The worthy physicians last mentioned,
and their antagonist Dr. Gallup, used stronger language than we of these
degenerate days permit ourselves. "The lancet is a weapon which annually
slays more than the sword," says Dr. Tully. "It is probable that, for
forty years past, opium and its preparations have done seven times the
injury they have rendered benefit, on the great scale of the world," says
Dr. Gallup.
What is the meaning of these perpetual changes and conflicts of medical
opinion and practice, from an early antiquity to our own time? Simply
this: all "methods" of treatment end in disappointment of those
extravagant expectations which men are wont to entertain of medical art.
The bills of mortality are more obviously affected by drainage, than by
this or that method of practice. The insurance companies do not commonly
charge a different percentage on the lives of the patients of this or
that physician. In the course of a generation, more or less, physicians
themselves are liable to get tired of a practice which has so little
effect upon the average movement of vital decomposition. Then they are
ready for a change, even if it were back again to a method which has
already been tried, and found wanting.
Our practitioners, or many of them, have got back to the ways of old Dr.
Samuel Danforth, who, as it is well known, had strong objections to the
use of the lancet.
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