Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/702

682 selves may do is changed to evil by reason of the actual or implied sanction we give to the bad work done by others. Nothing is so much needed just now as the rise in our midst of a stern and uncompromising apostle of sincerity in science—a man of unpitying animosity to humbug in all its forms, who will not hesitate, at any bidding, to denounce wrong-doing and untruthfulness, let who may be the offender. It is time that a spirit of manliness went out in our ranks to chase away the lying spirit of mock courtesy—the fainthearted and time-serving sentimentality—which makes us so ready to look kindly on any pretender, and so reluctant to expose any pretense.

There can not possibly be a "system" or "cure" in medicine. There are no rule-of-thumb methods and no mysteries in true science. If we do not know what a remedy is, and how it acts, we have no right, as honest men, to employ it. The time has passed for the working of cures by charms and the recourse to nostrums. We pander to the credulity of the unskilled community when we show ourselves credulous. We patronize and encourage quackery when we extend professional recognition to a quack. Every man is a quack—whether qualified or unqualified—who employs a remedy without knowing why, or who adopts a "system" in medicine. The profession must speak out clearly and strongly on this point, and without delay. From the highest places in society to the lowest ranks of the people, there is just now a grievous readiness to "believe in" quacks and quackery. We have ourselves to thank for this most adverse "feeling" and "influence." It is the stirring of the viper we have brought in from the cold, where physicians and surgeons of more robust intelligence than those of to-day left it—the viper we have warmed and fed and brought back to life; and now it is preparing to rise and sting the hand that caressed it. The way to encounter the charlatanry which is making head against science is to be at once more candid and more conspicuously honest in our dealings with the public. We must lay aside the last vestige of the robe of mystery, and show by our words and works, our conduct and policy, that medicine is not a science that admits of inspiration, and that the practice of healing is not an art which can be acquired by the unlearned. There is no system or cure, or charm or nostrum, known to the profession; our calling consists solely in the rational study and treatment of disease on common-sense principles. For those who pretend to a sort of inspiration we have no professional friendship; and toward the promoters of systems and 'pathies we can have no leaning, or any feeling other than that of suspicion, if not pity and contempt. They can have no place in our professional intercourse, and we can have nothing to say to them or their work. This is the only sentiment worthy of the medical profession in its dealings with medical quacks, and the time has come when the revival of its old spirit is most earnestly to be desired.—London Lancet.