What Is Medicine?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1875

What Is Medicine?

We will first listen to what some of the most able practitioners and professors of medicines say of it:—

“All of our curative agents are poisons.”—PROF. CLARKE, M. D.

“All medicines are poisonous.”—PROF. ST. JOHN, M. D.

The above citations, which we quote from “Water Cure for the Million,” are at once terse and unqualified. We might give many more, similar in character, but these will suffice. Indeed, it does not require the authority of a professor to convince a person of ordinary intelligence that corrosive sublimate, arsenic, strychnia, prussic acid, aconite, and belladonna, are poisons. A person who is well and strong takes by mistake one of these reputed remedies and speedily dies. The suicide finds in that favorite remedy, opium, the ready means of self-destruction. Who can believe that a simple change of hands can convert a deadly poison into a harmless agent? But we will not urge the argument that drugs are dangerous because large doses of them will kill, for it might be said of water that too much of it, improperly applied, would produce the same result. Heat and cold are most excellent remedial agents; and yet an excess of either is rapidly destructive to life. We are opposed to drugs because they are bad in themselves, and in all appreciable quantities. Some substances are poisons on account of excess in quantity, or the modification of circumstances; but a drug is a poison per se. No circumstance, or combination of circumstances, can change its character, although its so-called action may be modified by circumstances. For example, a man who has been poisoned by a rattlesnake may take great quantities of whisky without apparent effect. The latter article seems in this case to be inert, on account of the presence of a more deadly one. Its injurious effects are felt upon the tissues, however, although the brain does not seem to be affected.

But why are drugs poisons? Simply because they are substances which cannot be used in the system, and so require to be expelled. A poison is just the opposite in character to a food. A food is a substance which can be used in the vital economy of the body; a poison is a substance which cannot be used, and which thus interferes with the performance of the organic functions.

Notwithstanding our maintenance of this view of the real character of drug medicines, as remarked in a previous article, we are ready to admit that circumstances may arise which would render their use justifiable. Even in such cases, however, they are poisons still, and are acted upon by the system as such. If a person should suddenly swallow a fatal dose of strychnia, we would not hesitate to give him a dose of mustard, sulphate of zinc, or even blue vitriol, or ipecac, rather than run any risk of delay in securing evacuation of his stomach. If a person should suddenly fall in syncope, we would not object to applying ammonia to the nostrils, if other means were inefficient, or not available.

Again, if an individual was suffering agonizing pain, of such a nature that the usual hygienic remedies, ordinarily so potent, were ineffectual in affording relief, we should regard it as an act of humanity to place him under the influence of a narcotic, if he desired it. After several months’ reflection, we can see no reason why such a course would not be equally justifiable with the use of anaesthetics in surgery; and certainly no one will question the propriety of the latter.

We do not think it wise to denounce, unqualifiedly, the use of drugs, even though they are poisons. In our estimation, it is safer, wiser, and more consistent with reason, to follow the principle of always using the best remedy available, if any whatever is employed. If this rule were followed universally, little damage would result from the use of drugs, for they would be rarely employed. Nature is undoubtedly the best physician, and it is generally admitted that hygienic agents are of all remedies the best.

We will conclude with the following quotations from eminent physicians, which are derived from the same source as those cited at the beginning of this article:—

“Hygiene is of far more value in the treatment of disease than drugs.”—PROF. BARKER.

“The effects of our medicines on the human system are in the highest degree uncertain, except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined.” —JOHN MASON GOOD, M. D.

“Every dose of medicine is a blind experiment on the vitality of the patient.”—DR. BOSTWICK.

“Some patients get well with the aid of medicine, more without it, and still more in spite of it.”—SIR JOHN FORBES, M. D.—Health Reformer.