CHAPTER XCIX.

ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY.

A very large amount of testimony, going to show the inefficiency and inutility of medicine, might be presented; but I have limited myself to a selection of some of the more striking and important.

Let me begin with Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia. In a published lecture of his, more than half a century ago, he made the following remark:--

"Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality.... The art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top, and cracked at the foundation."

Magendie, late a distinguished French physician and physiologist, says, as follows:--

"I hesitate not to declare,--no matter how sorely I shall wound our vanity,--that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to treat, to the resources of nature, than to act, as we are frequently compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our conduct, and at the obvious risk of hastening the end of our patient."

Dr. Good, a learned and voluminous British writer, also says:--

"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon; and the effects of our medicines upon the human system, are, in the highest degree, uncertain, except, indeed, that they have already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined."

Professor Clark, of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, in an address of his, recently published, insists, again and again, that medicine never cures, and that it rarely, if ever, so much as _aids_ nature; while he exalts, in an unwonted degree, the remedial effects of every hygienic influence. Let him who longer doubts, read this most remarkable production; and with the more care from the fact that it is a very fair exponent of the doctrines now held at the very fountain-head of medical orthodoxy.

From a work entitled, "Memoirs of James Jackson, Jr.," late of Boston, written by his father, I have extracted the following. It is part of a letter, written from Europe, to his venerable father, the present elder Dr. James Jackson, of Boston.

"But our poor pathology and worse therapeutics--shall we ever get to a solid bottom? Shall we ever have fixed laws? Shall we ever _know_, or, must we always be doomed to _suspect_, to _presume_? Is _perhaps_ to be our qualifying word forever and for aye? Must we forever be obliged to hang our heads when the chemist and natural philosopher ask us for our laws and principles?... If honest, must we not acknowledge that, even in the natural history of disease, there is very much _doubtful_, which is received as _sure_? And in therapeutics, is it better yet, or worse? Have we judged--have we deduced our results, especially in the last science--from _all_, or from a selection of facts?

"Do we know, for example, in how many instances such a treatment fails, for the one time it succeeds? Do we know how large a proportion of cases would get well without any treatment, compared with those that recover under it? Do not imagine, my dear father, that I am becoming a sceptic in medicine. It is, not quite as bad as that. I shall ever believe, _at least_, that the rules of _hygeia_ must be and are useful, and that he only can understand and value them, who has studied pathology. Indeed, I may add that, to a certain extent, I have seen demonstrated the actual benefit of certain modes of treatment in acute diseases. But, is this benefit immense? When life is threatened, do we very often save it? When a disease is destined by _Nature_ to be long, do we very often materially diminish it?"

It is worthy of remark, that the discussions in the pages of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for two or three years past, concerning the treatment of scarlatina, have usually resulted, practically, in favor of the no-medicine system. It clearly appears that the less our reliance on medicine, in this disease, the better. But what shall hinder or prevent our coming to similar results, in the investigation, in time to come, of other diseases?

Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating and drinking,--no matter what the disease,--he should be surprised at a mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should _not_ be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction should finally recover.

I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia, thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave, Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"

Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last destroys it."