,R MEDICAL 
 
 ULTURE 
 
 R.DUNHAM, M.D. 
 
 ■ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 @|ap @0ju}rir$t f o 
 
 Shelf 3-^.A 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE 
 
The law of instinct is the law of the living principle. 
 A department not presented or defined in medical liter- 
 ature. 
 
Higher Medical Culture. 
 
 jffletrical Science 
 
 BASED ON 
 
 THE FOUR VITAL PROPERTIES AND LAWS 
 OF ORGANIC FORCE. 
 
 BY 
 
 
 W. R. DUNHAM, M.D. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1892. 
 
 V 
 

 Copyright, 1892, 
 By J. S. Dunham. 
 
 By John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 -+■ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 7 
 
 Vital Properties and Laws of Organic 
 
 Force 23 
 
 Department of Organic Law 58 
 
 Eruptive Fevers 79 
 
 Pneumonia 86 
 
 Vitalists 101 
 
 44 Active Medical Properties " .... 109 
 
 objectionable quality 126 
 
 Partial Summary or Scientific Premises . 157 
 
 Chemical Food 160 
 
 Sensation and Sensibility 163 
 
 Responsibility 167 
 
 Why do People drink Alcoholic Liquors ? 177 
 
 Summary 210 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 
 " Be bold ! be bold ! " and everywhere, " Be bold ! 
 Be not too bold ! " Yet better the excess 
 Than the defect ; better the more than less ; 
 Better like Hector in the field to die, 
 Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. 
 
 H. W. Longfellow. 
 
 *T*HIS volume is prepared with a view to 
 call attention to a department in medi- 
 cal science, which has not heretofore been 
 presented for consideration through medical 
 literature. 
 
 While the direction of present research is 
 largely being made for a discovery of both 
 new cause of disease and " active medical 
 properties," with more special attention to 
 the grouping and describing of the appear- 
 ances of pathological conditions, we shall 
 
8 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 have little to say of those mentioned divis- 
 ions of research ; but call attention to the 
 properties, laws, and principles of organic 
 force as related to the cause of disease, 
 and being the active agent which gives exist- 
 ence to pathological facts; thus presenting 
 a theory or explanation which connects the 
 discovered cause with the described conse- 
 quences; or, in other words, we propose to 
 present a theory of medical science from the 
 basis of organic force. 
 
 We believe it is conceded by very nu- 
 merous and highly cultured representatives 
 of medical science, that our department 
 of alleged scientific erudition is without 
 accepted or known fundamental principles, 
 which give unity and precision to scientific 
 methods; also that when placed in relations 
 of comparison with other departments of 
 natural science, medical science has failed 
 through research to discover and elucidate 
 the laws of force, which give activity to the 
 phenomena of their department of organic 
 
INTRODUCTION'. 9 
 
 nature, with any such degree of 
 as has been demonstrated with those depai 
 ments of science which present the phenom- 
 ena of the inorganic for 
 
 landing the important and prac- 
 tical significance implied in such fact 
 om: . it is well to remember I the 
 
 medical mind has been dealing with a de- 
 partment of Nature 1 which are a 
 thousand times more intricate in their sub- 
 tle rel - with expressed phenomena, tL 
 any found in the departments of inorganic 
 ience. k such delay may be thus 
 excusable, it certainly remains true that 
 
 nomical and chemi- 
 cal railed I sr Nature's pi 
 and laws of force in those departments of 
 inorganic nature until a verv recent com- 
 parative date. Thus, while the medical de- 
 partment has been more tardy in obtaining 
 the fruit of diligent research, there is in 
 pal d the unquestioned fact Haider, 
 that uur problems in Nature are vastly more 
 
10 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 profound. A certain eminent physician has 
 said, in defining the direction to be pursued : 
 " Medical science demands of her votaries un- 
 ceasing toil and investigation, with the en- 
 thusiasm and courage of pioneers, to explore 
 unknown regions, cultivate barren wastes, 
 and perfect a knowledge in the true spirit 
 of philanthropy that will stamp its im- 
 press on the coming ages, by the develop- 
 ment of a law which can accurately measure 
 and classify morbid states; a better knowl- 
 edge of the nature of disease will aid us 
 more than all the drugs discovered during 
 this century." We trust no one will deny 
 the statement that medical science, in com- 
 mon with other departments of natural sci- 
 ence, is based on two prime ultimate factors, 
 which factors become the starting points 
 from which all methods of procedure in 
 theory and practice must depend. One fac- 
 tor is material. The other factor is organic 
 force. 
 
 The same is true as to chemistry and 
 
11 
 
 ^■-':\:.-. — - «'•*.::. :':.:H Lis: 
 ei:es. :i~ ::::- 1:1-- .- 11 : 
 wb partment of mfriical a 
 
 ml . . 
 
 orgrai Eorae, or power, mar do 
 
 . .. • 
 
 manv text-books on physiology. ~ 
 
 al power, mar do with 
 >n-nut : reign mate- 
 
 ria 
 with the bwa and methods of prooed* 
 
 no: lined in any medico text 
 
 Tin we lint that the wn—Smg 
 
 n-: ::::". 5::ii:r is : vi 1. ni in: lifi. ii 
 • 11 i : _ " ■"* -"__ .;'„ :i;.i ; :;:: : 
 pla relation to non-nutritive materi 
 
12 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 While the department nutritive has been 
 disposed of with entire satisfaction, the sub- 
 ject of law and method, with foreign material, 
 is quite largely hidden in obscurity. Thus 
 the subject before us will be implied in the 
 relations and dealings of methods and pro- 
 cedure which organic force adopts, as an 
 active agent in relation to foreign material. 
 
 It is true that what is called vis medica- 
 trix naturce has been recognized, but what 
 is really implied or involved as expressed 
 through such term ? Is it not reasonable 
 to presume that in the recognition of this 
 principle we have the cue to expectation 
 that much may be revealed of great useful- 
 ness in the affairs of life, through a correct 
 knowledge and law of all that is implied in 
 the fulfilment of such a principle ? It is this 
 principle in organic nature that we propose 
 to present. 
 
 In this department we are quite largely 
 exploring in new fields for explanation of 
 organic methods. While such literature is 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 not abundant, — and for what reason neg- 
 lected we are unable to explain, — yet it 
 may not be without interest to consider what 
 this department seems to reveal, which Na- 
 ture has long held as trustee for mankind. 
 In brief, we say, that what is erroneously 
 called vis medicatrix naturce is really no 
 more nor less than organic force instinctively 
 directed in relation to non-nutritive or foreign 
 material, with a view to the self-preservation 
 of the organic body. Prof. Robley Dun- 
 glison, M.D., says, in his "Materia Medica" 
 (Vol. I. p. 34) : " The vis medicatrix naturce, 
 for and against which so much has been said, 
 can no more be denied than the existence of 
 life, — of which we know nothing except by 
 its results." We propose to illustrate that 
 this so called vis medicatrix naturce, which 
 is really a manifestation of organic power in- 
 stinctively directed, is the only power, force, 
 ability, or agent ever active in the affairs of 
 disease, or in relations with medicine. 
 Intelligence relates to the control of this 
 
14 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 principle, or power, only indirectly, through 
 a knowledge of the laivs of organic instinct. 
 Thus, to know the full function and possi- 
 ble usefulness implied in the erroneously 
 so called vis medicatrix naturce, we are re- 
 quired to comprehend the laws of organic 
 force, which execute the duties of this de- 
 partment. While we shall have much to 
 present for consideration in name, nature, 
 and properties involved in the duties and ac- 
 tivities of organic force, — which department 
 has always been one of serious omission, — 
 we also desire to state that we are not alone 
 in finding cause for criticism with this depart- 
 ment. Says Henry Maudsley, If. D., F. R. C. P., 
 - It is easy to perceive how impossible it is in 
 the present state of science to come to any 
 positive conclusion in regard to the nature of 
 the vital force.' 1 And it has also been said 
 by equally eminent authority, that " this 
 generation, and generations to come, will 
 have passed to their everlasting rest before 
 a discovery of the secret of vital activity is 
 
1 «. 
 
 » :.: 
 7: r 
 
 \ 
 
 ! 
 
 s 
 
16 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 of the University of Pennsylvania, in his 
 " Materia Medica " (Vol. I. p. 3) : " Medical 
 conclusions differ very widely from every 
 other species of evidence. We cheat our- 
 selves with a thousand illusions." Says Dr. 
 James Mason Good, the noted writer of medi- 
 cal literature, " The science of medicine is a 
 barbarous jargon." Such remarks from our 
 very eminent medical scholars find cause for 
 expression, because no clear idea exists rela- 
 tive to the law and nature of organic force, 
 as applied to methods in the affairs of life 
 involved in disease, and in relations with 
 medicine. 
 
