St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-07-28
wRANGnE OF THE DocroRs.

The man who reads more than one
newspaper and the man who does not
is hardly worth cnnsiderlng-notes with
amusement or confusion, as he thinks
for himself or lets others think for him,
and contents himself with thinking
that he thinks. how the meoico-poit-
leo gentlemen disagree III their pathol
ogy and therapeutics of the present
financial crisis. They have diagnosed
the case from every point of view in
the aggregate, each from his own, with
the result that we have a multitude of
causes listed for the disease, and
varied assortment of prescriptions for
the patient.
8 In this these gentlemen of the press
and the other eminent doctors who
break into it, it is curious to observe,
do not differ much, ii any. from their
fellows who diagnosed and prescribed
in the many preceding criSises with
which the commercial world has been
afflicted. They all obey that very hu-
man impulse to shift the blame off onto
anything ana everything but themselves
and their readers that's. humanity and
Its lnflrmlt;eS-and onto anything and
everything that will not offend any one,
and thus affect the circulation of the
particular modicO-politicO establishment
which they serve and adorn.
In this they are very mach behind
their brethren of the medical schools
who, i'll this later day, have quit guess
Ing and gone to studying the pathology
of disease more than the therapeutics,
with the result that they have very
perceptibly diminished their own in
comes in the Improvement of the gen.
eral health. There was a time within
the memory of men now living when
doctors cared more for their school than
for the lives of their patients, and con-
Sidered it very much better that the
patient should die reguiarly-that is,
under the practice of their especial
School-than that he should recover in
any irregular way. The war of the
allOpaths and the homeopathS and the
eclecticS, during which the only victims
were the patients, has subsidized. except
in out-Of-theway corners where men
simply vegetate. and growth in the mar
rowness and gloom is impossible; and
remedies and treatment having proved
merit are welcomed regardless of
schools.
But the strife still is on among the
municipalities as fierceIv as ever, and
among them it is still the fashion to ac-
cuSe all other schools of being the cause
of ills which their remedies are futile
to cure. The patient, the state or ma
ton, is less the object of their concern
than is the discontinue of the doctors
Of the other schools. One school insists
on phlebotomy as the cure, and another
prescribes the cold water treatment, and
yet another strenuouSly advises the faith
cure, and each derides the others, their
diagnoses and their cures. The rate of
progress is so slow that any Calculation
of the time of arriving at any given
point is merely guesswOrk; but we have
an abiding faith that the time will come
when these gentlemen will recognize,
as have their brethren in medicine,
that the main point IS the health of the
patient, that prevention is better than
cure, and that. if they would gain in
fiuence and standing and confidence,
they must give vastly more time to the
study of conditions and causes. and be
brave enough TO tell that portion of the
great patient for which they care, their
readers, that, complicated maybe with
other minor causes, the root of the
trouble always lies in their feverish
anxiety to get rich quickly, thus Great
ing q fictitious bubble wealth, which
collapses under the first pressure.