Dear girls, bye and bye you will be wives and mothers, and will have
occasion to consider the treatment of various diseases. Not that
diseases are inevitable, but we must consider things as they are,
and not as they might be.
The mother, if she be wise, has the selection of the doctor, and the
management of the sick ones. This supervision of the health of the
household falls so naturally into the hands of women, the nursing
and other duties incidental to sickness, are so universally hers,
that even among peoples and tribes where women are but slaves, their
authority in all that concerns the management of the sick is
unquestioned.
En passant it may be remarked that nothing but the blind, stupid
prejudice of men would oppose the introduction of women to the
medical profession.
It is a profession which belongs to them. Nature herself has decreed
it, and when the hard, selfish, overbearing tyranny of men shall
permit things to take their natural course, we shall have very few
men in the medical profession.
But my object in this chapter is to speak of a fundamental
misapprehension underlying the profession of medicine. This
misapprehension is, that diseases are local.
Let me give an illustration or two.
A doctor attempts a case of catarrh. He opens the nostril with his
speculum, turns in a strong light, takes a long, careful look, then
examines, perhaps with a microscope, some of the fluid which the
patient blows out of his nose, and then the doctor says, "Ahem!
ahem! this is a case of sick nose. It is a case of nasal catarrh.
The pituitary membrane is congested, and is secreting a morbid
mucus. Ahem! you really should have called upon me before."
Then the doctor proceeds to inject various stimulating caustic
fluids into the nostrils. He gives a snuff. He introduces a crooked
tube into the man's mouth, and turns the end up back of his palate,
and, getting into the back opening of the nostrils, he blows in
certain medicated powders. The nose is better at once, the treatment
is continued, the patient is soon cured; with the first cold or
stomach derangement the symptoms return, the second cure is more
difficult, the third is very difficult, and then the patient goes to
another doctor, who tells him he is very sorry that he has been so
quacked, but he will make a sure cure this time. He goes through
with the same performance, with similar results. The patient now
abandons hope, and goes snuffling about, to the great discomfort of
himself and friends. In just this way a hundred maladies are
treated,--an inflamed eye, a noise in the ear, a rheumatic knee, a
gouty toe, a pain in the liver or spine, a sore throat, and so on
through the whole list. The doctor finds the sick place, and then
proceeds to attack it.
The idea that the disease is in a certain part of the system, and
that the artillery must be directed to that precise spot, is not
only common among the doctors, but is so plausible that the people
all adopt it. This is the fundamental misapprehension underlying the
disastrous failure in medicine.
The catarrh is not of the nose, but of the man, showing itself in
the nose. The bronchitis is not a disease of the throat, but of the
man, showing itself in the throat. The sore eye is not a disease of
the eye, but of the man, showing itself in the eye.
A local disease is impossible. The organism is one and not many.
Even a gun-shot wound is not a local trouble. Suppose a man's little
finger is shot away. The man is not in the condition of a table with
a corner shot off; he is not even in the condition of a steam engine
with a valve or screw destroyed. Neither approaches the case of the
man with the maimed hand. The table is, except the small point
touched by the bullet, exactly as before. Feel of it. There is no
unusual warmth, no trembling, no sympathy with the wounded corner.
In fact, the table is quite well, thank you, except where it was
hit. Now examine the man with the hurt finger. Look at his face. How
pale and excited. Feel his pulse. It is 120 instead of 75. The skin
of his toes is in a peculiar condition. What is the matter with this
man's toes? They are suffering from a wound in his little finger.
While no doctor fails to talk much of the vis medicatrix naturae,
while the condition of the general system is constantly invoked to
explain this and that, the treatment of most local affections is
conducted on the plan of repairing the wound in the corner of the
table.
Here comes a man with a limping gait. He shows an ulcer upon his
ankle. The disease, sir, is not of your ankle, but of your system. I
will direct you how to improve your general health, so that this
ulcer will disappear, with no other local treatment than
cleanliness. You can't be cured by any doctor stuff put upon the
sore. This is the flag of distress which nature hangs out to give
notice of trouble within.
We are at sea and descry a vessel with a flag of distress. Our
captain believes in the doctrine of local diseases, and sends a
boat's crew to cut down the flag; whereupon he struts about the deck
exclaiming, "We've done it! we've done it! we have cured them!" The
doctor who treats the ulcer, salt rheum, catarrh, or any other local
manifestation, as the disease itself, is about equally bright.
But here comes a bad case. How pale and weak he seems. His pulse is
110, he is distressingly emaciated, and seems ready for the grave.
His cough and labored breathing suggest consumption, and we apply
the stethoscope to the chest. Ah, it's all of a piece. His lungs are
terribly ulcerated. "Now," says some wise doctor, "here it is. We've
found his trouble. We must bring our medicines to bear upon these
ulcers." "Yes, Doctor, that's it," gasps the patient; "just fix me
there, and I shall be all right." Then the wise doctor proceeds with
his inhalations, and keeps up the pitiful, suffocating farce, until
the patient, notwithstanding this most skillful treatment, sinks and
dies.
As a matter of fact, this man's system, from some inherited taint,
or from some vicious habit, unhealthy mode of life, or some other
cause, was sick all through and through for months or years before
the malady was localized in his lungs. The ulcers in his lungs, like
his rapid pulse, emaciation, and sickening perspiration, are simply
manifestations of the disease. The real disease is systemic, like
all others, and must be treated like all other diseases, by lifting
up the general vitality.
This must be done through sunshine, fresh air, exercise,
cleanliness, much sleep, cheerful society, and a wise diet. To give
such a patient medicated vapors, drugs for his stomach, or whiskey,
is a barbarism, that must soon give way before the advancing light
of our civilization.