_Poultices and the Doctrine of Signatures_.--There was a general

impression in the past that the indication of the ailment for which

substances are medically useful has been set on them by nature, either

through the color, or the form of the plant, or other qualities. In

general, the law of similars is supposed to hold in the doctrine of

signatures--like cures like. Hence the cornmeal poultice for light

jaundice, the flax-seed meal poultice for darker jaundiced conditions

and for tendencies to gangrene. The charcoal poultice was employed for

this same purpose with no better reason, though some of its efficacy

may have been due to oxygen present in the pores of the charcoal. I

have already spoken of the appeal to the patient's mind in the use of

the cranberry for erysipelas, and various other berries were used in

like manner on the doctrine of signatures.

_Deterrent Materials and Suggestion_.--Another basic principle in the

making of poultices was the use of deterrent, repulsive materials,

because these were more effective on the patient's mind. All the

ordures were so employed. Goose and chicken excrement was supposed to

be particularly efficacious for many of the purposes for which we now

use iodine. It was applied over sprains and bruises on the unbroken

skin. Cow-dung was employed as a poultice for sprains of the larger

joints, especially on the feet and legs, but to be efficacious it had

to be applied fresh. I have known, within twenty years, of physicians

in two so supposedly cultured parts of the country as Pennsylvania and

Maryland, to employ such ordure poultices for the cure of sprains and

dislocations, and these physicians had a great reputation among the

people of their countryside. They were known especially as good bone

doctors, and their use of such deterrent materials instead of

decreasing their practices rather added to them.

Ointments.--In the Middle Ages ointments made of the most far-fetched

materials were employed even by distinguished surgeons. That, indeed,

is the one serious flaw in the surgery of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, when they did everything else so well. These

ointments contained all manner of materials that were likely to

impress patients and make them feel that something wonderful was being

done for them. Crushed insects of all kinds were employed for external

lesions. Here the doctrine of similars seems once more to have been in

play. Insects gave creepy feelings, and whenever such feelings, or the

paresthesiae generally, were complained of, a poultice or ointment

made of insects seemed to be the natural remedy. The more repellent

the materials, the more efficient they were likely to be. Many of the

paresthesiae are due to neurotic conditions and it is not surprising

that when an ointment of crushed lice--these insects being collected

from barnyard {35} fowls or from hogs--was used, the suggestive

influence was strong. Another important ingredient in ointments were

portions of dead bodies. A bit of a mummy from the East was supposed

to be particularly efficacious. Portions of the bodies of men who had

been hanged, or of the moss that grew on the skulls of malefactors

whose bodies had been long exposed in chains to the air, were also

favorite ingredients. Plants and shrubs gathered in graveyards,

especially in the dark of the moon, because on account of the terror

of the place they were then harder to get, also had a great

reputation.

CHAPTER IV

SIGNATURES AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

_Similia similibus curantur_, like is cured by like, is a very old

idea. According to the doctrine of signatures nature had put an

external natural marking or a symbolical appearance or characteristic

upon a plant, mineral or other object, to indicate its special

usefulness for the treatment of certain diseases or for affections of

certain organs. Sir Robert Boyle, sometimes spoken of as the father of

chemistry, said, "Chymists observe in the book of nature that those

simples that wear the figure or resemblance, by them termed signature,

of a distempered part, are medicinal for that part or that infirmity

whose signature they bear." On this principle yellow flowered plants

were good for jaundice, because they resembled it in color. The blood

stone was good for hemorrhage, and plants of certain forms were good

for the organs or parts of man which they resembled. Certain plants

were named with this idea. Kidneywort, liverwort, are typical

examples. Scorpion grass, our familiar forget-me-not of the _genus

myosotis_, was so-called because its spike resembled a scorpion's tail

and was, therefore, good against the scorpion's sting, or against

pains similar to that produced by such a sting. Some of the

resemblances were extremely far-fetched, but in spite of the defect of

nature's signature on them, they seem to have been effective in

therapeutics. The plant, sometimes called Jew's ear, which can by an

effort of the imagination be made to bear resemblance to the human

ear, was, for instance, supposed to be a successful cure for diseases

of that organ.

We know now that there is no significance in this doctrine of

signatures. It represented one phase of pseudo-science. But the idea

of itself was enough to help people to throw off many symptoms, to

relieve discouragement, to encourage them with the thought that they

ought to get better; accordingly they took new heart, ate better, went

out more, and as a result naturally slept better, and then nature did

the rest. Signatures are an exquisite example of pure psychotherapy,

as the initial agent and natural curative methods accomplishing the

cure.

Signature Details.--Some of the details of the doctrine of signatures

are amusing. For a considerable period nuts were supposed to be a good

brain food, and some traces of this idea are still extant, although

there does not seem to be any better reason for it than the fact that

many nuts have an arrangement of their lobes which resembles the

conformation of the brain. On the same principle the Chinese use

ginseng-root as a general tonic. The extract is not {36} of any

special significance in medicine, though it has come to be much

advertised in recent years, and the Chinese continue to pay high

prices for it. The reason is that the root of the ginseng plant often

resembles the human body. The more nearly this resemblance can be

traced, the more virtue there is for the Chinese in the particular

specimen of ginseng. The signature is on the roots. It is good for man

because it looks like man, just as the nuts are good for the brain

because they look like the brain. In modern times we are likely to

think that we are far away from any such self-deception. But our

deceptions have a more appealing pseudo scientific element in them.

Fish was for some time considered a good brain food because fish has

phosphorus in it and so has the brain. The two reasons have as much

connection as that between nuts and the brain; or ginseng and man.

Astrological ideas came in to help out ignorance and foster supposed

knowledge. The sun and the stars were favorable planets and the moon

unfavorable. If anything about a plant reminded the gatherer of the

sun or the stars, then that plant was sure to be beneficial,

especially in chronic diseases. If anything reminded him of the moon,

however, then it could be expected to be maleficent in influence.

Though childish, this had yet its power to help.

The use of nitrate of silver, which in the old days was called lunar

caustic, because it had, in a fresh state, a silvery, moon-like sheen,

was largely a matter of signatures. The signature went both by

similitude and by contrary. Since the lunar caustic supposedly had a

moon quantity, therefore it would be good for moon-struck people--the

lunatics of the old time and of our own time. As a consequence nitrate

of silver was used in many obscure nervous and mental diseases. In

epilepsy it was commonly employed. Even in our own times, entirely on

empiric grounds, it was used for such severe organic nervous diseases

as locomotor ataxia and sometimes to such an extent as to produce

argyria. Undoubtedly, its use, with confidence on the part of the

physician and suggestion and persuasion on the part of the patient,

did much to relieve sufferers from discouragement and from such

psychic disturbance of their general health as would have made their

condition seem worse.

Wines as Remedies.--How much suggestibility means in the choice of

remedies that of themselves are more or less indifferent, may be well

judged from the recommendations with regard to various wines that have

been made by physicians. At one time and place it is red wine, at

another it is white wine that is particularly effective. For certain

nations the stronger wines, as Port or some of the Hungarian wines,

have appeared to exercise specific effects. Except for the tastiness

of these various brands or for other trivial accessories, it is

probable that the therapeutic efficacy of the wine depends entirely on

the alcohol and the effect of this upon the patient. In his "Memories

of My Life," Francis Galton relates that Robert Frere, one of his

fellow pupils with Prof. Partridge, who became through marriage in

later years a managing partner in a very old and eminent firm of wine

merchants, told him that the books of the firm for one hundred and

fifty years showed that every class of wine had in its turn been

favored by the doctors.

In prescribing wine the doctrine of signatures probably had more to do

with the special choice than anything else. Red wines were recommended

for anemic people, because somehow the coloring was supposed to affect

the {37} patient in such a way as to make up for the lack of coloring

in the blood. On the other hand, the light, and especially the

straw-colored wines, were recommended for liver troubles, because of

their relation in color to the yellow of bile. Light wines were best

for people who had more color than normal. Some wines are much

stronger than others, and the alcohol, as in so many of our patent

medicines, had a stimulating tonic effect, but in olden times this was

supposed to constitute only the smallest portion of the efficiency of

the wine, while the ingredients that made its color and taste were

extremely important. The taking of red wine by anemic patients often

proved suggestively valuable, and the alcoholic stimulation led them

to eat more freely and look at things more hopefully and,

consequently, to improve in health more rapidly than would have been

the case had they not had the feeling that somehow they were actually

consuming elements that would make their blood red.

Precious Stones.--The doctrine of signatures applied particularly to

precious stones, and many of the popular medical superstitions with

regard to precious stones were founded on it. The blood stone was said

to be efficient as a tonic: it stimulated people: it made the anemic

stronger and ruddier if it were worn on the fingers. The torquise

turned pale when its owner was in poor health. It was the stone that

was an index of what has been called "the blues" or what one modern

writer has dignified by the title "splanchnic neurasthenia." Dr. Donne

wrote of:

A compassionate turquoise that doth tell

By looking pale, the owner is not well.

It is probable that the pallor of the patient's hands as the

background to the stone made the difference in its appearance thus

noted. It became deeper in hue, as it were, when people were in ruddy

health. The suggestive influence of such beliefs is easy to

understand. It is even possible that the wearing of an amethyst did

help to keep people from indulging in liquor to excess, for that is

the traditional effect of the wearing of this stone, though its virtue

seems to be founded on nothing better than the supposed derivation of

the name from the Greek _a_ privative and _methuo_, "I get drunk,"

suggesting strongly to the wearer that he should not get drunk.

The jacinth superinduced sleep and doubtless the strong suggestion of

this supposed influence helped many sufferers from so-called insomnia

to get sleep. The single fixed idea that now they must get to sleep

would greatly help them. Pillows in the olden time were occasionally

set with bits of jacinth, and there is even the record of bed-linen

embroidered with it. This would probably be quite as effective as are

hop-pillows in the modern time, for their main influence, as is also

true of pine pillows, seems to be through suggestion. Some other

traditions with regard to precious stones are harder to understand,

yet may be explained. The owner of a diamond was supposed to be

invincible. Diamonds represented money and money meant power. It is

harder to explain the tradition that the possession of an agate made a

man able and eloquent.

The wide acceptance of the doctrine of signatures, and of allied

ideas, as to the effect of precious stones and metal and jewelry upon

disease, makes {38} it clear that the acceptance of a mental

persuasion with the changes in habits that follow, may serve as the

basis of a successful system of therapeutics. The materials associated

with the idea had absolutely no more physical influence than does the

carrying of a horse chestnut or a potato in the pocket serve to keep

off rheumatism.

CHAPTER V

PSEUDO-SCIENCE AND MENTAL HEALING

An interesting phase of psychotherapy is found in the history of the

applications of new scientific discoveries to medicine. The

development of every physical science has been followed by an attempt

to apply its new principles and discoveries to the treatment of

disease. Such applications have nearly always been followed by

excellent results at the beginning. But almost without exception, the

medical significance of these discoveries has, after a time, been

found to be _nil_. When these discoveries were made they became the

center of public attention. The announcement of their application to

medicine then seemed natural and produced a feeling that another great

therapeutic principle had been discovered. Sometimes wonderful

therapeutic effects were noted. The chronic diseases particularly were

helped for some time, at least, and practically all the affections

that have mainly subjective symptoms were greatly relieved, or

actually cured. After a time, however, when the novelty of the

discovery wore off, its suggestive power was lessened and then the

remedy lost its therapeutic power.

ASTROLOGY

Astrology is the typical example of pseudo-science in medicine. The

stars, and particularly the planets and the moon, were supposed to

have great influence on human destiny, human health, and human

constitutions. Astrology was an organized body of knowledge over 3,000

years ago. Mr. Campbell Thompson has recently translated a series of

300 inscriptions from the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, and

Professor Suedhoff of Leipzig has compiled all the references to

medicine in these. The latter's studies show the extent which star

influence was supposed to have over human health. A halo round the

moon, an obscuration of the constellation of Cancer, the pallor of a

planet in opposition to the moon, the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter,

and other movements and phenomena of heavenly bodies were supposed to

foretell the approach of disease for man and beast.

