The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1880-09-05

WIS hoobOu Nv W Pi'J""'NNN fNNf'0 - -
ass because no used matter from a COW
Thus will abuses, without any literary pc
lice, cluster thick around every such move
event of science or of the unscientiiic
Would the fcience of medicine itself be
science, would It be worth the time and re
search and labor necessary TO devote to 1t Il
become proficient il it was nota progressiv
one! Nothing Stands still in this world
changes take place in all animate nature
The habits and customs of men change ant
with these changes their physical being sn'
the practice of medicine TO DO OF value
must assmmilate and conform. The
knowledge and ideas Of astronomy that OBJ
tanned Atty years ago have very materially
altered since then. While the heavens are
as yet comparatively but as sealed book
many pages have been turned in the past
half century and such learned authors as
Proctor and Tce and others have thrown
new light from the very stars themselves
upon a science that in the days of Keppler
and Herschel was but in its swaddling clothes.
Lyel and Hugh Miller and the other great
delivers Of their day and time
progressed very far in the science
of geology, but many of the theories that
obtained then have been exploded for newer
ones that are now accepted in the geological
curriculum. We all know how little was
known of electricity century and half
ago. Franklin enticed 1t from the skies by
means of his kite string, and bottled it up,
and Morse, with his telegraph instrument,
batteries and wires, made it the servant Of
man, obediest TO his dictation on the earth
and beneath old oceans waves; but in these
latter days Edison has learned more and told
more of the subtle fluid than all the other
scientists ever knew. Even man himself and
his origin has been, indeed is yet, a profound
mystery, but Darwin and other students Of
anatomy and physiology have penetrated
deep into the arcanum of this grand holy of
holies, and we can come nearer than ever
before of obeying that injunction,
"Msn, know myself" l. it reasonable
then that the science Of medicine stand
still Does not our correspondent Escul Plus
himself progress in his profession? Have not
the experience of the years he has been prac-
ticing medicine, the idiosyncracies of disease
that he has observed when blythe beIsldes of
his patients, the varied effects Of the reme-
dies he uses In the cases he treats, enabled
him to advance beyond the ideas and opin-
ions he entertained when first he left the lee
ure room of the college to enter upon the
grand work of his admittedly excellent life,
unto suffering humanity? Why,
wenty or thirty years ago, as Esculapius
must know, the treatment of fevers was gen.
rally by starvation, by blood.letting, dosing
With calomel and tartar, and not a
rop of water could the poor sufferer have,
ave perhaps Il swallow after the air had been
AIKEN from it by coal of fire. What
would the profession think offs physician who
pursued that course now? In continued
evers, those Of the typhoid or so.called ty-
,hoid type, the sustaining course is pursued.
lust as little medicine as possible
5 administered, and the patient is
ed on stimulants and food of
he most nourishing kind. Will Esculapius
~ that is not the case? Will Esculapius say
hat the present treatment is not scientific
ADVANCE above and beyond the old system
If even his sect He has no doubt read what
Dr.. Gray, who at first advanced the theory of
he present fever system wrote, closing his
'emarks with the request that if no better
,pithet could be found for his monument
when he was dead to inscribe uponit, "He
led fevers." Under the ancient regime
cholera patient was stuffed with calolnel and
allowed no water, nothing to cool his in.
ward burning heat, while now only astrngents
're used with perfect quietude and stimu.
ants. Cholera, as is we'll known, does not
,xist rs sporadic cases, in endemic form like
levers, but is always an epidemic. In former
times the physician attributed it 70 atmos-
pheric causes and accepted it as matter of
course. Now tho physician looks about
him for causes; hunts for cesspools
and filthy sewers and other contagion-
denominations and removing the
cause stops the epidemic. Is not this pro,
erosion in the science? If, then, the science
Of medicine has otherwise advanced, why
should it not also in the matter of food and
its uses? Look at the different schools of
medicine, the Allopathic, the Homeopathic,
the Botanic, the Hydropathc, etc, do they
not all differ as to the modes of treatmentY
Buta few years ago every one of these schools
believed the other radically wrong, vet we
will ask E'culspius If all these schools do
not now profit BY the theories of the others
For instance Esculapius can remember poss;.
bly, when he had measles, and how terrible
thirsty he was, and how the cruel doctor gave
him only sheep saffron tea as hot as he could
drink, while now he gives his little measles
patients ice water, cooling them internally
and throwing out the eruption to the surface.
He remembers how hot water applications
used to be the practice of the steam doctors,
and how cold wet sheets and douches and HIN.
baths is thepractce of the hydropathist now.