Simple medicine

“ Even from this passing glance at the conditions that must modify every plan of treatment, it is evident that to assert of a particular medicine or method that it is the most efficient in a given disease is to convey very little information. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ This manner of administering drugs can be taken advantage of by the man who wishes to carry with him upon his outing a supply of remedies for the relief of such ailments as may befall him.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said in delivering an address to the graduating medical class of Harvard, "Young men, you have been taught here at least twenty remedies for every disease; after you have practiced medicine twenty years you will have one remedy for twenty diseases." ”

“ Thus, for the proper perfection of medicine as a rational science, two things are in the main needed: the first is a right understanding of the causes and symptoms of disease; the second, a correct knowledge of the action of medicines. [Pg 15] Should our acquaintance with these two subjects be complete, we should then be able to do all that man could by any possibility effect in the alleviation of human suffering. This sublime problem is already being unravelled at one end. Diagnosis and Nosology are making rapid strides; and perhaps we shall soon know what we have to cure. ”

“ I venture once more to repeat my lifelong declaration of faith that every art must exist before its associated science, and that, how much soever each may illustrate the other, both are essentially independent. Neither botany, nor chemistry, nor pharmacy, nor pharmaco-dynamics, nor physiology, nor bacteriology, is an essential part of therapeutics. Its true and only foundation is clinical medicine, the medicine which recognizes and treats diseases. Medicine, in this sense, is an art and not a science; its laws are rules established, not by theory, but by observation and experience. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The modus operandi of many remedies is, as I have already said, wholly unknown, and the knowledge which we have of it in any case is more or less imperfect. And after all, though it may gratify curiosity to know how a medicine cures disease, it is comparatively a matter of little importance. The fact that it does so is the material fact. The knowledge, which it is practically important to obtain in relation to any remedy, is a knowledge of its effects, and of the circumstances which modify them. ”

“ Probably most readers are aware that physiology is that science which treats of the various functions of life, such as digestion, respiration and the circulation of the blood, while therapeutics is that department of medicine which relates to the discovery and application of remedies for disease. Now I venture to assert that, during the last quarter of a century, infliction of intense torture upon unknown myriads of sentient, living creatures, has not resulted in the discovery of a single remedy of acknowledged and generally accepted value in the cure of disease. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a classification we do not so much consider the peculiarities of single remedies, as the points in which large numbers agree together. These points of resemblance we gene [Pg 20] rally find to be of the most importance. I have to consider three sets of authors in the second chapter. The first set treat of the general or ultimate effect of a medicine on the system; and classify medicines accordingly. A second set of writers have arranged therapeutical agents according to the organ or part of the body to which their action is especially directed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This empirical method, though hard on the patients, resulted in the course of five thousand years in the discovery of a number of useful remedies. But the modern medicine man when he knows the cause of the disease is usually able to devise ways of counteracting it directly. ”

“ 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 not only as interpretations of the 'dark sayings' of nature, not merely as contributions to science, that the discoveries now detailed are interesting and important. All of them have a bearing upon the art of healing, and may serve at least to direct the treatment of disease; but chemistry gives still more direct aid to the therapeutist; it has added not a few contributions to the materia medica— new weapons to the physician's armoury. Every new substance discovered is, in fact, a possible remedy, and may ultimately be used to cure or alleviate disease. ”

“ It often happens that there is more than one point of view from which the action of a medicine may be regarded. For many medicines are numbered under several distinct heads, being included in different groups on account of the several phases of their operation. There are three stages in the progress of the remedy through the system, at each of which it may exert a special action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In every age in which we may study the history of medicine, we cannot fail to be impressed by the one dominant idea which appears to have possessed the minds of those who have made medicine their peculiar study; I allude to the search for specific remedies against disease. There are undoubtedly those who profess to believe that we have but to search with sufficient acuteness, to find a remedy specific in its action against any disease which we may be called upon to treat ”

“ 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. ”

“ Professor Clark, of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, in an address of his, recently published, insists, again and again, that medicine never cures, and that it rarely, if ever, so much as aids nature ”

“ But the main work of the pill will be done by the man's belief in its efficacy. I'm thinking out a medicine now which I expect will cure almost everything. It will cure, in any case, all the ailments that lead to organic disease. ”

“ One of the strongest evidences that the community have a very imperfect conception of the varieties of disease, and of the necessity of accurate discrimination, is the propensity to look for some one grand remedy for all diseases. This propensity is exceedingly common, and exists in every variety of degree. Some, I may say many, have the full belief that there is such a remedy, and try every vaunted medicine that comes along, in their search after the great catholicon, or elixir vitæ. ”

“ Mind as far outstrips drugs in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is Mind Science in every case. Medicine is not a science, but a bundle of speculative human theories. The prescription that succeeds in one instance fails in another, owing to the different mental states of the patient. ”

“ The great variety of forms into which almost every article of medicine has been manufactured, affords another proof of the imperfection of the medical art. A drug which is perhaps most efficacious in the simplest form in which it can be administered, has been nevertheless served up in so many different shapes, that one would be induced to think the whole art of physic lay in exhibiting medicine under as many different modes as possible. ”

“ But when in succeeding ages, the use of medicines became more common, a great number of remedies for this dreadful disease were invented, some of which indeed were too filthy and shocking: such as drinking the warm blood of a gladiator just slain; eating human or horse’s flesh, the testicles and penis of some animals, and other things of the same kind; [132] as if matters so repugnant to nature, could be contrary to such grievous defects of it. For so it often happens, that when a rational medicine is not to be found, any improper and rash one is attempted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A small dose of a drug may serve as a stimulant for the lagging forces, while a larger dose would directly repress them or produce injurious secondary effects. As soon as we recognise that the aim of medicine is not to destroy the disease but rather to stimulate the resisting forces of the body, the whole logic of therapeutics assumes a new aspect. ”

“ Drugs have a place in medicine, of course, but this place is chiefly to stimulate the body to react against its invading hosts. They are, as a rule, not specific against definite diseases. We can not hope for much in the way of discovering special medicines adapted to special diseases. ”

“ The dogmatic assurances of science may be consolatory to the discomfited intelligence, but they are merely anodynes, not cures, for the baneful errors into which they have allured us. We turn from them disappointed, but confirmed in our conviction that when a medicine cures a disease or relieves a symptom, it matters very little whether or not we comprehend the manner in which its effect is produced. ”

“ For children medicine is mixed at the same strength, but a less quantity is given. The proper quantity for a dose is always given in books and manuals for the homœopathic treatment of disease. Small cases of the principal medicines used in homœopathy can be procured from most chemists, and with each case a little book showing the symptoms and treatment of all ordinary complaints is usually given. ”

“ A hearty emetic effected a cure; and the first child of Jerry and Mary Wilson was distinctly marked on the left shoulder with a bunch of grapes.
HOW TO CURE FITS. Not none of the least difficult problems, in the practice of medicine, is the distinguishing between cases of real disease, and those that are feigned. It is a great stumbling block in the path of young practitioners, and even the old members of the fraternity find a few chips of it in their way occasionally. ”

“ Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superstition have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual.”
“The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen.” ”