Medical Essays E-Book

Oliver Wendell Holmes

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was born on August 29th 1809. Among his many talents were those of physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author. Here we concentrate on his writing. He was regarded by many of his peers – including such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell – as one of the finest writers of their times. A great compliment indeed. As a poet he is considered to be one of the Fireside Poets and indeed his poems are works of real talent and quality. As a writer he is perhaps best known for his 'Breakfast Table' series. In this collection we publish his Medical Essays and show just why he was seen as an important reformer in that field. Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 but continued to write poetry, novels and essays until his death on October 7th 1894.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Preface.

A Second Preface.

Preface to the New Edition.

Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions

The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever

Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science

Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science.

Scholastic and Bedside Teaching.

The Medical Profession in Massachusetts.

The Young Practitioner

Medical Libraries.

Some of My Early Teachers

title

Medical Essays

Oliver Wendell Holmes

First digital edition 2016 by Anna Ruggieri

Preface.

The character of the opposition which some of these papers have met with suggests the inference that they contain really important, but unwelcome truths. Negatives multiplied into each other change their sign andbecome positives. Hostile criticisms meeting together are often equivalent to praise, and the square of fault-finding turns out to be the same thing as eulogy.

But a writer has rarely so many enemies as it pleases him to believe. Self-love leads us to overrate the numbers of our negative constituency. The larger portion of my limited circle of readers must be quite indifferent to, if not ignorant of, the adverse opinions which have been expressed or recorded concerning any of these Addresses or Essays now submitted to their own judgment. It is proper, however, to inform them, that some of the positions maintained in these pages have been unsparingly attacked, with various degrees of ability, scholarship, and good-breeding. The tone of criticism naturally changes with local conditions in different parts of a country extended like our own, so that it is one of the most convenient gauges of the partial movements in the direction of civilization. It is satisfactory to add, that the views assailed have also been unflinchingly defended by unsought champions, among the ablest of whom it is pleasant to mention, at this moment of political alienation, the Editor of the Charleston Medical Journal.

“Currents and Counter–Currents” was written and delivered as an Oration,a florid rhetorical composition, expressly intended to secure the attention of an audience not easy to hold as listeners. It succeeded in doing this, and also in being as curiously misunderstood and misrepresented as if it had been a political harangue. This gave it more local notoriety than it might otherwise have attained, so that, as I learn, one ingenious person made use of its title as an advertisement to a production of his own.

The commonest mode of misrepresentation was this: qualified propositions,the whole meaning of which depended on the qualifications, were stripped of these and taken as absolute. Thus, the attempt to establish a presumption against giving poisons to sick persons was considered as equivalent to condemning the use of these substances. The only important inference the writer has been able to draw from the greater number of the refutations of his opinions which have been kindly sent him, is that the preliminary education of the Medical Profession is not always what it ought to be.

One concession he is willing to make, whatever sacrifice of pride it may involve. The story of Massasoit, which has furnished a coral, as it were, for some teething critics, when subjected to a powerful logical analysis, though correct in its essentials, proves to have been told with exceptionable breadth of statement, and therefore (to resume the metaphor) has been slightly rounded off at its edges, so as to be smoother for any who may wish to bite upon it hereafter. In other respects the Discourse has hardly been touched. It is only an individual’s expression, in his own way, of opinions entertained by hundreds of the Medical Profession in every civilized country, and has nothing in it which on revision the writer sees cause to retract or modify. The superstitions it attacks lie at the very foundation of Homoeopathy, and of almost every form of medical charlatanism. Still the mere routinists and unthinking artisans in most callings dislike whatever shakes the dust out of their traditions, and it may be unreasonable to expect that Medicine will always prove an exception to the rule. One half the opposition which the numerical system of Louis has met with, as applied to the results of treatment, has been owing to the fact that it showed the movements of diseaseto be far more independent of the kind of practice pursued than was agreeable to the pride of those whose self-confidence it abated.

The statement, that medicines are more sparingly used in physicians’ families than in most others, admits of a very natural explanation, without putting a harsh construction upon it, which it was not intended to admit. Outside pressure is less felt in the physician’s own household; that is all. If this does not sometimes influence him to give medicine, or what seems to be medicine, when among those who have more confidence in drugging than his own family commonly has, the learned Professor Dunglison is hereby requested to apologize for his definition of the word Placebo, or to expunge it from his Medical Dictionary.

