Prophylaxis

“ INTRODUCTION In all branches of medicine the master word is prophylaxis, or prevention, and its benefits are nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the practice of obstetrics. In former times every woman who gave birth to a child or passed through a miscarriage was exposed to grave danger of infection or child-bed fever; but at present—thanks to the recognition of the bacterial origin of the disease and of its identity with wound infection—this danger can be practically eliminated by the rigid observance of surgical cleanliness and aseptic technique. ”

“ People in acute diseases may sometimes be their own physicians; but in the chronic, the cure must ever depend chiefly upon the patient’s own endeavours. The Doctor has also passed over the Prophylaxis, or preventive part of Medicine, very slightly, though it is certainly of the greatest importance in such a work. ”

“ In treating cases of contagious disease the question often arises as to means of individual prophylaxis to be used by those who must be exposed to the effects of the infected locality or of the presence of the sick. ”

“ I suppose my instinct is rather more in the moral direction than many people, but I recognise, as you will see from these articles (published by Lancet) , that it is by direct prophylaxis, and direct prophylaxis alone that we are likely to get rid of this abomination. I should never in any campaign exclude all the additional aids—proper soldiers' clubs, such as I have established in Egypt, the influence of decent women, and the one hundred and one factors that go to make a decent and reputable life ”

“ A number of medical officers accordingly gave instruction to their men in the means of effecting prophylaxis and of preventing infection in the event of association with these women. The medical officers acted entirely on their own responsibility. They advised the men to avoid the risk, but as they knew a certain number would not take their advice in any circumstances—in fact the men said as much—they showed them how to avoid infection if they would take the necessary trouble. ”

“ THE MODERN MEDICAL BARBARISM POISONS THE BLOOD IN THE BODY INSTEAD OF DRAINING THE BLOOD OUT OF THE BODY In this medical malpractice of to-day the doctors do not open the veins and drain out the life blood of the patient, ostensibly [Pg 7] to cure his disease, as in the mistaken past, but they now keep this blood in the body and inject into it directly or indirectly various more or less virulent diseases, blood poisons, or disease germs, cultures or products, either living or dead, with the idea of curing or preventing some natural disease. ”

“ Besides, if such a Law was made, setting aside that the Remedy would be worse than the Disease, it is much to be question’d if it prov’d any Remedy at all: For what Fine can we propose as sufficient to deter Men, when there are so many that squander away their whole Fortunes upon this sole Gratification? And what Corporal Punishment, on this side Death, can we find out equivalent to a Pox, which they every day run the Risque of? ”

“ We must view the matter as a disease, the conditions for which are favorable in a service into which men are hurried without any instruction in its duties. The skeleton army, of which so much is required, demands the rapid replenishing of new flesh to take the place of the old that has yielded to the disease itself. The important question to follow is, what is the remedy and how is it applied? A preventive has been sought with care and diligence, but none has been found. A remedy then is the only recourse, and this must be applied in the shape of discipline or punishment for the offender. ”

“ In such places [6] disease was ever ready to spring into vigorous life. Every few years, fevers which had been lurking in alleys and ravaging obscure places, devastated the city under various names. At last, that awful sickness which, even at the present day, chills the blood but to think of it, seemed to be naturalised in this country, under the name of the plague; but to it we owe that the initiative step was taken in England, in founding the first principles which govern life assurance, for to it we owe our earliest Bills of Mortality. ”

“ In consequence of these diseases affecting a great number of people at one time, it has always been, and always will be impossible, for them all to have the benefit of medical aid, more especially as the proportion of physicians to the number of sick, is generally diminished upon these occasions, by desertion, sickness, and death.
2. The safety of committing to the people the cure of pestilential fevers, particularly the yellow fever and the plague, is established by the simplicity and uniformity of their causes, and of their remedies. ”

“ Is it not obvious that there should be a staff of medical officers and orderlies, detached altogether from any association with the treatment of disease, who should devote themselves entirely to the problem of prevention? ”

“ The causes of disease, in the mean time, have been less earnestly studied in the eagerness of the search for remedies. Speak softly! Women have been borne out from an old-world hospital, two in one coffin, that the horrors of their prison-house might not be known, while the very men who were discussing the treatment of the disease were stupidly conveying the infection from bed to bed, as rat-killers carry their poisons from one household to another. ”

“ He may be pursuing a course which would be admirably adapted to cure the same disease in a more vigorous patient, and yet in the case in hand it may be ruinous. Though it may relieve and even cure the disease, it yet may destroy the patient. The judicious physician in some cases feels obliged to let morbid processes go on, because the violence which must necessarily be done to the debilitated system by the attempt to arrest them, would put the patient’s life in greater jeopardy, than it would to let them have their course. ”

“ If a choleric man be ready to strike, must I go about to purge his choler, or to break the blow? But where there is room for consultation things are not desperate. They consult, so there is nothing rashly, inconsiderately done; and then they prescribe, they write, so there is nothing covertly, disguisedly, unavowedly done. In bodily diseases it is not always so; sometimes, as soon as the physician's foot is in the chamber, his knife is in the patient's arm; the disease would not allow a minute's forbearing of blood, nor prescribing of other remedies. ”

“ Nothing—absolutely nothing, aye, even worse than nothing, i.e., positive injury to the organs, for, in nine cases out of ten, these cheap, clap-trap potions, by over stimulating, imitating and often inflaming the organs, do them actual harm, hasten and aggravate the disease and leave the patient in a much worse condition than if he had taken no treatment at all. ”

“ Persons of feeble constitution, whether hereditary or acquired, will still be the subjects of its incursion, and the disease engendered by its presence will require the same treatment as heretofore, unless happily we find a remedy which will destroy these morbific germs in situ, and thus, by relieving the patient of the exciting cause, lead to immediate recovery. ”

