By R.del Mas. D.,M.D., Hugo , Minn. Before the great war broke out, Prof.Albert Robin, of the medical faculty of Paris, France,wrote:”Drugs act or cure through dynamism and not through their masses.” If the cure by cure by dynamic, is the cause of disease, outside of trauma, material? The statement of Robin i a negative answer to the question.
The green theory is a theory that suits and fits the mind unable to enter the realm of abstractions. The world is till waiting for the scientist who will disprove the assertion that germs are the results and not the causes of diseases; and it is for him to disprove it. The products of disease, when innoculated in some form or other, will undoubtedly given rise to the disease they were associated with. But, asserting that, in disease,nature duplicates the experiments of the laboratory; is merely assuming facts which only a highly developed imagination could invent.
We are wont to believe and teach diphtheria and scarletina, phthisis and smallpox come from such individuals as have such diseases. I pray the scientists to prove peremptorily how the first case of any contagious disease originated in the world. And, since the first case of diphtheria,for instance in a human being or an animal had no predecessor from which to catch it, the world of reason wants to know how it developed. But, if the first case diphtheria under the sun arose spontaneously, without and previous focus of contagion, why should not, today, one and all cases of diphtheria arise up the same way? Why?
The disease called rheumatism is now taught to be due to the streptococcus. The laboratory has proceed rheumatic manifestations in animals in which the streptococcus had been injected.
The experiment was patent proof for the simpleton that the disease in man could only develop in such parts of his anatomy where in the streptococcus was a work., It never occurred to him that disease, in general, could arise only from disharmony in that intelligent, conscientious and orderly principle of energy that presides over the historical match of man in utero, and tends to his preservation 3ex utero.
No, the materialist could not perceive the dynamis that gives expression of life physiological and life pathological, of order and disorder, of health and disease. And, naturally, Prof. Robins view of the dynamis of the drug that cures is also something to laugh at, or ignore, by the medical man or the scientist whose organs of sense were reticulated by the palmist long before the dawn of the twentieth century.
Accepting the view of the materialistic scientist , that the streptococcus alone accounts for the existence of rheumatic affections, we beg leave to ask him for an explanation of the following clinical facts. And the explanation must not have even the suspicion of a surmise.
In our practice, we have found rheumatism attacking only the right or the left side of the body, or the lower of the upper extremities; and the affection in some cases ascended or descended, or travelled from right to left or left to right; in other cases, it alternated sides altogether.
We have seen rheumatism present only in the night; constant in the parts, or wandering and shifting;cases suffering only in dry, others in wet whether; many relieved by motion,and many by remaining motionless,and others, neither by et nor motion; some were dry and others sweating with fever; some chilly and others warm; a few whose pains were always relieved by plunging the affected limb in icy-cold water; many unrelieved and some relieved by perspiration; sick individuals with high fever and thirstless, while others were thirsty;and the thirstless one had a dry mouth, sometimes; the thirsty one sometimes drank large, could drinks that were vomited as soon as they became warm in the stomach; at times, patients were soon as they became warm in the stomach; at times, patients were found who only sipped down their drinks, either warm or cold; cases that were nauseated from the odor of cooking others , with the desire for stool; some were angry and uncivil,and others indifferent with the pains;some were dizzy while lying,others while sitting; some wanted their food warm, and others cold; some craved acids, and others, sweets some wanted company and others wished to be alone; a few craved smoked things and others aggravated when lying on, or moving,the affected parts; some had their pains only in the spring, others, only in the fall, others, only in the winter, others, only in the summer, and many, in all the seasons.
We have seen rheumatics come down periodically at the new moon and others, at the waning of the moon; others whenever the weather chanted from cold to warm, and others, only before a storm or when a cold spell was coming on. Some arthritic headaches had also a periodical character,and developed every third, every seventh,or every thirtieth day. Cases were affected only on clear, and others, in cloudy days. to some, sleep brought an aggravation of suffering, while others felt so much better after sleep. the remember a case of sciatica worse at 3 A.M., another,, at 6 P.M., another perfectly relieved when lying, and another, worse all night and when lying, but relieved if in constant motion.
The two cases that were, one worse at 3 A.M. and the other better when walking, had their left sciatica affected and, of the two patients. one was warm-blooded and the other cold-blooded. Both sciaticas,the one better when lying and the other worse at 6 P.M., were right-sided. We treated once a left sciatica that was perfectly well as long as the patient lay on the affected limb. Another one,a left-sided one also, with contractions, that could not stand without feeling worse, but found relief in walking. Lately, a woman past the menopause, had pains in her arms, following from the dorsum of the middle fingers up to the shoulders. Her pains were worse in bed, and better when letting charms hand down alongside the bed. Her soles were quite painful only in the morning, on beginning to walk. After walking awhile they were well until next morning. That woman, sometimes before, had passed rain calculi.
We will stop here, mentioning the variations in the characteristic symptoms of the several cases of rheumatism that have come under our cure. We will simply confess that we are a Missourian to believe that the streptococcus was the cause of the rheumatism we treated. Being open to conviction, we beg of the scientists to show us we are wrong.
We wish to know whey the streptococcus does not act constantly and in all the rheumatics in the same way. For instance,why should it give one a dull, and another, a stitching pain? Why does it attack some only before a storm, others at 3 A.M., others at 9 P.M., others at 6 P.M. Shy is it fitting and wandering in one,and steady and localized in the other, and why does it alternate sides in a few? Is there any scientific or rather reasonable, explanation for the streptococcus to be able to attack James only in dry weather,while most of us fall prey to it in wet weather?
When Mrs. Smith seeks relief in a cold bath, and keeps her rheumatic joints as wait as possible, while her son is worse from rest and better from motion, and wants heat applied to his sick joints, kindly tell me, is there any thing in your slides that accounts for it? When a rheumatic with fever and a wet mouth tells us he is thirty,we are surprised; but, if his mouth is dry and yet he never asks for a drink, well,then we are dumb founded. And we area so,we supposed,because we because that streptococci are not the cause of their afflictions. Had we a stronger mind of that type that believes everything pone hears said,why, it would be like a second nature for us t belong to the universal choir of such splendid songsters who, on the stage of medical science, learned how to sing so well the delightful chorus, “Amen”.
Making the streptococcus or any material object the scapegoat for all the rheumatic trouble s human flesh is heir only lead to one line of treatment fore the disease,and leave nothing for the patient. We all know the, salicylates as a “specific,” the mud bath as a :specific” the electric current as a “specific,” the phylacogens as a “specific for rheumatism. Al;l; those specifics” are, or were,but fads of enthusiastic optimism, that will be followed by other fads for flex the rheumatic victim.
And the medical man who follows fads and can sing well the chorus, “Amen,” never stopped to think that truth along is stable, and unchangeable,and that a therapy that varies as often as the weather-cock turns of the near by steeple is necessarily based upon erroneous principles of etiology. It is strictly establish upon the opinion of man and not the principles of truth. This is what ye should call medical charlatanism, or euphemistically, medical empiricism. But, from quarter where the verses are sung,and to which the “Amen” sempiternally responds, we are told with an air of undaunted authority, which is but arrogance, effrontery and ignorance:” This is truly medical progress.” Such a progress is no credit to the human mind.