 The science of medicine is not found in the 
 direction of what is called " active medical 
 property," but in the direction and within the 
 domain of active organic force^ developed into 
 activity through the agency of the vital prop- 
 erty, instinct. While there is much to ac- 
 quire through research in the field of organic 
 forces, there is also much to condemn of seri- 
 ous commission, which imagination has sup- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 plied to take the place of the alleged neg- 
 lected omission. This imaginary department 
 includes not only errors of language, which 
 represent no principles in nature, but im- 
 plies erroneous and dangerous thought when 
 made applicable to the affairs of life. In illus- 
 tration, we here mention, and in the proper 
 place shall make, and endeavor to maintain, 
 more specific charges. 
 
 We declare that there is no such prin- 
 ciple in Nature as so called " active medical 
 property." There is no " active medical 
 principle." Such doctrine is based on the 
 erroneous interpretation of appearances, and 
 nearest of kin to that delusion which pre- 
 saged the doctrine that the sun revolved 
 around the earth. 
 
 What is called the modus operandi of 
 medicine is really pathological vital action 
 instinctively directed in relation to the pres- 
 ence of the medicine. Disease is very 
 largely pathological vital action, of acute 
 
 or chronic manifestation. Medicine does not 
 
 2 
 
18 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 act on the human organism, but its presence 
 becomes a cause for the instinctive organic 
 power to be directed differently. ,Medicine 
 becomes useful, not because it acts, or has 
 " active properties," but from the fact that 
 its presence becomes a cause for the vital 
 power to act differently. 
 
 The present plan of medical practice is 
 based on the imaginary principle called " ac- 
 tive medical property," which doctrine has 
 been so universally accepted that a belief 
 has developed with the laity that the great 
 essential with invalidism is to supply suf- 
 ficient of this " active principle." Thus it 
 is fast becoming a matter of indifference 
 who shall supply this u active principle " in 
 material form. As a legitimate result of 
 such indifference, a large amount of medi- 
 cal practice will go into the hands of igno- 
 rant medicine pedlers, to the great detriment 
 of the invalid and the belittlement of pro- 
 fessional attainment. 
 
 A correct practice of medicine must be 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 based on the law of the instinctive action of 
 organic force. Thus the duty of the physi- 
 cian is to comprehend^ and be ever watchful 
 of the proceedings of vital activity, and to 
 guide such activity most safely to the best 
 possible results. When the laity so under- 
 stand this subject, no intelligent person will 
 trust the management of their case with any 
 reputed physician not liberally educated and 
 familiar with the laws of instinctive organic 
 force. The astronomer cannot ignore the 
 inorganic laws of force, and make legitimate 
 claim to being a student of science ; neither 
 can the physician make valid claim as an 
 intelligent practitioner of medical science 
 without a knowledge of the laws and prop- 
 erties of instinctive organic force, which 
 gives activity to the various phenomena 
 he is required to consider. 
 
 This volume will include the defining of 
 the several vital properties of life, with their 
 alleged sphere of fulfilment and compensat- 
 ing relations of purpose, together with such 
 
20 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 laws of general application in aid of self-pres- 
 ervation of the organic body as will furnish a 
 basis for the making of a more extended ap- 
 plication of organic force or vital instinctive 
 activity, in the name of theory and practice 
 and become applicable in the treatment of 
 disease. From such basis of fundamental 
 principles we have an equally positive law 
 on which to establish a theory and practice 
 as exists in the departments of inorganic 
 science. 
 
 No other department of erudition remains 
 enshrouded in such mystery as is confessed 
 through medical literature to exist in that 
 of medical science. The time has arrived 
 when the profession cannot afford longer 
 to pursue a phantom, and ignore research 
 from the true premises of a science. The 
 doctrine of " active medical property " rep- 
 resents neither a fact nor a principle in 
 medical science, while our present medical 
 philosophy is without principles that enable 
 the profession to comprehend the nature of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 disease, or the modus operandi of medicines ; 
 and the nature of vital activity is a problem 
 postponed for future generations to solve. 
 
 The solution of the various problems, and 
 the development of a medical science, are to 
 be found in the laws and nature of organic 
 force. We must accept the aphorism that, 
 if the practice of medicine is entitled to be 
 considered from premises which are implied 
 in scientific principles, it becomes legitimate 
 inquiry to ascertain the nature of such prin- 
 ciples. This volume will contribute little of 
 interest to those who practise medicine only 
 as an industry. 
 
MEDICAL SCIENCE 
 
 BASED ON THE 
 
 VITAL PEOPEETIES AND LAWS OF 
 OKGANIC FOBCE. 
 
 |"N considering the department of vital prop- 
 erties and laws of instinctive organic 
 force for the purpose here set forth, we find 
 ourself quite largely exploring in a direction 
 which has failed heretofore in being recog- 
 nized with that degree of importance which 
 legitimately attains to the subject. 
 
 While we do not expect to see and compre- 
 hend all which this department may reveal 
 in aid of a correct and scientific method for 
 the practice of a medical science, we shall 
 anticipate and also invite an honest criticism, 
 which we trust may be of extreme value in 
 shaping the medical mind into better rela- 
 
24 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. , 
 
 tions with cause and effect, developing more 
 extensively and clearly the great principles 
 in organic nature which will aid in the 
 development of the science. 
 
 It is not to be presumed that we anticipate 
 the presentation of a new plan of life, but 
 more correctly to approximate a representa- 
 tion of the real plan. With this problem, 
 we have for examination an organized live 
 human being, endowed with certain qual- 
 ities and organic abilities, which exist in 
 significant distinction to the individual of 
 material form. 
 
 The individual human being has certain 
 and separable unlike special vital properties, 
 through which, both consciously and uncon- 
 sciously, it becomes possible to hold active 
 relations between itself and the outer world, 
 of which the organized material self may be 
 no part. 
 
 In the name of Sensibility, Sensation, In- 
 stinct, and Contractility, — which qualities 
 of life expression arc not subject to a sub- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 25 
 
 division of function, although possessed of 
 great diversity of expression, — we have/ow 
 ultimate vital properties, through which the 
 human organism may express relations both 
 with itself and with the outer world. 
 
 As applied to our purpose with the problem 
 of medical science, of comparative relation, 
 we say that no science of astronomy could be 
 taught until a correct plan*, and laws of in- 
 organic force, became recognized. And thus 
 it is with medical science : we are required 
 to recognize both a correct plan and the laws 
 of organic force, which execute method in the 
 fulfilment of purpose. 
 
 Thus the principles which are to be con- 
 sidered as involved in the problems of medi- 
 cal science are principles existing and 
 implied in the nature and laws of vital pur- 
 pose. Therefore, what the human organism 
 fulfils in the aggregate in this direction 
 can be best determined by an examination 
 separately of the distinct vital properties. 
 In other words, this would imply that we 
 
26 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 essay to determine what is the plan of life. 
 Thus we will attempt to define the official 
 duty and purpose which seem legitimate to 
 the several vital properties. 
 
 The distinction of purpose, and often co- 
 relation of duty in illustration of certain 
 facts, will afford valid reason for more or less 
 of partial repetition. 
 
 Sensibility. — This term seems to express 
 legitimately certain abilities as a vital prop- 
 erty of life, — as a part of the grand whole, 
 which is fulfilled through the brain function 
 as intelligence and reason, — comprised in all 
 the variety of purpose to which conscious 
 intelligence becomes applicable. And we fur- 
 ther define this vital property, Sensibility, 
 as possessed of perceptive abilities which 
 afford the possibility to recognize things, 
 conditions, and relations, both near in contact 
 and external to and beyond contact ; that is, 
 at all distances, in quite significant distinction 
 to the vital property Sensation. While this 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 27 
 
 vital property includes a part of the recog- 
 nized abilities called special sense, such spe- 
 cial departments do not contribute to our 
 purpose with such degree of usefulness as to 
 make it important to further enlarge the ful- 
 filment of duty implied in such property. 
 
 Sensation. — Sensation is a vital property of 
 great significance with our subject ; and 
 unlike Sensibility, that more than a brief 
 mention is required to do justice to the many 
 problems of which it becomes a part. 
 
 Sensation is expressed through a nerve 
 ability, which is without consciousness or 
 intelligence, and can recognize only by i 
 mediate contact at insensible d 
 
 Remember the mentioned distance of meas- 
 ured distinction in the applied fulfilment 
 of function, with the two mentioned vital 
 properties. 
 
