Forty Years In The Wilderness Of Pills And Powders Part 39

There was a discussion in Boston, many years ago, between Dr. Watson, one of the most successful old-school pract.i.tioners of medicine, and a Thomsonian pract.i.tioner, whose name I have forgotten, in the progress of which the former made the open and unqualified declaration, that, in the course of four years' practice, he had drawn one hundred gallons of human blood, and that he was then on the use of his thirty-ninth pound of calomel.

Now both these men had full practice; and while one did little or nothing to break up disease or destroy the enemy, the other did a great deal; and yet both were deemed successful. Can we explain this any better than we can the facts in regard to Drs. Danforth and Hubbard?

Let us look at the case of Dr. M., of Boston, a successful allopathic pract.i.tioner. In order to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the claims of h.o.m.oeopathy, he suddenly subst.i.tuted the usual h.o.m.oeopathic treatment for allopathy, and pursued it two whole years with entire success. Curiosity still awake, he again exchanged his infinitesimal doses of active medicine for similar doses, as regards size, of fine flour, and continued this, also, for two years. The latter experiment, as he affirms, was quite as successful as the former.

Do not such facts as these point, with almost unerring certainty, to the inefficiency of all medical treatment? Do they not almost, if not quite, prove that when we take medicine, properly so called, or receive active medical treatment; we recover in spite of it? Is there any other rational way of accounting for the almost equal success of all sorts of treatment,--allopathic, botanic, h.o.m.oeopathic, hydropathic, etc.,--when in the hands of good, sound, common sense, and conjoined with good nursing and attendance? Is it not that man is made to live, and is tough, so that it is not easy to poison him to death?

But the most remarkable fact of this kind with which I am acquainted, is the case of Isaac Jennings, M.D., now of Ohio. He was educated at Yale College, in Connecticut. During the progress of his education, he served a sort of medical apprenticeship in the family of Prof. Eli Ives, of New Haven. He took his medical degree in 1812, and soon after this commenced the practice of his profession in Trumbull, in Fairfield County. Here, for eight years, he had ample opportunity to apply the principles with which, at the schools, he had been fully indoctrinated. In the summer of 1820, he removed, by special request, to Derby, nine miles from New Haven. Up to his second year in Derby, he pursued the usual, or orthodox, course of practice. The distance from his former field of labor was not so great but that he retained a portion of his old friends in that region. He was also occasionally called to the town of Huntington, lying partly between the two.

On meeting one day with Dr. Tisdale, of Bridgeport, an older physician than himself, he said to him, very familiarly, "Jennings, are you aware that we do far less good with our medicine than we have been wont to suppose?" He replied in the affirmative, and observed that he had been inclining to that opinion for some time. "Do you know," added Dr.

Tisdale, "that we do a great deal more harm than good with medicine?"

Dr. Jennings replied that he had not yet gone as far as that. Dr.

Tisdale then proceeded to state many facts, corroborating the opinion he had thrown out concerning the impotency of medicine. These statements and facts were, to the mind of Dr. Jennings, like a nail fastened in a sure place.

From this time forth his medical scepticism increased, till he came, at length, to give his doubts the test of experiment. Accordingly, he subst.i.tuted for his usual medicaments, bread pills and colored water; and for many years--I believe five or six--gave nothing else. The more rigidly he confined himself to these potions, the better he found his success, till his business was so extended, and his reputation so great, as to exclude all other medical men from his own immediate vicinity.

His great conscientiousness, as well as a desire of making known to his medical brethren what he believed to be true, and thus save them from the folly of dealing out that which he was a.s.sured was only a nuisance, especially under the shelter of what they supposed to be his example, led him, at length, to call a meeting of physicians, and reveal to them his discovery. The surprise was great; but greater or less, according to their tact for observation, and the length of their experience.

But the secret was now out, and Dr. Jennings soon began to lose practice. Instead of employing a man to give them bread pills and colored water, many chose to take care of themselves, and let the physician wholly alone; while a far greater number, though they dearly loved and highly respected Jennings, as an old friend and physician and an eminent Christian, began to seek medical counsel at other hands.

The result was, that his business became so much diminished as to leave him without a full support, except from past earnings, and he began to make preparations for a removal to the West. But this his friends were unwilling to have him do, and they accordingly raised, by subscription, $300 a year, to induce him to remain. In a few years, however, the subscription failed to be renewed, and in 1839 or 1840 he removed to Ohio, where he still remains. He does a little business, and what he does is attended with great success; and yet, the number of those who follow him is small.

