The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English Part 24

11. The emotions and the pa.s.sions exert a powerful influence over the physical organism. It is important, therefore, that they be held under restraint by the reasoning faculties. This rule applies equally to joy, fear, and grief; to avarice, anger, and hatred; and, above all, to the s.e.xual pa.s.sion. They are a prolific source of disease of the nervous system, and have caused the dethronement of some of the most gifted intellects.

PART III.

RATIONAL MEDICINE.

CHAPTER I.

THE PROGRESS OF MEDICINE.

During the last half century a great change has taken place in the treatment of disease. Medicine has advanced with rapid strides, from the narrow limits of mere empiricism, to the broader realm of rationalism, until to day it comprehends all the elements of an art and a science.

Scientific researches and investigations have added many valuable truths to the general fund of medical learning, but much more has been effected by observation and empirical discovery. It is of little or no interest to the invalid to know whether the prescribed remedy is organic or inorganic, simple, compound, or complex. In his anxiety and distress of body, he seeks solely for relief, without regard to the character of the remedial agents employed. But this indifference on the part of the patient does not obviate the necessity for a thorough, scientific education on the part of the pract.i.tioner. Notwithstanding all the laws enacted to raise the standard of medicine, and thus protect the public from quackery, there yet exists a disposition among many to cling to all that savors of the miraculous, or supernatural. To insure the future advancement of the healing art, physicians must instruct mankind in Physiology, Hygiene, and Medicine. When the people understand the nature of diseases, their causes, methods of prevention and cure, they will not be easily deceived, and pract.i.tioners will be obliged to qualify themselves better for their labors. The practice of medicine is every year becoming more successful. New and improved methods of treating disease are being discovered and developed, and the conscientious physician will avail himself of _all_ the means, by a knowledge of which he may benefit his fellow-men. The medical profession is divided into three princ.i.p.al schools, or sects.

THE ALLOPATHIC, REGULAR, OR OLD SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

This is the oldest existing branch of the profession. To it is due the credit of collecting and arranging the facts and discoveries which form the foundation of the healing art. It has done, and is doing, much to place the science of medicine on a firm basis. To the text-books of this school, every student who would qualify himself for medical practice must resort, to gain that knowledge upon which depends his future success. The early practice of this branch of the profession was necessarily crude and empirical. Conservative in its character, it has ever been slow to recognize new theories and methods of practice, and has failed to adopt them until they have been incontrovertibly established. This conservatism was manifested in the opposition to Harvey when he propounded the theory of the circulation of the blood, and to Jenner when he discovered and demonstrated the beneficial effects of vaccination. Thus has it ever defended its established opinions against innovation; yet out of this very conservatism has grown much real good, for, although it has wasted no time or energy in the investigation of theories, yet it has accepted them when established. In this manner it has added to its fund of knowledge only those truths which are of real and intrinsic value.

The history of medicine may be divided into three eras. In the first, the practice of medicine was merely empiricism. Ignorant priests or astrologers administered drugs, concerning the properties of which they had no knowledge, to appease the wrath of mythological deities. In the second or heroic era, the lancet, mercury, antimony, opium, and the blister were employed indiscriminately as the _sine qua non_ of medical practice. The present, with all its scientific knowledge of the human structure and functions, and its vast resources for remedying disease may be aptly termed the liberal era of medicine. The allopathic differs from the other schools, mainly in the application of remedies. In its ranks are found men, indefatigable in their labors, delving deep into the mysteries of nature, and who, for their scientific attainments and humane principles are justly considered ornaments to society and to their profession.

h.o.m.oEOPATHY.

Although this school is of comparatively recent origin, yet it has gained a powerful hold upon the public favor, and numbers among its patrons very many intelligent citizens. This fact alone would seem to indicate that it possesses some merit. The homeopathic differs from the allopathic school princ.i.p.ally in its _"law of cure,"_ which, according to Hahnemann, its founder, was the doctrine of _"similia similibus curantur"_ or "like cures like." Its method of treatment is founded upon the a.s.sumption that if a drug be given to a healthy person, symptoms will occur which, if transpiring in disease, would be mitigated by the same drug. While it may be exceedingly difficult for a member of another school to accept this doctrine and comprehend the method founded upon it, yet no one can deny that it contains some elements of truth.

