THE HOME.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 81, 1 February 1902, Page 11

THE HOME.

THE USE OF AN/ESTHETICS

The Medical Conference has just finished holding its annual session in Dunedin, and the opening discussion regarding the administration of chloroform cannot fail to be of interest to most people. During recent months there have been recorded in our public papers numerous deaths of patients about to undergo operations under chloroform. As a result there is a growing uneasiness in the community, and it is probably to allay this feeling that the matter has been taken up so early in the debates. Death by misadventure with no particular blame attaching to the administrator is usually, it not always, the verdict giv en by the jury. lhe Conference, however, dealing with generalities, seems fairly unanimous that this judicial finding of the laymen is open to much doubt, and that when due care is exercised chloroform is perfectly harmless to the individual. This is certainly a re-assuring state ment with regard to chloroform, but quite the contrary with respect to particular medical practitioners. Personally, one cannot help thinking that the old proverb, 44 Familiarity breeds contempt,” is well exemplified in these cases of misadventure. The craze for operations is growing at a terrific pace. All forms of disease must be attacked by the knife, and to hospital surgeons especially the temptation to treat the operating chamber lightly is certainly of no difficult explanation. Reading carefully the monthly reports

of our hospitals one cannot help feeling that the number of operations performed on patients is out of all proportion to the number of patients recorded as being attended and treated, and one is led to speculate as to what must often take place within the walls of the dreaded chamber.

A patient, friendless, weak and sufTering, is introduced. His mind is filled with gloomy presentiments and desponding fears. He hears no wellknown and trusted voice bidding him take comtort. He sees no familial lace around him. I ime is of importance to the administrators and operators, and the dominant feeling of perfunctoriness adds fresh terrors to the already drooping soul. W hat wonder, then, that the verdict of misadventure has to be so frequently given ? Associations do not go for nothing in this world of mysteries, and the associations of operating chambers, to say the least of it, must be ghastly. There is something wrong somewhere, then, when this is the case. The healer and the healing art should not l>e terror bringers but rather harbingers of peace and comfort.

The fact is that this constant search for disease is the high road that leads to the pits and quagmires of the valley ot the shadow. If poor suffering humanity is to be helped to attain the heights of health and happiness it will be not by the search for disease but by the research of health.

The following quotation from Louis Kuhne's book, 44 lhe New Science of Healing,” from the chapter entitled, “ How Diseases Arise,” affords ample subject for thought, and certainly tends to free the mind from the fear, begotten by the belief that diseases are multiplying, and that mankind is doomed to suffer ever-increasing pains as civilisation advances.

Some Important Final Conclusions. — 44 In the case of all sick people, alterations in the shape of the body are perceptible. These alterations are produced by foreign matter. The presence of foreign matter in the system is disease. This foreign matter consists of substances which the body had no need of, and which remained in it in consequence of bad digestion. Ihe foreign matter is at first deposited in the neighbourhood ol the secretory organs, but gradually spreads, especially when fermentation sets in, over the whole body. As long as the organs of secretion continue to expel a part of the foreign matter, the physical condition is endurable, but whenever their activity becomes lessened, great disturbances arise. Hut the accumulation of foreign matter is not painful, being, so to speak, a latent or chronic process, which spreads unnoticed oyer a considerable period. v , 44 We can best designate the forms of disease resulting from this as painless and hidden; they are essentially the same as those otherwise indicated by the term 4 chronic ’ (tedious). The foreign matter can putrify (decompose); it forms the soil on which fermentation (bacilli) can develop. Fermentation begins in the abdomen, where most of the foreign matter lies, but spreads rapidly upward. The patient’s condition changes, pain is felt, and fever sets in. These forms of disease we may term painful, fiery diseases; these are the forms otherwise termed 4 acute.’

“ From the foregoingexposition we must now draw the momentous conclusion : There is only one cause of disease , and there is only one disease , which shows itself under different forms. We therefore ought not, strictly speaking, to distinguish between different diseases, but only between different forms of disease.”