As a consequence of this application of astrological knowledge to

medicine, operations were performed only on certain favorable days or

under favorable conjunctions of planets. An ailment that occurred at

an unfavorable time, because of an unpropitious state of the heavens,

would not be relieved until the motions of the stars brought a more

benign conjunction. Observations seemed clearly to indicate that the

stars actually had such influences. Even Hippocrates, though he

insisted that "the medical art requires no basis of vain presumption,

such as the existence of distant and doubtful factors, the {39}

discussion of which, if it should be attempted, necessitates a

hypothetic science of supra-terrestrial of subterrestrial belief,"

could not entirely get away from astrology. In his treatise on "Air,

Water and Locality" he writes: "Attention must be paid to the rise of

the stars, especially to that of Sirus as well as the rise of

Arcturus, and after these to the setting of the Pleiades, for most

diseases in which crises occur develop during these periods." In the

second chapter he writes: "If anyone would be of the opinion that

these questions belong solely in the realm of astrology, he will soon

change his opinion as he learns that astrology is not of slight, but

of very essential importance in medical art." (Personally I doubt the

Hippocratean authorship of these passages, but they are surely very

old.)

The influence of the suggestions derived from astrology on human

patients continued until almost the nineteenth century. There were

many protests, especially from the Doctors of the Church, that the

applications of astrology to medicine were false, but the practice

continued. Both Kepler and Galileo drew horoscopes for patrons, and

while Kepler doubted their value, he felt that in making them he was

justified by custom. Galileo drew up the horoscope of the Grand Duke

of Tuscany during an illness, and declared that the stars foretold a

long life, but the Duke died two weeks later. But incidents of this

kind did not disturb either popular faith or medical confidence in

astrology as helpful, in prognosis, at least, if not also in

diagnosis. Even so late as 1766 Mesmer was graduated at the University

of Vienna, when it was doing the best medical work in Europe, with a

thesis on "The Influence of the Stars on Human Constitutions."

Later Astrology.--Few now realize that the curious figure printed at

the beginning of most of our almanacs down to the present day is a

relic of the time when physicians believed in the influence of the

constellations over the various portions of the body. Even yet this

idea has not entirely gone out of the popular mind, and hence its

retention as something more than a symbol in our little weather books.

Man was considered as a little world, a microcosm, and the universe,

as men knew it--the sun, the moon and the planets

together--constituted a macrocosm. It was observed that the bodies

constituting the universe were circumscribed in their movements and

never went out of a particular zone in the heavens which was called

the zodiac. This zodiac was divided into twelve equal parts called

signs or constellations. Similarly man's body was divided into twelve

parts, of which each one was governed by a sign of the zodiac or by

the corresponding constellation. The ram governed the head; the bull

the neck; the twins the paired portions, shoulders, arms and hands;

the crab the chest; the lion the stomach, and so on. The old surgical

rule, as quoted by Nicaise in his edition of Guy de Chauliac's "Grande

Chururgie," was that the surgeon ought not make an incision, or even a

cauterization, of a part of the body governed by a particular sign or

constellation on the day when the moon was in that particular portion

of the heavens, for the moon was supposed to be the bringer of

ill-luck and to have untoward influences. The incision should not be

made at these unfavorable periods for fear of too great effusion of

blood which might then ensue. Neither should an incision be made when

the sun was in the constellation governing a particular member,

because of the danger and peril that might be occasioned thereby.

{40}

Such rules were supposed to be founded on observation. Patients were

influenced by them mainly because they were assured that the surgical

treatment was undertaken under the most favorable influence of the

stars and that all unfavorable influences had been carefully observed

and eliminated. It is hard for us to understand how such ideas could

have been maintained for so long in the minds of men whose other

attainments clearly show how thorough they were in observing and how

profoundly intelligent in reaching conclusions. We should, however,

have very little censure for them, since from some other standpoint we

find every generation, down to and including our own, jumping at

conclusions just as absurd and just as inconsequential. And the

practice of astrology was not without its value, for the reassurance

given patients by the consciousness that the stars were favorable did

much to relieve their anxiety as to the consequences of surgery,

lessened shocks, hastened convalescence, and favored recovery.

HERBAL MEDICINE

What is thus exemplified in astronomy and astrology can be found in

the story of every other science. After the knowledge of the stars,

the next organized branch of information that might deserve the name

of science related to plants. This, too, was introduced into medicine,

and with more justification than astrology. Most of what was

accomplished by early herbal medicine was, however, due to the

influence produced on the mind rather than to any physical influence

tending to correct pathological conditions. The shape and color of

plants, their form, the appearance of their leaves, were all supposed

to indicate medical applications for human ailments. The reason for

their acceptance was entirely the ideas associated with the plants and

not any definite therapeutic effect. Whatever good nine-tenths of all

the herbal medication accomplished certainly was by means of the

influence on the mind. We have abandoned the use of most herbal

remedies in recent years, even many that are still retained in the

pharmacopeia, because we have realized their physical incapacity for

good.

ALCHEMY

When chemistry, under the old name of alchemy, began to develop, its

first study was of minerals, and just as soon as a body of knowledge

was acquired chemistry was applied to medicine. All the investigators

were engaged in searching for the philosopher's stone, the substance

by means of which it was hoped to change base metals into precious. It

was generally believed that when this substance was found, it would

have wonderful applications to human diseases and would transmute

diseased tissues into healthy tissues in the same way that it

transformed metals. It was felt that the philosopher's stone would be

an elixir of life as well as a master of secrets for wealth. This

would seem amusingly childish to us were it not for the fact that in

radium we, too, seem to have discovered a philosopher's stone--a

substance that transmutes elements. For some years after its discovery

{41} we were inclined to think that it must have some wonderful

application in medicine and in surgery, and we actually secured many

good results until its suggestive value wore off.

The fact that much had been learned about chemicals persuaded men that

they must be beneficial to human beings. Thus they were taken with

confidence and produced good results. When our modern chemistry

developed out of alchemy a great variety of drugs began to be used,

and long, complex, many-ingrediented prescriptions were written.

Polypharmacy became such an abuse that the time was ripe for

Hahnemann, whose principles, if carried to their legitimate

conclusions, would require his disciples to give practically nothing

to patients and treat them entirely by suggestion.

MATHEMATICAL MEDICINE

When mathematics developed, applications of that science were made to

physiology and to medicine. Under the influence of Borelli, the school

of Iatro-Mathematical medicine developed and it flourished long after

him. Foster, in his "History of Physiology," says:

Borelli was so successful in his mechanical solutions of

physiological problems that many coming after him readily rushed to

the conclusion that all such problems could be solved by the same

methods. Some of his disciples proposed to explain all physiological

phenomena by mathematical formulas and hypotheses concerning forces

and the shapes and sizes of particles.

MAGNETISM

Magnetism occupied a large place in the minds of the great thinkers of

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is no doubt that

Paracelsus accepted, quite literally, what we embody in figurative

expressions with regard to magnetism. To him the attraction of sex was

magnetic. People had personal magnetism because they possessed

physical powers by which they attracted others. He considered that

these powers of attraction were expressions in human beings of the

power of the magnet in the physical world, and that the two were

literally equivalents. Kepler, one of the deepest thinkers of his

time, evidently entertained the idea that the magnet represented the

soul of the physical world, and that the planets were held in

connection with the sun and their satellites with the planets, by

magnetic attraction. We now call it the attraction of gravitation. We

understand the force no better than before, but have changed the

terms. Descartes theorized much along magnetic lines, and felt that by

the use of certain expressions he was adding to knowledge, though he

was really only multiplying terms.

Human Magnetism.--How seriously the question of human magnetism was

taken will perhaps be best appreciated from one old fallacy. For a

long period it was supposed that human beings were so highly magnetic

that if a man were exposed in an open boat, in perfectly calm weather,

in the open sea, where no currents would disturb him, his face would

turn to the north, under the same magnetic influences as caused the

needle to point to the north! Many studies of magnetism were made at

this time, so that the subject {42} attracted widespread attention.

Columbus had made some rather startling observations on his voyage to

America with regard to the declination of the magnetic needle, and,

during the century following, Norman and Gilbert made interesting

studies in the same subject. Father Kircher wrote two books on

magnetism and there were a number of others written by university

professors. Advantage was taken of this thoroughly scientific interest

in magnetism to erect a whole body of pseudo-scientific medicine

supposed to be founded on magnetic principles. The same theories were

also applied to supposed explanations of various psychological

phenomena.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the application of

magnets was a favorite treatment for a great many diseases. Especially

were they useful in the treatment of muscular pains and aches and the

chronic diseases which so disturbed men's minds. Many of the joint

troubles of the aged, the muscular pains and aches that develop from

the wrong use of muscles, and the vague internal discomforts which

often disturb men so seriously, were cured by the application of

magnets. Perkins' success with his tractors shows how much can be

accomplished in this way.

ELECTROTHERAPY

The great development of pseudo-science in medicine remained for the

era following the scientific investigation of electricity. With the

discovery of the Leyden jar and its startling spark, a new and

marvelous healing agent seemed to be at hand. It is quite amusing to

read the accounts of the influence of the spark of the Leyden jar on

the well and on the ailing. In my "Catholic Churchmen in Science"

(Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909) I summed up the situation.

Winckler of Leipzig said that the first time he tried the jar, he

found great convulsions by it in his body; it put his blood into

great agitation; he was afraid of an ardent fever, and was obliged

to use refrigerating medicines. He felt a heaviness in his head as

if a stone lay upon it. Twice it gave him a bleeding at the nose.

After the second shock his wife could scarcely walk, and, though a

week later, her curiosity stronger than her fears, she tried it once

more, it caused her to bleed at the nose after taking it only once.

Many men were terrified by it, and even serious professors describe

entirely imaginary symptoms. The jar was taken around Europe for

exhibition purposes, and did more to awaken popular interest than

all the publications of the learned with regard to electricity, in

all the preceding centuries.

The extent to which the curative power of electric sparks from the

Leyden jar was supposed to go is best appreciated from a list of the

affections that one distinguished electro-therapeutist claimed could

be not only benefited, but absolutely cured by its employment. It

included pulmonic fever, under which title practically all the more or

less acute diseases of the chest were included, and some at least of

the sub acute; dropsy, by which was meant every effusion into the

abdominal cavity no matter what its cause; dysentery, under which was

included at that time not only the specific dysenteries but many of

the summer complaints and some typhoid fevers; diarrhea, including all

the intestinal diseases not already grouped under dysentery; putrid

and bilious fever, under which category were assembled the worst cases

of typhoid; typhus {43} fever, and all the other continued fevers, and

any febrile condition reasonably severe for which no other term could

be used; epidemic diseases, pest, anthrax, small-pox, cancer, gravel,

diseases of the bladder and of the brain and spinal cord. The Leyden

jar had no real effect on any of these affections, but doubtless the

mental effect of this new remedy was quite sufficient to be of

distinct therapeutic value in the milder forms of many of them.

With Galvani's discovery of the twitching of the muscles of the frog

there came a new impetus to the exploitation of electricity in

medicine. Many felt that now it was beyond doubt that electrical

energy bore some definite relation to vital energy--that one might be

made to replace the other if indeed they were not more or less the

same thing. This led to many applications of electricity in medicine.

Students of physiology were convinced that they were getting close to

the solution of the mystery of life, and their persuasion was readily

carried over to the people of the time, so that electricity literally

worked wonders on them.

When the various electrical machines were invented and their use

popularized, pseudo-science proceeded to exploit them, and succeeded,

because the mechanical shock of the electric current proved a

suggestive therapeutic stimulant. Gordon in the eighteenth century

made the first practical frictional electrical machine, and soon some

men were observing wonderful effects with it, though the charge was so

small that it could actually accomplish little. Just after the

invention of the voltaic pile in 1800 it came to be used in medicine

with wonderful results. We are prone to think that electrotherapy is

modern, but when electrical machines were quite crude, current

strength small and potential low, old-time electro-therapeutists were

recording their wonderful results and were getting just as marvelous

effects as are reported now by enthusiasts. Considerable

electro-medical literature existed a century ago when next to nothing

was known of electricity. When, later, high potency currents came in

and the Wimshurst and other powerful machines were invented, there was

revealed at each novel invention a new horizon in electro-therapy and

wondrous cures were reported. These continue to occur in the practice

of a few favored individuals, though the general profession secures

only some ordinary mechanico-muscular effects, which demand much time

for real good to be accomplished and have nothing at all of the

marvelous about them.

