Datasets:
Tasks:
Text Generation
Sub-tasks:
language-modeling
Languages:
English
Size:
10K<n<100K
ArXiv:
License:
Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at | |
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images | |
generously made available by The Internet Archive.) | |
QUACKS AND GRAFTERS | |
BY EX-OSTEOPATH | |
_BEING AN EXPOSE OF THE STATE OF | |
THERAPEUTICS AT THE PRESENT TIME, | |
WITH SOME REASONS WHY SUCH | |
GRAFTERS FLOURISH, AND SUGGESTIONS | |
TO REMEDY THE | |
DEPLORABLE MUDDLE_ | |
PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1908 BY | |
THE CINCINNATI MEDICAL BOOK COMPANY | |
CINCINNATI OHIO | |
COPYRIGHTED, 1908, | |
BY THE CINCINNATI MEDICAL BOOK CO. | |
THE LANCET-CLINIC PRESS, | |
CINCINNATI, OHIO. | |
TO THE | |
GREAT AMERICAN PUBLIC | |
IS DEDICATED | |
THIS BOOK, WITH EVERY | |
CONFIDENCE IN ITS PROVERBIAL COMMON SENSE AND | |
DISCRIMINATION, AND WITH THE HOPE OF | |
HAVING ADDED A MITE TOWARD GREATER | |
AND BETTER THINGS IN THE | |
ART OF AESCULAPIUS. | |
PREFACE. | |
There has been but one other period in the history of medicine when so | |
many systems of the healing art were in vogue. In the seventeenth century, | |
during the Reform Period, following the many epoch-making discoveries, as | |
the blood and lymph circulation; when alchemy was abandoned and chemistry | |
became a science; when Galileo regenerated physics, and zoology and botany | |
were largely extended; when Newton enunciated the laws of gravitation; | |
when cinchona bark, the great febrifuge, was introduced into Europe, and | |
the cell doctrine was founded by Hooke, Malpighi and Grew, the old | |
Hippocratic, Galenic and Arabic systems of medicine were undermined. In | |
that transition period, when the medical profession was trying to adjust | |
its practice with the many new theories, its authoritative voice was lost, | |
and in the struggle for something tangible, innumerable new systems sprang | |
up. | |
Four systems stood out most prominently--the pietistically | |
Paracelsism of Von Helmont, with its sal, sulphur and mercury; the | |
chemical system of Sylvius and Willis, with its acid and alkali theory of | |
cause and cure of disease; the iatro-chemical system, with its | |
fermentation theory; and the iatro-physical system, which contended that | |
health was dependent upon proper adjustment of physical and mechanical | |
arrangements of the body. The old humoral theory of Galen had its | |
adherents, influencing all of the newer systems. And suggestive | |
therapeutics was rampant in most grotesque and fanciful forms. Witchcraft, | |
superstition and cabalism were fostered even at the various European | |
courts. As Roswell Park says in his History of Medicine: "With delightful | |
satire Harvey divided the physicians of the day into six classes--the | |
Ferrea, Asinaria, Jesuitica, Aquaria, Laniaria and Stercoraria--according | |
as their favorite systems of treatment were the administration of iron, | |
asses' milk, cinchona, mineral water, venesection or purgatives." | |
That history repeats itself is a truism well illustrated in medicine | |
to-day. The new cellular pathology, founded by Virchow and Cohnheim and | |
elaborated by innumerable men since; the discovery of parasitism and the | |
germ theory by Davaine, Pasteur and Koch; antisepsis by Lister; the | |
introduction of anesthesia by Morton, Simpson and Koller; the application | |
of more exact methods in diagnosis by Skoda and others, and many other | |
innovations and discoveries have revolutionized medicine in the nineteenth | |
century. The transition period of to-day is very analogous to that of the | |
seventeenth century. | |
Suggestive therapeutics has its advocates in the Emmanuel movement, | |
Lourdes water, Christian Science, New Thought, faith cure and | |
<DW43>-therapy. The uric acid theory is a curious survival of the old | |
chemical system. The iatro-chemical system is the prototype of | |
Metchnikoff's theory of longevity. And, strange to relate, despite the | |
claims of wonderful discovery by A. T. Still and D. D. Palmer, the | |
iatro-physical system of the seventeenth century was more complete as a | |
guide to healing than is Osteopathy and Chiropractics to-day. Verily, | |
there is nothing novel under the solar rays. | |
That graft in surgery and shystering in internal medicine exists no one in | |
the medical profession denies. It has come so insidiously that the | |
profession itself was taken unawares. However, that sweeping denunciation | |
of the entire profession should follow is unwarranted. Every other | |
profession and calling has its black sheep, and it is the duty of the | |
leaders in each to eliminate them. Elimination, however, cannot come | |
entirely from within. The public has its share of responsibility and duty | |
to perform, and the sooner this is realized, the better for all concerned. | |
To aid in the work of obtaining better things in therapeutics, the | |
establishment and extension of a national bureau or department of health | |
is imperative. Any effort along this line will hasten the day of rational | |
healing. Preventive medicine will then gradually supplant the present | |
haphazard system of palliation and cure. | |
And education is the watchword of the day! | |
G. STROHBACH, M.D. | |
Cincinnati, Ohio, 1908. | |
PUBLISHERS' NOTE. | |
Though written in a satirical vein, this book is intended as a warning to | |
the medical profession and the public alike. And, while amusing, the | |
wealth of information and comment on certain abuses in the healing art | |
should lead to serious consideration. This book is published without bias | |
or prejudice toward any school of medicine or system of therapeutics as | |
such. But that quackery and graft are rampant among those who pose as | |
healers has become so apparent that we believe every influence to expose | |
and weed out the pretenders is timely. | |
The author is an Osteopath who abandoned the practice of Osteopathy after | |
a few years' earnest endeavor, convinced of the untenable position of | |
those professing the practice of this art. He returned to the more | |
congenial profession of teaching. For obvious reasons he publishes this | |
book under a _nom de plume_. He is abundantly fortified with facts to | |
substantiate his criticism. | |
That his effort may be of some service in clarifying the situation and | |
lead to better therapeutics in the near future, is the sincere hope of | |
THE PUBLISHERS. | |
CONTENTS. | |
PART I--IN GENERAL. | |
CHAPTER I--BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 17 | |
The Augean Stables of Therapeutics--The Remedy--Reason for | |
Absence of Dignified Literary Style--Diploma Mills--"All | |
but Holy"--Dr. Geo. H. Simmons' Opinion--American Medical | |
Association Not Tyrannical--Therapeutics a Deplorable | |
Muddle. | |
CHAPTER II--GRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA 25 | |
The Commercial Spirit--Commercialism in Medicine--Stock | |
Company Medical Colleges--Graft in Medicines, Drugs and | |
Nostrums--Encyclopedia Graft--"Get-Rich-Quick" | |
Propositions--Paradoxes in Character of Shysters--Money | |
Madness--Professional Failurephobia--The Fortunate Few and | |
the Unfortunate Many--A Cause of Quackery--The Grafter's | |
Herald--The World's Standard--Solitary Confinement--The | |
Prisoner's Dream--Working up a Cough--Situation Appalling | |
Among St. Louis Physicians--A Moral Pointed. | |
CHAPTER III--WHY QUACKS FLOURISH 37 | |
American Public Generally Intelligent--But Densely | |
Ignorant in Important Particulars--Cotton Mather and | |
Witchcraft--A.B.s, A.M.s, M.D.s and Ph.D.s Espousing | |
Christian Science, Chiropractics and Osteopathy-- | |
Gullibility of the College Bred--The Ignorant Suspicious | |
of New Things--The Educated Man's Creed--Dearth of | |
Therapeutic Knowledge by the Laity--Is the Medical | |
Profession to Blame?--Physician's Arguments | |
Controvertible--Host of Incompetents Among the Regular | |
Physicians--Report of Committee on Medical Colleges--The | |
"Big Doctors"--Doc Booze--The "Leading Doctor"--Osler's | |
Drug Nihilism--The X-Ray Graft. | |
CHAPTER IV--TURBID THERAPEUTICS 51 | |
An Astounding Array of Therapeutic | |
Systems--Diet--Water--Optics--Hemotherapy--Consumption | |
Cures--Placebos--Inconsistencies and Contradictions-- | |
Osler's Opinion of Appendicitis--Fair Statement of | |
Limitations in Medicine Desirable. | |
CHAPTER V--THE EXPERT WITNESS AND PROPRIETARY MEDICINES 57 | |
The "Great Nerve Specialist"--The Professional Witness a | |
Jonah--The "Railway Spine"--Is it Lack of Fairness and | |
Honesty or Lack of Skill and Learning?--Destruction of | |
Fine Herds of Cattle Without Compensation--Koch's Dictum | |
and Denial--Koch's Tuberculin--The Serum Tribe--Stupendous | |
Sale of Nostrums--Druggist's Arguments--Use of Proprietary | |
Medicines Stimulates Sale of Nostrums. | |
CHAPTER VI--FAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY 62 | |
Suggestive Therapeutics Chief Stock in Trade--Advice of a | |
Medical College President--Disease Prevention Rather than | |
Cure--Hygienic Living--The Medical Pretender--"Dangerous | |
Diagnosis" Graft--Great Flourish of Trumpets--No "Starving | |
Time" for Him--"Big Operations"--Mutilating the Human | |
Body--Dr. C. W. Oviatt's Views--Dr. Maurice H. | |
Richardson's Incisive Statements--Crying Need for | |
Reform--Surgery that is Useless, Conscienceless and for | |
Purely Commercial Ends--Spirit of Surgical Graft | |
Especially in the West--Fee-Splitting and Commissions--A | |
Nation of "Dollar-Chasers"--The Public's Share of | |
Responsibility--Senn's Advice--The "Surgical Conscience." | |
PART II--OSTEOPATHY. | |
CHAPTER VII--SOME DEFINITIONS AND HISTORIES 79 | |
Romantic Story of Osteopathy's Origin--An Asthma | |
Cure--Headache Cured by Plowlines--Log Rolling to Relieve | |
Dysentery--Osteopathy is Drugless Healing--Osteopathy is | |
Manual Treatment--Liberty of Blood, Nerves and | |
Arteries--Perfect Skeletal Alignment and Tonic, | |
Ligamentous, Muscular and Facial Relaxation--Andrew T. | |
Still in 1874--Kirksville, Mo., as a Mecca--American | |
School of Osteopathy--The Promised Golden Stream of | |
Prosperity--The "Mossbacks"--"Who's Who in Osteopathy." | |
CHAPTER VIII--THE OSTEOPATHIC PROPAGANDA 88 | |
Wonderful Growth Claimed to Prove Merit--Osteopathy is | |
Rational Physio-Therapy--Growth is in Exact Proportion to | |
Advertising Received--Booklets and Journals for Gratuitous | |
Distribution--Osteopathy Languishes or Flourishes by | |
Patent Medicine Devices--Circular Letter from Secretary of | |
American Osteopathic Association--Boosts by Governors and | |
Senators--The Especial Protege of Authors--Mark | |
Twain--Opie Reed--Emerson Hough--Sam Jones--The Orificial | |
Surgeon--The M.D. Seeking Job as "Professor"--The Lure of | |
"Honored Doctor" with "Big Income"--No Competition. | |
CHAPTER IX--THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY 97 | |
Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always | |
Cured--Indefinite Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of | |
Undeveloped Scientific Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D. | |
Course--The Standpatter and the Drifter--The | |
"Lesionist"--"Bone Setting"--"Inhibiting a | |
Center"--Chiropractics--"Finest Anatomists in the | |
World"--How to Cure Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric | |
Troubles--A Successful Osteopath--Timid Old | |
Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy. | |
CHAPTER X--OSTEOPATHY AS RELATED TO SOME NOTORIOUS FAKES 111 | |
Sure Shot Rheumatism Cure--Regular Practitioner's | |
Discomfiture--Medicines Alone Failed to Cure | |
Rheumatism--Osteopathy Relieves Rheumatic and Neuralgic | |
Pains--"Move Things"--"Pop" Stray Cervical Vertebrae--Find | |
Something Wrong and Put it Right--Terrible Neck-Wrenching, | |
Bone-Twisting Ordeal. | |
CHAPTER XI--TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES 119 | |
Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks | |
Exposed--How the Defunct Worm was Passed--Rubber | |
Near-Worm--New Gallstone Cure--Relation to | |
Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, "Autotherapeutic" | |
Machine--Touch the Button--The Truth About the Consumption | |
and Insanity Cures. | |
THE MORAL TO THE TALE 125 | |
Honesty--Plain Dealing--Education. | |
PART ONE | |
IN GENERAL | |
Quacks and Grafters | |
By EX-OSTEOPATH | |
CHAPTER I. | |
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION. | |
The Augean Stables of Therapeutics--The Remedy--Reason for Absence of | |
Dignified Literary Style--Diploma Mills--"All but Holy"--Dr. Geo. H. | |
Simmons' Opinion--American Medical Association Not | |
Tyrannical--Therapeutics of To-day a Deplorable Muddle. | |
In writing this booklet I do not pose as a Hercules come to cleanse the | |
Augean stables of therapeutics. No power but that of a public conscience | |
awakened to the prevalence of quackery and grafting in connection with | |
doctoring can clear away the accumulated filth. | |
Like Marc Antony, I claim neither wit, wisdom nor eloquence; but as a | |
plain, blunt man I shall "speak right on of the things I do know" about | |
quacks and grafters. In writing of Osteopathy I claim the right to speak | |
as "one having authority," for I have been on the "inside." As to grafting | |
in connection with the practice of medicine I take the viewpoint of a | |
layman, who for years has carefully read the medical literature of the | |
popular press, and of late years a number of representative professional | |
journals, in an effort to get an intelligent conception of the theory and | |
practice of therapeutics. | |
I have not tried to write in a professional style. I have been reading | |
professional literature steadily for some time, and need a rest from the | |
dignified ponderosity of some of the stuff I had to flounder through. | |
I have just read an exposition of the beautiful and rational simplicity of | |
Osteopathy. This exposition is found in a so-called great American | |
encyclopedia that has been put into our schools as an authoritative source | |
of knowledge for the making of intelligent citizens of our children. It is | |
written by a man whose name, like that of the scholar James Whitcomb Riley | |
describes, is "set plumb at the dash-board of the whole indurin' | |
alphabet," so many are his scholarly degrees. | |
How impressive it is to look through an Osteopathic journal, and see | |
exhaustive (and exhausting) dissertations under mighty names followed by | |
such proof of profound wisdom as, A.M., M.S., D.O., or A.B., A.M., M.D., | |
D.O. Who could believe that a man with all the wisdom testified to by such | |
an array of degrees (no doubt there were more, but the modesty that goes | |
with great learning forbade their display) could be imposed upon by a fad | |
or fake? Or would espouse and proclaim anything that was not born of | |
truth, and filled with blessing and benefaction for mankind? | |
Scholarly degrees should be accepted as proof of wisdom, but after reading | |
such expositions as that in the cyclopedia, or some of those in the | |
journals, one sometimes wonders if all the above degrees might not be | |
condensed into the one--D.F. | |
As for dignified style in discussing the subject before me, I believe my | |
readers will agree that dignity fits such subjects about as appropriately | |
as a ten-dollar silk hat fits a ten-cent corn doctor, or a hod-carrier | |
converted into a first-class Osteopath. | |
While speaking of dignity, I want to commend an utterance of the editor of | |
the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, made in a recent issue | |
of that journal. It was in reply to a correspondent who had "jumped onto" | |
the editor of a popular magazine because in exposing graft and quackery he | |
had necessarily implicated a certain brand of medical practitioners. The | |
man who criticised the editor of the popular magazine impresses a layman | |
as one of that class of physicians that has done so much to destroy the | |
respect and confidence of intelligent students of social conditions for | |
medical men as a class, and in the efficacy of their therapeutic agencies. | |
Although the committee appointed by the great society, of which he is | |
presumably a member, reported that more than half of the medical colleges | |
in this country are utterly unfit by equipment to turn out properly | |
qualified physicians; that a large per cent of these unworthy schools are | |
little better than diploma mills conducted for revenue only, and in spite | |
of the incompetency and shystering that reputable physicians, in | |
self-defense and in duty to the public must expose, this man proclaims | |
that the medical profession is "all but holy" in its care for the souls | |
and minds as well as the bodies of the people. With all respect for the | |
devoted gentlemen among physicians we ask, Is it any wonder that the | |
intelligent laity smile at such gush? And this man goes on to say that | |
"99 per cent. of the practicing physicians of the country belong to this | |
genuine class." | |
Members of the American Medical Association may think that such | |
discussions are for the profession, and should be kept "in the family." | |
Perhaps they should, and no doubt it would be much better for the | |
profession if many of the things said by leading medical men never reached | |
the thinking public. But the fact remains that the contradictory and | |
inconsistent things said do reach the public, and usually in garbled and | |
distorted form. The better and safer way is, if possible, to see to it | |
that there is no cause to say such things, or if criticisms must be made | |
let physicians be fair and frank with the people, and treat the public as | |
a party deeply concerned in all therapeutic discussions and | |
investigations. And here applies the utterance of the editor of the | |
_Journal of the American Medical Association_ that I wanted to commend: | |
"The time has passed when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of | |
professional dignity and assume an attitude of infallibility toward | |
the public. The more intelligent of the laity have opinions on medical | |
subjects, often _bizarre_, it must be admitted, but frequently well | |
grounded, and a fair discussion of such opinions can result only in a | |
greater measure of confidence in and respect for the medical | |
profession." | |
Such honest, fair-minded declarations, together with expressions of | |
similar import from scores of brainy physicians and surgeons in active | |
practice, are the anchors that hold the medical ship from being dashed to | |
wreckage upon the rocks of public opinion by the currents, cross-currents | |
and counter-currents of the turbid stream of therapeutics. | |
The people have strongly suspected graft in surgery, many of them know it, | |
and nearly all have been taught by journals of the new schools that such | |
grafting is a characteristic of medical schools, and is asserted to be | |
condoned and encouraged by the profession as a whole. How refreshing, | |
then, to hear a representative surgeon of the American Medical Association | |
say: | |
"The moral standards set for professional men are going to be higher | |
in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion turned on the | |
medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to exist." | |
Contrast such frankness with the gush of the writer who, in the same | |
organ, said 99 per cent. of the medical men were "all but holy" soul | |
guardians, and judge which is most likely to inspire confidence in the | |
intelligent laity. | |
Right here I want to say that since I have been studying through a | |
cartload of miscellaneous medical journals, I have changed my opinion of | |
the American Medical Association. It is a matter of little consequence to | |
medical men, of course, what my individual opinion may be. It may, | |
however, be of some consequence and interest to them to know that the | |
opinion of multitudes are being formed by the same distorting agencies | |
that formed the opinion I held until I studied copies of the _Journal of | |
the American Medical Association_ in comparison with the "riff-raff, | |
rag-tag and bob-tail" of the representative organs of the myriad cults, | |
isms, fads and fancies that "swarm like half-formed insects on the banks | |
of the Nile." | |
As portrayed by the numerous new school journals I receive, the American | |
Medical Association is a tyrannical monster, conceived in greed and | |
bigotry, born of selfishness and arrogance, cradled in iniquity and | |
general cussedness, improved by man-slaughter, forced upon the people at | |
the point of the bayonet and maintained by ignorance and superstition. | |
Most magazines representing various "drugless" therapies, I found, spoke | |
of the American Medical Association in about the same way. And not only | |
these, but a number of so-called regular medical journals, as well as | |
independent journals and booklets circulated to boost some individual, all | |
added their modicum of vituperation. | |
When you consider that thousands of Osteopaths (yes, there are several | |
thousand of them in the field treating the people) are buying some one of | |
the various Osteopathic journals by the hundreds every month and | |
distributing them gratis to the people until the whole country is | |
literally saturated, and that other cults are almost as busy disseminating | |
their literature, do you wonder that the people are getting biased notions | |
of the medical profession in general and the American Medical Association | |
in particular? While my faith in the integrity and efficacy of the "new | |
school" remained intact and at a fanatical pitch, my sympathy was with the | |
"independent" journals. The doctrine of "therapeutic liberty" seemed a | |
