Second report of Dr. John Francis Churchill's free stœchiological dispensary, for consumption, and diseases of the lungs, windpipe, nose and throat : with remarks on the treatment of chronic lung disease / [John Francis Churchill].

  • Churchill, J. Francis (John Francis)
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report of Dr. John Francis Churchill's free stœchiological dispensary, for consumption, and diseases of the lungs, windpipe, nose and throat : with remarks on the treatment of chronic lung disease / [John Francis Churchill]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lie will in time get to Lave over his patients a control and an influence which before he did not possess, because he will be able honestly to give them The assurance of the possibility, and very frequently the certainty of attaining a definite, and hitherto unattainable result, provided all the necessary require¬ ments are carefully and steadily complied with. Now this is altogether a new state of things, with regard to chronic disease, and especially with regard to chronic diseases of the respiratory apparatus. I feel certain that any physician who will carefully act upon these lines in the treatment of his patients, will find that I have understated the results to be obtained by the use of my discoveries, and patients on the other hand (at least the more sensible part of them) will allow themselves to be influenced and guided by this assurance from the outset. The others, that is the majority, will more slowly (but in time also) come to understand that chronic diseases of the respiratory apparatus, are always curable up to a certain point, but that this result requires the intervention of a scientific direction as much as does the ■cure of an acute disease and can only he reached by slow, steady, persistent, and jproqierly directed action. The great difficulty which will be still remaining in the cure of Chronic [Respiratory Diseases, is the shortness of time during which patients carefully follow their treatment; and this in its turn is a consequence of the uncertainty which has hitherto attended all attempts at curing long-standing disease. Patients are always too ready to leave off their treatment as soon as it has pro¬ duced a certain amount of relief. They have become accustomed to the low grade of vitality induced by impaired health, and are ready to put up with it again as soon as any special or sudden stress or aggravation is removed or relieved, because they do not fully understand that chronic disease leads in all -cases to a curtailment of the chances of life, and either from their own personal experience, or from observation of those around them, they see that medical science has hitherto offered no assured means of cure. What has chiefly led me to make these preceding remarks, is the difficulty I daily meet with at my dispensary, of inducing patients to follow the treatment of any chronic complaint for any length of time, after they have received a certain amount of relief, particularly if the relief has been sufficient to enable them to resume work, which they had been compelled to leave aside. This is the reason why the reports of many of the cases treated cannot bo fully given to their final and definite result. But as I have already said above, the proof of the specific action of a remedy does not rest solely upon the curative results which it may produce, because these, particularly in chronic disease, imply numerous extraneous ■conditions, which cannot always be realized. The specific action of a remedy is I contend legitimately established when¬ ever, within the limits of personal variation, its therapeutic action is found to bo uniformly the same, and when its curative results, are constant up to the point where they are not interfered with by the failure of some necessary condition or by the intervention of some disturbing cause. All these limitations are -evidently indispensable in so complex a science as therapeutics. Prom this point of view I have thought it would be interesting to ascertain what has been the therapeutic action of the treatment followed at my dispensary upon all the patients actually in attendance, at a certain time (March, 1887). Each patient was simply asked how he found himself compared with his condition before he began the treatment, the following answers were returned.