Part One.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE.

Drug Medication Does Not Command Professional Confidence.

Not very long ago an eminent practitioner of the dominant school of medicine said in my hearing to a class of students whom he was addressing on the subject of typhoid fever, with a case from the hospital wards lying before him, "Gentlemen: Concerning treatment, let me say that the very best treatment for this disease is plenty of fresh air; little, or no, food; and no medicine whatever. You may have to administer some drugs to appease the anxiety of friends, but I assure you that we have no medicines that are of any practical service in this disease."

"But," says the homeopath, "that admission was from an old-school practitioner. The new school can offer better testimony."

Can they? We shall all do well to give more analytical study to our resources as disclosed in the light of results fairly attributable to remedial

action.

The following has been taken from the annual address of the President of the New York State Homeopathic Medical Society, delivered at a recent meeting:

"This is a scientific age and we must conform to the methods of scientists to arrive at conclusions of any value. Today, statistics alone will answer this purpose. Each one of us believes that certain diseases run a more favorable course and the death rate is much less under homeopathic treatment. But where are our statistics to demonstrate this to the world at large? Echo answers where?

"Many years ago, when homeopathy was introduced into the hospitals of Vienna, when drugging and bloodletting was the practice in the treatment of pneumonia, the death rate promptly fell under the new treatment, and those statistics have often been used to demonstrate the efficacy of the practice. But what happened? A skeptic arose who had little faith in the infinitesimal dose, and who tried treating a certain number of cases with no medicine whatever, with the result that his death rate was practically identical with that under homeopathic administration. Thereupon the treatment of no medicine was substituted for the homeopathic, and continues with few modifications to the present day."

Enthusiasm over the curative power of the remedies commonly used in serious diseases is a characteristic of the Neophyte in medicine. This one, with consummate faith in the action of his little-tried remedies, sallies forth to meet the enemy. In preliminary skirmishes he meets fair success. He praises his armamentarium and rejoices in the skill with which he utilizes it. But when you see the same man a few years afterwards you find him cautious, and conservative, and deliberate: quite unlike the enthusiast that he was.

To be sure this is not true of all, for there are some, possessing small discrimination, who appear to gather their conclusions from the realm of fancy rather than of fact. Most physicians of mature experience, with a fair measure of discriminative and deductive power, feel most

DRUGS HAVE CURATIVE VALUES

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acutely their relative helplessness in the presence of portentous disease.

The truth is that the best medical skill can do little else than rectify minor physical ills by means of drug remedies and modify the course of the major ones.

Fatal disease appears to "take the bit in its teeth" and gallop resolutely onward to the end of the route, no matter how frantically we may tug at the reins.

I have seen many medical practitioners become enthusiasts over the assumed marvelous action of drug remedies. I have heard them relate, in radiant terms, how they "brought through" patient after patient supposedly lost in the mazes of disease, attributing "no action" to one remedy and "pronounced action" to another, when, in truth, a mind capable of properly weighing evidence should have clearly seen that the fluctuations indicated were likely due to the unsteady motions of the vital forces in their contest with the morbific elements. We are all fully convinced that our remedies do possess a degree of power over morbid conditions, and yet there is no denying that indubitable demonstration of their curative action is not the facile theorem it is commonly supposed to be.

Drugs Have Curative Values.

BUT IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT WE ARE READY TO CONTEND THAT THERE IS A PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE TO PROVE THAT DRUG REMEDIES DO POSSESS CURATIVE VIRTUES.

Advocates of the "New Thought" movement err in conceding to medicine no virtues. There is no denying that the drug itself has little

curative power-perhaps none at all. My own theory is that the drug effects its purpose through the subtle action of suggestion upon the subconscious faculties (represented by the sympathetic nervous system). What I mean by this is that the drug, by virtue of selective affinity, irritates (stimulates, if you prefer the term) some particular nerve center, or even nerve terminal, through which a customary physiological action ordinarily passes, or in which it is usually excited, the artificial stimulus being accepted by the controlling power for the genuine, and the usual phenomena accordingly developed.

There are examples of such action resulting from mechanical irritation, and there is good reason for believing that drugs act in an analagous manner.

Valuable Methods
Sometimes Rejected.

The spirit of uncertainty and consequent discouragement that has crept into medicine as the result of repeated and conspicuous failures has greatly weakened its power. It is doubtless because of this that new methods have sprung up so numerously and are claiming so much public attention and patronage.

It is all in accord with the evolutionary trend, and abundant good to humanity is bound to emerge from the confusion.

But in this very place there stalks forth that which to the laity is a most astonishing anomaly. Every one is craving new resources, and yet a suggestion tendered by one outside the brotherhood of science is not only rejected but spurned without investigation of its merits.

This, I say, to the popular mind, is an anomaly: to all it is irrational.

True Science.

The scientific man is he who has an intimate acquaintance with laws and principles. Science has been defined by Prof. Hyslop as "a body of truths or hypotheses which have presented empirical credentials in their favor, and are to be modified by the same methods." Scientific investigation is an orderly and critical inquiry into observed phenomena.

Few physicians enter the domain of pure science: they leave that field to him who can command his time and has a penchant for such study. Accordingly the physician is obliged to obtain his knowledge at second hand, accepting as final the conclusions of the pure scientist.

When a practitioner of medicine is spoken of as a "scientific man," allusion is to one who has a good knowledge of truths, assumed or real, which have a direct bearing upon the prosecution of his life work.

It therefore follows that a truly scientific physician or surgeon must have an acquaintance with ascertained facts, classified knowledge and prevalent hypotheses which have an appreciable bearing upon the work that falls to his hand. But the field of research is so broad, and the inferences derived by students of science so varied, that the man whose days are full of ministrations to those suffering from mental and physical ills can hardly find time to inform himself concerning even the essentials of successful and intelligent practice.

In this truth lies the necessity for leaning on