p. 20 | The Passing of the Medicine Bottle by L. A. Hansen.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 28, 1915

“The Passing of the Medicine Bottle”

By L. A. Hansen.

UNDER this heading the Ladies' Home Journal of October gives the following paragraphs, which must strike some of our readers as indicating a long stride toward rational therapeutics on the part of others than our own sanitarium supporters:—

“We are certainly making long strides forward when we read such words as these, and they concern us all because they concern our health. And it must be well borne in mind that the writer, Sir William Osler, M. D., is unquestionably the foremost living American physician and the highest authority on drugs in the medical world. He says what follows, in the Encyclopedia Americana:—

“The new school does not feel itself under obligation to give any medicine whatever, while a generation ago not only could few physicians have held their practice unless they did, but few would have thought it safe or scientific.

“Of course there are still many cases where the patient or the patient's friends must be humored by administering medicine, or alleged medicine, where it is not really needed, and indeed often where the buoyancy of mind, which is the real curative agent, can be created only by making him wait hopefully for the expected action of medicine; and some physicians still cannot unlearn their old training.

“But the change is great. The modern treatment of disease relies very greatly on the so-called natural methods, diet and exercise, bathing and massage; in other words, giving the natural forces the fullest scope by easy and thorough nutrition, increased flow of blood, and removal of obstructions to the excretory system or to circulation in the tissues.

“One notable example is typhoid fever. At the outset of the nineteenth century it was treated with “remedies” of the extremest violence—bleeding and blistering, vomiting and purging, antimony and calomel, and other heroic remedies. Now the patient is bathed and nursed and carefully tended, but rarely given medicine.

“This is the result of the remarkable experiments of the Paris and Vienna schools in the action of drugs, which have shaken the stoutest faiths; and partly of the constant and reproachful object lesson of homeopathy. No regular physician would ever admit that the homeopathic “infinitesimals” could do any good as direct curative agents; and yet it was perfectly certain that homeopaths lost no more of their patients than others. There was but one conclusion to draw, that most drugs had no effect whatever on the diseases for which they were administered.”

L. A. HANSEN.