fair one, and one that was only American. After studying both sides, and | |
comparing the journals, I have commenced to wonder if the man who preaches | |
universal liberty so strenuously is not, in most cases, only working for | |
_individual license_. | |
I wrote a paper some time ago, out of which this booklet has grown, and | |
sent it to the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical | |
Association_. He was kind enough to say it was full of "severe truth" that | |
should be published to the laity. In that paper I diagnosed the | |
therapeutic situation of to-day as a "deplorable muddle," and I am glad to | |
have my diagnosis confirmed by a prominent writer in the _Journal_ of the | |
Association. He says: | |
"Therapeutics to-day cannot be called a science, it can only be called | |
a confusion. With a dozen dissenting opinions as to the most essential | |
and efficacious therapeutic agents inside the school, and a horde of | |
new school pretenders outside, each with his own little system that he | |
heralds as the best and _only_ right way, and all these separated in | |
everything but their attack on the regulars, there certainly is a | |
'turbidity of therapeutics!'" | |
And this therapeutic stream is the one that flows for the "healing of | |
nations!" Should not its waters be pure and uncontaminated, so that the | |
invalid who thirsts for health may drink with confidence in their healing | |
virtues? | |
If the stream shows turbid to the physician, how must it appear to his | |
patient as he stands upon the shore and sees conflicting currents boil and | |
swirl in fierce contention, forming eddies that are continually stranding | |
poor devils on the drifts of discarded remedies, while streams of murky | |
waters (new schools) pour in from every side and add their filth. To the | |
patient it becomes "confusion, worse confounded." | |
CHAPTER II. | |
GRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA. | |
The Commercial Spirit--Commercialism in Medicine--Stock Company | |
Medical Colleges--Graft in Medicines, Drugs and Nostrums--Encyclopedia | |
Graft--"Get-Rich-Quick" Propositions--Paradoxes in Character of | |
Shysters--Money Madness--Professional Failurephobia--The Fortunate Few | |
and the Unfortunate Many--A Cause of Quackery--The Grafter's | |
Herald--The World's Standard--Solitary Confinement--The Prisoner's | |
Dream--Working up a Cough--Situation Appalling Among St. Louis | |
Physicians--A Moral Pointed. | |
This chapter is not written because I possess a hammer that must be used. | |
My liver is sound, and I have a pretty good job. Neither palpation nor | |
"osculation" (as one of our bright Osteopathic students once said in | |
giving means used in physical diagnosis) reveals any "lesion" in my | |
domestic affairs. | |
However, it doesn't take the jaundiced eye of a pessimist to see the graft | |
that abounds to-day. The grafter is abroad in the land like a wolf seeking | |
whom he may devour, and the sheep-skin (sometimes a diploma) that once | |
disguised his wolfish character has become so tattered by much use that it | |
now deceives only the most foolish sheep. Once a sheep-skin of patriotism | |
disguised the politician, and people fancied that a public office was a | |
public trust. The revelations of the last few years have taught us that | |
too often a public office is but a public steal. | |
The commercial spirit dominates the age. Nothing is too sacred for its | |
defiling hands to touch. The church does not escape. Preachers accuse each | |
other of following their Lord for the loaves and fishes. Lawyers accuse | |
each other of taking fees from both sides. Leading physicians | |
unhesitatingly say that commercialism is the bane of the medical | |
profession. They say hundreds are rushing into medicine because they have | |
heard of the large earnings of a few fortunate city physicians, and think | |
they are going into something that will bring them plenty of "easy money." | |
Stock company medical colleges have been organized by men whose main | |
object was to get a share of the money these hosts of would-be doctors had | |
to spend. Even the new systems of therapeutics such as Osteopathy, that | |
have boomed themselves into a kind of popularity, have their schools that, | |
to believe what some of them say of each other, are dominated by the | |
rankest commercialism, being, in fact, nothing but Osteopathic diploma | |
mills. | |
Not alone has graft pervaded the schools whose business it is supposed to | |
be to make capable physicians. The graft that has been uncovered lately in | |
connection with the preparation and sale of medicines, drugs and nostrums | |
is almost incredible when we think of the danger to health and human life | |
involved. The same brand of ghouls who tamper with and juggle medicines | |
for gain, do not hesitate to adulterate and poison food. With their | |
inferior, filthy and "preserved" milk they slaughter the innocents to | |
make a paltry profit. The story Sinclair wrote of the nauseating horrors | |
of slaughter-houses was enough to drive us all to the ranks of vegetarians | |
forever. | |
Only recently I chanced to learn that even in the business of publishing | |
there is a little world of graft peculiar to itself. I was told by a | |
responsible book man that the encyclopedia containing a learned (?) | |
exposition of the science of Osteopathy is the product of grafters, who | |
took old material and worked in a little new matter, such as the | |
exposition of Osteopathy, to make their work appear up to date to the | |
casual observer. Then, to make the graft worse, for a consideration, it | |
was alleged, a popular publisher let his name be used, and thus thousands | |
were caught who bought the work relying on the reputation of the | |
publisher, who, it appears, had nothing whatever to do with the | |
encyclopedia. | |
Physicians, school teachers and preachers, all supposedly poor financiers, | |
know about the swarms of grafters who hound them with "get-rich-quick" | |
propositions into which they want them to put their scant surplus of | |
salary or income as they get it. A physician told me he would have been | |
$2,000 better off if a year or two before he had been a subscriber to a | |
certain medical journal that poses as a sort of "watch dog" of the | |
physician's treasury. | |
Pessimistic as this review may seem, there is yet room for optimism, and, | |
paradoxical as it may sound, men are not always as bad as their business. | |
I know of a lawyer who in his profession has the reputation of being the | |
worst shyster that ever argued a case. No scheme is too dishonest for his | |
use if it will win his case. Yet this man outside of his profession, in | |
his home, and in his society, is as fine a gentleman as you would wish to | |
meet--a model husband and father, a kind and obliging neighbor, a generous | |
supporter of all that is for the upbuilding and bettering of society. | |
Strong case, do you say? I believe our country is full of such cases. And | |
I believe the medical profession has thousands of just such men, men whose | |
instincts are for nobility of character and whose moral ideals are high, | |
but whose business standards are groveling. | |
They live a sort of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" life, and why? Are they not | |
to blame? And are they not to be classed as scoundrels? Yes--and no. These | |
men are diseased. Their contact with the world has inoculated them with | |
the world's contagion. What is this disease? The diagnosis has been | |
considered simple. So simple that the world has called it commercialism, | |
or money madness, and treated the disease according to this diagnosis | |
without studying it further. May it not be true that, for many cases at | |
least, the diagnosis is wrong? Do men choose the strenuous, money-grabbing | |
life because they really love it, or love the money? I believe thousands | |
of men in professional life to-day, who are known as dollar-chasers, | |
really long for a more simple life, but the disease they have has robbed | |
them of the power to choose "that better part." And that disease is not | |
money madness, but _failurephobia_. | |
The fear of failing, or of being called a failure, dominates the | |
professional world as no other power could. It claims thousands of poor | |
fellows who were brought up to the active, worth-while life of the farm or | |
of a trade, and chains them to a miserable, sham, death-in-life sort of | |
existence, that they come to loathe, but dare not leave because of their | |
disease, failurephobia. | |
Success is the world's standard. Succeed in your business or profession, | |
by honest means if you can, but _succeed_! At least, keep up the | |
appearance of succeeding, and you may keep your place in society. It may | |
be known that your business is poor, and that you go to your office and | |
sit in solitude day in and day out, and that you starve and skimp at home, | |
but so long as you keep up the _show_, you are a "professional man!" What | |
mighty courage it takes to acknowledge what everybody else knows, and | |
_quit_! A writer in a medical journal told of a young physician in Boston | |
who put an ad. in a daily paper asking for a job in which a strong man | |
could use the strength a manly man ought to be proud of, to earn an honest | |
living. If men only had the courage, I wonder how many such ads. would | |
appear in the columns of our papers! | |
An old schoolmate, who is a lawyer in a Western city, told me that of the | |
more than two hundred lawyers of that city, twenty had practically all the | |
law business, and of that twenty a half dozen got the big cases in which | |
there was most money. It is largely so in every city and town. And what | |
applies to the lawyer applies to the physician, though perhaps not to so | |
great an extent. And while the fortunate few get most of the practice, | |
and make most of the money, what are the unfortunate many doing? Holding | |
on, starving, skimping, keeping up appearances, and, while young, hoping | |
against hope for better days. But when hope long deferred has made the | |
soul sick, and hope itself dies, what then? Keep up appearances, you are a | |
professional man. You can't be a quitter. It would be humorous, were it | |
not so pathetic, to see the old doctor who has dragged along for years, | |
barely eking out a living, put on the silk hat of his more ambitious days | |
and wear it with dignity along with his shiny threadbare trousers and | |
short coat, making a desperate spurt to keep up with the dashing young | |
fellow just out of school. | |
_Failurephobia!_ Among professional men what a terrible disease it is! I | |
have known it to drive a young man, who might have been happy and useful | |
as a farmer or mechanic, into a suicide's grave. Such cases are not | |
uncommon. Who are the M.D.s whose pictures and glaring ads. appear in | |
those 15-cent papers published in Augusta, Me., and in many daily and even | |
religious papers? Are they men who took to graft and disgraced their | |
profession because they loved that kind of life, and the stigma it brings? | |
Not in many cases. Most of them perhaps come from the ranks of ambitious | |
fellows who lost out in the strife for legitimate practice, but who would | |
not acknowledge failure, so launched into quackery, and became _notorious_ | |
if they could not become noted. | |
Strange as it may seem, the fact that a professional man is a notorious | |
grafter abroad does not necessarily deprive him of social standing at | |
home. I have in mind a man whose smug face appears in connection with a | |
page of loud and lurid literature in almost every 15-cent _Grafters | |
Herald_ from Maine to California; yet this man at home was pointed to with | |
pride as an eminently successful man. He wore his silk hat to church, and | |
the church of which he was a valued member was proud of the distinction he | |
gave it. A Western city has an industry to which it "points with pride," | |
and the pictures of the huge plant appear conspicuously placed in | |
illustrated boom editions of the city's enterprising papers. This octopus | |
reaches out its slimy tentacles to every corner of the United States, | |
feeling for poor wretches smitten by disease, real or fancied. When once | |
it gets hold of them it spews its inky fluids around them until they | |
"cough up" their hard-earned dollars that go to perpetuate this "pride of | |
the West." | |
The most popular themes of the preacher, lecturer and magazine writer | |
to-day are Honesty, Anti-graft, Tainted Money, True Success, etc. You have | |
heard and read them all, and have been thrilled with the stirring words | |
"An honest man is the noblest work of God." The preacher and the people | |
think they are sincere, and go home congratulating themselves that they | |
are capable of entertaining such sentiment. When we observe their social | |
lives we are led to wonder how much of that noble sentiment is only cant | |
after all. | |
THE WORLD'S STANDARD. | |
The world will say that goodness is the only thing worth while, | |
But the man who's been successful is the man who gets the smile. | |
If the "good" man is a failure, a fellow who is down, | |
He's a fellow "up against it," and gets nothing but a frown. | |
The fellow who is frosted is the fellow who is down, | |
No matter how he came there, how honest he has been, | |
They find him just the same when being there's a sin. | |
A man is scarce insulted if you tell him he is bad, | |
To tell him he is tricky will never make him mad; | |
If you say that he's a schemer the world will say he's smart, | |
But say that he's a failure if you want to break his heart. | |
If you want to be "respected" and "pointed to with pride," | |
"Air" yourselves in "autos" when you go to take a ride; | |
No matter how you get them, with the world that "cuts no ice," | |
Your neighbors know you have them and know they're new and nice. | |
The preacher in the pulpit will tell you, with a sigh, | |
That rich men go with Dives when they come at last to die; | |
And men who've been like Lazarus, failures here on earth, | |
Will find their home in Heaven where the angels know their worth. | |
But the preacher goes with Dives when the dinner hour comes; | |
He prefers a groaning table to grabbing after crumbs. | |
Yes; he'll take Dives' "tainted money" just to lighten up his load. | |
Enough to let him travel in the little camel road. | |
That may sound like the wail of a pessimistic knocker, but every observing | |
man knows it's mostly truth. The successful man is the man who gets the | |
world's smile, and he gets the smile with little regard to the methods | |
employed to achieve his "success." | |
This deplorable social condition is largely responsible for the | |
multitudinous forms of graft that exist to-day. To "cut any ice" in | |
"society" you must be somebody or keep up the appearance of being | |
somebody. Even if the world knows you are going mainly on pretensions, it | |
will "wink the other eye" and give you the place your pretensions claim. | |
Most of the folk who make up "society" are slow to engage in stone | |
slinging, for they are wise enough to consider the material of which their | |
own domiciles are constructed. | |
To make an application of all this, let us not be too hard on the quack | |
and the shyster. He is largely a product of our social system. Society has | |
placed temptations before him to get money, and he must keep up the | |
appearances of success at any cost of honesty and independent manhood. The | |
poor professional man who is a victim of that fearful disease, | |
failurephobia, in his weakness has become a slave to public opinion. He is | |
made to "tread the mill" daily in the monotonous round to and from his | |
office where he is serving a life sentence of solitary confinement, while | |
his wife sews or makes lace or gives music lessons to support the family. | |
I say solitary confinement advisedly, for now a professional man is even | |
denied the solid comfort of the old-time village doctor or lawyer who | |
could sit with his cronies and fellow-loafers in the shade of the tavern | |
elm, or around the grocer's stove, and maintain his professional standing | |
(or rather sitting). In the large towns and cities that will not do | |
to-day. If the professional man is not busy, he must _seem_ busy. A | |
physician changed his office to get a south front, as he felt he _must_ | |
have sunshine, and he dared not do like Dr. Jones, get it loafing on the | |
streets. Not that a doctor would not enjoy spending some of his long, | |
lonely hours talking with his friends in the glorious sunshine, but it | |
would not do. People would say: "Doctor Blank must not get much to do now. | |
I see him loafing on the street like old Doc Jones. I guess Doctor | |
Newcomer has made a 'has been' of him, too." | |
I know a young lawyer who sat in his office for two long years without a | |
single case. Yet every day he passed through the street with the brisk | |
walk of one in a hurry to get back to pressing business. He was so busy | |
(?) that he had to read the paper as he walked to save time to--wait! | |
Did you ever sit in the office with one of these prisoners and watch him | |
looking out of his window upon prosperous farmers as they untied fine | |
teams and drove away in comfortable carriages? Did you know how to | |
translate that look in his eye, and the sad abstraction of manner into | |
which he momentarily sank, in spite of his creed, which taught him to | |
always seem prosperous and contented? The translation was not hard. His | |
mind was following that farmer out of town and along the green lanes, | |
bordered by meadows and clover bloom, and on down the road through the | |
cool twilight of the quiet summer evening, to where the ribbon of dark | |
green forest, whose cool cadence had called to him so often, changed to | |
groves of whispering trees that bordered the winding stream that spoke of | |
the swimming holes and fishing pools of his boyhood. And on up the road | |
again, across the fertile prairie lands, until he turns in at the gate of | |
an orchard-embowered home. And do you think the picture is less attractive | |
to this exile because it has not the stately front and the glistening | |
paint of the smart house in town? Not at all. The smart house with | |
glistening paint is the one he must aspire to in town, but his ideal home | |
is that snug farmhouse to which his fancy has followed the prosperous | |
farmer. | |
That picture is not altogether a product of poetic fancy. We get glimpses | |
of such pictures in confidential talks with lawyers and doctors in almost | |
every town. These poor fellows may fret and sigh for change, "and spend | |
their lives for naught," but the hunger never leaves them. Not long ago a | |
professional man who has spent twenty-five years of his life imprisoned in | |
an office, most of the time just waiting, spoke to me of his longing to | |
"get out." His longing had become almost a madness. He forgot the creed, | |
to always appear prosperous, and spoke in bitterness of his life of sham. | |
He said he was like the general of the old rhyme who "marched up the hill | |
and--marched down again." He went up to his office and--went home again, | |
day in and day out, year in and year out, and for what? But | |
_failurephobia_ held him there, and he is there yet. | |
What schemes such unfortunates sometimes concoct to escape their fate! I | |
was told of a physician who was "working up a cough," to have an excuse to | |
go west "for his health." How often we hear or read of some bright doctor | |
or lawyer who had a "growing" practice and a "bright future" before him, | |
having to change his occupation on account of his health failing! | |
This is not an overdrawn picture. I believe old and observing professional | |
men will bear me out in it. Statistics of the conditions in the | |
professions are unobtainable, but I feel sure would only corroborate my | |
statement. In a recent medical journal was an article by a St. Louis | |
physician, which said the situation among medical men of that city was | |
"appalling." Of the 1,100 doctors there, dozens of them were living on | |
ten-cent lunches at the saloons, and with shiny clothes and unkempt | |
persons were holding on in despair, waiting for something better, or | |
sinking out of sight of the profession in hopeless defeat. | |
This is a discouraging outlook, but it is time some such pictures were | |
held up before the multitude of young people of both sexes who are | |
entering medical and other schools, aspiring to professional life. And it | |
is time for society to recognize some of the responsibility for graft that | |
rests on it, for setting standards that cause commercialism to dominate | |
the age. | |
CHAPTER III. | |
WHY QUACKS FLOURISH. | |
American Public Generally Intelligent, but Densely Ignorant in | |
Important Particulars--Cotton Mather and Witchcraft--A.B.'s, A.M.'s, | |
M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s Espousing Christian Science, Chiropractics and | |
Osteopathy--Gullibility of the College Bred--The Ignorant Suspicious | |
of New Things--The Educated Man's Creed--Dearth of Therapeutic | |
Knowledge by the Laity--Is the Medical Profession to | |
Blame?--Physicians' Arguments Controvertible--Host of Incompetents | |
Among the Regular Physicians--Report of Committee on Medical | |
Colleges--The "Big Doctors"--Doc Booze--The "Leading Doctor"--Osler's | |
Drug Nihilism--The X-Ray Graft. | |
In spite of the apparent prevalence of graft and the seemingly | |
unprecedented dishonesty of those who serve the public, there are not | |
wanting signs of the coming of better things. The eminent physician who | |
spoke of the turbidity of therapeutics thought it was only that agitation | |
that precedes crystallization and clarification that brings purity, and | |
