The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English Part 158

FOURTH FLOOR.

Large mills for crushing, grinding and pulverizing roots, barks, herbs, and other drugs occupy a considerable part of this floor. Extensive drying-rooms, in which articles to be ground in the drug mills are properly dried, are also located upon this floor, as are also thousands of reams of paper ready for printing the different books, pamphlets, labels, etc. In large rooms set aside for that purpose, are stored vast quant.i.ties of labels and wrappers, for use in putting up medicines.

FIFTH FLOOR.

On this floor is located ingeniously devised filling and bottling machinery, also rooms for labeling, wrapping, and packing medicines; others are occupied for the storage of crude drugs, gla.s.s, corks, and supplies for use in the general business.

SIXTH FLOOR.

This entire floor is occupied with mixing, percolating, distilling, filtering, and other processes employed in the manufacturing of medicines. Every process is conducted under the watchful care of an experienced chemist and pharmacist, and in the most perfect and orderly manner; the apparatus employed being of the most approved character.

Here are manufactured all the various medicinal preparations and compounds prescribed by the Faculty, in the treatment of special cases.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Section of Chemical Laboratory.--World's Dispensary.]

In all departments of this vast business establishment, the visitor is struck with the perfect system which everywhere prevails, and the wonderful accuracy with which every process and transaction is carried on and consummated; hence the uniformity of purity and strength for which the medicines here manufactured have so long been celebrated. To this, also, is due much of the marvelous success attained in the department established for the special treatment of chronic and obstinate cases of disease. In this department the Faculty are not at all limited or hampered in prescribing, and do not confine themselves in the least to the proprietary or standard medicines manufactured for general sale through druggists, but employ a series of curative agents unsurpa.s.sed in variety and range of application. They aim to carefully adapt their prescriptions to each individual case.

THE

INVALIDS' HOTEL AND SURGICAL INSt.i.tUTE

_SOME OF THE CAUSES THAT LED TO ITS ERECTION, AND THE ADVANTAGES WHICH IT AFFORDS._

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the Private Consultation-rooms, Gentlemen's Department.]

The destinies of inst.i.tutions, like those of men, are often determined by pre-existing causes. The destinies of some men are like those of way-side plants, springing up without other apparent cause than the caprice of nature, developing without any apparent aim, yielding no perfected fruit, and finally, dying, leaving scarcely a trace of their existence. Thus it is with inst.i.tutions which have their origin only in man's caprice. To be enduring, they must be founded upon the needs and necessities of humanity. Many of the great men of the world owe their greatness more to surrounding circ.u.mstances than to the genius within them. The highest genius can be dwarfed or deformed by the force of adverse circ.u.mstances; hence the poetic truth of Gray in those exquisite lines:

"Some mute inglorious Milton here may lie, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

Opportunity is the guiding star of genius. Without it, genius would drift hither and thither upon the restless, ever-changing waves of circ.u.mstance, never casting anchor in a secure haven. Upon opportunity, too, depends the success of inst.i.tutions. By opportunity we mean a real and acknowledged public want. Whoever undertakes to supply this want finds himself upon the crest-wave of prosperity. It was to supply such a want that this inst.i.tution was erected.

A REMEDIAL HOME.

Of the seventy millions of people living in the United States to-day, it is estimated that nearly twelve millions are sufferers from chronic disease. Think for a moment! Twelve millions of people slowly but surely dying by the insidious and fatal development of chronic diseases! This is an appalling fact. And yet this is the very cla.s.s of diseases with which the general pract.i.tioner is least familiar.

As a general pract.i.tioner of the healing art, fresh from _curriculum_, the founder of this inst.i.tution early realized that the grand unpardonable sin of the medical profession was the neglect to more thoroughly study and investigate this cla.s.s of diseases.

The profession is diligently cauterizing and poulticing the sores which now and then appear on the surface, but the internal chronic disease, of which these are merely the external signs, is too often overlooked or neglected.

Some years ago we devised and put into practical operation a method of

TREATING PATIENTS AT THEIR HOMES,

without requiring them to undergo personal examinations. We reasoned that the physician has abundant opportunity to accurately determine the nature of most chronic diseases without ever seeing the patient. In substantiating that proposition, we cited the perfect _accuracy_ with which scientists are enabled to deduce the most minute particulars in their several departments, which appears almost miraculous, if we view the subject in the light of the early ages. Take, for example, the electro-magnetic telegraph, the greatest invention of the age. Is it not a marvelous degree of accuracy which enables an operator to _exactly_ locate a fracture in a sub-marine cable nearly three thousand miles long? Our venerable "clerk of the weather" has become so thoroughly familiar with the most wayward elements of nature that he can accurately predict their movements. He can sit in Washington and foretell what the weather will be in Florida or New York, as well as if hundreds of miles did not intervene between him and the places named. And so in all departments of modern science, what is required is the knowledge of certain _signs_. From these, scientists deduce accurate conclusions regardless of distance. A few fossils sent to the expert geologist enables him to accurately determine the rock-formation from which they were taken. He can describe it to you as perfectly as if a cleft of it were lying on his table. So also the chemist can determine the const.i.tution of the sun as accurately as if that luminary were not ninety-five million miles from his laboratory. The sun sends certain _signs_ over the "infinitude of s.p.a.ce," which the chemist cla.s.sifies by pa.s.sing them through the spectroscope. Only the presence of certain substances could produce these solar signs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Medical Library and Council-room.--Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Inst.i.tute.]

