Quacks and Grafters Part 1

Quacks and Grafters.

by Unknown.

PREFACE.

There has been but one other period in the history of medicine when so many systems of the healing art were in vogue. In the seventeenth century, during the Reform Period, following the many epoch-making discoveries, as the blood and lymph circulation; when alchemy was abandoned and chemistry became a science; when Galileo regenerated physics, and zoology and botany were largely extended; when Newton enunciated the laws of gravitation; when cinchona bark, the great febrifuge, was introduced into Europe, and the cell doctrine was founded by Hooke, Malpighi and Grew, the old Hippocratic, Galenic and Arabic systems of medicine were undermined. In that transition period, when the medical profession was trying to adjust its practice with the many new theories, its authoritative voice was lost, and in the struggle for something tangible, innumerable new systems sprang up.

Four systems stood out most prominently--the pietistically colored Paracelsism of Von Helmont, with its sal, sulphur and mercury; the chemical system of Sylvius and Willis, with its acid and alkali theory of cause and cure of disease; the iatro-chemical system, with its fermentation theory; and the iatro-physical system, which contended that health was dependent upon proper adjustment of physical and mechanical arrangements of the body. The old humoral theory of Galen had its adherents, influencing all of the newer systems. And suggestive therapeutics was rampant in most grotesque and fanciful forms. Witchcraft, superst.i.tion and cabalism were fostered even at the various European courts. As Roswell Park says in his History of Medicine: "With delightful satire Harvey divided the physicians of the day into six cla.s.ses--the Ferrea, Asinaria, Jesuitica, Aquaria, Laniaria and Stercoraria--according as their favorite systems of treatment were the administration of iron, a.s.ses' milk, cinchona, mineral water, venesection or purgatives."

That history repeats itself is a truism well ill.u.s.trated in medicine to-day. The new cellular pathology, founded by Virchow and Cohnheim and elaborated by innumerable men since; the discovery of parasitism and the germ theory by Davaine, Pasteur and Koch; antisepsis by Lister; the introduction of anesthesia by Morton, Simpson and Koller; the application of more exact methods in diagnosis by Skoda and others, and many other innovations and discoveries have revolutionized medicine in the nineteenth century. The transition period of to-day is very a.n.a.logous to that of the seventeenth century.

Suggestive therapeutics has its advocates in the Emmanuel movement, Lourdes water, Christian Science, New Thought, faith cure and psycho-therapy. The uric acid theory is a curious survival of the old chemical system. The iatro-chemical system is the prototype of Metchnikoff's theory of longevity. And, strange to relate, despite the claims of wonderful discovery by A. T. Still and D. D. Palmer, the iatro-physical system of the seventeenth century was more complete as a guide to healing than is Osteopathy and Chiropractics to-day. Verily, there is nothing novel under the solar rays.

That graft in surgery and shystering in internal medicine exists no one in the medical profession denies. It has come so insidiously that the profession itself was taken unawares. However, that sweeping denunciation of the entire profession should follow is unwarranted. Every other profession and calling has its black sheep, and it is the duty of the leaders in each to eliminate them. Elimination, however, cannot come entirely from within. The public has its share of responsibility and duty to perform, and the sooner this is realized, the better for all concerned.

To aid in the work of obtaining better things in therapeutics, the establishment and extension of a national bureau or department of health is imperative. Any effort along this line will hasten the day of rational healing. Preventive medicine will then gradually supplant the present haphazard system of palliation and cure.

And education is the watchword of the day!

G. STROHBACH, M.D.

Cincinnati, Ohio, 1908.

PART ONE

IN GENERAL

Quacks and Grafters

By EX-OSTEOPATH

CHAPTER I.

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.

The Augean Stables of Therapeutics--The Remedy--Reason for Absence of Dignified Literary Style--Diploma Mills--"All but Holy"--Dr. Geo. H.

Simmons' Opinion--American Medical a.s.sociation Not Tyrannical--Therapeutics of To-day a Deplorable Muddle.

