A new health era / by William Howard Hay.

  • William Howard Hay
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new health era / by William Howard Hay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    after all the years of failure to reach a scientific basis for the consideration of either disease or its management. We exploit those who do not know as much as we think we know, which is merely human nature applied selfishly. So this superstitious attitude that has always handicapped the ill has lent this class to continual exploitation, even as today; for if the surgeon cannot raise fear in the mind of the victim, he is not hugely successful in securing consent for an operation which the patient himself fears but little less than the condition that he does not understand, which has led him to consult the surgeon. As wisdom has increased, so has sorrow, just as Solomon said; for while we have learned to understand much that was formerly unknown to us, yet at the same time the increased knowledge is too often used to add fright to our internal troubles, and we are too often frightened into operations, most of which never should have occurred. Charms, incantations, exorcisms of supposedly unfriendly and harmful spirits, all these were the form of treatment fol- lowed before man became wise enough to understand that spirits had nothing to do with our maladies. But I am wonder- ing if these ancient misunderstandings are not closely related to our present fear of germs. As the anatomy of the body became better understood, the way was opened for the surgeon, who sought to rearrange the internal works to his satisfaction, and with the hope that this would in some way improve conditions. Barbers and priests reigned during the dark ages, the barber being the surgeon, because he knew how to cut, pre- sumably, the priest was the one who corresponded to the present day internist; his intercessions being supposed to pla- cate those spirits that could be reached in this way, or to exorcise those too unfriendly to listen to his intercession. And man, the goat, always paid for these ministrations, for they could not be performed for nothing. [18]
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