DELUSIONS AS TO THE CURATIVE VALUE OF DRUGS.

Medicines that are sure cures for all the diseases to which humanity is heir, are not the spurious discoveries of the quacksalver and patent-medicine vender alone, but some very intelligent persons believe that if there is not a panacea, there is at least a remedy, for every disease. In cases where the patient does not recover, they believe that either the disease was not thoroughly understood or the medicines which were given were not properly selected.

This is a great error, because there is no such thing as a specific or infallible remedy for any disease, and, on the other hand, it is quite possible that most patients, with proper nursing and diet, would naturally recover without any drugs or medicines whatever. Outside of those drugs, like ether, chloroform, opium, or morphine, that are employed for the purpose of deadening the sensibility of the nerves, so as to render them insensible to pain, there is not another drug that is absolutely sure and true in its medical effects. Some few are very useful at times, but the great bulk of medicines do much more harm than good.

Medicine in its broad sense means a knowledge of the cause, course, treatment and ultimate results of disease. The study of medicine cannot be circumscribed by dogma or theory, nor can it be mastered in a few short years of study at the very best medical schools. It requires a mind adapted by nature for a plodding investigation of her laws, and incessant application, long after the college curriculum is ended. In fact, the student must unlearn much of the stereotyped lessons of the text-books, and this is particularly true of the supposed medicinal effects of drugs, which are always exaggerated. When physicians really have a threatening case, under their observation and care, the attributed therapeutic action of drugs is nearly always disappointing, and very often injurious, and they are forced to let the drugging entirely alone, and bring their skill to bear on measures which support the strength and vitality of the system, so that nature can effect a cure in her own way. This may seem to some simple doctoring, but I can assure the reader that it requires the highest degree of medical skill, notwithstanding the droll sarcasm of Voltaire, that “medical science is the art of amusing the patient while nature performs the cure.” There is neither skill nor much learning required to give an ordinary prescription; that the average apothecary could do with the greatest exactness. But science and medical skill can be exhausted in managing and husbanding the resources of nature, in order to effect a cure.

Medicine no longer stands alone as a simple art, based on theoretical deductions, as it was less than a hundred years ago, but it has become a department of natural science, a part of the natural history of the human race.

Disease is as much a vital process as health, only in one case the vital function is perverted, or destructive, while in health it is constructive. The germ theory of disease and cellular pathology are clearly within the domain of biological research, while chemistry has solved many physiological processes. Mental philosophy has been no less serviceable in the department of medicine, by teaching the wonderful influence of thought and emotions on the physiological functions of the organs.

A one-sided education is inadequate to appreciate the subject of healing or teaching. A comprehensive knowledge of all that bears on the subject of health and disease has several important objects in view, namely, it thoroughly acquaints the doctor with all of nature’s resources for the amelioration or cure of disease; and it gives him judgment in all cases to avoid irreparably wrong treatment, which places obstacles in the road of nature’s efforts to heal spontaneously. The quack or professional imbecile will, in the ordinary course of diseases, be accredited with remarkable cures; in fact, the cures wrought by a quack or an ignorant person are just as welcome and valuable to the patient interested as if they were accomplished under the advice of the most erudite and skillful physician, but the invalid ran the chances of malpractice or bad treatment at the hands of the quack, which might have cost him his life, because the incompetent healer does not know when his method of treatment does mischief. Every method of cure may possess merits of its own, which are beneficial when the disease or conditions for its employment are present, whether this is mind cure, water cure, or anything else that you may name. All that any system of treatment can do is simply to stimulate the curative force of nature, which is the only first cause of any cure.

The reparative energy of nature has never been duly recognized, because the selfishness and pride of the doctors will not concede this as often as they ought. The doctor should be the most useful as a monitor to the sick, in guiding and controlling thought and conduct, in harmony with the curative energy of nature. From this point of view the pretensions of anyone effecting this or that cure are only a delusion, because the doctor effects nothing, he only assists, guides, and directs towards effecting a cure. What this curative force is has by no means been understood. Some believe it identical with life or vital action, which manifests itself only in organized substances, but even if we admit this identity, we are balked again, because we do not really know what life is, any more than we know what electricity is. Descartes resolved life into matter and motion; this, however, is rather the phenomena of life and gives us no idea of the real essence of the force that we call life. There is another theory, that all life whenever or wherever found is a spiritual force, ethereal and universal. For our purpose, the discussion of this question has no particular value, were it not for the fact that life, or vital activity, wherever we find it in organized substances, whether in the lowest living thing or in the highest type of physical development, is accompanied by or is endowed with the natural tendency to repair defects or injuries in that in which it is active.

Regeneration, or the curative process of nature, is always the handmaid of vital activity. It is present at the earliest formation and division of a cell, which constitutes the unit of all organisms. Just as one brick is laid on the other with mortar or cement between them, so as to make a whole wall of a building, so are our bodies built up of minute cells, one added to the other, with cement between them, until the entire structure is completed. There is no tissue of the living body which was not at one time during its existence a cell. This curative force is beautifully illustrated in the lower animals, where parts of organs are replaced to a far greater extent than among warm-blooded animals.