 Sensation may be a condition of pleas- 
 ure, irritability, or pain. The vital property 
 sensation may express a sensation normal or 
 
28 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. . 
 
 abnormal ; the latter always precedes active 
 disease. 
 
 Irritability is not a different vital property, 
 as some writers have proclaimed, but a sen- 
 sation disagreeable, which may relate to 
 sensation direct, and to sensibility indirect 
 
 Sensibility has a consciousness of what 
 the sensation may be ; while sensation is 
 blind and unconscious of the realm of a 
 possible sensibility. 
 
 These two vital properties have each great 
 significance of purpose, quite distinct to be 
 thought about in a great variety of relations ; 
 yet so related that we are often required 
 simultaneously to consider them jointly in 
 the affairs of life. The term " senses," which 
 becomes applicable to the field of sensibil- 
 ity, cannot be substituted, and used legiti- 
 mately in modification of the vital property 
 sensation. 
 
 This may seem like hair-splitting theory ; 
 but, if language is entitled to any specific 
 meaning in its application to inorganic 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 29 
 
 science, it seems equally important to be 
 thus consistent in its application to a far 
 superior department of science. 
 
 Theory has long been in disrepute, more 
 because it has been so frequently in error, 
 rather than out of place as a method appli- 
 cable to a more correct aid to the compre- 
 hension of a problem. Scientific research in 
 the problems of organic force requires that 
 special significance shall attach to certain 
 phraseology, otherwise communication could 
 not be profitably exchanged. 
 
 In no department of erudition do we find 
 such promiscuous and interchangeable appli- 
 cation of terms of special significance as 
 is to be found in the literature of medical 
 science. If the subject of vital properties, as 
 well as other relations in organic nature, are 
 deemed worthy of consideration through 
 special thought, it becomes important that 
 the language to develop correct thought 
 should blend with an approximate correct- 
 ness to the greatest possible end. It is 
 
30 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE., 
 
 not well to treat with too great contempt 
 the importance of equally significant terms, 
 in a science of the highest order, which 
 involves the most delicate and subtle rela- 
 tions that have a bearing on the fulfilment 
 of the plan of life. 
 
 Before proceeding to further mention of the 
 vital properties so far considered, it is well 
 briefly to allude to Instinct and Contrac- 
 tility; after which to review what medical 
 literature may have contributed pertaining 
 to the two properties, sensibility and sen- 
 sation ; and then proceed to further consid- 
 eration of the distinct vital properties in their 
 co-relation of duty. 
 
 instinct. — Organic instinct is a vital prop- 
 erty of life-ability without reason or intel- 
 lect, which presides over the construction of 
 the organic body, and also is installed com- 
 mander in chief of the department of de- 
 fence, as executed through the involuntary 
 organic process. This property manifests its 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 31 
 
 function and purpose in presiding over all 
 material which comes within the field of 
 vital jurisdiction. 
 
 Nutritive material is used for organic con- 
 struction, while material not nutritive, and 
 foreign, is directed into the proper channels 
 and eliminated. 
 
 The ability of organic fulfilment, which uses 
 certain material for constructive purpose, while 
 other material is ejected, deserves a name 
 as a special organic or vital property. It is 
 not the will power of ability which presides 
 and directs to the use of nutrient, or to the 
 expelling of foreign material; but a decision 
 and fulfilment of duty, which comes from an 
 entirely different source. Therefore, with 
 the human organism it can be truly and 
 significantly said, that Sensibility presides 
 over the voluntary life acts, — while In- 
 stinct presides over the involuntary life acts. 
 This distinction should ever receive due con- 
 sideration when dealing with the problems 
 of life. 
 
32 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 Contractility. — Contractility is that vital 
 property manifested by the contraction and 
 alternate relaxation of muscular fibre, thus 
 producing motion. Sensibility may preside 
 over voluntary contractility, while Instinct 
 presides over involuntary contractility, as il- 
 lustrated in the heart's action, and more spe- 
 cially in the convulsive struggles subsequent 
 to the presence of strychnia. Thus the vital 
 property Contractility is largely, and in fact 
 wholly, an invisible instrument of motion in 
 the hands of Sensibility and Instinct. 
 
 Let us now stop and review most criti- 
 cally the premises and outlined duty we have 
 attached to the several distinct and separate 
 vital properties. Determine whether we have 
 represented an ideal illustration, which may 
 be found in duplicate with facts in organic 
 nature. Determine whether our illustration 
 of the several vital properties becomes sus- 
 ceptible of demonstration and verification in 
 harmony with the known facts, presented 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 33 
 
 and fulfilled through the instrumentality of 
 organic life as manifested by the human liv- 
 ing organism. Determine whether we have 
 drawn the lines of distinction between the 
 separate vital properties in harmony with the 
 facts. Determine whether it is rational, rea- 
 sonable, and indispensable, in the study of 
 the total aggregate of life's problems, to 
 make such division of unlike life functions 
 as the only possible method for a consider- 
 ation in aid of the comprehension of the 
 fulfilment of the duties of life. 
 
 If the total of ultimate life expressions, 
 of organic force, are included and become 
 truly represented in the four divisions of vital 
 properties, we then have a basis for an eluci- 
 dation of numerous problems in organic life. 
 Who says that all problems are not sus- 
 ceptible of explanation on this basis, from 
 which we are enabled to recognize how 
 prominent and co-related each department 
 of vital property is in the problem under con- 
 sideration? It is of the greatest importance 
 3 
 
34 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 to determine the validity of this representa- 
 tion of the vital properties. Our theory, ex- 
 planation, and suggestive inference of applied 
 treatment of disease, rest on this foundation. 
 We shall be compelled to fall back for support 
 on this basis of fundamental principles, to give 
 emphasis to the methods of organic execution. 
 
 Before proceeding further, let us determine 
 whether or not we have represented correctly 
 the vital properties expressed in human life. 
 We again take up the subject of vital prop- 
 erties, believing that we are all better pre- 
 pared to consider the literature of record 
 which refers to the first two mentioned. The 
 vital properties Sensibility and Sensation 
 involve such delicate premises of greatest 
 importance, that we trust the reader will in- 
 dulge us in giving sufficient attention to 
 the subject. 
 
 The function of Sensibility is defined in 
 Prof. Robley Dunglison's Medical Dictionary 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Sensibility. The faculty of receiving impres- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 85 
 
 sions, and having the consciousness of them. 
 Bichat defines it as the property possessed by 
 living bodies of receiving impressions, whether 
 the individual be conscious of them or not. In 
 the former case, where conscious, he calls the 
 sensibility animal ; in the latter, where not, 
 he terms it organic. This last is common to 
 vegetables and animals, and presides over nu- 
 trition/' 
 
 It becomes evident that Professor Dungli- 
 son adopts the definition of Bichat, by giving 
 it such prominence. This definition seems 
 most exceedingly mixed, although it is the 
 official definition of record. This definition 
 of the vital property Sensibility defines it 
 very imperfectly, and at the same time makes 
 a part of itself the function of Sensation. 
 
 The language, " property possessed by liv- 
 ing bodies of receiving impressions, whether 
 the individual be conscious of them or not," 
 implies that, when conscious, he calls such 
 fact an expression of " animal sensibility " ; 
 when not conscious, he calls such fact 
 " organic sensibility." 
 
36 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 The definition further implies that organic 
 sensibility " is common to vegetables and ani- 
 mals, and presides over nutrition." In fact, 
 this one vital property, Sensibility, is made to 
 fulfil the duties which we have defined as im- 
 plied in Sensibility, Sensation, and Instinct. 
 
 The idea of a property in vegetables being 
 called " organic sensibility " seems crude, to 
 say the least. In this definition we have no 
 defined line of distinction between those func- 
 tions which are executed consciously and un- 
 consciously. The term " impression " is here 
 used with such expression of agency that it 
 becomes important briefly to consider the true 
 import of its application. Impression, in the 
 sense here used, is not truly expressive of a 
 something done, as the language seems to im- 
 ply. What is fulfilled as an event, which is 
 called an impression, is really no other event 
 than a recognition, or perception, either by 
 the sensibility or organic sensation of some 
 new relation or contact of material entity. 
 
 What is called in medical literature the 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 37 
 
 making of an impression on the human or- 
 ganism is not a something done to the or- 
 ganism, but a recognition ly the organism of 
 some new relation or contact. Such recog- 
 nition may first take place through or by the 
 consciousness, Sensibility ; or the recognition 
 may in the second place become an event of 
 Sensation, and sensibility later becomes con- 
 scious of the sensation ; or the recognition 
 may take place with the sensation, and such 
 fact may not become of conscious knowledge 
 to the sensibility. 
 
