8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life has been considerably prolonged.
9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated above.
10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.
11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.
Preventives of Consumption.
If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair, we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping, they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,—which they cannot look into as they can their watch or old boots,—first try to patch themselves up, instead of employing a professional “cobbler of poor health and broken constitutions.”
Before me are Wistar’s, Wilson’s, and Gray’s Works on Anatomy. I have read them, or Krause’s, more than twenty years. They contain all that has been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is “Physiology,” which treats of the offices or various functions of the system. I do not comprehend it all. “Great ignoramus!” Nobody is perfected in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature, and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases safely.
CORRECT POSITION. INCORRECT POSITION.
Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.