Читать книгу The Royal Road to Health; or, the Secret of Health Without Drugs - Chas. A. Tyrrell - Страница 4

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It is one of the most profound mysteries of our civilization, and has been one of the most perplexing and discouraging phenomena of human existence, that, while the world at large has maintained an ever increasing “medical profession,” whose members are popularly supposed to be competent to deal with all the ills that flesh is heir to; still there has always been a long list of what are termed “incurable diseases.” But the immense strides made, in recent years, in every branch of modern science, has led the thinking public to consider such a condition of things as an outrageous libel on the God of Nature, and to question whether there can be such a thing as an incurable disease.

Health is such an inestimable blessing, that the individual who shall devise means to preserve it, or to restore it, when lost, is deserving of all the thanks and honors that a grateful community can bestow. Unfortunately, there are very few who estimate life at its true value, until they are confronted with the grim destroyer, Death. No one can fully appreciate the priceless blessings of health, until they feel that it has slipped from their grasp. The oft quoted phrase, “Health is Wealth,” is truly a concrete expression of wisdom, for without the former, the latter is well nigh an impossibility. But its interference with the activities of life is one of the least evils of sickness, for perfect health is the very salt and spice of life; without it, existence is “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”

But let none despair, for it is my purpose to show how those who enjoy the blessing of robust health may preserve it indefinitely, and how those who have lost it may regain it—with access of vigor, and once more feel that life is indeed worth living. In presenting a new system of medication, it is necessary to attack the existing systems, and hence, I am placed in a delicate position, for of all the problems ever presented for the ingenuity of man to solve, undoubtedly the most difficult is, how to present new facts so as not to offend old errors; for individuals are very prone to regard arguments levelled against their opinions as direct attacks upon their personality; and not a few of them mistake their own deeply-rooted prejudices for established certainties.

I shall endeavor to show that the practice of administering drugs to cure disease is a fallacy, and in so doing, I am bound to incur the condemnation of my brother practitioners, who prescribe drugs, and the druggists who vend them.

It may safely be asserted that the drug system of treating disease would be destroyed if it were to be critically examined; in fact, to defend it is provocative of unmistakable damage to it. If it is once subjected to the analysis of calm reason its defects become palpable to the meanest understanding.

There are three principal schools of medicine, each with a distinctive title, but they are all one in essential principles. They may differ in unimportant details, but in the main premises they are a unit. They all believe in the principle of “curing one disease by producing another.” In other words, their practice is, to induce a drug disease to cure a primary one, for this is exactly what is done when drugs are administered, in pathological conditions as we shall prove later on by testimony from authorities on medical practice.

The materia medica of the schools, to-day, includes upwards of two thousand substances—the number increasing daily—and when viewed dispassionately it presents what? A list of drugs, chemicals, dye-stuffs, all subversive of organic structures. They are all antagonistic to living matter: all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living domain—as a matter of fact, all are poisons. Now, what logical standing can a system have, that employs, as remedies for diseases, those things that produce disease in healthy persons? No advocate of the drug system has ever advanced a reason that would bear one moment’s scientific examination, why poisonous substances should be administered to the sick, and no one will ever be able to give a satisfactory explanation of the theory that underlies the practice, for none exists. When once the public fully grasps the true import of this glaring anomaly, the days of the drug system will be numbered.

Physicians of ability and long experience, who have devoted their lives to the relief of suffering humanity, both in this and other countries, have declared after close observation, that they were fully and thoroughly convinced that medicines do not cure patients, that they do not assist Nature’s process of cure, so much as they retard it, and, that they are more hurtful than remedial in all diseases. A still larger number have reached the same conclusion with regard to certain complaints, such as scarlet fever, croup, pneumonia, cholera, rheumatism, diphtheria, measles, small-pox, dysentery, and typhoid-fever, and that in every case where they have abandoned all medicine, abjured all drugs and potions, their success has been marvellously increased.

