Medicine of Experience

Man, regarded as an animal, has been created more helpless than all other animals. He has no congenital weapons for his defense like the bull, no speed to enable him to flee from his enemies like the deer, no wings, no webbed feet, no fins no armour impenetrable to violence like the tortoise, no place of refuge provided by nature as is possessed by thousands of insects and worms for their safety, no physical provision to keep the enemy at bay, such as render the hedgehog and torpedo formidable, no sting like the gadfly, nor poison-fang like the viper;-to all the attacks of hostile animals he is exposed defenseless. He has, moreover, nothing to oppose to the violence of the elements and meteors. He is not protected from the action of the water by the shining hair of the seal, nor by the close oily feathers of the duck, nor by the smooth shield of the water beetle; his body, but a slight degree lighter than the water, floats more helplessly in that medium than that of any quadruped, and is in danger of instant death. He is not protected like the polar-bear or elder-duck by a covering impenetrable to the northern blast. At its birth the lamb knows where to seek its mother's udder, but the helpless babe would perish if its mother's breast were not presented to it. Where he is born nature nowhere furnishes his food ready made, as she provides ants for the armadillo, caterpillars for the ichneumon fly, or the open petals of flowers for the bee. Man is subject to a far larger number of diseases than animals, who are born with a secret knowledge of the remedial means for these invisible enemies of life, instinct, which man possesses not. Man alone painfully escapes from his mother's womb, soft, tender, naked, defenseless, helpless, and destitute of all that can render his existence supportable, destitute of all wherewith nature richly endows the worm of the dust, to render its life happy.

Where is the benevolence of the Creator, that could have disinherited man, and him alone of all the animals of the earth, of the bare necessities of life?

Behold, the Eternal Source of all love only disinherited man of the animal nature in order to endow him all the more richly with that spark of divinity-a mind-which enables man to elicit from himself the satisfaction of all his requirements, and a full measure of all conceivable benefits, and to develop from himself the innumerable advantages that exalt the children of this earth far above every other living thing-a mind that, indestructible itself, is capable of creating for its tenement, its frail animal nature, more powerful means for its sustenance, protection, defense and comfort, than any of the most favored creatures can boast of having derived directly from nature.

The Father of mankind has chiefly reckoned on this faculty of the human mind to discover remedial agents, for his protection from the maladies and accidents to which the delicate organism of man is exposed.

The help that the body can afford itself for the removal of diseases is but small and very limited, so that the human mind is so much the more compelled to employ, for the care of the diseases of the body, remedial powers of a more efficient kind than it has seemed good in the Creator to implant in the organic tissues alone.

What crude nature presents to us should not form the limit for the relief of our necessities; no, our mind should be able to enlarge her resources to an unlimited degree for our perfect well-being.

Thus the Creator presents to us ears of corn from the bosom of the earth, not to be chewed and swallowed in a crude and unwholesome state, but in order that we should render them useful as nutriment by freeing them from the husk, grinding and depriving them of everything of an injurious and medicinal nature, by fermentation and the heat of the oven, and partaking of them in the form of bread-a preparation of an innocuous and nutritious character, ennobled by the perfecting power of our mind. Since the creation of the world the lightning's flash has destroyed animals and human beings; but the Author of the universe intended that the mind of man should invent something, as has actually been done in these latter days, whereby the fire of heaven should be prevented from touching his dwellings-that by means of metallic rods boldly reared aloft he should conduct it harmless to the ground. The waves of the angry ocean reared mountains high threaten to overwhelm his frail bark, and he calms them by pouring oil upon them.

So he permits the other powers of nature to act unhindered to our harm, until we can discover something that can secure us from their destructive force, and harmlessly avert from us their impressions.

So he allows the innumerable array of diseases to assail and seize upon the delicate corporeal frame, threatening it with death and destruction, well knowing that the animal part of our organism is incapable, in most cases, of victoriously routing the enemy, without itself suffering much loss or even succumbing in the struggle;-the remedial resources of the organism, abandoned to itself, are weak, limited and insufficient for the dispersion of diseases, in order that our mind may employ its ennobling faculty in this case also, where the question concerns the most inestimable of all earth's goods, health and life.

