THE DOCTOR VERSUS THE MEDICINE
We have not taken any part in the controversy now raging between the Allopathists and Homœopathists; but we think it our duty to point out a signal benefit which appears to have resulted from it. Allopathy means simply 'another suffering,' and Homœopathy 'the same suffering;' from which the ingenious may conclude, that our regular doctors pretend to cure diseases by inducing other diseases, and the new school by inducing symptoms identical with those of the existing disease. But there is another difference between the schools. The one gives the medicine boldly by the grain, the other cautiously by the millionth part of a grain. Both sometimes fail; both sometimes cure. Which is right?
We cannot pretend to answer the question; but in practice we hold with the regular doctors. We do this because we are used to it. We may be said to have been born with their silver spoon in our mouths; and we should be terrified if the ghost of a grain went in instead. We have done our duty from our youth up by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him; and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling closer and closer with the Homœopathists, and meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal system. To that system you owe the fact that you are now at large: if you had given doses like ours of such medicines, you would have been in the hands of the turnkey or the mad-doctor long ago. Your cures have been effected by your giving so little as not to interrupt nature in any appreciable manner. But we will improve upon your placebos. If an infinitesimal dose is good, no dose at all is better—and, except in special cases, that shall henceforward be our system!'
Our readers may think this a jest; but it is actually the point at which, on the part of the Allopathists, the controversy has arrived. A very intelligent and intelligible paper by Dr C. Radclyffe Hall, of Torquay, has appeared in the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, in which the subject is treated in a pleasant and profitable way. He is aware of the difficulty there will be in introducing the new system—of the surprised stare with which the patient will regard the doctor 'doing nothing;' and as confidence is an important part of the cure, the rule cannot be made absolute. 'But as often as it can be adopted it should. By degrees, the doctrine will work its way, that medical attendants are required to survey, superintend, and direct disease, to watch lest harm accrue unnoticed, to employ active remedies when required, or not to interfere at all, as seems to their own judgment best. Every case of successful treatment without medicines will assist to indoctrinate the public with this view. By learning how much nature can do without medicines, people will be able to perceive more correctly how much medicines, when they are necessary, can assist nature.'
The following is given as an example of a case of non-interference. 'A child, above the age of infancy, is chilly, looks dull around its eyes, has headache, pain in the back, quick pulse, and no appetite. It is not known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may prove—anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which this may not be the commencement. If, on careful examination, no local disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of food, but not of water, and wait. When reaction takes place, if there be anything serious, it shews itself, and we then know what to attend to. Very frequently, the case is one of mere ephemeral febrile disorder, from exposure to cold; and in two or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations, and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination of a prisoner, who does nothing, but whose presence is essential to his client. If the usual counteracting remedies had been administered, a disease would have been induced, for which a process of convalescence would have had to be gone through. If the globules had been given simultaneously with the hygienic treatment described, Homœopathy instead of nature would have had the credit of the cure.
'In all chronic blood-diseases,' says Dr Hall, 'medicines are useful, but hygienic treatment'—the word is explained by the treatment of the above case—'must rank the first. In all acute blood-diseases, when mild and occurring in a previously healthy constitution, as they must run through a special course, and last for a certain time, cases will frequently do very well without any medicines. More frequently, a little medicine occasionally to meet a temporary requirement is serviceable; but in every case of this kind, however severe, the difficult point of medical judgment is, rather, when to do nothing, than what to do. Hygienic treatment is invariably necessary. Acting on the principle of the accoucheur, that nature is to be carefully watched, but that so long as she proceeds well, she is to be let alone, we shall meet with few cases of illness in which we cannot find opportunities to judiciously dispense with medicines.' Another difficulty in adopting this system may be found in the doctor's fear, that if he dispenses with medicines, the patient may dispense with him; but we are of Dr Hall's opinion, that this is quite illusory. The only difference it will make will be, that patients will learn to trust more to the judgment of their medical attendant, and less to the efficacy of his medicines.
Hydropathy proceeds on the hygienic treatment, although doubtless in a somewhat rough manner. Air, exercise, rubbing, cold water, simple food—such are its substitutes both for medicines and globules; and we think the regular doctors might with great advantage take a leaf out of its book, as well as out of the book of homœopathy. With this reform, we would suggest—although with some timidity, for doctors are sensitive on the point—that a re-examination, on broad scientific principles, even of common diseases, would do some good. Doctors are too fond of systems of treatment, which are not made to fit the patient, but which the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the certainty of fate. The patient dies—the patient recovers. What then? The doctor has done his best—everything has been according to rule!
The following are the rules laid down for practitioners on the new system:—
'1. Never prescribe medicines when hygiene will do as well and can be enforced.
