The Royal Road to Health | Page 8

recommend it as a substitute for quinine. Can any intelligent
person believe that a comparatively harmless tonic, and an intense
poison are perfect equivalents for each other?
It is stated on reliable authority, that during the civil war, hundreds of
sick soldiers implored the nurses to throw away their medicine. They
feared drugs worse than bullets, and not without reason.
It is a curious fact that young physicians prescribe more medicine than
the older ones.
Said the venerable Professor Alexander H. Stevens M.D., of the New
York College of Physicians and Surgeons: "Young practitioners are a
most hopeful class of community. They are sure of success. They start
out in life with twenty remedies for every disease; and after an
experience of thirty years or less they find twenty diseases for every
remedy." And again: "The older physicians grow, the more skeptical
they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed
to trust to the powers of Nature."
The effect of drugging a person, is to lock up the actual causes of the
disease in the system; thus producing permanent and worse diseases. It
is in accordance with common sense that they should be expelled, not
retained. What is known as disease, is nothing more or less than the
struggle of Nature, to cast out impurities, and this remedial effort
should be regulated, and assisted, not obstructed by administering
drugs, which only complicate the situation, by producing more disease.
No man can fight two enemies better than one, and, to give drugs to a
system already struggling to regain its normal condition, is like tying
the hands of a man who is beset by enemies. The truth is, that the real
nature of disease is misapprehended by the popular schools of medicine,
and until broader views obtain a lodgment among them, it is useless to
hope for any alteration or improvement in the antiquated system of
drugging. "Who shall decide, when doctors disagree ?" is an oft Quoted
sentence, and, the following conflicting opinions from prominent

physicians show conclusively how little is actually known of the action
of drugs upon the human system, by those who administer them right
and left.
Says the "United States Dispensatory," "Medicines are those articles
which make sanative impressions on the body." This may be important
if, true. But, per contra, says Professor Martin Paine, M.D., of the New
York University Medical School, in his "Institutes of Medicine":
"Remedial agents are essentially morbific in their operations."
But again says Professor Paine: "Remedial agents operate in the same
manner as do the remote causes of disease." This seems to be a very
distinct announcement that remedies are themselves causes of disease.
And yet again: "In the administration of medicines we cure one disease
by producing another." This is both important and true.
Professor Paine quotes approvingly the famous professional adage, in
good technical Latin,
"Ubi virus, ibi vitus,"
which, being translated, means, "our strongest poisons are our best
remedies."
Says Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the New York College of
Physicians and Surgeons: "All of our curative agents are poisons, and
as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient's vitality."
Says Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., of the same school: "All
medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same
manner as do the poisons that produce disease."
Says Professor St. John, of the New York Medical College : "All
medicines are poisonous."
Says Professor B. R. Peaslee, MD., of the same school: "The
administration of powerful medicines is the most fruitful cause of
derangements of the digestion."

Says Professor H. G. Cox, M.D., of the same school: "The fewer
remedies you employ in any disease, the better for your patients."
Says Professor E. H. Davis, M.D., of the New York Medical College:
"The modus operandi of medicines is still a very obscure subject. We
know that they operate, but exactly how they operate is entirely
unknown."
Says Professor J. W. Carson, M.D., of the New York University
Medical School: "We do not know whether our patients recover
because we give medicines, or because Nature cures them."
Says Professor E. S. Carr, of the same school: "All drugs are more or
less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has
sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician
seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing."
The authors disagree in many things; but all concur in the fact that
medicines produce diseases; that their effects are wholly uncertain, and
that we know nothing whatever of their modus operandi.
But now comes in the testimony of the venerable Professor Joseph M.
Smith, M.D., who says: "Drugs do not cure diseases; disease is always
cured by the vis medicatrix naturae."
And Professor Clark further complicates the