With twenty years of practice back of us, conforming the experience of others, we hold it to be a truth that the treatment or the drug for rheumatism must vary according to the symptoms which are characteristic of the sick,and not diagnostic or characteristic of the disease; that such treatment never will fail to bring satisfactory results to the patient and the doctor,and that any other treatment is erroneous and harmful. Any medical man who contents he has a panacea,a serum,or a drug, or even half dozen of drugs that will meet one and all cases of romantic complaints, is a dangerous optimize who should be put in a straight jacket or a penitentiary for life. Our assertions were not based on dreams and vagaries, but on hard forceful, clinical facts gathered at the bedside or in the office; and we are ready to prove them to be true.
The true that covers the idiosyncrasies or characteristics of the patient will,cure every time. A sciatica well vanish in a warm-blooded individual whose aggravates are in the night-also,when lying, and especially when lying on the painful side; and whose ameliorations came from flexing the leg, from motion and from walking; it will vanish under Potassium iodide. But, Potassium Carbonate will cure the case who pains are always worse at 3 A.M., and also when lying on the painful side,or when moving. Valeriana will handful the trouble if the patient can neither stand nor sit, but lies with the leg flexed, or walks for relief.
When the patient lies still, motionless,and on the painful side, he either calls for Bryonia,or Colocynth;for Colocynth, if the pains are associated with numbness,and better with the leg flexed on the abdomen. He know of more than 100 different drugs that will cure and have cured sciatica and rheumatism; but each drug has only its sphere of action which answers to the characteristics of the patient. Where Rhus toxicodendron is needed we feel satisfied that ammonium chloride,magnesium phosphate,or and other drug cold not control the case. It is with drugs as with shoes, were this will fit, the other will hurt. To advocate a drug, or a treatment for one or all cases of rheumatic diseases would be like having but one size of garments to dress all men, women,and children in the world.
And yet, we re convinced that one standard suit of clothes for all human beings would fit them better, and be of more service to them,then any new, or old, and supposedly wonderful remedy or treatment which blind optimism or selfish wonderful service to them, than any new,or old, ad supposedly wonderful remedy or treatment which blind optimism or selfish enthusiasm and scientific foolery advocate for the cure of any disease. Each and every drug has its own range of action,which cannot be stretched by imagination, by boards of health regulations to state that a compound pill or a mixture is but an irrefutable proof of medical ignorance of drug action. Familiarity with drug action necessarily leads the practitioners to prescribe but one single drug at a time. Ignorance only needs the crutches of adjuvants or corrective.
Empiricism alone ever prescribed by “guess and by God.” But, in order to becomes a sound therapeutist, one must know the full range of action of nearly one thousand drugs. Each patient needs only on drug at a time and the drug he needs is that which covers his own characteristics, plus the characteristic or diagnostic symptoms of his disease. We have to veer about entirely,and face in and others direction., If we want to see therapeutics established on the sound basis , whether in handling rheumatic cases of any other cases. On treating rheumatics we must know more about the patient than about his disease. Every sick individual is a personality different from any other personality; and each patient, from derangements in the innermost of his life, stamps his rheumatism, and makes it all;of together different from the next or.
They the pains are relieved by could in one,and by warmth in the pains are relieved by cold in one, and by warmth in the other;l by motion in this and by rest in that one; why one is thirstless with fever, while the other only sips his water, or drinks large cold drinks often; why one is worse at 9 P.M. , another one, at 3A.M. a third one, every other night; a fourth one, every seventh day; and a fifth one, only in dry weather,or at the waning of the ,moon, is something our clever scientists cannot see with their prolonged light and magnifying lenses. But it is al quite clear to him who can see that no two faces,no two blades of grass, no two leaves in the forest, and no two grains of sand on the ocean;s shores, and alike. Only supreme folly or conceited ignorance could conceive standardized treatments as ready-cut garments for him who, even in disease,is so full of surprises.
Man is not the cell we see and weigh, but the power behind,and with it, that sets it into intelligent activity. The eye that cannot seethe dynamis of the human cell was never given the judgment to select the force that will re-establish order and health where disorder and disease exists. The therapeutists who sees only patients and no disease,along is worthy of being called a physician.
