Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/173

 Here we have to do with what is strictly a non-malignant condition. That is to say, there is always a fair ground for hoping that surgery may operate like auxiliary steam power in the battleships of the Crimean period. Help nature (or the 'undermind') enough and, other conditions being favourable, a tolerably satisfactory result may be expected. But, really, clinical experience in all civilised communities for the past fifty or sixty years must be allowed to have some value; and the value surely lies in this, that the experienced surgeon knows more or less exactly when to excise or scrape and when to refrain. That anyone should prefer to this the services of some unqualified, inexperienced 'healer,' who bids his patient trust in prayer, unction, or whatever his method is, telling him that if his faith is sufficient the largest sinus will be cleared up and the most distressing ankylosis broken down, simply strikes me with amazement. If the 'healers' really wish us to believe their claims, let them produce a properly codified list of cases which can be thoroughly investigated.

(c) Diseases in which certain drugs are empirically known to act with marked success, e.g. malaria. Here, properly graduated quantities of quinine can and do effect an