"Qu? res neque consilium neque modum habet ullum
Eam consilio regere non potes."
Ter. Eun. Act i, Sc. i.
"Master, the thing which hath not in itself
Or measure or advice—advice can\'t rule."
Colman.

POSITION, PROGRESS, AND PROSPECTS OF THE PROFESSION—OF
HYDROPATHY—OF HOM?OPATHY—OF QUACKERY—OF PUBLIC
IGNORANCE.

A writer84, of no ordinary judgment and discrimination, has observed, that "it often happens in human affairs that the evil and the remedy grow up at the same time: the remedy unnoticed, and at a distance scarcely visible perhaps above the earth; whilst the evil may shoot rapidly into strength, and alone catch the eye of the observer by the immensity of its shadow; and yet," he adds, "a future age may be able to mark how the one declined and the other advanced, and how returning spring seemed no longer to renew the honours of the one, while it summoned into maturity and progress the perfection of the other."

We know not how it may appear to the reader, but we cannot help thinking that, in the foregoing sentence, there is a far-seeing341 perception of a very leading character in human affairs. There is no evil but which is charged with a certain degree of good. At first, it is indeed "scarcely visible"—nay, it escapes alike the most penetrative perception and faithful confidence, in the surpassing working-to-good of all things around us; but so soon as the evil begins to tell—so soon as the full flood of mischief becomes obtrusive or remarkable,—the small ripple of some corrective principle rises into view.

It would be easy to illustrate the foregoing proposition from general history, from the progress of nations, or even from the contracted area of individual experience. But we will confine ourselves to an illustration more directly in relation to our immediate object—namely, the present condition and prospects of medical science.

There are, no doubt, many persons who view the present state of Medical Science as little better than the triumphant domination of a conjectural art, which has long obscured, and is still very imperfectly representing, a beautiful science; and that the perception of the true relations which it bears to such science has been veiled by the impression that it involved some mystery from which the general public, who were most interested in its development, were necessarily excluded.

There have been at all times individuals, perhaps, sufficiently astute to see the real truth of the matter; but still they were rare exceptions, and did not prevent Mystery from conferring, on a very considerable section of people, the social advantage of a gainful profession; that property being enhanced, of course, in that it ministered to an ignorant public. But, even in an early stage, correctives to an equivocally-earned advantage began to appear; for a thing which had no character but its indefiniteness, and its apparent facility of acquisition, obtained many followers: the supply, such as it was, was thus so close in relation to the demand, that what in theory seemed necessarily very gainful, in practice, on the whole, proved anything but a lucrative profession. As contrasted with any other, or a variety of commercial pursuits, medical men were neither so affluent, nor always so secure of their342 position. Retiring competency in well-conducted callings has, in a rich country, been rather the rule. We fear, in the medical profession it is the exception; which, we are apprehensive (in its bereaved dependents), contributes more applicants for eleemosynary relief than any other.

This surely is not a state of things which can be well made worse. Public ignorance, the real mischief, has, in the meantime, been left uninformed; and any attempt to enlighten it has too often been branded with some kind or other of corrupt motive. Public positions have been conferred without competition—the surest test of fitness or excellence; and the public have been further doubly barred out, in that the chance of eliciting men of spirit and enthusiasm has been diminished, by the first positions having been often rendered contingent on the payment of money in the right quarter.

But all this time corrections were slowly springing up. Hundreds were beginning, under the light of a more liberal diffusion of general knowledge, to feel that the so-called Science of medicine and surgery was very different from science usually so termed; and, whilst other sciences were affording that which was definite and positive, the juxtaposition only seemed to bring out in higher relief the prevailing character of conjecture and uncertainty in medicine.

