WHAT MEDICINE CAN" DO FOR US. XXXI 



ressort. The result is that the bulk of the hospital physician's patients are what 

 are technically called " bad cases," and, as from their very nature they are unlikely 

 to improve under treatment, he gradually becomes sceptical as to the action of 

 medicines. The general practitioner, on the other hand, gets all kinds of cases, 

 trivial and severe, and is much more likely to be able to form a correct estimate of 

 the value of his remedies. At the same time, we are happy to say this scepticism 

 on the part of the London physicians is far from being universal. One of our most 

 accomplished and successful physicians, a man at the head of the profession, recently 

 made the following " confession of faith." He said : " Now, for myself, I desire to 

 repudiate, absolutely, scepticism in regard of medicine. I believe as confidently in 

 the power of physicians to treat disease successfully as I did when clinical clerk to 

 * one of the first practical physicians of my youth. Extended knowledge and accu- 

 mulated experience have only increased my confidence in the remedial powers of our 

 art." "VVe should say that a man who disbelieved in the curative powers of medicine 

 must be blind to the evidence of his own senses. The man who could not perceive 

 the beneficial action of quinine in ague, or of mercury in syphilis, would not see a 

 hole in a ladder. You sometimes hear a man say he " doesn't believe in medicine." 

 He might as well say that he does not believe in bread-aiid-b utter. There are, of 

 course, many diseases that are still beyond the power of our art, but this number is 

 decreasing day by day. Every year serves to introduce new remedies and fresh 

 preparations of old ones, and the number of diseases amenable to treatment is 

 steadily, but surely, increasing. " How wonderful," says the physician whom we 

 have just quoted, " is the influence of bromide of potassium over diseases for the 

 treatment of which we were but a few years ago almost impotent. A dull, heavy- 

 looking lad suffered for seven years from epileptic attacks, which steadily increased 

 from the first in severity and frequency, till many occurred in twenty-four hours. 

 For a year he was treated by a physician on general principles with little benefit. 

 The case was in all particulars most unpromising; yet from the time the boy took 

 the first dose of bromide of potassium to the present, nearly three years, he has not 

 had a single tit." This is by no means an unusual case. We have seen many like 

 it, and so must every one who has paid the slightest attention to the action of 

 drugs. But it illustrates well the power of a comparatively new remedy over a 

 class of cases which only a few years ago were regarded by practical men as almost 

 as much beyond the curative influence of drugs as is a case of cancer of the stomach. 

 Other illustrations of the strides made in treatment are afforded by the influence 

 of cod-liver oil and the hypophosphites in consumption, of iron in annemia, of 

 digitalis in heart disease, of ipecacuanha in the cure of dysentery and some kinds of 

 vomiting, of sulphide of calcium in boils and abscesses, and of electricity in many 

 diseases of the nervous system. With reference to the power of our art to alleviate 

 suffering, the difference between the medicine of to-day and that of five-and- 

 twenty years ago is very great. No one who has suffered from a painful local 

 affection can think of the immediate relief which followed the subcutaneous injection 

 of a dose of morphia without feelings of overpowering gratitude. There is no one who 

 has had to submit to the knife of the surgeon whose heart does not overflow with 

 thankfulness to those who introduced anaesthetics. The electric telegraph, the 