Professor L. Landois, in his work on “Human Physiology,” says that “when a hydra is divided into two parts, each part forms a new individual—nay, if the body of the animal be divided into several parts in a particular way, each part gives rise to a new individual. The planarians also show a great capacity for producing lost parts. Spiders and crabs can reproduce lost feelers, limbs, and claws; snails, part of the head, feelers, and eyes, provided the central nervous system is not injured. Many fishes reproduce fins, even the tail fin. Salamanders and lizards can produce an entire tail, including bones, muscles, and even the posterior part of the spinal cord, while the triton reproduces an amputated limb, the lower jaw, and an eye. This reproduction requires that a small stump be left, while total extirpation of the parts prevents reproduction. In amphibians and reptiles the regeneration of organs and tissues, as a whole, takes place after the type of embryonic development, which is by cell division, and the same is true as regards the histological processes which occur in the regenerated tail and other parts of the body of the earth worm.” Comparative pathological anatomy clearly demonstrates the inherent curative power of nature, and this is also apparent in the vegetable kingdom, and together they deliver a lecture on the “art of healing” from the stage of creation, in silent and modest language, but eloquently instructive to the thoughtful observer.

The question now naturally arises How far this curative energy of nature operates in warm-blooded animals, and especially in man? The answer must be that, while it falls short of reproducing parts of organs or even tissues in the same degree of perfection as in the lower orders, the innate tendency towards regeneration and recovery from injury and disease is, on certain lines, practically the same. There is not the slightest doubt that ninety per cent. of all cures, whether the invalid took this, that, or the other medicine, or whether the method of treatment was homeopathic, allopathic, or mind cure, are entirely due to this inherent curative energy; and the other ten per cent. may have required some active remedy, but this, too, alone, without nature’s healing force, would have been ineffectual.

What is ordinarily termed mind cure is not mind cure in the sense that the term implies, but it is simply the mind toying or playing with the idea of a cure, for while the mind is thus engaged, nature’s energy is accomplishing the result or cure. This is the only rational explanation, and corresponds with the cures that nature is continually making in the lower orders of animals. If the recovery of the sick depended entirely upon the caprice and wisdom of the doctor, and not on the reparative forces of nature, the race would soon die out. I fully recognize the fact that the curative force can be stimulated; this may be done through the influence of nourishing food, alcoholic stimulants, a drug or medicine, or through purely mental influences. No physician can estimate how much merit he can accredit to the methods or substances he employs in any particular case that recovers, and how much to the lady physician, Dame Nature. This old lady doctor is ever active, and the most inert drugs, employed or administered with her assistance, have achieved wonderful cures; this the history of medicine confirms. The tar water cure of Bishop Berkeley is an illustration how an inert substance is capable of making for itself an enviable reputation for curing ailments, like pleurisy, pneumonia, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, hypochondria, and other diseases. This remedy had the vehement indorsement of one of the greatest metaphysicians of the English-speaking world, and that the cures reported by him were genuine no one will doubt for a moment; but the bishop, like many of our day, was determined to have a remedy to cure disease, where none was required, but the mind had to be humored, while nature was actively repairing the disorder. To-day almost everyone is satisfied, that the virtues ascribed to tar water by Berkeley were a delusion, which was shared by all those who believed as he did.

The Weapon Ointment affords another instance where the credulity of the public was supported by abundant facts to prove the efficacy of the remedy, yet it was based on the wildest superstition. This ointment was employed for the healing of wounds, but instead of being applied to them, the weapon with which the wound was inflicted was carefully anointed and hung up in a corner, and the wound was washed and bandaged without the salve being allowed to touch it. This ointment created such a furor that eminent medical men indorsed its virtues as a healing agent. Another example of superstition and charlatanry was the equally famous Sympathetic Powder, which, when applied to the blood-stained garments of wounded persons, cured their injuries even when miles away. That dukes and knights vied with each other to obtain the secret of its preparation and ingredients is a matter of history. Instances of delusions on medical subjects could be multiplied a thousand fold, but they prove nothing but ignorance and superstition on the one side, and the inherent all-powerful curative force of nature on the other. While I wish to avoid wounding the fastidious and sensitive in the matter of their faith in their cherished system of cure, I cannot refrain from classing homeopathy as a similar delusion.

I am glad to admit at the outset that I have read Hahnemann’s “Organon of the Art of Healing” with a great deal of interest and some profit. I am convinced that his theory of infinitesimal dilutions is as absurd and ridiculous as either the Weapon Ointment or the Sympathetic Powder treatment already referred to.