The power of the pseudo-scientific aspect of electricity to influence

patients, far from being lost in our time, has rather been increased.

Our newspapers make their readers eminently suggestible because they

constantly furnish suggestions, and nothing so strengthens a function

of any kind as exercise of it. All sorts of electrical contrivances

and apparatuses are advertised to cure various pains and aches. Many

of them actually seem to relieve long-standing discomfort, though it

is not through any electrical power that they do so, but entirely

through their influence on the patient's mind. A museum of the

electrical contrivances of various kinds for which absurdly high

prices are paid at the present time and which people recommend to

others because of having been benefited by them would be interesting.

There are belts of many kinds, and rings, and medallions, and plates

to be worn on the back and on the chest, and curiously shaped poles or

"polar plates" resembling various organs, and pendants and armlets and

anklets and insoles of many, many kinds, usually {44} going in pairs,

one made in zinc and the other in copper, and worth exactly as much as

the weight of copper and zinc in them, yet curing chronic ailments by

suggestion, or at least bringing relief from many pains and aches

complained of.

LIGHT AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Just as electricity has always been therapeutically abused by those

who have taken advantage of the suggestive influence of its marvelous

energy, so each new discovery in light has been the source of

pseudo-scientific applications to medicine. When the explanation of

photography was first made, shortly after the middle of the nineteenth

century, and it was demonstrated that it was the blue light, or at

least that end of the spectrum, and even some of the rays beyond the

visible violet, which were the most active in this regard,

applications of this fact to popular medicine became the order of the

day. We had a wave of "blue light therapy" that wandered over this

country and sold tons of blue glass. People simply sat beneath the

blue glass as the sun shone through it and were supposed to absorb the

actinic rays and acquire new life. According to many who had tried

them, the ultra-violet rays were quite equal in their power to heal

and restore new vigor to old frames to the fabled elixir of life of

the olden time. "Rheumatism (that universal ill of the unthinking) in

all its hydra-headed forms disappeared," as one enthusiast declared,

"before the blue light, like the mists of the morning before the sun."

All this, though it is said that the movement had no more serious

foundation than the desire of a manager of a glass factory, who found

himself stocked up with blue glass through a mistake, to dispose of

his surplus stock. He not only did so, but many other manufacturers

turned special attention to the new product because of the demand for

it. The newspaper advertising was through the reading columns. The

results were heard of on every side.

THE X-RAY

That happened two generations ago, and it might be supposed that in

the meantime there had been so much advance in popular education, and

particularly in the diffusion of scientific knowledge, that such a

self-deception on the part of scientists, and blind following by the

people, could not take place in our time. Just as soon as Roentgen

discovered the X-ray, however, we began to have applications of that

wonderful agent to curative purposes. About 1900, scarcely five years

after Roentgen's discovery, there was hardly an ailment that some one

did not claim to have seen treated successfully by the X-rays.

Especially was this true for the chronic and hitherto supposedly

incurable diseases. All the forms of malignant disease were treated by

the new agent, and some supposedly marvelous cures were reported.

Everything chronic was favorably affected--lupus, rodent ulcer,

eczema, acne rosacea, even tuberculosis of the lungs. At the time I

was on the staff of a medical journal, and the favorable reports came

in so thick and fast that it really looked for a time as though the

surgery of the future was to be much simplified. It took but a year or

two to show us how little of lasting therapeutic benefit there was

{45} in the X-ray, in spite of the fact that it is a marvelous agent

in its action upon living tissues. At the present moment it is used

comparatively little, and its use is gradually diminishing, except for

very special limited affections.

RADIUM AND RADIO-ACTIVITY

When radium was discovered, though it came so soon after the discovery

of the X-ray and our disappointment with it, the old story of another

pseudo-scientific medical application was told. For a time it looked

as though radium might accomplish all that had been promised for the

X-ray, though that promise had been so lamentably broken. Then,

besides radium, we had brought home to us the whole class of

radio-active substances, and their possibilities. The internal

administration of radio-active liquids was one of the hopes of

therapeutics. We had found it difficult to explain how many of the

mineral waters produced the beneficial action credited to them when

taken at the spring. We knew that artificially made waters of exactly

the same chemical composition, so far as we could determine, did not

have the same effect, nor even the waters themselves when taken at a

distance from the spring.

With the discovery of the radio-active principle there came the

suggestion that possibly the main virtue of mineral waters at the

spring was due to radio-activity. This would not be present in

artificial water and would disappear from the natural water during

shipment. This new idea was alluring, and it captured many. Radium

seemed to be the new panacea. But we are discovering its limitations.

It is of little avail in surgery; it is probably of less avail in

medicine. As yet, however, we cannot say absolutely and must wait

until results are determined. In the mean time many zealous advocates

of the marvelous power of radio-activity to cure are exploiting it,

apparently getting results and certainly making money. In the case of

the mineral waters, also, the most important therapeutic element is

probably the mental influence, which is strongest at the spring

itself, where the suggestion of efficiency is repeated many times a

day, and where the very atmosphere breathes confidence in the results

to be obtained.

SUGGESTION AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE

These applications of science, or rather of supposed science,

illustrate the influence of suggestion. The succession of events in

each case is about as follows: The definite attitude of mental

expectancy is created in the popular mind. As a consequence, with the

application of the new scientific principle, patients cease inhibiting

the recovery that would have come spontaneously before, only that they

were self-centered and had their nervous energies short-circuited.

Some are benefited by the habits of life that are established as a

consequence of the belief that they are about to be cured, while

before this they had been largely confining themselves to their

houses, and had been refusing to take recreation or get diversion

because of the conviction that they were ill. Finally, many of them

had no real physical ills, but were suffering from mental ailments

brought on by dreads and by a concentration {46} of attention on

certain portions of the body which interfered with the normal

physiologic action of those parts. Whenever strong mental impressions

are produced, from any cause, results will surely follow, some of them

marvelous. The supposed causes of these results will seem quite absurd

to those who study them afterwards, but they were living realities to

the sufferers. Nothing is more calculated to produce a strong mental

impression than a newly discovered scientific fact with some

supposedly wonderful application to humanity. The subsequent history

of the application of scientific discoveries to medicine has been as

invariably the same as the primary enthusiasm over each new

therapeutic agent. After a time some people were not benefited.

Physicians lost confidence in the power of the new remedial measure,

whatever it might be. Patients were no longer impressed by the

assurance that they would be benefited, and then the new application

has either completely disappeared from our list of remedies, or has

remained only to be used by a few, who still report good results from

it. In spite of the constancy of this succession of events, we are

still quite ready to take up with enthusiasm new discoveries in

science and their applications to medicine. We have not yet lost the

feeling, common in earlier centuries, that all science was meant for

man and that every new scientific development must have some special

reference to him.

CHAPTER VI

QUACKERY AND MIND CURES

Not less interesting than the therapeutic results obtained by men who

in good faith were using inert remedies that they thought effective,

are the cures obtained by men who had good reason to know that the

therapeutic methods they were using were quite inefficient. Their good

results, often loudly proclaimed by healed patients, are obtained

entirely through the patients' minds. Usually these men are supposed

to possess some wonderful therapeutic secret, which they have obtained

by a fortunate discovery, or by long years of study, though usually

their discovery is a myth and their long years of study a fable. So

long as people can be brought to believe in their powers many cures

are sure to follow their ministrations. The real secret is their

knowledge of human nature. They induce people to tap new sources of

vital energy in themselves, and somehow they succeed in bringing to

their aid this law of reserve energy. Besides, in many cases the real

reasons why patients continue to have certain symptoms once they have

been initiated, is that their worry about themselves inhibits their

natural curative power. This inhibition is prevented or obliterated by

the change of mind produced by the quack, and then the _vis medicatrix

naturae_ brings about a cure.

Probably the oldest story that we have of a quack in our modern sense

of the word is found in the Arabian Nights, some of the stories of

which were old even in the time of Herodotus. One day Galen, famous

for his work at Rome in the second century after Christ, found a

wandering healer pursuing his avocation in his front yard. He found

also that this man succeeded in relieving certain patients for whom he

had been unable to do anything. He {47} found that the medicines

prescribed were likely to do harm rather than good, yet many of the

patients were benefited.

Galen succeeded in winning the man's confidence, who told him his

story. He had been a weaver, but his wife thought he was not making

money enough to support her properly, so she had advised him to become

a leech. After taking lessons from a wandering quack, he set up for

himself. When Galen inquired as to his method of making a diagnosis,

he found that he did it entirely by his knowledge of human nature. He

was even able to tell what was the matter with patients at a distance

when friends came to demand medicine for them.

We think that such ready deception was possible only in earlier times,

when education was not widely diffused and when belief in

superstitions was fostered. Any such idea completely ignores the

modern status of the quack and the success that he meets among even

the more intelligent members of the community. Indeed, with the

diffusion of information in modern times the quack has secured a wider

audience. Superficial ideas of science are disseminated by the

newspapers and by the magazines, people think that they understand all

about it, and then these ideas are turned to their own advantage by

the irregular practitioners of medicine. We have quacks by the score

in all the centers of population, making a livelihood by exploiting

the ailing, and serving to no small extent to create a feeling of

popular discontent towards the physician, because that serves the

purpose of quackery. Indeed, it is during the past century or a little

more that some of the most striking examples of quackery have

occurred.

Cagliostro.--Cagliostro, whose story is told in Dumas' "Memoirs of a

Physician," and an excellent account of whose life may be found in

Carlyle's "Miscellanies," is one of the great quacks and humbugs of

history. He began his supposed medical work at Strasburg by the modest

claim that during his travels in the East he had found a series of

remedies which made old people young. In proof of his power to do this

he exhibited his wife. She was a handsome young woman of very shady

reputation whom he had married on his travels. She professed to be

sixty years of age, though she was really under thirty and looked it,

but she claimed that she had a son who had served for many years in

the Dutch army. This imposition was so effective that in Strasburg,

and subsequently in Paris, the charming pair collected large sums from

wealthy old persons, especially from women on whom the marks of time

had begun to show, and who expected, as the result of the treatment,

to be shortly as young and as handsome-looking as Madame Cagliostro

herself.

We might think that it is quite impossible for any such a deception as

this supposed renewal of youth to be practiced in our more enlightened

day when popular education is so widely diffused. We must not forget,

however, that the newspapers bring us evidence every month of some old

person who is quite sure that something that was being done for him

was, if not renewing his youth, at least giving him back much of his

pristine vigor, healing his aches and pains, and enabling him to take

up his work once more. In treating the ravages of old age, which would

seem to be altogether beyond any influence of psychotherapy, some of

the most striking results are obtained. New therapeutic methods for

the old come into vogue every year. As they grow older, {48} people

become discouraged and so do not exert even the natural energy that

they have for the maintenance of health and the keeping up of

strength. Their discouragement keeps them from exercising enough, and

this decreases appetite and sleep, and as a consequence there are many

disturbances of function. All of this disappears as soon as they feel

encouraged. Brown Sequard and his extract of testicular tissues is a

typical example of how strong suggestion may influence the old and

make them think that they are renewing their vigor and strength, and

even their youth.

Perkins, Prince of Quacks.--Shortly after Cagliostro an American

succeeded in using a very simple idea to gain world fame and at the

same time to make an immense amount of money. He was a Connecticut

Yankee with the typical name, Elisha Perkins. Dr. Perkins must have

been born under a lucky star; at least he lived in fortunate

circumstances for his purposes. Galvani's discovery of the twitchings

that occur in the frog's legs when a nerve-muscle preparation or its

equivalent was touched by metals in contact, had aroused world-wide

discussion as to the place of electricity and magnetism in biology.

Volta's brilliant experiments, which led to the invention of the

Voltaic Pile, still further increased men's interest in this subject.

