BY REV. H. WINSLOW. [For the Journal of Health.-Continued from page 100.] WHILE speaking of the physical causes of premature infirmity in this country, among the most prevalent and disastrous we notice the extraordinary use of medicines. How slow is the world to learn, that the tendency of all medicines is, not to life, but to death. The medicine was never found, and from the nature of the case never can be, which does not tend, so far as it has any effect, to weaken the vital principle and precipitate its victim down the hill of life. Every pill you swallow, every elixir you sip, is detracting from your constitutional vigor, and slily drawing the envious wrinkle over your fair skin. Consider that the very property which makes it a medicine- -a killer or exterminator of disease-makes it, at the same time and in the same degree, a killer or exterminator of the vital forces of your system. In precisely the degree in which calomel, jalup, ipecac., &c. make war on any disease in your system, do they make war on your system itself. If your system happen to hold out the longest, under the assault, you recover, but it is always at the expense of your constitution-always at the price of an earlier old age with its compassing infirmities. This is not saying that we should never take medicines ;-ours may be the choice of evils. Our condition may be such that if medicine does not kill us, disease will; and as disease would kill first, we may prudently take the alternative of a more lingering death. A person habitually compelled to take medicine, is like one who has money in the bank and is compelled to keep drawing on the capital. He may in this way linger along with gradually diminishing capital, but the final disaster is sure. The necessity for taking medicines may almost always be prevented, and when that dreadful necessity actually comes, the quantity and the deleterious influence of the medicine may be indefinably diminished. There is, in the benevolent arrangement of Providence, a vis medicatrix natura-a healing power of nature-which, left to itself, or aided only by some attention to diet and exercise, will usually work out a cure wherever a cure is possible. Probably the principal merit of the homœopathic practice, if any merit it have, lies in its abandonment of all medicines, except in so small doses as to do no harm; thus leaving nature unembarrassed to perform her cure. Nor does this view militate against the importance of medical advice and direction in cases of disease. It affords the strongest of reasons why, in all cases of serious disease, the advice of thoroughly scientific practitioners should be resorted to, instead of blind, hap-hazard dosing. It is far from the first-I had almost said it is quite the last-business of the physician, to prescribe medicines. To make the patient or his friends acquainted with the nature of his disease, to put him on the right course of regimen, to keep him informed of the progress of his malady, to afford those alleviations and aids to nature which facilitate her efforts to effect a cure, and, not least, to guard the patient against self-destruction by a resort to quackery-these are objects sufficiently worthy of the highest order of consecrated talent. That a large portion of the medical faculty have hitherto dealt too freely with medicines, cannot be denied; that the more enlightened have materially changed their practice in this respect, is a token for purer health and longer life. If these views are just, let all marvelling at the premature old age of Americans cease, till our newspaper advertisements tell a different story. Had our forefathers seen a modern newspaper, teeming with its extravagant and ridiculous advertisements and puffs of patent and quack medicines, they would have been filled with amazement twice amazed. And the worst of it is, that these monstrous pretensions, these horrible falsehoods, are believed yes, believed and acted on, by perhaps three-fourths of our fellow citizens! It has been said that Americans are the most gullible people in the world :-it may be so:-but this passion for being duped and humbugged must not lay all its unenvied honors on American heads. It is among the universal fruits of fallen humanity. This, however, may be safely said, that there is no one particular in which Americans covet imposition more than in this. It is indeed surprising that Yankees, with their proverbial shrewdness on other subjects, are so stupid upon this. These patent and quack medicines, pretending to cure all the "ills that flesh is heir to," are actually purchased and taken from one end of the land to the other, with all the docility of the most undoubting faith. If all the elixirs, cordials, syrups, panaceas, &c. which are annually made and sold in this country, were collected in one body, they would make a pond large enough to sail a ship. If all the pills, powders, medicated lozenges, &c. were gathered into a heap, the pile would almost rival the Bunker Hill Monument. And yet all this amount of poison is actually crammed into the American stomach, as if to punish the poor sensitive creature for complaining of improper food, surfeits, and other abuses! Is it then strange that, growing up from infancy with such habits, we become old and enfeebled at an early age ? The jaded stomach loses its tone, the nervous system is prostrated, the bright blush of youthful health is gone forever, even before we reach the meridian of life. But what shall we say? Are all such pretensions at healing to be condemned? To say, yes, would not be very wide of the truth. But do not the venders of these medicines proclaim wonderful cures? Consider that the apparent cures are trumpeted over the land, while the thousand times as many failures, and ten thousand times as many instances of premature old age and debility occasioned by them, are buried in the grave of oblivion. In most cases where persons resort to such medicines, they are ashamed to have it known; and hence, in all cases