“Everything is done with a view to cure the disease, without any regard to its cause, and the disease is considered as the infliction of some supernatural being. Therefore, in the progress of the healing art thus far, not a step is taken towards investigating the laws of health and the philosophy of disease.
“Nor, after Medicine had received a more systematic form, did it apply to those researches which were most essential to its success, but, like religion, it became blended with superstitions and absurdities. Hence, the history of Medicine, with very limited exceptions, is a tissue of ignorance and error, and only serves to demonstrate the absence of that knowledge upon which alone an enlightened system of Medicine can be founded, and to show to what extent a noble art can be perverted from its capabilities of good to almost unmixed evil by the ignorance, superstition, and cupidity of men. In modern times, anatomy and surgery have been carried nearly to perfection, and great advance has been made in physiology. The science of human life has been studied with interest and success, but this has been confined to the few, while even in our day, and in the medical profession itself, the general tendency is adverse to the diffusion of scientific knowledge.
“The result is, that men prodigally waste the resources as if the energies of life were inexhaustible; and when they have brought on disease which destroys their comforts, they fly to the physician, not to learn by what violation of the laws of life they have drawn the evil upon themselves, and by what means they can avoid the same; but, considering themselves visited with afflictions which they have in no manner been concerned in causing, they require the physician’s remedies, by which their sufferings may be alleviated. In doing this, the more the practice of the physician conforms to the appetites of the patient, the greater is his popularity and the more generously is he rewarded.
“Everything, therefore, in society tends to confine the practising physician to the department of therapeutics, and make him a mere curer of disease; and the consequence is, that the medical fraternity have little inducement to apply themselves to the study of the science of life, while almost everything, by which men can be corrupted, is presented to induce them to become the mere panderers of human ignorance and folly; and, if they do not sink into the merest empiricism, it is owing to their own moral sensibility rather than to the encouragement they receive to pursue an elevated scientific professional career.
“Thus the natural and acquired habits of man concur to divert his attention from the study of human life, and hence he is left to feel his way to, or gather from what he calls experience, all the conclusions which he embraces. It has been observed that men, in their (so-called) inductive reasonings deceive themselves continually, and think that they are reasoning from facts and experience, when they are only reasoning from a mixture of truth and falsehood. The only end answered by facts so incorrectly apprehended is that of making error more incorrigible. Nothing, indeed, is so hostile to the interests of Truth as facts incorrectly observed. On no subjects are men so liable to misapprehend facts, and mistake the relation between cause and effect, as on that of human life, health, and disease.”
By the opponents of dietetic reform it has been pretended that climate, or individual constitution, must determine the food proper for nations or individuals:—
“We have been told that some enjoy health in warm, and others in cold climates some on one kind of diet, and under one set of circumstances, and some under another; that, therefore, what is best for one is not for another; that what agrees well with one disagrees with another; that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison; that different constitutions require different treatment; and that, consequently, no rules can be laid down adapted to all circumstances which can be made a basis of regimen to all.
“Without taking pains to examine circumstances, people consider the bare fact that some intemperate individuals reach old age evidence that such habits are not unfavourable to life. With the same loose reasoning, people arrive at conclusions equally erroneous in regard to nations. If a tribe, subsisting on vegetable food, is weak, sluggish, and destitute of courage and enterprise, it is concluded that vegetable food is the cause. Yet examination might have shown that causes fully adequate to these effects existed, which not only exonerated the diet, but made it appear that the vegetable diet had a redeeming effect, and was the means by which the nation was saved from a worse condition.
“The fact that individuals have attained a great age in certain habits of living is no evidence that those habits are favourable to longevity. The only use which we can make of cases of extraordinary old age, is to show how the human constitution is capable of sustaining the vital economy, and resisting the causes which induce death.