And here a question arises that is puzzling to many. If these systems are
fads and frauds, why do they so rapidly get and retain so large a
following among intelligent people? The answer is not hard to find. The
quacks of these fad schools get their cures, as every intelligent doctor
of the old schools knows, in the same way and upon the same principle that
is so important a factor in medical practice, _i. e._, _faith cure_--the
psychic effect of the thing done, whether it be the giving of a dose of
medicine, a Christian Science pow-wow, the laying on of hands, the
"removal of a lesion" by an Osteopath, the "adjustment" of the spine by a
Chiropractor, or what not.
The principles of mind or faith cure are legitimately used by the honest
physician. Suggestive therapeutics is being systematically studied by many
who want to use it with honesty and intelligence. They realize fully that
abuse of this principle figures largely in the maintenance of the shysters
in their own school, and it is the very foundation of all new schools and
healing fads. The people must be made to know this, or fads will continue
to flourish.
The honest physician would be glad to have the people know more than this.
He would be glad to have them know enough about symptoms of diseases to
have some idea when they really need the help of a physician. For he knows
that if the people knew this much all quacks would be speedily put out of
business.
I wonder how many doctors know that observing people are beginning to
suspect that many physicians regulate the number of calls they make on a
patient by motives other than the condition of the patient--size of
pocketbook and the condition of the roads, for instance. I am aware that
such imputation is an insult to any physician worthy of the name, but the
sad fact is that there are so many, when we count the quacks of all
schools, unworthy of the name.
The president of a St. Louis medical college once said to a large
graduating class: "Young men, don't go to your work with timidity and
doubts of your ability to succeed. Look and act your part as physicians,
and when you have doubts concerning your power over disease _remember
this_, ninety-five out of every hundred people who send for you would get
well just the same if they never took a drop of your medicine." I have
never mentioned this to a doctor who did not admit that it is perhaps
true. If so, is there not enough in it alone to explain the apparent
success of quacks?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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