So, also, in medical science,

DISEASE HAS CERTAIN UNMISTAKABLE SIGNS,

or symptoms, and, by reason of this fact, we have been enabled to originate and perfect a system of determining with the greatest accuracy the nature of chronic diseases without seeing and personally examining our patients. In recognizing diseases without a personal examination of the patient, we claim to possess no miraculous powers. We obtain our knowledge of the patient's disease by the practical application of well-established principles of modern science to the practice of medicine. And it is to the accuracy with which this system has endowed us that we owe our almost world-wide reputation for the skillful treatment of all lingering, or chronic, affections. This system of practice, with the marvelous success which has been attained through it, demonstrates the fact that diseases display certain phenomena, which, being subjected to scientific a.n.a.lysis, furnish abundant and unmistakable data to guide the judgment of the skillful pract.i.tioner aright in determining the nature of diseased conditions.

So successful has been this method of treating patients at a distance that there is scarcely a city or a village in the United States that is not represented by one or more cases upon the "Records of Practice" at the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Inst.i.tute. In all chronic diseases that are curable by medical treatment, it is only in very rare cases that we cannot do as well for the patient while he or she remains at home, as if here in person to be examined. But we annually treat hundreds of cases requiring surgical operations and careful after-treatment, and in these cases our Invalids' Hotel, or home, is indispensable. Here the patient has the services not only of the most skillful surgeons, but also, what is quite as necessary in the after treatment, of thoroughly trained and skilled nurses.

What should be the essential characteristics of an Invalids' Home?

CLIMATE.

Obviously, the most important of these characteristics is _climate_.

Climatology, from being a mere speculative theory, has arisen to the deserved rank of a science. The influence of the climate of a country on the national character has long been observed and acknowledged. The languid but pa.s.sionate temperaments of the South are like its volcanoes, now quiet and silent, anon bursting forth with terrible activity, flooding entire cities with molten fire; or, like its skies, now sunny, cloudless, an hour hence convulsed with lightnings and deluging the earth with pa.s.sionate rain; or like its winds, to-day soft, balmy, with healing on their wings, to-night the wind fiend, the destroying simoom, rushing through the land, withering and scorching every flower and blade of herbage on its way. On the other hand, the calm, phlegmatic temperament of the North accords well with her silent mountains, her serener skies, and her less vehement, but chilling winds. The South, too, is the native home of the most violent acute diseases, such as yellow fever and cholera. But, aside from this general climatic influence, there is the yet more restricted one of locality. It has often been observed that certain cla.s.ses of diseases are most prevalent in certain localities, the prevalence in every instance being due to peculiarities of climate.

EXTREME HEALTHFULNESS OF BUFFALO.

In the published records of the examination for military service in the army, during our late civil war, this fact was clearly and definitely stated, and maps were prepared and presented showing the comparative prevalence of certain diseases in the several States and districts represented. The maps are prepared by a graduation of color, the lighter shades indicating the localities where the special disease under consideration is least prevalent; and it is a very significant and important fact that in all chronic diseases not due to occupation or accident, Buffalo and its immediate vicinity is marked by the lighter shades. Thus, in epilepsy, paralysis, scrofula, rheumatism, and consumption, our city is little more than tinted with the several colors used to denote these diseases.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Patient's Room.--Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Inst.i.tute.]

There is a popular, but unfounded, belief that Buffalo is a hot-bed for pulmonary diseases. This idea could have originated only in an ignorant disregard of facts; for medical statistics prove that in her freedom from this cla.s.s of diseases she is unrivaled by any city in America, not excepting those on the seaboard.

EVIDENCE OF HEALTH STATISTICS.

Compare, if you please, the statistics of Buffalo with those of the great Eastern cities in this respect. In Boston and New York the death-rate from consumption shows a ratio of about 1 to 5 of the whole number of deaths. In Baltimore and Philadelphia the ratio is 1 to 6, while in Buffalo the death rate from consumption is only 1 to 10--very remarkable difference in favor of our city. Only last summer a gentleman residing in the eastern part of our State collected and compared the health statistics for 1876 of all the prominent cities in the United States. The result showed that