One thingis certain. A loud outcry on a slight touch reveals the weak spot in a profession, as well as in a patient. It is a doubtful policy to oppose the freest speech in those of our own number who are trying to show us where they honestly believe our weakness lies. Vast as are the advances of our Science and Art, may it not possibly prove on examination that we retain other old barbarisms beside the use of the astrological sign of Jupiter, with which we endeavor to insure good luck to our prescriptions? Is it theact of a friend or a foe to try to point them out to our brethren when asked to address them, and is the speaker to subdue the constitutional habit of his style to a given standard, under penalty of giving offence to a grave assembly?

“Homoeopathy and itsKindred Delusions” was published nearly twenty years ago, and has been long out of print, so that the author tried in vain to procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with the only one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that he was attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it. This edition was in the press at that very time.

Many of the arguments contained in the Lectures have lost whatever novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions havebeen submitted to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far, about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them require much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ in their readings of the ancient Prophets.

If some statistics recently published are correct, Homoeopathy has made very slow progress in Europe.

In all England, as it appears, there are hardly a fifth more Homoeopathic practitioners than there are students attending Lectures at the Massachusetts Medical College at the present time. In America it has undoubtedly proved more popular and lucrative, yet how loose a hold it has on the public confidence is shown by the fact that, when a specially valued life, which has been played with by one ofits agents, is seriously threatened, the first thing we expect to hear is that a regular practitioner is by the patient’s bed, and the Homoeopathic counsellor overruled or discarded. Again, how many of the ardent and capricious persons who embraced Homoeopathy have run the whole round of pretentious novelties; — have been boarded at water-cure establishments, closeted with uterine and other specialists, and finally wandered over seas to put themselves in charge of foreign celebrities, who dosed them as lustily as they were ever dosed before they took to globules! It will surprise many to learn to what a shadow of a shade Homoeopathy has dwindled in the hands of many of its noted practitioners. The itch-doctrine is treated with contempt. Infinitesimal doses are replaced by full ones whenever the fancy-practitioner chooses. Good Homoeopathic reasons can be found for employing anything that anybody wants to employ. Homoeopathy is now merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box of pellets pretending to be specifics, which, as all of us know, fail ignominiously in those cases where we would thankfully sacrifice all our prejudices and give the world to have them true to their promises.

Homoeopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration. Perhaps it was well that it should not, for it has taught us a lesson of the healing faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made proper acknowledgments. But it probably does more harm than good to medical science at the present time, by keeping up thedelusion of treating everything by specifics — the old barbarous notion that sick people should feed on poisons [Lachesis, arrow-poison, obtained from a serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus, rattlesnake’s venom (Neidhard). The less dangerous Pediculus capitis is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the English “Apostle of Homoeopathy.” These are examples of the retrograde current setting towards barbarism] against which a part of the Discourse at the beginning of this volume is directed.

The infinitesimal globules have not become a curiosity as yet, like Perkins’s Tractors. But time is a very elastic element in Geology and Prophecy. If Daniel’s seventy weeks mean four hundred and ninety years, as the learned Prideaux and others have settled it that they do, the “not many years” of my prediction may be stretched out a generation or two beyond our time, if necessary, when the prophecy will no doubt prove true.

It might be fitting to add a few words with regard to the Essay on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. But the whole question I consider to be now transferred from the domain of medical inquiry to the consideration of Life Insurance agencies and Grand Juries. For the justification of this somewhat sharply accented language I must refer the reader to the paperitself for details which I regret to have been forced to place on permanent record.

BOSTON, January, 1861.

A Second Preface.

A Second Preface.

These Lectures and Essays are arranged in the order corresponding to the date of their delivery or publication. They must, ofcourse, be read with a constant reference to these dates, by such as care to read them. I have not attempted to modernize their aspect or character in presenting them, in this somewhat altered connection, to the public. Several of them were contained in aformer volume which received its name from the Address called “Currents and Counter–Currents.” Some of those contained in the former volume have been replaced by others. The Essay called “Mechanism of Vital Actions” has been transferred to a distinct collection of Miscellaneous essays, forming a separate volume.

I had some intention of including with these papers an Essay on Intermittent Fever in New England, which received one of the Boylston prizes in 1837, and was published in the following year. But asthis was upon a subject of local interest, chiefly, and would have taken up a good deal of room, I thought it best to leave it out, trusting that the stray copies to be met with in musty book-shops would sufficiently supply the not very extensive or urgent demand for a paper almost half a century old.

Some of these papers created a little stir when they first fell from the press into the pool of public consciousness. They will slide in very quietly now in this new edition, and find out for themselves whether the waters are those of Lethe, or whether they are to live for a time as not wholly unvalued reminiscences.

March 21, 1883.

Preface to the New Edition.

These Essays are old enough now to go alone without staff or crutch in the shape of Prefaces. Avery few words may be a convenience to the reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to find in it.

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.

Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so will surely exist — assurely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as acurious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago, we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are “cured” by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every form of drugging and put their whole trust in “nature.” Thus experience,

“From seeming evil still educing good,”

has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of pseudo-therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of practitioners in breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging which has been one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While keeping up the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be “cured” by drugging, Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they would very generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean time the newer doctrines of the “mind cure,” the “faith cure,” and the rest are encroaching on the territory so long monopolized by that most ingenious of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its whole ground should be taken possession of by these new claimants with their flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to such attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-born rivals.

It takes a very moderate amount of erudition to unearth a charlatan like the supposed father of the infinitesimal dosing system. The real inventor of that specious trickery was an Irishman by the name of Butler. The whole story is to be found in the “Ortus Medicinm” of Van Helmont. I have given some account of his chapter “Butler” in different articles, but I would refer the students of our Homoeopathic educationalinstitutions to the original, which they will find very interesting and curious.

CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS

My attack on over-drugging brought out some hostile comments and treatment. Thirty years ago I expressed myself with more vivacity than I shouldshow if I were writing on the same subjects today. Some of my more lively remarks called out very sharp animadversion. Thus my illustration of prevention as often better than treatment in the mother’s words to her child which had got a poisonous berry inits mouth — “Spit it out!” gave mortal offence to a well-known New York practitioner and writer, who advised the Massachusetts Medical Society to spit out the offending speaker. Worse than this was my statement of my belief that if a ship-load of miscellaneous drugs, with certain very important exceptions — drugs, many of which were then often given needlessly and in excess, as then used “could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.” This was too bad. The sentence was misquoted, quoted without its qualifying conditions, and frightened some of my worthy professional brethren as much as if I had told them to throw all physic to the dogs. But for the epigrammatic sting the sentiment would havebeen unnoticed as a harmless overstatement at the very worst.

Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the English “general practitioner” of making his profit outof the pills and potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him, he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that his drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable to him. This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was doubtless the source in some measure of the errors I combated.

THECONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.

This Essay was read before a small Association called “The Society for Medical Improvement,” and published in a Medical Journal which lasted but a single year. It naturally attracted less attention than it would have doneif published in such a periodical as the “American Journal of Medical Sciences.” Still it had its effect, as I have every reason to believe. I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of “Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence,” and laying down rules for taking the necessary precautions against it. The case has long been decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote two of the most celebrated professorsof Obstetrics in this country opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and position.

This paper was written in a great heat and with passionate indignation. If I touched it at all I might trim its rhetorical exuberance, but I prefer to leave it all its original strength of expression. I could not, if I had tried, have disguised the feelings with which I regarded the attempt to put out of sight the frightful facts which I brought forward and the necessary conclusions to which they led.Of course the whole matter has been looked at in a new point of view since the microbe as a vehicle of contagion has been brought into light, and explained the mechanism of that which was plain enough as a fact to all who were not blind or who did not shuttheir eyes.

O. W. H.

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/holmes/oliver_wendell/medical/preface3.html

Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:55

Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions

[Two lectures delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 1842.]

[When a physician attempts to convince a person, who hasfallen into the Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these Lectures is to show, byabundant facts, that such statements, made by persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility ofa method of practice.

Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he “Had better try Homoeopathy,” are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that “at any rate it can do no harm.” This may or may not be true asregards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures. Whether or not those who countenance Homoeopathy are guilty of this injustice towards others, the second of these Lectures may afford them some means of determining.

To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up the so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to regulate the circumstances which influence the humanbody in health and disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary practitioners.

To deny that some patients may have been actually benefited through the influence exerted upon their imaginations, would be to refuse to Homoeopathy what all are willing to concede to every one of those numerous modes of practice known to all intelligent persons by an opprobrious title.

So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor man’s necessities.

Homoeopathy has come before our public at a period when the growing spirit of eclecticism has prepared many ingenious and honest minds to listen to all new doctrines with a candor liable todegenerate into weakness. It is not impossible that the pretended evolution of great and mysterious virtues from infinitely attenuated atoms may have enticed a few over-refining philosophers, who have slid into a vague belief that matter subdivided grows less material, and approaches nearer to a spiritual nature as it requires a more powerful microscope for its detection.

However this may be, some persons seem disposed to take the ground of Menzel that the Laity must pass formal judgment between the Physician and the Homoeopathist, as it once did between Luther and the Romanists. The practitioner and the scholar must not, therefore, smile at the amount of time and labor expended in these Lectures upon this shadowy system; which, in the calm and serious judgment of many of the wisest members of the medical profession, is not entitled by anything it has ever said or done to the notoriety of a public rebuke, still less to the honors of critical martyrdom.]