Professor B. F. Parker, of the New York Medical College, once said to a medical class: “I have recently given no medicine in the treatment of measles and scarlet fever, and I have had excellent success.”

Dr. Snow, Health Officer of Providence, R. I., reported for the information of his professional brethren, through the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal that he had treated all the cases of small-pox, which had prevailed endemically in that city, without a particle of medicine, and that all of the cases—some of which were very grave ones—recovered.

Dr. John Bell, Professor of Materia Medica in one of the Philadelphia Colleges, and also in the Medical College of Baltimore, testified in a work which he published (“Bell on Baths”), that he and others had treated many cases of scarlet fever with bathing, and without medicines of any kind, and without losing a patient.

Dr. Ames, of Montgomery, Alabama, some years since published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, his experience and observation in the treatment of pneumonia. He had been led to notice for many years, that patients who were treated with the ordinary remedies—bleeding, mercury, and antimony—presented certain complications which always aggravated the malady, and rendered the convalescence more lingering and recovery less complete. Such patients were always liable to collapses and re-lapses; to “run into typhoid”; to sink suddenly, and die very unexpectedly.

He noticed particularly that patients who took calomel and antimony were found, on post-mortem examinations, to have serious and even fatal inflammation of the stomach and small intestines, attended with great prostration, delirium, and other symptoms of drug poisoning. These “complications” were nothing more or less than drug diseases. And Dr. Ames found, on changing his plan of treatment to milder and simpler remedies, that he lost no patients.

The late Professor Wm. Tully, M.D., of Yale College, and of the Vermont Academy of Medicine at Castleton, Vt., informed his medical class, that on one occasion the typhoid pneumonia was so fatal in some places in the valley of the Connecticut River, that the people became suspicious that the physicians were doing more harm than good; and in their desperation they actually combined against the doctors and refused to employ them at all; “after which,” said Professor Tully, “no deaths occurred.” And I might add, as an historical incident of some pertinency in this place, that regular physicians were once banished from Rome, so fatal did their practice seem, so far as the people could judge of it.

The great Magendie, of France, who long stood at the very head of Physiology and Pathology in the French Academy—which, by the way, has claimed to be, and perhaps is, the most learned body of men in the world—performed this experiment. He divided the patients of one of the large Paris hospitals into three classes. To one he prescribed the common remedies of the books. To the second he administered only the common simples of domestic practice. And to the third class he gave no medicine at all. The result was, those who took less medicine did better than those who took more, and those who took no medicine did the best of all.

Magendie also divided his typhoid fever patients into two classes, to one of whom he prescribed the ordinary remedies, and to the other no medicines at all, relying wholly on such nursing and such attention to Hygiene as the vital instincts demanded and common sense suggested. Of the patients who were treated the usual way, he lost the usual proportion, about one-fourth. And of those who took no medicine, he lost none. And what opinion has Magendie left on record of the popular healing art? He said to his medical class, “Gentlemen, medicine is a great humbug.”

In the face of such damaging testimony from prominent representatives of the medical profession, it becomes exceedingly difficult to place any reliance on the drug remedies prescribed by them.

The melancholy truth is, that drug medication has become an integral part of our domestic economy. At no time in history has the consumption of drugs even approximated the present rate. Enormous sums of money are invested in manufacturing and distributing them, and the physicians of the various schools, being educated to prescribe them, a mutual bond of interest has grown up between doctor and druggist, which is not at all surprising. The medical profession, as a whole is, and ever has been eminently conservative, and this fact, in connection with its traditional predilection for drugs causes its members to resolutely set their faces against any remedial process that runs counter to the theories they imbibed at college. They look askance at all such things and regard them as dangerous experiments, and assert that their dignity will not permit them to recognize any irregular practice, or any form of quackery.

Dignity! When was dignity ever known to save a life? Most humanity continue to suffer because the medical profession (blindly following in the rut of custom) fail to see anything superior to the antiquated system of treating disease by drugging, which many of its ablest members condemn as unreliable?

