Medical Essays | Page 7

which were then often given needlessly and in excess, as then used "could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." This was too bad. The sentence was misquoted, quoted without its qualifying conditions, and frightened some of my worthy professional brethren as much as if I had told them to throw all physic to the dogs. But for the epigrammatic sting the sentiment would have been unnoticed as a harmless overstatement at the very worst.
Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the English "general practitioner" of making his profit out of the pills and potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him, he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that his drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable to him. This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was doubtless the source in some measure of the errors I combated.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.
This Essay was read before a small Association called "The Society for Medical Improvement," and published in a Medical Journal which lasted but a single year. It naturally attracted less attention than it would have done if published in such a periodical as the "American Journal of Medical Sciences." Still it had its effect, as I have every reason to believe. I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of "Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence," and laying down rules for taking the necessary precautions against it. The case has long been decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote two of the most celebrated professors of Obstetrics in this country opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and position.
This paper was written in a great heat and with passionate indignation. If I touched it at all I might trim its rhetorical exuberance, but I prefer to leave it all its original strength of expression. I could not, if I had tried, have disguised the feelings with which I regarded the attempt to put out of sight the frightful facts which I brought forward and the necessary conclusions to which they led. Of course the whole matter has been looked at in a new point of view since the microbe as a vehicle of contagion has been brought into light, and explained the mechanism of that which was plain enough as a fact to all who were not blind or who did not shut their eyes.
O. W. H.
BEVERLY Farms, Mass., August 3, 1891

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS [Two lectures delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1842.]
[When a physician attempts to convince a person, who has fallen into the Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these Lectures is to show, by abundant facts, that such statements, made by persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility of a method of practice.
Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures. Whether or not those who countenance Homoeopathy are guilty of this injustice towards others, the second of these Lectures may afford them some means of determining.
To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up the so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to regulate the circumstances which influence the human body in health and disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary practitioners.
To deny that some patients may have been actually benefited