Imbued with the spirit of progress, many of its most intelligent and successful pract.i.tioners have resorted to the use of appreciable quant.i.ties of medicine. This school a.s.sociates hydropathy with its practice, and usually inculcates rigid dietetic and hygienic regulations. Many h.o.m.oeopathic remedies are thoroughly triturated with sugar of milk, which renders them more palatable and efficacious.

Whether we attribute their cures to the infinitesimal doses which many h.o.m.oeopathists employ, to their "law of cure," to good nursing, or to the power of nature, it is nevertheless true that their practice is measurably successful. No doubt the h.o.m.oeopathic practice has modified that of the other schools, by proving that diseases may be alleviated by smaller quant.i.ties of medicine than were formerly employed.

THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL.

This school, founded by Wooster Beach, inst.i.tuted the most strenuous opposition to the employment of mercury, antimony, the blister, and the lancet. The members of this new school proclaimed that the action of heroic and noxious medicines was opposed to the operation of the vital forces, and proposed to subst.i.tute in their place safer and more efficacious agents, derived exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. The eclectics have investigated the properties of indigenous plants and have discovered many valuable remedies, which a kind and bounteous nature has so generously supplied for the healing of her children. Marked success attended the employment of these agents. In 1852, a committee on "Indigenous Medical Botany," appointed by the "American Medical a.s.sociation," acknowledged that the pract.i.tioners of the regular school had been extremely ignorant of the medical virtues of plants, even of those of their own neighborhoods. The employment of podophyllin and leptandrin as subst.i.tutes for mercurials has been so successful that they are now used by pract.i.tioners of all schools. Although claiming to have been founded upon liberal principles, it may be questioned whether its adherents have not been quite as exclusive and dogmatic as those whom they have opposed. It cannot be denied, however, that the eclectics have added many important remedies to the Materia Medica. Their writings are important and useful contributions to the physician's library.

THE LIBERAL AND INDEPENDENT PHYSICIAN.

After this brief review of the various medical sects, the reader may be curious to learn to what sect the physicians of the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Inst.i.tute belong. Among them are to be found graduates from the colleges of all the different schools. They are not restricted by the tenets of any one sect, but claim the right and privilege, nay, consider it a duty, to select from all, such remedies as careful investigation, scientific research, and an extensive experience, have proved valuable.

They resort to any and every agent which has been proved efficacious, whether it be vegetable or mineral.

And here arises a distinction between _sanative_ remedial agents and those which are _noxious_. Many pract.i.tioners deplore the use of poisons, and advocate innocuous medicines which produce only curative results. We agree with them in one proposition, namely, that improper medicines not only poison, but frequently utterly destroy the health and body of the patient. Every physician should keep steadily in view the final effects, as well as present relief, and never employ any agent without regard to its ulterior consequences. However, an agent which is noxious in _health_, may prove a valuable remedy in _disease_. When morbid changes have taken place in the blood and tissues, when a general diseased condition of the bodily organs has occurred, then an agent, which is poisonous in health, may prove curative. For instance it is admitted that alcohol is a poison; that it prevents healthful a.s.similation, solidifies pepsin, begets a morbid appet.i.te; that it produces intoxication, and that its habitual use destroys the body. It is, therefore, neither a hygienic nor a sanative agent, but strictly a noxious one; yet, its very distinct antiseptic properties render it valuable for remedial purposes, since these qualities promptly arrest that fatal form of decomposition of the animal fluids which is occasioned by snake-venom, which produces its deadly effects in the same manner as a drop of yeast ferments the largest mash. Alcohol checks this poisonous and deadly process and neutralizes its effects. Thus, alcohol, although a noxious agent, possesses a special curative influence in a morbid state of the human system; but its general remedial effects do not ent.i.tle it to the rank of a hygienic agent. We believe that medicine is undergoing a gradual change from the darkness of the past, with its ignorance, superst.i.tion, and barbarism, to the light of a glorious future. At each successive step in the path of progress, medicine approaches one degree nearer the realm of an exact science. The common object of the pract.i.tioners of all medical schools is the alleviation of human suffering. The only difference between the schools is in the remedies employed, the size of dose administered, and the results attained. These are insufficient grounds for bitter sectarianism. We are all fellow laborers in the same field. Before us lies a boundless expanse for exploration. There are new conditions of disease to be learned, new remedies to be discovered, and new properties of old ones to be examined.