 In illustration of the latter, we mention 
 such incident as the taking of certain medi- 
 cines in disguise, without knowledge of such 
 fact until the sensation has developed into 
 degrees of aggravating pain ; after which 
 consciousness becomes aware of the sensa- 
 tion of pain ; but not previously aware of a 
 contact, or sensation of mild degree, which 
 had yet failed to develop pain. We will men- 
 tion a certain kind of contact fact, which 
 has a dual method of becoming a conscious 
 
38 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 fact, and which is illustrated by forcing a 
 needle-point into the skin. This fact may 
 be known to the sensibility, or conscious- 
 ness, through the special sense of sight ; or 
 such fact may become known through the 
 sensation (pain) thus caused, which sensa- 
 tion becomes later known to the sensibility. 
 A second party observing the fact knows of 
 it only through his sensibility ; while the 
 party of experience may know such fact 
 through his sensibility directly, and, secondly, 
 indirectly, through the consciousness of the 
 sensation of pain. 
 
 Thus all contact relations of recognized 
 perception, which are not observed by the 
 eye, become conscious recognitions through 
 the recognition of the sensation, rather than 
 the fact which caused the sensation. The 
 function of vital property, manifested in life 
 abilities which can recognize a fact at all 
 distances, and possessed of intelligence, we 
 call Sensibility, while that vital property of 
 life ability which can recognize a fact only 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 39 
 
 through immediate contact, and is without 
 intelligence, we call Sensation. 
 
 It seems to us that the differences of duty 
 in the affairs of life imply such distinction 
 of purpose that we cannot intelligently in- 
 clude them within the limit of one vital prop- 
 erty, and do justice to fact and required 
 comprehension. 
 
 We quote Professor Dunglison's definition 
 of Sensation, which is expressed in the follow- 
 ing language : " The consciousness or cogni- 
 zance by the brain of an impression caused by 
 an external body on the organs of the senses." 
 This definition does not define sensation ; it 
 only defines that the brain, or consciousness, 
 is aware of the fact that there has been a 
 sensation developed. Such sensation is said 
 to have been caused by the contact of some 
 external body " on the organs of the senses " ; 
 while the fact is, in place of being necessarily 
 in contact with the organs of the senses, — 
 possibly the eye, — such contact might be 
 with the organs of sensation. 
 
40 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE., 
 
 In this definition more emphasis is given 
 to the brain ability than any unlike abil- 
 ity, which may distinguish sensation from 
 sensibility. While it is true that sensibility 
 may know what the sensation may be, yet 
 consciousness forms no part ; sensation can 
 exist when there is no sensibility for a possi- 
 ble recognition. 
 
 We have said that contractility was a vital 
 property in the hands of both Sensibility and 
 Instinct. One gives direction to voluntary 
 contractility or motion ; the other, to invol- 
 untary contractility or motion. Neither the 
 Sensibility nor the Instinct executes the 
 contractility, but either may authorize such 
 activity. 
 
 It is important to recognize that Sensation 
 is always a prior incident of fact, which pre- 
 cedes the instinctive order for a special exe- 
 cution of Contractility or involuntary mo- 
 tion, which co-relation is the ever interven- 
 ing compound fact between cause and effect, 
 — with the cause of disease and effects of 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 41 
 
 medicine. There is a fact of presence, and a 
 fact of sensation ; while Sensation may or 
 may not precede a conscious mandate, which 
 authorizes a voluntary Contractility. 
 
 To illustrate the incident fact of a sensa- 
 tion, where it is not possible to involve the 
 brain function Sensibility, we mention that 
 a decapitated frog can be induced to jump 
 by making a sensation irritable with a needle ; 
 while he cannot stop jumping until exhausted, 
 because he has no head, or sensibility, to call 
 a halt. 
 
 Professor Dunglison's definitions of Sensi- 
 bility and Sensation seem each to include 
 the other, to such a degree that no dis- 
 tinct difference is made to appear. The 
 eminent lexicographer, Noah Webster, de- 
 fines Sensibility : " The quality or condition 
 of being sensible ; capacity to feel or perceive, 
 applied to animal bodies, — as a frozen limb 
 loses its sensibility." The two vital proper- 
 ties of Sensibility and Sensation are thus 
 made to appear as one. The same authority 
 
42 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 defines Sensation as " an impression made 
 upon the mind through the medium of the 
 organs of sense, " — which is quite simi- 
 lar to that given by Prof. Dunglison, who 
 defines Instinct : " The action of the living 
 principle, whenever manifestly directing its 
 operations to the health or reproduction of a 
 living frame. The law of instinct is, conse- 
 quently, the law of the living principle ; and 
 instinctive actions are the actions of the liv- 
 ing principle. Instinct is natural ; reason 
 is acquired." This definition is substantially 
 correct. This vital property authorizes ac- 
 tion, but does not act itself. It is more the 
 grand dictator of ceremony, or superintendent. 
 The question will naturally arise, who 
 shall be acknowledged as authority in this 
 department of definition, whether appointed 
 by popular vote, or determined by ability 
 to discriminate and represent most cor- 
 rectly the precise fulfilment of separate 
 properties in organic nature. We must ad- 
 here to our own definitions until otherwise 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 43 
 
 persuaded, rather than those of record. We 
 base our theory on the outlined definition we 
 have given to the separate vital properties. 
 We are dealing with a department of nature 
 which has been represented and defined so 
 broadly in its phraseology, that it is exceed- 
 ingly difficult to know what one is really 
 thinking about, while we have a department 
 of such delicate relations of fulfilment that 
 far greater method is required to do justice 
 to its facts than is required in the depart- 
 ments of inorganic force. We are thus re- 
 quired to give specific attention to the proper 
 defining and elucidation of the several vital 
 properties, to enable us to pursue the subject 
 to the end with that consistency of relation 
 which shall fulfil a representation of the 
 nature and law of organic force, in duplicate 
 with facts expressed through the organic life 
 ability. 
 
 To further illustrate the undefined thought 
 of the functions of the different vital proper- 
 ties by medical men of eminence, we quote 
 
44 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 from an address delivered by Prof. Thomas 
 H. Huxley, before the British Scientific Asso- 
 ciation : — 
 
 " The first proposition that you find definitely 
 and clearly stated by Descartes is one which 
 will sound very familiar to you at the present 
 day. It is the view which he was first, so far 
 as I know, to state, not only definitely, but upon 
 scientific grounds, i that the brain is the organ 
 of sensation, of thought, and of emotion.' If 
 it should happen to a man that by accident his 
 spinal cord is broken, he becomes paralyzed 
 below the point of injury ; his limbs would be 
 paralyzed, and they would be insensible. Con- 
 sciousness, so far as we can have knowledge of 
 it, is entirely abolished below the injury." 
 
 The brain is here made the organ of sensa- 
 tion, and the limbs expressive of conscious- 
 ness. Such is a common error in medical 
 literature, which is presumed to represent 
 the language of science. It harmonizes 
 with the dictionary requirement, but it does 
 not harmonize or blend with the facts of 
 Nature, which such language is presumed 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 45 
 
 to represent. Should a professor of inor- 
 ganic science use the terms " attraction of 
 gravitation" and "cohesion" in such inter- 
 changeable manner, it would be exceedingly 
 difficult to know what he was talking about. 
 In the department of medical science precise- 
 ness of expression is of far more importance, 
 because it involves in many instances very 
 important practical relations of possibility of 
 continued life. In illustration, it becomes 
 important with a view to the conservation of 
 vital energy, in the practice of medicine, to 
 have a common and correct understanding 
 of the meaning and application of language. 
 Science requires a preciseness which shall 
 contribute to our comprehension a positive 
 idea, whether in administering a medicine 
 we are transferring supplementary energy, or 
 engaged in guiding the vital energy in the 
 most possible economic manner. Without 
 a clear, correct, and well defined idea of the 
 true import of the separate vital properties, 
 no one can have a distinct comprehension 
 
46 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 of the principles of a medical science. With- 
 out a knowledge of such principles and their 
 application, no one is qualified to take the 
 best advantage of the possibilities provided 
 for the practice of a medical science. Such 
 is true with other sciences, and why not true 
 with the department of organic science ? 
 
 We will now return to a brief considera- 
 tion in outline of what is implied in the 
 fulfilment of co-operative methods of vital 
 agency, in the more general application of 
 the combined special properties, as a practi- 
 cal activity in direction of organic duty. 
 