It is with all schools of medicine as it is with each individual practitioner of the healing art—the less faith they have in medicine, the more they have in Hygiene; hence those who prescribe little or no medicine, are invariably and necessarily more attentive to Hygiene, which always was, and ever will be, all that there is really good, useful, or curative in medication. Such physicians are more careful to supply the vital organism with whatever of air, light, temperature, food, water, exercise, or rest, etc., it needs in its struggle for health, and to remove all vitiating influences—all poisons, impurities, or disturbing influences of any kind. This is hygienic medication, the natural and rational method of cure, and the more closely it is examined, the more strongly it will commend itself to reason.

It is a lamentable fact that the preservation of health is not taught in the medical schools, neither is it explained in their books, and judging from general practice not much regard is attached to it in their prescriptions. But when the inevitable typhoid or malaria appears as an inevitable consequence of neglected precautions, the physician can drug without mercy, and, as we contend, on most illogical grounds.

Who imagines for one instant, that quinine is a poison? Who is not aware that arsenic is a deadly poison? And yet physicians and medical journals calmly and gravely assert that arsenic is the better article of the two, and recommend it as a substitute for quinine. Can any intelligent person believe that a comparatively harmless tonic, and an intense poison are perfect equivalents for each other?

It is stated on reliable authority, that during the civil war, hundreds of sick soldiers implored the nurses to throw away their medicine. They feared drugs worse than bullets, and not without reason.

It is a curious fact that young physicians prescribe more medicine than the older ones.

Said the venerable Professor Alexander H. Stevens M.D., of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons: “Young practitioners are a most hopeful class of community. They are sure of success. They start out in life with twenty remedies for every disease; and after an experience of thirty years or less they find twenty diseases for every remedy.” And again: “The older physicians grow, the more skeptical they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the powers of Nature.”

The effect of drugging a person, is to lock up the actual causes of the disease in the system; thus producing permanent and worse diseases. It is in accordance with common sense that they should be expelled, not retained. What is known as disease, is nothing more or less than the struggle of Nature, to cast out impurities, and this remedial effort should be regulated, and assisted, not obstructed by administering drugs, which only complicate the situation, by producing more disease.

No man can fight two enemies better than one, and, to give drugs to a system already struggling to regain its normal condition, is like tying the hands of a man who is beset by enemies. The truth is, that the real nature of disease is misapprehended by the popular schools of medicine, and until broader views obtain a lodgment among them, it is useless to hope for any alteration or improvement in the antiquated system of drugging. “Who shall decide, when doctors disagree?” is an oft quoted sentence, and, the following conflicting opinions from prominent physicians show conclusively how little is actually known of the action of drugs upon the human system, by those who administer them right and left.

Says the “United States Dispensatory,” “Medicines are those articles which make sanative impressions on the body.” This may be important if, true. But, per contra, says Professor Martin Paine, M.D., of the New York University Medical School, in his “Institutes of Medicine”: “Remedial agents are essentially morbific in their operations.”

But again says Professor Paine: “Remedial agents operate in the same manner as do the remote causes of disease.” This seems to be a very distinct announcement that remedies are themselves causes of disease. And yet again: “In the administration of medicines we cure one disease by producing another.” This is both important and true.

Professor Paine quotes approvingly the famous professional adage, in good technical Latin,

“Ubi virus, ibi vitus,”

which, being translated, means, “our strongest poisons are our best remedies.”

Says Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons: “All of our curative agents are poisons, and as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient’s vitality.”

Says Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., of the same school: “All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce disease.”

Says Professor St. John, of the New York Medical College: “All medicines are poisonous.”

Says Professor E. R. Peaslee, M.D., of the same school: “The administration of powerful medicines is the most fruitful cause of derangements of the digestion.”

Says Professor H. G. Cox, M.D., of the same school: “The fewer remedies you employ in any disease, the better for your patients.”