“ A patient, writhing under the tortures of excruciating disease, asks of his physician to cure him if he can, and, if he cannot, to mitigate his sufferings. But the remedy proposed, if generally adopted and perseveringly applied, for a sufficient length of time, should it not entirely eradicate the disease, will enable the body politic to bear it without danger and without suffering. ”

“ Thompson, “ever yet died of a fever! for as death approaches, the patient grows cold, until in death the last spark is extinguished. This the learned doctors cannot deny; and as this is true, they ought in justice to acknowledge that their whole train of depletive remedies, [Pg 107] such as bleeding, blistering, physicking, starving, with all their refrigeratives; their opium, mercury, arsenic, antimony, nitre, &c., are so many deadly engines combined with the disease, against the constitution and life of the patient. ”

“ Humanity has likewise much to deplore from this paganism in medicine. The sword will probably be sheathed for ever, as an instrument of death, before physicians will cease to add to the mortality of mankind, by prescribing for the names of diseases.
The facts I have delivered upon this subject will admit of a very important application to the cure, not only of the yellow fever, but of all other acute and dangerous epidemics. ”

“ I introduce this case to shew how sick men are often treated, after their keeper consents to give them medicine. He complained of not being very well, and was taken to his room, and ordered to take an emetic. This is a prescription for every thing, and is designed as a punishment rather than a remedy. The room was cold, and he was left alone to undergo the medicine. The emetics are generally given in great and unusual quantities, that the effect may be the more painful, and how many have been killed by such prescriptions, the day of Judgment will publish. ”

“ We will put the devils aside for a moment, the lawyers, too, with the tongs, and devote our attention to the doctors. We have already examined the medical treatise entitled Flagelliun Salutis, wherein was exposed the excellence of the whip for the cure of every disorder to which mortality is heir. ”

“ For the curates, vicars, preachers, physicians, chirurgeons, and apothecaries, who went to visit, to dress, to cure, to heal, to preach unto and admonish those that were sick, were all dead of the infection, and these devilish robbers and murderers caught never any harm at all. ”

“ The more skilled the allopathic school becomes in the suppression and prevention of acute diseases by drugs, knife, x-rays, serums, vaccination virus, etc., the greater will be the increase of chronic dyspepsia, nervous prostration, insanity, locomotor ataxy, paresis, cancer, secondary and tertiary syphilis, tuberculosis and many other so-called incurable diseases. Thus, the standard medical practice is self-supporting; the treatment of acute conditions assuring a lifelong supply of chronic conditions for the doctor to treat. ”

“ If the death of a patient under treatment is due to carelessness in the treatment, the physician shall be punished with the middle-most amercement. Growth of disease due to negligence or indifference (karmavadha) of a physician shall be regarded as assault or violence. ”

“ Again, the physician cannot come on time to save life, limb, or looks to the victim of many a serious accident. And yet some bystander could usually understand and apply plain rules for inducing respiration, applying a splint, giving an emetic, soothing a burn or the like, so as to safeguard the sufferer till the doctor's arrival—if only these plain rules were in such compact form that no office, store, or home in the land need be without them. ”

“ If, however, through neglect or wrong treatment, the inflammatory processes are not allowed to run their natural course, if they are checked or suppressed by poisonous drugs, the ice bag or surgical operations, or if the disease conditions in the system are so far in the ascendancy that the healing forces cannot react properly, then the constructive forces may lose the battle and the disease may take a fatal ending or develop into chronic ailments. ”

“ Sanitation and isolation of the infected offer the only rational and effective antidote for these disorders. Away, then, with the abominable and filthy subterfuge! Give us health instead of disease. Health is the great prophylactic. ”

“ I will use all ways of medical treatment that shall be for the advantage of the sufferers, according to my power and judgment, and will protect them from injury and injustice. Nor will I give to any man, though I be asked to give it, any deadly drug, nor will I consent that it should be given. ”

“ If, therefore, it cannot be made to yield to general treatment,—I mean evacuations by bleeding and purging,—nor to topical, such as astringents, repellents, and discutients,—we must proceed to the operation, lest, by its constant irritation, it bring on coughs, sleeplessness, and even suffocation. Such, therefore, as are contracted, round, not of a lengthened shape, bloody, or somewhat black, we must decline operating upon; but those that are slender, long, small at the extremity, loose, not very bloody, [299] but whitish, we must operate upon; for the inflammation of them soon subsides. ”

“ It is very interesting, however, as giving short and simple practical directions, such as would be most like to be wanted and most useful, in the opinion of a physician in repute of that day.
The diseases prescribed for are plague, small-pox, fevers, king's evil, insanity, falling-sickness, and the like; with such injuries as broken bones, dislocations, and burning with gunpowder. The remedies are of three kinds: simples, such as St. John's wort, Clown's all-heal, elder, parsley, maidenhair, mineral drugs, such as lime, saltpetre, Armenian bole, crocus metallorum, or sulphuret of antimony ”

“ KILL OR CURE.
[Reports continue to reach us from our brave troops in the field that they "never felt fitter," are "in the best of spirits," and so forth.]
Have you a bronchial cough, or cold,
And is your ailment chronic
Past every sort of cure that's sold? ”

“ A man 60 years old falls and dislocates his finger, he goes to the hospital, where in a short time he dies from blood poisoning. * * * * * Another man 48 years old, many years a wine merchant, whose great toe was severely crushed by a heavy man stepping on it, was taken with blood-poisoning and in spite of all treatment, even to the amputation of the leg, he soon succumbed to the disease. ”

“ That in all clear and well ascertained cases of deaths from immediately removable causes of disease and death, the officers of health be invested with summary powers, and be responsible for exercising them, for the removal of those causes, and for the protection of strangers from continued exposure and suffering from them. ”