We have not taken any part in the controversy now raging between the
Allopathists and Homoeopathists; but we think it our duty to point out a
signal benefit which appears to have resulted from it. Allopathy means
simply 'another suffering,' and Homoeopathy 'the same suffering;' from
which the ingenious may conclude, that our regular doctors pretend to
cure diseases by inducing other diseases, and the new school by inducing
symptoms identical with those of the existing disease. But there is
another difference between the schools. The one gives the medicine
boldly by the grain, the other cautiously by the millionth part of a
grain. Both sometimes fail; both sometimes cure. Which is right?
We cannot pretend to answer the question; but in practice we hold with
the regular doctors. We do this because we are used to it. We may be
said to have been born with their silver spoon in our mouths; and we
should be terrified if the ghost of a grain went in instead. We have
done our duty from our youth up by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can
lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that
fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him;
and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling
closer and closer with the Homoeopathists, and meeting them manfully on
their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of
attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same
disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal
system. To that system you owe the fact that you are now at large: if
you had given doses like ours of such medicines, you would have been in
the hands of the turnkey or the mad-doctor long ago. Your cures have
been effected by your giving so little as not to interrupt nature in any
appreciable manner. But we will improve upon your placebos. If an
infinitesimal dose is good, no dose at all is better--and, except in
special cases, _that_ shall henceforward be our system!'
Our readers may think this a jest; but it is actually the point at
which, on the part of the Allopathists, the controversy has arrived. A
very intelligent and intelligible paper by Dr C. Radclyffe Hall, of
Torquay, has appeared in the _Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal_,
in which the subject is treated in a pleasant and profitable way. He is
aware of the difficulty there will be in introducing the new system--of
the surprised stare with which the patient will regard the doctor 'doing
nothing;' and as confidence is an important part of the cure, the rule
cannot be made absolute. 'But as often as it can be adopted it should.
By degrees, the doctrine will work its way, that medical attendants are
required to survey, superintend, and direct disease, to watch lest harm
accrue unnoticed, to employ active remedies when required, or not to
interfere at all, as seems to their own judgment best. Every case of
successful treatment without medicines will assist to indoctrinate the
public with this view. By learning how much nature can do without
medicines, people will be able to perceive more correctly how much
medicines, when they are necessary, can assist nature.'
The following is given as an example of a case of non-interference. 'A
child, above the age of infancy, is chilly, looks dull around its eyes,
has headache, pain in the back, quick pulse, and no appetite. It is not
known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may
prove--anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local
pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous
fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which
this may not be the commencement. _If_, on careful examination, no local
disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special
treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a
warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of food, but not of water,
and wait. When reaction takes place, if there be anything serious, it
shews itself, and we then know what to attend to. Very frequently, the
case is one of mere ephemeral febrile disorder, from exposure to cold;
and in two or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without
having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing?
When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation,
by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The
equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited
the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided
ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as
it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the
stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted
nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations,
and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination
of a prisoner, who does nothing, but whose presence is essential to his
client. If the usual counteracting remedies had been administered, a
disease would have been induced, for which a process of convalescence
would have had to be gone through. If the globules had been given
simultaneously with the hygienic treatment described, Homoeopathy
instead of nature would have had the credit of the cure.
'In all chronic blood-diseases,' says Dr Hall, 'medicines are useful,
but hygienic treatment'--the word is explained by the treatment of the
above case--'must rank the first. In all acute blood-diseases, when mild
and occurring in a previously healthy constitution, as they must run
through a special course, and last for a certain time, cases will
frequently do very well without any medicines. More frequently, a little
medicine occasionally to meet a temporary requirement is serviceable;
but in every case of this kind, however severe, the difficult point of
medical judgment is, rather, when to do nothing, than what to do.
Hygienic treatment is invariably necessary. Acting on the principle of
the accoucheur, that nature is to be carefully watched, but that so long
as she proceeds well, she is to be let alone, we shall meet with few
cases of illness in which we cannot find opportunities to judiciously
dispense with medicines.' Another difficulty in adopting this system
may be found in the doctor's fear, that if he dispenses with medicines,
the patient may dispense with him; but we are of Dr Hall's opinion, that
this is quite illusory. The only difference it will make will be, that
patients will learn to trust more to the judgment of their medical
attendant, and less to the efficacy of his medicines.
Hydropathy proceeds on the hygienic treatment, although doubtless in a
somewhat rough manner. Air, exercise, rubbing, cold water, simple
food--such are its substitutes both for medicines and globules; and we
think the regular doctors might with great advantage take a leaf out of
its book, as well as out of the book of homoeopathy. With this reform,
we would suggest--although with some timidity, for doctors are sensitive
on the point--that a re-examination, on broad scientific principles,
even of common diseases, would do some good. Doctors are too fond of
systems of treatment, which are not made to fit the patient, but which
the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do
remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between
the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of
a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are
administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the
certainty of fate. The patient dies--the patient recovers. What then?
The doctor has done his best--everything has been according to rule!
The following are the rules laid down for practitioners on the new
system:--
'1. Never prescribe medicines when hygiene will do as well and can be
enforced.
'2. Never permit the patient, or those around him, to expect more from
medicines than medicines can perform.
'3. Never prescribe medicines, except avowedly as mere palliatives, when
the period is gone by for them to be of ultimate service.
'4. Never conceal the _general_ intention of the treatment; that is,
whether it be adopted with a view to cure, or only to mitigate the
disease, or merely to alleviate a symptom or symptoms.
'5. Never prescribe medicines more powerful than are necessary; or
continue a powerful medicine longer, or repeat it oftener, than the
disease actually requires.
'6. Never attribute to the medicine-giving part of the management of a
successful case more than its due share of credit.'
We have called this a new system, but a new system is nothing without a
name; and we therefore beg leave to suggest one, made up, like the
others, of a Greek compound. First, we have Allopathy, another
suffering; then Homoeopathy, the same suffering; then Hydropathy,
water-suffering; and now let us have Anapathy, no suffering at all.
APPLICATION OF THE SIRENE TO COUNT THE RATE AT WHICH THE WINGS OF
INSECTS MOVE.
The buzzing and humming noises produced by winged insects are not, as
might be supposed, vocal sounds. They result from sonorous undulations
imparted to the air by the flapping of their wings. This may be rendered
evident by observing, that the noise always ceases when the insect
alights on any object. The sirene has been ingeniously applied for the
purpose of ascertaining the rate at which the wings of such creatures
flap. The instrument being brought into unison with the sound produced
by the insect, indicates, as in the case of any other musical sound, the
rate of vibration. In this way it has been ascertained that the wings of
a gnat flap at the rate of 15,000 times per second. The pitch of the
note produced by this insect in the act of flying is, therefore, more
than two octaves above the highest note of a seven-octave
pianoforte.--_Lardner's Handbook_.