The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand
John Stuart Mill · en
THE ALLOPATHIC, REGULAR, OR OLD SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.
This is the oldest existing branch of the profession. To it is due the
credit of collecting and arranging the facts and discoveries which form
the foundation of the healing art. It has done, and is doing, much to
place the science of medicine on a firm basis. To the text-books of this
school, every student who would qualify himself for medical practice
must resort, to gain that knowledge upon which depends his future
success. The early practice of this branch of the profession was
necessarily crude and empirical. Conservative in its character, it has
ever been slow to recognize new theories and methods of practice, and
has failed to adopt them until they have been incontrovertibly
established. This conservatism was manifested in the opposition to
Harvey when he propounded the theory of the circulation of the blood,
and to Jenner when he discovered and demonstrated the beneficial effects
of vaccination. Thus has it ever defended its established opinions
against innovation; yet out of this very conservatism has grown much
real good, for, although it has wasted no time or energy in the
investigation of theories, yet it has accepted them when established. In
this manner it has added to its fund of knowledge only those truths
which are of real and intrinsic value.
The history of medicine may be divided into three eras. In the first,
the practice of medicine was merely empiricism. Ignorant priests or
astrologers administered drugs, concerning the properties of which they
had no knowledge, to appease the wrath of mythological deities. In the
second or heroic era, the lancet, mercury, antimony, opium, and the
blister were employed indiscriminately as the _sine qua non_ of medical
practice. The present, with all its scientific knowledge of the human
structure and functions, and its vast resources for remedying disease
may be aptly termed the liberal era of medicine. The allopathic differs
from the other schools, mainly in the application of remedies. In its
ranks are found men, indefatigable in their labors, delving deep into
the mysteries of nature, and who, for their scientific attainments and
humane principles are justly considered ornaments to society and to
their profession.
HOMOEOPATHY.