The American Therapist. Vol. II. No. 7. Jan. 15th, 1894 / A Monthly Record of Modern Therapeutics, with Practical Suggestions Relating to the Clinical Applications of Drugs.

Transcriber’s Note:
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Vol. II.             NEW YORK, JANUARY 15th, 1894.             No. 7.
By Oscar H. Merrill, M. D.
Whoever reads the history of Therapeutics will find there records of much faithful work in many directions—records not infrequently of hope deferred. He will find there also a tolerably full account of human credulity, of human weakness and of human cupidity. The same faulty methods of reasoning are followed century after century. Post hoc ergo propter hoc , wrecks as many therapeutists to-day as it ever did, notwithstanding its fallacies have been demonstrated so often as to make mention of the subject distressing. It might be expected that half educated physicians, without preliminary, scientific training, would fall into this error; but when some of the brightest men in the profession—men who have presumably travelled the paths of logic and induction all their lives, go the same way, it shows pretty plainly what must be the inherent difficulties of the subject; and that for the proper discussion of therapeutic questions, no caution can be quite great enough and no learning quite profound enough.
The list of dead theories and abandoned remedies grows longer each year, and the experience of the past is as little heeded in the medical as in the financial world.
Acuteness of intellect and extent of education can, it seems, no more keep a man straight in medicine, than they can in religion or politics. Men, who for years have been esteemed well balanced authors and practitioners, become “a little crazy” on some one therapeutic measure and enthusiastically advocate its employment in all sorts of unsuitable cases. Good illustrations of this form of mental activity may be found in the literature of hydrotherapy and of electricity.
Thus, it has been stated that every case of typhoid fever may be made to end in recovery by the proper use of cold baths; and yet this writer knew in how many ways the disease may kill the patient—some of them almost accidental in their nature; he knew that perforation has occurred many days after the disappearance of pyrexia; he knew that in some fatal cases the temperature never exceeded 100°F.