The Royal Road to Health; or, the Secret of Health Without DrugsTyrrell, Chas. A. (Charles Alfred)
Science
The Royal Road to Health; or, the Secret of Health Without Drugs
Tyrrell, Chas. A. (Charles Alfred)
Enema; Health; Health -- Popular works; Health promotion; Hygiene
The late Professor Wm. Tully, M.D., of Yale College, and of the Vermont
Academy of Medicine at Castleton, Vt., informed his medical class, that
on one occasion the typhoid pneumonia was so fatal in some places in the
valley of the Connecticut River, that the people became suspicious that
the physicians were doing more harm than good; and in their desperation
they actually combined against the doctors and refused to employ them at
all; “after which,” said Professor Tully, “no deaths occurred.” And I
might add, as an historical incident of some pertinency in this place,
that regular physicians were once banished from Rome, so fatal did their
practice seem, so far as the people could judge of it.
The great Magendie, of France, who long stood at the very head of
Physiology and Pathology in the French Academy--which, by the way, has
claimed to be, and perhaps is, the most learned body of men in the
world--performed this experiment. He divided the patients of one of the
large Paris hospitals into three classes. To one he prescribed the
common remedies of the books. To the second he administered only the
common simples of domestic practice. And to the third class he gave no
medicine at all. The result was, those who took less medicine did better
than those who took more, and those who took no medicine did the best of
all.
Magendie also divided his _typhoid fever_ patients into two classes, to
one of whom he prescribed the ordinary remedies, and to the other no
medicines at all, relying wholly on such nursing and such attention to
Hygiene as the vital instincts demanded and common sense suggested. Of
the patients who were treated the usual way, he lost the usual
proportion, about one-fourth. And of those who took no medicine, he lost
none. And what opinion has Magendie left on record of the popular
healing art? He said to his medical class, “Gentlemen, medicine is a
great humbug.”
In the face of such damaging testimony from prominent representatives
of the medical profession, it becomes exceedingly difficult to place any
reliance on the drug remedies prescribed by them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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