It was then that Dr. Perkins came to exploit these electrical and

magnetic ideas in medicine by means of a very simple invention. It was

indeed the simplicity of his apparatus that made its appeal even more

wide than would otherwise have been the case, and, be it said, left a

larger measure of profit for the inventor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes in his "Medical Essays" [Footnote 4] has told

the story of what may be called the rise and fall of tractoration. Any

physician who wants to appreciate the real significance of cured cases

should read Holmes' essay. We quote:

[Footnote 4: Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston.]

Dr. Elisha Perkins was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the year

1740. He had practiced his profession with a good local reputation

for many years, when he fell upon a course of experiments, as it is

related, which led to his great discovery. He conceived the idea

that metallic substances might have the effect of removing diseases,

if applied in a certain manner; a notion probably suggested by the

then recent experiments of Galvani, in which muscular contractions

were found to be produced by the contact of two metals with the

living fiber. It was in 1796 that Perkins' discovery was promulgated

in the shape of the Metallic Tractors, two pieces of metal, one

apparently iron and the other brass, about three inches long, blunt

at one end and pointed at the other. These instruments were applied

for the cure of different complaints, such as rheumatism, local

pains, inflammations, and even tumors, by drawing them over the

affected parts very lightly for about twenty minutes. Dr. Perkins

took out a patent for his discovery, and traveled about the country

to diffuse the new practice.

[Footnote 5: (Transcriber: This footnote is not numbered in the

text but appears to refer to the preceding paragraph.): In one of

Plautus' plays there is a curiously interesting expression that is

recalled by this subject. The dramatist described one of his

characters, Sosia, as thrown into a sleep by the manipulations of

Mercury. These manipulations are described as _tractim

tangere_--that is, to touch strokingly. It would remind one very

much of Perkins' Tractors, and in this regard the fact that

Mercury was to the Romans, besides being the messenger of the

gods, the divinity of thieves, seems not without interest.]

Just what the tractors were composed of may be found in the

description of them filed with an application for a patent in the

Rolls Chapel Office in London. They were not simply two different

metals, but a combination of many metals, with even a little of the

precious metals in them, partly because {49} of the appeal that this

would make to the multitude, as chloride of gold did to our own

generation, but doubtless mainly because the claim of precious metals

entering into the composition enabled the inventor to sell his

tractors at a better price.

Dr. Holmes continues:

Perkins soon found numerous advocates of his discovery, many of them

of high standing and influence. In 1798 the tractors had crossed the

Atlantic, and were publicly employed in the Royal Hospital at

Copenhagen. About the same time the son of the inventor, Mr.

Benjamin Douglass Perkins, carried them to London where they soon

attracted attention. The Danish physicians published an account of

their cases in a respectable octavo volume, containing numerous

instances of alleged success. In 1804 an establishment, honored with

the name of the Perkinean Institution, was founded in London. The

transactions of this institution were published in pamphlets, the

Perkinean Society had public dinners at the Crown and Anchor, and a

poet celebrated their medical triumphs. [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6:

"See pointed metals, blest with power t' appease

The ruthless rage of merciless disease,

O'er the frail part a subtle fluid pour,

Drenched with the invisible galvanic shower,

Till the arthritic staff and crutch forego

And leap exulting like the bounding roe!"]

Miss Watterson [Footnote 7] tells how he attracted attention. Like all

successful quacks, he had an inborn genius for advertising.

[Footnote 7: "Mesmer and Perkins's Tractors,"

_International Clinics_, Vol. III, Series 19. 1909.]

He lived in the house once occupied by John Hunter [how

characteristic this is--the first quack we mentioned in this

chapter, took up his work in Galen's front yard], and in 1804 the

Perkinean Institute was opened, but by the end of 1802, 5,000 cases

had already been treated. Lord Rivers was president. Sir William

Barker, Vice-President [Prominent legislators, lawyers, bankers

always lend their names.] Twenty-one physicians, nineteen surgeons,

and the leading veterinaries succumbed to the influence of the magic

tractors. One "eminent physician" who had had 30 guineas from a

country patient and had done him no good was very angry when the

sick man took to Perkinism.

"Why, I could have cured you in the same way with my old brick-bat

or tobacco pipe, or even my fingers."

"Then why, sir," answered the patient in a stern voice (Perkins

quotes this), "did you dishonorably pick my pocket when you had the

means of restoring me to health?"

In some 176 pages young Perkins gives us the pick of 2,000 cases who

had, of course, been foolish enough at first to put faith in the

ordinary physician and his drugs.

In Bath, particularly, where aristocratic London went, as they do

to-day, to repair the damage wrought by a season in town, the

Tractor Cure was the talk of the place. But an enemy dwelt there, a

Dr. Haygarth, an unbeliever. He, with a certain Dr. Falconer,

fabricated a pair of false tractors. Five cases of gout and

rheumatism were operated on by the conspirators, who discussed in a

light tone the wonders of magnetism as they described circles,

squares and triangles with the sham tractors. "We were almost afraid

to look each other in the face lest an involuntary smile should

remove the mask from our faces," says Haygarth, but the two

assistant doctors, unaware of what was being done, were almost

converted to Perkinism when they saw the five patients slowly

mending under the treatment. One man experienced such burning pain

that he begged to wait till the next day. [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Compare the first effects of the Leyden Jar, related

in the chapter on Pseudo-Science.]

So rapid, and so many were the hospital cures wrought by these two

doctors, that patients crowded to them and they could hardly spare

five minutes to eat. They amused themselves inventing other

instruments made of common nails and sealing wax, and effected with

them cures, while they sent a pair of false tractors {50} to Sir

William Watson in London and Dr. Moncriffe in Bristol, who operated

with them with wonderful results.

It must not, however, be thought that the uneducated, or the

unskilled, or even merely unoccupied, were the only ones taken in by

the supposed power of Perkins' Tractors. As we have seen, many

physicians did not hesitate to avow themselves publicly as believers

in this new and marvelous application of magnetism to human healing.

It is true that the only thing we know about the men who became

advocates of this new instrumental therapeusis, is their connection

with it. The attention of the scientific world was rather cleverly

managed. Dr. Perkins presented a pair of his tractors and the book

that he had written about their use to the Royal Society. The custom

of that learned body was to accept such presentations by a formal

letter of thanks and place the objects and books on their shelves. No

formal investigation of the claims to scientific consideration of such

presentations was made. All possible advantage was taken of the fact

that the Royal Society had accepted the new invention and had publicly

thanked the discoverer for it.

How characteristically recent this old story is; it is renewed on

every possible occasion and wears all the familiar aspect of modern

devices for securing recognition and obtaining the apparent

approbation or recommendation of some scientific society or

institution. We had an example of it a few years ago when a nostrum

exploiter signed the register of an International Congress immediately

after a great medical investigator and then used a photograph of the

names for advertising purposes.

How did the tractors secure the vogue they enjoyed? Those who believed

in them did so not because of the scientific theory that animal

magnetism or magnetic influence was behind them, nor because of the

plausible ways of the Connecticut Yankee, but because of the

unquestioned and unquestionable facts of actual healing that they saw

in connection with the use of the tractors. Every one of these

applications of science to medicine that has proved to be

pseudo-scientific after enthusiasm subsides has made its appeal

through the cures effected by it. Cures are what Eddyism advances to

support its claims, cured patients are presented as their most

effective argument by the osteopaths, cured symptoms are the proofs

for Hahnemannism, but none of these systems of treatment ever cured as

many cases in a corresponding time as did Perkins' tractors. They

cured all sorts of physical ills, but their only effect was exerted

through the mind.

Holmes wrote:

Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by

believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, blazoned at

the head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant

disputant, held up as paramount to all other considerations,

stretched like an impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate

of the great cause against the weapons of the adversary, was

that omnipotent monosyllable which has been the patrimony of cheats

and the currency of dupes from time Immemorial--Facts! Facts! FACTS!

First came the published cases of the American clergymen,

brigadier-generals, almshouse governors, representatives,

attorneys and esquires. Then came the published cases of the

surgeons of Copenhagen. Then followed reports of about one hundred

and fifty cases, published in England, "demonstrating the efficacy

of the metallic practice" in a variety of complaints, both upon

the human body and on horses, etc. But the progress of facts in

Great Britain did not stop here. Let those who rely upon the numbers

{51} of their testimonials, as being alone sufficient to prove the

soundness and stability of a medical novelty digest the following

from the report of the Perkinistic Committee. "The cases published

(in Great Britain) amounted, in March last, the date of Mr. Perkins'

last publication, to about five thousand. Supposing that not more

than one cure in three hundred, which the tractors have performed,

has been published, and the proportion is probably much greater,

it will be seen that the number, to March last, will have exceeded

one million five hundred thousand!"

It is not surprising that with such "facts" behind them the tractors

attracted deep and wide attention. A contemporary tells of it and the

fate of the inventor:

A gentleman in Virginia sold a plantation and took the pay for it in

tractors. Nothing was more common than to sell horses and carriages

to buy them. But the worst (or the best) of it was, yellow fever was

raging in New York, and Perkins thought he could cure the fever with

the tractors and fell a victim to the fever himself.

Success of Quackery.--Always in the history of quackery and, indeed,

in the history of all therapeutics, the appeal is to the cures that

have been effected. This is the only evidence, of course, that can be

adduced for the development of therapeutics, and yet the history of

medicine makes it clear how carefully supposed cures must be analyzed

if they are really to mean anything. Mesmer could adduce thousands of

cured cases. Perkins could do the same. Every quack in history, from

Galen's weaver, who became a leech, down to the last street corner

nostrum vendor, does the same thing. When on the strength of supposed

cures, then, a new system of therapeutics is introduced, it is much

more likely than not that there is no foundation for the claims made.

We have had ever so many more experiences of disappointment after the

introduction of remedies which cured at the beginning of their

history, than we have had of remedies that maintain themselves after

prolonged experience. It is the attitude of scepticism and suspended

judgment until after a remedy or method of treatment has been tried on

many different kinds of cases in varying circumstances that

constitutes the only efficient safeguard against repeating the

unfortunate errors of old times in the matter of drugs and remedial

measures. If the public could be made to realize this, they would be

much less easily taken in.

What the quacks cure are not always imaginary ills, but often ills

that are very real, at least to the patients, and the symptoms of

which are relieved by the confidence aroused in the new remedy and the

representations of the supposed discoverer, who, in spite of the

exaggerated claims which he makes, somehow succeeds in catching the

trust of patients. Very often this process initiated by the quack is

really only the beginning of the cure.

In most people a vicious circle of pathological subsidiary causes is

formed when anything becomes the matter. Patients are persuaded that a

serious illness is ahead of them. This keeps them from exercising as

much as before. Becoming overcareful of their diet, they reduce it

below the normal limit for healthy activity. This causes them to have

less energy for work and disturbs their sleep. Then a host of minor

symptoms, supposed to be due to the disease, whatever it is or they

think it is, but really consequent upon the unhealthy habits that have

formed, begin to develop. Just as soon as confidence in their power to

regain health is restored to these people, a virtuous circle, {52} to

use the Latin word virtue in its etymological sense, of strength and

courage, is formed. Everything conspires to stimulate the patients;

they live more naturally, the subsidiary symptoms consequent upon

their bad habits disappear and the disappearance of each one of them

means for the patients a new assurance of triumph over disease. They

attribute every improvement to the remedy they happen to be taking,

though most of them are due to the changes in their habits, their

diversion of mind, and the new energy released by their sense of

encouragement.

