THE MEANING OF DISEASE SYMPTOMS.
By David Paulson, M.D.
An illustration or two may be cited to show that the symptoms of disease are friendly, and that the thing to fight is the cause of the disease rather than the disease itself. Let us take fever, for an example. For hundreds of years it had been supposed that the thing to do in fever cases was to reduce the temperature of the patient at any cost, and by any means whatsoever; and when, by the use of some drug, the temperature of the patient was brought down from 103 degrees to 99 degrees, it was thought that a very wise and a very wonderful thing had been accomplished. During the last few years it has been discovered that this is not the thing to do in fever cases. Dr. Hare, an eminent American investigator, and others who have made a study of this subject, have found out that the blood has greater antiseptic power at a temperature of 103 degrees than when at 99 degrees to 100 degrees. Dr. Hare experimented on guinea-pigs. He took some blood serum, inoculated it with fever germs, and injected it into the pigs, and by this means produced an artificial fever, the temperature promptly going up from 99 degrees to 104 degrees, and in some cases higher, just as it would in a man. Then he reduced this fever by administering some drug,—one of the products of coal-tar, which always tends to bring down the temperature,—and this quickly brought the temperature to 99 degrees or 100 degrees. He tried this experiment upon some of the guinea-pigs, and with others he let the fever run its natural course. The guinea-pigs in which the fever had been artificially reduced, died; the others lived. We are not to conclude from this that there is nothing to do in fever, but our treatment must be of such a nature as to remove the cause of the disease, and then the disease will disappear; we want to take away the fuel, and then the fire will go out. There are other things that nature does for the fever patient, one of which is the taking away of the appetite; the mouth is dry, and the stomach is equally dry. Nature seems to have "gone on a strike;" she refuses to produce gastric juice and support digestion, and at the same time fight the fever, so she does a wise thing by taking away the appetite, and thus saves a little recuperative energy in that direction. But the neighbors come in with something which they think the patient can eat, and say, "Here are some preserves for poor Johnie, which I made myself, last winter." Perhaps nearly all of it is sugar; it is ready to ferment, and is full of germs, but "poor Johnie" takes it, and his mother says, "I am so glad that he is able to take a little nourishment!" Nature takes away the appetite for a good purpose, but at the same time makes the patient extremely thirsty. There are plenty of gray-haired men who remember the time when the fever-patient was refused water; they were given nothing but beef tea and brandy. I recall hearing my father tell that water was never allowed in fever cases, but that they were given a little brandy and beef tea, beef tea being simply the wash water which is left after soaking the beef, and containing therefore the poisons and waste matter of the beef. So in giving this beef tea they were giving just the things in which germs would flourish, and thus adding a little more fuel to the flame. Nature made the man thirsty, for a good purpose. Nature has something to do besides digesting food; she economizes her energy for curative purposes; but water does not have to be digested; it soaks through, as it were, the membranes, and washes out the ptomains and various poisons which really cause the trouble. I remember a case of this kind in which the patient was not allowed any water; one night the patient, in his delirium, got up while his nurse was sleeping and went to the well, and, with the old-fashioned windlass, drew a bucket of water and drank nearly half a gallon. It was predicted that he would die, but he recovered, because by drinking an abundance of water he was really given an additional chance to live. Physicians now let a fever patient have all the water he wishes to drink. There is practically no disease in which the use of water would be injurious. Another thing that nature does for the fever patient: she causes his skin to become warm and to sweat so as to carry off in this way some of the accumulated waste matters and poisons. It is the best thing that could be done under the circumstances, and the thing for us to do is to co-operate with nature by bathing and stimulating the skin so as to encourage it to eliminate more of these poisons and waste matters. You know we sometimes hear it said of a fever patient, "Don't let a drop of water touch him; if you do, he will catch cold and die." We often see cases of fever in children where bathing has been a terror to their parents, especially to the mothers, who have been educated in this manner, and they will say: "What! going to give my boy a bath! Don't you think it will kill him?" Such a patient might jump into a snow-bank briefly without any definite injury, because his high temperature would protect him; there is no chance for him to be seriously chilled while his temperature is up to 103 degrees to 105 degrees. So you need not be afraid of brief cold sponging, etc., in fever cases. It was the old style of medical practise to avoid the use of water in fevers, and there are some traces of the old style of treatment still remaining; but the best men in the profession stand for the principle of encouraging nature, by the use of water and all other rational measures, so that the patient may be safely towed into the harbor of health. Again, nature makes the fever patient breathe fast, so as to throw off as much poison and waste matters as possible through the lungs. They are the most important eliminating organ in the body. If a person did not breathe for a few moments, his face would become blue, and he would soon die, because of the large quantity of poisons and waste matters which would accumulate in the system. It used to be said that the windows of the sick-room must never be opened, for, if they were, the patient might catch cold and die; no matter what the disease was, they must be kept closed, and, in addition, screens were often put around the bed of the patient, so that but little air could reach him. The fact should also be mentioned that nature makes the heart of the fever patient pump fast, so as to exchange the blood rapidly and bring it to the lungs and kidneys and other organs as quickly as possible, and assist in saving the man. The old-time doctor used to say of such a case, "The pulse is too fast; we must bring it down." And so they did bring it down, just as the highwayman's club brings down the man who is opposing him. But we are now living in a better day. In second-hand bookstores works can be found which teach these old-fashioned theories. Yet we are told of the superior health of the people of those early days; it is true that there was less degeneracy and sickness in those days than at present, but that was because there was more vital power in the human system, by which it was able to cope with these things, than there is to-day. To sum up, then, the proper principles to keep in mind in treating a fever patient is to keep the skin in the best possible condition for the elimination of poisons; give the patient plenty of pure water, instead of giving him morphine or some drug to bring down his temperature arbitrarily, and which tends to put his stomach and skin in such a condition that they can not perform their functions. We should do everything possible that will encourage normal digestion, by the use of fruits and other things not difficult to digest, and which will, at the same time, stimulate the production of the digestive fluids and the activity of the bowels. By these methods it is not difficult to treat the fever patient, because nature heals him when the obstructions are removed. It is not such a desperate thing to treat many of the ordinary diseases, if we only get hold of a few fundamental principles; nature works along simple lines in disease, as well as in everything else. When you come to examine the facts and principles which govern the proper treatment of disease, you will find the same simplicity as in the principles of spiritual health when they are understood.