not greater pollution. May the seeming bad condition not be due in part | |
also to the fact that a larger number of our American people are becoming | |
intelligent enough to know the sham from the genuine, and to know when | |
they are being imposed upon? | |
That our American people are generally intelligent we know; but that a | |
people may be generally intelligent and yet densely ignorant in important | |
particulars has been demonstrated in all ages, and in no age more clearly | |
than in our own. We wonder how the great scholar, Cotton Mather, could | |
have believed in and taught witchcraft. What shall we think, in this | |
enlightened age, of judges pleading for the healing (?) virtues of | |
Christian Science, or of college professors taking treatment from a | |
Chiropractor or magnetic healer; or of the scores of A.B.s, A.M.s, M.D.s, | |
Ph.D.s, who espouse Osteopathy and use the powers of their supposedly | |
superior intellect in its propagation? | |
We can only come to this conclusion: The college education of to-day does | |
not necessarily make one proof against graft. In fact, it seems that when | |
it comes to belief in "new scientific discoveries," the educated are even | |
more easily imposed upon than the ignorant. The ignorant man is apt to be | |
suspicious of new things, especially things that are supposed to require | |
scientific knowledge to comprehend. On the other hand, the man who prides | |
himself on his learning is sure he can take care of himself, and often | |
thinks it a proof of his superior intelligence to be one of the charter | |
members of every scientific fad that is sprung on the people by some | |
college professor who is striving for a medal for work done in original | |
research. | |
Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that frauds and grafts are | |
perpetrated upon educated people to-day. In the preceding chapter I tried | |
to tell in a general way what some of the grafts are, and something of the | |
social conditions that help to produce the grafters. I shall now give some | |
of the reasons why shysters find so many easy victims for their grafts. | |
When it comes to grafting in connection with therapeutics, the layman's | |
educational armor, which affords him protection against most forms of | |
graft in business, seems utterly useless. True, it affords protection | |
against the more vulgar nostrum grafting that claims its millions of | |
victims among the masses; but when the educated man meets the "new | |
discovery," "new method" grafter he bares his bosom and welcomes him as a | |
friend and fellow-scientist. It is the educated man's creed to-day to | |
accept everything that comes to him in the name of science. | |
The average educated man knows nothing whatever of the theory and _modus | |
operandi_ of therapeutics. He is perhaps possessed of some knowledge of | |
everything on the earth, in the heaven above, and in the waters beneath. | |
He is, however, densely ignorant of one of the most important things of | |
all--therapeutics--the matter of possessing an intelligent conception of | |
what are rational and competent means of caring for his body when it is | |
attacked by disease. A man who writes A.M., D.D., or LL.D. after his name | |
will send for a physician of "any old school," and put his life or the | |
life of a member of his family into his hands with no intelligent idea | |
whatever as to whether the right thing is being done to save that life. | |
Is this ignorance of therapeutics on the part of the otherwise educated | |
the result of a studied policy of physicians to mystify the public and | |
keep their theories from the laity? I don't know. Such accusations are | |
often made. I read in a medical magazine recently a question the editor | |
put to his patrons. He told them he had returned money sent by a layman | |
for a year's subscription to his journal, and asked if such action met | |
their approval. If the majority of the physicians who read his journal do | |
approve his action, their motives _may_ be based on considerations that | |
are for the public good, for aught I know, but as a representative layman | |
I see much more to commend in the attitude of the editor of the _Journal | |
of the A. M. A._ on the question of admitting the public to the confidence | |
of the physician. As I have quoted before, he says: "The time has passed | |
when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of professional dignity and assume | |
an attitude of infallibility toward the public." Such sentiment freely | |
expressed would, I believe, soon change the attitude of the laity toward | |
physicians from one which is either suspicion or open hostility to one of | |
respect and sympathy. | |
The argument has been made by physicians that it would not do for the | |
public to read all their discussions and descriptions of diseases, as | |
their imagination would reproduce all the symptoms in themselves. Others | |
have urged that it will not do to let the public read professional | |
literature, for they might draw conclusions from the varied opinions they | |
read that would not be for the good of the profession. Both arguments | |
remind one of the arguments parents make as an excuse for not teaching | |
their children the mysteries of reproduction. They did not want to put | |
thoughts into the minds of their children that might do them harm. At the | |
same time they should know that the thoughts would be, and were being, put | |
into their children's minds from the most harmful and corrupting sources. | |
So in therapeutics. Are not all symptoms of disease put before the people | |
anyway, and from the worst possible sources? If medical men do not know | |
this, let them read some of the ads. in the _Grafter's Herald_. And are | |
the contradictions and inconsistencies in discussions in medical journals | |
kept from the public? If medical men think so, let them read the | |
Osteopathic and "independent" journals. The public knows too much already, | |
considering the sources from which the knowledge comes. Since people will | |
be informed, why not let them get information that is authentic? | |
Before I studied the literature of leading medical journals I believed | |
that the biggest and brainiest physicians were in favor of fair and frank | |
dealing with the public. I had learned this much from observation and | |
contact with medical men. After a careful study of the organ of the | |
American Medical Association my respect for that organization is greatly | |
increased by finding expressions in numbers of articles which show that my | |
opinion was correct. In spite of all the vituperation that is heaped upon | |
it, and in spite of the narrowness of individual members, the American | |
Medical Association does seem to exist for the good of humanity. The | |
strongest recommendation I have found for it lies in the character of the | |
schools and individuals who are most bitter against it. It is usually | |
complimentary to a man to have rascals array themselves against him. | |
There are many able men among physicians who feel keenly their | |
limitations, when they have done their best, and this class would gladly | |
have their patients understand the limitations as well as the powers of | |
the physician. In sorrow and disgust sometimes the conscientious physician | |
realizes that he is handicapped in his work to either prevent or cure | |
disease, because he has to work with people who have wrong notions of his | |
power and of the potency of agencies he employs. With shame he must | |
acknowledge that the people hold such erroneous ideas of medicine, not | |
because of general ignorance, but because they have been intentionally | |
taught them by the army of quacks outside and the host of grafters and | |
incompetents _inside_ the regular medical profession. | |
Incompetent physicians, to succeed financially (and that is the only idea | |
of success incompetents are capable of appreciating), must practice as | |
shysters. They fully understand how necessary it is to the successful | |
working of their grafts to keep the people in ignorance of what a | |
physician may legitimately and conscientiously do. | |
Our medical brethren who preach the "all but holy" doctrine, and want to | |
maintain the "attitude of infallibility toward the public," will disagree | |
with me about there being "a host" of incompetents in the regular school | |
of medical practice. I shall not ask that they take the possibly biased | |
opinion of an ex-Osteopath, but refer them to the report of the committee | |
appointed by the American Medical Association to examine the medical | |
colleges of the United States as to their ability to make competent | |
physicians. "One-half of all the medical schools of our country are | |
utterly unfit to turn out properly qualified physicians, and many of them | |
are so dominated by commercialism that they are but little better than | |
diploma mills"! That's what the committee said. | |
It has been argued that the capable physician need not fear the | |
incompetent pretender, for, like dregs, he must "settle to the bottom" and | |
find his place. This might be true if the people had correct notions of | |
the true theory of therapeutics. As it is, the scholarly, competent | |
physician knows (and intelligent laymen often know) that the pretenders | |
too often are the fellows who get the reputations of being the "big | |
doctors." Why? I think mainly because, being ignorant, they practice | |
largely as quacks, and by curing (?) all kinds of dangerous (on their own | |
diagnosis) diseases quickly, "breaking up" this and "aborting" that | |
unbreakable and unabortable disease (by "hot air" treatment mainly), they | |
place the whole system upon such a basis of quackery that the deluded | |
masses often pronounce the best equipped and most conscientious physician | |
a "poor doctor," because he will not pretend to do all that the | |
wind-jamming grafter claims _he has_ done and _can_ do. | |
Here is a case in point which I know to be true. The farce began some | |
years ago in a small college in Oregon. A big, awkward, harmless-looking | |
fellow came to the college one fall and entered the preparatory | |
department. At the end of the year, after he had failed in every | |
examination and shown conclusively that he had no capacity to learn | |
anything, he was told that it was a waste of time for him to go to school, | |
and they could not admit him for another year. Was he squelched? Not he. | |
The fires of ambition yet burned in his breast, and the next year he | |
turned up at a medical college. I presume it had the same high educational | |
requirements for admission that some other medical colleges have, and | |
enforced them in about the same way. At any rate he met the requirements | |
($$$), and pursued his medical researches with bright visions of being a | |
doctor to lure him on. But his inability to learn anything manifested | |
itself again, and, presumably, his money gave out. At any rate he was sent | |
away without a diploma. Still the fire of ambition was not extinguished in | |
his manly bosom. Regulations were not strict in those days, so he went to | |
a small town, wore fine clothes, a silk hat and a pompous air, and--within | |
a short time was being called for forty miles around to "counsel little | |
doctors" in their desperate cases. Such cases are all too common, as | |
honest physicians know. | |
How humiliating to the conscientiously equipped doctor to hear people say | |
of a man who never had more brains than he needed, and had hopelessly | |
muddled what he had by using his own dope and stimulants: "I tell you Doc | |
Booze is the best doctor in town yet when he's half sober!" Strange, isn't | |
it, that in many communities people have an idea that an inclination on | |
the part of a physician toward whisky or dope indicates some peculiar | |
mental fitness for a doctor? "Poor fellow, he formed the habit of taking | |
stimulants to keep up when he had to go night and day during the big | |
typhoid epidemic, you know." For what per cent. of cases of medical | |
dipsomaniacs this constitutes a stock excuse, only medical men know. As an | |
Osteopathic physician I was never rushed so that I felt the necessity for | |
"keeping up on stimulants." If I had been, to be consistent, I should have | |
had to stimulate (?) mechanically, of course. | |
Not only do shysters and pretenders abuse the confidence of the masses in | |
matters of diagnosis and medication, but of late years they are working | |
another species of graft that is beginning to react against the | |
profession. This graft consists in the over-use of therapeutic appliances | |
that are all right in their place when legitimately used. | |
By what standard is the physician judged by the people who enter his | |
office? It used to be the display of medical literature. Sometimes some of | |
it was pseudo-medical literature. Did you ever know a shyster to pad his | |
library with Congressional reports? I have. The literature used to be | |
conspicuously placed in the waiting-room, with a ponderous volume lying | |
open on the desk. | |
Have you a "leading doctor" in your town? Often he is not only in the lead | |
but has flagged all the others at the quarter post--put them all into the | |
"has been" class. What an elegant office he has! Plush rugs and luxurious | |
couches in the waiting-room. Double doors into the private and | |
operating-rooms, left open when not in actual use to give impressive | |
glimpses of glass cases filled with glittering instruments, any one of | |
which would give the lie to Solomon's declaration that "there is nothing | |
new under the sun." An X-ray machine fills a conspicuous corner. In the | |
same room are tanks, tubes, inhalers, hot-air appliances, vibrators, etc. | |
One full side of the room is filled with shelves that groan under a load | |
of the medicines he "keeps and dispenses." What are all of these hundreds | |
of bottles for if it is true, as many of our greatest physicians say, that | |
a comparatively few people are benefited by drugs? These numerous bottles | |
may contain placebos. I do not know as to that, but I do know something of | |
the impression such a display makes on the mind of an intelligent layman. | |
The query in his mind is how much of that entire display is for its | |
legitimate effect on the minds of the patients, and how much of it is to | |
impress the people with the powers of this physician, with his "wonderful | |
equipment" to cope with all manner of disease? | |
If there is any doubt in the minds of physicians that laymen do know and | |
think well over the sayings of drug nihilists, let them talk with | |
intelligent people and hear them quote from the editorial page of a great | |
daily such sentiments as this (from the Chicago _Record-Herald_): | |
"Prof. William Osier, the distinguished teacher of medicine, who was | |
taken from this country a few years ago to occupy the most important | |
medical chair in Great Britain, has shocked his profession repeatedly | |
by his pronouncements against the use of drugs and medicines of almost | |
every kind. Only a few days ago he made an address in which he | |
declared that even though most physicians will be deprived of their | |
livelihood, the time must soon come when sound hygienic advice for the | |
prevention of disease will take the place of the present system of | |
prescription and _pretense of cure_. The most able physicians agree | |
with him, even when they are not frank enough to express themselves to | |
the same effect." | |
Medical men need not think, either, that the people who happened to read | |
the editorial pages referred to are the only ones who know of that | |
declaration from Osier. Osteopathic journals, Christian Science journals, | |
health culture journals, and all the riff-raff of journals published as | |
individual boosters, are ever on the watch for just such things, and when | |
they find them they "roll them under their tongue as sweet morsels." They | |
chew them, as Carleton says, with "the cud of fancy," and hand them along | |
as latest news to tens of thousands of people who are quick to believe | |
them. | |
Going back to the physician who has the well-equipped office, is he a | |
grafter in any sense? I shall not give my opinion. Perhaps every thing he | |
has in the office is legitimate. In the opinion of the masses of that | |
community he is the greatest doctor that ever prescribed a pill or | |
purloined an appendix. Taking the word of the physicians whom he has put | |
into the "has been" class for it, he is the greatest fake that ever fooled | |
the people. Most of those outclassed doctors will talk at any time, in any | |
place, to any one, of the pretensions of this type of physician. They will | |
tell how he dazzles the people with his display of apparatus "kept for | |
show;" how he diagnoses malarial fever as typhoid, and thus gets the | |
reputation of curing a larger per cent. of typhoid than any other doctor | |
in town; how he gets the reputation of being a big surgeon by cutting out | |
healthy ovaries and appendices, and how he assists with his knife women | |
who do not desire Rooseveltian families. They point to the number of | |
appendectomies he has performed, and recall how rare such cases were | |
before his advent, and yet how few people died with appendicitis. Is it to | |
be wondered that intelligent laymen sometimes lose faith in and respect | |
for the profession of medicine and surgery? | |
To show that people may be imposed upon by illegitimate use of legitimate | |
agencies I call attention to an article published recently in the _Iowa | |
Health Bulletin_. The Iowa Medical Board is winning admiration from many | |
by conducting a campaign to educate the people of the State in matters | |
pertaining to hygienic living. In line with this work they published an | |
article to correct the erroneous idea the laity have of the X-ray. They | |
say: | |
"The people think that with the X-ray the doctor can look right into | |
the body and examine any part or organ and tell just what is the | |
matter with it, when the fact is all that is ever seen is a lot of dim | |
shadows that even the expert often fails to understand or recognize." | |
Why do the people have such erroneous conceptions of the X-ray? Is it | |
accidental, or the result of their innate stupidity? Certainly it is not. | |
The people have just such conceptions of the X-ray as they receive from | |
the faker who uses it as he uses his opiates and stimulants--to get an | |
effect and give the people wrong ideas of his power. | |
A lady of a small town who was far advanced in consumption was taken to a | |
city to be examined by a "big doctor" who possessed an X-ray. He | |
"examined" her thoroughly by the aid of the penetrating light made by his | |
machine, and sent them home delighted with the assurance that his | |
wonderful instrument revealed no tuberculosis. He assured her that if she | |
would avail herself of his superior skill she might yet be restored to | |
health. She died within a year from the ravages of tuberculosis. | |
A boy of four had an aggravated attack of bronchitis. His symptoms were | |
such that his parents thought some object might have lodged in his | |
trachea. A noted surgeon who had come one hundred miles from a hospital to | |
see another case was consulted. He told the parents that the boy had | |
sucked something down his windpipe, and advised them to bring him to the | |
hospital for an operation. They did so, and a $100 incision was made | |
after the X-ray had located (?) an object lodged at the bifurcation of the | |
trachea. The knife found nothing, however, and the boy still had his | |
bronchitis, and the parents had their hospital and surgeon's bills, and, | |
incidentally, their faith in the X-ray somewhat shattered. | |
The X-rays, Finsen rays, electric light and sunlight have their place in | |
therapy. Informed people do not doubt their efficacy. However, the history | |
of the use of these agents is a common one. A scientist, after possibly a | |
lifetime of research, develops a new therapeutic agent or a new | |
application of some old agent. He gives his findings to the world. | |
Immediately a lot of half-baked professional men seize upon it, more with | |
the object of self-laudation and advertisement than in a true scientific | |
spirit. Serious study in the application of the new agent is not thought | |
of. The object is rather to have the reputation of being an up-to-snuff | |
man. The results obtained are not what the originator claimed, which is | |
not to be wondered at. The abuse of the remedy leads to abuse of the | |
originator, which is entirely unfair to both. | |
This state of affairs has grown so bad that scientists now are beginning | |
to restrict the application of their discoveries to their own pupils. A | |
Berlin _savant_, assistant to Koch, has developed the use of tuberculin to | |
such a point as to make it one of the most valuable remedies in | |
tuberculosis. It is manufactured under his personal supervision, and sold | |
only to such physicians as will study in his laboratory and show | |
themselves competent to grasp the principles involved. | |
CHAPTER IV. | |
TURBID THERAPEUTICS. | |
An Astounding Array of Therapeutic | |
Systems--Diet--Water--Optics--Hemotherapy--Consumption | |
Cures--Placebos--Inconsistencies and Contradictions--Osler's Opinion | |
of Appendicitis--Fair Statement of Limitations in Medicine Desirable. | |
To be convinced that therapeutics are turbid, note the increasing numbers | |
of diametrically opposed schools springing up and claiming to advocate the | |
only true system of healing. Look at the astounding array: | |
Allopathy, Homeopathy, Eclecticism, Osteopathy, Electrotherapy, Christian | |
Science, Emmanuel movement, Hydrotherapy, Chiropractics, Viteopathy, | |
