"The new school does not feel itself under obligation to give any medicines whatever, while a generation ago not only could few physicians have held their practice unless they did, but few would have thought it safe or scientific. Of course, there are still many cases where the patient or the patient's friends must be humored by administering medicine or alleged medicine where it is not really needed, and indeed often where the buoyancy of mind which is the real curative agent, can only be created by making him wait hopefully for the expected action of medicine; and some physicians still cannot unlearn their old training. But the change is great. The modern treatment of disease relies very greatly on the old so-called natural methods, diet and exercise, bathing and massage--in other words, giving the natural forces the fullest scope by easy and thorough nutrition, increased flow of blood and removal of obstructions to the excretory systems or the circulation in the tissues. "One notable example is typhoid fever. At the outset of the nineteenth century it was treated with 'remedies' of the extremest violence--bleeding and blistering, vomiting and purging, and the administration of antimony and mercury, and plenty of other heroic remedies. Now the patient is bathed and nursed and carefully tended, but rarely given medicine. This is the result partly of the remarkable experiments of the Paris and Vienna schools in the action of drugs, which have shaken the stoutest faiths; and partly of the constant and reproachful object lesson of homeopathy. No regular physician would ever admit that the homeopathic preparations, 'infinitesimals,' could do any good as direct curative agents; and yet it was perfectly certain that homeopaths lost no more of their patients than others. There was but one conclusion to draw--that most drugs had no effect whatever on the diseases for which they were administered." Dr. Osler is probably the greatest medical authority on drugs now living. He was formerly professor of materia medica at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore, U. S., and now holds a professorship at Oxford University, England. His books on medical practice are in use in probably every university and medical school in English-speaking countries. His views on drugs and their real value as expressed in this article should be an eye-opener to those good people who believe that we of the Nature Cure school are altogether too radical, extreme, and somewhat cranky. However, what Dr. Osler says regarding the "New School" is true only of a few advanced members of the medical profession.