Says Professor E. H. Davis, M.D., of the New York Medical College: “The modus operandi of medicines is still a very obscure subject. We know that they operate, but exactly how they operate is entirely unknown.”

Says Professor J. W. Carson, M.D., of the New York University Medical School: “We do not know whether our patients recover because we give medicines, or because Nature cures them.”

Says Professor E. S. Carr, of the same school: “All drugs are more or less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing.”

The authors disagree in many things; but all concur in the fact that medicines produce diseases; that their effects are wholly uncertain, and that we know nothing whatever of their modus operandi.

But now comes in the testimony of the venerable Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., who says: “Drugs do not cure diseases; disease is always cured by the vis medicatrix naturae.”

And Professor Clark further complicates the problem before us by declaring that, “Physicians have hurried thousands to their graves who would have recovered if left to Nature.” And again: “In scarlet fever you have nothing to do but to rely on the vis medicatrix naturae.”

Says Professor Gross: “Of the essence of disease very little is known; indeed, nothing at all.” And says Professor George B. Wood, M.D., of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia (“Wood’s Practice of Medicine”): “Efforts have been made to reach the elements of disease; but not very successfully; because we have not yet learned the essential nature of the healthy actions, and cannot understand their derangements.”

On the other side of the Atlantic the claims of the existing medical schools to popular favor, do not appear to rest upon any surer basis than they do here, if we may judge from the following opinions expressed by some of the most eminent authorities in the British Kingdom:

“The medical practice of our days is, at the best, a most uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence.”—Dr. Evans, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

“There has been a great increase of medical men of late, but, upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion.”—John Abernethy, M.D., “The Good,” of London.

“Gentlemen, ninety-nine out of every hundred medical facts are medical lies; and medical doctrines are, for the most part, stark, staring nonsense.”—Prof. Gregory, of Edinburgh, author of a work on “Theory and Practice of Physic.”

“It cannot be denied that the present system of medicine is a burning shame to its professors, if indeed a series of vague and uncertain incongruities deserves to be called by that name. How rarely do our medicines do good! How often do they make our patients really worse! I fearlessly assert, that in most cases the sufferer would be safer without a physician than with one. I have seen enough of the mal-practice of my professional brethren to warrant the strong language I employ.”—Dr. Ramage, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

“The present practice of medicine is a reproach to the name of Science, while its professors give evidence of an almost total ignorance of the nature and proper treatment of disease. Nine times out of ten, our miscalled remedies are absolutely injurious to our patients, suffering under diseases of whose real character and cause we are most culpably ignorant.”—Prof. Jameison, of Edinburgh.

Assuredly the uncertain and most unsatisfactory art that we call medical science, is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions; of conclusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn; of facts misunderstood or perverted; of comparisons without analogy; of hypotheses without reason, and theories not only useless, but dangerous.”—Dublin Medical Journal.

“Some patients get well with the aid of medicine; more without it; and still more in spite of it.”—Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S. “Thousands are annually slaughtered in the quiet of the sick-room. Governments should at once either banish medical men, and proscribe their blundering art, or they should adopt some better means to protect the lives of the people than at present prevail, when they look far less after the practice of this dangerous profession, and the murders committed in it, than after the lowest trades.”—Dr. Frank, an eminent author and practitioner.

“Our actual information or knowledge of disease does not increase in proportion to our experimental practice. Every dose of medicine given is a blind experiment upon the vitality of the patient.”—Dr. Bostock, author of “History of Medicine.”

“The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon, and the effects of our medicines on the human system in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined.”—John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S., author of “Book of Nature,” “A System of Nosology,” “Study of Medicine,” etc.

“I declare as my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience and reflection, that if there were not a single physician, surgeon, man midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail.”—Jas. Johnson, M.D., F.R.S., Editor of the Medico-Chirurgical Review.

So it comes to this, that during three thousand years remedies have been accumulating until between two and three thousand drugs are recorded in the archives of the medical profession, and yet we have the admission of some of the highest authorities on the subject that the nature of disease is still a mystery, that the “modus operandi” of drugs is equally obscure, and that in consequence there is profound uncertainty as to the relation of drugs to the diseases for which they are prescribed.

