For the present I have no concern with these arguments, sound as they are. My own conviction is that the study of human physiology by way of experiments of animals is the most grotesque and fantastic error ever committed in the whole range of human intellectual activity. And like all such errors, it is defended by its adherents, either by an arrogant and muddle-headed fanaticism , or a cantankerous petulance. Yet these are presented to the student as an altruistic and open-minded zeal for truth.
The fact is that most students, thought they do not realize it, are intellectually crippled for life if once they are persuaded to take more than a perfunctory interest in physiology as taught in the formal medical curriculum. One of the saddest things one can see is the spectacle of a medical student otherwise kindly, reasonable and sensible, passionately defending experiments upon animals because his teacher, financially interested in such experiments, use their positions and personalities to impress their perversion on him.
Unhappily the impressed perversion often persists through life and one occasionally reads of the ludicrous and pathetic spectacle of elderly laymen, not knowing what they say, repeating the platitudes taught them as science students in defence of the mutilation of animals”.
“If at the conclusion of his clinical years the students finds that interest in original research has survived in him after his studies (by approved experimental methods) in orthodox physiology, he may respectfully enquire from his clinical teachers as to fruitful lines of research.
Nine times out of ten he is directed along lines involving experiments upon animals, partly because his teachers know no better, partly because financial grants are available from public funds for this sort of work, and partly because such study is conventional, respectable, easy, convenient and hallow by an attractive aura of mystery. Alas ! that it should be so”.
I believe that medical men who are sincerely striving for improvement in medical education should seek allies among the lay public. There are hosts of individuals in the learned professions who are by no means unaware of the shortcomings of medical knowledge, and the crippling effect which a medical education has upon an average student. I believe such individuals mostly in law and the Church would prove valuable allies in a public campaign to eradicate from medical education all that is worthless and unworthy”.
The heads of medical students are crammed to bursting point with abstract notions, while practical matters are neglected. Young medical men who have passed all their examinations can talk learnedly on countless irrelevant subjects, but they may not be able to give commonsense advice on diet, help a woman in childbirth, use the catheter, give an enema, set a broken limb, or do simple bandaging.
Thousands of general practitioners do not know the practical rudiments of the medical art. Panel doctors often give to serious cases a minute or two, doing the shoddiest of shoddy work. The terrible realities of the position may be learned from a book. This Panel Business, by A.G.P., just published by John Bale, Sons & Danielsson.
After five years of study, medical students can talk “scientifically”. They have learned to call stomach pain gastrodynia, bed-wetting enuresis nocturna, etc., but what about the all-important matter of treatment ? Medical men are taught like parrots for rheumatism give salicylates, for fever give quinine, for heart disease give digitalis, etc.
If they have correctly diagnosed a disease half the diagnose are incorrect they are able to give the “specific”, although heart disease may be due to a faulty diet, constipation, etc. In many cases doctors perfunctorily prescribe a laxative, a tonic, a sedative or a mixture of them, and if the patient is no better, he may be advised to have all his teeth pulled out without need, or he is sent to the hospital or to the surgeon, or his secretion and excretions are sent to the laboratory and he may be treated “scientifically” with unsuitable injections.
And the most amazing thing is that men whose brains have been filled with useless knowledge and who know next to nothing about the art of healing, treat with contempt all the unorthodox healers, homoeopaths, osteopaths, etc., who have studied principally the art of healing and who succeed when orthodox had failed. The public is becoming more and more disgusted with orthodox medicine. The education of budding medical men is disastrous.
Sir Herbert Barker, the famous manipulating surgeon, has given back their health to thousand of people who had been declared “absolutely incurable” by the foremost physicians and surgeons. Men and women who had been dependent on crutches for decades were set going by him in a few minutes.
Yet this great genius has been maligned for decades and he has never been allowed to demonstrate his methods to the profession. He has not been allowed to work at a hospital, being treatment as a despicable quack to the shame of the profession. Dr. Axham, who helped him in his wonderful work by giving his patients anaesthetics, was expelled from the profession in disgrace. He pleaded in his extreme old age for reinstatement. His prayers remained unheard, even when on the point of dying and he was allowed to die with the seal of infamy pressed upon him.
No doctor attended his funeral except Sir Arbuthnot Lane. Needless to say Sir Herbert Barker is not the only layman who has been able to cure countless cases which were declared incurable by leading doctors and surgeons. It is high time that an adequate status was given to osteopaths and other unorthodox healers who have proved their ability by their successes. Germany has furnished a precedent which must earlier or later be followed in this country.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.