People began to see that, in mere human occupation, mystery is but mystery, to whatever it is applied; and that one man can see in the dark about as well as another; that, where all is obscure, any one may scramble with a chance of success. Accordingly, we observe that a state of things has gradually been rising up, which, if it do not justify the expression of quot medici tot empirici, at least leads us to deplore that, of all callings in life, no one had ever such a legion of parasites as are represented by the hydra-headed quackeries which infest the medical profession. Naturally enough, too, Quackery attacked chiefly those disorders in regard to which Mystery avowed its incapacity, or declared to be incurable; and thus, while the regular profession made their own limited knowledge the measures of the powers of343 nature, the quacks unconsciously proceeded, de facto, more philosophically, when they neither avowed nor acknowledged any other limits than those of observation and experience.

Amongst, no doubt, innumerable failures, and, as we know, a multiplicity of fictions, they would now and then, in acting violently on the various organs, blunder on the last link in the chain—the immediate cause of the disorder; and perhaps effect the removal of a so-called incurable malady. Thus, whilst the regular profession were making their own knowledge the measure of remedial possibility, and were reposing contentedly on the rule, they were every now and then undermined, or tripped up, by unexplained exceptions.

It is difficult to conceive any state of things, when once observed, more calculated to drive men to the obvious remedy that a definite science would alone afford; nor should it be forgotten that multiform quackeries, with mesmerism to boot, are coincident with a system which allows not one single appointment, which the public are requested to regard as implying authority, to be open to scientific competition. Of late, many persons have begun to examine for themselves questions which they had been wont to leave entirely to their medical adviser.

The sanitary movement has shown that more people die every year from avoidable causes than would satisfy the yawning gulf of a severe epidemic, or the most destructive battle. In a crowded community, many events are daily impressing on the heads of families, besides the expedience of avoiding unnecessary expenses, that long illnesses are long evils; that their dearest connections are sometimes prematurely broken; and that parts are not unfrequently found diseased which are not suspected to be so during life. The thought will sometimes occur whether this may have been always consequent on the difficulty of the subject, or whether it may not have been sometimes the result of too hasty or too restricted an inquiry; that not only (as the Spanish tutor told his royal pupil of kings) do patients die "sometimes," but very frequently.

These and other circumstances have induced many of the public to inquire into the reason of their faith in us; and to ask344 how it happens that, whilst all other sciences are popularized and progressing, there should be any thing so recondite in the laws governing our own bodies as to be accessible only to comparatively few; especially as they have begun to perceive that their interests, in knowing such laws, is of the greatest possible importance.

Amongst various attempts to better this condition of things, the imagination of men has been very active. Too proud to obey the guidance, or too impatient to await the fruition, of those cautious rules which the intellect has imposed on the one hand, and which have been so signally rewarded (whenever observed) on the other, imagination has set forth on airy wing, and brought home curiosities which she called science, and observations which, because they contained some of that truth of which even fancies are seldom entirely deprived, blinded her to the perception of a much larger portion of error.

Two of these curiosities have made considerable noise, have been not a little damaging to the pecuniary interests of the medical profession, and have been proportionately species of El Dorados to the followers of them. We allude to the so-called Hom?opathy and Hydropathy.

Hom?opathy proceeds on an axiom that diseases are cured by remedies which excite an action similar to that of the disease itself; "Similia similibus curantur."

Our objection to this dogma is twofold, and, in the few hints we are giving, we wish them not to be confounded.

1st. It is not proven.

2nd. It is not true.

Take the so-called fever. The immediate and most frequent causes of fever are bad air, unwholesome food, mental inquietude, derangement of the digestive organs, severe injuries. Now it is notorious that very important agents in the cure of all fevers are good air, carefully exact diet or temporary abstinence, and correction of disordered functions, with utmost repose of mind and body, and so forth.

So of small-pox, one of the most instructive of all diseases. All the things favourable to small-pox are entirely opposite to345 those which conduct the patient safely through this alarming disease; and so clearly is this the case, that, if known beforehand, its virulence can be indefinitely moderated, so as to become a comparatively innoxious malady.

