"Ah! it is well masked; but I know you too well to allow me to doubt that you suspect what I am referring to."
"Upon my word, I am all in the dark."
"Is there not," said I, "a close analogy between the condition of men in reference to the health of their bodies and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore it, and the health of their souls and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore that? Has not God placed them in precisely the same difficulty and perplexity in both cases,—nay, as I think, in greater in relation to medicine,—and yet is not man most willing and eager to apply to its most problematic aid, imparted even by the most ignorant practitioners, rather than be without it altogether? The possession which man holds most valuable in this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any other world,—LIFE itself,—is at stake; it is subjected to a science, or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion, —whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much stress; in which even the wisest and most cautious practitioners confess that their art is at best only a species of guessing; while the patient can no more judge of the remedies he consents, with so much faith, to swallow on the knowledge of him who prescribes them, than he can of the perturbations of Jupiter's satellites. Yet the moment he is sick, away he goes to this dubious oracle, and trusts it with a most instructive faith and docility, as if it were infallible. All his doubts are mastered in an instant. I strongly suspect yours would be. Ought you not in consistency to refuse to act at all in such deplorable deficiency of evidence?"
"Well," said he, "consistent or inconsistent, it must be admitted that the parallel is very complete,—and amusing." And he then went on, as he was apt to do, when an analogy struck his fancy. "Let me see,—yes, our unlucky race is condemned to put its most valued possession on the hazard of a wise choice, without any of the essential qualifications for wisely making it; a man cannot at all tell whether his particular priest in medicine understands and can skilfully apply even his own theory. Yes," he went on, "and I think (as you say) we might find, not only in the partisans of different systems of physic, the representatives of the various priesthoods, but in their too credulous—or shall we say, too faithful patients? —the representatives of all sects. There is, for example, the superstitious vulgar in medicine,—the gross worshipper of the Fetish, who believes in the efficacy of charm, and spell, and incantation, of mere ceremonial and opus operatum; then there is the polytheist, who will adore any thing in the shape of a drug, and who is continually quacking himself with some nostrum or other from morning to night; who not only takes his regular physician's prescriptions, but has his household gods of empirical remedies, to which he applies with equal devotion. Then there is the Romanist in medicine, who swears by the infallibility of some papal Abernethy, and the unfailing efficacy of some viaticum of a blue pill."
"And who," said I, "would represent our friend who has just left the room, and who has tried every thing?"
"Why," he replied, "I think he is in the condition of a little boy of whom I heard a little while ago, whose mother was a homoeopathist, and kept a little chest, from which she dispensed to her family and friends, perhaps as skilfully as the doctor himself could have done. The little fellow, going into her dressing-room, opened this box, and, thinking that he had fallen on a score of 'millions' (as children call them), swallowed up his mother's whole doctor's shop before he could be stopped. It was happy, said the doctor, when called in, that the little patient had swallowed so many, or he would have been infallibly killed. Or perhaps we may liken our friend to that humorous traveller, Mr. Stephens, who tells us, that, having been provided at Cairo, by a skilful physician there, with a number of remedies for some serious complaint to which he was subject, found, to his dismay, when suffering under a severe paroxysm in the fortress of Akaba, that he had lost the directions which told him in what order the medicines were to be taken. Whether pill, powder, or draught was to come first, he knew not: 'on which,' says he, 'in a fit of desperation, I placed them all in a row before me, and resolved to swallow them all serialim till I obtained relief.' George has equal faith."
"You have omitted," said I, "one character,—that of the sceptic, who believes in no medicine at all; who sturdily dies with his doubts unresolved, and unattended by any physician. But it must be confessed that he is a still rarer character than the sceptic in religion. Nature, my dear Harrington, everywhere decides against you."
"I acknowledge," he said, "that we are but a scanty flock in any department of life; but, upon my word, the parallel you have suggested is so striking, that I think I must in consistency, extend my scepticism to physic at least, and, if I am ill, refrain from availing myself of so uncertain an art, practised by such uncertain hands and which are to be selected by one who cannot even guess whether they are ignorant or skilful;—doctors, who may perhaps, as Voltaire said, put drugs of which they know nothing into bodies of which they know still less."
"Act upon that resolution, Harrington," said I, "and you will at least be consistent: but, depend upon it, nature will confute you."
"Why," said he, jestingly, "perhaps in the case of medicine, at all events, I might face the consequences of scepticism'. I remember reading, in some account of Madagascar, that the natives are absolutely without the healing art; 'and yet,' says the author, with grave surprise, 'it is not observed that the number of deaths is increased.' Perhaps, thought I, that is the cause of it."