Placebo

“ It is bitter, cool, and aperient, useful in affections of the spleen and liver, disorders of mucus, bile, blood, fever, blisters, and hardness of the skin; and slightly increases bile. If rubbed with water on the hands, fire may be held with impunity. Its juice is well known as a medicine, mixed with anise seed; it is excellent in pains of the bowels. I have written more of its virtues in my other works, and the prescription there mentioned is excellent in all disorders from cold. The pulp of the leaf with alum and opium is excellent in ophthalmia; its juice dropt into the eye. ”

“ That minute doses of medicine can exert an active influence over the body is not to be denied, but these must consist of powerful drugs, as arnica, aconite, and nux vomica, with others, and it is more than probable, that of such medicines, an inconceivably small amount may produce a specific effect upon some portion of the organic nervous system. ”

“ COUNTER-IR′RITANTS. In medicine and pharmacy, substances applied to the surface of the body to establish a secondary morbid action, with the view of relieving one already existing. In painful and spasmodic affections, as neuralgia, spasms, and cramp; in rheumatism, lumbago, swelled and painful joints; in headache, sore throat, sprains, languid glandular tumours, and many other cases, this class of medicine often proves extremely valuable. The counter-irritants which are best known are blisters, mustard poultices, hartshorn-and-oil, and liniment of ammonia. ”

“ For instance: a man with his liver functionally deranged appears before a physician: The pulse shows the circulation to be disturbed; the excretory system has become largely inactive—the skin, bowels, kidneys, and lungs each working inefficiently or compelled to overdo. The doctor concludes that a good dose of calomel and jalap, which enter into the allopathic practice; or some sitz-baths, skin-rubbing, packs, or injections, which would be the hydropathic practice; or regulation of diet, connected with some mild alterative, which belong to the eclectic practice ”

“ Since I last wrote you, I have had frequent testimonials from various persons, old and young, of their beneficial effects—several of whom have stated that they consider the Herbal Pills not only an excellent medicine for correcting vicious humours in the system, but also efficacious in purifying the blood, relieving the liver, cleansing the intestines, and producing vigorous reaction in the whole arterial system. ”

“ If we consider the knowledge positively acquired, in this short time, of the modus operandi of urari, of atropia, of physostigmin, of veratria, of casca, of strychnia, of bromide of potassium, of phosphorus, there can surely be no ground for doubting that, sooner or later, the pharmacologist will supply the physician with the means of affecting, in any desired sense, the functions of any physiological element of the body. ”

“ It cannot be that medicines should be able to affect the nerves, and to influence the glands, in divers ways, but that none should exert any action upon the blood, a most susceptible and changeable fluid, the medium of nutrition, the source of all the tissues, the "fons et origo" of disease. It is only very lately that authors have begun to recognise and include in their arrangements the class of blood-medicines, which seem to me to be considerably more important than any other. ”

“ When medicine must be given, it should be borne in mind that there are various classes of purgatives, which produce very diverse effects. Some, like salts, operate to thin the blood, and reduce the system; others are stimulating; and others have a peculiar operation on certain organs. Of course, great discrimination and knowledge are needed, in order to select the kind which is suitable to the particular disease, or to the particular constitution of the invalid. ”

“ What I wish to prove is, that a medicine increases secretion simply by being itself secreted; that while passing through a gland it stimulates the secreting cells, and rouses them to a proper performance of their natural function; that each eliminative medicine has a tendency towards particular glands, and increases the secretion of those glands; that thus, as far as our information on the subject extends, we find that Cathartics are excreted from the blood by the glands of the bowels, and pass out with the fæces ”

“ I suppose that a disease in the blood is to be met by agents in the blood, which directly or indirectly counteract it there; that disorders, generally temporary, which depend on nervous derangement, are to be benefited by remedies which affect the nerves; and in the same way that a laxity of muscular fibre, or a failure in a secretion, should be treated by agents which especially possess the property of restoring to a right condition such parts or functions. ”

“ Assuming as a basis the ultimate or practical effect of medicines, we may proceed to divide them into groups in a natural way. Food and liquids are of use in the nutrition of the tissues, and will form the first class. A second set of substances act so as to expel from the body certain humours and secretions. Another class exalt the tone of the nervous system, and through it stimulate the system at large. A fourth set depress the same. And a fifth group do none of these things; but their action results in certain obvious changes in the chemical nature of the secretions. ”

“ It is an established rule, to which there are few exceptions, that each substance which is formed in the blood and has to pass out of the body, tends to pass out through some particular glands; that it is the particular function of the kidneys to excrete water, urea, uric acid, and certain salts; that it is the especial office of the bowels to excrete certain effete matters and gases; and that it is the peculiar province of the liver to excrete fatty matters, taurine, cholesterine, and choleate of soda. ”

“ Know your drug, know your dose, and know its effect, and you can, with the aid of your hypodermic, play with men and women just as you please. The world itself is but a plaything in the hands of the clever practitioner who specializes in toxicology. ”

“ The medicines to remedy this perverted condition of the blood and fluids must be alteratives which will act upon the digestive organs and tone the nutritive functions, thus enriching and purifying the blood. As this affection is frequently a complication in chronic diseases, it is eminently proper for us to refer to a few considerations involved in its general treatment.
An alterative medicine belongs to a class which is considered capable of producing a salutary change in a disease without exciting any sensible evacuation. ”