We might go on multiplying these illustrations to almost any extent. What, then, is the meaning of the similia similibus curantur? This we will endeavour, so far as there is any truth in it, to explain. The truth is, that Nature has but one mode, principle, or law, in dealing with injurious influences on the body. Before we offer the few hints we propose to do on these subjects (and we can here do no more), we entirely repudiate that sort of abusive tone which is too generally adopted. That never can do anybody any good. We believe both systems to be dangerous fallacies; but, like all other things, not allowed to be entirely uncharged with good. We shall state, as popularly as possible, in what respect we deem them to be dangerous fallacies, and in what we deem them to be capable of effecting some good; because it is our object to show, in respect to both, that the good they do is because they accidentally, as it were, chip off a small corner of the principles of Abernethy.

Hom?opathy is one of those hypotheses which show the power that a minute portion of truth has to give currency to a large quantity of error; and how much more powerful in the uninformed are appeals to the imagination than to the intellect. The times are favourable to hom?opathy. To some persons, who had accustomed themselves to associate medical attendance with short visits, long bills,—a gentleman in black, all smiles,—and a numerous array of red bottles, hom?opathy must have addressed itself very acceptably. It could not but be welcome to hear that all the above not very pleasing impressions could be at once dismissed by simply swallowing the decillionth part of a grain of some efficacious drug. Then there was the prepossession so common in favour of mystery. How wonderful! So small a quantity! What a powerful medicine it must be! It was as good as the fortune-telling of the gipsies. There! take that, and then you will see what will happen next! Then, to get released from red bottles tied over with blue or red paper, which,346 if they were not infinitesimal in dose, had appeared infinite in number, to say nothing of the wholesome repulsion of the palate.

Besides, after the bottles, came the bill, having no doubt the abominable character of all bills, which, by some law analogous to gravitation, appear to enlarge in a terrifically accelerating ratio, in proportion to their longevity; so that they fall at last with an unexpected and a very unwelcome gravity. Then hom?opathy did not restrict itself to infinitesimal doses of medicine, but recommended people to live plainly, to relinquish strong drinks, and, in short, to adopt what at least seemed an approximation to a simple mode of living. To be serious—what, then, are the objections to hom?pathy?

Is there no truth, then, in the dogma, "Similia similibus curantur?" We will explain. The laws governing the human body have an established mode of dealing with all injurious influences, which is identical in principle, but infinitely varied and obscured in its manifestations, in consequence of multifarious interferences; in that respect, just like the laws of light or of gravitation. As we have no opportunity of going into the subject at length, we will give a hint or two which will enable the observing, with a moderate degree of painstaking, to see the fallacy. You can demonstrate no fallacy in a mathematical process even, without some work; neither can you do so in any science; so let that absence of complete demonstration be no bar to the investigation of the hints we give. All medicines are more or less poisons; that is, they have no nutritive properties, or these are so overbalanced by those which are injurious, that the economy immediately institutes endeavours for their expulsion, or for the relief of the disturbance they excite. All organs have a special function of their own, but all can on occasions execute those of some other organ. So, in carrying out injurious influences, organs have peculiar relations to different forms of matter; that is, ordinarily. Thus, the stomach is impatient of ipecacuanha, and substances which we call emetics; the liver, of mercury, alcohol, fat, and saccharine matters; and so forth. In the same way we might excite examples of other organs which ordinarily deal with particular natural substances. But then, by347 the compensating power they have, they can deal with any substance on special occasions.

Now the natural mode in which all organs deal with injurious substances, or substances which tend to disturb them, is by pouring forth their respective secretions; but if, when stimulated, they have not the power to do that, then they evince, as the case may be, disorder or disease. Thus, for example: If we desire to influence the secretion from the liver, mercury is one of the many things which will do it. But if mercury cease to do this, it will produce disease; and, if carried to a certain extent, of no organ more certainly than the liver. Thus, again, alcohol, in certain forms, is a very useful medicine for the liver; yet nothing, in continuance, more notoriously produces disease of that organ. So that it happens that all things, which in one form disorder an organ, may, in another form, in greater or more continued doses, tend to correct that disorder, by inducing there a greater, and thus exciting stimulation of its secretions.

This is the old dogma, long before hom?opathy was heard of, of one poison driving out another. This is the way in which fat bacon, at one peri............