An essay on some of the principles of medical delusion / by J.H. Nutting.

  • Nutting, J. H.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on some of the principles of medical delusion / by J.H. Nutting. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    must exist, and they pursue it with the utmost pertinacity, taking box after box, and bottle after bottle, of all the thousands of nostrums which the ingenuity and cupidity of crafty men can invent. This may cure, and that may cure, and they try all. So, too, doctor after doctor is called, each time taking one more ignorant than the one before. The regular physician, finding no room for hope, gives no promise of reco- very, and is discarded for one who will. He, failing to cure, is dismiss- ed for one more ignorant still ; for each promises more confidently, in proportion to his ignorance, and they feed delusive hope on these pro- mises, although they know them to be empty as the wind. At length, having tried the whole round of ignorance, death lays them in their resting place. They have expended their means for that which could do them no good, and have helped feed the whole army of ra- pacious quacks, ever ready to feed on the extremities of such as these. Another source of medical delusion is found in the Utter Ignorance of even educated men, of the Nature and Extent of Medical Knowledge. It seems taken for granted, that there are no fixed principles in medi- cine ; that disease, and the action of remedies, are all hap-hazard—the one coming when it may chance to, or, when God, by a miraculous in- tervention, sends it; and that the action of remedies is equally without law. On such notions as these, they found their idea of medical sci- ence. This, also, they consider as a mixture of luck and chance, hav- ing in it no fixed principles, and being what one may acquire in a month, as well as in a life time. If you are successful in practice, they will say that you are lucky or fortunate in not losing your patients. But there is no luck nor fortune about it. You do not go to your patients and pour down their throats whatever you may happen to, and trust fortune for the result. Having made yourself master of what know- ledge is to be attained, you investigate your case, till you find the exact nature of the disease, and then you select that remedial agent which your own observation, or that of others, has shown best adapted to re- move the disease. If you are successful, it is because you have done this. But here is no luck. The whole matter is as much the result of fixed laws, as any other result of a physical cause. The all-wise Governor of the Universe has not left disease out from his general plan. Certain causes, acting upon the human system under certain circum- stances, will invariably produce disease. Certain remedies, under certain conditions, will invariably assist nature to throw off disease. There is no luck in this. The truly successful physician is he who ascertains these laws, and acts in accordance with them. The really v/tsuccessful phy-