“ It is true that we have drugs with which we can diminish or increase the number of heart beats per minute, dilate or contract the pupils of the eye, check or stimulate the secretion of mucus, sedate or irritate the nervous system, etc., but all that is accomplished is temporary stimulation or sedation, and such juggling does not cure. The practice of medicine is today what it has been in the past, largely experiment and guess-work. ”

“ Last, and usually least in effectiveness in my arsenal, are orthotropic substances (in the form of little pills and capsules) commonly known as vitamins or food supplements.
Interestingly, acceptance of these methods by my clients runs in exact opposition to their effectiveness. People prefer taking vitamins because they seem like the allopaths' pills, taking pills demands little or no responsibility for change. The least popular prescription I can write is a monodiet of water for several weeks or a month. Yet this is my most powerful medicine. ”

“ When we come to consider more in detail the results of these actions we find that the various secretions of the body, such as the sweat, gastric juice, bile, milk, urine, &c., may be increased or diminished; that the heart may have its muscular or nervous apparatus stimulated or depressed; that the nerve-centres in the brain, medulla and spinal cord may be rendered more sensitive or the reverse; and that the general metabolism of the body may be altered in various ways. ”

“ Of all the organs the Liver is most commonly out of sorts, and when it is so everything else goes wrong. The Liver is the great regulator.
The coppery taste in the mouth, the greasy feeling about the throat and stomach, the sour stomach, the bilious feeling in general, radically relieved by these pills. Safe in any weather or climate, always effective. They search every corner of Liver, Stomach and Bowels. If you want a thorough Pill, use them. 25 cents per box. Then invigorate and tone up the system with WELLS’ HEALTH RENEWER. $1.00 at Druggists.
[23] ”

“ There are four great groups of medicines, the action of each of which is well marked and distinct. The first class acts in the blood; and as a large number of diseases depends on a fault in that fluid, we may by their means be enabled to remedy that fault. They are the most important of all medicines. They are called Hæmatics, or blood-medicines. They are used chiefly in chronic and constitutional disorders. But a second class of remedies are temporary in their action. They influence the nervous system, exciting it, depressing it, or otherwise altering its tone. ”

“ In general, the change may be characterized as a return to nature. In the older medicine at its best, a dose of some vegetable or mineral substance, such as quinine or mercury, comparatively harmless, but altogether foreign to the body, was administered through the mouth and in time reaching the blood through the digestive systems, killed off or paralyzed the disease germ. ”

“ We must always keep in mind that the effect of medicine is in the greatest degree relative to the particular disease for which it is administered, and to the force of such disease. The doses of active medicines are to be diminished as symptoms abate. ”

“ It is obvious, that if these questions could be accurately determined, medical men would have a better knowledge than at present of the action and progress, so to speak, of medicine within the body. Substances, when taken into the stomach, pass into the blood, which may be supposed to distribute them to all parts of the body. ”

“ The true cause was, that a young man having no personal introduction to the bedsides of dowagers of the pillmania dynasty, sought to establish his fame on the basis of a sound and rational medicine—because impressed with the knowledge of the external origin of disease, he went in for the removal of external causes, and studied nature in preference to the Pharmacopœia. ”

“ With the exception of a few specific remedies, such as mercury, sulphur, colchicum, and ergot, with the real nature of whose physiological operation on the human frame little is known, almost all the other medicinal agents act through the medium of the digestive organs, the liver, the kidneys, and the skin. ”

“ This with suitable food constitutes a treatment that bears excellent results. The physician who believes in giving large doses of quinine, ammonia, etc., will sneer at these small doses and hotly declare that nature cures independently of the drugs. ”

“ Here all the blood in the body comes for the purpose of being transmitted, or rather decanted, from the arteries to the veins, that it may go back to its fountain, the heart, and thence to the lungs, to be renewed with a fresh supply of oxygen; and so numerous are the operations of the skin that, be­sides affording protection and giving beauty to the body, it exudes above thirty different substances, which have become effete and noxious in conse­quence of the almost infinite number of vital and chemical changes which are constantly taking place within. ”

“ I. General Sedatives.
(Hydrocyanic acid. Creosote. Aconite. Conium. Colchicum. Tea and Coffee.)
These are medicines which pass into the stomach, and are [Pg 245] capable of absorption; which are absorbed, and are proved to act after passage into the blood. From the blood they pass to the nerves and nerve-centres, and on all of them alike exert a depressing influence. Some of them are much more powerful than others. They do not exert any primary stimulant effect, or any action on the intellectual part of the brain. Most of them have special actions and tendencies. ”

“ Just as drugs act upon the tissues, so they themselves are in many cases reacted upon, and broken up or altered. While in the alimentary canal they are subjected to the action of the digestive fluids and the varied contents of the stomach and intestines, and after absorption they come under the influence of the constituents of the blood and lymph, and of the chemical action of the tissue cells. ”

“ Arguing from a physical law, we should say at once that it was impossible; but the matter cannot be so lightly dismissed, for a foreign professor has lately asserted that insoluble matters may and do pass into the circulation. I have made experiments to satisfy myself on the point, and have come to the contrary conclusion.
In the Fourth Proposition it is stated that some few substances may act locally, by irritation or otherwise, on the mucous surface of the stomach or intestines. These are not many; they act without being absorbed; and they do not extend into the system at large. ”

“ The whole materia medica, perhaps, furnishes no drug or mineral that is known, when taken into the stomach, to have a local and partial effect on the eyes. Such an effect is even irreconcileable with the general and constantly observed operation of all remedies applied to the human body. ”