The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-02-13
HOME HEAL I'll CLUB
6Edited By Dr. David H. Feeder. of
 Chicagol

.~>->~~ =(Edited By pr. David H. Reeder. of
 Chicago.)
 NERVES -(Continuation of articles written for Home Health Club by H. Lindlahr. M. D.) Many intelligent physicians are now convinced, as has always been maintained in these col urnns, that poisonous drugs should not be taken at all into the human body. They realize more and more that these dangerous agents are not at all neces- sary to cure human ailments; that this can be accomplished much bet ter and more safely by the natural methods of treatm ent.
 Dr. Osler is probably the greatest medical authority on drugs now liv- ing. He was formerly professor of materia medfca at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltino ore, Md.s and now holds a professorship at Oxford Univer- sity, England. His books on medi- cal practice are in use probably ey7 cry university and medical schooIsin English-speaking countries. His views on drugs and their real values as ex- pressed in the following article should be an eye-opener to those good peo- pie who believe that we of the Mature Cure school are altogether too radi- cal, extreme, and somewhat cranky '' In his article entitled s.Medicine, in the Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. K, he expresses himself as follows: 'sThe new school does not feel itself under obligation to give any medicines what ever, while a generation ago not only could few physicians have held their practice unless they did, but few would have thought it safe or scien- tific. Of course, there are still many eases where the patient or the pa tents friends must be hunaored by administering medicine or alleged medicine where it is not really need ed, and indeed often where the buoy ancy of mind. which is the real cura- tive agent, can only be created by making him wait hopefully for the ex- pected action of medicine. and some physicians still cannot unlearn their old training But the change is great. The modern treatment of disease relies very greatly on the so- called natural methods diet and ex- words, giving the natural forces the nutrition, increased flow of blood, and removal, of Instructions to the excre- tory system or the circulation in the tissues.,'
 One notable example is. typhoid fever. At the outset of the nineteenth century it was treated with .reme- dies of the extremest vioIence-b1eed- ing and bIistering. vomiting and purg- ing, and the administration of anti mony and mercury, and plenty of oth- CT heroic remedies. Now the patient is bathed and nursed and carefully tended, but rarely given medicine. This is the result partly of the re- markable experiments of the Paris and Vienna schools into the action Of drugs, which have shaken the stoutest faiths sand partly of the constant and reproachful object-Iesson of homoep- athy. No regular physician would ever admit that the homeopathic prep arations. inffnitesima1s' could do any good as direct curative agents; and yet it is perfectly certain that homeo- paths lost no more of their patients than others. There was but one con clusion to sdraw,-that most drugs had no effect whatever on the diseases for which theyawere administered 7
 The foregoing is certainly a strong condemnation of old time drugging, and an unqualified endorsement of of the greatest medical authorities now living However, when Dr. Os- Ter says that most drugs have no ef- feet whatever he makes a serious nis- statement. While they may not con tribute anything to the cure of the dis ease for which they are given, they are often very harmful in themselves. By far the greater part of nervous diseases. and of all other chronic dis eases) are complicated, on the one hand, by the suppression of acute dis eases by the means of drug poisons, and on the other hand, through the destructive after effects of the drugs themselves.