Preventable Diseases | Page 6

or of symptoms, of which we can say, "This is
essentially morbid, this is everywhere and at all times disease."
Our attainment of any clear view of the essential nature of disease was
for a long time hindered, and is even still to some degree clogged, by
the standpoint from which we necessarily approached and still
approach it, not for the study of the disease itself, but for the relief of
its urgent symptoms. Disease presents itself as an enemy to attack, in
the concrete form of a patient to be cured; and our best efforts were for
centuries almost wasted in blind, and often irrational, attempts to
remove symptoms in the shortest possible time, with the most powerful
remedies at our disposal, often without any adequate knowledge
whatever of the nature of the underlying condition whose symptoms we
were combating, or any suspicion that these might be nature's means of
relief, or that "haply we should be found to fight against God." There
was sadly too much truth in Voltaire's bitter sneer, "Doctors pour drugs
of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less"; and I
fear the sting has not entirely gone out of it even in this day of grace.
And yet, relative and non-essential as all our definitions now recognize
disease to be, it is far enough (God knows) from being a mere negative
abstraction, a colorless "error by defect." It has a ghastly individuality
and deadly concreteness,--nay, even a vindictive aggressiveness, which
have both fascinated and terrorized the imagination of the race in all
ages. From the days of "the angel of the pestilence" to the coming of
the famine and the fever as unbidden guests into the tent of Minnehaha;

from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness" to the plague that still
"stalks abroad" in even the prosaic columns of our daily press, there has
been an irresistible impression, not merely of the positiveness, but even
of the personality of disease. And no clear appreciation can possibly be
had of our modern and rational conceptions of disease without at least a
statement of the earlier conceptions growing out of this personifying
tendency. Absurd as it may seem now, it was the legitimate ancestor of
modern pathogeny, and still holds well-nigh undisputed sway over the
popular mind, and much more than could be desired over that of the
profession.
The earliest conception of disease of which we have any record is, of
course, the familiar Demon Theory. This is simply a mental
magnification of the painfully personal, and even vindictive,
impression produced upon the mind of the savage by the ravages of
disease. And certainly we of the profession would be the last to blame
him for jumping to such a conclusion. Who that has seen a fellow being
quivering and chattering in the chill-stage of a pernicious malarial
seizure, or tossing and raving in the delirium of fever, or threatening to
rupture his muscles and burst his eyes from their sockets in the
convulsions of tetanus or uræmia, can wonder for a moment that the
impression instinctively arose in the untutored mind of the Ojibwa that
the sufferer was actually in the grasp, and trying to escape from the
clutch, of some malicious but invisible power? And from this
conception the treatment logically followed. The spirits which
possessed the patient, although invisible, were supposed to be of like
passions with ourselves, and to be affected by very similar influences;
hence dances, terrific noises, beatings and shakings of the unfortunate
victim, and the administration of bitter and nauseous messes, with the
hope of disgusting the demon with his quarters, were the chief remedies
resorted to. And while to-day such conceptions and their resultant
methods are simply grounds for laughter, and we should probably
resent the very suggestion that there was any connection whatever
between the Demon Theory and our present practice, yet, unfortunately
for our pride, the latter is not only the direct lineal, historic descendant
of the former, but bears still abundant traces of its lowly origin. It will,
of course, be admitted at once that the ancestors of our profession,

historically, the earliest physicians, were the priest, the Shaman, and
the conjurer, who even to this day in certain tribes bear the suggestive
name of "medicine men." Indeed, this grotesque individual was neither
priest nor physician, but the common ancestor of both, and of the
scientist as well. And, even if the history of this actual ancestry were
unknown, there are scores of curious survivals in the medical practice
of this century, even of to-day, which testify to the powerful influence
of this conception. The extraordinary and disgraceful prevalence of
bleeding scarcely fifty years ago, for instance; the murderous doses of
calomel and other violent purges; the indiscriminate use of powerful
emetics