Magnetic Healing, Suggestive Therapeutics, Naturopathy, Massotherapy, | |
Physio-Therapy, and a host of minor fads that are rainbow-hued bubbles for | |
a day. They come and go as Byron said some therapeutic fads came and went | |
in his day. He spoke of the new things that astounded the people for a | |
day, and then, as it has been with | |
"Cowpox, tractors, galvanism and gas, | |
The bubble bursts and all is air at last." | |
One says he has found that fasting is a panacea. Another says: "He is a | |
fool; you must feed the body if you expect it to be built up." | |
One says drinking floods of water is a cure-all. Another says the water is | |
all right, but you must use it for the "internal bath." Still another | |
agrees that water is the thing, but it must be used in hot and cold | |
applications. | |
One faker says _he_ has found that most diseases are caused by defective | |
eyes, and proposes to cure anything from consumption to ingrown toe-nails | |
with glasses. Another agrees that the predisposing cause of diseases is | |
eye strain, but the first fellow is irrational in his treatment. Glasses | |
are unnatural and therefore all wrong. To cure the eyes use his wonderful | |
nature-assisting ointment; that goes right to the optic nerve and makes | |
old eyes young, weak eyes strong, relieves nerve strain and thereby makes | |
sick people well. | |
Another has found that "infused" blood is the real elixir of life. He | |
reports 100 per cent. of twenty cases of tuberculosis cured by his | |
beneficent discovery. I wonder why we have a "Great White Plague" at all; | |
or why we have international conventions to discuss means of staying the | |
ravages of this terrible disease; or why State medical boards are devoting | |
so much space in their bulletins to warn and educate the people against | |
the awful fatality of consumption, when to cure it is so easy if doctors | |
will only use blood? | |
Even if the hemotherapist does claim a little too much, there is yet no | |
cause for terror. A leading Osteopathic journal proclaims in large | |
letters that the Osteopath can remove the obstruction so that nature will | |
cure consumption. | |
Christian Scientists and Magnetic Healers have not yet admitted their | |
defeat, and there are many regulars who have not surrendered to the | |
plague. So the poor consumptive may hope on (while his money lasts). Our | |
most conscientious physicians not only admit limitations in curing | |
tuberculosis, but try to teach the people that they must not rely on being | |
"cured" if they are attacked, but must work with the physician to prevent | |
its contagion. The intelligent layman can say "Amen" to that doctrine. | |
The question may be fairly put: "Why not have more of such frankness from | |
the physician?" The manner in which the admissions of doctors that they | |
are unable to control tuberculosis with medicine or surgery alone has been | |
received by intelligent people should encourage the profession. It would | |
seem more fair to take the stand of Professor Osler when he says that | |
sound hygienic advice for the prevention of diseases must largely take the | |
place of present medication and pretence of cure. | |
As a member of the American Medical Association recently said, "The | |
placebo will not fool intelligent people always." And when it is generally | |
known that most of a physician's medicines are given as placebos, do you | |
wonder that the claims of "drugless healers" receive such serious | |
consideration? | |
The absurd, conflicting claims of quack pretenders are bad enough to | |
muddle the situation and add to the turbidity of therapeutics; but all | |
this is not doing the medical profession nearly as much harm, nor driving | |
as many people into the ranks of fad followers, as the inconsistencies and | |
contradictions among the so-called regulars. | |
This was my opinion before I made any special study of therapeutics, and | |
while studying I found numbers of prominent medical men who agree with me. | |
One of them says that the "criticisms," quarrels, contradictions, and | |
inconsistencies of medical men are doing more to lower the profession in | |
the estimation of the intelligent laity and to cause people to follow the | |
fads of "new schools" than all else combined. | |
Think for a moment of some of these inconsistencies and contradictions. | |
One doctor in a town tells the people that he "breaks up" typhoid fever. | |
His rival, perhaps from the same college, tells the people that typhoid | |
must "run its course" and cannot be broken up, and that any man who claims | |
the contrary is a liar and a shyster. One surgeon makes a portion of the | |
people believe he has saved dozens of lives in that community by surgical | |
operations; the other physicians of the town tell the people openly, or at | |
least hint, that there has been a great deal of needless butchery | |
performed in that community in the name of surgery. And then the people | |
see editorials in the daily press about the fad of having operations | |
performed, and read in their health culture or Osteopathic journals from | |
articles by the greatest M.D.s, in which it is admitted that surgery is | |
practiced too largely as a graft. Professor Osler is quoted as saying: | |
"Surgeons are finding altogether too many cases of appendicitis these | |
days. Appendicitis is becoming so common and so easily detected that | |
the physician's wife can diagnose a case of it over the telephone." | |
One leading physician says medical treatment has little beneficial effect | |
on pneumonia; another claims to be able to cure it, and lets the friends | |
of his patient rely entirely on his medicine in the most desperate cases. | |
Another says the main reliance should be heat. Another says ice-packs. | |
Another says Antiphlogistine. Another says, "All those clay preparations | |
are frauds, and the only safe way to treat pneumonia is by blood letting." | |
Thus it goes, and this is only a sample of contradictions that arise in | |
the treatment of diseases. | |
Nor is the above an overdrawn picture. Most of it was from the journal of | |
the editor who said he refused to send it to a layman who had sent his | |
money in advance. But all that same stuff has been hashed and rehashed to | |
the people through the sources I have already mentioned. There are not | |
only these evidences of inconsistencies to edify (?) the people, but | |
constantly recurring examples of incompetency and pretensions. | |
There is no doubt a middle ground in all this, but it is not evident to | |
the casual observer. If the true physician would honestly admit his | |
limitations to the intelligent laity, much of this muddle would be | |
avoided. While by such a course he may occasionally temporarily lose a | |
patient, in the end both the public and profession would gain. The time | |
has gone by to "assume an air of infallibility toward the public." | |
CHAPTER V. | |
THE EXPERT WITNESS AND PROPRIETARY MEDICINES. | |
The "Great Nerve Specialist"--The Professional Witness a Jonah--The | |
"Railway Spine"--Is it Lack of Fairness and Honesty or Lack of Skill | |
and Learning?--Destruction of Fine Herds of Cattle Without | |
Compensation--Koch's Dictum and Denial--Koch's Tuberculin--The Serum | |
Tribe--Stupendous Sale of Nostrums--Druggist's Arguments--Use of | |
Proprietary Medicines Stimulates Sale of Nostrums. | |
I wonder what the patrons of the sanitarium of the "great nerve | |
specialist" thought of his display of knowledge of the nervous system when | |
he was on the witness stand in a recent notorious case? A lawyer tangled | |
him up completely, and showed that the doctor had no accurate knowledge of | |
the anatomy of the nervous system. When asked the origin of the | |
all-important pneumogastric nerve, he _thought_ it originated in a certain | |
segment of the spinal cord! This noted "specialist" was made perfectly | |
contemptible, and the whole profession must have blushed in shame at the | |
spectacle presented. And that spectacle was not unnoticed by the | |
intelligent laity. | |
The professional witness has in most cases been a Jonah to the profession. | |
It is about as easy to get the kind of testimony you want from a | |
professional witness in a suit for damages for personal injuries as it is | |
to get a doctor's certificate to get out of working your poll-tax, or a | |
certificate of physical soundness to carry fraternal life insurance. | |
Let me recall the substance of a paper read a few years ago by perhaps the | |
greatest lawyer in Iowa (afterward governor of that State). He told of a | |
trial in which he had examined and cross-examined ten physicians. It was a | |
trial in which suit was brought to recover damages for personal injury, a | |
good illustration of the "railway spine." One physician testified that the | |
patient was afflicted with sclerosis of the spinal cord; another said it | |
was a plain case of congestion of the cord; another diagnosed degeneration | |
of the cord; yet another said it was a true combination of all the | |
conditions named by the first three. They all said there was atrophy of | |
the muscles of the left leg, and predicted that complete paralysis would | |
surely supervene. | |
On the other side five noted physicians testified as positively that | |
neither the spinal cord nor any nerve was injured; that there was no sign | |
of atrophy or loss of power in the leg; and they seemed to think the | |
disease afflicting the patient was due to a fixed desire to secure a | |
verdict for large damages from the railway company. One eminent specialist | |
made oath that the electrical test showed the partial reaction of | |
degeneration; another as famous challenged him to make the test again in | |
the presence of both. After it was made this second specialist went before | |
the jury and positively declared that there was no trace whatever of the | |
reaction of degeneration, and that the muscles responded to the current | |
precisely as healthy muscles should. | |
Then this eminent attorney adds: "If the instances of such diversity were | |
rare they might pass unnoticed, but they occur and re-occur as often as | |
physicians are called to the temple of justice for the expression of | |
opinions." | |
The lay mind imputes this clash of opinions either to lack of fairness and | |
honesty or lack of skill and learning. In either case the profession | |
suffers great injury in the estimation of those who should have for it | |
only the profoundest admiration and the most implicit faith. Again I ask, | |
Is it any wonder people have lost implicit faith when they read many | |
reports of similar cases rehashed in the various yellow journals put into | |
their hands? | |
Farmers submitted with all possible grace to the decrees of science when, | |
by the authority of such a great man as Koch, their fine herds of cattle | |
were condemned as breeders and disseminators of the great white plague and | |
destroyed without compensation. But how do you think these same farmers | |
feel when they read in yellow journals that Koch has changed his mind | |
about bovine and human tuberculosis being identical, and has serious | |
doubts about the one contracting in any way the disease of the other. | |
People read with renewed hope the glowing accounts of the wonderful | |
achievements of Dr. Koch in finding a destroyer for the germ of | |
consumption. Somehow time has slipped by since that renowned discovery, | |
with consumption still claiming its victims, and many physicians are | |
saying "Koch's great discovery is proving only a great disappointment." | |
Drugless therapy journals are continually pouring out the vials of their | |
wrath upon vaccination, antitoxin and all the serum tribe, and their | |
vituperation is even excelled by vindictive denunciations of the same | |
things by the individual boomer journals that flood the land. | |
Another bitter contention that is confusing some, and disgusting others, | |
is the acrimonious strife between users and non-users of proprietary | |
medicines. This usually develops into a sort of "rough house" affair, the | |
druggist mixing up as savagely as the doctors before the fight is | |
finished. I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the case nor of the | |
merits or demerits of proprietary medicines, but I do know this, however: | |
The stupendous sale of nostrums that in 1907 represented a sum of money | |
sufficient to have provided every practitioner of medicine in the United | |
States with a two thousand dollar salary, has been helped by the use of | |
proprietary medicines. I am aware that my position is likely to be called | |
in question by many physicians. But they should hear druggists arguing | |
with people who hesitate about buying patent medicines because their | |
physicians tell them they should seldom take medicine unless prescribed by | |
a doctor. They would hear him say: "Your doctor gives you medicines that | |
are put up in quantities for him just as these patent medicines are put up | |
for us." He then produces literature and proves it--at least beyond the | |
refutation of the patient. Physicians would then realize, perhaps, how the | |
use of proprietary medicines stimulates the sale of nostrums. | |
CHAPTER VI. | |
FAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY. | |
Suggestive Therapeutics Chief Stock in Trade--Advice of a Medical | |
College President--Disease Prevention Rather than Cure--Hygienic | |
Living--The Medical Pretender--"Dangerous Diagnosis" Graft--Great | |
Flourish of Trumpets--No "Starving Time" for Him--"Big | |
Operations"--Mutilating the Human Body--Dr. C. W. Oviatt's Views--Dr. | |
Maurice H. Richardson's Incisive Statements--Crying Need for | |
Reform--Surgery that is Useless, Conscienceless and for Purely | |
Commercial Ends--Spirit of Surgical Graft, Especially in the | |
West--Fee-Splitting and Commissions--A Nation of "Dollar-Chasers"--The | |
Public's Share of Responsibility--Senn's Advice--The "Surgical | |
Conscience." | |
I think we have enough before us to show why intelligent people become | |
followers of fads. Seeing so many impositions and frauds, they forget all | |
the patient research and beneficent discoveries of noble men who have | |
devoted their lives to the work of giving humanity better health and | |
longer life. They are ready at once to denounce the whole medical system | |
as a fraud, and become victims of the first "new system" or healing fad | |
that is plausibly presented to them. | |
And here a question arises that is puzzling to many. If these systems are | |
fads and frauds, why do they so rapidly get and retain so large a | |
following among intelligent people? The answer is not hard to find. The | |
quacks of these fad schools get their cures, as every intelligent doctor | |
of the old schools knows, in the same way and upon the same principle that | |
is so important a factor in medical practice, _i. e._, _faith cure_--the | |
psychic effect of the thing done, whether it be the giving of a dose of | |
medicine, a Christian Science pow-wow, the laying on of hands, the | |
"removal of a lesion" by an Osteopath, the "adjustment" of the spine by a | |
Chiropractor, or what not. | |
The principles of mind or faith cure are legitimately used by the honest | |
physician. Suggestive therapeutics is being systematically studied by many | |
who want to use it with honesty and intelligence. They realize fully that | |
abuse of this principle figures largely in the maintenance of the shysters | |
in their own school, and it is the very foundation of all new schools and | |
healing fads. The people must be made to know this, or fads will continue | |
to flourish. | |
The honest physician would be glad to have the people know more than this. | |
He would be glad to have them know enough about symptoms of diseases to | |
have some idea when they really need the help of a physician. For he knows | |
that if the people knew this much all quacks would be speedily put out of | |
business. | |
I wonder how many doctors know that observing people are beginning to | |
suspect that many physicians regulate the number of calls they make on a | |
patient by motives other than the condition of the patient--size of | |
pocketbook and the condition of the roads, for instance. I am aware that | |
such imputation is an insult to any physician worthy of the name, but the | |
sad fact is that there are so many, when we count the quacks of all | |
schools, unworthy of the name. | |
The president of a St. Louis medical college once said to a large | |
graduating class: "Young men, don't go to your work with timidity and | |
doubts of your ability to succeed. Look and act your part as physicians, | |
and when you have doubts concerning your power over disease _remember | |
this_, ninety-five out of every hundred people who send for you would get | |
well just the same if they never took a drop of your medicine." I have | |
never mentioned this to a doctor who did not admit that it is perhaps | |
true. If so, is there not enough in it alone to explain the apparent | |
success of quacks? | |
Again I say there are many noble and brainy physicians, and these have | |
made practically all the great discoveries, invented all the useful | |
appliances, written all the great books for other schools to study, and | |
they should have credit from the people for all this, and not be | |
misrepresented by little pretenders. Their teachings should be applied as | |
they gave them. The best of them to-day would have the people taught that | |
a physician's greatest work may be done in preventing rather than in | |
curing disease. Physicians of the Osler type would like to have the people | |
understand how little potency drugs have to cure many dangerous diseases | |
when they have a firm hold on the system. They would have some of the | |
responsibility removed from the shoulders of the physician by having the | |
people understand how much they may do by hygienic living and common-sense | |
use of natural remedies. | |
But the conscientious doctor too often has to compete with the pretender | |
who wants the people to believe that _he_ is their hope and their | |
salvation, and in him they must trust. He wants them to believe that he | |
has a specific remedy for every disease that will go "right to the spot" | |
and have the desired effect. People who believe this, and believe that | |
without doctoring the patient could never get well, will sometimes try, or | |
see their neighbors try, a doctor of a "new school." When they see about | |
the same proportion of sick recover, they conclude, of course, that the | |
doctor of the "new school" cured them, and is worthy to be forever after | |
intrusted with every case of disease that may arise in their families. | |
This is often brought about by the shyster M.D. overreaching himself by | |
diagnosing some simple affection as something very dangerous, in order to | |
have the greater credit in curing it. But he at times overestimates the | |
confidence of the family in his ability. They are ready to believe that | |
the patient's condition is critical, and in terror, wanting the help of | |
everything that promises help, call in a doctor of some "new school" | |
because neighbors told how he performed wonderful cures in their families. | |
When the patient recovers speedily, as he would have done with no | |
treatment of any kind, and just as the shyster M.D. thought he would, the | |
glory and credit of curing a "bad case" of a "dangerous disease" go to the | |
new system instead of redounding to the glory of Dr. Shyster, as he | |
planned it would. | |
Is it any wonder true physicians sometimes get disgusted with their | |
profession when they see a shyster come into the town where they have | |
worked for years, patiently and conscientiously building up a legitimate | |
practice that begins to promise a decent living, and by such quack methods | |
as diagnosing cases of simple fever, such as might come from acute | |
indigestion or too much play in children, as something dangerous, typhoid | |
or "threatened typhoid," or cases of congestion of the lungs as "lung | |
fever," and by "aborting" or "curing" these terrible diseases in short | |
order and having his patients out in a few days, jumps into fame and | |
(financial) success at a bound? Because the typhoid (real typhoid) | |
patients of the honest doctor lingered for weeks and sometimes died, and | |
because frequently he lost a case of real pneumonia, he made but a poor | |
showing in comparison with the new doctor. "He's just fresh from school, | |
you know, from a post-graduate course in the East." Or, "He's been to the | |
old country and _knows_ something." Just as if any physician, though he | |
may have been out of school for many years, does not, or may not, know of | |
all the curative agencies of demonstrated merit! | |
Would a medical journal fail to keep its readers posted concerning any new | |
discovery in medicine, or helpful appliance that promises real good to the | |
profession? Yet people speak of one doctor's superior knowledge of the | |
best treatment of a particular disease as if that doctor had access to | |
some mysterious source of therapeutic knowledge unknown to other | |
physicians. It is becoming less easy to work the "dangerous diagnosis" | |
graft than formerly, for many people are learning that certain diseases | |
must "run their course," and that there are no medicines that have | |
specific curative effects on them. | |
There is another graft now that is taking the place of the one just | |
mentioned, to some extent at least. In the hands of a fellow with lots of | |
nerve and little conscience it is the greatest of them all. This is the | |
graft of the smart young fellow direct from a post-graduate course in the | |
clinics of some great surgeon. | |
