Therapeutics

“ All physicians have at all times used, though often unconsciously, the suggestive factor in therapeutics, and mental influence has had everywhere a large role in the treatment of disease. Only in recent years have we come to appreciate how many diseases are self-limited. ”

“ Exclusive attention to Therapeutics is apt to bring a man dangerously near to Homoeopathy and other pretended Systems of treatment, but sound pathology, and diagnosis controlled by post-mortem inspection, give positive knowledge and that union of modest self-confidence and prudent enterprise which become the physician. ”

“ In a word, the whole of present-day therapeutics has for foundation, not only ancient clinical observation, which it would be supremely foolish to disdain, but also the experiments of modern times, which it would be equally foolish to proscribe. ”

“ Suffice it here to say that, as must be inferred from the facts and arguments already adduced, no system of therapeutics can be complete which does not embrace the design of controlling psycho-biological relations in general, and with reference to chronic disease especially. ”

“ Some, on the other hand, wrote great books on therapeutics, and gave you a list of some score or so of drugs, more or less deadly, for the cure of every complaint, real or imaginary, leaving the selection to the practitioner, as he, when he combined 105 them, left Nature to take what she thought would best answer her purpose. ”

“ In order to do justice to our patients and not neglect our responsibilities toward them we must use in the treatment of disease all that is good in all the natural methods of healing. In serious chronic cases any single one of these methods, whether it be pure food diet, hydrotherapy, massage, spinal treatment, mental therapeutics or homeopathy, is not by itself sufficient to achieve satisfactory results or to produce them fast enough. ”

“ With so many broken-hearted witnesses of the insufficiency of evolved therapeutics, almost any knave can steal a living by brazenly opposing some dominant practise in medicine—as surgery or the use of drugs. ”

“ For ordinary purposes a limited amount of such knowledge is all that is needful; but for the pursuit of the higher branches of physiology no knowledge of these branches of science can be too extensive, or too profound. Again, what we call therapeutics, which has to do with the action of drugs and medicines on the living organism, is, strictly speaking, a branch of experimental physiology, and is daily receiving a greater and greater experimental development. ”

“ It is possible always to do this. Even in certain of the acute diseases favorable suggestion has its place, and for all chronic cases this form of therapeutics is extremely important. The very presence of the physician, especially if he is thoroughly in control of himself, placid, imperturbed, evidently ready to use all his powers without any excitement, is of itself the strongest kind of favorable suggestion. From the very beginning of medical history the presence of the physician has in most cases meant even more than his medicines. ”

“ The seventeenth century was not to close, however, without another discovery in science, which, when applied to the causation of disease almost two centuries later, revolutionized therapeutics more completely than any one discovery. ”

“ But the smaller minds have been satisfied to think that their drugs, their external remedies and applications, have been the sole sources of the benefit that accrued to the patient. Such smaller men are prone to think that they have specifics for disease, while the larger men hesitate and recognize that coincidence plays a large role and that the suggestive factors in therapeutics often deceive us as to the real efficacy of drugs and remedies. ”

“ Many books have been written on the subject by eminent medical authorities, and the indications are that during the present century Suggestive Therapeutics, in its various forms, will come even more prominently into popular favor, and that it will be developed far beyond its present limits. ”

“ The notion that therapeutics or hygiene or surgery is any more or less scientific than making or cleaning boots is entertained only by people to whom a man of science is still a magician who can cure diseases, transmute metals, and enable us to live for ever. ”

“ Psychotherapy represents one of the important elements in therapeutics, and we must learn to use it in a way suitable to our patients. We have to learn to use our drugs in accordance with the nature and physical make-up of the patient. We have to find out by experience just how to use hydrotherapy for each individual. Varying currents of electricity and varying forms of electrical action are needed for different individuals. ”

“ Here lies the true domain of mental therapeutics. We can learn to dominate and regulate the vital activities and the life currents in our bodies so that they will do their work intelligently and serenely even under the stress of illness or of danger. We can, by the power of will, direct the vital currents to those parts and organs which need them most and we can relieve congested areas by equalizing the circulation, by drawing from the surplus of blood and nerve currents and distributing the vital fluids over other parts of the body. ”

