One day, some two years after the strike, while walking down Washington Street, I met the leader of the second deputation aforementioned. 'I guess I have seen you before,' he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. 'Didn't you work at C——'s? Ah! you were the toughest customer we had; but if we had all done as you did, it would have been better for us.'
THE DOCTOR VERSUS THE MEDICINE.
We have not taken any part in the controversy now raging between the Allopathists and Homœopathists; but we think it our duty to point out a signal benefit which appears to have resulted from it. Allopathy means simply 'another suffering,' and Homœopathy 'the same suffering;' from which the ingenious may conclude, that our regular doctors pretend to cure diseases by inducing other diseases, and the new school by inducing symptoms identical with those of the existing disease. But there is another difference between the schools. The one gives the medicine boldly by the grain, the other cautiously by the millionth part of a grain. Both sometimes fail; both sometimes cure. Which is right?
We cannot pretend to answer the question; but in practice we hold with the regular doctors. We do this because we are used to it. We may be said to have been born with their silver spoon in our mouths; and we should be terrified if the ghost of a grain went in instead. We have done our duty from our youth up by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him; and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling closer and closer with the Homœopathists, and meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal system. To that system you owe the fact that you are now at large: if you had given doses like ours of such medicines, you would have been in the hands of the turnkey or the mad-doctor long ago. Your cures have been effected by your giving so little as not to interrupt nature in any appreciable manner. But we will improve upon your placebos. If an infinitesimal dose is good, no dose at all is better—and, except in special cases, that shall henceforward be our system!'
Our readers may think this a jest; but it is actually the point at which, on the part of the Allopathists, the controversy has arrived. A very intelligent and intelligible paper by Dr C. Radclyffe Hall, of Torquay, has appeared in the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, in which the subject is treated in a pleasant and profitable way. He is aware of the difficulty there will be in introducing the new system—of the surprised stare with which the patient will regard the doctor 'doing nothing;' and as confidence is an important part of the cure, the rule cannot be made absolute. 'But as often as it can be adopted it should. By degrees, the doctrine will work its way, that medical attendants are required to survey, superintend, and direct disease, to watch lest harm accrue unnoticed, to employ active remedies when required, or not to interfere at all, as seems to their own judgment best. Every case of successful treatment without medicines will assist to indoctrinate the public with this view. By learning how much nature can do without medicines, people will be able to perceive more correctly how much medicines, when they are necessary, can assist nature.'
The following is given as an example of a case of non-interference. 'A child, above the age of infancy, is chilly, looks dull around its eyes, has headache, pain in the back, quick pulse, and no appetite. It is not known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may prove—anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which this may not be the commencement. If, on careful examination, no local disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of food, but not of water, and wait. When reaction takes place, if there be anything serious, it shews itself, and we then know what to attend to. Very frequently, the case is one of mere ephemeral febrile disorder, from exposure to cold; and in two or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations, and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination of a prisoner, who does nothing, but whose presence is essential to his client. If the usual counteracting remedies had been administered, a disease would have been induced, for which a process of convalescence would have had to be gone through. If the globules had been given simultaneously with the hygienic treatment described, Homœopathy instead of nature would have had the credit of the cure.
'In all chronic blood-diseases,' says Dr Hall, 'medicines are useful, but hygienic treatment'—the word is explained by the treatment of the above case—'must rank the first. In all acute blood-diseases, when mild and occurring in a previously healthy constitution, as they must run through a special course, and last for a certain time, cases will frequently do very well without any medicines. More frequently, a little medicine occasionally to meet a temporary requirement is serviceable; but in every case of this kind, however severe, the difficult point of medical judgment is, rather, when to do nothing, than what to do. Hygienic treatment is invariably necessary. Acting on the principle of the accoucheur, that nature is to be carefully watched, but that so long as she proceeds well, she is to be let alone, we shall meet with few cases of illness in which we cannot find opportunities to judiciously dispense with medicines.' Another difficulty in adopting this system may be found in the doctor's fear, that if he dispenses with medicines, the patient may dispense with him; but we are of Dr Hall's opinion, that this is quite illusory. The only difference it will make will be, that patients will learn to trust more to the judgment of their medical attendant, and less to the efficacy of his medicines.
Hydropathy proceeds on the hygienic treatment, although doubtless in a somewhat rough manner. Air, exercise, rubbing, cold water, simple food—such are its substitutes both for medicines and globules; and we think the regular doctors might with great advantage take a leaf out of its book, as well as out of the book of homœopathy. With this reform, we would suggest—although with some timidity, for doctors are sensitive on the point—that a re-examination, on broad scientific principles, even of common diseases, would do some good. Doctors are too fond of systems of treatment, which are not made to fit the patient, but which the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the certainty of fate. The patient dies—the patient recovers. What then? The doctor has done his best—everything has been according to rule!