He comes to town with a great flourish of trumpets. Of course, he observes | |
the ethics of the profession! The long accounts of his superior education | |
and unusual experience with operative surgery are only legitimate items of | |
news for the local papers. Certainly! It is only right that such an | |
unusual doctor should have so much attention. | |
There is no "starving time" for him. No weary wait of years for patients | |
to come. At one bound he leaps into fame and fortune by performing "big | |
operations" right and left, when before his coming such cases were only | |
occasionally found, and then taken to surgeons of known ability and | |
experience. The reputable physician respects surgery, and would respect | |
the bright young fellow fresh from contact with the latest approved | |
methods who has nerve to undertake the responsibility of a dangerous | |
operation when such an operation is really indicated. But when it comes to | |
mutilating the human body by cutting away an appendix or an ovary because | |
it is known that to remove them when neither they nor the victim are much | |
diseased is a comparatively safe and very _quick_ way to get a big | |
reputation--that is the limit of quackery. And no wonder such a man is so | |
cordially hated by his brethren. He not always hated because he mutilates | |
humanity so much, as because his spectacular graft in surgery is sure to | |
be taken as proof conclusive that he is superior in all other departments | |
of therapeutics. | |
And it puzzles observing laymen sometimes to know why all the successful | |
(?) operations are considered such desirable items of news, while the | |
cases that are not flattering in their outcome pass unmentioned. | |
I find most complete corroboration of my contention in the president's | |
address, delivered before the Western Surgical and Gynecological | |
Association at St. Louis, in 1907, by Charles W. Oviatt, M.D. This address | |
was published in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, and I | |
herewith reprint it in part: | |
"The ambitious medical student does not usually get far into college | |
work before he aspires to become a surgeon. He sees in the surgical | |
clinics more definite and striking results than are discernible in | |
other branches. Without being able to judge of his own relative | |
fitness or whether he possesses the special aptitude so essential to | |
success, he decides to become a surgeon. There will always be room for | |
the young surgeon who, fitted by nature for the work, takes the time | |
and opportunity to properly prepare himself. There is more good | |
surgery being done to-day than ever before, and there are more good | |
surgeons being educated to do the work. If, however, the surgeon of | |
the future is to hold the high and honorable position our leaders have | |
held in the past, there must be some standard of qualification | |
established that shall protect the people against incompetency and | |
dishonesty in surgeons. | |
"That there is much that passes under the name of surgery being done | |
by ill-trained, incompetent men, will not be denied. What standard, | |
then, should be established, and what requirement should be made | |
before one should be permitted to do surgery? In his address as | |
chairman of the Section on Surgery and Anatomy of the American Medical | |
Association, at the Portland (1905) meeting, Dr. Maurice H. Richardson | |
deals with this subject in such a forceful, clear-cut way, that I take | |
the liberty to quote him at some length: | |
"'The burden of the following remarks is that those only should | |
practice surgery who by education in the laboratory, in the | |
dissecting-room, by the bedside, and at the operating-table, are | |
qualified, first, to make reasonably correct deductions from | |
subjective and objective signs; secondly, to give sound advice for | |
or against operations; thirdly, to perform operations skillfully | |
and quickly, and, fourthly, to conduct wisely the after-treatment. | |
"'The task before me is a serious criticism of what is going on in | |
every community. I do not single out any community or any man. | |
There is in my mind no doubt whatever that surgery is being | |
practiced by those who are incompetent to practice it--by those | |
whose education is imperfect, who lack natural aptitude, whose | |
environment is such that they never can gain that personal | |
experience which alone will really fit them for what surgery means | |
to-day. They are unable to make correct deductions from histories; | |
to predict probable events; to perform operations skillfully, or | |
to manage after-treatment. | |
"'All surgeons are liable to error, not only in diagnosis, but in | |
the performance of operations based on diagnosis. Such errors must | |
always be expected and included in the contingencies of the | |
practice of medicine and surgery. Doubtless many of my hearers can | |
recall cases of their own in which useless--or worse than | |
useless--operations have been performed. If, however, serious | |
operations are in the hands of men of large experience, such | |
errors will be reduced to a minimum. | |
"'Many physicians send patients for diagnosis and opinion as to | |
the advisability of operation without telling the consultant that | |
they themselves are to perform the operation. The diagnosis is | |
made and the operation perhaps recommended, when it appears that | |
the operation is to be in incompetent hands. His advice should be | |
conditional that it be carried out only by the competent. Many | |
operations, like the removal of the vermiform appendix in the | |
period of health, the removal of fibroids which are not seriously | |
offending, the removal of gall-stones that are not causing | |
symptoms, are operations of choice rather than of necessity; they | |
are operations which should never be advised unless they are to be | |
performed by men of the greatest skill. Furthermore, many | |
emergency operations, such as the removal of an inflamed appendix | |
and other operations for lesions which are not necessarily | |
fatal--should be forbidden and the patient left to the chances of | |
spontaneous recovery, if the operation proposed is to be performed | |
by an incompetent. | |
"'And is not the surgeon, appreciating his own unfitness in spite | |
of years of devotion, in the position to condemn those who lightly | |
take up such burdens without preparation and too often without | |
conscience? | |
"'In view of these facts, who should perform surgery? How shall | |
the surgeon be best fitted for these grave duties? As a matter of | |
right and wrong, who shall, in the opinion of the medical | |
profession, advise and perform these responsible acts and who | |
shall not? Surgical operations should be performed only by those | |
who are educated for that special purpose. | |
"'I have no hesitation in saying that the proper fitting of a man | |
for surgical practice requires a much longer experience as a | |
student and assistant than the most exacting schools demand. A man | |
should serve four, five or six years as assistant to an active | |
surgeon. During this period of preparation, as it were, as much | |
time as possible should be given to observing the work of the | |
masters of surgery throughout the world.' | |
"While Dr. Richardson's ideal may seem almost utopian, there being so | |
wide a difference between the standard he would erect and the one | |
generally established, we must all agree that however impossible of | |
attainment under present conditions, such an ideal is none too high | |
and its future realization not too much to hope for. | |
"While there is being done enough poor surgery that is honest and well | |
intended, there is much being done that is useless, conscienceless, | |
and done for purely commercial ends. This is truly a disagreeable and | |
painful topic and one that I would gladly pass by, did I not feel that | |
its importance demands some word of condemnation coming through such | |
representative surgical organizations as this. | |
"The spirit of graft that has pervaded our ranks, especially here in | |
the West, is doing much to lower the standard and undermine the morals | |
and ethics of the profession. When fee-splitting and the paying of | |
commissions for surgical work began to be heard of something like a | |
decade ago, it seemed so palpably dishonest and wrong that it was | |
believed that it would soon die out, or be at least confined to the | |
few in whom the inherited commercial instinct was so strong that they | |
could not get away from it. But it did not die; on the other hand, it | |
has grown and flourished. | |
"In looking for an explanation for the existence of this evil, I think | |
several factors must be taken into account, among them being certain | |
changes in our social and economic conditions. This is an age of | |
commercialism. We are known to the world as a nation of "dollar | |
chasers," where nearly everything that should contribute to right | |
living is sacrificed to the Moloch of money. The mad rush for wealth | |
which has characterized the business world, has in a way induced some | |
medical men, whether rightfully or wrongfully, to adopt the same | |
measures in self-protection. The patient or his friends too often | |
insist on measuring the value of our services with a commercial | |
yard-stick, the fee to be paid being the chief consideration. In this | |
way the public must come in for its share of responsibility for | |
existing conditions. So long as there are people who care so little | |
who operates on them, just so long will there be cheap surgeons, cheap | |
in every respect, to supply the demand. The demand for better | |
physicians and surgeons must come in part from those who employ their | |
services. | |
"Another source of the graft evil is the existence of low-grade, | |
irregular and stock-company medical schools. In many of these schools | |
the entrance requirements are not in evidence outside of their | |
catalogues. With no standard of character or ethics, these schools | |
turn out men who have gotten the little learning they possess in the | |
very atmosphere of graft. The existence of these schools seems less | |
excusable when we consider that our leading medical colleges rank with | |
the best in the world and are ample for the needs of all who should | |
enter the profession. Their constant aim is to still further elevate | |
the standard and to admit as students only those who give unmistakable | |
evidence of being morally and intellectually fit to become members of | |
the profession. | |
"Enough men of character, however, are entering the field through | |
these better schools to ensure the upholding of those lofty ideals | |
that have characterized the profession in the past and which are | |
essential to our continued progress. I think, therefore, that we may | |
take a hopeful view of the future. The demand for better prepared | |
physicians will eventually close many avenues that are now open to | |
students, greatly to the benefit of all. With the curtailing of the | |
number of students and a less fierce competition which this will | |
bring, there will be less temptation, less necessity, if you will, on | |
the part of general practitioners to ask for a division of fees. He | |
will come to see that honest dealing on his part with the patient | |
requiring special skill will in the long run be the best policy. He | |
will make a just, open charge for the services he has rendered and not | |
attempt to collect a surreptitious fee through a dishonest surgeon for | |
services he has not rendered and could not render. Then, too, there | |
will be less inducement and less opportunity for incompetent and | |
conscienceless men to disgrace the art of surgery. | |
"The public mind is becoming especially active just at this time in | |
combating graft in all forms, and is ready to aid in its destruction. | |
The intelligent portion of the laity is becoming alive to the patent | |
medicine evil. It is only a question of time when the people will | |
demand that the secular papers which go into our homes shall not | |
contain the vile, disgusting and suggestive quack advertisements that | |
are found to-day. A campaign of reform is being instituted against | |
dishonest politicians, financiers, railroad and insurance magnates, | |
showing that their methods will be no longer tolerated. The moral | |
standards set for professional men and men in public life are going to | |
be higher in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion | |
turned on the medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to | |
exist. Hand in hand with this reform let us hope that there will come | |
to be established a legal and moral standard of qualification for | |
those who assume to do surgery. | |
"I feel sure that it is the wish of every member of this association | |
to do everything possible to hasten the coming of this day and to aid | |
in the uplifting of the art of surgery. Our individual effort in this | |
direction must lie largely through the influence we exert over those | |
who seek our advice before beginning the study of medicine, and over | |
those who, having entered the work, are to follow in our immediate | |
footsteps. To the young man who seeks our counsel as to the | |
advisability of commencing the study of medicine, it is our duty to | |
make a plain statement of what would be expected of him, of the cost | |
in time and money, and an estimate of what he might reasonably expect | |
as a reward for a life devoted to ceaseless study, toil and | |
responsibility. If, from our knowledge of the character, attainments | |
and qualifications of the young man we feel that at best he could make | |
but a modicum of success in the work, we should endeavor to divert his | |
ambition into some other channel. | |
"We should advise the 'expectant surgeon' in his preparation to follow | |
as nearly as possible the line of study suggested by Richardson. Then | |
I would add the advice of Senn, viz: 'To do general practice for | |
several years, return to laboratory work and surgical anatomy, attend | |
the clinics of different operators, and never cease to be a physician. | |
If this advice is followed there will be less unnecessary operating | |
done in the future than has been the case in the past.' The young man | |
who enters special work without having had experience as a general | |
practitioner, is seriously handicapped. In this age, when we have so | |
frequently to deal with the so-called border-line cases, it is | |
especially well never to cease being a physician. | |
"We would next have the young man assure himself that he is the | |
possessor of a well-developed, healthy, working 'surgical conscience.' | |
No matter how well qualified he may be, his enthusiasm in the earlier | |
years of his work will lead him to do operations that he would refrain | |
from in later life. This will be especially true of malignant disease. | |
He knows that early and thorough radical measures alone hold out hope, | |
and only by repeated unsuccessful efforts will he learn to temper his | |
ambition by the judgment that comes of experience. Pirogoff, the noted | |
surgeon, suffered from a malignant growth. Billroth refused to operate | |
or advise operation. In writing to another surgeon friend he said: 'I | |
am not the bold operator whom you knew years ago in Zurich. Before | |
deciding on the necessity of an operation, I always propose to myself | |
this question: Would you permit such an operation as you intend | |
performing on your patient to be done on yourself? Years and | |
experience bring in their train a certain degree of hesitancy.' This, | |
coming from one who in his day was the most brilliant operator in the | |
world, should be remembered by every surgeon, young and old." | |
Oh, surgery! Modern aseptic surgery! In the hands of the skilled, | |
conscientious surgeon how great are thy powers for good to suffering | |
humanity! In the hands of shysters "what crimes are committed in thy | |
name!" | |
With his own school full of shysters and incompetents, and grafters of | |
"new schools" and "systems" to compete with on every hand, the | |
conscientious physician seems to be "between the devil and the deep sea!" | |
With quacks to the right of him, quacks to the left of him, quacks in | |
front of him, all volleying and thundering with their literature to prove | |
that the old schools, and all schools other than theirs, are frauds, | |
impostors and poisoners, about all that is left for the layman to do when | |
sick is to take to the woods. | |
PART TWO | |
OSTEOPATHY | |
CHAPTER VII. | |
SOME DEFINITIONS AND HISTORIES. | |
Romantic Story of Osteopathy's Origin--An Asthma Cure--Headache Cured | |
by Plowlines--Log Rolling to Relieve Dysentery--Osteopathy is Drugless | |
Healing--Osteopathy is Manual Treatment--Liberty of Blood, Nerves and | |
Arteries--Perfect Skeletal Alignment and Tonic, Ligamentous, Muscular | |
and Facial Relaxation--Andrew T. Still in 1874--Kirksville, Mo., as a | |
Mecca--American School of Osteopathy--The Promised Golden Stream of | |
Prosperity--Shams and Pretenses--The "Mossbacks"--"Who's Who in | |
Osteopathy." | |
The story of the origin of Osteopathy is romantic enough to appeal to the | |
fancy of impressionists. It is almost as romantic as the finding of the | |
mysterious stones by the immortal Joe Smith. In this story is embodied the | |
life history of an old-time doctor and pioneer hero in his restless | |
migrations about the frontiers of Kansas and Missouri. His thrilling | |
experiences in the days of border wars and through the Civil War are | |
narrated, and how the germ of the idea of the true cause and cure of | |
disease was planted in his mind by the remark of a comrade as the two lay | |
concealed in a thicket for days to escape border ruffians. Then, later, | |
how the almost simultaneous death of two or three beloved children, whom | |
all his medical learning and that of other doctors he had summoned had | |
been powerless to save, had caused him to renounce forever the belief that | |
drugs could cure disease. He believed Nature had a true system, and for | |
this he began a patient search. He wandered here and there, almost in the | |
condition of the religious reformers of old, who "wandered up and down | |
clad in sheep-skins and goat-hides, of whom the world was not worthy." In | |
the name of suffering humanity he desecrated the grave of poor Lo, that he | |
might read from his red bones some clue to the secret. | |
One Osteopathic journal claims to tell authentically how Still was led to | |
the discovery of the "great truth." It states that by accidentally curing | |
a case of asthma by "fooling with the bones of the chest," he was led to | |
the belief that bones out of normal position cause disease. | |
Still himself tells a rather different story in a popular magazine posing | |
of late years as a public educator in matters of therapeutics. In this | |
magazine Still tells how he discovered the principles of Osteopathy by | |
curing a terrible headache resting the back of his neck across a swing | |
made of his father's plowlines, and next by writhing on his back across a | |
log to relieve the pain of dysentery. Accidentally the "lesion" was | |
corrected, or the proper center "inhibited," and his headache and flux | |
immediately cured. | |
You can take your choice of these various versions of the wonderful | |
discovery. | |
Ever since Osteopathy began to attract attention, and people began to | |
inquire "What is it?" its leading promoters have vied with each other in | |
trying to construct a good definition for their "great new science." | |
Here are some of the definitions: | |
"Osteopathy is the science of drugless healing." For a genuine "lesion" | |
Osteopath that would not do at all. It is too broad and gives too much | |
scope to the physicians who would do more than "pull bones." | |
"Osteopathy is practical anatomy and physiology skillfully and | |
scientifically applied as _manual_ treatment of disease." That definition | |
suits better, because of the "manual treatment." If you are a true | |
Osteopath you must do it _all_ with your hands. It will not do to use any | |
mechanical appliances, for if you do you cannot keep up the impression | |
that you are "handling the body with the skilled touch of a master who | |
knows every part of his machine." | |
"The human body is a machine run by the unseen force called life, and that | |
it may run harmoniously it is necessary that there be liberty of blood, | |
nerves, and arteries from the generating point to destination." This | |
definition may be impressive to the popular mind, but, upon analysis, we | |
wonder if any other string of big words might not have had the same | |
effect. "Liberty of blood" is a proposition even a stupid medical man must | |
admit. Of course, there must be free circulation of blood, and massage, or | |
hot and cold applications, or exercise, or anything that will stimulate | |
circulation, is rational. But when "liberty of blood" is mentioned, what | |
is meant by "liberty of arteries"? | |
"Osteopathy seeks to obtain perfect skeletal alignment and tonic | |
ligamentous, muscular and facial relaxation." Some Osteopaths and other | |
therapeutic reformers (?) have contended that medical men purposely used | |
"big words" and Latin names to confound the laity. What must we think of | |
the one just given as a popular definition? | |
A good many Osteopaths are becoming disgusted with the big words, | |
technical terms and "high-sounding nothings" used by so many Osteopathic | |
writers. The limit of this was never reached, however, until an A.B., | |
Ph.D., D.O. wrote an article to elucidate Osteopathy for the general | |
public in an American encyclopedia. It takes scholarly wisdom to simplify | |
