Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Whoever reads the history of Therapeuticswill find there records of much faithfulwork in many directions—records notinfrequently of hope deferred. He willfind there also a tolerably full account ofhuman credulity, of human weakness andof human cupidity. The same faultymethods of reasoning are followed centuryafter century. Post hoc ergo propterhoc, wrecks as many therapeutists to-dayas it ever did, notwithstanding its fallacieshave been demonstrated so often asto make mention of the subject distressing.It might be expected that half educatedphysicians, without preliminary, scientifictraining, would fall into this error; butwhen some of the brightest men in theprofession—men who have presumablytravelled the paths of logic and inductionall their lives, go the same way, it showspretty plainly what must be the inherentdifficulties of the subject; and that for theproper discussion of therapeutic questions,no caution can be quite great enough andno learning quite profound enough.
The list of dead theories and abandonedremedies grows longer each year, and theexperience of the past is as little heededin the medical as in the financial world.
Acuteness of intellect and extent of educationcan, it seems, no more keep a manstraight in medicine, than they can inreligion or politics. Men, who for yearshave been esteemed well balanced authorsand practitioners, become “a little crazy”on some one therapeutic measure andenthusiastically advocate its employmentin all sorts of unsuitable cases. Goodillustrations of this form of mental activitymay be found in the literature ofhydrotherapy and of electricity.
Thus, it has been stated that every caseof typhoid fever may be made to end inrecovery by the proper use of cold baths;and yet this writer knew in how manyways the disease may kill the patient—someof them almost accidental in theirnature; he knew that perforation has occurredmany days after the disappearanceof pyrexia; he knew that in some fatalcases the temperature never exceeded100°F.
Occasionally such a man after sowingdogmatic statements broad cast for a fewyears becomes insane enough to be confinedin an asylum; sometimes advancingage with its mental deterioration is theevident cause; sometimes these acts arethe work of advertising schemers; butgenerally the explanation is to be foundin that mental substratum which permitsotherwise sane and well educated personsto entertain monstrous opinions concerningthe most ordinary matters.
The best work in Therapeutics is nowcarried on quietly without brass bands orsensational announcements. A few earnestmen in each civilized country are patientlyworking out the physiological action ofdrugs, as a basis for a more rationaltherap