. Medical essays, 1842-1882. nt and which you cannot cure ? An oldwoman who knows how to make a poidtice and how toput it on, and does it tuto, cito, jucunde, just whenand where it is wanted, is better, — a thousand timesbetter in many cases, — than a staring pathologist, whoexplores and thumps and doubts and guesses, and tellshis patient he will be better to-morrow, and so goeshome to tumble his books over and make out a dia<r- o nosis. But in those days, I, like most of my fellow students,was thinking much more of science than of prac-tical medicine, and I believe if we had not cluiiff so
. Medical essays, 1842-1882. nt and which you cannot cure ? An oldwoman who knows how to make a poidtice and how toput it on, and does it tuto, cito, jucunde, just whenand where it is wanted, is better, — a thousand timesbetter in many cases, — than a staring pathologist, whoexplores and thumps and doubts and guesses, and tellshis patient he will be better to-morrow, and so goeshome to tumble his books over and make out a dia<r- o nosis. But in those days, I, like most of my fellow students,was thinking much more of science than of prac-tical medicine, and I believe if we had not cluiiff so o closely to the skirts of Louis and had followed someof the courses of men like Trousseau, — therapeutists,who gave special attention to curative methods, andnot chiefly to diagnosis, - - it would have been betterfor me and others. One thing, at any rate, we didlearn in the wards of Louis. We learned that a verylarge proportion of diseases get well of themselves,without any special medication, — the great fact for-. SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS. 435 mulated, enforced, and popularized by Dr. Jacob Big-elow in the Discourse referred to. We wwlearned thehabit of drugging for its own sake. This detestablepractice, which I was almost proscribed for condemn-ing somewhat too epigrammatically a little more thantwenty years ago, came to us, I suspect, in a consider-able measure from the English general practition-ers, a sort of prescribing apothecaries. You remem-ber how, when the city was besieged, each artisan whowas called upon in council to suggest the best meansof defence recommended the articles he dealt in : thecarpenter, wood; the blacksmith, iron; the mason,brick; until it came to be a puzzle to know winch toadopt. Then the shoemaker said, Hang your ivalls with new boots, and gave good reasons why these should be the best ofall possible defences. Now the general practitioner 3harged, as I understand, for his medicine, and in thatway got paid for his visit. Wherever this
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade189, booksubjectmedicine, bookyear1895
