348 THE PRINCIPLES OF TREA TMENT 



ishness, we may place the patient in a more favourable 

 condition to withstand it than " Nature " unaided can 

 do, and we may often mitigate the force of a blow 

 that we may be powerless to ward off. 



" Expectant Medicine " in severe cases of fever is 

 not justified by the facts known concerning fever, and 

 an expectant attitude will no more save life than it 

 will extinguish fever-poison, effect sanitary improve- 

 ments, or preserve people in a state of health which 

 will enable them to resist the influence of disease- 

 germs. Expectancy, as a principle, is no more justi- 

 fiable than is the giving of harmless pilules or coloured 

 water as a practice. In the treatment of real disease, 

 mere passive expectancy means the denial of know- 

 ledge, the ignoring of broad facts of observation and 

 experiment, a contempt for the lessons taught by 

 experience, and a disbelief in all that has been handed 

 down to us by those who have observed, and laboured, 

 and thought before we lived. 



The Principles by which we should be guided in the 

 Treatment of Slight Cases of Fever and of the Early 

 Stage of Cases which may afterwards become Serious 

 or Desperate. 



It would seem almost superfluous to urge that 

 the admission that there are cases of fever which 

 will get well without any medical treatment what- 

 ever, and cases that cannot be saved by any mode 

 of treatment yet discovered, does not involve the 

 inference that nothing is to be gained by treat- 



