“The success of the homœopathic practice has astonished many discerning minds,” says Dr. Jennings. “It is unnecessary for my present purpose to give a particular account of the results of homœopathy; … what I now claim with respect to it is, that a wise and beneficent Providence is using it to expose a deep delusion. In the result of homœopathic practice, we have evidence in amount, and of a character sufficient, most incontestably to establish the fact that disease is a restorative process, a renovating operation, and that medicine has deceived us. The evidence is full and complete. It does not consist merely of a few isolated cases, whose recovery might be attributed to fortuitous circumstances, but it is a chain of testimony fortified by every possible circumstance. All kinds and grades of disease have passed under the ordeal, and all classes and characters of persons have been concerned in the experiment as patients or witnesses; … while the process of infinitesimally attenuating the drugs was carried to such a ridiculous extent that no one will, on sober reflection, attribute any portion of the cure to the medicine. I claim then, that homœopathy may be regarded as a providential sealing of the fate of old medical views and practices” (“Medical Reform,” p. 247).
Since physiology was first studied methodically an overwhelming array of facts has, indeed, proved that the disorders of the human organism can be cured more easily without poison drugs; more easily in the very degree that would suggest the suspicion that our entire system of therapeutics is founded upon an erroneous view of disease. The homœopathists cure their patients with milk-sugar, the exponents of the movement cure with gymnastics, the hydropathists with cold water, the disciples of Dr. Schrodt with exercise and mountain-air, the primitive Christians with prayer, Nature cures her children with rest and a partial suspension of the digestive process (the fasting cure, indicated instinctively by a loss of appetite). Let all repudiate alcohol and all can record swifter, more numerous, and more permanent cures than the disciples of the nostrum school.
Considered in connection with the foregoing remarks, these facts admit only of one conclusion, and after giving the above-mentioned exception the benefit of a (temporary) doubt, we can assert with perfect confidence that drastic drugs have no remedial value, and that every drop of alcohol administered for medicinal purposes, has increased, instead of decreasing, the weight of human misery.
There is no doubt but these views will awaken the anathemas of the poison-worshipers; but it is equally certain that before the end of this century they will become truisms. We should regard the drift of the main current rather than the incidental fluctuations of scientific theories, and all the ripple of conflicting opinions can not conceal the progress of a strong tendency toward total abstinence from all virulent drugs.
STUDIES IN KITCHEN SCIENCE AND ART.
II. WHEAT, RYE AND CORN.
BY BYRON D. HALSTED.