All schools recognize the wonderful recuperative power of nature, as
this from the introduction of a standard allopathic text book will
show[9]: “There is no scientific dogma better established than this:
that the living organism is in itself adequate to the cure of all its
curable disorders. This natural law sustains the medical skeptic in
his infidelity, enables the homeopath to report his sugar cures, and
helps all physicians out of more close places than they are generally
willing to acknowledge.” But at times, as all will agree, nature is not
able to overcome its maladies and assistance is needed. Here, again, is
a divergence as to the method and character of that assistance. There
is no system so trivial or absurd which cannot point to its cures, but
a school of medicine should have a settled system with established
methods of procedure. This is not true of any school employing drugs as
its principal therapy. In the President’s annual address at Cleveland
he says[10]: “The observant reader of the progressive medical press
is struck at once by the unsettled condition in the field of modern
therapeutics. The trend is emphatically away from drugs. But, in
the effort to get away from medicine, the medical investigator has
wandered far afield, cutting loose from nature and resorting to the
artificial.” It is the last paragraph of the extract quoted which
particularly emphasizes the point of divergence, natural _versus_
unnatural methods. It must be understood at once that the osteopath
admits the reality of drug action for “there is no doubt that the
pharmacopeia records many drugs whose action is rapid and effective so
far as securing activity or decrease of secretion is concerned, but the
element of danger, i. e., their destructive power is great. Oftentimes
their power does not stop at the point desired or limit its effect
to the therapeutic action sought[11].” This point of unreliability
of the drug is emphasized by the following from recognized medical
authority[12]: “We give drugs for two purposes: (1) To restore health
directly by removing the sum of the conditions which constitute
disease. Here we act empirically with no definite knowledge—often
indeed with little idea of the action of our drugs, but on the ground
that in our hands or in the hands of others they have restored health
in like cases. (2) To influence one or more of the several tissues
and organs which are in an abnormal state so as to restore them to or
toward the normal; with the hope that if we succeed in our purpose
recovery will take place. The purpose we effect by means of the
influence which the chemical properties or drugs exert on the structure
and function of the several tissues and organs. Minute information,
therefore, of the nature of drugs and their action is essential for
their proper employment.” Osteopathy brings into action the latent
or stagnant forces of nature by specific methods which are usually
reliable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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