Facts of similar import, in very great numbers, some more and some less striking, might be related, to almost any extent; but can it be necessary? Suffice it to say that some of the oldest physicians in Boston and its vicinity, the oldest physician in Cleveland, and some of the most intelligent ones in New York and Philadelphia, as well as elsewhere, are coming rapidly to the same conclusions with Dr. Jennings, and a few of them have already arrived there.

It is from stumbling on such facts as these, together with my own long experience, all bearing in the same direction, that I have long since renounced dependence on medicine, properly so called, as a means of restoring the system, when out of order, to a state of health. In other words, I have ceased to employ poison to _cure_ poison.

But, lest it should still be thought I make too much of my own experience, and of the facts which have been adduced in this chapter, I subjoin another of kindred character, containing the written testimony of others, especially medical men, on the subject.

CHAPTER XCIX.

ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY.

A very large amount of testimony, going to show the inefficiency and inutility of medicine, might be presented; but I have limited myself to a selection of some of the more striking and important.

Let me begin with Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia. In a published lecture of his, more than half a century ago, he made the following remark:--

"Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and theories! We have a.s.sisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality.... The art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top, and cracked at the foundation."

Magendie, late a distinguished French physician and physiologist, says, as follows:--

"I hesitate not to declare,--no matter how sorely I shall wound our vanity,--that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to treat, to the resources of nature, than to act, as we are frequently compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our conduct, and at the obvious risk of hastening the end of our patient."

Dr. Good, a learned and voluminous British writer, also says:--

"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon; and the effects of our medicines upon the human system, are, in the highest degree, uncertain, except, indeed, that they have already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined."

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; while he exalts, in an unwonted degree, the remedial effects of every hygienic influence. Let him who longer doubts, read this most remarkable production; and with the more care from the fact that it is a very fair exponent of the doctrines now held at the very fountain-head of medical orthodoxy.

From a work ent.i.tled, "Memoirs of James Jackson, Jr.," late of Boston, written by his father, I have extracted the following. It is part of a letter, written from Europe, to his venerable father, the present elder Dr. James Jackson, of Boston.

"But our poor pathology and worse therapeutics--shall we ever get to a solid bottom? Shall we ever have fixed laws? Shall we ever _know_, or, must we always be doomed to _suspect_, to _presume_? Is _perhaps_ to be our qualifying word forever and for aye? Must we forever be obliged to hang our heads when the chemist and natural philosopher ask us for our laws and principles?... If honest, must we not acknowledge that, even in the natural history of disease, there is very much _doubtful_, which is received as _sure_? And in therapeutics, is it better yet, or worse?

Have we judged--have we deduced our results, especially in the last science--from _all_, or from a selection of facts?

"Do we know, for example, in how many instances such a treatment fails, for the one time it succeeds? Do we know how large a proportion of cases would get well without any treatment, compared with those that recover under it? Do not imagine, my dear father, that I am becoming a sceptic in medicine. It is, not quite as bad as that. I shall ever believe, _at least_, that the rules of _hygeia_ must be and are useful, and that he only can understand and value them, who has studied pathology. Indeed, I may add that, to a certain extent, I have seen demonstrated the actual benefit of certain modes of treatment in acute diseases. But, is this benefit immense? When life is threatened, do we very often save it? When a disease is destined by _Nature_ to be long, do we very often materially diminish it?"

It is worthy of remark, that the discussions in the pages of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for two or three years past, concerning the treatment of scarlatina, have usually resulted, practically, in favor of the no-medicine system. It clearly appears that the less our reliance on medicine, in this disease, the better. But what shall hinder or prevent our coming to similar results, in the investigation, in time to come, of other diseases?

Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating and drinking,--no matter what the disease,--he should be surprised at a mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should _not_ be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction should finally recover.

I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia, thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave, Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"

Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once that he a.s.sists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last destroys it."

CHAPTER C.

AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.

The Ma.s.sachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April 15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "_We would regard every approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of humanity and scientific medicine._"

A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.

The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very t.i.tle of the essay is at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is, therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning than at first appears.

What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there is a belief,--a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,--among our scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with?

Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to such a point,--with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of which we sometimes hear,--without the possibility of ever reaching it?

It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency, everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance or credulity of the community.

The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does not alter the plain matter of fact.

Thus Dr. S----, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his a.s.sures me that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually practice on themselves and their families.

What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the providence of G.o.d are forced upon them, that in the general management of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines are needful?

There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a general rule, includes it. And an entire change from the latter to the former, is, perhaps, too great to be expected immediately. Yet, in the progress of society towards a more perfect millennial state of things, must it not come?