“Some testimonials are hard to believe,” said Mrs. Clyde, thankfully accepting the chance to shift the conversation to a less painful phase of the topic. “Old Mrs. Dibble in our church is convinced that she owes her health to Hall’s Catarrh Cure.” Dr. Strong smiled sardonically. “That’s the nostrum which offers one hundred dollars reward for any case it can’t cure; and when a disgusted dupe tried to get the one hundred dollars, they said he hadn’t given their remedy a sufficient trial: he’d taken only twenty-odd bottles. So your friend thinks that a useless mixture of alcohol and iodide of potassium fixed her, does she?”
“Why shouldn’t she? She had a case of catarrh. She took three bottles of the medicine, and her catarrh is all gone.”
“All right. Let’s extend her line of reasoning to some other cases. While old Mr. Barker, around on Halsey Street, was very ill with pneumonia last month, he fell out of bed and broke his arm.”
“In two places,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “I saw him walking up the street yesterday, all trussed up like a chicken.”
“Quite recovered from pneumonia, however. Then there was little Mrs. Bowles: she had typhoid, you remember, and at the height of the fever a strange cat got into the room and frightened her into hysterics.”
“But she got well,” said Mrs. Clyde. “They’re up in the woods now.”
“Exactly. Moral (according to Mrs. Dibble’s experience with Hall’s Catarrh Cure): for pneumonia, try a broken arm; in case of typhoid, set a cat on the patient.”
Mr. Clyde laughed. “I see,” he said. “People get well in spite of these patent medicines, rather than by virtue of them. Post hoc, non propter hoc, as our lawyer friends say.”
“You’ve got it. The human body keeps up a sort of drug-store of its own. As soon as disease fastens on it, it goes to work in a subtle and mysterious way, manufacturing a cure for that disease. If it’s diphtheria, the body produces antitoxin, and we give it more to help it on. If it’s jaundice, it produces a special quality of gastric juices to correct the evil conditions. In the vast majority of attacks, the body drives out the disease by its own efforts; yet, if the patient chances to have been idiot enough to take some quack ‘cure’ the credit goes to that medicine.”
“Or to the doctor, if it’s a doctor’s case,” suggested Grandma Sharpless, with a twinkle of malice.