 In the execution of the plan of organic life 
 as based on the four vital properties, Sensi- 
 bility is held responsible for the presence of 
 kind and quantity of material which may 
 come within contact relations with the do- 
 main of organic life, waiving accidents and 
 uncontrollable circumstances, thus getting to 
 the end of voluntary relations, which it seems 
 important to consider further under a special 
 head. Now, in default of properly applied 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 47 
 
 sensibility, there exists a compensating ability 
 in the name of Instinct, which will appear 
 more prominent at a later period, which will 
 direct application to the disposal of all such 
 material that may be already out of the field 
 of direct aid through sensibility, and wholly 
 within the field of instinctive jurisdiction. 
 Thus the usable material for organic con- 
 structive purpose — all relations being nor- 
 mally in balance — is conducted through the 
 progressive changes of assimilation to become 
 a part of the endowed life structure, and the 
 surplus nutrient material is expelled. More- 
 over, that material not nutritive, and not of 
 possible use for organic constructive purpose, 
 is taken in charge by instinct, with an ap- 
 plied activity to the process of elimination 
 or expulsion, either in a manner common to 
 ordinary elimination, or a vital expression 
 of special resentment. 
 
 All instinctive actions are either physio- 
 logical or pathological, — one department 
 relating to usable material, the other to non- 
 
48 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 usable. Not only does instinct attempt to 
 correct the errors and omissions of sensi- 
 bility, together with the many unavoidable 
 transgressions, — which may frequently be 
 accomplished, illustrating what is called 
 Nature's remedial process, or vis medicatrix 
 naturce, — but again in many instances when 
 instinct comes to such relief, the instinct 
 fails to proceed in harmony with economic 
 vital expenditure and structural safety, thus 
 instituting activities which become dangerous 
 to life, requiring to be diverted or retarded 
 by means devised by sensibility, through 
 medical relations. Thus, when pathological 
 vital action has been successful in removing 
 said non-usable material without interference 
 from sensibility, such feat is recognized as 
 an exhibition of vis medicatrix naturce. But 
 when said pathological vital action does not 
 make a safe success of removal without the 
 aid of medical relation, the pathological action 
 is recognized as disease. Pathological vital 
 action is disease. There are no other actions 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 49 
 
 of the living organism except physiological, 
 pathological, and voluntary. 
 
 The cause and continuance of disease may 
 be from material introduced from without, or 
 material obnoxious resulting from previous 
 pathological action, or chemical product. The 
 nature of disease in general is implied in the 
 general function of pathological vital action. 
 The nature of special disease is the nature 
 of the special pathological vital action under 
 consideration. 
 
 Instinct presides over all material within 
 the vital jurisdiction. Thus the law of in- 
 stinct is the law of the living principle act- 
 ing physiologically in relation to nutritive 
 material for constructive purpose. Also the 
 law of instinct is the law of the living prin- 
 ciple acting pathologically in relation to 
 material non-usable, or not of possible use 
 for constructive purpose. Organic contin- 
 uance requires that such material be re- 
 moved. Instinct is without reason, and is 
 a willing worker. 
 
 4 
 
50 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 We must recognize that instinct corrects 
 some of the errors of sensibility in the re- 
 moval of non-usable material ; while sensibil- 
 ity must quite frequently, in conditions of 
 disease, come to the rescue of instinct and 
 guide to more desirable results. Thus Na- 
 ture has provided a double compensating abil- 
 ity in relation to vital process, whereby each 
 of the two vital properties Sensibility and 
 Instinct may give aid to the practical in- 
 completeness of the other. 
 
 The vital property represented through sen- 
 sibility contributes aid to organic construc- 
 tion by the supply of nutritive material. 
 Sensibility may erroneously, carelessly, or 
 accidentally contribute material of no use, 
 and obnoxious. In such instance instinct, 
 presiding over such presence, sets the or- 
 ganic machinery into activity to eliminate 
 such material. Success may be of early 
 event, or prolonged, and receive the name of 
 " disease " ; or the organism may die from 
 exhaustion of vital energy, or injury to struc- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE* 51 
 
 ture from such struggle. The function of 
 Sensation becomes instrumental in convey- 
 ing the fact of all material presence to the 
 commander in chief, Instinct, which, acting 
 as a board of decision, determines what shall 
 be done with said material. Thus Sensibility 
 contributes supply of material ; Instinct builds 
 the organic body, and keeps it in repair 
 through the aid of involuntary contractility, 
 which is pressed into service in connection 
 with other process. When constructed, this 
 organic body as a whole becomes an engine 
 of activity under the control of sensibility, 
 w T hich property becomes operative of volun- 
 tary contractility. 
 
 Returning to the subject of pathological 
 vital action, — the action of instinct, — we 
 may remark that it is the duty of sensibility 
 to have a watchful oversight of instinct in 
 the affairs of disease. If Instinct is doing 
 the best which circumstances permit with 
 the least danger to the organic system, it 
 becomes the duty of Sensibility to withhold 
 
52 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 interference, and let properly directed in- 
 stinct work out the cure ; otherwise, guide 
 with appropriate appliance to the best possible 
 result. 
 
 Thus, dependent on the fact that instinct 
 is not a department of reason, those premises 
 are provided in Nature which make it neces- 
 sary there shall be a medical profession of 
 special scientific culture in the department 
 of organic force. While we recognize that 
 certain material may become a cause for pa- 
 thological vital action, or disease, we must 
 recognize also that material medicine be- 
 comes a cause for pathological vital action. 
 Thus, when pathological vital action, which 
 we call disease, is being manifested in a di- 
 rection we wish to change or modify, we use 
 a certain medicine which has been deter- 
 mined by experiment to become a cause for 
 pathological vital action to be modified or 
 differently expressed. In place of medicine 
 acting and having " active properties," medi- 
 cine does not act ; its presence only becomes 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 58 
 
 a cause for a vital act. Consequently medi- 
 cine has no " active properties." What is 
 called medical action is no more or less than 
 pathological vital action. The modus operandi 
 of medicine consists in no other phenomena 
 than pathological vital action. 
 
 The man of practice may inquire, " Of 
 what profit is this argumentative distinction ? 
 We are seeking results." If the practice is 
 right, why not have the philosophy, or theory, 
 right ? It is certainly more commendable to 
 intellectual pursuit, in matters of science, to 
 have language, thought, and fact in unison. 
 But we will again take up this subject later. 
 
 We must not ignore the practical fact that 
 pathological vital action is an expenditure of 
 vital energy. Said Professor Clark of the 
 New York College of Physicians and Sur- 
 geons, " Every dose of medicine diminishes 
 the vitality of the patient." Said the ven- 
 erable Prof. James M. Smith, M. D., "Drugs 
 do not cure diseases ; diseases are cured by 
 the vis medicatrix naturce" 
 
54 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 Vis medicatrix naturce is pathological vital 
 action, and pathological vital action expels 
 the cause of disease. And this action, while 
 removing the cause of disease, is called the 
 disease. Pathological vital action is disease. 
 Thus when vis medicatrix naturce, or patho- 
 logical vital action, executes the removal of 
 the cause, the action called disease stops, and 
 the active disease has vanished. As one 
 writer has without thought remarked, the 
 " disease has gone to seek other victims." 
 
 This may be the place to call attention to 
 the general mention in medical literature of 
 "the active cause of disease." The term 
 " active cause " is not of compound relation. 
 There can be no " active cause." The cause 
 of disease may be certain material ; and when 
 said material gets within the limits of vital 
 jurisdiction, a special vital act is expressed in 
 relation to said material. The cause may be 
 dead material, while the u active " is a func- 
 tion of the living organism. The cause of 
 disease does not act ; it is only cause. Dis- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 55 
 
 ease does not migrate ; it is only the cause 
 of disease that travels. " Active cause of 
 disease " and " active medical property " are 
 twins, whose father is named " delusion." 
 The property sensation, or organic perception, 
 may communicate a fact of material presence 
 to instinct, which is responded to by an ac- 
 tivity of significant violence ; which activity, 
 as an activity only, becomes the first evidence 
 to the sensibility that wrong material rela- 
 tions exist within the domain of organic life. 
 Such fact is illustrated when strychnia has 
 been unconsciously introduced within the 
 vital premises ; also, with various causes of 
 disease. 
 
 Thus there may be a sensation to which 
 instinct responds with such degree of in- 
 voluntary convulsion, through the active 
 property contractility, as to exhaust vital 
 energy unto death. In many cases sensi- 
 bility can adopt measures to modify instinct- 
 ive activity. When sensibility cannot thus 
 interpose, instinct holds first place, and may 
 
56 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE., 
 
 inspire activities which exhaust all vital 
 energy. Sensation may have its relations 
 with sensibility, while at other times sensa- 
 tion is in close communion with instinct ; or 
 both may at the same time be involved in 
 the affairs of life. 
 
