Preventable Diseases | Page 3

contain
opium which, while it relieves the pain and stops the discharge, simply
locks up in the system the very poisons which it was trying to get rid of.
Laxatives, intestinal antiseptics, and bowel irrigations have almost
taken the place of opiates in the treatment of these conditions in
modern medicine. We try to help nature instead of thwarting her.
Supposing that the poison be of more insidious form, a germ or a
ptomaine, for instance, which slips past these outer "firing-out"
defenses of the food-tube and arouses no suspicion of its presence until
it has been partially digested and absorbed into the blood. Again,
resourceful nature is ready with another line of defense. It was for a
long time a puzzle why every drop of the blood containing food and its
products absorbed from the alimentary food-canal had to be carried,
often by a most roundabout course, to and through the liver, before it
could reach any part of the general system. Here was the largest and
most striking organ in the body, and it was as puzzling as it was large.
We knew in some crude way that it "made blood," that it prepared the
food-products for use by the body-cells, and that it secreted the bile;
but this latter secretion had little real digestive value, and the other
changes seemed hardly important enough to demand that every drop of
the blood coming from the food-tube should pass through this
custom-house. Now, however, we know that in addition to its other
actions, the liver is a great poison-sponge or toxin-filter, for straining
out of the blood poisonous or injurious materials absorbed from the

food, and converting them into harmless substances. It is astonishing
what a quantity of these poisons, whether from the food or from germs
swallowed with it, the liver is capable of dealing with--destroying them,
converting them, and acting as an absolute barrier to their passage into
the general system. But sometimes it is overwhelmed by appalling odds;
some of the invaders slip through its lines into the general circulation,
producing headache, backache, fever, and a "dark-brown taste in the
mouth"; and, behold, we are bilious, and proceed to blame the poor
liver. We used to pour in remedies to "stir it up," to "work on it"--which
was about as rational as whipping a horse when he is down, instead of
cutting his harness or taking his load off. Nowadays we stop the supply
of further food-poisons by stopping eating, assist nature in sweeping
out or neutralizing the enemies that are still in the alimentary canal,
flush the body with pure water, put it at rest--and trust the liver.
Biliousness is a sign of an overworked liver. If it wasn't working at all,
we shouldn't be bilious: we should be dead, or in a state of collapse.
Moral: Don't rush for some remedy with which to club into
insensibility every symptom of disease as soon as it puts in an
appearance. Give nature a little chance to show what she intends to do
before attempting to stop her by dosing yourself with some
pain-reliever or colic cure. Don't trust her too blindly, for the best of
things may become bad in extremes, and the body may become so
panic-stricken as to keep on throwing overboard, not merely the
poisons, but its necessary daily food, if the process be allowed to
continue too long.
This is where the doctor comes in. This is the point at which it takes
brains to succeed in the treatment of disease--to decide just how far
nature knows what she is doing, even in her most violent expulsive
methods, and is to be helped; and just when she has lost her head, or
got into a bad habit, and must be thwarted. This much we feel sure of,
and it is one of the keynotes of the attitude of modern medicine, that a
large majority of the symptoms of disease are really nature's attempts to
cure it.
This is admirably shown in our modern treatment of fevers. These we

now know to be due to the infection of the body by more or less
definitely recognized disease-germs or organisms. Fever is a
complicated process, and we are still in the dark upon many points in
regard to it, but we are coming more and more firmly to the conclusion
that most of its symptoms are a part of, or at least incidents in, the fight
of the body against the invading army. The flushed and reddened skin
is due to the pumping of large quantities of blood through its mesh, in
order that the poisons may be got rid of through the perspiration. The
rapid pulse shows the vigor with which the heart is driving the blood
around the body, to have its poisons