In writing this booklet I do not pose as a Hercules come to cleanse the Augean stables of therapeutics. No power but that of a public conscience awakened to the prevalence of quackery and grafting in connection with doctoring can clear away the acc.u.mulated filth.

Like Marc Antony, I claim neither wit, wisdom nor eloquence; but as a plain, blunt man I shall "speak right on of the things I do know" about quacks and grafters. In writing of Osteopathy I claim the right to speak as "one having authority," for I have been on the "inside." As to grafting in connection with the practice of medicine I take the viewpoint of a layman, who for years has carefully read the medical literature of the popular press, and of late years a number of representative professional journals, in an effort to get an intelligent conception of the theory and practice of therapeutics.

I have not tried to write in a professional style. I have been reading professional literature steadily for some time, and need a rest from the dignified ponderosity of some of the stuff I had to flounder through.

I have just read an exposition of the beautiful and rational simplicity of Osteopathy. This exposition is found in a so-called great American encyclopedia that has been put into our schools as an authoritative source of knowledge for the making of intelligent citizens of our children. It is written by a man whose name, like that of the scholar James Whitcomb Riley describes, is "set plumb at the dash-board of the whole indurin'

alphabet," so many are his scholarly degrees.

How impressive it is to look through an Osteopathic journal, and see exhaustive (and exhausting) dissertations under mighty names followed by such proof of profound wisdom as, A.M., M.S., D.O., or A.B., A.M., M.D., D.O. Who could believe that a man with all the wisdom testified to by such an array of degrees (no doubt there were more, but the modesty that goes with great learning forbade their display) could be imposed upon by a fad or fake? Or would espouse and proclaim anything that was not born of truth, and filled with blessing and benefaction for mankind?

Scholarly degrees should be accepted as proof of wisdom, but after reading such expositions as that in the cyclopedia, or some of those in the journals, one sometimes wonders if all the above degrees might not be condensed into the one--D.F.

As for dignified style in discussing the subject before me, I believe my readers will agree that dignity fits such subjects about as appropriately as a ten-dollar silk hat fits a ten-cent corn doctor, or a hod-carrier converted into a first-cla.s.s Osteopath.

While speaking of dignity, I want to commend an utterance of the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation_, made in a recent issue of that journal. It was in reply to a correspondent who had "jumped onto"

the editor of a popular magazine because in exposing graft and quackery he had necessarily implicated a certain brand of medical pract.i.tioners. The man who criticised the editor of the popular magazine impresses a layman as one of that cla.s.s of physicians that has done so much to destroy the respect and confidence of intelligent students of social conditions for medical men as a cla.s.s, and in the efficacy of their therapeutic agencies.

Although the committee appointed by the great society, of which he is presumably a member, reported that more than half of the medical colleges in this country are utterly unfit by equipment to turn out properly qualified physicians; that a large per cent of these unworthy schools are little better than diploma mills conducted for revenue only, and in spite of the incompetency and shystering that reputable physicians, in self-defense and in duty to the public must expose, this man proclaims that the medical profession is "all but holy" in its care for the souls and minds as well as the bodies of the people. With all respect for the devoted gentlemen among physicians we ask, Is it any wonder that the intelligent laity smile at such gush? And this man goes on to say that "99 per cent. of the practicing physicians of the country belong to this genuine cla.s.s."

Members of the American Medical a.s.sociation may think that such discussions are for the profession, and should be kept "in the family."

Perhaps they should, and no doubt it would be much better for the profession if many of the things said by leading medical men never reached the thinking public. But the fact remains that the contradictory and inconsistent things said do reach the public, and usually in garbled and distorted form. The better and safer way is, if possible, to see to it that there is no cause to say such things, or if criticisms must be made let physicians be fair and frank with the people, and treat the public as a party deeply concerned in all therapeutic discussions and investigations. And here applies the utterance of the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation_ that I wanted to commend:

"The time has pa.s.sed when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of professional dignity and a.s.sume an att.i.tude of infallibility toward the public. The more intelligent of the laity have opinions on medical subjects, often _bizarre_, it must be admitted, but frequently well grounded, and a fair discussion of such opinions can result only in a greater measure of confidence in and respect for the medical profession."