 In illustration of the application of thought 
 — not practice — to the disease problem from 
 the basis of vital properties, we have to con- 
 sider the cause, and of what degree of possi- 
 ble sensation, of irritability, such cause may 
 produce ; also what activities will be devel- 
 oped by instinct, and what sensibility may be 
 required to effect, in guiding such activity ; 
 also how such modification can best be ac- 
 complished with the least possible expendi- 
 ture of vital energy. This last consideration 
 is of greatest importance. Life is quite too 
 frequently sacrificed from improper appliance. 
 Medical practice is not a supply of supplemen- 
 tary energy, but quite the opposite. In the 
 choice of measures used there are premises 
 for the exhibition of skill, — which makes a 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 57 
 
 knowledge of the law of the " living principle " 
 an indispensable accomplishment. Legitimate 
 medical practice does not consist in silencing 
 pathological vital action in all cases. Patho- 
 logical vital action is for a purpose, and it is 
 important that we comprehend its purpose, 
 and render aid to its desired accomplishment 
 of purpose. 
 
 We will now call attention brieflv to some 
 of the general laws of applied vital energy. 
 
 We have a broad and very intricate future 
 in detail of the various relations which our 
 premises suggest, with the many problems 
 of disease and medicinal relations, of which 
 but little mention is of profit at this time. 
 The more definite outlined plan is of more 
 immediate importance. 
 
DEPARTMENT OF ORGANIC LAW. 
 
 r I M3E first general law of organic vital 
 ■*• purpose is implied in the constructive 
 duty comprised in the transforming of food 
 material into living organic structure, and 
 the elimination or expelling of the worn out 
 tissue of dead material. Such acts are phys- 
 iological vital activities, in relation to food 
 material in certain quantities. This depart- 
 ment is treated quite exhaustively to the 
 minutest of detail in the text-books on phys- 
 iology, and requires little or no mention. 
 Food material in large quantities cannot al- 
 ways be used for physiological purpose ; and 
 pathological vital action may come to the res- 
 cue, and expel by special process the surplus 
 quantity. Thus both physiological and path- 
 ological vital action may relate to food mate- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 59 
 
 rial, while physiological vital action cannot 
 be expressed in relation to material which is 
 foreign, or not possible of assimilation. All 
 special vital action in relation to material not 
 assimilable is pathological. No other line of 
 distinction can rationally be inferred. 
 
 The second law of vital purpose is implied 
 in a pathological vital activity manifested in 
 relation to material not possible of assimila- 
 tion, or usable for purposes of organic con- 
 struction. This law of vital purpose and 
 applied ability is required to correct to a lim- 
 ited extent certain material relations within 
 the domain and field of organic life, which 
 instinct superintends. This department could 
 be quite appropriately called the army and 
 navy, or powers active, not for construct- 
 ive purpose, but powers for defence, which 
 execute the duties of throwing out of the 
 organic citadel that material w T hich has no 
 legitimate right of occupancy, and whose 
 presence interferes with the functions and 
 
60 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 duties of harmonious organic life. The 
 instinct presiding has complete supervision 
 of both material for constructive purpose, 
 and expulsion of material not possible of 
 assimilation. 
 
 If no such function of life ability became a 
 part of our being, in a brief time we should 
 become so mechanically obstructed that or- 
 ganic life functions would cease to continue. 
 The total included in detail of such variety 
 of application of pathological vital action 
 would be sufficient for volumes far more ex- 
 tensive than is found in the text-books of 
 physiology. Our text-books give but little 
 space to pathological vital action, but very 
 much is recorded of what is called pathologi- 
 cal anatomy, or product of pathological vital 
 action, together with description of appear- 
 ances of pathological action. In fact, patho- 
 logical action is disease; and such phenomena 
 may produce morbid anatomy, or may not. 
 
 Those disturbances called disease furnish 
 a great field of phenomena for the study of 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 61 
 
 the law of pathological vital action. No one 
 can define the difference between the so 
 called " action of poisons," in disease, and 
 " active medical property," in distinction 
 from pathological vital action. There is no 
 difference. All of the former terms are mis- 
 nomers, while the latter is the real and true 
 expression of the principle involved. The 
 belief in a medical power, or " active medical 
 property," gives wrong direction to research 
 in aid of the principles and problems of a 
 medical science, while in the department of 
 pathological vital action is found that law 
 and principle of organic activity exceedingly 
 more useful to the physician than the de- 
 partment of physiology. The former quite 
 frequently needs a physician of superior sen- 
 sibility to superintend with intelligent watch- 
 fulness that department of instinct which is 
 urging to activity those pathological feats 
 called disease, while physiological vital ac- 
 tions with a patient have little use for a phy- 
 sician. Thus is it with pathological vital 
 
62 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 action, or disease, which is inspired by in- 
 stinct, and often requires the interference of 
 sensibility to guide it, and of which much 
 would be required to complete a course on 
 theory and practice. 
 
 There yet remain other premises to con- 
 sider, which have not appeared, and which 
 speak volumes in support of a manifest wis- 
 dom in behalf of a one more resource which 
 has been provided to enable us to have a one 
 more chance for a possible continuance of 
 extended life. Thus we introduce and let the 
 thought come up, by asking the following 
 question : — 
 
 Provided that instinct is really running 
 riot with pathological vital action to the ex- 
 haustion or end of the fund of life, even unto 
 death, and no sensibility is available or pos- 
 sible to make application to divert or other- 
 wise deploy this morbid vital activity into 
 lesser dangerous relations, — is there, we ask, 
 a one more provision in Nature for a forlorn 
 hope to be found in the provisions of instinct, 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 63 
 
 to compensate for what sensibility cannot do 
 to delay the immediate prospective fatality 
 thus directed, by instinct ? To this question 
 the reply is, Yes. Instinct has a special 
 quality, or ability, to meet such emergency 
 in many instances. Such is found under 
 the head, or in that division, we shall call the 
 third division of general law, applied to the 
 self-preservation of the organic body. 
 
 The third general law of application is 
 more an ability to stop instinctive activity 
 than otherwise. It is a modification of patho- 
 logical activity into a silence, or suspension, 
 of active measures. This vital purpose of 
 modified instinct fulfils such an important 
 relation, that we are required to consider this 
 department in a division separate, implied in 
 a third law of vital purpose in aid of self- 
 preservation. It is a silence, or toleration, 
 for a purpose ; and that purpose is self-pres- 
 ervation. It is expressive of a measure in- 
 volving important wisdom in the plan of life. 
 
64 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 This third division seems to be implied in 
 a toleration; that is, certain activities have 
 been occasioned from a certain cause, and 
 while the cause may yet remain, the activity 
 has ceased. Or, in other words, instinct has 
 ceased to inspire with activity after a period, 
 — that activity which was early inaugurated 
 from causes which yet continue to remain. 
 Thus the morbid activity which has a suffi- 
 cient cause to be perpetuated unto exhaustion 
 becomes in many instances suspended, and 
 the presence of the remaining cause is tol- 
 erated without special activity in relation 
 thereto, — thus husbanding the vital fund, and 
 giving a longer lease to life. This feature 
 and fact of presentment belongs to the depart- 
 ment of instinct. It is instinct in a special 
 direction. It does not apply in all cases, — 
 far from it ; but it does apply in many cases. 
 
 This principle, or toleration, of cause with- 
 out activity, is of frequent incident, and is 
 well illustrated in the fact that a child resid- 
 ing in a miasmatic region, or in the filth of a 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 65 
 
 city, may escape active disturbance of disease ; 
 while a child from a rural district brought 
 into such relations might be taken suddenly 
 sick. The same principle seems to be im- 
 plied and illustrated in Pasteur's method, so 
 far as it becomes a fact of protection from 
 primary cause. When medicine, as the phy- 
 sicians sometimes say, has ceased to act, or 
 exhibit " active principles," such fact is due 
 to this principle of toleration. 
 
 We remember on a certain occasion of be- 
 ing present when a Professor of Materia 
 Medica had for his lecture before the class 
 the subject of " Ergot and its Powers." 
 While on the premises we made the following 
 note of language used : — 
 
 "The same preparation of ergot often acts 
 finely for a period, but may lose its power, or 
 it certainly seems to, although the bottle has 
 remained corked and properly cared for ; and 
 how that power escaped, or why it ceased to act, 
 is a problem which will wait till medical science 
 can explore deeper those mysteries which sur- 
 round us." 
 