The great Instructor of mankind did not intend that we should go to work in the same manner as nature; we should do more than organic nature, but not in the same manner, not with the same means as she. He did not permit us to create a horse; but we are allowed to construct machines, each of which possesses more power than a hundred horses, and is much more obedient to our will. He permitted us to build ships, in which, secure from the monsters of the deep and the fury of the tempest, and furnished with all the comforts of the mainland, we might circumnavigate the world, which no fish could do, and therefore he denied to our body the piscine fins, branchiae and float, that were inadequate to perform this feat. He denied to our body the rustling wings of the mighty condor, but on the other hand, he allows us to invent machines filled with light gas, that with silent power lifts us into far higher regions of the atmosphere than are accessible to the feathered tenants of the air.

So also he suffers us not to employ the process of sphacelus, as the human corporeal organism does for itself, in order to remove a shattered limb, but he placed in our hand the sharp, quickly-dividing knife, which Faust moistened with oil, that is capable of performing the operation with less pain, less fever, and much less danger to life. He permits us not to make use of the so-called crisis, like nature, for the cure of a number of fevers; we cannot imitate her critical sweat, her critical diuresis, her critical abscesses of the parotid and inguinal glands, her critical epistaxis, but he enables the investigator to discover remedies wherewith he may cure the fever more rapidly than the corporeal organism is capable of producing crises, and to cure them more certainly, more easily, and with less suffering, with less danger to life and fewer after-sufferings, than unassisted nature can do by means of crises.

I am therefore astonished that the art of medicine has so seldom raised itself above a servile imitation of these crude processes, and that it has at almost all periods been believed that hardly anything better could be done for the cure of diseases than to copy these crises, and to produce evacuations in the form of sweat, diarrhoea, vomiting, diuresis, venesections, blisters or artificial sores. (This was and remained the most favoured method of treatment from the earliest times till now: and it was always fallen back upon, when other modes of treatment founded on ingenious speculations disappointed the hopes they had raised.) Just as if these imperfect and forced imitations were the same thing as what nature effects in the hidden recesses of vitality, by her own spontaneous efforts, in the form of crises! Or as if such crises were the best possible method for overcoming the disease, and were not rather proofs of the (designed) imperfection and therapeutical powerlessness of our unaided nature! Never, never was it possible to compel these spontaneous endeavours of the organism by artificial means) the very notion implies a contradiction), never was it the Creator's will that we should do so. His design was that we should bring to unlimited perfection our whole being, as also our corporeal frame and the cure of its diseases.

This design has hitherto been in part fulfilled by pure surgery alone. Instead of acting like unassisted nature, which can often only throw off a splinter of bone in the leg by inducing a fever attended by danger to life, and a suppuration that destroys almost all the limb, the surgeon is able by a judicious division of the irritable integuments to extract it in a few minutes by means of his fingers, without occasioning any great suffering, without any considerable bad consequences, and almost without any diminution of the strength. A debilitating slow fever, accompanied by intolerable pains and uninterrupted torturing to death, is almost the sole means the organism can oppose to a large stone in the bladder; whereas an incision made by a practised hand frees the sufferer from it often in a quarter of an hour, spares him many years of torment, and rescues him from a miserable death. Or ought we to attempt to relieve a strangulated hernia by an imitation of the mortification and suppuration, which are the only means, besides death that nature possesses against it? Would it suffice for the rescue and preservation of life, did we not know of any other mode of stopping the hemorrhage from a wound in a large artery than by causing a syncope of half-an-hour's duration, as nature does? Could the tourniquet, bandage and compress be thereby dispensed with?

It has always been a matter worthy of the greatest admiration to see how nature, without having recourse to any surgical operation, without having access to any remedy from without, does often when left quite unassisted, develop from itself invisible operations whereby it is able,-often it is true in a very tedious, painful and dangerous manner-but still really to remove diseases and affections of many kinds. But she does not do these for our imitation! we cannot imitate them, we ought not to imitate them, for there are infinitely easier, quicker and surer remedial means which the inventive faculty implanted in our mind is destined to discover, in order to subserve the ends of medicine, that most essential and most honourable of all earthly sciences.