The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-10-08
PADS AND FADDIsTs.

1 ThaL mGulCOSs surgeons anu Othot
 specialists sometimes have fads is no | discredit to them, nor Is the fact sur
 prising, for they also are human like I the rest of us. It has not been many
 years since one of them gave out the ! information that sitting or lying in
 the rays of light passing through q | blue glass would cure almost any hu- man ailment. It took with many peo- | pie and became quite a fad but that was alb and now the matter is almost | forgotten. Still later one Dr. Brown Sequard announced the wonderful fact that he had discovered the elixir of life by and through which death was to be defied and man was to live in- definitely. That, too. had its short day and departed. These arc but two of a number of fads of like nature which attracted attention. but not for long.
 It has been put a short while since it was boldly proclaimed to the world that crime could be eliminated by surg cry. It was held that crime is alto gether a brain product and that certain portions of the brain were responsible for all criminal acts. As The Indianap- oils Star observes, 'It was really a very pretty theory, and, had 1t worked, the troubles of mankind arising from crime would have been almost over. It would have been unnecessary for the people to pay out their good taxes for tine sup port of prisons. Jails and work houses, All that would have been necessary AA I,, fAx geons, cut open the skulls of the pris- oners. take out the brain cells that make for crime and turn the victims loose as good titizens. Instead of sent encing a criminal to Imprisonment the judge would merely sentence him to surgeons offlce for bit of work coop ering up his brain. After a while the surgeons would nave discoverd what makes a man lazy. and the vagrant could have been reformed with the sur l geons knife"
 Yes, 1t was a pretty theory, but it 1 failed to work. The Star tells of a boy
 who had formed the habit Of running
 away, and gave so much trouble that
 the surgeons operated on him, but he
 hardly waited to get we'll before he
 ran away again.. The same paper tells ] of a youth who was arrested in that 1 city for vagrancy, and 1t turned out | that shortly before he had been oper- ] ated on for delinquency, but the job was failure, as in the other case It may be that each human action, good | or bad, is governed by certain brain l cells, and that there is something in
 the theory that the bad in n human
 being can be removed by the removal
 of the governing cells, but 1t has not yet been proven. How far science may
 ultimately go in this direction no one
 may say, but certainly not much has | yet been done.
 We repeat that 1t is no reflection on i medical science that there are failures. The doctor does not live who can all
 ways be absolutely sure that a certain dose of medicine will always produce certain effect, nor is there a surgeon who can declare with absolute certainty
 that an operation will be entirely suc- cessful in ev 5ry case Neither medicine
 nor surgeory can be called ar exact
 science, else there would be no failures to re.orl against well informed prac-
 titioners. They, too, must experiment
 and learn, and If they sometimes fall
 victims to the faddists 1t Is but human
 in them.