The Royal Road to Health | Page 7

late Professor Win. Tully, M.D., of Yale College, and of the
Vermont Academy of Medicine at Gastleton, Vt., informed his medical
class, that on one occasion the typhoid pneumonia was so fatal in some

places in the valley of the Connecticut River, that the people became
suspicious that the physicians were doing more harm than good; and in
their desperation they actually combined against the doctors and
refused to employ them at all; "after which," said Professor Tully, "no
deaths occurred." And I might add, as an historical incident of some
pertinency in this place, that regular physicians were once banished
from Rome, so fatal did their practice seem, so far as the people could
judge of it.
The great Magendie, of France, who long stood at the very head of
Physiology and Pathology in the French Academy which, by the way,
has claimed to be, and perhaps is, the most learned body of men in the
world performed this experiment. He divided the patients of one of the
large Paris hospitals into three classes. To one he prescribed the
common remedies of the books. To the second he administered only the
common simples of domestic practice. And to the third class he gave
no medicine at all. The result was, those who took less medicine did
better than those who took more, and those who took no medicine did
the best of all.
Magendie also divided his typhoid fever patients into two classes, to
one of whom he prescribed the ordinary remedies, and to the other no
medicines at all, relying wholly on such nursing and such attention to
Hygiene as the vital instincts demanded and common sense suggested.
Of the patients who were treated the usual way, he lost the usual
proportion, about one-fourth. And of those who took no medicine, he
lost none. And what opinion has Magendie left on record of the popular
healing art? He said to his medical class, "Gentlemen, medicine is a
great humbug."
In the face of such damaging testimony from prominent representatives
of the medical profession, it becomes exceedingly difficult to place any
reliance on the drug remedies prescribed by them.
The melancholy truth is, that drug medication has become an integral
part of our domestic economy. At no time in history has the
consumption of drugs even approximated the present rate. Enormous
sums of money are invested in manufacturing and distributing them,

and the physicians of the various schools, being educated to prescribe
them, a mutual bond of interest has grown up between doctor and
druggist, which is not at all surprising. The medical profession, as a
whole is, and ever has been eminently conservative, and this fact, in
connection with its traditional predilection for drugs causes its
members to resolutely set their faces against any remedial process that
runs counter to the theories they imbibed at college. They look askance
at all such things and regard them as dangerous experiments, and assert
that their dignity will not permit them to recognize any irregular
practice, or any form of quackery.
Dignity! When was dignity ever known to save a life? Most humanity
continue to suffer because the medical profession (blindly following in
the rut of custom) fail to see anything superior to the antiquated system
of treating disease by drugging, which many of its ablest members
condemn as unreliable?
It is with all schools of medicine as it is with each individual
practitioner of the healing art the less faith they have in medicine, the
more they have in Hygiene; hence those who prescribe little or no
medicine, are invariably and necessarily more attentive to Hygiene,
which always was, and ever will be, all that there is really good, useful,
or curative in medication. Such physicians are more careful to supply
the vital organism with whatever of air, light, temperature, food, water,
exercise or rest, etc., it needs in its struggle for health, and to remove
all vitiating influences all poisons, impurities, or disturbing influences
of any kind. This is hygienic medication, the natural and rational
method of cure, and the more closely it is examined, the more strongly
it will commend itself to reason.
It is a lamentable fact that the preservation of health is not taught in the
medical schools, neither is it explained in their books, and judging from
general practice not much regard is attached to it in their prescriptions.
But when the inevitable typhoid or malaria appears as an inevitable
consequence of neglected precautions, the physician can drug without
mercy, and, as we contend, on most illogical grounds.
Who imagines for one instant, that quinine is a poison? Who is not

aware that arsenic is a deadly poison? And yet physicians and medical
journals calmly and gravely assert that arsenic is the better article of the
two, and