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Scalping the Scalpel

About This Item

  • Title: Scalping the Scalpel
  • Date: 13 December 1856
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01441
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 13 December 1856: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Tara Ballard Kevin McMullen Samantha Gilmore Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Scalping the Scalpel." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01441.xml (TEI)
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SCALPING THE SCALPEL.—

This well known medical publication is now issued in quarto form, monthly, at ten cents a number, and is therefore much more accessible to the general public than formerly. The Scalpel frequently has contained articles of which we have expressed a very favorable opinion, and we do not scruple to say now, that we admire Dr. Dixon as a vigorous writer, and an earnest advocate of what he conceives to be right.1 The November protest of the Scalpel against the use of Lager bier has attracted much attention; and we think Dr. Dixon owes it to the public, and to his own reputation, to enter more closely into the subject, and present us with scientific facts and reasoning, instead of mere assertion. So in regard to the use of tobacco, which the Dr. denounces as strongly this month as he did lager bier last month. Undoubtedly tobacco, like almost every other substance, consists of ingredients which in themselves are poisonous, but neither lager bier nor tobacco are half so pernicious in their effects on the physical and mental powers of those who use them as the Dr. would have his readers believe. If they were, we might look for the extinction of the American race within a very few years. His language holds good, probably, as regards an excessive use of the weed, but it is refuted by ordinary observation in many cases, where we find octogenarian chewers and smokers—living facts which it takes something more than the Scapel​ 's mere dictum to outweigh.

Notes:

1. The Scalpel was published quarterly in New York by editor and doctor Edward H. Dixon (1808—1880). [back]

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