To have maintained, in the zenith of their fame, that either of the great medical schools could ever have so completely perished would have been the rankest heresy; to believe now that the germ theory of disease can ever be superseded is to be subjected to the charge, not of medical heresy alone, but of the completest ignorance of science. Yet there are some bold spirits who have dared even this. The history of the past forbids the cautious historian of medicine to make too sure of the permanence of any theory of disease or system of cure, but the germ theory has claims to our acceptance which far outweigh those of any other theories which we have reviewed. From the length of time it has been under construction, from the marvellous care and minute caution exercised by the profound scientists who have devoted their lives and utmost energies to the innumerable experiments which their researches have embraced, from the fact that not medical theorists merely, but sober-minded scientists as well as practical surgeons and physicians, have everywhere given their adherence to the germ theory of disease, we have good reason to believe that it will hold its ground as a theory of the cause—if not of much value as a system of cure—of a great number of the most serious maladies which afflict the races of men and animals.
Medical Systems.
Giovanni Rasori (1762-1837), of Milan, introduced a theory which was a revival of Methodism combined with that of Brunonianism. The Methodists held a status strictus and a status laxus, Brown a sthenic diathesis and an asthenic diathesis.
Rasori taught a combination of these theories modified by his own. His doctrines were accepted by a multitude of learned and eminent medical men, yet his teaching was simply atrocious, and a study of it almost makes one despair of any real advance for the healing art. His system of therapeutics consisted in the endeavour to make a diagnosis of the disease by watching the effects of the remedies which make it better or worse! Bleeding was held to be the best diagnostic means: if it did the patient good, the sthenic diathesis was assumed; if it made him worse, the asthenic was demonstrated.
He administered enormous doses of powerful drugs, such as would be considered nothing less than simply poisonous now. Baas says he gave 1 to 4 grammes of gamboge for diarrhœa, and 60 to 90 grammes of saltpetre a day[1023]—doses which would be large for a horse.
The wonder is that anybody survived the treatment.
Homœopathy, faith-healing, peculiar-people treatment, anything, however heterodox, is better than this licensed system of murder, which actually received the adhesion of famous professors at Italian universities, where the art of medicine was supposed to be taught sixty years ago.
Johann A. Roeschlaub (1768-1835), a highly cultivated German physician, was the founder of a medical system on the “Theory of Excitement.” Life depends upon irritability which belongs to the natural disposition. To be healthy, the body must be in a state of moderate irritation and moderate excitability. Disease disturbs the happy medium upwards as hypersthenia, or downwards as asthenia; in other words, by inducing too much strength or actual debility.
Johann Stieglitz (1767-1840) was an eminent physician who opposed the theory of excitement, saying, “There is no such thing as one only saving system.” He was the founder of Etiological diagnosis (or diagnosis dependent on a knowledge of the causes of disease).
C. W. von Hufeland (1762-1836), professor at Jena, and afterwards in Berlin, opposed the theory of excitement. He used to say, “Successful treatment requires only one-third science and two-thirds savoir faire,” and, “To him who fails to make a religion of the healing art, it is the most cheerless, wearisome, and thankless art upon earth; indeed, in him it must become the greatest frivolity and a sin.”