 5 
 
66 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 The fulfilment of this principle of tolera- 
 tion becomes the intervening condition which 
 preserves the life in some acute and self- 
 limited disease. In fact, it is the principle 
 in Nature which makes it possible that cer- 
 tain disease mav be self-limited, and also has 
 much to do in determining the duration of 
 other acute disease. Indeed, in very many 
 instances, it is the condition to be arti- 
 ficially induced by the physician, rather 
 than to deploy vital activity in a different 
 direction, — to husband the vital energies, 
 or modify dangerous activity, which is so 
 frequently accomplished with sedative medi- 
 cine. It is the principle involved in the 
 interim of relapse in many cases of febrile 
 disease, as well as the existing condition in 
 many cases of protracted convalescence, and 
 modified phenomena of disease. 
 
 From the foregoing premises, implying 
 the nature of vital power, or organic force, 
 of separate special vital properties, and their 
 co-relations to purpose, together with the 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 67 
 
 three departments for the exhibition of 
 applied law of organic method, we have a 
 plan of life implying fundamental principles 
 for the development of the doctrinal subject 
 of a theory and practice of medical science. 
 
 Chronic disease is very frequently due to 
 a presentation of cause, in small quantity and 
 of continuous application, — many times of 
 such small quantity that little or no special 
 disturbance is noticeable, — while a condi- 
 tion of toleration develops in relation to such 
 presence, to that decree that such material 
 may exist in quantity sufficient to be the cause 
 of special disturbance of great magnitude, 
 with one whose system had not thus become 
 tolerant ; yet, with the one tolerant, we fail 
 to recognize much trouble of apparent im- 
 portance, until serious organic complications 
 are developed. Such may be illustrated in 
 the sequela of malarial poison and organic 
 disease due to the use of spirituous liquors. 
 
 Malignant growth is always preceded by 
 an abnormal sensation, and frequently of 
 
68 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 conscious existence. It becomes important 
 many times that we attach proper significance 
 to continued abnormal sensation ; while a 
 better knowledge of histology is obtained 
 through a study of the law of development, 
 than from results of the law; also, a more 
 effective treatment may have a reasonable 
 expectancy. 
 
 In such incident we recognize that there 
 has been sufficient abnormal sensation to per- 
 vert the development of organic structure ; 
 yet the sensibility of the individual of ex- 
 perience was conscious of but little degree 
 of abnormal sensation, until serious condi- 
 tions were made to prevail. Again, such 
 incident illustrates that reason may be far 
 superior to experience. Under the law, reason 
 may and can have good cause to anticipate 
 such event, while experience comes too late 
 to be of great value to the person of experi- 
 ment, who long presumed that such material 
 agreed with his constitution. 
 
 It is not to be implied that the brief men- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 69 
 
 tion that pathological vital action is disease 
 does justice to the subject of disease. Such 
 statement only puts certain facts and actions 
 in a true relation, while there remain many 
 complex facts which require a far more ex- 
 tended consideration. Disease is an organic 
 condition, in which physiological vital action 
 is more or less imperfectly executed, while 
 pathological vital action is being specially 
 active in a more or less variety of relations, 
 that would require a complete treatise on 
 special disease to do it justice. 
 
 The germ theory of disease as presented is 
 an incomplete aggregation of ideas of frac- 
 tional relation, to which we shall again refer 
 later. 
 
 The first duties of instinctive supervision 
 are implied in the oversight given to nutri- 
 tive material in the process of organic con- 
 struction, which constitutes the life work of 
 this department of applied function for the 
 perpetuation of organic life. 
 
70 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 The second division of duty, executed 
 through instinct, consists in directing special 
 activities in relation to material or conditions 
 which are not of normal relation. Sensation 
 recognizes and communicates the fact to in- 
 stinct, which authorizes activities executed by 
 contractility. Now the presentment thus im- 
 plied is precisely what is presented and ex- 
 pressed in medical literature as the " making 
 of an impression on the organism, which is 
 responded to by a reaction." Such incident 
 of phenomena is not a " reaction," but a first 
 action, in response to a sensation, rather than 
 a previous action. 
 
 Foreign material of objectionable quality 
 within the citadel of life is generally recog- 
 nized in medical literature as an agent which 
 has done something, and such application is 
 also made to medicinal relations. The medi- 
 cine is made an agent which does something, 
 an agent which acts, an agent expressive of 
 power or " active medical property," which 
 is said to make an "impression," which is 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 71 
 
 responded to by " reaction." In medical 
 literature, if no response becomes expressive 
 from such relation, this agent is presumed to 
 have lost its power, or become inert. We 
 cannot escape the inference that in the affairs 
 of life, executed by organic force, medical 
 science of acceptance has given but little 
 credit to the organic ability, except in the 
 performance of physiological duties. And 
 with this department discovery is fast super- 
 seding Nature in recognizing that many " ac- 
 tive properties," or powers, exist in drugs 
 which execute physiological action. In fact, 
 many students of medical science are experi- 
 menting with drugs with a view to discover 
 such ability ; and great success has been 
 reported. 
 
 The grand strides in scientific research 
 seem destined to reveal possibilities which 
 will allow the physician to dispense entirely 
 with organic force. It is becoming the aim 
 of the alleged foremost journals, in keeping 
 abreast with the times, to give particular 
 
72 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 attention to the " physiological action of old 
 and new remedies," while leaders in schools 
 of medical instruction have made " some new 
 observations on the physiological action of 
 the mercurials," — thus illustrating that in 
 no age, and with no department of scientific 
 research, has the human mind given such 
 exhibit of serious delusion as we find in the 
 literature of alleged contribution to medical 
 science. What vagaries of thought are yet 
 destined to become adopted is a serious de- 
 partment to contemplate when brought into 
 relations of experimental procedure with the 
 fund of life. 
 
 Reasoning about such premises from the 
 basis of experiment and appearances, with- 
 out established law, is quite like the early 
 reasoning about astronomy from appearances. 
 While great credit is scored for such achieve- 
 ment, there is a boast of u exact science of 
 practical value not to be regarded in the light 
 of a beautiful but useless theory." An ac- 
 cepted state of intellectual scientific pursuit 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 73 
 
 which ignores the use of theory, or compre- 
 hension of the nature of cause and effect, 
 may do for a novelist, but is a sad and 
 lamentable infliction when made applicable to 
 an invalid existence. 
 
 Physiological action is a phenomenon of 
 organic force acting in relation to nutrient 
 material for constructive purpose, or the 
 elimination of such material later. Said 
 Professor Gregory of Edinburgh, " Medical 
 doctrines are for the most part stark, star- 
 ing nonsense." Said Dr. Bostock, author of 
 a History of Medicine : " Our actual infor- 
 mation or knowledge of disease does not 
 increase in proportion to our experimental 
 practice. Every dose of medicine given is a 
 blind experiment upon the vitality of the 
 patient." 
 
 Of that department which we allege to be 
 executed by pathological vital activity, ac- 
 cepted medical doctrine has given credit 
 quite largely to an ability or agency of " ac- 
 tive property " belonging to dead material, or 
 
74 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 more frequently to material which never even 
 had life. Such is the only inference of the 
 language. Such a plan seems crude, to say 
 the least, of thus endowing ability, although 
 such is the plan of accepted philosophy, and 
 it has long appeared to afford general satis- 
 faction. Whether such philosophy will be 
 surrendered witli a less reluctance than the 
 doQtrines of pre-Copernican acceptance, will 
 be determined later. The human mind gets 
 into channels, and thought is the result of an 
 education, which might be made as easy to 
 be right as wrong, and vice versa. Some can 
 escape from the convictions of a first educa- 
 tion, while others cannot. Says Herbert 
 Spencer : " In my earlier days I made the 
 foolish supposition that conclusive proofs 
 would change beliefs ; but experience has 
 long since dissipated my faith in men's ra- 
 tionality." The question may arise later, 
 whether we owe more allegiance to the pres- 
 ervation of educational dignity than to the 
 preservation of the laity. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 75 
 
 In the enigma of life it seems that there 
 exist four vital properties of organic force, 
 and that Sensibility may direct voluntary 
 motion, while Instinct directs the invol- 
 untary ; that Contractility executes motion, 
 while Sensation executes the function or per- 
 ception of immediate material contact, rela- 
 tive to which instinct may find cause to 
 direct a special involuntary activity, and sen- 
 sibility find cause to direct voluntary activ- 
 ity relative to the conscious sensation. All 
 these qualities of vital ability have special 
 significance in the affairs of life ; and while 
 we cannot escape the recognition of such 
 separate unlike functions, we cannot get be- 
 hind to a " more previous," but we must 
 begin with such knowledge. 
 
