One day, some two years after the strike, while walking down Washington Street, I met the leader of the second deputation aforementioned. 'I guess I have seen you before,' he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. 'Didn't you work at C's? Ah! you were the toughest customer we had; but if we had all done as you did, it would have been better for us.'
THE DOCTOR VERSUS THE MEDICINE
We cannot pretend to answer the question; but in practice we hold with the regular doctors. We do this because we are used to it. We may be said to have been born with their silver spoon in our mouths; and we should be terrified if the ghost of a grain went in instead. We have done our duty from our youth up by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him; and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling closer and closer with the Homœopathists, and meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal system. To that system you owe the
be found in the doctor's fear, that if he dispenses with medicines, the patient may dispense with him; but we are of Dr Hall's opinion, that this is quite illusory. The only difference it will make will be, that patients will learn to trust more to the judgment of their medical attendant, and less to the efficacy of his medicines.
Hydropathy proceeds on the hygienic treatment, although doubtless in a somewhat rough manner. Air, exercise, rubbing, cold water, simple foodsuch are its substitutes both for medicines and globules; and we think the regular doctors might with great advantage take a leaf out of its book, as well as out of the book of homœopathy. With this reform, we would suggestalthough with some timidity, for doctors are sensitive on the pointthat a re-examination, on broad scientific principles, even of common diseases, would do some good. Doctors are too fond of systems of treatment, which are not made to fit the patient, but which the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the certainty of fate. The patient diesthe patient recovers. What then? The doctor has done his besteverything has been according to rule!
The following are the rules laid down for practitioners on the new system:
'1. Never prescribe medicines when hygiene will do as well and can be enforced.
'2. Never permit the patient, or those around him, to expect more from medicines than medicines can perform.
'3. Never prescribe medicines, except avowedly as mere palliatives, when the period is gone by for them to be of ultimate service.
'4. Never conceal the general intention of the treatment; that is, whether it be adopted with a view to cure, or only to mitigate the disease, or merely to alleviate a symptom or symptoms.
'5. Never prescribe medicines more powerful than are necessary; or continue a powerful medicine longer, or repeat it oftener, than the disease actually requires.
'6. Never attribute to the medicine-giving part of the management of a successful case more than its due share of credit.'
We have called this a new system, but a new system is nothing without a name; and we therefore beg leave to suggest one, made up, like the others, of a Greek compound. First, we have Allopathy, another suffering; then Homœopathy, the same suffering; then Hydropathy, water-suffering; and now let us have Anapathy, no suffering at all.