Modern Superstition

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 27, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 38.

Modern Superstition.

Milo Hastings says in the San Francisco Examiner of August 31 that one of the modern superstitions is that of drugs. He remarks that the drug superstition originated in the theory that disease was caused by an evil spirit, and vile tasting, repulsive, poisonous medicines were used to drive the spirit out. Adders' tongues and toads' skins were among the early prescriptions. These cruder ideas have largely passed away, but the idea still holds that there is some "It" that will cure the disease. Just recently a patent medicine faker finished a several weeks' course in this town. When he left he had taken about five thousand dollars, it is said, of the people's money, in selling things that had no potency in them whatever in the cure of disease. A century or so ago an enterprising Frenchman sold slightly acidulated Seine River water by the thousands of bottles with very careful directions as to how it should be taken. People thought the medicine a marvel and lauded the maker of the miracle, but after a while the truth crept out. The cures resulting from its supposed efficacy were due to the better methods of living which his rules enforced. The Seine water was what the people were drinking all the time.

Drugs do not cure, and Mr. Hastings quotes the following from Dr. Osler as one among thousands who have similarly expressed themselves:

"For generations the people of the United States have indulged in an orgy of drugging. Between pharmacy in the profession and quack medicines the American body has become saturated ad nauseam, and here, indeed, was a boon even greater than homeopathy. No wonder the American spirit, unquiet in a drug-soaked body, rose with joy at a new evangel. In every country there were dyspeptics and neurasthenics in sufficient numbers to demonstrate the efficacy of the new gospel."