Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1892-01-13
NO. 81.
OLD AND NEW PHYsIc.
The Physician OF To-Day Thinks More Of
Hygiene Than of Medicine.

The Physician Of To-Day Thinks More of
Hygiene Than of Medicine.
In his method of treating the sick the
practitioner of the old school had a
lively sense of the value of medicines
and of remedial substances generally.
He cared little or nothing about hy-
giene. He let his nurses draw down the
blinds of the windows in the sick room,
and make it dark and dirty dungeon,
without the slightest compunction. He
had no love for open windows; and.
unless the weather was very cold, he
never troubled about the fire or the ex-
ternal temperature. but he enforced
freedom from noise, and secured mental
repose by directing the street below to
be covered with straw. He ordered low
diet in acute cases; and, as a rule, he
knocked off stimulants so vigorously
that his permission to administer
a glass of wine or beer was looked
upou by the joyful family as first and
certain sign of recovery. He never for
a moment forgot his potent remedies.
The lancet, the cupping-gla the
leech. the calomel pill and black
draught, the effervescing mixture to be
taken every three or four hours, the
sleeping draught, the cooling lotion to
be applied TO the head, the blister and
the blister ointment, followed by the
tonic" day after day during con-
valescence"-these were almost in
separables from his routine. Say what
we may of him now, the doctor of the
old school was right loyal to his rene
III haI .A ~ FL
means, and he stuck to them. They
were not many nor much varied, but
such as they were there was no mis-
take about them. Tartar emetic in
sixth-of-a-grain doses until it was ''tol-
Grated" mercury until it touched the
gums" half an ounce or even
an ounce of EPSON salts;
eHervescing tartrate of potash
or soda mixture ad libitun, bark UP to
cinchonism, and occasionally bolusl
But the great remedy was blood letting;
every man carried lancet, and a tor
toise-she1 lancet case holding two
bright blades was considered the most
beftting present for youth about to
be articled. Mine l keep still as a
souvenir 1t was a joke to direct a
youth to learn to practice venesection
on what were called 1.-The veins of a
cabbage leaf" and some, thinking it
proper advice, did, in their innocence,
begin in that style. The lancet, in fre-
quent use, was supplemented by the
leech and the cupping-glass. There is
no wonder that, in the treatment of
acute diseases, medicine was not emf.
nently successful in the old DAYS
The wonder is rather that patients
recovered so well as they did.
The famous DIR. Gregory, when
piling on the heroic treatment" "
would say to his students: Don't
be alarmed. gentlemen; it takes a great
deal to kill a man." Gregory was right,
and If some were~ not really killed il
was more by good luck than by good
management. 1t was not successful
treatment, as all who have lived to
compare it with our reformed treatment
admit It was bad at the time, for If
left many bad after-effects, and it was
far worse than no treatment at all of a
medicinal kind; fact the discovery of
which every honest observer must il
justice accord to the schismatic school
of homeopathy. The contrast between
new and old physic in matter of prac-
tice is striking. Our fathers followed
Galen in the view that every prac-
titioner ought to hold all his RENE
dies in his own hand and dis
pense them himself; the chemist
and druggist was the demon. Now
it is considered too commonplace for
the doctor to dispense his own RENE
dies, and when he does so it is a sort of
favor or necessity-something thrown
in, to form. incidentally or not at all, an
addition to the fees for attendance. The
pharmaceutist pushes his trade in
dustriously to meet our wants, and our
wants are many. He grows bolder; he
invents for us in advance of our needs.
He floods our breakfast tables with his
nostrums, advices and temptations. He
is a professor of materia medica.
pharmacology, hygienics, diet and
regimen, all rolled into one. He has a
new remedy for every day in the year,
with two for holidays, so that any
remedy that lives for a year has a long
life. The result is that a large sec
ton of practitioners is flying after
everything, trying everything, and
holding fast by nothing, whilst anoth-
er-smaller section is giving up every
thing, or. in state of greatest activity,
is playing placebo with considerable
luck in the play, to their establishment.
For several years past specialism has
taken such hold on the public mind
that, perforce, the universalists have
been driven to haul down their colors.
Some particular persOps saauo - -.
as many specialists as they have or
gans. know a lady who boasts of
her eye doctor, ear doctor, chest doc
tor, heart doctor, brain doctor, and nose
doctor, as well as what she calls her
general prac.;" ;" and of all of them she
speaks as if they were men of different
profession, just as she might speak of
her matchmaker, her bellows-maker. or
her undertaker.-Dr. =. w. Richard
son, in Ascleniad