An excellent example of how some of these mental persuasions in

quackery act, and of how the cure is often really due to the physician

who previously treated the case, though it is credited to the quack,

may be found in the story that Hilton tells in his "Rest and Pain":

When this patient was first seen by a surgeon, he was thought to be

laboring under some disease of the bladder and kidneys, for he had

severe lumbago, pain over the bladder, and offensive urine. There

had been no suspicion of anything wrong as regards the spine. He was

a master painter and a house decorator, and was monstrously

conceited, thinking himself right and everybody else wrong. When I

explained to him, after careful examination, that the spine was the

cause of the symptoms, he was not satisfied with my opinion and

without my knowledge consulted Sir Benjamin Brodie, who also assured

him that his spine was diseased and told him that he must rest it by

lying down. To this he then assented. As he could not be controlled

in his own house, I persuaded him to go to Guy's Hospital, where he

had got nearly well; but he was very impatient, and would not remain

long enough under my care to be quite cured. He returned home,

gradually improved, and was getting quite well when some pseudo

friend advised hydropathy and homeopathy--it did not matter which

of the two--as "the thing" to cure him. After a few months he was

perfectly restored, not by either hydropathy or homeopathy, but,

no doubt, by nature. The man, however, feels convinced that

hydropathy and homeopathy cured him. It so happens, gentlemen, that

sometimes we do not get the degree of credit which perhaps belongs

to us.

To Mr. Hilton's reflections one is tempted to add that many of these

patients, after having been seriously ill, cannot bring themselves to

think that they will gradually get well by the forces of nature. Even

after they have improved very much they are still inclined to think

that that improvement is illusory or will relapse because they have

not been "cured," that is, actively treated, in some way so that a

"cure" should result. When they are nearly well, because of properly

directed rest and nursing, someone recommends some irregular form of

treatment. They take it up and this gives them confidence that they

are being cured. This state of mind makes the ultimate steps of their

recovery more rapid than it otherwise would be. As a consequence, the

irregular gets the credit. Immediately after this case Mr. Hilton

tells the story of another case in which a "rubber" got all the credit

for the cure. It is evident that the modern osteopath has only

somewhat systematized what had been in existence generations ago.

All this tendency of human nature to respond to anything that is done

for it, provided the promise of cure goes with it, is taken advantage

of by the quack, sometimes unconsciously, for his own purposes.

Results, as a rule, are secured, in spite of the remedies that he

suggests, which in most cases do harm rather than good. Of the

thousands of remedies that have been introduced by quacks, not one now

remains, though every one of them produced {53} wonderful cures on a

great many patients at some time or other. It is the duty of the

physician to secure just as good results honestly. He must influence

the patient's mind favorably so as to bring about a modification of

habits and a hopeful outlook on life, in spite of whatever ailment

there may be. If he can do so he will have in his hands the best

therapeutic measure that has been employed in all the history of

medicine. It is the most universally applicable. It will cure, that is

help, all forms of disease. It will relieve many of the symptoms of

even incurable diseases. It will occasionally arouse the resistive

vitality of the patient to such an extent that even apparently

incurable diseases will be overcome. This is the lesson that the

modern student of medicine must draw from the history of quackery.

CHAPTER VII

NOSTRUMS AND THE HEALING POWER OF SUGGESTION

A striking illustration of the power of the mind to bring about the

cure of ailments and symptoms of every sort is found in the history of

the many nostrums and remedies that have worked wonders for a time and

later proved to be inert or even harmful. The ordinary definition of a

nostrum includes the idea of secrecy. At all times in the world's

history fortunes have been made out of such remedies. They appeal not

only to the uneducated, but also to those who are supposed to be well

informed, and this in spite of the fact that generally the remedies

are claimed to do good for nearly every form of disease, and it must

be evident to anyone, after a moment's serious thought, that the one

idea of their inventor is not to benefit patients, but to make money.

With the multiplication of newspapers and magazines, there has been a

great increase in these secret remedies and of their users. Apparently

all that is needed for many people who are ailing, or think they are

ailing, is to be told in a more or less impressive way that some

remedy will cure, and then it proceeds to do them good. There is a

general impression abroad that some of these remedies represent great

discoveries in medicine, and the feeling of most of those who take

them is that the inventor has found a new and wonderful remedy. During

all the centuries such secret remedies have come and gone, and not one

of them has proved to be of lasting value. Just as soon as its

composition is no longer a secret it begins to fail. It is, therefore,

evident that its effect was entirely due to influence on the mind and

not at all to any influence on the body.

The stories of the origin of these remedies bear a striking

similarity. There are two variants on the theme: either the inventor

is supposed to be an earnest student of science, devoting himself to

profound research for many years and finally finding some wonderful

secret of nature hitherto hidden from men; or else the remedy has been

discovered by happy accident, and some chronic sufferer pronounced by

the most eminent physicians to be hopelessly incurable has in despair

turned to the now method, caring little really, so discouraged is he,

whether it does good or ill, and wakes up to find that he is on the

high road to recovery, apparently having been directed by Providence

in the use of the remedy in question. Overflowing with gratitude, he

{54} wants to share the heaven-sent blessing with all mankind--for a

valuable consideration.

The Weapon Ointment.--Among the most famous nostrums, and a striking

example of the great role played in therapeutics by mental influence

and coincidence, is the Unguentum Armariam or Weapon Ointment. This

famous remedy would cure any wound made by a weapon, if it could only

be employed before the fatal effects were absolutely manifest. There

was an abundance of evidence that it stopped the pain, checked the

bleeding and initiated the restoration of the patient to health. We

know the remedy not from traditions of its use among the uneducated,

but from descriptions that we have by men who were among the best

educated of their time, and that by no means an era of dullards. The

story of this infallible remedy is all the more surprising because it

was not applied to the wound itself, nor indeed to the sufferer at

all, but _to the weapon which inflicted the wound_. Nay, it was well

authenticated that, where the weapon could not be secured for

inunction, if the ointment were applied to a wooden model of the

weapon, the cure followed with almost, though, it was confessed by

some, not quite so much assurance as in the fortunate case of the

weapon being available.

The story has been so well told by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his

"Medical Essays" [Footnote 9] that it seems best to retell it in

abstracts from his "Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions." He says:

[Footnote 9: Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.]

Fabricius Hildanus, whose name is familiar to every surgical

scholar, and Lord Bacon, who frequently dipped a little into

medicine, are my principal authorities for the few circumstances I

shall mention regarding it. The Weapon Ointment was a preparation

used for the healing of wounds, but instead of its being applied to

them, the injured part was washed and bandaged, and the weapon with

which the wound was inflicted was carefully anointed with the

unguent. Empirics, ignorant barbers, and men of that sort are said

to have especially employed it. _Still there was not wanting some

among the more respectable members of the medical profession who

supported its claims_. [Italics ours.] The composition of this

ointment was complicated, in the different formulas given by

different authorities; but some substances addressed to the

imagination, rather than the wound or weapon, entered into all. Such

were portions of mummy, of human blood and of moss from the skull of

a thief hung in chains.

Hildanus was a wise and learned man, one of the best surgeons of his

time. He was fully aware that a part of the real secret of the

Unguentum Armarium consisted in the washing and bandaging the wound

and then letting it alone. But he could not resist the solemn

assertions respecting its efficacy; he gave way before the outcry of

facts (!), and therefore, instead of denying all their pretensions,

he admitted and tried to account for them upon supernatural grounds.

Holmes says further:

Lord Bacon speaks of the weapon ointment, in his Natural History, as

having in its favor the testimony of men of credit, though, in his

own language, he himself "as yet is not fully inclined to believe

it." His remarks upon the asserted facts respecting it show a

mixture of wise suspicion and partial belief. He does not like the

precise directions given as to the circumstances under which the

animals from which some of the materials were obtained were to be

killed, for he thought it looked like a provision for an excuse in

case of failure, by laying the fault to the omission of some of

these circumstances. But he likes well that "they do not observe the

confecting of the Ointment under any certain constellation; which

is commonly the excuse of magical medicines, when they fail, that

they {55} were not made under a fit figure of heaven." It was

pretended that if the offending weapon should not he had, it would

serve the purpose to anoint a wooden one made like it. "This," says

Lord Bacon, "I should doubt to be a device to keep this strange form

of cure in request and use, because many times you cannot come by

the weapon itself." And in closing his remarks on the statements of

the advocates of the ointment, he says, "Lastly, it will cure a

beast as well as a man, which I like best of all the rest, because

it subjecteth the matter to an easy trial." It is worth remembering

that more than 200 years ago, when an absurd and fantastic remedy

was asserted to possess wonderful power, and when sensible persons

ascribe its pretended influence to imagination, it was boldly

answered that the cure took place when the wounded party did not

know of the application made to the weapon, and even when the brute

animal was the subject of the experiment, and that this assertion,

lie as we all know it was, came in such a shape as to shake the

incredulity of the keenest thinker of his time.

It is interesting to follow up some of the controversies among

scientific men with regard to the weapon ointment, for they serve to

show how the remedy came to maintain its prominence for so long.

Podmore, in his "Mesmerism and Christian Science" (London, 1909),

tells the story of the controversy between Goclenius, a professor of

medicine at the University of Marburg, who published as the Inaugural

Thesis for his professorship, a treatise on the "Weapon Salve," and

Father Roberti, a Jesuit scientist and philosopher, whose final

treatise in the controversy was entitled after the lengthy fashion of

titles in that day, "Goclenius Corrected Out of His Own Mouth; or, The

Downfall of the Magnetic Cure and the Weapon Salve." The decision of

the controversy was eventually referred to the great physician of the

time. Van Helmont, who decided that both disputants were partly wrong,

the Jesuit erring most, but that above all Goclenius should

distinguish between the cases when the weapon had blood on it and when

it had not. When there is blood on the weapon, he held, then the salve

is always effective; when there is not, then much stronger remedies

were required. In both cases, of course, the salve or ointment was

applied to the weapon.

In the midst of this discussion of the points at issue, it is

interesting to note Van Helmont's opinion with regard to many curious

things used in medicine at that time. He insists that Goclenius makes

a mistake in attributing therapeutic power alone to the moss taken

from the skull of a condemned criminal who had been hung in chains.

This material, under the name of _usnea_, was apparently quite popular

in prescriptions for various chronic ills, and especially those that

we now recognize as prolonged neurotic affections. Van Helmont

emphasizes the fact that the experience of all physicians shows that

material taken from the heads of condemned criminals executed in other

ways, as, for instance, those broken on the wheel, may be just as

effective. Van Helmont conceived of the magnetic and sympathetic

feeling as a natural process. All the force of the stars might be

concentrated in objects that had been beneath their beams for a long

time, and this might be communicated in some wonderful way to patients

so as to supply defects of vitality. Such defects of vitality Van

Helmont's prescriptions actually were compensating, but the source was

in the patients themselves--that reservoir of surplus energy which

remains unused unless some strong suggestion brings it out.

Sympathetic Powder.--After the weapon ointment, the best known of the

nostrums of older times is probably Sir Kenelm Digby's famous

Sympathetic {56} Powder, which Dr. Holmes talks of as even better

known than its great therapeutic predecessor. This, too, was a

wonderworker. Unlike the Unguentum Armarium, however, its composition

was simple. It was nothing else than copper sulphate which had been

allowed to deliquesce to a white powder. This powder would cure any

injury as infallibly as the weapon ointment. It, too, was not applied

to the wound, but to the _bloodstained_ garments (Van Helmont's

distinctions between the bloody and the bright weapon should be

recalled) of the wounded person. The patient did not need to be

present at the time the application was made. He might be far away and

yet its efficacy was, according to many very intelligent and highly

educated persons, quite assured.

For the sympathetic powder we have one of the stories of far-fetched

discovery that have since become so familiar. A missionary, traveling

in the East, was said to have brought the recipe to Europe about the

middle of the seventeenth century. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, in whose

dominions the missionary took up his residence, heard of the cures

performed by him and tried by offers of money and favor to obtain the

missionary's secret, but without success. Sir Kenelm Digby, however,

who was traveling in Italy, happened by good fortune to do a favor for

the missionary, and put him under such deep obligations that he felt

the only way he could properly repay his benefactor was to confide to

him the composition of this wonderful remedy. Sir Kenelm Digby was at

this time one of the best known of English scholars. After having

reached distinction in the English navy, he had devoted himself to

literature, to philosophy, and to politics. He had devoted much time

to the old books of alchemy. Therefore, the offer of this precious

piece of information especially appealed to him. On his return to

England he proceeded to use it for the benefit of his friends, and it

created a sensation. The French dictionary of the Medical Sciences

tells the story of the application of the powder for the first time in

England and of the subsequent use of it, especially on the nobility of

England:

An opportunity soon presented itself to try the powers of the famous

powder. A certain Mr. Howell, having been wounded in endeavoring to

part two of his friends who were fighting a duel, submitted himself

to a trial of the sympathetic powder. Four days after he received

his wounds, Sir Kenelm dipped one of Mr. Howell's garters in a

solution of the powder, and immediately, it is said, the wounds,

which were very painful, grew easy, although the patient, who was

conversing in a corner of the chamber, had not the least idea of

what was doing with his garter. He then returned home leaving his

garter in the hands of Sir Kenelm, who had hung it up to dry, when

Mr. Howell sent his servant in a great hurry to tell him that his

wounds were paining him horribly; the garter was therefore replaced

in the solution of the Powder, and the patient got well after five

or six days of its continued immersion.

