Year: 1859
Type: article
Abstract: SELF MEDICATION.Of any four persons met successively on the street, three will strongly inveigh against taking medicine and against the doctors, and multitudes of publications are scattered through the land every day by a class of persons as reckless and im pudent as they are ignorant,, assuming to themselves the name of " reformers/' their papers being the vehicles of their trumpery, making all sorts of imaginary and impossible state ments as to the ravages of what they call " druggery," and fighting under the popular banner of " temperance," with maudlin professions about " progress," " human ameliora tion," " elevation of the masses," " equality," " fraternity," and all that, and last, but not least,pandering to the passions of a depraved nature, they stab secretly, and behind, and under cover of false garbs, the fundamental principles of our holy religion, and indeed of all religion, and by these means have got up such a hue and cry against physic, that even me dical men, despicably weak-minded of course, take up the re frain, chime in with the prejudices of a gullible community, and are getting into the way of prescribing almost no medi cine at all, in cases where it was urgently demanded, doing violence to their own better judgment, rather than incur the hazard of censure, in case the disease should take a fatal turn.On the other hand, as among the people themselves there is a most extraordinary paradox, in that they have fallen into the habit of swallowing medicine on their own responsibility, or by the advice of any ignoramus or knave who may happen to
Source: PubMed Central
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4310962329