On slight ailments : and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale.
- Lionel Smith Beale
- Date:
- MDCCCXC [1890]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On slight ailments : and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![for his credulity. You will find persons sceptical concerning demon- strable and demonstrated facts, and faithful and believing in respect of fictions of the imagination and dicta of the most nonsensical character. The most profound knowledge of logic, mathematics, law, classics, or metaphysics will not protect a man from imposition and quackery as regards the nature and management of the ailments of his body, and there are not a few persons having great intellectual capacity who have been duped by quacks while they mistrusted the true statements of an honest, straightforward medical practitioner. There is nothing more e.Ktraordinary than the trust often reposed in what is false, and the doubt, disbelief, and suspicion exhibited concerning that which is true. In the matter of medical advice, and not uncommonly in high quarters, humbug sometimes reigns supreme. Character, experience, unremitting work often go for nothing. In England and in America great success is often attained by persons utterly ignorant of their calling. There still lurks belief in mysterious and inexplicable actions as regards medicines and in the wonder-working powers of some who prescribe them. This it is, possibly, which enables the self-asserting vulgar empiric to exert a favourable impression upon some who though really great in some departments, are at best but very ill-informed con- cerning matters of health and disease. Some even of our very simplest prescriptions get handed about from one to another in consequence of some wonder-working power they are supposed to possess, which would, I fear, vanish in a moment if only they were translated into English. Still we may hope that the time is not far distant when we may order Carbonate of Soda, Hydrochloric Acid, and such-like simple medicines, which often afford great relief, without enveloping them in a cloak of mystery. People would often be much astonished if they knew what cheap and common drugs they sometimes bought at extravagant prices in the form of various highly-puffed patent medicines of secret compo- sition, not a few of similar simple remedies being prescribed by medical practitioners day by day. It is hardly reasonable to expect that we should be able to persuade people generally, especially those who are very well off, to live in a reasonable manner on simple healthy food. But patients who are com- ])letely ignorant of medical knowledge, and who come to us for advice and assistance, go a little too far when they suggest or dictate to us the kind of advice we are to give, the medicines we are to order, and the methods of treatment which we are to adopt. We having been studying over a period of many years the nature and causes of disease, while they are utterly ignorant of its nature, diagnosis, and treatment. And yet this is no imaginary picture ; there are people who know nothing of science, and who have never seen anything of sick people, who nevertheless talk as if they were thoroughly experienced in the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2130340x_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