King James I, his son, afterwards Charles I, the Duke of Buckingham,

then Prime Minister, and all the principal personages of the time

were cognizant of this fact; and James himself, being curious to

know the secret of this remedy, asked it of Sir Kenelm, who revealed

it to him, and his majesty had the opportunity of making several

trials of its efficacy, _which all succeeded in a surprising manner_.

Tar Water and Therapeutic Faith.--One further story of an old nostrum

deserves to be told because of the distinction of its chief promoter,

who did not, however, as do most of the nostrum promoters, make a

fortune by it. {57} This is the incident of Bishop Berkeley and his

tar water. Berkeley was one of the leaders of thought of the

eighteenth century. At one time he came to America with the idea of

enlightening the ignorance of the colonists and of founding a school

of philosophy. Besides being one of the most learned men of his time,

he was one of the best. He was known for his gentleness, his

unselfishness, and his lack of pretension. Yet all of these virtues

were unable to save him from falling a victim to a medical delusion.

One of his essays is on the value of tar water in medicine, and is

entitled "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries

Concerning the Virtues of Tar Water," etc.

Tar water was prepared by stirring a gallon of water with a quart of

tar, letting it stand for several days, and then pouring off the clear

water. It, in fact, retained scarcely more of the tar than the odor.

According to the great philosopher, this not only cured, but prevented

diseases. The list is, indeed, so long that it is hard to understand

how the claims for it could have received any credence. They did,

however, and Berkeley himself, and many of his friends, were cured of

many and various ills, and were protected from many more by its

frequent use. The odor was the factor that proved of suggestive value

and set free the springs of vital energy.

Sarsaparilla.--It might be thought that such deception of self and

others as has been illustrated in the weapon salve and sympathetic

powder would be impossible in our enlightened day. Anyone who thinks

so forgets certain incidents of recent times. The story of

sarsaparilla is a striking illustration. Few drugs have been more

popular in the last half century, and it is even yet popularly

supposed to be a wonderful tonic, a cure for many diseases. During the

first half of the nineteenth century, when the humoral theory of the

causation of diseases was generally accepted, certain German

physicians thought they observed that a decoction of sarsaparilla was

a sovereign remedy for various ailments having their origin in the

blood. The blood was at that time supposed to become impure for many

reasons, and the possibility of neutralizing such impurity by medical

measures was seriously attempted. As Virchow used to insist, the

humoral pathology still holds its ground in popular estimation, and so

blood purifiers are favorite remedies, and will doubtless continue to

be for at least another generation, until cellular pathology secures a

hold on the popular mind.

Sarsaparilla came in, then, as a great blood purifier, and was used

for ten years by many of the physicians of the world, confident that

they were obtaining excellent results from its use. After a time,

however, further study of the drug showed that it was inert. Gradually

the employment of sarsaparilla as a remedial agent ceased, though it

continued to be used as an elegant vehicle in the prescription of

nauseating remedies.

Only after it had been thus abandoned by the regular profession, was

it taken up extensively by others who advertised its virtues widely

and secured a great clientele for it. Probably more money has been

spent on sarsaparilla during the last fifty years than on any other

single drug. Many millions were every year appropriated by rival

concerns to advertise its virtues. It has been possible at any time

during the last half century to secure any number of people who were

willing and ready to declare--and most of them convinced of the truth

of what they said--that various preparations of {58} sarsaparilla had

cured them of long-standing ills, and that they considered it a

life-saving remedy.

The efficient ingredient in the sarsaparilla, so far as any of its

various preparations have seemed to do good, has not been anything

that was in the bottle, but the printer's ink that was absorbed from

the outside of it. People were persuaded that they would get better,

and, as far as most of them were concerned, this was of itself quite

sufficient to turn the scale in favor of improvement that led to the

obliteration of symptoms. So long as these symptoms were a source of

worry and trouble to them, they continued to be quite incurable. Just

as soon as the inhibition of nervous energy, due to worry and

over-attention to their sensations, stopped, then the natural force of

the body was sufficient to remove the sources of complaint.

Psychology, Old and New, of Remedies.--Men have always known how to

take advantage of the possibility of influencing patients' minds by

wondrous claims for remedies. Anyone is sadly deceived who thinks that

it is only in recent times that men have learned to make their

advertisements of nostrums suggestive by the promises made or that we

have developed the psychology of advertising to such a degree as to

appeal to the ailing more forcibly and surely than was done in the

past. Here is the announcement that went with a remedy in old Irish

medicine more than 1,000 years ago. It was, according to its inventor,

"a preservative from death, a restorative for the want of sinews

(strength), for the tongue-tied, a cure for swelling in the head, and

of wounds from iron and of burning by fire, and of the bite of the

hound; it preventeth the lassitude of old age, cures the decline, the

rupture of the blood vessels, takes away the virulence of the

festering sore, the fever of the blood, the poignancy of grief--he to

whom it shall be applied shall be made whole." The announcement ended

up with the panegyric "extolled be the elixir of life bequeathed by

Diancecht to his people; by which everything to which it is applied is

made whole." When it is noted that, besides death and loss of muscle

power and aphasia and wounds and burns and bites, it also cures old

age and consumption (for that is what is meant by decline) and

hemorrhages, and probably aneurysms, and fevers and also grief, there

are not many modern panaceas that exceed it in power.

Always, as in this Irish announcement of the olden time, the climax of

the advertisement is a note of exultant praise for the inventor who

has brought such a magnificent blessing to mankind. The ways of the

nostrum vender are ever the same.

Roman Nostrums.--How old are all these methods, and how little human

nature has changed through all the centuries! The patent medicine men

of Rome in the early Christian eras made use of just the same methods

that are employed to-day. Friedlaender, in his "Roman Life and Manners

Under the Early Roman Empire," tells the story well. Many remedies

were known by special arbitrary names, instead of descriptive names

recalling the ingredients. Sometimes they were named after famous

physicians who had used them, or were said to have done so; again, the

preparations were named after persons of distinction who actually, or

supposedly, were cured thereby, much as, in our own day, cigars are

named after poets, statesmen and pugilists. The titles of some of

these preparations, for instance, were "Ointment for Gout, Made for

Patroculus, Imperial Freedman--Safe Cure"; "Ointment for {59} Aburnius

Valens" (probably the famous jurist) called the "Expensive Ointment";

"Eye Salve with Which Florus Cured Antonia, the Wife of Drusus (the

Emperor's son) After the Other Doctors had Nearly Blinded Her." Many

of these remedies were labeled "instantaneous," "safe," "sure cure,"

"Harmless remedy," and the like. Frequently euphonious names,

sometimes from the Greek, were chosen: Ambrosia, Anicetum, Nectarium,

for the promoters evidently knew the satisfying effect, on both

patient and physician, of a mystifying foreign name.

_Proprietary Remedies_.--A corresponding abuse very like that of our

own time was with reference to proprietary medicines. Physicians,

instead of compounding their own, accepted those made by others with

the exaggerated claims for them, used them on patients, transferring

their own confidence in them to the patients, thus producing cures

which, after a time, proved to be due entirely to the influence on the

patient's mind. Pliny, the elder, complains that physicians of his

time (the first century after Christ) often bought their remedies so

as to avoid the trouble of preparation. He evidently refers to

compounds supposed to be curative for various affections; for

Friedlaender says that "often the physicians did not know the exact

ingredients of the compounds that they used and should they desire to

make up written prescriptions, would be cheated by the salesmen." Both

Galen and Pliny complain that physicians used ready-made medicines,

instead of original prescriptions carefully prepared by or under the

supervision of the physicians themselves. It is evident that the

proprietary remedy had come into existence thus early, and that

various drug manufacturers made specialties which physicians,

following the line of least resistance, found it easy to prescribe,

though men like Pliny and Galen realized that this was an abdication

of one of the most important functions of their profession, which was

bound to work harm in the end both to themselves and to their

patients.

How curious it is to find exactly the same state of affairs recurring

in our time, with absolutely similar results. Simple remedies that are

well known combinations of ordinary drugs receive high-sounding names,

usually derivatives from the Greek or the like, and are claimed to

work just as many wonders as the old-fashioned nostrums. Even

imitations of the old-fashioned poultices, when thus exploited, give a

new lease of life to the exploded idea of the drawing-out power of

external applications.

Common Ailments and Nostrums.--Certain ailments are particularly the

subject of exploitation by the manufacturers of remedies. Rheumatism

is one of these, neuralgia is another, catarrh is a third, and

headache a fourth. Then there are various forms of indigestion and all

the pains and aches associated with it. All of these ailments are

rather vague and are in some cases at least, due to the insistent

dwelling of the patient's mind on some symptom of very little

significance. Others are real pains and aches, relieved by some simple

anodyne drugs, doubly efficient when taken with the suggestion that

they represent a wonderful discovery, which came only after long years

of study and investigation, and are said to represent a new departure

in medicine. Another favorite field for the nostrum vender is the

series of pains and aches associated with the menstrual condition.

Many of these nostrums are used by hundreds of thousands, and yet an

analysis shows that probably the only active substance in them is the

alcohol in which certain of the drug {60} principles are dissolved.

This makes the patient feel better by the exaltation that comes from

the dose of alcohol and the rest is merely suggestion, though there is

no doubt that symptoms which have failed to be cured by physicians are

sometimes relieved by these remedies. It is a cure by faith, not by

medicine.

Cured Cases as Evidence.--As all of the nostrums, and indeed all the

therapeutic movements supposedly medical or physical or religious,

secure their vogue on the strength of reported cures, this would seem

to be the best possible evidence for the efficacy of a remedy. But

unless the cases supposed to be cured are critically examined and

analyzed, and above all, followed for some time afterwards, such

evidence is open to all sorts of errors. Is it any wonder, then, that

the physician, familiar with the history of medicine in this regard,

asks for the careful study and analysis of these cases. We know that

it was on the strength of cures effected by it, that the weapon

ointment became possible throughout Europe. We know that portions of

the body of executed criminals and the touch of the hanged cured as

many cases as, let us say, osteopathy or Eddyism. The sympathetic

powder and its advocates appealed to the many cures that followed its

use. Every other nostrum from the beginning of time has made this same

appeal.

CHAPTER VIII

AMULETS, TALISMANS, CHARMS

Amulets, talismans, charms--these words are commonly used with

something of the same significance, and for our purpose all three may

be treated in common.

Prophylactic Objects.--From the earliest ages men have worn amulets,

that is, objects often resembling jewelry, though sometimes the

remains of animals or even of men, [Footnote 10] with the idea that

they would ward off illness, or cure it when present. Rings of many

sorts, brooches, various objects suspended around the neck, ear-rings,

head-bands, belts for the waist, and rings for the wrists and the

ankles, ornamented bracelets and anklets, have at all times had a

medicinal power attached to them in some minds. Earrings are still

worn by many with the idea that they are helpful in affections of the

eyes. I have known children's ears to be pierced and earrings inserted

because the little ones were suffering from headache. Precious stones

were supposed to have this power when worn. The amethyst protected its

wearer from drunkenness; the bloodstone cured anemia; while the opal

was supposed to portend evil. Occasionally such gems were ground up

and used as internal or external remedies, because of the power

supposed to be attached to them. Their influence upon the mind, at

least, can be readily understood. The earliest prescription we have in

America is at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, among the curiosities

from Egypt (about 1500 B.C.). It calls for the use of ground up

precious stones in fumigations, probably for an hysterical person.

