Dana, describing the avidity
with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of
fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to
their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is
often a return to nature, and seen in this single instance the germ of
innumerable beneficent future medical reforms.
I cannot help believing that medical curative treatment will by and by
resolve itself in great measure into modifications of the food, swallowed
and breathed, and of the natural stimuli, and that less will be expected
from specifics and noxious disturbing agents, either alien or
assimilable. The noted mineral-waters containing iron, sulphur, carbonic
acid, supply nutritious or stimulating materials to the body as much as
phosphate of lime and ammoniacal compounds do to the cereal plants. The
effects of a milk and vegetable diet, of gluten bread in diabetes, of
cod-liver oil in phthisis, even of such audacious innovations as the
water-cure and the grape-cure, are only hints of what will be
accomplished when we have learned to discover what organic elements are
deficient or in excess in a case of chronic disease, and the best way of
correcting the abnormal condition, just as an agriculturist ascertains
the wants of his crops and modifies the composition of his soil. In
acute febrile diseases we have long ago discovered that far above all
drug-medication is the use of mild liquid diet in the period of
excitement, and of stimulant and nutritious food in that of exhaustion.
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