THE MEDICINE MEN.

Shannon News, 4 September 1925, Page 4

THE MEDICINE MEN.

JPKOTICST AGAINST DOCTOIRS' DOGMATISM DISEASE DECREASING—BUT WHY? A host of doctors from the United States and Canada has descended on our shores, and in the intervals between meals they will attend' lectures and hospital demonstrations and hold conferences (writes Herbert Sidebotham, in the 'Sunday Chronicle*). Very properly these distinguished men have been welcomed by Royalty, for we owe much gratitude to our doctors, and it is to be hoped never owe them anythiug else. The chief difference between American doctors and our own is that they may advertise, provided they pay for' their advertisement, whereas our own may only advertise provided their advertisements are called articles and they get paid for them. The difference shows that the medical trade union is stronger here than in America, but when they all get together the only apparent difference between them will be in their tailoring. Let us hope that they will have an instructive and enjoyable time here. IModei'u Triumiilis Doctors are in very high repute in these days. The biggest war in history was in its freedom from disease a triumph for the doctors as it was a discredit for the generals for their extravagant exposure of human bodies to flying steel. Another sign of thenrising prestige is that a department of Government which used to be called the Local Government Board has become the Ministry of Health. Undoubtedly medicine has made more rapid progress in the last forty years than it did in the previous 2,000 years and more. One does not grudge doctors their growing reputation and influence. But as a class they lack the crown of virtues which is modesty, and it is in the hope that they may assume it that it is proposed in the rest of this article to avert one's eye from their virtues and to concentrate on their faults. The G.P. Humbug. Doctors belong to one of three classes, of which the first are called general practioners. These are the men who never fail to cure us of diseases from which we should have got better anyhow. They put us to bed, and give Nature and the nurse a chance; they givo us pills and nasty coloured drinkisi; they cultivate a good bedside manner, at once authoritarian and sympathetic; and in convalescence and rude health they are delightful companions. Of necessity the G.P. has to be something of a humbug. Diagnosis is the most difficult thing in the world, and if a family doctor gave/to every case out of the ordinary the time that an absolutely correct diagnosis requires he would earn the stipend of a curate. Fortunately, as he knows very well, Nature does the cure in most cases. There are only about twenty drugs that matter, and for the rest the family doctor's art is not so much to do anything as to make the patienr and his relatives think that he is doing something. It is faith-healing and witchcraft, and as the family doctor grow,s older iuid older the bedside manner 'grows mellower and the science withers. He would often like to say that he doesn't understand; but to say that would be to suspend the faith cure

and the mumbo-jumbo. So much lor the G.P. The second class is the specialists, who spend all their life studying one organ of the human body, and, provided that the

malady is allocated to the right organ these are the men in whom the lamp of science burns steadily to the end.

, There ought to be more of them, and | the sound development of the medical •' art would make recourse to them the i rule in every case which presented the slightest doubt. The difficulty m their case, how-

ever, is that they tend to forget the ! man, in his disease. If the doctor ! specialises in throats the patient is a | throat and has no other organs; if in ! spines, he is all spine and no stomach, Jif in stomachs, all stomach and no | spine. And woe betide the man j whose real trouble is his liver and ' who gets into the hands of a brain 1 specialist! There is a kind of speciali ist who wants to cut a man's head ; off because he has toothache. Guesswork. j Ocv third class is the public medicine man. These people treat not the J particular case, but every one at j once. They prescribe for the million, I and lay down universal laws which they change every month. ' It is true of doctors generally that ' even when they are most learned they I are the most unphilosophical of men. i Their business is what is taking- place | behind the walls of the body, and as j they cannot see through they have to ! guess. It is bad enough guessing in ! a particular case, but when you are j guessing at a law that applies to ! everyone the results are ludicrous. I The whole history of medicine is an - untidy litter of fads, taken up rashly lon insufficient evidence, and with a I complete absence of philosophy and I discarded . with equal suddenness. j These medicine men do not even conline themselves to purely physical facts, but encroach on the depart- ; ments of morals, of dress, of minor ! habits, on any of which they are alj wayis ready to provide us with an ; anarchy of inconsistent generallsaj tions. There ar e doctors who, if they l had their way, would substitute a tyranny of a medical council for the ordinary government of the country. Politician Or Nurse. Two thoughts may be submitted aa a corrective to the unphilosophic dogmatism and arrogance of rnediI cine. It is pointed out that the ex- ' pectation of life hae increased in late ' years; it is, in fact, as Mr. Churchill pointed out in his Budget speech,

adding enormously to the cost of old age pensions. Certain diseases, like tuberculosis, are on the decline, ana many diseases, like diphtheria, formerly deadly, are now regularly cured; and medical science, not wholly without specious reason, is claiming the credit for it. But so does the family doctor for the cure which the patient and the nursebetween them haVe effected. \

The poor, despised politician is the nurse in this case . His patient lives longer, thanks not so much to the progress of medical science, but to the happier life that he leads, his better housing, his greater opportunities of relaxation, and a hundred other causes for which the politician must claim the credit.

And may there not be a fallacy in some of the alleged triumphs of science over disease? The human body has the power of acquiring immunity from certain diseases, and even of passing on immunity to the next generation. Balance of Power. When measles first appears in a community it carries off the young wholesale. Last generation people regarded measles as no more serious than a cold in the head, but now it is again dangerous. So with scarlet fever now slight, formerly very serious. The virulence of disease seems to turn in cycles of fashion. As tuberculosis diminishes cancer increases; smallpox and plague have gone, but a new enemy is on the horizon in the mysterious sleepy sickness. la it possible that diseases fight each other—that there is some mysterious balance of power In bacteria and microbes with which it be dangerous to interfere, and that to get rid of one enemy is only to increase the power of another?

How little" the wisest know after all? It is no reproach to the doctors that we know so little; but it is a rebuke to conceit and arrogance, a plea for less dogmatism .more modesty, and more philosophy.