Prize essay, Rational therapeutics, or the comparative value of different curative means, and the principles of their application / by Worthington Hooker.

  • Hooker, Worthington, 1806-1867.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prize essay, Rational therapeutics, or the comparative value of different curative means, and the principles of their application / by Worthington Hooker. 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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    results would have been better. But the facts are far from proving that the absence of all medication would have been followed by better results than a judicious application of general principles, — the measures of both modes being adopted to some extent, and adjusted to the needs of indi- vidual cases. They do not touch this point at all. This must be decided by altogether different data. It will not be deemed unprofitable here to consider briefly the question, whether positive medication is of real benefit in the treatment of disease generally. The question, let it be borne in mind, is, not whether the results of medical practice, as pursued by the profession at large, are better than they would be if disease were left to nature and a proper regimen; but whether this is true of the ordinary practice of judicious physicians. That it is so, is proved by various kinds of evidence, which I will very briefly notice. There is very decisive evidence on this point in the actual, undoubted effects of remedies. It is often difficult to dis- tinguish between the favorable effects of medicines and the results of nature's efforts ; but there are cases in which there cannot be the slightest doubt as to the curative influ- ence of the remedies that we employ. The evidence from such cases is clear on the simple question, whether medica- tion is ever useful. To what extent it is applicable is quite another question, to be decided by other evidence. We have evidence also from comparisons between cases subjected to medication and those which are left to nature. This evidence, however, is limited in amount; because the belief in the propriety of using some positive means of treatment in disease is so universal, that such comparisons are very seldom made. One of the most conclusive which we have is that reported by M. Grisolle in relation to pneu- monia. In 1840, he treated eleven patients attacked with this disease, without using any active remedies. The cases which he selected for observation were such, that there was no reason to fear a fatal termination in any of them ; and