great truths and bring them to the comprehension of ordinary minds. If | |
writers for the medical profession want a lesson in the art of simplifying | |
and popularizing therapeutic science, they should study this article on | |
Osteopathy in the encyclopedia. | |
A brief history of Osteopathy is perhaps in place. The following summary | |
is taken from leading Osteopathic journals. As to the personality and | |
motives of its founders I know but little; of the motives of its leading | |
promoters a candid public must be the judge. But judgment should be | |
withheld until all the truth is known. | |
The principles of Osteopathy were discovered by Dr. Andrew T. Still in | |
1874. He was at that time a physician of the old school practicing in | |
Kansas. His father, brothers and uncles were all medical practitioners. He | |
was at one time scout surgeon under General Fremont. During the Civil War | |
he was surgeon in the Union army in a volunteer corps. It was during the | |
war that he began to lose faith in drugs, and to search for something | |
natural in combating disease. | |
Then began a long struggle with poverty and abuse. He was obstructed by | |
his profession and ridiculed by his friends. Fifteen years after the | |
discovery of Osteopathy found Dr. Still located in the little town of | |
Kirksville, Mo., where he had gradually attracted a following who had | |
implicit faith in his power to heal by what to them seemed mysterious | |
movements. | |
His fame spread beyond the town, and chronic sufferers began to turn | |
toward Kirksville as a Mecca of healing. Others began to desire Still's | |
healing powers. In 1892 the American School of Osteopathy was founded, | |
which from a small beginning has grown until the present buildings and | |
equipment cost more than $100,000. Hundreds of students are graduated | |
yearly from this school, and large, well-equipped schools have been | |
founded in Des Moines, Philadelphia, Boston and California, with a number | |
of schools of greater or less magnitude scattered in other parts of the | |
country. More than four thousand Osteopaths were in the field in 1907, and | |
this number is being augmented every year by a larger number of physicians | |
than are graduated from Homeopathic colleges, according to Osteopathic | |
reports. | |
About thirty-five States have given Osteopathy more or less favorable | |
legal recognition. | |
The discussion of the subject of Osteopathy is of very grave importance. | |
Important to practitioners of the old schools of medicine for reasons I | |
shall give further on, and of vital importance to the thousands of men and | |
women who have chosen Osteopathy as their life work. It is even of greater | |
importance in another sense to the people who are called upon to decide | |
which system is right, and which school they ought to rely upon when their | |
lives are at stake. | |
I shall try to speak advisedly and conservatively, as I wish to do no one | |
injustice. I should be sorry indeed to speak a word that might hinder the | |
cause of truth and progress. I started out to tell of all that prevents | |
the sway of truth and honesty in therapeutics. I should come far short of | |
telling all if I omitted the inconsistencies of this "new science" of | |
healing that dares to assume the responsibility for human life, and makes | |
bold to charge that time-tried systems, with their tens of thousands of | |
practitioners, are wrong, and that the right remedy, or the best remedy | |
for disease has been unknown through all these years until the coming of | |
Osteopathy. And further dares to make the still more serious charge that | |
since the truth has been brought to light, the majority of medical men are | |
so blinded by prejudice or ignorance that they _will_ not see. | |
This is not the first time I have spoken about inconsistencies in the | |
practice of Osteopathy. I saw so much of it in a leading Osteopathic | |
college that when I had finished I could not conscientiously proclaim | |
myself as an exponent of a "complete and well-rounded system of healing, | |
adequate for every emergency," as Osteopathy is heralded to be by the | |
journals published for "Osteopathic physicians" to scatter broadcast among | |
the people. I practiced Osteopathy for three years, but only as an | |
Osteopathic specialist. I never during that time accepted responsibility | |
for human life when I did not feel sure that I could do as much for the | |
case as any other might do with other means or some other system. | |
Because I practiced as a specialist and would not claim that Osteopathy | |
would cure everything that any other means might cure, I have never been | |
called a good disciple of the new science by my brethren. I would not | |
practice as a grafter, find bones dislocated and "subluxated," and tell | |
people that they must take two or three months' treatment at twenty-five | |
dollars per month, to have one or two "subluxations" corrected. In | |
consequence I was never overwhelmed by the golden stream of prosperity the | |
literature that made me a convert had assured me would be forthcoming to | |
all "Osteopathic physicians" of even ordinary ability. | |
As I said, this is not the first time I have spoken of the inconsistencies | |
of Osteopathy. While yet in active practice I became so disgusted with | |
some of the shams and pretences that I wrote a long letter to the editor | |
of an Osteopathic journal published for the good of the profession. This | |
editor, a bright and capable man, wrote me a nice letter in reply, in | |
which he agreed with me about quackery and incompetency in our profession. | |
He did not publish the letter I wrote, or express his honest sentiments, | |
as I had hoped he might. If what I wrote to that editor was the truth, as | |
he acknowledged in private, it is time the public knew something of it. I | |
believe, also, that many of the large number of Osteopaths who have been | |
discouraged or disgusted, and quit the practice, will approve what I am | |
writing. There is another class of Osteopathic practitioners who, I | |
believe, will welcome the truth I have to tell. This consists of the large | |
number of men and women who are practicing Osteopathy as standing for all | |
that makes up rational physio-therapy. | |
Speaking of those who have quit the practice of Osteopathy, I will say | |
that they are known by the Osteopathic faculties to be a large and growing | |
number. Yet Osteopathic literature sent to prospective students tells of | |
the small per cent. of those who take the course who fail. It may not be | |
known how many fail, but it is known that many have quit. | |
A journey half across one of our Western States disclosed one Osteopath in | |
the meat business, one in the real estate business, one clerking in a | |
store, and two, a blind man and his wife, fairly prosperous Osteopathic | |
physicians. This was along one short line of railroad, and there is no | |
reason why it may not be taken as a sample of the percentage of those who | |
have quit in the entire country. | |
I heard three years ago from a bright young man who graduated with honors, | |
started out with luxurious office rooms in a flourishing city, and was | |
pointed to as an example of the prosperity that comes to the Osteopath | |
from the very start. When I heard from him last he was advance | |
bill-poster for a cheap show. Another bright classmate was carrying a | |
chain for surveyors in California. | |
I received an Osteopathic journal recently containing a list of names, | |
about eight hundred of them, of "mossbacks," as we were politely called. I | |
say "we," for my name was on the list. The journal said these were the | |
names of Osteopaths whose addresses were lost and no communication could | |
be had with them. They were wanted badly, it seemed. Just for what, aside | |
from the annual fee to the American Osteopathic Association, was not | |
clear. | |
I do know what the silence of a good many of them meant. They have quit, | |
and do not care to read the abuse that some of the Osteopathic journals | |
are continually heaping upon those who do not keep their names on the | |
"Who's Who in Osteopathy" list. | |
There is a large percentage of failures in other professions, and it is | |
not strange that there should be some in Osteopathy. But when Osteopathic | |
journals dwell upon the large chances of success and prosperity for those | |
who choose Osteopathy as a profession, those who might become students | |
should know the other side. | |
CHAPTER VIII. | |
THE OSTEOPATHIC PROPAGANDA. | |
Wonderful Growth Claimed to Prove Merit--Osteopathy is Rational | |
Physio-Therapy--Growth is in Exact Proportion to Advertising | |
Received--Booklets and Journals for Gratuitous | |
Distribution--Osteopathy Languishes or Flourishes by Patent Medicine | |
Devices--Circular Letter from Secretary of American Osteopathic | |
Association--Boosts by Governors and Senators--The Especial Protege of | |
Authors--Mark Twain--Opie Reed--Emerson Hough--Sam Jones--The | |
Orificial Surgeon--The M.D. Seeking Job as "Professor"--The Lure of | |
"Honored Doctor" with "Big Income"--No Competition. | |
But what about Osteopathy? Why has it had such a wonderful growth in | |
popularity? Why have nearly four thousand men and women, most of them | |
intelligent and some of them educated, espoused it as a profession to | |
follow as a life work? These are questions I shall now try to answer. | |
Osteopathic promoters and enthusiasts claim that the wonderful growth and | |
popularity of Osteopathy prove beyond question its merits as a healing | |
system. I have already dealt at length with reasons why intelligent people | |
are so ready to fall victims to new systems of healing. The "perfect | |
adjustment," "perfect functioning" theory of Osteopathy is especially | |
attractive to people made ripe for some "drugless healing" system by | |
causes already mentioned. When Osteopathy is practiced as a combination of | |
all manipulations and other natural aids to the inherent recuperative | |
powers of the body, it will appeal to reason in such a way and bring such | |
good results as to make and keep friends. | |
I am fully persuaded, and I believe the facts when presented will | |
establish it, that it is the physio-therapy in Osteopathy that wins and | |
holds the favor of intelligent people. But Osteopathy in its own name, | |
taught as "a well-rounded system of healing adequate for every emergency," | |
has grown and spread largely as a "patent medicine" flourishes, _i. e._, | |
in exact proportion to the advertising it has received. I would not | |
presume to make this statement as merely my opinion. The question at issue | |
is too important to be treated as a matter of opinion. I will present | |
facts, and let my readers settle the point in their own minds. | |
Every week I get booklets or "sample copies" of journals heralding the | |
wonderful curative powers of Osteopathy. These are published not as | |
journals for professional reading, but to be sold to the practitioners by | |
the hundreds or thousands, to be given to their patients for distribution | |
by these patients to their friends. The publishers of these "boosters" | |
say, and present testimonials to prove it, that Osteopaths find their | |
practice languishes or flourishes just in proportion to the numbers of | |
these journals and booklets they keep circulating in their communities. | |
Here is a sample testimonial I received some time since on a postal card: | |
"Gentlemen: Since using your journals more patients have come to me | |
than I could treat, many of them coming from neighboring towns. Quite | |
a number have had to go home without being treated, leaving their | |
names so that they could be notified later, as I can get to them. Your | |
booklets bring them O. K." | |
The boast is often made that Osteopathy is growing in spite of bitter | |
opposition and persecution, and is doing it on its merits--doing it | |
because "Truth is mighty and will prevail." At one time I honestly | |
believed this to be true, but I have been convinced by highest Osteopathic | |
authority that it is not true. As some of that proof here is an extract | |
from a circular letter from the secretary of the American Osteopathic | |
Association: | |
"Now, Doctor, we feel that you have the success of Osteopathy at | |
heart, and if you realize the activity and complete organization of | |
the American Medical Association and their efforts to curb our | |
limitations, and do not become a member of this Association, which | |
stands opposed to the efforts of the big monopoly, we must believe | |
that you are not familiar with the earnestness of the A. O. A. and its | |
efforts. We must work in harmonious accord and with an organized | |
purpose. _When we rest on our oars the death knell begins to sound._ | |
Can you not see that unless you co-operate with your | |
fellow-practitioners in this national effort you are _sounding your | |
own limitations_?" | |
This from the _secretary_ of the American Osteopathic Association, when we | |
have boasted of superior equipment for intelligent physicians. | |
Incidentally we pause to make excuse for the expressions: "Curbing our | |
limitations" and "sounding your own limitations." | |
But does the idea that when we quit working as an organized body "_our | |
death knell begins to sound_," indicate that Osteopathic leaders are | |
content to trust the future of Osteopathy to its merits? | |
If Osteopathic promoters do not feel that the life of their science | |
depends on boosting, what did the secretary of the A.O.A. mean when he | |
said, "Upon the success of these efforts depends the weal or woe of | |
Osteopathy as an independent system"? If truth always grows under | |
persecution, how can the American Medical Association kill Osteopathy when | |
it is so well known by the people? | |
Nearly four thousand Osteopaths are scattered in thirty-six States where | |
they have some legal recognition, and they are treating thousands of | |
invalids every day. If they are performing the wonderful cures Osteopathic | |
journals tell of, why are we told that the welfare of the system depends | |
upon the noise that is made and the boosting that is done? | |
Has it required advertising to keep people using anesthetics since it was | |
demonstrated that they would prevent pain? | |
Has it required boosting to keep the people resorting to surgery since the | |
benefits of modern operations have been proved? | |
Does it look as if Osteopathy has been standing or advancing on its | |
merits? Does it not seem that Osteopathy, as a complete system, is mostly | |
a _name_, and "lives, moves, and has its being" in boosting? It seems to | |
have been about the best boosted fad ever fancied by a foolish people. | |
Governors and senators have boosted for it. Osteopathic journals have | |
published again and again the nice things a number of governors said when | |
they signed the bills investing Osteopathy with the dignity of State | |
authority. | |
A certain United States senator from Ohio has won more notoriety as a | |
champion of Osteopathy than he has lasting fame as a statesman. | |
Osteopathy has been the especial protege of authors. Mark Twain once went | |
up to Albany and routed an army of medical lobbyists who were there to | |
resist the passage of a bill favorable to Osteopathy. For this heroic deed | |
Mark is better known to Osteopaths to-day than even for his renowned | |
history of Huckleberry Finn. He is in danger of losing his reputation as a | |
champion of the "under dog in the fight." Lately he has gone on the | |
warpath again. This time to annihilate poor Mother Eddy and her fond | |
delusion. | |
Opie Reed is a delightful writer while he sticks to the portrayal of droll | |
Southern character. Ella Wheeler Wilcox is admirable for the beauty and | |
boldness with which she portrays the passions and emotions of humanity. | |
But they are both better known to Osteopaths for the bouquets they have | |
tossed at Osteopathy than for their profound human philosophy that used to | |
be promulgated by the _Chicago American_. | |
Emerson Hough gave a little free advertising in his "Heart's Desire." | |
There may have been "method in his madness," for that Osteopathic horse | |
doctoring scene no doubt sold many a book for the author. | |
Sam Jones also helped along with some of his striking originality. Sam | |
said, "There is as much difference between Osteopathy and massage as | |
between playing a piano and currying a horse." The idea of comparing the | |
Osteopath's manipulations of the human body to the skilled touch of the | |
pianist upon his instrument was especially pleasing to Osteopaths. | |
However, Sam displayed about the same comprehension of his subject that | |
preachers usually exhibit who try to say nice things about the doctors | |
when they get their doctoring gratis or at reduced rates. | |
These champions of Osteopathy no doubt mean well. They can be excused on | |
the ground that they got out of place to aid in the cause of "struggling | |
truth." But what shall we say of medical men, some of them of reputation | |
and great influence, who uphold and champion new systems under such | |
conditions that it is questionable whether they do it from principle or | |
policy? | |
Osteopathic journals have made much of an article written by a famous | |
"orificial surgeon." The article appears on the first page of a leading | |
Osteopath journal, and is headed, "An Expert Opinion on Osteopathy." Among | |
the many good things he says of the "new science" is this: "The full | |
benefit of a single sitting can be secured in from three to ten minutes | |
instead of an hour or more, as required by massage." I shall discuss the | |
time of an average Osteopathic treatment further on, but I should like to | |
see how long this brother would hold his practice if he were an Osteopath | |
and treated from three to ten minutes. | |
He also says that "Osteopathy is so beneficial to cases of insanity that | |
it seems quite probable that this large class of terrible sufferers may be | |
almost emancipated from their hell." I shall also say more further on of | |
what I know of Osteopathy's record as an insanity cure. There is this | |
significant thing in connection with this noted specialist's boost for | |
Osteopathy. The journal printing this article comments on it in another | |
number; tells what a great man the specialist is, and incidentally lets | |
Osteopaths know that if any of them want to add a knowledge of "orificial | |
surgery" to their "complete science," this doctor is the man from whom to | |
get it, as he is the "great and only" in his specialty, and is big and | |
broad enough to appreciate Osteopathy. | |
The most despicable booster of any new system of therapeutics is the | |
physician who becomes its champion to get a job as "professor" in one of | |
its colleges. Of course it is a strong temptation to a medical man who has | |
never made much of a reputation in his own profession. | |
You may ask, "Have there been many such medical men?" Consult the faculty | |
rolls of the colleges of these new sciences, and you will be surprised, no | |
doubt, to find how many put M.D. after their names. Why are they there? | |
Some of these were honest converts to the system, perhaps. Some wanted | |
the honor of being "Professor Doctor," maybe, and some may have been lured | |
by the same bait that attracts so many students into Osteopathic colleges. | |
That is, the positive assurance of "plenty of easy money" in it. | |
One who has studied the real situation in an effort to learn why | |
Osteopathy has grown so fast as a profession, can hardly miss the | |
conclusion that advertising keeps the grist of students pouring into | |
Osteopathic mills. There is scarcely a corner of the United States that | |
their seductive literature does not reach. Practitioners in the field are | |
continually reminded by the schools from which they graduated that their | |
alma mater looks largely to their solicitations to keep up the supply of | |
recruits. | |
Their advertising, the tales of wonderful cures and big money made, appeal | |
to all classes. It seems that none are too scholarly and none too ignorant | |
to become infatuated with the idea of becoming an "honored doctor" with a | |
"big income." College professors and preachers have been lured from | |
comfortable positions to become Osteopaths. Shrewd traveling men, seduced | |
by the picture of a permanent home, have left the road to become | |
Osteopathic physicians and be "rich and honored." | |
Other classes come also. To me, when a student of Osteopathy, it was | |
pathetic and almost tragic to observe the crowds of men and women who had | |
been seduced from spheres of drudging usefulness, such as clerking, | |
teaching, barbering, etc., to become money-making doctors. In their old | |
callings they had lost all hope of gratifying ambition for fame and | |
fortune, but were making an honest living. The rosy pictures of honor, | |
fame and twenty dollars per day, that the numerous Osteopathic circulars | |
and journals painted, were not to be withstood. | |
These circulars told them that the fields into which they might go and | |
reap that $20 per day were unlimited. They said: "There are dozens of | |
ministers ready to occupy each vacant pulpit, and as many applicants for | |
each vacancy in the schools. Each hamlet has four or five doctors, where | |
it can support but one. The legal profession is filled to the starving | |
point. Young licentiates in the older professions all have to pass through | |
a starving time. Not so in Osteopathy. There is no competition." The | |
picture was a rosy dream of triumphant success! When they had mastered the | |
great science and become "Doctors of Osteopathy," the world was waiting | |
with open arms and pocketbooks to receive them. | |
CHAPTER IX. | |