Such honest, fair-minded declarations, together with expressions of similar import from scores of brainy physicians and surgeons in active practice, are the anchors that hold the medical ship from being dashed to wreckage upon the rocks of public opinion by the currents, cross-currents and counter-currents of the turbid stream of therapeutics.

The people have strongly suspected graft in surgery, many of them know it, and nearly all have been taught by journals of the new schools that such grafting is a characteristic of medical schools, and is a.s.serted to be condoned and encouraged by the profession as a whole. How refreshing, then, to hear a representative surgeon of the American Medical a.s.sociation say:

"The moral standards set for professional men are going to be higher in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion turned on the medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to exist."

Contrast such frankness with the gush of the writer who, in the same organ, said 99 per cent. of the medical men were "all but holy" soul guardians, and judge which is most likely to inspire confidence in the intelligent laity.

Right here I want to say that since I have been studying through a cartload of miscellaneous medical journals, I have changed my opinion of the American Medical a.s.sociation. It is a matter of little consequence to medical men, of course, what my individual opinion may be. It may, however, be of some consequence and interest to them to know that the opinion of mult.i.tudes are being formed by the same distorting agencies that formed the opinion I held until I studied copies of the _Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation_ in comparison with the "riff-raff, rag-tag and bob-tail" of the representative organs of the myriad cults, isms, fads and fancies that "swarm like half-formed insects on the banks of the Nile."

As portrayed by the numerous new school journals I receive, the American Medical a.s.sociation is a tyrannical monster, conceived in greed and bigotry, born of selfishness and arrogance, cradled in iniquity and general cussedness, improved by man-slaughter, forced upon the people at the point of the bayonet and maintained by ignorance and superst.i.tion.

Most magazines representing various "drugless" therapies, I found, spoke of the American Medical a.s.sociation in about the same way. And not only these, but a number of so-called regular medical journals, as well as independent journals and booklets circulated to boost some individual, all added their modic.u.m of vituperation.

When you consider that thousands of Osteopaths (yes, there are several thousand of them in the field treating the people) are buying some one of the various Osteopathic journals by the hundreds every month and distributing them gratis to the people until the whole country is literally saturated, and that other cults are almost as busy disseminating their literature, do you wonder that the people are getting biased notions of the medical profession in general and the American Medical a.s.sociation in particular? While my faith in the integrity and efficacy of the "new school" remained intact and at a fanatical pitch, my sympathy was with the "independent" journals. The doctrine of "therapeutic liberty" seemed a fair one, and one that was only American. After studying both sides, and comparing the journals, I have commenced to wonder if the man who preaches universal liberty so strenuously is not, in most cases, only working for _individual license_.

I wrote a paper some time ago, out of which this booklet has grown, and sent it to the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation_. He was kind enough to say it was full of "severe truth" that should be published to the laity. In that paper I diagnosed the therapeutic situation of to-day as a "deplorable muddle," and I am glad to have my diagnosis confirmed by a prominent writer in the _Journal_ of the a.s.sociation. He says:

"Therapeutics to-day cannot be called a science, it can only be called a confusion. With a dozen dissenting opinions as to the most essential and efficacious therapeutic agents inside the school, and a horde of new school pretenders outside, each with his own little system that he heralds as the best and _only_ right way, and all these separated in everything but their attack on the regulars, there certainly is a 'turbidity of therapeutics!'"

And this therapeutic stream is the one that flows for the "healing of nations!" Should not its waters be pure and uncontaminated, so that the invalid who thirsts for health may drink with confidence in their healing virtues?

If the stream shows turbid to the physician, how must it appear to his patient as he stands upon the sh.o.r.e and sees conflicting currents boil and swirl in fierce contention, forming eddies that are continually stranding poor devils on the drifts of discarded remedies, while streams of murky waters (new schools) pour in from every side and add their filth. To the patient it becomes "confusion, worse confounded."