[Footnote 10: A king of Italy of the later nineteenth century used

to send the parings of his toe-nails to friends to be worn in rings

for luck and protection against disease.]

The precious metals were used also as powerful cures. Chaucer says,

"for {61} gold in physick is a cordial." Some think that our own use

of chloride of gold a few years ago for many chronic ills had little

more reason than the preciousness of gold impressing itself on

patients. Inscriptions were made on the metals, and these were

supposed to add to their healing or preservative quality. Famous among

these was the abracadabra. It had to be written in a particular

triangular form, and was then very powerful. Here the amulet invades

the sphere of the charm. Prayers were written on parchment, or on

paper, or on papyrus, in the old time in Egypt, Babylon and Assyria,

and when worn about the body were supposed to do great good. It is

surprising to us now how many physicians and scientists placed

confidence in these things because they thought that they had seen

good results. Alexander of Tralles recommends a number of them. Robert

Boyle, the father of chemistry, says that he was cured of a severe

ague, that the doctors could not benefit, by the application of an

amulet to his wrists. Burton, in the "Anatomy of Melancholy," has a

series of references that show how much he, himself, and the educated

men of his time, believed in the power of amulets to help in illnesses

and Boyle, particularly, has a number of references to precious stones

and their curative virtue.

Rings in Therapy.--Under Faith Cures I mention the cramp rings blest

by the Queen of England and effective against abdominal pains. Other

kinds of therapeutic rings were used rather commonly. All through the

Middle Ages iron rings were worn, which were good for colic and

biliousness and also for rheumatic pains. There are literally

thousands of such rings worn now, here in the United States, and by

quite intelligent people. Personally, I know of more than a dozen

cases where they have been worn for years. The wearers faithfully take

them off each day, rub off the rust which collects on the inside, call

their own and others' attention to the fact that all this material has

been drawn out of the body through the supposed electrical power of

the ring, and then they replace them. Here is pseudo science obtruding

itself. Usually these rings are of polished steel and look a little

like silver. They may, however, be obtained in gold plate, and then

are supposed to be quite as efficacious. The iron or steel rings cost

two dollars each; gold-plated rings cost five to ten dollars,

according to the ability of the patient to pay, for metallotherapy has

as one of its effects the lessening of congestion of the purse. Those

who wear them would not part with them, because they feel the benefits

derived. These rings are supposed to be particularly good for vague,

painful conditions in the joints, especially the so-called rheumatic

pains.

In old times these rings were sometimes engraved with a legend that

was itself a strong suggestive element. The rings of the Middle Ages

that were supposed to be a cure for biliousness were engraved with a

command to the bile to go and take possession of a bird. Occasionally

rings were supposed to be valuable because of their origin. Epileptic

fits, for instance, were rendered much less frequent and less severe

if a ring made of money that had been given in the church were worn.

The condition was that the sufferer should stand at the church door

asking a penny from every unmarried man who passed in or out. After

sufficient alms had been thus collected the money was exchanged for

silver money that had been contributed to the church, and from this

the ring was made. It was to have a cross and sometimes a verselet

from Scripture, or an exorcism, or a prayer, engraved on it. It is

{62} easy to understand that all of this represents strong suggestive

influence and that the standing at the church door begging alms might

well represent an enforced prolonged opportunity to get rest and air,

for many unmarried men do not go to church, and so there were also

physical factors at work in the cure noted.

Precious Stones as Preservatives.--Pettigrew, in his "Superstitions

Connected with Medicine and Surgery," mentions a number of the

precious stones and their power to heal. Garnet hung about the neck

relieves sorrow and refreshes the heart; chrysolite is the wisdom

stone, the enemy of folly; heliotrope staunches blood and acts as an

antidote; sapphire is good for ague and gout, and also gives its

wearer courage; it also stops bleeding at the nose and was an

antidote; the topaz was good for lunatics; the carnelian cured bloody

fluxes and also fluxes of anger and passion. Jasper, hematite and

similar stones had certain general powers of doing good. The Bezoar

stone had a great reputation against melancholy; the smaragdum was

infallible against epilepsy; the onyx was good for sleep; the sardonyx

prevented bad dreams. The most wonderful stone, however, was the

agate; taken in liquid it was good for any disease. It made the skin

healthy. It preserved against snakebite, and against all poisons, and

it prevented the devil from injuring one who wore it or drank it, and

also preserved him from being struck by lightning. Considering how

common agates were and how readily they could be obtained, it is

rather surprising that we should have so many stories of illness and

deaths by lightning and from poison and from venomous serpents in the

old days when its curative value was rated so high.

Amulets.--The coin given by the kings of England when they healed the

scrofulus or epileptic came to be, in one sense, an amulet. The sight

and the touch of this acted as an ever recurrent suggestion tending to

make these patients better, and undoubtedly the coin was of great

service by its renewal of the mental influence of the touch of the

king. There are traditions, also, that these coins healed others who

touched them, and sometimes for generations they were kept in families

as representing a fountain of healing and of preservation of health.

Any object that thus became invested with reverence produced healing

effects. Virchow, in the introduction to Schliemann's "Troas," tells

of going to a long distance for water, during the time when he was

present at the excavations, in order to be sure that the water would

be absolutely pure. The natives had heard that he was a great

physician from the West. They concluded that the reason why he went to

this particular distant spring for water, in spite of the trouble

involved, was that it must have some wonderful healing virtues.

Accordingly a tradition of healing grew up around it, and people came

from long distances, drank from it and were cured.

There are still people who carry horse chestnuts for rheumatism, and

occasionally a farmer carries a potato for the same purpose. The

feeling is, if they do no good, at least they can do no harm.

Doubtless in the Middle Ages the same feeling prevailed as to other

favorite objects. At present, among the better informed classes,

various pendants supposed to have some connection with electricity are

popular. I have seen a medal made of alternate discs of copper and

zinc, and confidently believed to be strongly electrical, worn even by

an otherwise sensible merchant in a country town. Electric belts still

are {63} extremely common--and expensive. Supposed electric insoles,

one made of copper, the other of zinc, are sold in great numbers and

at good prices, though, quite needless to say, they are absolutely

inert electrically. Various electric contrivances, small batteries,

and the like, really are of the nature of amulets. People have a faith

in them that is not justified by anything in science, but that faith

helps them in their ills. Most of the supposed medicinal plasters are

in the same class. As a rule, sufficient curative material cannot be

incorporated in a plaster to be of any service, and most of them,

though widely advertised, are scarcely more than rubber adhesive

plaster. They do good partly by their mechanical effect, because they

actually support muscles, but mainly because of faith in their

efficacy. Whenever a particular discomfort occurs the feeling that a

plaster is covering the spot gives the patient assurance that he or

she must soon be better. In all of these effects there is no

manifestation of any physical or marvelous supernormal power, but

simply and solely of the influence of the mind on the body.

CHAPTER IX

DETERRENT THERAPEUTICS

In the history of therapy a peculiar phase was the use of all sorts of

materials, intensely repugnant to human nature and deterrent to all

the finer feelings, but which, nevertheless, proved curative of many

ills. We know now that there was absolutely nothing remedial in these

substances or methods of treatment, but only the effect produced upon

the patient's mind. If the patient makes sufficient effort to overcome

the intense repugnance, that enables him to release hitherto latent

vital energies, or to correct hampering inhibitions which have

prevented curative reactions. The more the patient had to conquer

himself, or herself, the more surely did the remedy produce a good

effect. It was effective, however, not only among the poor and the

uneducated, but often also among the better informed, provided the

patients became persuaded of its efficiency. Persuasion in these

matters is usually best secured by the reports of cured cases. It is

easy to obtain "cures" from almost anything. They are set up as

confident proofs of the remedial virtue of methods of treatment. They

have been, in the history of medicine, more often the indexes of

action upon mind than upon body. Real remedies help patients to get

better. Supposed remedies, that afterwards prove quite inert, _cure_.

Portions of Corpses.--One of the ingredients of the famous Unguentum

Armarium (see chapter on Nostrums) was, as has been said, moss scraped

from the skull of a man who had been hanged. It was declared to be

particularly efficacious against so-called dead members, such as the

blanched fingers of Raynaud's disease, or the hysterical palsies, and

other functional paralytic conditions of the limbs. The real

therapeutic factor was not the gruesome material itself, but the

potent suggestions awakened by it. It is probable that the quacks and

witch doctors who gave out the formula of their remedies as containing

such material often did not take the trouble to collect them, and that

their salves and ointments were really quite inoffensive preparations.

{64}

Touch of the Hanged.--Some of the traditions which gather round the

effect of contact with the body of a hanged person are curiously

interesting from the standpoint of psychotherapy. This form of

execution seems to have had a much more potent influence in producing

therapeutic elements in the bodies of the victims than any other. We

do not hear much of the touch of a beheaded person's body nor of any

place in medicine for portions of the victims of execution by

shooting, though Van Helmont claims curative properties for these in

lesser degree. All sorts of ailments were, however, supposed to be

cured by the touch of a hanged person. Thomas Hardy in his "Wessex

Tales" tells of a young woman in his time suffering from a paralyzed

arm, apparently a form of paralysis due to a functional nervous

condition, who was recommended by an old "conjure" doctor to touch her

bared arm, as soon after the execution as possible, to the purple mark

of the rope around the neck of a man who had been hanged. The doctor

assured her this was the only means by which she could be cured. We

would not be surprised to hear of her cure under such circumstances.

Hardy has carefully collected his material regarding the traditions of

the southern part of England, and he makes the hangman say, when the

woman applies to him for permission to touch the body of the victim,

that such a request had not been made for some years, but that there

used to be many applicants when he was a younger man. He adds,

moreover, that it was the custom to apply to the governor of the

prison and that usually this application was made by the physician of

the patient who accompanied him or her on the visit to the corpse.

There is no doubt that physicians did, in many cases, have recourse to

such methods, and that the reasons for their belief in the efficacy of

the touch of the dead was that they had seen the cure in this way of

many puzzling diseased conditions, which their skill in wortcraft and

herbal medicines had not enabled them to relieve. The touch of the

corpse was supposed to bring about a "turning of the blood," and this

produced the good effects. Occasionally the patients fainted from

terror, yet afterwards were found to be able to use limbs that had

been quite beyond their control before. The story is typical of what

happened in country districts all over Europe for centuries.

Mummies.--How little distant we are from the use of such material for

therapeutic purposes will be appreciated from the fact that mummy was

used in medicine down nearly to the end of the eighteenth century. The

first edition of the "Encyclopedia Brittanica" (1768) said:

We have two different substances preserved for medicinal use under

the name of mummy, though both in some degree of the same origin.

The one is the dried and preserved flesh of human bodies, embalmed

with myrrh and spices; the other is the liquor running from such

mummies, when newly prepared, or when affected by great heat or

damps. The latter is sometimes in a liquid, sometimes of a solid

form, as it is preserved in vials well stopped, or suffered to dry

and harden in the air. The first kind of mummy is brought to us in

large pieces, of a lax and friable texture, light and spongy, of a

blackish brown color, and often damp and clammy on the surface: it

is of a strong but disagreeable smell. The second kind of mummy, in

its liquid state, is a thick, opaque, and viscous fluid, of a

blackish color, but not disagreeable smell. In its indurated state,

it is a dry solid substance, of a fine shining black color, and

close texture, easily broken, and of a good smell; very inflammable,

and yielding a scent of myrrh and aromatic ingredients while

burning. This, if we cannot be content without medicines from our own

bodies, ought

{65}

to be the mummy used in the shops; but it is very scarce and dear;

while the other is so cheap, that it will always be most in use.

All these kinds of mummy are brought from Egypt. But we are not to

imagine, that anybody breaks up the real Egyptian mummies, to sell

them in pieces to the druggists, as they may make a much better

market of them in Europe whole, when they can contrive to get them.

What our druggists are supplied with, is the flesh of executed

criminals, or of any other bodies the Jews can get, who fill them

with the common bitumen so plentiful in that part of the world; and

adding a little aloes, and two or three other cheap ingredients,

send them to be baked in an oven, till the juices are exhaled, and

the embalming matter has penetrated so thoroughly that the flesh

will keep and bear transportation into Europe. Mummy has been

esteemed resolvent and balsamic: but whatever virtues have been

attributed to it, seem to be such as depend more upon the

ingredients used in preparing the flesh, than in the flesh itself;

and it would surely be better to give those ingredients without so

shocking an addition.

