The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is, therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning than at first appears.
What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there is a belief,—a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,—among our scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with? Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to such a point,—with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of which we sometimes hear,—without the possibility of ever reaching it?
It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency, everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance or credulity of the community.
The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does not alter the plain matter of fact.
Thus Dr. S——, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his assures me that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually practice on themselves and their families.
What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the providence of God are forced upon them, that in the general management of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines are needful?
There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a general rule, includes it. And an entire change from the latter to the former, is, perhaps, too great to be expected immediately. Yet, in the progress of society towards a more perfect millennial state of things, must it not come?