We do not deplore the fact, that there are different schools in medicine, for this science has not reached perfection, and they tend to stimulate investigation. The remarks of Herbert Spencer on the "Multiplication of Schemes of Juvenile Culture," may be pertinently applied to the different schools in medicine with increased force. He says: "It is clear that dissent in education results in facilitating inquiry by the division in labor. Were we in possession of the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous independent seekers carrying out their researches in different directions, const.i.tute a better agency for finding it than any that could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts--each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in its efforts to make known its success--each of them merciless in its criticism on the rest--there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one of them has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment and failure, be exploded. And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually be developed a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion pa.s.ses--the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise--it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third."

We believe the time is coming when those maladies which are now considered fatal will be readily cured--when disease will be disarmed of its terrors. To be successful, a physician must be independent, free from all bigotry, having no narrow prejudice against his fellow-men, liberal, accepting new truths from whatever source they come, free from restrictions of societies, and an earnest laborer in the interests of the Great Physician.

CHAPTER II.

REMEDIES FOR DISEASE.

It will be our aim, throughout this book, to prescribe such remedies as are within the easy reach of all, and which may be safely employed. Many of those of the vegetable cla.s.s are indigenous to this country, and may be procured in their strength and purity, at the proper season, by those residing in the localities where they grow, while all others advised may be obtained at any good drug-store. We shall endeavor to recommend such as can be procured and prepared with the least trouble and expense to the patient, when it is believed that they will be equally as efficacious as more expensive medicines.

PROPRIETARY MEDICINES.

Having the invalid's best interests in view, it will often happen that we cannot prescribe better or cheaper remedies nor those which are more effective or easily obtained, than some of our standard preparations, which are sold by all druggists. We are aware that there is a popular, and not altogether unfounded prejudice against "patent medicines," owing to the small amount of merit which many of them possess. The term "Patent Medicine" does not apply to Dr. Pierce's remedies, as no patent has ever been asked or obtained for them, nor have they been urged upon the public as "cure alls." They are simply favorite prescriptions, which, in a very extensive practice, have proved their superior remedial virtues in the cure of the diseases for which they are recommended.

From the time of Hippocrates down to the present day, physicians have cla.s.sified diseases according to their causes, character or symptoms. It has been proved that diseases apparently different may often be cured by the same remedy. The reason for this singular fact is obvious. A single remedy may possess a variety of properties. Quinine, among other properties has a tonic which suggests its use in cases of debility; an antiperiodic, which renders it efficient in ague; and an anti-febrile property, which renders it efficacious in cases of fever. The result produced varies with the quant.i.ty given, the time of its administration, and the circ.u.mstances under which it is employed. Every practicing physician has his favorite remedies, which he oftenest recommends or uses, because he has the greatest confidence in their virtues. The patient does not know their composition. Even prescriptions are usually written in a language unintelligible to anybody but the druggist. As much secrecy is employed as in the preparation of proprietary medicines.

Does the fact that an article is prepared by a process known only to the manufacturer render that article less valuable? How many physicians know the elementary composition of the remedies which they employ, some of which never have been a.n.a.lyzed? Few pract.i.tioners know how morphine, quinine, podophyllin, leptandrin, pepsin, or chloroform, are made, or how nauseous drugs are transformed into palatable elixirs; yet they do not hesitate to employ them. Is it not inconsistent to use a prescription the composition of which is unknown to us, and discard another preparation simply because it is accompanied by a printed statement of its properties with directions for its use?

Various journals in this country, have at different times published absurd formulae purporting to be receipts for the preparation of "Dr.

Sage's Catarrh Remedy" and Dr. Pierce's standard medicines, which, in most instances, have not contained a single ingredient which enters into the composition of these celebrated remedies.

