Medicine man

“ Do you not think it is necessary to give medicine sometimes? Yes, but I would rather have a wife of mine that knows what medicine to give me when I am sick, than all the professional doctors in the world. Now let me tell you about doctoring, because I am acquainted with it, and know just exactly what constitutes a good doctor in physic. It is that man or woman who, by revelation, or we may call it intuitive inspiration, is capable of administering medicine to assist the human system when it is besieged by the enemy called Disease ”

“ The physician should be the handy man of Nature, and he should strive to aid and to imitate her efforts to effect a cure. His first care should be to remove, so far as is possible, the causes of the disease; and then, in the conduct of the treatment, he should keep in view at all times the special circumstances of the case, giving closer attention to the patient than to the disease itself. In short, he should aim at being useful, or at least he should be careful not to do any harm. ”

“ The Beginnings of Medicine.—In the early period of man’s existence upon this earth he must have possessed an exceedingly small stock of knowledge with regard to the maintenance of his body in health and with regard to the means which he should adopt in order to restore it to a normal condition after it had been injured by violence or impaired in its working machinery by disease. ”

“ MEDICINE.—The science of medicine, as we understand it, has for its province the treatment of disease. The word “medicine” (Lat. medicina: sc. ars, art of healing, from mederi, to heal) may be used very widely, to include Pathology (q.v.) , the theory of the causation of disease, or, very narrowly, to mean only the drug or form of remedy prescribed by the physician—this being more properly the subject of Therapeutics (q.v.) ”

“ He who doth, with the greatest exactness imaginable, weigh every individual thing that shall happen or hath happened [442] to his patient and may be known from the observations of his own or of others, and who afterward compareth all these with one another, and puts them in an opposite view to such things as happen in an healthy state; and lastly, from all this, with the nicest and severest bridle upon his reasoning faculty, riseth to the knowledge of the very first cause of the disease, and of the remedies fit to remove them; he, and only he, deserveth the name of a true physician. ”

“ The physician is, alas! too often powerless to contend against the ills that are raging around us. But, really, we can not expect physiology to cure incurable diseases and make men immortal; its mission is to discover the truth, and it is for the physician to apply the lessons of the new truth to the treatment of diseases. Who can say seriously that modern medicine, enlightened by the great physiological discoveries of this and former centuries, is not superior to the medicine of the middle ages? The circulation of the blood was discovered by vivisection. ”

“ As I devoted myself with all possible zeal to the work in hand it was not long before I realized thoroughly that the best way of increasing one’s knowledge of medicine is to begin applying, in actual practice, such principles as one may already have acquired; and thus I became convinced that the physician [421] who earnestly studies, with his own eyes,—and not through the medium of books,—the natural phenomena of the different diseases, must necessarily excel in the art of discovering what, in any given case, are the true indications as to the remedial measures that should be employed. ”

“ Other eminent medical men have given utterance to these aphorisms: “The science of medicine is founded on conjecture and improved by murder;” “Mercury has made more cripples than war;” “Ninety-nine medical facts are medical lies;” “Every dose of medicine is a blind experiment;” “The older physicians grow the more sceptical they become of the virtues of their own medicines.” ”

“ To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian and a veritable encyclopedia to record them.
And yet, there are still many diseases that plague man of which he has no knowledge. They eat and ravage his mind and body with excruciating pain and torture, and he is utterly helpless against [Pg 49] them. ”

“ We conclude by impressing upon our brethren who are studying medicine in the light of reason and science, the urgency of the duty [251] that devolves upon them of so using the element of physic in medical practice as to make more and more apparent the great gulf that is fixed between their practice and the rival quackeries of the day. Let them use medicine so that the most undiscerning patient will perceive that it is only one of many means to an end, auxiliary only to great provisions in the body itself, and for the most part acting, not mysteriously, like quinine, but sensibly or chemically. ”

“ I have no doubt, that some diseases not yet understood may in time be transferred to the table of those known. But, were I a physician, I would rather leave the transfer to the slow hand of accident, than hasten it by guilty experiments on those who put their lives into my hands. The only sure foundations of medicine are, an intimate knowledge of the human body, and observation on the effects of medicinal substances on that. ”

“ It is an elaborate defense of the art of medicine against the attacks of those who maintain that it is no art at all, or one of an uncertain nature. According to the author’s definition, the aim of the physician should be to remove the pains of the sick, to blunt the intensity of diseases, and not to interfere with those that are mastered by disease, as knowing that medicine can be of no avail in such a case. ”

“ It is a common proverb, that one extreme often follows another. It is sometimes so in medicine. As soon as physicians had let go the absurd idea that diseases were the work of demons, had given up their useless mysticisms, and begun to look upon disease as the effect of natural causes—when Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology had helped to explain morbid phenomena, and rational means had come to be employed, practitioners commenced a course of active treatment and went to work with all their might to cure all diseases by positive medication. ”

