The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-04-16
FROM AN
OLD FRIEND
Civis Secundus on
Some Current
Themes.

of ripe manhood says, Every organized
body of men tends to grow, and tends
to magnify it's own Importance
Readers of medical literature who have
watched the trend of the professional
mind for forty long years will GER
tainly feel the force of that great think
er's assertion, and all will readily rec
ognize that it is simply because, as a
class, professional men share the hu-
man weaknesses of the rest of man
kind. Hasty announcements and gen
Civilizations are made and the credulity
of men leads many to take up and
swear by any new medical theory or
fad. Remember we must, if we forget
much else, how, a little more than
decade ago the world vibrated with the
praises of a so-called scientific cure for
against it was considered almost as
imbeciIe as to doubt the efficacy of
vaccination in re smallpox
Like Hamlet we are all Indifferent
to proclaim darkness for light, but the
fact remains pretty much as Spencer
puts it, not that his dictum makes it
true, but that his observation discerned
the conditions, and common sense APP
proves his appreciation thereof.
Among the many hasty pronounce
ments and concentrations probably
may be placed the statement that it is
absolutely prOven'-strong words and
Ineligible; absolutely proven that
mosquitoes are the sole cause of yellow
fever" Vide p. G. Advertiser of 4th
inst, on Panama and Mosquitoes,
DR.. a. NJ. F. De Ybarra, writing from
New York to a leading medical journal
after criticising certain vulnerable
points in the experiments carried out
by the L. S. Army Yellow Fever Board
of 1900, says: In the city of Havana
alone mosquitoes have been killed and
petroleum used in their breeding places
to eXtirpate yellow fever. In no other
city or town of the island has this
measure been put into practice and yet
yellow fever has disappeared not only
from Havana but equally as well from
Santiago, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Car
denas, Sagna, Manzanillo, Gibara, and
all other cities and towns of the island,
no matter how great the distance from
Havana. In consequence of
the cleanliness, the sanitary reforms
and the prophylactic measures nstitut-
ed by the United States Government in
Cuba, and continued by the present Gu
ban Government, not only yellow fever,
but also smallpox has been eradicat-
ed
Many take up hasty pronouncementsI
,rix- hut
scant investigation or none. But there
is usually a small minority, perhaps so
small you cannot count it more than
one, that sees in such announcements
and congratulations flaws and errors
and publishes them to the world, get
ting naught but ridicule and often
abuse, for wise discrimination between
error and truth. BY what are such i'm
PEELED?
BY the love impelrd
THAT moves the sun in heaven and
all the stars
The love of Truth. Such a one was
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, NJ. D.,
F. r. s. Writing in the Asclepiad (vol
81 twelve years ago touching the then
supposed cure for consumption he said:
when the last number of this work
was published the medical world was
in the height of delirium agitans.
In the half century 1 have seen of
physic nothing has approached it. The
introduction of the grand blessing of
anaesthesia was a trifle to it, The
world was bewildered with the mere
view of the excitement. On one side
it seemed clear enough that the wild
statements and wilder prophecies We're
OF the impossible; on the other side,
men of sane reasoning power We're seen
running after a new prepossession like
emigrants after a gold or diamond find;
or, better smile, like the bands who
might flock to the standard of a second
Peter the Hermit. Who shall
calculate all the mischief that has been
accomplished in this one paroxysm of
confused judgment and hasty general
ization?'
Not long since a highly placed medi-
cal officer on the mainland said Mod
ern science had discovered a serum
treatment the efficacy of which was
thoroughly established" This for
plague! We were grave!y told that at
Annoy of twenty-three cases treated
all recovered but two whose cOndi-
tons We're desperate from the outset"
Surely, sir, this was in words of oliver
Wendell Holmes, ''warranting some
body's ice not to melt in any climate"
Was there no confusion of judgment,
no too hasty generalization about those
twenty-three Annoy cases of 1896 for in
April, 1897. a leading medical journal
said the results of DR.. Yersin's anti
toxic serum treatment had, unhappily
not been so successful as was snticipat-
ed, and that it was in fact regarded
as having failed Again later 0S99).
DR.. Camille of the London School of
Tropical Medicine said that in China
and india the treatment seems to have
met with but little success.
If. Mr.. Editor. you ask the cui bono
of all this to laymen let me say that
medical theories not always leading TO
the we'll being of mankind, it may per-
haps help iaymen to remember and
perhaps even some professional men,
in, Dc Of ai-I,.