Can one cause cure another? Can a poison expel a poison? Can the human system throw off two burdens better than one? If such a proposition were submitted to us in any other domain we would indignantly resent it as an insult to our intelligence.

There can be no question but that the public are largely responsible for the existing condition of things, for whatever they demand they can obtain, in obedience to the inexorable law of supply and demand: which accounts for the rapidly increasing interest in hygiene. An eminent authority on therapeutics says:

“The medical profession holds a most false relation to society. Its honors and emoluments are measured, not by the good, but by the evil it does. The physician who keeps some member of the family of his rich neighbor on a bed of sickness for months or years, may secure to himself thereby both fame and fortune; while the other who would restore the patient to health in a week or two, will be neither appreciated nor understood. If a physician, in treating a simple fever, which if left to itself or to Nature would terminate in health in two or three weeks, drugs the patient into half a dozen chronic diseases, and nearly kills himself half a dozen times, and prolongs his sufferings for months, he will receive much money and many thanks for carrying him safely through so many complications, relapses, and collapses. But if he cures in a single week, and leaves him perfectly sound, the pay will be small, and the thanks nowhere, because he has not been very sick!”

I know many of you will say, “My physician is a very excellent man and a good scholar—I have all confidence in him.” But what if his system is false? Is your confidence in him or in his system? If in his system, you are to be pitied. If in him, take his good advice and refuse his bad medicine.

The Caucasian has not much to learn from the Mongolian, it is true, but the public might safely imitate the Chinese in dealing with their physicians. A Chinaman of rank pays his physician a retaining salary so long as he remains in health, but, the instant he gets sick, the salary ceases. Manifestly, it is a common-sense proceeding. The doctor has a vital interest in preserving the health of his client, since sickness entails a pecuniary loss; and best of all, the patient escapes having his system drenched with drugs. There is no valid reason why there should be any such thing as serious sickness; nor would there be if Hygiene were taught, and practised, and the whole materia medica consigned to oblivion. As Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “If all drugs were thrown into the sea, it would be so much better for man, but so much worse for the fishes.”

Now, the remedies of the Hygienic system, which I advocate, comprehend everything except poisons. The drug system rejects almost everything but poisons. My system rejects only poisons, and adopts everything else. I welcome anything that possesses remedial value, provided it is in accordance with the laws of Nature, and am equally ready to accept suggestions from the laity, as from fellow practitioners. I am ready to submit everything thus presented, to the test of experiment, and employ it if found worthy.

In this regard I may, without vanity, lay claim to the possession of a more progressive spirit than the members of the drug schools, for their disinclination to adopt anything new in the treatment of disease has passed into a proverb. It might naturally be supposed that any one who should come forward with a discovery by which the suffering portion of the human family would be benefited, would be welcomed with open arms by the medical fraternity, or, that at least he would be allowed a hearing, but unfortunately it is not so.

Even if the discoverer be one of themselves, they are apt to regard his proposition with a certain amount of distrust, but if he happens to be a layman they instantly stand upon their dignity—denounce all irregular practice and raise the cry of quack.

In justice, however, it must be said that there are members of liberal, broad-minded men in the medical profession who recognize the fact that brains are not monopolized by physicians, and who are perfectly willing to accord credit where it is due, as the following opinions will show.

Dr. A. O’Leary, Jefferson Medical College, of Philadelphia, says:

“The best things in the healing art have been done by those who never had a diploma—the first Cæsarian section, lithotomy, the use of cinchona, of ether as an anæsthetic, the treatment of the air passages by inhalation, the water cure and medicated baths, electricity as a healing agent, and magnetism, faith cure, mind cure, etc.”

