Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The American Therapist.
A MONTHLY RECORD OF MODERN THERAPEUTICS,
WITH PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS RELATING TO THE CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF DRUGS.
Vol. II. NEW YORK, JANUARY 15th, 1894. No. 7.
Original Articles.
NOTES ON RECENT THERAPEUTICS.
By Oscar H. Merrill, M. D.
Whoever reads the history of Therapeutics will find there records of much faithful work in many directions—records not infrequently of hope deferred. He will find there also a tolerably full account of human credulity, of human weakness and of human cupidity. The same faulty methods of reasoning are followed century after century. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, wrecks as many therapeutists to-day as it ever did, notwithstanding its fallacies have been demonstrated so often as to make mention of the subject distressing. It might be expected that half educated physicians, without preliminary, scientific training, would fall into this error; but when some of the brightest men in the profession—men who have presumably travelled the paths of logic and induction all their lives, go the same way, it shows pretty plainly what must be the inherent difficulties of the subject; and that for the proper discussion of therapeutic questions, no caution can be quite great enough and no learning quite profound enough.
The list of dead theories and abandoned remedies grows longer each year, and the experience of the past is as little heeded in the medical as in the financial world.