In the manufacture of any pharmaceutical preparation, two conditions are essential to its perfection, viz: purity and strength of the materials, and appropriate machinery. The first is insured, by purchasing the materials in large quant.i.ties, whereby the exercise of greater care in selecting the ingredients can be afforded; and the second can only be accomplished where the business is extensive enough to warrant a large outlay of capital in procuring proper chemical apparatus. These facts apply with especial force to the manufacture of our medicines, their quality having been vastly improved since the demand has become so great as to require their manufacture in very large quant.i.ties. Some persons, while admitting that our medicines are good pharmaceutical compounds, object to them on the ground that they are too often used with insufficient judgment. We propose to obviate that difficulty by enlightening the people as to the structure and functions of their bodies, the causes, character, and symptoms of disease, and by indicating the proper and judicious employment of our medicines, together with such auxiliary treatment as may be necessary. Such is one of the designs of this volume.

PROPERTIES OF MEDICINE.

It is generally conceded that the action of a remedy upon the human system depends upon properties peculiar to it. The effects produced suggest the naming of these qualities, which have been scientifically cla.s.sified. We shall name the diseases from their characteristic symptoms, and then, without commenting upon all the properties of a remedy, recommend its employment. Our reference to the qualities of any remedy, when we do make a particular allusion to them, we shall endeavor to make as easy and familiar as possible.

DOSE. All persons are not equally susceptible to the influence of medicines. As a rule, women require smaller doses than men, and children less than women. Infants are very susceptible to the effects of anodynes, even out of all relative proportion to other kinds of medicines. The circ.u.mstances and conditions of the system increase or diminish the effects of medicine, so that an aperient at one time may act as a cathartic at another, and a dose that will simply prove to be an anodyne when the patient is suffering great pain will act as a narcotic when he is not. This explains why the same dose often affects individuals differently. The following table is given to indicate the size of the dose, and is graduated to the age.

YEARS DOSE 21... ... ... .full 15... ... ... . 2-3 12... ... ... . 1-2 8 ... ... ... . 1-3 6 ... ... ... . 1-4 4 ... ... ... . 1-6 2 ... ... ... . 1-8 1 ... ... ... . 1-12 ... ... 1-20 to 1-30

The doses mentioned in the following pages are those for adults, except when otherwise specified.

THE PREPARATION OF MEDICINES. The remedies which we shall mention for domestic use are mostly vegetable. Infusions and decoctions of these will often be advised on account of the fact that they are more available than the tinctures, fluid extracts, and concentrated principles, which we prefer, and almost invariably employ in our practice. Most of these medical extracts are prepared in our chemical laboratory under the supervision of a careful and skilled pharmaceutist.

No one, we presume, would expect, with only a dish of hot water and a stew-kettle, to equal in pharmaceutical skill the learned chemist with all his ingeniously devised and costly apparatus for extracting the active, remedial principles from medicinal plants. Yet infusions and decoctions are not without their value; and from the inferior quality of many of the fluid extracts and other pharmaceutical preparations in the market, it may be questioned whether the former are not frequently as valuable as the latter. So unreliable are a majority of the fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles found in the drug-stores, that we long since found it necessary to have prepared in our laboratory, most of those which we employ. To the reliability of the preparations which we secure in this way we largely attribute our great success in the treatment of disease. Tinctures and fluid extracts are often prepared from old and worthless roots, barks, and herbs which have wholly lost their medicinal properties. Yet they are sold at just as high prices as those which are good. We manufacture our tinctures, fluid extracts, and concentrated, active principles from roots, barks, and herbs which are fresh, and selected with the greatest care. Many of the crude roots, barks, and herbs found in the market are inactive because they have been gathered at the wrong season. These, together with those that have been kept on hand so long as to have lost all medicinal value, are often sold in large quant.i.ties, and at reduced prices, to be manufactured into fluid extracts and tinctures. Of course, the preparations made from such materials are worthless. Whenever the dose of fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles, is mentioned in this chapter, the quant.i.ty advised is based upon our experience in the use of these preparations, as they are made in our laboratory, and the smallest quant.i.ty which will produce the desired effect is always given. When using most of the preparations found in the drug-stores, the doses have to be somewhat increased, and even then they will not always produce the desired effect, for reasons already given.

THE LIST OF MEDICINES which we shall introduce in this chapter will be quite limited, as we cannot hope, by making it extensive, that the non-professional reader would be able to prescribe with good judgment any other than the simpler remedies. Hence, we prefer, since we have not s.p.a.ce in this volume to waste, to mention only a few of the most common remedies under each head or cla.s.sification.