Serpents in Therapeutics.--Snakes and portions of snakes have been

prominent features of deterrent therapeutics at all times. Headaches

were cured by wrapping a dead snake around the head, or by the touch

of a snake's skin, and sore throat by wearing a snake's skin around

the throat at night. This seems one degree better than the custom,

still common, of wrapping the stocking, that has been worn during the

day, around the neck. In the chapter on Graves Disease, the use of the

touch of a snake, or of a snake's skin worn around the neck, is

mentioned. Girdles made of snake's skin or snakes themselves, were

supposed to be good for colic and for various internal troubles, and

were sometimes, among barbarous peoples, a sovereign remedy for the

ills of pregnancy and assured the woman a safe delivery and an easy

labor. Undoubtedly they lessened dreads by suggestion and the effort

necessary to overcome repugnance. Some of the symptoms of the

menopause have been cured in the same way. Rattlesnake oil has had a

special reputation among mountainous people, where the snakes

abounded, for the pains and aches of the old, and the vague joint

discomfort, sometimes spoken of as rheumatic, but really due to

various individual conditions. It is probable that in most cases the

oil thus employed was not extracted from the rattlesnake, but was some

ordinary oil palmed off under that name, and having its special

effectiveness because of the thought associated with it.

Various portions of serpents are still in use, sometimes in the hands

of physicians, though usually in popular medicine. I knew a physician

in a small inland city who had a great local reputation for curing

external eye troubles, and who owed not a little of it to the fact

that the people in his neighborhood thought that he used rattlesnake

oil as one of the ingredients for his strongest prescriptions. He was

supposed to be able to dissolve even cataract by his remedies, and

there is no doubt that in many cases of chronic indolent ulcer of the

eye he was able to bring about a cure sooner, and have it last longer,

than those of the regular profession who had not the advantage of this

popular faith. He was careful to buy rattlesnakes from certain of the

mountain people, who killed and brought them to him and who advertised

the fact that they had such commissions from him. The stories were

made all the more interesting by the fact that the doctor would not

purchase dead rattlesnakes. They must be brought to him alive, since

the therapeutic virtues can only be extracted immediately after death.

A mountaineer with a couple of live rattlesnakes with him is always an

interesting object and a fine {66} advertisement. One would like to

know what the doctor did with the snakes--that is, how he disposed of

them without suspicion. Homeopathic physicians still have

lachesis-viper venom in their pharmacopeia. Their remedies, however,

if they really follow the dilution principle of their founder, can

have an effect only on the mind, so that the use of lachesis is not

surprising.

Repugnant Remedial Measures.--Quite in keeping with the use of

deterrent remedies of various kinds are the recommendations to do

certain things that involve great self-control, and the overcoming of

repugnance, or fright, or the like. A favorite mode of preparing

remedies in the Middle Ages was to gather the particular herbs for the

prescription in a graveyard in the dark of the moon. The patient

himself was supposed to gather them and to be alone when doing so, if

they were to be effective. How much occupation of mind and diversion

of thought would be afforded for timid people by the effort to

overcome themselves to this extent! The occupation of mind alone and

the concentration of thought necessary for the ordeal would be quite

sufficient to divert many people from the centralization of attention

on themselves, which is responsible for so many of their symptoms, or

for that exaggeration of symptoms that aggravates the ailment.

_Ordures as Remedies_.--Among all primitive peoples we have the story

of the use, as remedies, of ordures of various kinds, of repugnant

portions of animals, of ground insects, of animal excrement and urine,

and even of human excretions, of the blood of serpents, or eels, or

carrion feeding birds, and the like. Ground lice and insects of

various kinds are very common as prescriptions in the history of

primitive medicine. They turn up here and there through the Middle

Ages, and they are said to be still used in China. The more one knows

about side-tracks in medicine, the more does one find of far-fetched

repugnant materials vaunted as wonderful cures. Some of the substances

employed are so disgusting that one does not care to mention, much

less discuss, them. I have had a man tell me that, in a severe

epidemic of diphtheria, he saved his children's lives when they were

attacked by the disease, and the children of others were dying all

around him, by blowing the dried excrement of dog down their throats.

There are certain popular medical practices that are related to these

old traditions of deterrent therapeutics. In many manufacturing

establishments, in spite of progress with regard to sepsis and

antisepsis and the diffusion of information as to first aid to the

injured, it is still the custom to put spittle on wounds. I am sure

that every doctor has seen quids of tobacco used in this way. Even

native-born Americans, who are not illiterate, are sometimes found

using some deterrent material. I have known such a man use his own

urine as an eye-wash for sore eyes, and the use of children's urine

for such purposes is much commoner than might be thought. After all,

it is only a generation since physicians used to taste urine in order

to determine whether it contained sugar or not, and I have seen a

country doctor even take between his finger and his thumb a little of

the excrement of a child and apply his tongue to it, pretending of

course that he obtained very valuable information this way.

_Excretions and Secretions_.--All the human excretions have formed the

basis of vaunted remedies. Tears, on the principle that like cures

like, were used for melancholia; nasal secretion to lessen respiratory

difficulty through {67} the nose; sputum for various mouth affections,

but also as an application to external abrasions, and to the eyes, the

ears, and the like. Undoubtedly patients were helped by many of these,

not because of any physical effect, but because they felt easier as a

consequence of the satisfaction of having something done for them, and

the consequent freedom from solicitude which allowed nature to produce

her curative reaction without interference. The greater the effort he

has to make, apparently the more efficiently does he control this

disturbing state of mind. This is the secret of many cures now as well

as in the olden time.

Whatever good effect is produced in such cases comes, of course, from

the persuasion that these substances will do good, and there must be a

strong suggestion to that effect before the repugnance can be

overcome. While we are prone to think the older peoples who used such

materials commonly are to be condemned for ignorance and superstition,

it is well to recall that human nature has not changed, and is still

ready to be influenced in the same way. Brown Sequard's extract of

testicular substance came in this category. We had a wave of

organotherapy a few years ago, and we know now that whatever benefits

patients derived from taking heart substance for heart troubles, and

brain substance for brain troubles, and kidney for renal diseases, was

entirely due to mental influence. The cannibal who eats the heart of

his enemy, thinking that the vigor and courage of the other will pass

into him, undoubtedly has for a time a power of accomplishment greater

than before. Nothing acts so powerfully as suggestion of this kind to

give renewed vigor and to enable us to tap sources of energy that we

were not aware of in ourselves, and that enable us to accomplish what

before seemed quite impossible, and even to bring about curative

reactions.

Diseases Benefited.--Observe the classes of disease that were

particularly relieved by deterrent therapeutics. Headache was one of

these. All sorts of things were cures for headaches--the touch of the

hangman's rope, or of an executed criminal, or some herb gathered in

the graveyard in the dark of the moon, or pills made of the excrement

of various animals. The forms of headache thus relieved would be those

in which over-attention to self, rather than real headache, produced

queer feelings in the head, though concentration of attention might

exaggerate this into an ache. Foot troubles were cured by deterrent

therapeutics. To wear the shoes of a dead person, especially of a

murderer who had been hanged, would cure them. Colic was cured by

pills of excrementitious materials, and by all sorts of other

deterrent remedies. For instance, one well-known remedy was to wash

the feet and drink the wash-water. The wash-water of little babies was

a favorite remedy for the vague abdominal pains of old maids, and for

the symptoms due to the menopause.

Deterrent Pain.--A striking illustration of a strong mental influence

helping out a slight amount of therapeutic efficiency is found in the

use of the actual cautery for medical affections. At a number of times

in history most of the chronic pains and aches, the arthritises, the

so-called gouty tendencies when localized, the rheumatic affections

and especially the chronic rheumatisms, have been treated by means of

the cautery. All of the neuralgias, many of the neuroses, all of the

neuritises and a certain number of so-called palsies and paralyses,

were treated successfully by this means. It is a very suggestive

remedy producing a deep impression that now relief must be in sight.

It {68} became popular over and over again, though after a time it

always lost its influence, and ceased to have the beneficial effects

that it had at the beginning of its reintroduction.

During the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the

nineteenth century the cautery became very popular. It was applied

particularly in the form of the moxa. A cylinder of cotton was

employed for this purpose, being set on fire and allowed to burn on

the skin of the patient, producing a deep wound. The mental effect of

this can be readily understood. Baron Larrey, one of the most eminent

surgeons of the time, thought the moxa one of the best aids that he

had in the treatment of many affections where the knife was not

indicated. There were large groups of diseases in which it was almost

a specific. Larrey employed it in affections of vision, of smell, of

taste, of hearing and of speech. In many paralytic affections of the

muscular system, in all chronic affections of the head, among which he

enumerates non-traumatic affections, hydrocephalus, chronic headaches

and many other affections supposed to be seated in the cranium. In

asthma he was particularly successful with the moxa. Old catarrhal

affections yielded to it. Consumption was frequently benefited by it.

Most of the chronic affections of the uterus were benefited, as were

also similar affections of the stomach. He considered that the moxa

must be admitted, without contradiction, to be the remedy _par

excellence_ against rachitis. In Pott's disease, which he called

dorsal consumption, it worked wonders. In sacrocoxalgia, in

cocygodynia and femero-coxalgia he had excellent results with the

moxa.

A glance at this list shows exactly the class of cases in which

suggestion has always played a large role, and for which there has

been, at various times, a series of specific remedies, medicinal,

manipulative and surgical. Others extended the value of the moxa

beyond these affections. Ponto found it valuable in gout, and in the

various chronic affections which are sometimes grouped under the name

chronic rheumatism. He insisted that the moxa could be placed on

almost any part of the body, though the contra indications he suggests

show how far the men of his time went with its use. Only these

portions named might not have a moxa applied to them. It must not be

used on the skull, on the eyelids, on the ears, on the mamme, on the

larynx and on the genitals, though it might be applied to the perineum

or the perineal body.

Deterrent Taste and Smell.--The disturbing effects produced by other

senses besides those of sight have been used in the same way for the

production of definite therapeutic suggestive effects. A number of the

ill-tasting, almost nauseating drugs of the olden time prove to have

very little real therapeutic efficiency in the light of modern

clinical careful observation. This is particularly true of the herbs

and simples. Many a disgusting preparation apparently owed all of its'

good effects on the patient to the effort that was required to swallow

it, producing such a favorable influence upon the mind, by

_contrecoup_ as it were, that the patient got better. A little girl

said that cough medicines were nasty things they gave you in order to

keep you from catching cold again. The sense of smell has been used in

the same way. Valerian is probably an efficient drug in certain

respects, but undoubtedly its efficiency is materially increased by

its intensely repulsive odor. For many of the psycho-neuroses and

neurotic conditions generally the ammonium valerianate is likely to be

much more efficient than the strychnin valerianate, though probably

the {69} latter should be considered as more physically efficacious in

its tonic properties. Asafetida, musk and some preparations of the

genital organs of animals that used to be in the pharmacopeia, owed

most, if not all, of their power, whatever it was, to the mental

effect of their odor and the feeling of deterrence that had to be

overcome before they were taken.

There is a precious therapeutic secret in this use of deterrent,

repugnant, frightful materials which patients use to advantage under

certain circumstances. It illustrates the influence of the mind over

the body, and emphasizes the fact that such influence can be exerted

in the full only when a deep impression is produced upon the patient.

Whether this can be imitated without deceit, and without the use of

undignified methods, must depend on the physician himself and his

personality. There can be no doubt that there is a wonderful power

here to be employed. It must be the physician's business to find out

in each individual case, according to his own personal equation, just

how he may be able to use at least some of it. It is well worth

studying and striving for, because nothing is more potent for

psychoneurotic conditions, and for neuroses on the borderland of the

physical, than which no ailments are more obstinate to treatment.

CHAPTER X

INFLUENCE OF THE PERSONALITY IN THERAPEUTICS