WHY NOT USE SENSE, INSTEAD?
By Editor
We have received a booklet, and a circular letter calling attention to the booklet and its value, hoping that we will accept it. This booklet advertises a patent-medicine—a grand cure—“a perfect remedy for headache arising from the following causes:— “Headache resulting from protracted mental effort and close confinement; nervous headache occasioned by excitement, excessive grief, or other causes; headache due to loss of sleep and rest; headache from indigestion and overindulgence.” From this it is perfectly plain that, if ever there was a medicine invented as a sheer imposition upon the ignorance and thoughtlessness of the people, and to encourage dissipation and injurious practices, this must be the one. For it distinctly identifies certain causes of headache, and then recommends this drug, or whatever it may be, as a cure for the headache produced by these distinctly named causes; when the simplest thing in the world, and the only sensible thing, is for the individual to stop the causes. Imagine the perfect thoughtlessness and the nonsense of taking a drug to cure a “headache resulting from protracted mental effort and close confinement”! All in the world that is needed in that case is for the sufferer to stop his protracted mental effort, and go out into the open air. For headache that is “occasioned by excitement, excessive grief, or other causes,” all that is needed is to stop the excitement, to tone down the grief, and to put away whatever “other causes” there may be. For headache that is “due to loss of sleep and rest,” why should it be thought that anything is needed but to take sleep and rest? And for headache caused by “indigestion,” the thing to do is to eat only what will digest. And for headache from “overindulgence,” the sensible thing would seem to be to stop the overindulgence. Yet this circular is a fair exposition of the present-day ideas of cure—continue causes, and then administer drugs to kill the effects! And, in all reason, what can the end be of such a course, but to kill the person?