Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1881-10-28
The Prevention of Disease.

Prevention is better than cure and
far cheaper" said John Locke, zoo
years ago; and the history of medical
science has since made it more and
more probable that, in stricter sense
of the word, prevention is the only
possible cure. By observing the health
laws OF Nature, sound constitution
can be very easily preserved, but. if a
violation of those laws has brought on
disease, all We can do by way of
curing that disease is to remove the
cause; in other words. to prevent the
continued operation of the predisposing
circumstances.
Suppressing the symptoms in any
other way means only to change the
form of the disease, or to postpone it's
crisis. Thus, mercurial salves will
cleanse the skin by driving the ulcers
from the surface to the interior of
the body; opiates stop a fox only
by paralyzipg the bowels, i. e.,
turning their morbid activity into
a morbid inactivity; the symptoms of
pneumonia can be suppressed by bleed.
ing the patient till the exhausted system
has to postpone the crisis of the disease.
This process, the g. breaking up of O
Sickness" in the language of the old
schoo. aliopathists, is therefore in real
ity only an interrupting of it, tempo
rsry interruption of the symptoms.
We might as we'll try to cure the sleepi.
ness Of weary child by pinching it's
eyelids. or the hunger of whining dog
by COMPRISING its throat.
Drugs are rot wholly useless. If my
life depended upon Job of work that
had to be finished before morning, and
the inclination to go to sleep was ire
sistible, should not hesitate to defy
nature, and keep myself awake with
cup after cupful of strong black coffee.
If was sfiicted with sore, spreading
rapidly from my temple toward my
nose, I should suppress it by the short.
est process, even by deliberately pro.
ducing larger sore elsewhere, rsthe,
than let the smaller one destroy my
eyesight. There are also two or three
forms of disease which have (thus far)
resisted all unmedicinal cures, and can
hardly be trusted to the healing powers
OF nature-the lues venerea, and scabies
prurigo-because, as Glade Bernard
suggests. their symptoms are probably
due to the agency OF microscopic para.
sites, which oppose to the action of the
vital forces life energy of their own,
or, as DR.. Jennings puts it, "because
art has here to interfere-not for the
purpose ct brsakirg up deceased action
Out Tor the removal OF the csuse Of that
action, the destruction of an active
virus that possesses the power of self.
perpetuation beyond the dislodging
ability of nature"
But with those rare exceptions it is
better to direct our efforts against the
cause rather than the symptoms-i. e.,
in about ninety nine cases out of q
hundred it is not only the safer but also
the shorter way to avoid drugs, reform
our habits, and, for the rest, let nature
take her course; for, properly speaking
disease itself is reconstructive process
an expulsive effort, whose interruption
compels nature to do double work; to
resume her operations against the all.
ment after expeliing worse enemy
the drug. If drugged person recov.
ers, the true explanation is that his
constitution was strong enough to
overcome both the disease and the
druggist.-(Dr. Felix L. Oswald, in
Popular Science Monthly.