MEDICAL FOLLIES.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 March 1926, Page 4

MEDICAL FOLLIES.

In the course of “ The Medical Follies,” Dr M. Fishbein, the author, quotes the following dictum of an American scientist; 11 Despite our remarkable advance of knowledge, nonsense is ever becoming bolder and more rampant; it is pre-eminently a time of fads and crazes.” Certainly this is true in the field o,f healing, or rather pseudo-healing. Never has there Imjou such a systematic exploitation of the ignorance and credulity of the public, In America, it appears, medical education used to be quite unregulated. There were institutions that would grant a diploma to anyone who would pav the few dollars required. That evil has been remedied, and now an American II.D. is a certificate of reasonable proficiency? But there are other ” schools ” and colleges which do not profess to give a medical training. and which have thus escaped control. They turn out the osteopaths, the chiro-practitioners. the health experts, and so forth, who are the object of Dr Fishbein's assault. Some of these gentry honestly believe in the efficacy of their methods; some are unscrupulous charlatans. It is all the same as far as their patrons arc concerned. Sometimes in nervous or hysterical cases a cure may result—great is the power of suggestion—hut in general their patients spend money and endure suffering to no purpose. The author deals faithfully with various impostures and fallacies “on the borderland of medicine.” with the Abrams Box. with the preposterous claims advanced oil behalf of the glayul treatment.

lie also creates a spear with the opponents of vivisection and animal experimentation. Space does not allow him to enlarge on the benefits for which this form of investigation has been re.->poiisible, but the test is a

very long one. Anyone, he says, who lias seen a child succumbing to diphtheria suddenly responds to the marvellous effects of diphtheria anti-toxin will resist to the utmost any attempt to deprive that child of the remedy. For t ile production of the serum horses, ami for its standardisation guinea pigs, are required. Neither seem to object. When the serum is withdrawn from the horse he makes “no more visible sign of protest than is made by tile average man when he sticks his finger on a oiii in the hack of his wile’s dress.” The author has seen guinea, pigs bv the thousands utilised for the work, and “if I am any judge of

guinea nig extractions they do not suffer unduly in the process. I have never seen a guinea pig suffer as much as an hvsterieal auti-vivisectioiiist

suffers at a dog and pony show or n circus.” The whole science of bacteriology, indeed, is ultimately founded upon • animal experimentation, and, asks the author, are the lives ot guinea pigs and rabbits to be weighed against human beings? Dr Fishbein waxes

indignant on occasion, but he writes with a great deal of chronic humour, and this book is both informative and entertaining. (Boni and AVright).