THE HOME.

White Ribbon, Volume 2, Issue 20, 1 February 1897, Page 11

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The Drug System of Treatment of Disease. The long suffering endurance and the blind trustfulness of humanity cannot tail to strike one as simply marvellous when their results are considered. Despite the misery resultant, mankind in the mass has woishipped from time to time fetishes, whose cult is lost slowly, how slowly ! But it is significant ot a coming change of attitude towards worn-out creeds and customs, that there is resiles ness and discontent abroad in all directions. 1 here is, too. a growing desire to give account of the hope and faith that are cherished, thanks, largely, to science, which has exalted the critical faculty. Vv om-out systems arc being attacked on every side, and soon they must yield to newer and to truer ones, which will most assuredly again give place to yet higher methods. A study of the drug system reveals to the earned student the fact that it has been tried and found wanting One

terrible indictment urged against it, and one to which it must plead * guilty,’ is that it has induced a long list of terrible maladies by the multitude of poisonous agencies which go to make up the I sum total of the drug practice. Dr Trail says: — 44 It is a serious fact, among the curiosities of medical literature, that the standard books recognise fiftyone distinct diseases resulting from the medicinal administration of the various preparations of mercury.” Dr Johnson says : 44 I am certain I speak the literal, the simple, the unexaggerated truth, w r hen I assert that thousands - not hundreds of human l>eings are killed in Great Britain alone f>y drug medicines. The same gentleman, who spent a long life in the treatment of disease by natural methods, further urges that many drugs which are thought to be harmless are 44 highly deleterious in a great variety of ways. They alter the constitution and destroy the qualities of the blood.’ As an instance of the destructive properties of such simple drugs as common nitre and sulphate of soda, he instances an experiment by a celebrated analytical chemist, Schultz. Blood w f as taken from the arm of a robust countryman, and was found to contain 5 per cent of fibrin. During the following twentyfour hours the man took three drams of nitre and an ounce of sulphate of soda. Again the man’s arm was bled and analysed, and this time the percentage of hbrin was 3*4 The use of the nitre and soda was continued during the next twenty-four hours, and the man was then bled again. The blood was now tound to contain only I*9 per cent of hbnn. The testimony of famous men with regard to the utter inefficacy of the drug system might be multiplied almost indefinitely. The celebrated Dr. Kush, of Philadelphia, many years of practice, declired

to his medical brethren, “ We have done little more than to multiply diseases and increase their fatality.” Dr. Abernethy said, 44 There has been a great increase of medical men of late years, but upon my life diseases have increased :n proportion.” Every remedy should possess the power of (l) removing the causes of disease, (2) of supplying the conditions for health, (3) of exalting the enfeebled curative principle of nature. Let us consider how the drug system attempts to accomplish these things. Suppose a patient to be suffering from constipation. The object, of course, will % be to increase intestinal secretion. By drug practice this is achieved by administering certain acrid and irritating substances called purgatives. 44 The stomach,” says Dr Johnson, 44 now l>ecomes nauseated, its membranes inflamed, its nerves irritated, and its functions disturbed.” From the stomach the irritating substance passes by absorption directly into the blood, and is circulated through all the organs —the heart, the lungs, the brrin—which it irritates in their turn, till presently the conservative principleof nature,ever on watch to guard the living organism from harm, takes alarm and expels the offendirg substance. But at what cost has this been accomplished. The stomach has suffered, the blood poisoned, the other organs irritated, and the powers of nature t>een taxed to expel tile cause of such trouble. But the mischief does not stop here. In a day or so the bowels are as badly constipated as ever. The same process is repeated, and frequently the strength is not restortd for months. In the light of such knowledge Dr Johnson says 44 I need hardly advise the patient to close the door of his heart against drugs, and to bolt it on the inside.”