112 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



DR. OSWALD AGAIN EEPLIES TO DE. 

 BLACK. 

 Meter t. Editors: 



DR. J. R. BLACK'S second epistle, pub- 

 lished in the October issue of the 

 " Monthly," can hardly have surprised your 

 intelligent readers, and may even have ex- 

 cited their pity. When people like Dr. 

 Black see a way to achieve publicity, they 

 must be pardoned for trying to make the 

 best of their chance, even on the terms ac- 

 cepted by that Paris quack who volunteered 

 to be pilloried, if they would permit him 

 to exhibit himself in a pair of canvas 

 breeches, displaying a printed advertise- 

 ment of his pills. Besides, the doctor has 

 somewhat modified his original plan. Hav- 

 ing undertaken to pose as a martyr of med- 

 ical orthodoxy, but finding his nasal organ 

 out of plumb to a degree he had not quite 

 bargained for, he now attempts to effect his 

 retreat under a dust-cloud of irrelevant ob- 

 scurities. 



After admitting that dyspepsia in chil- 

 dren can be explained by the agency of 

 causes distmct from hereditary transmission 

 (which he had denied in his first letter), he 

 now defies me to prove that, by moderate 

 eating and abstinence from virulent drugs, 

 children can escape the disease. Has the 

 plan ever failed where it had a chance of a 

 fair trial, as in hygienic homes, or in 

 Schrodt's " Boarding Kindergartens " ? Or 

 does Dr. Black know what his thesis im- 

 plies ? He can not deny — 1. That the di- 

 gestive organs of children are governed by 

 the Bame pathological laws as those of 

 adults, the difference, if any, being in favor 

 of the children, since every birth is a hy- 

 gienic regenesis, and since diseases, as he 

 himself admitted in his first letter, do not 

 exist per se from the moment of birth. 2. 

 That a correct regimen and abstinence from 

 noxious drugs will prevent dyspepsia in 

 adults, and cure even far-gone dyspeptics. 

 Yet he holds that a correct regimen and ab- 

 stinence from noxious drugs will not prevent 

 dyspepsia in children. In other words, the 

 laws of health hold good in the ordinary 

 affairs of life, but may be set aside when it 

 comes to account for the mortality in the 

 infant-wards of an Ohio drug-hospital. Dr. 

 Black informs us that the public is deeply 

 interested in the issue of our controversy. 

 Feverishly. But your readers can make 

 their minds easy. Nature is not so incon- 

 sistent as Dr. Black; and I will under- 

 take to insure any child against dyspepsia, 

 nay, any cured dyspeptic against a relapse 

 of the disease, on the sole condition that 



they shall avoid dietetic abuses and Dr. 

 Black's prescriptions. In his distress to 

 evade the logical inference of his admis- 

 sions, Dr. Black suggests that some of my 

 arguments might be used to disprove the 

 hereditary tendency of insanity and con- 

 sumption. Before the doctor's friends per- 

 mit him to undertake another pathological 

 controversy, I would advise them to en- 

 lighten his mind on the difference between 

 functional and organic disorders, and thus 

 enable him to understand the reason why 

 consumption or cancer, but not dyspepsia, can 

 be called an hereditary disease, and why he- 

 reditary diseases and not dyspepsia reappear 

 in successive generations at the same period 

 of life when they were first contracted. If 

 I had ever doubted the chronic persistence 

 of mental derangements, I confess that Dr. 

 Black's arguments would have convinced 

 me of my error. The manner of his attempt 

 to defend the drivel of his first letter is a 

 sufiBcient proof that the taint of idiocy is 

 ineradicable. 



In trying to explain away the silliness of 

 his soap-water argument, Dr. Black volun- 

 teers the confession that Nature protests 

 against the use of soap when the sensitive- 

 ness of the cutaneous tissue has been mor- 

 bidly increased by the influence of a skin- 

 disease. In other words, he admits that a 

 morbid condition increases the danger of 

 using even the mildest chemical depurative. 

 Yet to the morbidly sensitive membrane of 

 the diseased digestive organs he proposes 

 to apply the virulent " intestinal soaps," as 

 he calls his cathartic drugs. The " striking 

 benefit" resulting from the use of patent 

 laxatives is too exclusively confined to the 

 experience of the patentee. 



Dr. Black's assertion that I propose to 

 cure syphilis on the let-alone plan is a fic- 

 tion which can be pardoned only to a non- 

 plused sophist at the brink of a reduciio 

 ad absurdum. Not only have I never pro- 

 pounded such a theory, but I have repeat- 

 edly named syphilis as the representative 

 disorder of the exceptional class of diseases 

 which (for reasons stated on page 729 of 

 " The Popular Science Monthly " for Octo- 

 ber, 1881, and on page 199 of my work on 

 " Physical Education ") have to be cured by 

 an artificial removal of the cause. 



As a last attempt to retrieve the re- 

 verses of his game, Dr. Black tries to score 

 a point on a lexicographical quibble. In 

 defending my plea for longer pauses be- 

 tween meals, he says, I have spoken of di- 

 gestion and assimilation as being one and 

 the same thing. The truth is, that I men- 



