The limitations of internal therapeutics in skin diseases / by James C. White.

  • James Clarke White
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The limitations of internal therapeutics in skin diseases / by James C. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ^ simplicity. A most respected author states that there is no more reliable remedy in certain infantile dermatoses than some drug, which another distinguished dermatologist re- ports after prolonged trial to be valueless. Allowing for all possible variations in the action of these drugs, in the character of the disease, or the constitution of the patient, due to geographical or race differences, the chief cause of such diversity of opinion must be improper methods of experimentation or observation employed, or the unscientific or unreliable conclusions of the observers. So contradictory, so unsatisfactory must the therapeutics of our branch of medicine remain, until better methods of study are adopted and the faults of individualism eradicated from it. These elements of error,—the bias of early teachings, prejudices against particular schools, subserviency to mere theorizing with regard to the necessity of internal medica- tion, either popular or professional in its origin, an a priori scepticism which refuses all personal investigation, hasty generalizations from inconsequent or too meagre data,—can, in my opinion, be eliminated only by a systematic plan of experimentation conducted by no one person, but by a committee of competent observers fairly selected. It would not be boastful to say that nowhere does there exist a body of dermatologists so broadly cosmopolitan in spirit and training, and representing such varied opportuni ties of research as are afforded by wide differences in climate and race, or one more competent for such work, than the gentlemen who compose the American Dermato- logical Association. Let us suppose that such a committee were organized, what should be its scope, what its methods of work ? A member presents a paper upon the specific effect of some drug in this or that affection, or upon the action of some class of remedies in certain pathological changes of the skin, or upon the properties of some new remedy. Ordinarily his conclusions would be supplemented by the expression of the views of others more or less posi- tive in support or negative in opposition. If the matter were novel, criticism would be little else than theorizing, and there the subject would generally rest. There would