Preventable Diseases | Page 7

like tartar emetic and ipecac; the universal practice of starving
or "reducing" fevers by a diet of slops, were all obvious survivals of the
expulsion-of-the-demon theory of treatment. Their chief virtue lay in
their violence and repulsiveness. Even to-day the tendency to regard
mere bitterness or distastefulness as a medicinal property in itself has
not entirely died out. This is the chief claim of quassia, gentian,
calumbo, and the "simple bitters" generally, to a place in our official
lists of remedies. Even the great mineral-water fad, which continues to
flourish so vigorously, owed its origin to the superstition that springs
which bubbled or seethed were inhabited by spirits (of which the
"troubling of the waters" in the Pool of Bethesda is a familiar
illustration). The bubble and (in both senses) "infernal" taste gave them
their reputation, the abundant use of pure spring water both internally
and externally works the cure, assisted by the mountain air of the
"Bad," and we sapiently ascribe the credit to the salts. Nine-tenths of
our cells are still submarine organisms, and water is our greatest
panacea.
Then came the great "humoral" or "vital fluid" theory of disease which
ruled during the Middle Ages. According to this, all disease was due to
the undue predominance in the body of one of the four great vital
fluids,--the bile, the blood, the nervous "fluid," and the lymph,--and
must be treated by administering the remedy which will get rid of or
counteract the excess of the particular vital fluid in the system. The
principal traces of this belief are the superstition of the four
"temperaments," the bilious, the sanguine, the nervous, and the
lymphatic, and our pet term "biliousness," so useful in explaining any

obscure condition.
Last of all, in the fullness of time,--and an incredibly late fullness it
was,--under the great pioneer Virchow, who died less than a decade ago,
was developed the great cellular theory, a theory which has done more
to put disease upon a rational basis, to substitute logic for fancy, and
accurate reasoning for wild speculation, than almost any discovery
since the dawn of history. Its keynote simply is, that every disturbance
to which the body is liable can be ultimately traced to some disturbance
or disease of the vital activities of the individual cells of which it is
made up. The body is conceived of as a cell-state or cell-republic,
composed of innumerable plastid citizens, and its government, both in
health and disease, is emphatically a government "of the cells, by the
cells, for the cells." At first these cell-units were regarded simply as
geographic sections, as it were, sub-divisions of the tissues, bearing
much the same relation to the whole body as the bricks of the wall do
to the building, or, from a little broader view, as the Hessians of a given
regiment to the entire army. They were merely the creatures of the
organism as a whole, its servants who lived but to obey its commands
and carry out its purposes, directed in purely arbitrary and despotic
fashion by the lordly brain and nerve-ganglia, which again are directed
by the mind, and that again by a still higher power. In fact, they were
regarded as, so to speak, individuals without personality, mere slaves
and helots under the ganglion-oligarchy which was controlled by the
tyrant mind, and he but the mouthpiece of one of the Olympians. But
time has changed all that, and already the triumphs of democracy have
been as signal in biology as they have been in politics, and far more
rapid. The sturdy little citizen-cells have steadily but surely fought their
way to recognition as the controlling power of the entire body-politic,
have forced the ganglion-oligarchy to admit that they are but delegates,
and even the tyrant mind to concede that he rules by their sufferance
alone. His power is mainly a veto, and even that may be overruled by
the usual two-thirds vote.
In fact, if we dared to presume to criticise this magnificent theory of
disease, we would simply say that it is not "cellular" enough, that it
hardly as yet sufficiently recognizes the individuality, the independence,

the power of initiative, of the single constituent cell. It is still a little too
apt to assume, because a cell has donned a uniform and fallen into line
with thousands of its fellows to form a tissue in most respects of
somewhat lower rank than that originally possessed by it in its free
condition, that it has therefore surrendered all of its rights and become a
mere thing, a lever or a cog in the great machine. Nothing could be
further from the truth, and I firmly believe that our clearest insight into
and firmest grasp upon the problems of pathology will come from a
recognition of the fact that,