“ For these notes show that here too he had reached the same conclusion which we noted in the foregoing, namely, that the results produced by physicians in treating the sick depend upon securing the attention of the patient in favor of a certain diagnosis and the proper medicine to be taken for the supposed disease. In fact he says, convincingly, that “all medical remedies affect the body only through the mind.” The one who takes medicine must believe in medicine and anticipate the desired result. The result is then created by the believer. ”

“ But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner as the ox, the horse, and all other animals, except man, do of the productions of the earth, such as fruits, weeds, and grass; ”

“ Many practitioners, indeed, hold every thing that is in the least theoretical, in great contempt. They 3alledge, that a physician possesses all the knowledge requisite in medicine, who is acquainted with particular remedies which will infallibly cure particular diseases. Could such remedies be discovered, their reasoning would indeed hold good; and medicine, which, of all arts, is in reality the most difficult, would be the easiest. ”

“ A metaphysician who understands and adheres strictly to the rules of our system, and rests his demonstration on its great basis, Truth, and the results of Truth on disease, is the only one safe to employ in the most difficult and dangerous cases. Mind will as far outstrip medicine in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is science in every instance; and medicine is not a science, it is speculative and void. ”

“ The popular tide of medicine is always therapeutics, and the less one knows of anatomy and physiology the more sure he is to address himself exclusively to this department, and to rely upon empirical remedies. ”

“ And our plan of treatment will become rational, when on the one hand, from an accurate knowledge of the symptoms of diseases, we are better enabled to meet each by its appropriate remedy, and on the other hand, from some acquaintance with the general action of a medicine, we are fitted to wield it with more skill and effect, and to apply it even in cases where it has not yet been proved beneficial. ”

“ It involves a continuance of the mischievous ideal of medical practice of the past, a conception still held by a large portion of the public to its own detriment, that a hasty inquiry, a perfunctory examination, and a bottle of medicine, represent the best that scientific medicine can offer a patient. ”

“ The records of medicine furnish us with instances of death from each of the above causes. But let us not despair. It becomes a physician to believe, that there is no disease necessarily incurable; and that there exist in the womb of time, certain remedies for all those morbid affections, which elude the present limits of the healing art. ”

“ But He who knows the heart knows its disease, and, as the Good Physician, if we give ourselves unreservedly into his hands to be cured, He will give that medicine which his perfect knowledge of our case prescribes. ”

“ Such has been the course pursued by the modern science of medicine, which from the original absurd remedies and equally absurd empirical operations, has now succeeded in placing the cure of diseases on the more solid basis of experience. ”

“ Now as a sharp tool is not to be handled but by a good workman, so likewise a powerful medicine ought to be managed by an understanding and conscientious physitian, who according to the condition of the person, and the disease, knows to increase or abate the strength of the medicine, and not by such a one, as doth minister it ignorantly without making any difference at all. ”

“ Many centuries had still to elapse before medicine could gain that freedom of action, that rich equipment of tools, and that stock of accumulated knowledge which enable her in these days to make such giant strides forward as we have witnessed during the past twenty or thirty years.
The question will naturally arise, How did the Methodists decide, in the presence of an actual case of illness, which one of these abnormal states (the laxum, the strictum, or the mixtum) was the condition that called for medical treatment? ”

“ For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a few years’ time. So that to believe in medicine would be the height of folly, if not to believe in it were not greater folly still, for from this mass of errors there have emerged in the course of time many truths. ”

“ It is a very narrow and unjust view of the practice of medicine, to suppose it to consist altogether in the use of powerful drugs, or of drugs of any kind. Far from it. “The physician may do very much for the welfare of the sick, more than others can do, although he does not, even in the major part of cases, undertake to control and overcome the disease by art. It was with these views that I never reported any patient cured at our hospital. ”

“ Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. ”

“ The practice of medicine is every year becoming [pg 293] more successful. New and improved methods of treating disease are being discovered and developed, and the conscientious physician will avail himself of all the means, by a knowledge of which he may benefit his fellow-men. ”

“ Well grounded in the observation of disease in its different forms and modes of behavior, and also familiarized with the ordinary methods of treatment, these physicians needed to be shown a new route along which they might advance to greater heights of knowledge, and they also needed to be stimulated to further endeavor. ”

“ The learning required to master either of these professions can be acquired only after the most painstaking and arduous study. To learn the essence of things, the meaning of life and death, the movements that produce life and death, and the symptoms that proclaim disease, come within the purview of the doctor. How can he tell what will be the effect of his medicine unless he knows what the disease is and what effect upon the human body will be his medicines? He must know intimately the thousand and one essential parts of the human body, how they operate and their effects. ”

“ What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics. ”

“ To this end must be added the one thing needful, personal fitness, sagacity in recognizing the peculiarities of individual cases, and in adapting the treatment of them, hygienic, dietetic, and medicinal, to the special requirements of each. In a word, the physician must never forget that he has a patient as well as a disease to treat. ”