Prof. Waterhouse, writing to the learned Dr. Mitchell, of New York, says: “I am, indeed, so disgusted with learned quackery that I take some interest in honest, humane, and strong-minded empiricism; for it has done more for our art, in all ages and all countries, than all the universities since the time of Charlemagne.”

Professor Benj. Rush, of the greatest and oldest Allopathic College in America, says:

“Remember how many of our most useful remedies have been discovered by quacks. Do not therefore be afraid of conversing with them, and of profiting by their ignorance and temerity. Medicine has its pharisees as well as religion. But the spirit of this sect is as unfriendly to the advancement of medicine as it is to Christian charity. In the pursuit of medical knowledge let me advise you to converse with nurses and old women. They will often suggest facts in the history and cure of disease which have escaped the most sagacious observers of nature. By so doing, we may discover laws of the animal economy which have no place in our system of nosology, or in our theories of physic. The practice of physic hath been more improved by the casual experiments of illiterate nations, and the rash ones of vagabond quacks, than by all the once celebrated professors of it, and the theoretic teachers in the several schools of Europe, very few of whom have furnished us with one new medicine, or have taught us better to use our old ones, or have in any one instance at all, improved the art of curing disease.”

Dr. Adam Smith says: “After denouncing Paracelsus as a quack, the regular medical profession stole his ‘quack-silver’—mercury; after calling Jenner an imposter it adopted his discovery of vaccination; after dubbing Harvey a humbug it was forced to swallow his theory of the circulation of the blood.”

Professor J. Rodes Buchanan, Boston, says:

“Mozart, Hoffman, Ole Bull, and Blind Tom were born with a mastery of music, as Zerah Colburn with a mastery of mathematics, as others are born with a mastery of the mystery of life and disease, like Greatrakes, Newton, Hutton, Sweet and Stephens, born doctors, and a score of similar renown.”

Professor Charles W. Emerson, M.D., the well-known president of the Monroe Conservatory of Oratory, of Boston, says:

“The progress in therapeutics has and still continues to come from the unlearned. Common people give us our improvements and the school men spend their time in giving Greek and Latin names to these improvements, and building metaphysical theories around them.”

This is a heavy indictment against the medical profession, as a body, but truth and justice compel me to state that most of the foregoing statements were made some years ago, and that intolerance can no longer be charged against them as it could, even in the last generation. Nor can we close our eyes to the fact that thousands of high-minded physicians are devoting their time and energies to the amelioration of disease. Scarcely a month passes in which some convention of physicians is not held to consider the best means of dealing with some particular malady, and a large number of the attending physicians at those conventions contribute their time and experience at considerable financial loss to themselves.

In the ranks of the medical body there are able and honorable men who would adorn any profession—men who have sacrificed health, wealth and happiness in their devotion to the cause of suffering humanity—the pages of history are full of instances of such heroism. But of what avail is it to have the most perfect examples of humanity for physicians, if the system they practice is an erroneous one? It is impossible to secure good results with bad methods. We must have a sure foundation, if we expect to raise an abiding structure. And that is why I am in opposition to the existing method of treating disease. Not because of any feeling against the physician individually, but for the reason that I consider their system based upon error—upon a false conception of the true nature of disease, and of the relation of drugs to the human system.

There is a tradition in the orthodox medical schools, that all curative processes are dependent upon, and act only in accordance with, an established law—the “Law of Cure.”

But although all the schools are a unit in believing in the existence and operation of such a law, no two of them agree upon a definition of it. Their theories concerning this all-important law are as diametrically opposite as the poles. For instance, the Allopaths define it as “contraria contrariis curantur,” which is simply the law of opposition. But the Homeopaths take a widely different view of the matter, their definition of it being “similia similibus curantur,” which is, practically, the law of agreement; while the Eclectics declare that “sanative medication” is the law.

This diversity of opinion is not by any means unique, for the tendency to disagreement among physicians is proverbial; but the unfortunate layman who is the person most vitally interested in the matter, is at a loss what to believe among this conflict of definitions, and naturally asks, Who is right?

