The morphine, strychnia, and digitalis with which he had been handicapped were all discontinued at once, and he was given a half-pint of concentrated Pluto water through a stomach tube, placed on the bed-pan, repeated enemas of tepid water containing bicarbonate of soda given, and, also through the stomach tube, a pint of hot water was given containing a heaping teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda. Within fifteen minutes the hiccoughs had disappeared and breathing was regular, though very rapid.
The cyanosis was gone, his skin becoming pale, and his bowels were already running off copiously. In two hours I told the family that he was out of danger, and went home for some sleep.
Next morning when I arrived he grinned at me and stuck out his hand when I approached his bed, and said he felt fine.
In four days he was sitting up in bed signing his payroll and making out cheques, still without the slightest desire for food, so taking nothing. He had no desire for food until the eighth day, when he wanted buttermilk, and was given this just as the desire called for it, followed gradually by other foods as desire pointed the way, with no interruption to his recovery, and followed by the best health that he had enjoyed since a young man.
Other cases apparently as near death were saved in the same simple manner, not by doing some heroic deed to prevent the impending death, but simply by relieving the body of much of its burden of intoxication quickly, with fuller reliance on the healing-powers of nature to restore a sick body to health if the impediments to this are removed.
If detoxication could change such a picture as the one just recited, and so quickly change this, does it not seem good presumptive evidence that in the absence of this intoxication the crisis in health would never have occurred? Surely when nothing is done except to remove the obstacle of intoxication, such a recovery could not be credited to anything except the bodys inherent ability to readjust its internal affairs to the normal if given opportunity.
Just as surely, the means usually employed in pneumonia bear no relation to detoxication, but ignore the need for this and concentrate the attention on keeping up the nourishment, supporting the vitality with stimulants, and the giving of such supposed remedies as seem to be indicated by the symptoms present.
Not one of the measures can add one jot or little to the inherent vitality of the body, nor are there means of any kind that can do so. This vitality is inherent in the body, and is sufficient for any crisis if the obstacles to recovery are removed; and in the very last analysis this is all that is humanly possible to do in any case of severe crisis, whether this be pneumonia or anything else.
The best treatment for pneumonia is to keep the body from becoming so toxic that such crisis is never necessary, a thing that can be done so easily that it is not believed.
When the body is relieved of the excess intoxication by any acute crisis, such as pneumonia, the after-condition is much better than before the crisis became necessary, but the usual effort to increase the strength by food, to support the body, to stimulate it to greater appearance and sensation of strength, is to handicap its best efforts to adjust its affairs to the normal, and in view of the usual treatment of pneumonia it is not strange that this disease stands first in the post-holiday season as a cause of death.
This never would be so if the body were prevented from becoming so toxic, nor would it be true even if this were not the case, if treatment were aimed at detoxication rather than the support of failing vitality in the face of too great an intoxication.
A few years ago a Pittsburgh patient called me from New York, telling me that his wife had been rushed into one of the Pittsburgh hospitals and was under preparation for removal of the appendix next day.
He begged me to go to Pittsburgh on the night train and stop the operation, as he was unalterably opposed to it.
This was rather a tall order, but I met him at the hospital next morning, and we went to call on the surgeon who was to do the operation at two oclock in the afternoon.
This man was very chilly when approached on the subject of the operation, as he had fixed the case for two oclock that afternoon, and his judgment for the necessity for the operation was of course above question.
He completely discounted the objections of the husband, who was a mere layman who could not know anything about appendicitis, of course.
When I questioned the necessity for the operation, and showed him from the hospitals own laboratory report of that morning that the recovery was already quite complete and nothing remained but the nausea from the large dose of morphine given her the night before, he lost his temper completely, threatened bodily harm to humble me, and put on the head of the devoted husband all responsibility for his wifes predicted death if the operation did not occur on scheduled time.
The husband accepted the responsibility and elected not to have the operation performed, but brought his wife to Buffalo, where I then was, and a few days later she returned to her home with no evidence of the recent attack.
The surgeon had notified the husband that he must have the cheque for fifteen hundred dollars in his hand before the patient went on the table for the operation that might kill or cripple her, in either of which contingencies the surgeon would at least have his fee, a noble arrangement that is far too often insisted on by many surgeons.
Not only so, but many extremely careful operators further secure themselves by requiring the family to sign a wavier before the operation is performed, so that in the event of death or accident, the doctor is well protected. Such contract is scarcely bi-lateral, surely, and give the signer nothing, while the surgeon gets everything.
If the operation can be shown to be necessary, and the operator is known to be skilful, why should such precaution be necessary?.
The operation is not necessary, and the surgeon is not at all sure of his surgical reputation, or he would never condescend to such an arrangement.
Medicine has always taught pathology, stressed pathology, ignored the fundamentals of health in favour of disease, because medicine is an institution for the treatment of disease only.
Yet after centuries of advertised progress we have more disease to-day than ever before, more different types of disease, more disability, more people in uncertain health, more degenerative conditions.
