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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 780 



were never so well known; the methods of 

 their preparation and standardization were 

 never so perfect; and their therapeutic use 

 was never so effective ; while the discovery 

 of new drugs has greatly widened the 

 range of their applicability in disease. 



The subject of drugs leads us naturally 

 to consider other methods of healing. In 

 these amazing days of rapid living, when 

 we rush over the earth 's surface or through 

 the air above or the waters beneath, when 

 we joyfully jaunt to the icy ends of the 

 earth's axis, or speak our messages straight 

 into the wireless ether, confident of their 

 destination, we are prone to become im- 

 patient with long-existing things— we are 

 ever seeking the novel. With the seem- 

 ingly slow progress of the difficult science 

 and art of healing disease it is not strange 

 that unorthodox methods of healing should 

 have come into much favor. Medicine is 

 not really making as slow an advance as 

 often appears to the layman. The past 

 quarter of a century has witnessed the rise 

 of an entirely new and powerful medical 

 science, bacteriology, and a series of bril- 

 liant onslaughts, which are certain of ulti- 

 mate success, against that great enemy of 

 mankind, the infectious diseases. As in- 

 stances of what has been accomplished al- 

 ready one needs only to recall here the 

 remarkable decrease in the death rate of 

 diphtheria and tuberculosis. The success 

 in surgery during the same period has been 

 scarcely less brilliant. Internal medicine, 

 fortified by great physiological and patho- 

 logical discoveries, is rapidly forging to 

 the front; while thei'e is no considerable 

 class of diseases in the knowledge and 

 treatment of which progress has not been 

 marked. Yet notwithstanding the hopeful 

 augury, many men and women are dissatis- 

 fied with the results and the prospects. 

 Nothing testifies so well to the tendency 

 of humankind toward the bizarre as does 



the spread of osteopathy and Christian 

 Science. In the foundations of both of 

 these cults there can be found a few grains 

 of scientific truth, but they are surrounded 

 and concealed by such a fabrication of the 

 false, the imaginary and the superficial, 

 and the whole is often so exploited by ig- 

 norance and deception, that it would seem 

 as if the normal mind must turn from 

 them in disgiist. Yet the mystery about 

 them charms; and multitudes of other- 

 wise worthy men and women' are attracted 

 by them and cheerfully give to them their 

 own souls and bodies and the souls and 

 bodies of their children. 



Osteopathy is an outgrowth from the 

 primitive conditions prevailing on our 

 western frontier in the period preceding 

 our civil war, when educated physicians 

 were few, opportunities for rational treat- 

 ment were fewer, and boldness in assertion 

 and action counted far more than exact 

 conformity to scientific truth. The 

 founder of osteopathy was one of the rude, 

 itinerant practical bone-setters, probably 

 often clever in his attitude toward the sick. 

 Though unlettered, he was possessed of a 

 positive philosophy that found a sympa- 

 thetic hearing in the home of many an un- 

 learned frontiersman, who would have 

 been ill at ease under the ministrations of 

 one trained in the nice theories of aca- 

 demic medicine. Osteopathy was and still 

 is full of unfounded assertions regarding 

 the normal functioning of the bodily struc- 

 tures, and the nature and proper methods 

 of cure of disease, though of late years its 

 more enlightened practitioners appear to 

 be endeavoring to harmonize its practises 

 with certain accepted scientific principles. 

 It speaks much of "lesions," by which it 

 means, not the commonly accepted patho- 

 logical idea of morbid changes, but rather 

 "any structural perversion which by pres- 

 sure produces or maintains functional 



