CURING BY COMBATING THE CAUSE. 2/7 



nemann still dominated, lapsed into giving 

 nothing at all to the patient, and rested content 

 with observing the course of the malady. 

 With this " do-nothing " method of treatment 

 the outcome was at least as satisfactory as if 

 the patient had been harassed with all sorts of 

 medicine. On the other hand, in certain cases 

 where physicians with their great activity, 

 their many remedies and large doses of medi- 

 cine had done only harm, Hahn and Priess- 

 nitz achieved remarkable cures by using ordi- 

 nary water, a remedy everywhere accessible. 

 Men gradually learned again to consider the 

 common substrata of life, such as air and food, 

 in their causative aspect, and forty-one years 

 ago Brehmer founded in Gorbersdorf a now 

 famous sanitarium where he adduced strong 

 proof in opposition to the conclusions of medi- 

 cal empiricism of thousands of years, that the 

 dreaded disease, lung consumption or tuber- 

 culosis, is curable by hygienic measures. 

 Forty-eight years ago Semmelweiss taught 

 that the terrible malady known as puerperal 

 fever which exceeds in fatality even small-pox 

 and cholera, could be prevented by simple 

 cleanliness. These instances, together with 

 Jenner's successful combating of the much 

 dreaded small-pox by means of inoculation 

 with harmless cow-pox virus, constitute good 



