Problems of sickness and health would be enormously clarified if the uses and limitations of drugs were more generally understood. Many people still believe that every disease can be cured by a drug if only the doctor is clever or lucky enough to think of the right one to give. Such beliefs result naturally enough from centuries of faith in charms and magic, and occasionally are confirmed by remarkable cures apparently brought about by drugs, but really pure coincidence or the result of suggestion.
It is a fact that a few medicines are known
which if rightly used actually do cure certain diseases. An example of their action is the curative effect of quinine in malaria. Such medicines, unfortunately, are few. In the great majority of cases medicines do not cure disease; their beneficial action is ordinarily indirect and is due to their power either to increase or to check certain processes within the body.
It is here that the abuse of drugs comes in. Disordered bodily processes give rise to symptoms of disease; and it is the symptoms of disease, not the disease itself, that trouble the patient. A patient with typhoid, for example, is not conscious of the toxins in his blood, but of headache, weakness, and fever; the man with eyestrain is not aware of an imperfectly shaped lens, but of headache and indigestion. What the patient wants is to have his symptoms relieved; in some cases they can be controlled by drugs, and the sufferer then considers himself cured. But the original condition persists: it may in the meantime be improving, but it may on the other hand be growing worse.
Not infrequently it is best to check symptoms, and to check them by means of drugs. When they should be checked, only a thoroughly trained physician is qualified to decide. The question is not one for amateurs, since the whole practice
of medicine, including the prescription of drugs, constantly becomes more nearly an exact science. People should obtain and follow expert advice in regard to health as they would in regard to other affairs of life. The constant self-dosing practised by thousands of people is harmful and unintelligent; it is, however, no less irrational to go to the other extreme and refuse to take medicine prescribed by a competent doctor.
Amateur Dosing.
—Amateur dosing either of oneself or of others is dangerous in more ways than one. In the first place, time is lost. Moreover, symptoms are characteristic; checking or altering them increases the difficulty of finding the real trouble. The man with eyestrain who takes one drug to stop his headache and another to "cure" his stomach, is simply delaying the time when properly adjusted glasses will relieve both. In this case the result may not be serious; but such a loss of time in finding the trouble and beginning proper treatment might prove fatal in the case of tuberculosis.
Another objection to amateur prescription of medicine is the fact that most drugs have more than one effect. In addition to their main action they have others, subordinate or ordinarily less marked. These minor effects may be serious in some cases. Many headache remedies, for example,
affect the heart; a dose that is harmless for a normal person may be strong enough to injure seriously a person with a weak heart. A doctor, and a doctor only, is competent to decide when and in what quantity medicines will be beneficial, because he alone understands both the condition of the patient and all the possible effects of the drug.