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY. | |
Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always Cured--Indefinite | |
Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of Undeveloped Scientific | |
Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D. Course--The Standpatter and the | |
Drifter--The "Lesionist"--"Bone Setting"--"Inhibiting a | |
Center"--Chiropractics--"Finest Anatomists in the World"--How to Cure | |
Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric Troubles--A Successful | |
Osteopath--Timid Old Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy. | |
How desperately those students worked. Many of them were men and women | |
with gray heads, who had found themselves stranded at a time of life when | |
they should have been able to retire on a competency. They had staked | |
their little all on this last venture, and what was before them if they | |
should fail heaven only knew. How eagerly they looked forward to the time | |
when they should have struggled through the lessons in anatomy, chemistry, | |
physiology, symptomatology and all the rest, and should be ready to | |
receive the wonderful principles of Osteopathy they were to apply in | |
performing the miraculous cures that were to make them wealthy and famous. | |
Need I tell the physician who was a conscientious student of anatomy in | |
his school days, that there was disappointment when the time came to enter | |
the class in "theory and practice" of Osteopathy? | |
There had been vague ideas of a systematized, infallible, touch-the-button | |
system that _always_ cured. Instead, we were instructed in a lot of | |
indefinite movements and manipulations that somehow left us speculating as | |
to just how much of it all was done for effect. | |
We had heard so often that Osteopathy was a complete satisfying science | |
_that did things specifically_! Now it began to dawn upon us that there | |
was indeed a "wealth of undeveloped scientific facts" in Osteopathy, as | |
those glittering circulars had said when they thought to attract young men | |
ambitious for original research. They had said, "Much yet remains to be | |
discovered." Some of us wondered if the "undeveloped" and "undiscovered" | |
scientific facts were not the main constituents of the "science." | |
The students expected something exact and tangible, and how eagerly they | |
grasped at anything in the way of bringing quick results in curing the | |
sick. | |
If Osteopathy is so complete, why did so many students, after they had | |
received everything the learned (?) professors had to impart, procure | |
Juettner's "Modern Physio-Therapy" and Ling's "Manual Therapy" and Rosse's | |
"Cures Without Drugs" and Kellogg's work on "Hydrotherapy"? They felt that | |
they needed all they could get. | |
It was customary for the students to begin "treating" after they had been | |
in school a few months, and medical men will hardly be surprised to know | |
that they worked with more faith in their healing powers and performed | |
more wonderful (?) cures in their freshman year than they ever did | |
afterward. | |
I have in mind a student, one of the brightest I ever met, who read a | |
cheap book on Osteopathic practice, went into a community where he was | |
unknown, and practiced as an Osteopathic physician. In a few months he had | |
made enough money to pay his way through an Osteopathic college, which he | |
entered professing to believe that Osteopathy would cure all the ills | |
flesh is heir to, but which he left two years later to take a medical | |
course. He secured his D.O. degree, but I notice that it is his M.D. | |
degree he flourishes with pride. | |
Can students be blamed for getting a little weak in faith when men who | |
told them that the great principles of Osteopathy were sufficient to cure | |
_everything_, have been known to backslide so far as to go and take | |
medical courses themselves? | |
How do you suppose it affects students of an Osteopathic college to read | |
in a representative journal that the secretary of their school, and the | |
greatest of all its boosters, calls medical men into his own family when | |
there is sickness in it? | |
There are many men and women practicing to-day who try to be honest and | |
conscientious, and by using all the good in Osteopathy, massage, Swedish | |
movements, hydrotherapy, and all the rest of the adjuncts of | |
physio-therapy, do a great deal of good. The practitioner who does use | |
these agencies, however, is denounced by the stand-patters as a "drifter." | |
They say he is not a true Osteopath, but a mongrel who is belittling the | |
great science. That circular letter from the secretary of the American | |
Osteopathic Association said that one of the greatest needs of | |
organization was to preserve Osteopathy in its primal purity as it came | |
from its founder, A. T. Still. | |
If our medical brethren and the laity could read some of the acrimonious | |
discussions on the question of using adjuncts, they would certainly be | |
impressed with the exactness (?) of Osteopathic science. | |
There is one idea of Osteopathy that even the popular mind has grasped, | |
and that is that it is essentially finding "lesions" and correcting them. | |
Yet the question has been very prominent and pertinent among Osteopaths: | |
"Are you a lesion Osteopath?" Think of it, gentlemen, asking an Osteopath | |
if he is a "lesionist"! Yet there are plenty of Osteopaths who are stupid | |
enough (or honest enough) not to be able to find bones "subluxed" every | |
time they look at a patient. Practitioners who really want to do their | |
patrons good will use adjuncts even if they are denounced by the | |
stand-patters. | |
I believe every conscientious Osteopath must sometimes feel that it is | |
safer to use rational remedies than to rely on "bone setting," or | |
"inhibiting a center," but for the grafter it is not so spectacular and | |
involves more hard work. | |
The stand-patters of the American Osteopathic Association have not | |
eliminated all trouble when they get Osteopaths to stick to the "bone | |
setting, inhibiting" idea. The chiropractic man threatens to steal their | |
thunder here. The Chiropractor has found that when it comes to using | |
mysterious maneuvers and manipulations as bases for mind cure, one thing | |
is about as good as another, except that the more mysterious a thing | |
looks the better it works. So the Chiropractor simply gives his healing | |
"thrusts" or his wonderful "adjustments," touches the buttons along the | |
spine as it were, when--presto! disease has flown before his healing touch | |
and blessed health has come to reign instead! | |
The Osteopath denounces the Chiropractor as a brazen fraud who has stolen | |
all that is good in Chiropractics (if there _is_ anything good) from | |
Osteopathy. But Chiropractics follows so closely what the "old liner" | |
calls the true theory of Osteopathy that, between him and the drifter who | |
gives an hour of crude massage, or uses the forbidden accessories, the | |
true Osteopath has a hard time maintaining the dignity (?) of Osteopathy | |
and keeping its practitioners from drifting. | |
Some of the most ardent supporters of true Osteopathy I have ever known | |
have drifted entirely away from it. After practicing two or three years, | |
abusing medicine and medical men all the time, and proclaiming to the | |
people continually that they had in Osteopathy all that a sick world could | |
ever need, it is suddenly learned that the "Osteopath is gone." He has | |
"silently folded his tent and stolen away," and where has he gone? He has | |
gone to a medical college to study that same medicine he has so | |
industriously abused while he was gathering in the shekels as an | |
Osteopath. Going to learn and practice the science he has so persistently | |
denounced as a fraud and a curse to humanity. | |
The intelligent, conscientious Osteopath who dares to brave the scorn of | |
the stand-patter and use all the legitimate adjuncts of Osteopathy found | |
in physio-therapy, may do a great deal of good as a physician. I have | |
found many physicians willing to acknowledge this, and even recommend the | |
services of such an Osteopath when physio-therapy was indicated. | |
When a physician, however, meets a fellow who claims to have in his | |
Osteopathy a wonderful system, complete and all-sufficient to cope with | |
any and all diseases, and that his system is founded on a knowledge of the | |
relation and function of the various parts and organs of the body such as | |
no other school of therapeutics has ever been able to discover, then he | |
knows that he has met a man of the same mental and moral calibre as the | |
shyster in his own school. He knows he has met a fellow who is exploiting | |
a thing, that may be good in its way and place, as a graft. And he knows | |
that this grafter gets his wonderful cures largely as any other quack gets | |
his; the primary effects of his "scientific manipulations" are on the | |
minds of those treated. | |
The intelligent physician knows that the Osteopath got his boastedly | |
superior knowledge of anatomy mostly from the same text-books and same | |
class of cadavers that other physicians had to master if they graduated | |
from a reputable school. All that talk we have heard so much about the | |
Osteopaths being the "finest anatomists in the world" sounds plausible, | |
and is believed by the laity generally. | |
The quotation I gave above has been much used in Osteopathic literature | |
as coming from an eminent medical man. What foundation is there for such a | |
belief? The Osteopath _may_ be a good anatomist. He has about the same | |
opportunities to learn anatomy the medical student has. If he is a good | |
and conscientious student he may consider his anatomy of more importance | |
than does the medical student who is not expecting to do much surgery. If | |
he is a natural shyster and shirk he can get through a course in | |
Osteopathy and get his diploma, and this diploma may be about the only | |
proof he could ever give that he is a "superior anatomist." | |
Great stress has always been laid by Osteopaths upon the amount of study | |
and research done by their students on the cadaver. I want to give you | |
some specimens of the learning of the man (an M.D.) who presided over the | |
dissecting-room when I pursued my "profound research" on the "lateral | |
half." This great man, whose superior knowledge of anatomy, I presume, | |
induced by the wise management of the college to employ him as a | |
demonstrator, in an article written for the organ of the school expresses | |
himself thus: | |
"It is needless to say that the first impression of an M. D. would not | |
be favorable to Osteopathy, because he has spent years fixing in his | |
mind that if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it, but | |
give a man morphine or something of the same character with an | |
external blister or hot application and in a week or ten days he would | |
be all right. In the meanwhile watch the patient's general health, | |
relieve the induced constipation by suitable means and rearrange what | |
he has disarranged in his treatment. On the other hand, let the | |
Osteopath get hold of this patient, and with his _vast_ and we might | |
say _perfect_ knowledge of anatomy, he at once, with no other tools | |
than his hands, inhibits the nerves supplying the affected parts, and | |
in five minutes the patient can freely move his head and shoulders, | |
entirely relieved from pain. Would not the medical man be angry? Would | |
he not feel like wiping off the earth with all the Osteopaths? Doctor, | |
with your medical education a course in Osteopathy would teach you | |
that it is not necessary to subject your patients to myxedema by | |
removing the thyroid gland to cure goitre. You would not have to lie | |
awake nights studying means to stop one of those troublesome bowel | |
complaints in children, nor to insist upon the enforced diet in | |
chronic diarrhea, and a thousand other things which are purely | |
physiological and are not done by any magical presto change, but by | |
methods which are perfectly rational if you will only listen long | |
enough to have them explained to you. I will agree that at first | |
impression all methods look alike to the medical man, but when | |
explained by an intelligent teacher they will bring their just | |
reward." | |
Gentlemen of the medical profession, study the above | |
carefully--punctuation, composition, profound wisdom and all. Surely you | |
did not read it when it was given to the world a few years ago, or you | |
would all have been converted to Osteopathy then, and the medical | |
profession left desolate. We have heard many bad things of medical men, | |
but never (until we learned it from one who was big-brained enough to | |
accept Osteopathy when its great truths dawned upon him) did we know that | |
you are so dull of intellect that it takes you "years to fix in your minds | |
that if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it but to give a | |
man morphine." | |
And how pleased Osteopaths are to learn from this scholar that the | |
Osteopath can "take hold" of a case of torticollis, "and with his vast and | |
we might say perfect knowledge of anatomy" inhibit the nerves and have the | |
man cured in five minutes. We were glad to learn this great truth from | |
this learned ex-M.D., as we never should have known, otherwise, that | |
Osteopathy is so potent. | |
I have had cases of torticollis in my practice, and thought I had done | |
well if after a half hour of hard work massaging contracted muscles I had | |
benefited the case. | |
And note the relevancy of these questions, "Would not the medical man be | |
angry? Would he not feel like wiping off the earth all the Osteopaths?" | |
Gentlemen, can you explain your ex-brother's meaning here? Surely you are | |
not all so hard-hearted that you would be angry because a poor wry-necked | |
fellow had been cured in five minutes. | |
To be serious, I ask you to think of "the finest anatomists in the world" | |
doing their "original research" work in the dissecting-room under the | |
direction of a man of the scholarly attainments indicated by the | |
composition and thought of the above article. Do you see now how | |
Osteopaths get a "vast and perfect knowledge of anatomy"? | |
Do you suppose that the law of "the survival of the fittest" determines | |
who continues in the practice of Osteopathy and succeeds? Is it true worth | |
and scholarly ability that get a big reputation of success among medical | |
men? I know, and many medical men know from competition with him (if they | |
would admit that such a fellow may be a competitor), that the ignoramus | |
who as a physician is the product of a diploma mill often has a bigger | |
reputation and performs more wonderful cures (?) than the educated | |
Osteopath who really mastered the prescribed course but is too | |
conscientious to assume responsibility for human life when he is not sure | |
that he can do all that might be done to save life. | |
I once met an Osteopath whose literary attainments had never reached the | |
rudiments of an education. He had never really comprehended a single | |
lesson of his entire course. He told me that he was then on a vacation to | |
get much-needed rest. He had such a large practice that the physical labor | |
of it was wearing him out. I knew of this fellow's qualifications, but I | |
thought he might be one of those happy mortals who have the faculty of | |
"doing things," even if they cannot learn the theory. To learn the secret | |
of this fellow's success, if I could, I let him treat me. I had some | |
contracted muscles that were irritating nerves and holding joints in tense | |
condition, a typical case, if there are any, for an Osteopathic treatment. | |
The fellow began his "treatment." I expected him to do some of that | |
"expert Osteopathic diagnosing" that you have heard of, but he began in an | |
aimless desultory way, worked almost an hour, found nothing specific, did | |
nothing but give me a poor unsystematic massage. He was giving me a | |
"popular treatment." | |
In many towns people have come to estimate the value of an Osteopathic | |
treatment by its duration. People used to say to me, "You don't treat as | |
long as Dr. ----, who was here before you," and say it in a way indicating | |
that they were hardly satisfied they had gotten their money's worth. Some | |
of them would say: "He treated me an hour for seventy-five cents." Does it | |
seem funny to talk of adjusting lesions on one person for an hour at a | |
time, three times a week? | |
My picture of incompetency and apparent success of incompetents, is not | |
overdrawn. The other day I had a marked copy of a local paper from a town | |
in California. It was a flattering write-up of an old classmate. The | |
doctor's automobile was mentioned, and he had marked with a cross a fine | |
auto shown in a picture of the city garage. This fellow had been | |
considered by all the Simple Simon of the class, inferior in almost every | |
attribute of true manliness, yet now he flourishes as one of those of our | |
class to whose success the school can "point with pride." | |
It is interesting to read the long list of "changes of location" among | |
Osteopaths, yet between the lines there is a sad story that may be read. | |
How often I have followed these changes. First, "Doctor Blank has located | |
in Philadelphia, with twenty-five patients for the first month and rapidly | |
growing practice." A year or so after another item tells that "Doctor | |
Blank has located in San Francisco with bright prospects." Then "Doctor | |
Blank has returned to Missouri on account of his wife's health, and | |
located in ----, where he has our best wishes for success." Their career | |
reminds us of Goldsmith's lines: | |
"As the hare whom horn and hounds pursue | |
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew." | |
There has been many a tragic scene enacted upon the Osteopathic stage, but | |
the curtain has not been raised for the public to behold them. How many | |
timid old maids, after saving a few hundred dollars from wages received | |
for teaching school, have been persuaded that they could learn Osteopathy | |
while their shattered nerves were repaired and they were made young and | |
beautiful once more by a course of treatment in the clinics of the school. | |
Then they would be ready to go out to occupy a place of dignity and honor, | |
and treat ten to thirty patients per month at twenty-five dollars per | |
patient. | |
Gentlemen of the medical profession, from what you know of the aggressive | |
spirit that it takes to succeed in professional life to-day (to say | |
nothing of the physical strength required in the practice of Osteopathy), | |
what per cent. of these timid old maids do you suppose have "panted to the | |
place from whence at first they flew," after leaving their pitiful little | |
savings with the benefactors of humanity who were devoting their splendid | |
talents to the cause of Osteopathy? | |
If any one doubts that some Osteopathic schools are conducted from other | |
than philanthropic motives, let him read what the _Osteopathic Physician_ | |
said of a new school founded in California. Of all the fraud, bare-faced | |
shystering, and flagrant rascality ever exposed in any profession, the | |
circumstances of the founding of this school, as depicted by the editor of | |
the _Osteopathic Physician_, furnishes the most disgusting instance. Men | |
to whom we had clung when the anchor of our faith in Osteopathy seemed | |
about to drag were held up before us as sneaking, cringing, incompetent | |
rascals, whose motives in founding the school were commercial in the worst | |
sense. And how do you suppose Osteopaths out in the field of practice feel | |
when they receive catalogues from the leading colleges that teach their | |
system, and these catalogues tell of the superior education the colleges | |
are equipped to give, and among the pictures of learned members of the | |
faculty they recognize the faces of old schoolmates, with glasses, pointed | |
beards and white ties, silk hats maybe, but the same old classmate | |
of--sometimes not ordinary ability. | |
I spoke a moment ago of old maids being induced to believe that they would | |
be made over in the clinics of an Osteopathic college. That was not an | |
exaggeration. An Osteopathic journal before me says: "If it were generally | |
known that Osteopathy has a wonderfully rejuvenating effect upon fading | |
beauty, Osteopathic physicians would be overworked as beauty doctors." | |
Another journal says: "If the aged could know how many years might be | |
added to their lives by Osteopathy, they would not hesitate to avail | |
themselves of treatment." | |
A leading D. O. discusses consumption as treated Osteopathically, and | |
closes his discussion with the statement in big letters: "CONSUMPTION CAN | |
BE CURED." | |
Another Osteopathic doctor says the curse that was placed upon Mother Eve | |
in connection with the propagation of the race has been removed by | |
Osteopathy, and childbirth "positively painless" is a consummated fact. | |
The old made young! The homely made beautiful! The insane emancipated from | |
their hell! Consumption cured! Childbirth robbed of its terrors! Asthma | |
cured by moving a bone! What more in therapeutics is left to be desired? O | |
grave, where is thy victory? | |
CHAPTER X. | |
OSTEOPATHY AS RELATED TO SOME OTHER FAKES. | |
Sure Shot Rheumatism Cure--Regular Practitioner's | |
Discomfiture--Medicines Alone Failed to Cure Rheumatism--Osteopathy | |
Relieves Rheumatic and Neuralgic Pains--"Move Things"--"Pop" Stray | |
Cervical Vertebrae--Find Something Wrong and Put it Right--Terrible | |
Neck-Wrenching, Bone-Twisting Ordeal. | |
