Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1881-11-24
The fatm aud fireside.
THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE.

"Prevention is better than cure, and far
cheaper" said John Locke, two hundred
years ago and the history of medical sci
ence has since made it more and more proba'
bic that, in stricter sense of the word, pre-
vention is the only possible cure. By observ-
ing the health laws of nature, sound con-
stitution can be very easily preserved, but, if
violation of those laws has brought on dis
ease, 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 its crisis. Thus mer-
curial salves will cleanse the skin by driving
the ulcers from the surface to the interior of
the body; opiares stop fux only by par
alyzing the bowels T. e.. turning their NOR
bid activity into a morbid inactivity the
symptoms of pneumonia can be suppressed
by bleeding the patient till the exhausted sys-
tenn has to postpone the crisis of the disease.
This process 'the breaking up Of sickness" I"
in the language of the old school allopathists,
is therefore in reality onl ly an interrupting OF
it, temporary interruption Of the symptoms.
We might as we'll try to cure the sleepiness
of weary child by pinching its eyelids, or
the hunger of whining dog by COMPRISING
his throat. E.E, :. a.. .....
Drugs are not wholly useless. If my life
depended upon a job of work that had to be
finished before morning, and the inclination
to fall asleep was getting irresistible, l should
not hesitate to defy nature, and keep myself
awake with cup after cupful of strong black
coffee If I were afflicted with sore, spread
ing rapidly from my temple toward my nose, l
should suppress it by the shortest process,
even by deliberately producing larger sore
sewhere, rather than let the smaller one de-
stroy my eyesight. There are also two or
three forms of diseases which have (thus far)
resisted all unnledicnal cures, and can hard
ly be trusted to the healing powers OF ma
ture-the Tues venerea scabies, and prurigo-
because as Claude Bernard suggests, their
symptoms are probably due to the agency
of microscopic parasites, 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
Of breaking up diseased action, but for the
removal of the cause of that action, the de-
struction of an active virus that possesses the
power of selfperpetuation beyond the dis
lodging ability of nature"
But with these 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 hundred, it is not only
the safer, but also the shorter way to avoid
drugs, reform cur habits, and for the rest, let
nature have her course for, properly speak.
lug, disease itself is reconstructive process,
an expusive effort, whose interruption com
pels nature to do double work to resume her
operations against the ailment after expelling
worse enemy-the drug. If drugged pa
tient RECEIVERS, the true explanation is that
his constitution was strong enough to over
come both the disease and the druggist.