“ A careful study of their lives shows that this counted for more in many of the experiences of their healing than the drugs and remedies which they employed. The men who have been the most sought by patients have not as a rule left us great therapeutic secrets; on the contrary, they have only employed the conventional remedies of their times with reasonable common-sense and have added to them their own personal influences. On the other hand, the men who have made discoveries in therapeutics, and in medicine, have not always been popular as physicians. ”

“ The old axiom, that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," holds good in psycho-therapeutics as well as in material remedies, and he who obtains the power to hold himself in the mental attitude which enables him to resist the encroachments of disease has mastered the great secret of mental medicine. ”

“ His therapeutics is, above all, individual. Remedies must be administered with careful reference to the constitution, the age, the sex, and the condition of the patient's strength. Special attention must always be paid to nature's efforts to cure, and these must be en [Pg 48] couraged as far as possible. ”

“ It must suffice for the present to state that over one hundred experiments have been made by the writer and one or two others to whom he has confided his theory, without a single failure. Some very striking cures have been effected,—cures that would take rank with the most marvellous instances of healing recorded in the annals of modern psycho-therapeutics. It is obvious that details of names and dates could not properly be given, for the reason that the cures have been effected without any knowledge on the part of the patients that they were being made the subjects of experiment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we can ever settle down to the rational way of regarding these things, we shall discover, what sensible medical men have always known, and what druggists as well as mere laymen can not afford to neglect, that there is no such thing as a panacea, and that all rational therapeutics is based on common sense study of the disease—finding out what is the cause and endeavoring to abate that cause. The cause may be such that surgery is indicated, or serum, or regulation of diet, or change of scene. ”

“ Every quack in history, from Galen's weaver, who became a leech, down to the last street corner nostrum vendor, does the same thing. When on the strength of supposed cures, then, a new system of therapeutics is introduced, it is much more likely than not that there is no foundation for the claims made. We have had ever so many more experiences of disappointment after the introduction of remedies which cured at the beginning of their history, than we have had of remedies that maintain themselves after prolonged experience. ”

“ In ancient and medieval times, however, other than chemical agencies were supposed to be efficient in the cure of diseases, and the primitive animistic conception of the cause of illness, and hence of the therapeutics of disease, long held sway among those who practised the medical art. ”

“ The science has come to recognize the reservoir of reserve energy in human nature which may be tapped under special favoring circumstances. The physicians of the past have often succeeded in tapping it deliberately as well as unconsciously. There is large room, however, for the further development of medicine along this line, to the great advantage of therapeutics and probably the most promising field at the present time in view in therapy lies in this direction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He taught his students to observe the course of nature in diseases, to distinguish between essential and accidental symptoms, and to carefully discriminate the influence of remedies from the curative operations of nature. “There is nothing,” he said, “I desire so much as that every disease we treat here should be a matter of experience to you, so you must not be surprised that I use only one remedy when I might employ two or three; for in using a multiplicity of remedies, when a cure does succeed, it is not easy to perceive which is most effectual.” ”

“ We have wanted such remedies and methods of treatment so much that it has been rather easy to persuade us sometimes that they have been discovered. It is like the question of specifics in medicine. For centuries men devoted themselves to trying to find a specific remedy for each disease. It was thought they must exist in nature. Now we know that they probably do not exist, though those who claim to discover them find an easy livelihood exploiting the credulity of those who still cherish the belief in them. ”

“ This mode of treating disease (Hydropathy) is unquestionably far from inert, and most opposed to the cure of diseases, by the undisturbed processes of nature. It in fact perhaps affords the very best evidence we possess of the curative power of art, and is unquestionably when rationally [7] regulated a most effective mode of treatment in many diseases. Still it puts in a striking light, if not exactly the curative powers of nature, at least the possibility—nay, facility—with which all the ordinary instruments of medical cure, drugs, may be dispensed with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The therapeutic uses of a remedy are based on what we know of its physiological effects. Many—or rather most—of the therapeutic effects of this as well as of most other remedies, correspond to certain physiological effects. Those therapeutic effects whereto we find none analogous among the physiological effects, are yet the results of the physiological tendencies of the remedy, and where these tendencies do not manifest themselves as results, it is because they find no field for action in the healthy organism. ”

“ 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. ”