Physician, heal thyself. It seems but just, that those who profess to cure the diseases of others, should, as a pledge of their capacity, be able to preserve themselves, and families, from the ravages of them. But how few are able to give this pledge!
Practitioners in medicine, are neither more remarkable for longevity, nor for producing or rearing a more healthy, or a more numerous progeny, than those who are out of the pale of the profession. This, however, does not arise from the fault of the physician, but from the imperfection of the art ; for though there is no branch of science that has been cultivated with more diligence, than this of medicine, or that has had the advantage of being practiced by men of greater genius, abilities, and learning, or who have labored with greater industry, perseverance, and zeal, to bring it to perfection; yet they have been so far from attaining their object, that there are many diseases, and among them, some of the most frequent, formidable, and fatal, for which no adequate, or successful methods of treatment, have been discovered.
The treatment of rheumatism is at this time as various, unsettled, and generally as inefficient, as it was 2000 years ago ; and although so many volumes have been written on asthma, and consumption, it is to be lamented that no satisfactory proof can be given, that either of them were ever cured by medicine. Much might, perhaps, be clone towards the improvement of the practice, if physicians would follow the model which the late Dr. Heberden has left them in his Commentaries ; in my judgment, one of the best books which this, or any other age, or country, has produced on the subject.
The College of Physicians have done something towards leading practitioners to this mode, by abolishing the vain titles heretofore given to drugs and compositions, attributing to them qualities which experience by no means warrants us in believing they possess. But even in the complaints mentioned above, and many more might be added, the physician may be often able to give directions that may retard their progress, and enable the patient to pass his life with some degree of comfort; and he who limits his endeavors to procuring these advantages, will well deserve their grateful acknowledgments, he will also escape the censures so frequently thrown on the professors of the art.
“Turba medicorum perii,” a multitude of physicians have destroyed me, was the inscription the Emperor Adrian ordered to be put upon his monument. It would be useless, perhaps in some degree mischievous, to recite the many sarcastic speeches that have been recorded to degrade the practice of medicine. The effect they should have, and which, indeed, they have had on the more judicious practitioners, is not, on every occasion, to load their patients with drugs, which, when not absolutely necessary, deserve a different name than that of medicines. With no great impropriety they may be called poisons; for, although they may not kill, yet if they nauseate, and destroy the tone of the stomach, and have the effect of checking and preventing the powers of the constitution in their efforts to expel the disease, they cannot fail of doing much mischief.
Baglivi, addressing himself to young practitioners, says, “Quam paucis remediis curantur morbi ! Quam pi u res e vita tollit remediorum farrago!” and Sydenham advises, in many cases, rather to trust to nature, it being a great error to imagine that every case requires the assistance of art.
It should be considered, that as there are some diseases for which medicine has not yet found out any cure, there are others for which no medicines are required, the constitution being of itself, or only aided by rest, and a simple and plain diet, sufficient to overcome them.
The French therefore say, with much good sense, “Un bouillon de choux fait perdre cinque sous au medecin,” a mess of broth hath lost the physician his fee. That this adage is ancient may be concluded from the smallness of the fee assigned to the doctor. The Undertaker, in the Funeral, or Grief a-la-mode, among his expenses, mentions ten pounds paid for a Treatise against Water-gruel, “a damned healthy slop, that has done his trade more mischief,” he says, ” than all the faculty.”
The Spaniards on this subject say, ” Al enfermo que es vida, el agua le es medicina,” the patient who is not destined to die, will need no other medicine than water : such is their opinion of the efficacy of abstinence.
” It is no less disgraceful,”” Plutarch says, ” to ask a physician, what is easy, and what is hard of digestion, and what will agree with the stomach, and what not, than it is to ask what is sweet, or bitter, or sour.” Our English adage, which is much to this purport, and with which I shall close this essay is, ” Every man is a fool or a physician, at forty.”