196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 



ABOUT a century before the birth of the Emperor Augustus, the 

 most popular physician in Rome was the Grecian philosopher 

 Asclepiades. His system seems to have resembled that of our " move- 

 ment-cure " doctors. Instead of being stuffed with drugs, his patients 

 were invited to his palcestra, a sort of out-door gymnasium or hygienic 

 garden, where they were doctored with gymnastics, wholesome comes- 

 tibles, and, as some writers assert, with flattery — probably courteous 

 attention to the jeremiads of crapulent senators. At all events, his 

 method proved eminently successful, though we need not doubt that 

 ail respectable druggists retailed canards about his establishment. He 

 had devised a special course of gymnastics for every disorder of the 

 human organism, and repeatedly declared that he would utterly re- 

 nounce the claim to the title of a physician if he should ever be sick 

 for a single day. Medicines he rejected on the ground that they ac- 

 complish by violent means what the palcestra-method would effect in an 

 easier way. 



Still, in certain cases, a short, sharp remedy might be preferable to 

 an easy-going one, but unfortunately there is a more serious objection 

 to the use of drugs, viz., the danger of complicating instead of curing 

 the disease. For — 1. The diagnosis may fail to establish the true 

 cause of the disorder. No watch-maker would undertake to explain 

 the irregularities of a timepiece by merely listening to a description of 

 the symptoms, and before he can trace the effect to its cause he must 

 minutely inspect the interior mechanism. But a physician is not only 

 generally obliged to content himself with the evidence of the external 

 symptoms, but he has to deal with an apparatus so infinitely more 

 complex than the most intricate chronometer, that, even under normal 

 circumstances, the process of its plainest functions has never been fully 

 explained.* 



2. We risk to mistake the suppression of the symptoms for the sup- 

 pression of the disease. We would try in vain to subdue a conflagra- 

 tion by demolishing the fire-bells, but on exactly the same principle 

 the mediaeval drug-mongers attempted to restore the health of their 



* " Every organic process is a miracle, that is, in every essential sense an unexplained 

 phenomenon." — Lorenz Oken. 



" He obstinately refused to take medicine, " Doctor," said he, " no physicking. Do 

 not counteract the living principle. Let it alone ; leave it the liberty of defending it- 

 self ; it will do better than your drugs. The watch-maker can not open it, and must, in 

 handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once that he assists and relieves, 

 by dint of torturing it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last de- 

 stroys it."— (Scott's "Life of Napoleon," p. 368.) 



