596 THE PaPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Suppressing the symptoms in any other way means only to change 

 the form of the disease, or to postpone its crisis. Thus, mercurial 

 salves will cleanse the skin by driving the ulcers from the surface to 

 the interior of the body ; opiates stop a flux only by paralyzing the 

 bowels i. e., turning their morbid activity into a morbid inactivity ; 

 the symptoms of pneumonia can be suppressed by bleeding the patient 

 till the exhausted system has to postpone the crisis of the disease. 

 This process, the " breaking up of a sickness," in the language of the 

 old-school allopathists, is therefore in reality only an interrupting of 

 it, a temporary interruption of the symi^toms. We might as well try 

 to cure the sleepiness of a w^eary child by pinching its eyelids, or the 

 hunger of a whining dog by compressing his throat. 



Drugs are not wholly useless. If my life depended upon a job of 

 work that had to be finished before morning, and the inclination to 

 fall asleep was getting irresistible, I should not hesitate to defy Nat- 

 ure, and keep myself awake with cup after cupful of strong black 

 coffee. If I were afflicted with a sore, spreading rapidly from my 

 temple toward my nose, I should suppress it by the shortest process, 

 even by deliberately producing a larger sore elsewhere, rather than 

 let the smaller one destroy my eyesight. There are also two or three 

 forms of disease which have (thus far) resisted all unmedicinal cures, 

 and can hardly be trusted to the healing powers of Nature the lues 

 venerea, scabies, and prurigo because, as Claude Bernard suggests, 

 their symptoms are probably due to the agency of microscopic para- 

 sites, which oppose to the action of the vital forces a life-energy of 

 their own, or, as Dr. Jennings puts it, " because art has here to inter- 

 fere not for the purpose of breaking up diseased action, but for the 

 removal of the cause of that action, the destruction of an active virus 

 that possesses the power of self-perpetuation beyond the dislodging 

 ability of Nature." 



But with those rare exceptions it is better to direct our efforts 

 against the cause rather than the symptoms i. e., in about ninety-nine 

 cases out of a hundred it is not only the safer but also the shorter way 

 to avoid drugs, reform our habits, and, for the rest, let Nature have 

 her course ; for, properly speaking, disease itself is a reconstructive 

 process, an expulsive effort, whose interruption compels Nature to do 

 double work ; to resume her operations against the ailment after ex-' 

 pelling a worse enemy the drug. If a drugged patient recovers, the 

 true explanation is that his constitution was strong enough to over- 

 come both the disease and the druggist. 



Dr. Isaac Jennings,* the greatest pathologist (or, at least, patho- 

 gno7nist) of our century, was sadly misunderstood, chiefly, I believe, 

 because he called his method the " Let-alone Plan." Prevention Plan, 

 or Unmedicinal Cure, would have been a better word. Diseases do 

 not want to be let alone ; they call loudly for relief not, though, 



* Author of the " Treatise on Medical Reform." 



