Another from of antipathogenic therapy is the use of parasiticides. These are substances used to destroy, parasites. For example, the use of the oleoresin of the male fern to destroy tapeworms or thymol to kill hookworms. Then there are substances that when applied locally will destroy various parasites and organism and fungi that involve the skin or the mucous membrane of the mouth or the vagina and so forth. These are antipathogens because they attack the cause of the disease.
From what has been said you can see that when you are confronted with a patient, the first thought to come into your mind should not be what is the indicated homoeopathic remedy, but “what kind of drug therapy does this patient need”? Does he need a palliative to relieve his symptoms, or does he need a substance that will attack the cause of disease ? He may need both. A man with a boil on his neck may need a sedative to relieve the pain; he may need a parasiticide to destroy some of the organism; and he may require another-method of therapy, namely, surgery, that the boil may be incised and the pus drained from it.
In addition to various methods of drug therapy, the modern physician must use a great many other forms of therapy. For example, he must use surgery-mechanical removal of defects, and so forth. The boy with the sand-burr in his nose did not need medicine. He needed surgical removal of the sand-burr. We recognize that surgery plays a very important part in modern therapy.
Then we have dietetics–the treatment of disease by certain types of diet. This is an important method of therapy in the treatment of diabetes, of gout, of various metabolic diseases, tuberculosis and so forth. I might also mention electrotherapy, phototherapy, radiotherapy, hydrotherapy, massage, osteopathy and psychotherapy.
Time does not permit a detailed discussion of all of these methods, each of value in their special sphere, but I wish to say a few words in regard to psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy is the oldest method of treatment known to man. It is, of course, the common method of treatment in vogue among quacks; and the reason quacks use it is because it works. As an example of the simplest form of psychotherapy, I might cite the case of a child who falls down and bumps his head. He begins to cry, and mother picks him up and says, “Where did you hurt yourself, Johnny ?”
“Right here on the head.” “All right, mother will kiss it and make it well.” That is a form of psychotherapy known as suggestion. I believe it was DuBois who said that homoeopathy is suggestion plus sugar pills; that allopathy is suggestion plus nauseating drugs; electrotherapy is suggestion plus funny noises, and osteopathy is suggestion plus rubbing your back.
Now we dont altogether agree with him, but in all these methods the element of suggestion is important and a well trained doctor should be familiar with scientific methods of psychotherapy. There is no question about its value and if scientifically and properly applied, it is one of the most efficient methods of therapy we have today.
Some of you who read the Sunday papers may have seen an article recently in the New York Times, in which a prominent, psychotherapeutist said, “Fear and worry produce more disease than bacteria.” I think there is a very great deal to substantiate that statement. Certainly emotional conflicts produce as much disease as bacteria and such conditions cant be cured by the use of surgery or of drugs. Psychotherapeutic methods are necessary to overcome the bad effects of worry and of fear, of which so many people are the victims.
Sometimes ago, I went to see an old lady and gentleman and found both of them huddled up in a little room because they had red in the paper that Hitler was about to bomb Philadelphia. They were in pretty bad shape. They had lost their appetites; they couldnt sleep, and when I told them that Hitler had decided he wasnt coming for a while and that the polar bears from Greenland would probably be down here before Hitler, they felt better and decided to go out and sit on the porch in the sun.
Psychotherapy is a subject to which every student of medicine should give more attention. The majority of recent graduates who go out to practice medicine have no idea whatever of psychotherapy unless they happen to pick it up as a result of their own intuition, and it takes a long while to find these things out by intuition, whereas proper information in regard to such psychotherapeutic methods as suggestion, explanation and re- education will enable you to make rapid progress in this field.
Whenever you see a doctor with a large practice, you can be sure that he is a good psychotherapeutist even though his knowledge of the science of medicine may be extremely small.
A young doctor came to me sometimes ago and said, “I have been in practice now for three years, but I cant make my office rent. Up the street there is a man whose office is so full of patients that many of them have to sit out on the porch. They cant all get in and yet I know a great deal more about medicine than he does.” I said, “That may be true. How do you account for it ?”
He said, “He just laughed himself into a practice.” I replied, “Thats fortunate for you, because he has no patent on that, and Ill give you some Biblical advice–Go thou and do likewise. If you think it is possible to laugh yourself into a practice, for heavens sake go ahead and do it ! Nobody will stop you”.