'2. Never permit the patient, or those around him, to expect more from medicines than medicines can perform.
'3. Never prescribe medicines, except avowedly as mere palliatives, when the period is gone by for them to be of ultimate service.
'4. Never conceal the general intention of the treatment; that is, whether it be adopted with a view to cure, or only to mitigate the disease, or merely to alleviate a symptom or symptoms.
'5. Never prescribe medicines more powerful than are necessary; or continue a powerful medicine longer, or repeat it oftener, than the disease actually requires.
'6. Never attribute to the medicine-giving part of the management of a successful case more than its due share of credit.'
We have called this a new system, but a new system is nothing without a name; and we therefore beg leave to suggest one, made up, like the others, of a Greek compound. First, we have Allopathy, another suffering; then Homœopathy, the same suffering; then Hydropathy, water-suffering; and now let us have Anapathy, no suffering at all.
APPLICATION OF THE SIRENE TO COUNT THE RATE AT WHICH THE WINGS OF INSECTS MOVE
The buzzing and humming noises produced by winged insects are not, as might be supposed, vocal sounds. They result from sonorous undulations imparted to the air by the flapping of their wings. This may be rendered evident by observing, that the noise always ceases when the insect alights on any object. The sirene has been ingeniously applied for the purpose of ascertaining the rate at which the wings of such creatures flap. The instrument being brought into unison with the sound produced by the insect, indicates, as in the case of any other musical sound, the rate of vibration. In this way it has been ascertained that the wings of a gnat flap at the rate of 15,000 times per second. The pitch of the note produced by this insect in the act of flying is, therefore, more than two octaves above the highest note of a seven-octave pianoforte.—Lardner's Handbook.
A WELCOME SACRIFICE
BY THE REV. JAMES GILBORNE LYONS, LL.D
Vain is the blood of rare and spotless herds,
Pastured in meads where blue Clitumnus shines;
Vain are sweet gums from lands that Indus girds,
Or diamonds sought in deep Brazilian mines;
Vain are Iberian fruits, and perfumed flowers,
Rich as a Grecian sunset's purest dyes,
If deemed, when worship claims thy holiest hours,
For Him in Heaven fit gift or sacrifice.
The flocks that roam on thrice ten thousand hills,
Each living thing that moves on shore and sea,
The gems and gold which gleam in caves and rills,
Saba's low shrub, and Lebanon's proud tree,
The fragrant tribes that spring on cliff and field,
That flush the stream, or fringe the smooth lake's brim,
Breathe, burn, and bloom, at His high will revealed,
And own with joy their Light and Lord in Him.
Our gains are His, and, laid before the Cross,
These must of our oblations form a part,
But oh! the choicest ores and gems are dross,
If brought without that pearl of price—the heart.
The poorest serf who fears a tyrant's nod,
Whose inmost soul hard bondage racks and wrings—
That toil-worn slave may send unseen to God
An offering far beyond the wealth of kings.
Come thou with breast from pride and passion freed,
Hands which no stain of guilt has ever soiled,
Feet swift and strong for every gentle deed,
Faith, hope, and truth, by sordid crowds unspoiled;
Come with a spirit full of generous love
For all beyond, and all below the skies:—
Make ready thou, for Him who reigns above,
The Christian's gift—A living sacrifice.
'MY TRAVELLING COMPANION.'
An individual, signing himself 'A Protestant Dissenter,' has written to us, to remonstrate against one of the heroines of the tale in No. 424, with the above title, having been consigned by the author to the seclusion of a convent. As the same correspondent protests against the 'Visit to an English Monastery' in No. 413, as something calculated to introduce the wedge of Popery among our readers—the said article having given much offence to our Catholic readers, and terrified all our Protestant readers, but one, into thanking God for their own faith—perhaps it may be thought unnecessary for us to notice such a communication. But this is only one of the reproaches we receive almost daily, from all sides of the religious question. Our correspondents are not satisfied with the well-known fact, that while retaining our own opinions, we wilfully interfere with the opinions of no other man. Each secretly thinks we ought to side with him, and would have us sacrifice to this duty the usefulness of a journal which circulates freely among all denominations of religion, and inculcates the practical part of Christianity wherever it goes. We are tired of such correspondence—and there is the truth. Let it be understood once for all, that ours is no more a religious than it is a political mission. The supposed party tendency of expressions that occur here and there in our papers is the result of mere chance; it may be detected as often on one side as on another; and in no publication but our own does it rouse the acrimony of partisans. We give information connected with monasteries, churches, and conventicles, with equal impartiality; and if this is found otherwise than useful or amusing, it is the fault of those who convert facts into sentiments.
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