, that I am influenced, in its presenta- tion to the enlightened executive of a chivalrous, intelligent, & mag- nanimous people, by a disposition to promote the public weal and benefit our species. Accidents and diseases appear to be the lot of man in every place and under all circumstances ;-and altho' much of your country is some- what exempt from the latter, it is as subject to the former as any -0ther; and some parts of it will doubtless be found to be the hot bed -0f disease.- Has the Republic now, or will it in two or three years have, use for a few hundred physicians?- If so, may it not be well, in the morning of its days, to take measures for an intelligent & in- structed medical corps-the guards & conservators of the health of the people & the country? rather than commit so important a trust fo itenerant adventurers, of whose qualifications,-from the very na- ture of the profession, the populace are incapable of judging. In view of the very greatly defective condition of medical education in the south-having to depend, for physicians, upon the north & northwest, who, of course, are unacquainted with the peculiarities of southern diseases,-! say, in view of this state of things, it has been proposed by a respectable number of the citizens of the south, that a medical school be established at some point in the great :Mississippi valley, with professors of experience, as well as science, & whose success in practice has been such, as to promise a better course of medical in- struction, than has hitherto fallen to the lot of southern physicians to receive, short of a long course of experience & close observation. .And it is the more needed, for the following, among other reasons: 1st. The dieases of the south have peculiarities, and in some cases, :a degree of virulence, unknown in the north, which require a corre-. spondent treatment. 2d. The knowledge thereof must be the result of :a long course of experience & observation,-there being no treatise extant, to be depended upon, from which a correct knowledge of the pathology & treatment of southern diseases may be gathered. And, 3d. I believe it may be asserted, fearless of successful contradiction, that there is not a medical school in the U. S. with a professor of Theory and Practice who has been a very successful practitioner in the south.* · '"A. L. S. *This point, though important, seems to have been overlooked; and the general fatality of our diseases has been ,considered rafoer inevitable arrd a necessary consequence in the nature of things, than the want of a correct knowledge of their pathology & treatment, & the result of rnal-practice, or no practice at all.
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