of failure or injury, they keep it silent as the grave. Hogsheads of medicated liquids and tons of pills are taken weekly, by those who would be ashamed to let their left hand known what their right hand doeth. And, moreover, most of the cases of pretended cure are no real cure; although the credulous patient may fondly think otherwise. Follow him a few years-it may be a few months— and his disease re-appears, with more malignant forms, the less controllable for the prostration of his system by previous treatment. Had he previously exercised more prudence and patience, he might now have enjoyed a fairer promise of prolonged life and health. The writer of this article was once conversing with an aged lady, then ninety-five years of age, the mother of twelve children, whose step was still as firm and elastic as that of most women at fifty-she said she had never taken any medicine but once, and for that sin she expected to lose five years from the end of her life. When urged to take medicine, her reply was, that she had rather take her chance of dying by disease than by medicine. She was an ultraist, undoubtedly ;-but her ultraism turned to good account, for she lived to walk out and take a social cup of tea with her neighbors, apparently as young and happy as any mortal ought to be, when past her hundredth year. During her life time many an epidemic swept around her, like fire in dry stubble. Medicine takers fell before it like withered grass, but it found no susceptibilities in her uninjured constitution on which to take effect. But after all, we would vibrate to no extreme in either direction. That there are cases in which a little medicine, whose properties are thoroughly known, may be judiciously applied so as to aid nature in removing disease, there can be no doubt. The thing of which we complain, is the enormous abuse of this admission. Through the incredible credulity of the great mass of our community on this subject, youth, health, beauty, vigor, life, are brought into market and sold at the quack's board;-and a few are made rich at the price of the premature old age, disease, deformity, languor and death, of many millions. For the remedy. Let the public mind, if possible, be disabused. If parents are too old and obstinate in their folly to be corrected, let us begin with their children :—and especially with the daughters the future mothers and guardians of domestic health. Physiology should form a part of every young lady's study. No young lady is properly educated, till she understands the laws of life, and can avail herself of them in the most effective way to arrest disease and secure a long and healthful life to her own person, and to the children of whom she is destined to become the mother. She may thus become an angel of light to her household, both herself enjoying and teaching all around her to enjoy the gifts of Providence in the manner divinely intended. "Rectius occupat Nomen beati, qui deorum Callet." [To be continued.] BIBLICAL RULES OF HEALTH. We do not mean that the Bible was given, exclusively, to teach medical science, but, that among the other valuable things which this book contains, it gives us more correct medical knowledge, and is a better guide to health, than any other sys tem. More than this is claimed in behalf of this book, in respect to medical science, namely, that the greatest part of the correct principles by which the physician is guided in the Art of Healing, is laid down in the Bible. It is to be remembered that this book was not composed in a single age, nor by any one man. The period, from the time that Moses wrote the first book, till the apostle John wrote the last, was about 1600 years; and it was written by different classes of men. It was, moreover, designed, not for one particular age or nation, but for all nations throughout all time. We are then to recollect that its instructions are general, rather than particular, and designed for all, rather than the few. Having premised these general things, we shall now proceed to the physiological and medical principles and instructions laid down in the bible, as respects the preservation of health. 1. As the blood is more important than any other portion of the animal economy (if one part can be more important than another), we shall commence with that. Immediately after the flood, God informed Noah that "the life of the flesh was the blood." Noah was forbidden to eat the blood because it was the life of the flesh. The same is repeated again, and again, in the statutes given to Israel: "Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether of fowl, or of beast. Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people." Though the reason, originally assigned why they were not to eat the blood, is not repeated in all these cases, yet, undoubtedly, it remained the same as when given to Noah. The truth of this sentiment, to wit, that "the life of all flesh is the blood," has been alternately believed and denied from the days of Noah till about the year 1770, when Dr. John Hunter established it, as one would suppose, beyond all controversy. Though the passages in the bible refer more directly to the blood of animals and birds, yet that does not alter the case, as to its vitality, for, Dr. Hunter assures us, that "blood is much the same in all animals," and he tells us that by the "transfusion of the blood of one animal into the vessels of another, the uniform nature of the blood is proved; for, no alteration has been observed." That "the blood has life," says he, "is an opinion which I have taught for twenty years." His experiments in proof of this position, I need not repeat. It is sufficient to say that they are incontrovertible. But aside from these, one would readily suppose that the single, obvious fact, that all the muscles, bones, cartilages, &c., are formed from the blood, vivified and nourished by it, and decay and die without it, would be sufficient of itself, without any other evidence, to establish ns vnamy. |