If we consider the harsh, or, preferably-termed, heroic treatments, then in vogue, we need not be surprised that the pendulum of medication should have swung in the opposite extreme. Blood was drawn from the already enfeebled body, emaciated by disease; emetics were administered to sensitive and inflamed stomachs, and only aggravated into greater disorder; blisters, or the burning moxa, scorched into greater agony the suffering mortal, while large doses of drastic cathartics depleted the waning forces of nature. There was a tendency of the medical profession about that time to entirely ignore the curative forces of nature, and to attack disease as you would a midnight marauder, with the most powerful and dangerous weapons at command; and there is no doubt that with these powerful expedients, disease was destroyed, but life also. Under these conditions Hahnemann appeared on the scene, and I am frank to admit that he rendered suffering humanity invaluable service by espousing a system of cure which had the merit of being harmless. If we take into account that physiological studies were then in their infancy, and that the word “Biologie,” from the Greek words which signify a discourse upon life and living things, was made use of for the first time by Lamarck, in a work published in 1801, it will not seem altogether strange that even learned men were mystified into beliefs which, in the light of our present knowledge of the subject, appear preposterous. This was a most opportune time to fasten on the healing art any doctrine or dogma, however absurd, and on this tide of ignorance and superstition, the doctrine of infinitesimal dilutions floated into popularity. Homeopathy affords us one of the most striking illustrations of the uselessness of drugs in ordinary ailments, and conclusively proves that nature possesses inherent curative powers. Cases treated under this system make splendid recoveries, and often much better than when the powers of nature are opposed or weakened with nauseating drugs and poisonous doses, prescribed by incompetent persons.

Hahnemann truthfully observed that existing diseases are liable to become aggravated, complicated or replaced by drug diseases.

There is no doubt of the truth of this statement where drugs are heedlessly administered. When I was a student I was told that calomel was par excellence a babies’ medicine without any qualification. I was credulous enough to believe it and prescribed it for my own children for its purgative effect whenever it was deemed necessary. In later childhood, when the second dentition set in, the germs of the permanent teeth were so injured, evidently from the calomel that had been absorbed into the system, that the teeth were ragged and defective. The glands of the neck were also inclined to swell and suppurate, and there is no doubt in my mind that a great deal of what is generally supposed to be scrofula in young children, is nothing more nor less than a “drug disease.” I believe that Hahnemann was cognizant of the potency of nature under ordinary circumstances to cure disease. I believe that he absorbed this view of the philosophy of healing from the writings of Paracelsus, which he had studied, and from which he drew his inspiration, but he also appreciated the practical necessity that success depended on satisfying the superstitious belief of the times, and that consisted in offering some tangible remedy. Hahnemann proved himself equal to the emergency by formulating his doctrine of potentizing drugs or medicinal substances by reducing them to a wonderful degree of minuteness.

The preparation of these dilutions was directed to be carried out in a ceremonial sort of way. Chalk from an oyster shell, sulphur, charcoal, or any other substance, was potentized by taking one grain of the drug and mixing it with one hundred grains of sugar of milk. Of this mixture one grain was taken and mixed in the same manner with another hundred grains sugar of milk. This gave the ten-thousandth of a grain of the drug. Take one grain of this with another hundred grains of sugar of milk and the powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the substance, or the first potency, which forms the bases of other dilutions. This is reducing the doses of any drug to an absurdity, and Hahnemann was too brilliant a mind not to know this. It might be mentioned in connection with these dilutions, that if one grain of the most powerful drug, strychnine, aconitin, arsenic, or any other chemical that is known, is mixed with six hundred grains of sugar of milk, one grain of this powder, or the one six-hundredth of a grain of this substance, cannot be detected by any test or chemical reagent; or, in other words, the quantity of the drug or chemical contained is so small that the most delicate chemical test fails to show it; yet, in homeopathy, the dilutions are carried to the decillionth of a grain, from which important medical effects are expected.

Drugs are physical agents, and if they are diluted so as to destroy their chemical or physical properties, it is sheer nonsense to expect any physical result from them on the system. Chemical and physical facts conclusively prove the utter inertness of certain drugs either in themselves or in the manner in which they are employed, and the indisputable evidence of biological science demonstrates the natural curative tendency of nature observable in the lowest living thing to the highest, so that we should stultify our reason were we to arrive at any other conclusion than that the doctrine of this therapeutic creed is one of the most irrational delusions that ever befogged the mental horizon of a thinking being.

The supposed cures effected through the employment of the Weapon Ointment, the Sympathetic Powders, the endless dilutions of the Hahnemann system, and, indeed, most other remedial agents from any school or source, whether offensive powders, mixtures, or patent medicines, or the more agreeable and tasteless pellets, have but one role to play, that is, to assuage the apprehensions of the mind while nature is performing the cure; that is, to engage the mind with the thought or idea that something tangible is being done to bring about a certain result.

If the patient has pinned his faith to the curative value of mind alone, the mind is for the time being engaged with idea that mind is performing the cure. This is a delusion quite similar to the previous one, in which medicines are taken, with only this difference, that while you pin your faith on drugs in the one case, you pin it to mind cure in the other.