I answer, unequivocally, not one! They are all wrong. This so-called “Law of Cure” is a purely imaginary affair; one of the many misconceptions peculiar to the medical schools, originating in a false conception of the true nature of disease. There is no such thing as a law of cure! There is a condition of cure, and that is, obedience. Nature has provided penalties for disobedience, and is inexorable in exacting payment; but she does not provide remedies. If there is one thing absolutely certain in nature, it is the unfaltering sequence of cause and effect. Nature never stultifies herself. It is impossible to imagine nature providing penalties for violation of her laws, and then furnishing remedies to make those penalties negatory.

It is a lamentable fact that the medical profession, as a body, entertain a totally erroneous conception of the true nature of disease, and its legitimate function in the economy of nature. Instead of recognizing it as a beneficent remedial process, which, if properly aided, will work out the salvation of the patient, they antagonize it at every turn, and endeavor to suppress the symptoms, which are its legitimate expressions.

The whole thing is a huge misconception, the failure to understand the true relation between living and dead substances. According to the United States Dispensatory, medicines are those substances that make sanative impressions on the body.

A false definition of a word leads to a false system of remedial practice, based upon that definition. What is an impression? Is it the action of a dead substance, which cannot act upon a living substance that can? Assuredly not! Is it not rather the recognition by the living substance of the lifeless one? The whole theory of drug action is easily explainable on this hypothesis. Drugs—inert substances—do not act upon the living organism, but are acted upon, with a view to their expulsion from the living domain. If it were not so, if drugs really acted upon the various organs, then their action should be equally as effective after death as before. But no, nature resents the introduction of foreign substances into the human economy, and exerts all her powers to cast out the intruders.

Now, as all substances incapable of physiological use are foreign, such as particles of worn out tissue, the waste products of digestion, etc., and their presence in the animal economy inimical to the general welfare, the depurating organs are called into active play to expel the offending substances; and the increased physiological activity, and (in the case of actual lesion) the increased flow of blood to the parts, for the purpose of repair, cause a rise in temperature, commonly known as fever, which is one of the most frequent symptoms of what is generally recognized as disease; thus establishing the fact, indisputably, that disease is purely and simply a remedial process, either for purposes of repair or purification.

The practice, therefore, of increasing the deposits in the physical system by the introduction of drugs (foreign substances) is in direct opposition to physiological law, and has no scientific foundation whatever.

From the countless remedies of the pharmacopœia we can select substances that if administered to a healthy person will produce almost any known form of disease—thus: brandy, cayenne pepper and quinine, will induce inflammatory fever; scammony and ipecac will cause cholera morbus; nitre, calomel and opium, will provoke typhoid or typhus fever; digitalis will cause Asiatic, or spasmodic cholera; cod liver oil and sulphur promote scurvy, and all the cathartic family inevitably cause diarrhœa, the disease in each case being nothing more than the effort of Nature to get rid of these troublesome intruders.

Drugs do not, as their advocates claim, select their special organ with a view of acting upon it, but are acted upon by that particular organ for the purpose of ridding the system of the drug.

It follows, therefore, as a perfectly legitimate and logical deduction, that, if the system of administering drugs is founded upon a wrong conception of their relation to the human organism, then any theoretical “law of cure” predicated upon drug action must necessarily be equally fallacious and untrustworthy.

As stated before, the simple fact is, that there is no law of cure, only a condition—and that condition—obedience, by which is meant a course of treatment in harmony with Nature.

The older physicians grow the more they rely upon the vis medicatrix naturae, which is, after all, the only remedial force, and one totally beyond their control. The physician can no more perform cures than the farmer can make his crops grow. In each case, all that can be done is to employ all the methods that cumulative wisdom can suggest to make the conditions as favorable as possible, and leave the rest to Mother Nature, who is not in the habit of making mistakes, and whose unerring methods would cure ninety per cent. of all diseased conditions, if her beneficent intentions were not frustrated by well meant, but nevertheless pernicious, drug interference.