A discussion of graft in connection with doctoring would not be complete | |
if nothing were said about the traveling medicine faker. Every summer our | |
towns are visited by smooth-tongued frauds who give free shows on the | |
streets. They harangue the people by the hour with borrowed spiels, full | |
of big medical terms, and usually full of abuse of regular practitioners, | |
which local physicians must note with humiliation is too often received by | |
people without resentment and often with applause. | |
Only last summer I was standing by while one of these grafters was making | |
his spiel, and gathering dollars by the pocketful for a "sure shot" | |
rheumatism cure. His was a _sure_ cure, doubly guaranteed; no cure, money | |
all refunded (if you could get it). A physician standing near laughed | |
rather a mirthless laugh, and remarked that Barnum was right when he said, | |
"The American people like to be humbugged." When the medical man left, a | |
man who had just become the happy possessor of enough of the wonderful | |
herb to make a quart of the rheumatism router, remarked: "He couldn't be a | |
worse humbug than that old duffer. He doctored me for six weeks, and told | |
me all the time that his medicine would cure me in a few days. I got worse | |
all the time until I went to Dr. ----, who told me to use a sack of hot | |
bran mash on my back, and I was able to get around in two days." | |
In this man's remarks there is an explanation of the reason the crowd | |
laughed when they heard the quack abusing the regular practitioner, and of | |
the reason the people handed their hard-earned dollars to the grafter at | |
the rate of forty in ten minutes, by actual count. If all doctors were | |
honest and told the people what all authorities have agreed upon about | |
rheumatism, _i. e._, that internal medication does it little good, and the | |
main reliance must be on external application, traveling and patent | |
medicine fakers who make a specialty of rheumatism cure would be "put out | |
of business," and there would be eliminated one source of much loss of | |
faith in medicine. | |
I learned by experience as an Osteopath that many people lose faith in | |
medicine and in the honesty of physicians because of the failure of | |
medicine to cure rheumatism where the physician had promised a cure. | |
Patients afflicted with other diseases get well anyway, or the sexton puts | |
them where they cannot tell people of the physician's failure to cure | |
them. The rheumatic patient lives on, and talks on of "Doc's" failure to | |
stop his rheumatic pains. All doctors know that rheumatism is the | |
universal disease of our fickle climate. If it were not for rheumatic | |
pains, and neuralgic pains that often come from nerves irritated by | |
contracted muscles, the Osteopath in the average country town would get | |
more lonesome than he does. People who are otherwise skeptical concerning | |
the merits of Osteopathy will admit that it seems rational treatment for | |
rheumatism. | |
Yet this is a disease that Osteopathy of the specific-adjustment, | |
bone-setting, nerve-inhibiting brand has little beneficial effect upon. | |
All the Osteopathic treatments I ever gave or saw given in cases of | |
rheumatism that really did any good, were long, laborious massages. The | |
medical man who as "professor" in an Osteopathic college said, "When the | |
Osteopath with his _vast_ knowledge of anatomy gets hold of a case of | |
torticollis he inhibits the nerves and cures it in five minutes," was | |
talking driveling rot. | |
I have seen some of the best Osteopaths treat wry-neck, and the work they | |
did was to knead and stretch and pull, which by starting circulation and | |
working out soreness, gradually relieved the patient. A hot application, | |
by expanding tissues and stimulating circulation, would have had the same | |
effect, perhaps more slowly manifested. | |
To call any Osteopathic treatment massage is always resented as an insult | |
by the guardians of the science. What is the Osteopath doing, who rolls | |
and twists and pulls and kneads for a full hour, if he isn't giving a | |
massage treatment? Of course, it sounds more dignified, and perhaps helps | |
to "preserve the purity of Osteopathy as a separate system," to call it | |
"reducing subluxations," "correcting lesions," "inhibiting and | |
stimulating" nerves. The treatment also acts better as a placebo to call | |
it by these names. | |
As students we were taught that all Osteopathic movements were primarily | |
to adjust something. Some of us worried for fear we wouldn't know when the | |
adjusting was complete. We were told that all the movements we were taught | |
to make were potent to "move things," so we worried again for fear we | |
might move something in the wrong direction. We were assured, however, | |
that since the tendency was always toward the normal, all we had to do was | |
to agitate, stir things up a bit, and the thing out of place would find | |
its place. How _specific_! How scientific! | |
We were told that when in the midst of our "agitation" we heard something | |
"pop," we could be sure the thing out of place had gone back. When a | |
student had so mastered the great bone-setting science as to be able to | |
"pop" stray cervical vertebrae he was looked upon with envy by the fellows | |
who had not joined the association for protection against suits for | |
malpractice, and did not know just how much of an owl they could make of a | |
man and not break his neck. | |
The fellow who lacked clairvoyant powers to locate straying things, and | |
could not always find the "missing link" of the spine, could go through | |
the prescribed motions just the same. If he could do it with sufficient | |
facial contortions to indicate supreme physical exertion, and at the same | |
time preserve the look of serious gravity and professional importance of a | |
quack medical doctor giving _particular_ directions for the dosing of the | |
placebo he is leaving, he might manage to make a sound vertebra "pop." | |
This, with his big show of doing something, has its effect on the | |
patient's mind anyway. | |
We were taught that Osteopathy was applied common sense, that it was all | |
reasonable and rational, and simply meant "finding something wrong and | |
putting it right." Some of us thought it only fair to tell our patients | |
what we were trying to do, and what we did it for. There is where we made | |
our big mistake. To say we were relaxing muscles, or trying to lift and | |
tone up a rickety chest wall, or straighten a warped spine, was altogether | |
too simple. It was like telling a man that you were going to give him a | |
dose of oil for the bellyache when he wanted an operation for | |
appendicitis. It was too common, and some would go to an Osteopath who | |
could find vertebra and ribs and hips displaced, something that would make | |
the community "sit up and take notice." If one has to be sick, why not | |
have something worth while? | |
Where Osteopathy has always been so administered that people have the idea | |
that it means to find things out of place and put them back, it is a | |
gentleman's job, professional, scientific and genteel. Men have been known | |
to give twenty to forty treatments a day at two dollars per treatment. In | |
many communities, however, the adjustment idea has so degenerated that to | |
give an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a high collar on a hot day. To | |
strip a hard-muscled, two-hundred-pound laborer down to a | |
perspiration-soaked and scented undershirt, and manipulate him for an hour | |
while he has every one of his five hundred work-hardened muscles rigidly | |
set to protect himself from the terrible neck-wrenching, bone-twisting | |
ordeal he has been told an Osteopathic treatment would subject him to--I | |
say when you have tried that sort of a thing for an hour you will conclude | |
that an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a kid-gloved dandy nor for a | |
lily-fingered lady, as it has been so glowingly pictured. | |
I know the brethren will say that true Osteopathy does not give an hour's | |
shotgun treatment, but finds the lesion, corrects it, collects its two | |
dollars, and quits until "day after to-morrow," when it "corrects" and | |
_collects_ again as long as there is anything to co--llect! | |
I practiced for three years in a town where people made their first | |
acquaintance with Osteopathy through the treatments of a man who | |
afterwards held the position of demonstrator of Osteopathic "movements" | |
and "manipulations" in one of the largest and boastedly superior schools | |
of Osteopathy. The people certainly should have received correct ideas of | |
Osteopathy from him. He was followed in the town by a bright young fellow | |
from "Pap's" school, where the genuine "lesion," blown-in-the-bottle brand | |
of Osteopathy has always been taught. This fellow was such an excellent | |
Osteopath that he made enough money in two years to enable him to quit | |
Osteopathy forever. This he did, using the money he had gathered as an | |
Osteopath to take him through a medical college. | |
I followed these two shining lights who I supposed had established | |
Osteopathy on a correct basis. I started in to give specific treatments as | |
I had been taught to do; that is, to hunt for the lesion, correct it if I | |
found it, and quit, even if I had not been more than fifteen or twenty | |
minutes at it. I found that in many cases my patients were not satisfied. | |
I did not know just what was the matter at first, and lost some desirable | |
patients (lost their patronage, I mean--they were not in much danger of | |
dying when they came to me). I was soon enlightened, however, by some more | |
outspoken than the rest. They said I did not "treat as long as that other | |
doctor," and when I had done what I thought was indicated at times a | |
patient would say, "You didn't give me that neck-twisting movement," or | |
that "leg-pulling treatment." No matter what I thought was indicated, I | |
had to give all the movements each time that had ever been given before. | |
A physician who has had to dose out something he knew would do no good, | |
just to satisfy the patient and keep him from sending for another doctor | |
who he feared might give something worse, can appreciate the violence done | |
a fellow's conscience as he administers those wonderfully curative | |
movements. He cannot, however, appreciate the emotions that come from the | |
strenuous exertion over a sweaty body in a close room on a July day. | |
Incidentally, this difference in the physical exertion necessary to get | |
the same results has determined a good many to quit Osteopathy and take up | |
medicine. A young man who had almost completed a course in Osteopathy told | |
me he was going to study medicine when he had finished Osteopathy, as he | |
had found that giving "treatments was too d----d hard work." | |
CHAPTER XI. | |
TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES. | |
Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks Exposed--How | |
the Defunct Worm was Passed--Rubber Near-Worm--New Gallstone | |
Cure--Relation to Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, "Autotherapeutic" | |
Machine--Touch the Button--The Truth About the Consumption and | |
Insanity Cures. | |
There is another trump card the traveling medical grafter plays, which | |
wins about as well as the guaranteed rheumatism cure, namely, the tapeworm | |
fraud. Last summer I heard a plug-hatted faker delivering a lecture to a | |
street crowd, in which he said that every mother's son or daughter of them | |
who didn't have the rosy cheek, the sparkling eye and buoyancy of youth | |
might be sure that a tapeworm of monstrous size was, "like a worm in the | |
bud," feeding on their "damask cheeks." To prove his assertion and lend | |
terror to his tale, he held aloft a glass jar containing one of the | |
monsters that had been driven from its feast on the vitals of its victim | |
by his never-failing remedy. The person, "saved from a living death," | |
stood at the "doctor's" side to corroborate the story, while his | |
voluptuous wife was kept busy handing out the magical remedy and "pursing | |
the ducats" given in return. | |
How about the worm exhibited? How this one was secured I do not know; but | |
intelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common | |
that eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively | |
asserted. | |
An acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to | |
furnish the song and dance performances that are so attractive to the | |
class of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how | |
the game was worked. The "specialist" would pick out an emaciated, | |
credulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the | |
unmistakable marks of being the prey of a terrible tapeworm. If he | |
couldn't sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a | |
bottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him | |
at his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or | |
dying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert | |
work. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as directed the | |
worm was dead beyond a doubt, but sometimes the "fangs" were fastened so | |
firmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they | |
would not come away until he had injected a certain preparation that | |
_always_ "produced the goods." | |
The man was taken into a darkened room for privacy (?), the injection | |
given, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always | |
found in the evacuated material, and how was the deluded one to know that | |
it was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt | |
wondrous relief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify that Dr. | |
Grafter was an angel of mercy sent to deliver him from the awful fate of | |
living where "the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." | |
I was told recently of a new tapeworm graft that makes the old one look | |
crude and unscientific. This one actually brings a tapeworm from the | |
intestines in _every_ case, whether the person had one before the magic | |
remedy was given or not. The graft is to have a near-worm manufactured of | |
delicate rubber and compressed into a capsule. The patient swallows the | |
capsule supposed to contain the worm destroyer. The rubber worm is not | |
digested, and a strong physic soon produces it, to the great relief of the | |
"patient" and the greater glory and profit of the shyster. What a | |
wonderful age of invention and scientific discoveries! | |
Another journal tells of a new gallstone cure that never fails to cause | |
the stones to be passed even if they are big as walnuts. The graft in this | |
is that the medicine consists of paraffine dissolved in oil. The | |
paraffine does not digest, but collects in balls, which are passed | |
by handfuls and are excellent imitations of the real things. | |
How about tapeworms, gallstones and Osteopathy, do you ask? | |
We heard about tapeworms and gallstones when we were in Osteopathic | |
college. | |
The one thing that was ground into us early and thoroughly was that | |
Osteopathy was a complete system. No matter what any other system had | |
done, we were to remember that Osteopathy could do that thing more surely | |
and more scientifically. | |
Students soon learned that they were never to ask, "_Can_ we treat this?" | |
That indicated skepticism, which was intolerable in the atmosphere of | |
optimistic faith that surrounded the freshman and sophomore classes | |
especially. The question was to be put, "_How_ do we treat this?" In the | |
treatment of worms the question was, "How do we treat worms?" That was | |
easy. Had not nature made a machine, perfect in all its parts, | |
self-oiling, "autotherapeutic," and all that? And would nature allow it to | |
choke up or slip a cog just because a little thing like a worm got tangled | |
in its gearing? Not much. Nature knew that worms would intrude, and had | |
provided her own vermifuge. The cause of worms is insufficient bile, and | |
behold, all the Osteopath had to do when he wished to serve notice on the | |
aforesaid worms to vacate the premises was to touch the button controlling | |
the stop-cock to the bile-duct, and they left. It was so simple and easy | |
we wondered how the world could have been so long finding it out. | |
Osteopathy was complete. That was the proposition on which we were to | |
stand. If anything had to be removed, or brought back, or put in place, | |
all that was necessary was to open the floodgates, release the pent-up | |
forces of nature, and the thing was done! | |
What a happy condition, to have _perfect_ faith! I remember a report came | |
to our school of an Osteopathic physician who read a paper before a | |
convention of his brethren, in which he recorded marvelous cures performed | |
in cases of tuberculosis. The paper was startling, even revolutionary, yet | |
it was not too much for our faith. We were almost indignant at some who | |
ventured to suggest that curing consumption by manipulation might be | |
claiming too much. These wonderful cures were performed in a town which I | |
afterward visited. I could find no one who knew of a single case that had | |
been cured. There were those who knew of cases of tuberculosis he had | |
treated, that had gone as most other bad cases of that disease go. | |
There was another world-startling case. It is one of the main cases, from | |
all that I can learn, upon which all the bold claims of Osteopathy as an | |
insanity cure are based. I remember an article under scare headlines big | |
enough for a bloody murder, flared out in the local paper. It was yet more | |
wonderfully heralded in the papers at the county seat. The metropolitan | |
dailies caught up the echo, which reverberated through Canada and was | |
finally heard across the seas! Osteopathic journals took it up and made | |
much of it. Those in school read it with eager satisfaction, and plunged | |
into their studies with fiercer enthusiasm. Many who had been "almost | |
persuaded" were induced by it to "cross the Rubicon," and take up the | |
study of this wonderful new science that could take a raving maniac, | |
condemned to a mad house by medical men, and with a few scientific twists | |
of the neck cause raging insanity to give place to gentle sleep that | |
should wake in sanity and health. | |
Was it any wonder that students flocked to schools that professed to teach | |
how common plodding mortals could work such miracles? Was it strange that | |
anxious friends brought dear ones, over whom the black cloud of insanity | |
cast its shadows, hundreds of miles to be treated by this man? Or to the | |
Osteopathic colleges, from which, in all cases of which I ever knew, they | |
returned sadly disappointed? | |
The report of that wonderful cure caused many intelligent laymen (and even | |
Dr. Pratt) to indulge a hope that insanity might be only a disturbance of | |
the blood supply to the brain caused by pressure from distorted "neck | |
bones," or other lesions, and that Osteopaths were to empty our | |
overcrowded madhouses. Where is that hope now? What was its foundation? I | |
was told by an intimate friend of this great Osteopath that all these | |
startling reports we had supposed were published as news the papers were | |
glad to get because of their important truths, were but shrewd | |
advertising. I afterward talked with the man, and his friends who were at | |
the bedside when the miracle was performed, and while they believed that | |
there had been good done by the treatment, it was all so tame and | |
commonplace at home compared with its fame abroad that I have wondered | |
ever since if anything much was really done after all. | |
THE MORAL TO THE TALE. | |
Honesty--Plain Dealing--Education. | |
But I must close. I could multiply incidents, but it would grow | |
monotonous. I believe I have told enough that is disgusting to the | |
intelligent laity and medical men, and enough that is humiliating to the | |
capable, honest Osteopath, who practices his "new science" as standing for | |
all that is good in physio-therapy. | |
I hope I have told, or recalled, something that will help physicians to | |
see that the way to clear up the turbidity existing in therapeutics to-day | |
is by open, honest dealing with the laity, and by a campaign of education | |
that shall impart to them enough of the scientific principles of medicine | |
so that they may know when they are being imposed upon by quacks and | |
grafters. I am encouraged to believe I am on the right track. After I had | |
written this booklet I read, in a report of the convention of the American | |
Medical Association held in Chicago, that one of the leaders of the | |
Association told his brethren that the most important work before them as | |
physicians was to conduct a campaign of education for the masses. It must | |
be done not only to protect the people, but as well to protect the honest | |
physician. | |
There is another fact that faces the medical profession, and I believe I | |
have called attention to conditions that prove it. That is, that the hope | |
of the profession of "doctoring" being placed on an honest rational basis | |
lies in a broader and more thorough education of the physician. A broad, | |
liberal general education to begin with, then all that can be known about | |
medicine and surgery. Is that enough? No. Then all that there is in | |
physio-therapy, under whatsoever name, that promises to aid in curing or | |
preventing disease. | |
If this humble production aids but a little in any of this great work, | |
then my object in writing will have been achieved. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Quacks and Grafters, by Unknown | |
*** |