 It may not appear wise, safe, or prudent 
 for instinct to inaugurate such activities as 
 frequently become manifest ; but we must 
 keep in mind that instinct is not intellect ; 
 and while instinct may often appear to direct 
 very unwisely, this department can and does 
 
76 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE., 
 
 direct actions which practically become wise 
 in their achievement of purpose. The ability 
 given to instinct is an ability that within it- 
 self cannot exercise discrimination. It is an 
 ability that may do practically right, or may 
 do practically wrong. Yet no one can but 
 admire the grand plan of life, of which it 
 would be extremely difficult to suggest im- 
 provement, — wherein is included the fact 
 that instinct corrects some errors of sensibil- 
 ity, and executes a great variety of pathologi- 
 cal feats without aid from sensibility ; yet in 
 emergency sensibility superintends instinct, 
 and directs more safely its applied measures 
 in support of organic preservation. Thus 
 we have in the several distinct vital proper- 
 ties a complete whole, which is wonderful to 
 contemplate in support of expressed wisdom 
 emanating from the laboratory of the Great 
 Architect. It becomes emphatically sug- 
 gestive that no department of erudition can 
 equal in its achievements such reward to 
 mental industry in fulfilment of scientific 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 77 
 
 accomplishments, applicable to the practice 
 of medicine most beneficially, as is revealed 
 through a knowledge of the several vital 
 properties and laws of organic activity. 
 
 Before closing this chapter, we desire to 
 mention, in connection with a first cause for 
 a pathological vital action, the possibility of 
 a development of secondary causes that may 
 further contribute to aggravation of abnormal 
 sensation and subsequent pathological action. 
 Such secondary cause can be made to exist 
 with a condition of abnormal heat, in asso- 
 ciation with the primary cause. Increased 
 temperature may be in partnership with joint 
 total cause, in relation to which instinct di- 
 rects a larger influx of blood, thus developing 
 what is called inflammation, it may be to a 
 local point, or an organ, perhaps the lungs. 
 Associated with all acute disease, pathologi- 
 cal vital action develops more or less in- 
 creased temperature of the blood, which in 
 itself becomes an addition, and a secondary 
 
78 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 cause of frequent serious importance, that 
 requires watchful attention. In the treat- 
 ment of disease, too little attention to such 
 cause becomes a dereliction of duty difficult 
 to excuse. 
 
 We now trust that the primary premises 
 have been sufficiently outlined to make ap- 
 plication or illustration of the vital theory, 
 as expressed in the phenomena of special 
 disease. 
 
ERUPTIVE FEVERS. 
 
 \li 7HEN we take into account what is 
 * * required to be accomplished in a 
 variety of eruptive febrile disease, — namely, 
 the elimination of an increased total of dis- 
 integrated tissue and developed poisonous 
 pathological product, together with the fact 
 that the skin is the great eliminating organ 
 of such tissue and product, and the outlet of 
 greatest safety, — we are confronted with a 
 mechanical fact which militates against such 
 possibility to a dangerous degree. The in- 
 stinctive effort to eliminate through the skin 
 sends such a volume of blood into the capil- 
 laries, that sufficient pressure is made on the 
 millions of pores to collapse them so as me- 
 chanically to shut the door to all possibility 
 of escape. The increased heat in the skin in 
 
80 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 contact with the numerous nerve extremi- 
 ties becomes the abnormal fact recognized in 
 irritable sensation as a cause secondary, to 
 which instinct responds with persistent de- 
 termination of blood, thus closing the nu- 
 merous emunctories against escape of the 
 deleterious material so important to be ex- 
 pelled. Thus heat alone may be the cause 
 of death in the early stage of eruptive fevers. 
 The death line is just beyond a certain de- 
 gree of heat, which is not the same with 
 each person. 
 
 Now, the practical problem comes up, — 
 and how explainable? — How shall w r e open 
 the million of pores, or how shall we prevent 
 death from heat early, and how shall we 
 prevent death later, from the cause of a too 
 great quantity of obnoxious material ? What 
 fulfils one purpose also fulfils the other. 
 
 But how shall we reduce the temperature ? 
 Before we proceed to make reply, let us con- 
 sider the method — which, we regret to say, 
 is quite too often adopted — of giving hot 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 81 
 
 drinks, and supplying artificial heat to make 
 the patient " sweat," as such method is ex- 
 plained. The fact that extreme heat already 
 present from organic method prevents indi- 
 rectly the possibility to " sweat," fails to be 
 recognized with due consideration. To in- 
 duce perspiration, or opening of the pores, 
 the mechanical problem, or fact, requires 
 that we reduce the superficial volume of 
 capillary fulness. To accomplish such pur- 
 pose we must reduce the temperature. Shall 
 we reduce the temperature by loading the 
 organism down with such kind of medicine 
 that vital activitv cannot act sufficientlv to 
 develop heat, thus placing our selected rem- 
 edy outside our reach and control, and at 
 the same time adding more material for 
 further subsequent tax on vital ability to 
 remove ? Such would not be an exhibition 
 of conservation of vital energy, but quite 
 similar to balancing a bag of corn on a 
 horse's back by placing a stone in the oppo- 
 site end. Such is not to be advised when 
 
 6 
 
82 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE., 
 
 better methods may become practical. If 
 possible, we should adopt such a method to 
 reduce temperature as would occasion the 
 instinctive action to fulfil the best purpose 
 with the least expenditure of vital energy. 
 Our method should be as much as possible 
 under our immediate control, with a view to 
 conservation of vital energy and immediate 
 modification. It has long been our practice? 
 with a view to reduce superficial temperature, 
 and thus diminish the cause which contributes 
 to capillary congestion, — particularly with 
 delayed exanthemata in both scarlatina and 
 rubeola, attended with rapid pulse and high 
 temperature, — to put the patient in a wet 
 sheet pack, give an abundance of cold water, 
 and open the windows, — most decidedly 
 to be adopted in cases of severity. Such 
 treatment is accepted by the patient with 
 feelings expressive of gratitude, and is soon 
 followed by the desired result, although 
 the attendants are liable to anticipate great 
 danger. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 83 
 
 Custom has long been permitted to dictate 
 methods, rather than the safer and more 
 effectual means suggested through the prin- 
 ciples of an applied science. So important 
 is this treatment as a life-saving method from 
 early death often times, that we desire to give 
 special emphasis to such consideration. 1 
 
 It is not essential that extreme cold appli- 
 cations be used ; the wet sheet of agreeable 
 temperature becomes a sufficient conductor 
 of heat when changed frequently, and not 
 applied with such long continuance as to be 
 productive of retained heat. With scarlatina, 
 the keeping of the superficial heat diminished 
 early, with such reduced volume of capillaries 
 that the pores will remain open to allow the 
 early and continuous escape of the accumu- 
 lating poisonous product, will be of great 
 advantage as a prophylactic against glandu- 
 lar swellings and inflammation of the throat. 
 The soluble products of pathological action 
 
 1 Read what is said on the treatment of scarlatina in 
 Naphey's " Medical Therapeutics." 
 
84 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. - 
 
 become secondary causes for continued disease 
 of more or less severity, and of blood poison, 
 which should ever be accommodated with a 
 door for escape. Avoid cathartics, and hold 
 bits of ice in the mouth to protect mucous 
 membranes. 
 
 We have sometimes thought that medical 
 practice was conducted too much with a view 
 to paralyze or suppress vital activity, rather 
 than the keeping of such activity in relations 
 which could best execute the cure, — thus 
 becoming instrumental in retaining the exist- 
 ing cause, protracting convalescence, and de- 
 velopment later of chronic invalidism. Said 
 Professor Barker, of the New York Medical 
 College, some years ago : " The drugs which 
 are administered for the cure of scarlet fever 
 and measles kill far more than those diseases 
 do." A practice of medicine should be based 
 on the solved problem of the nature of or- 
 ganic force implied in the nature of the par- 
 ticular disease, — what is required to be done, 
 and how it can best be accomplished with the 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 85 
 
 least expenditure of vital energy. To give 
 medicine without a clear idea of the nature 
 of the problem too frequently becomes of 
 serious detriment to the patient. It fre- 
 quently becomes a duty of greater importance 
 indefinitely to postpone medical treatment 
 rather than make such appliance. Seek to 
 comprehend what is required, and how the 
 organism can best accomplish such purpose, 
 • — remembering that it is the vital energy 
 which executes all the doing, and that medi- 
 cine never acts, but becomes cause only to 
 modify vital acts. 
 
PNEUMONIA. 
 
 T^URTHER to illustrate the application of 
 •** a theory which in our opinion is entitled 
 to respect, in being consistent with cause and 
 effect and phenomena, — also with method 
 of treatment and results, — we will make ap- 
 plication of it to the disease of pneumonia. 
 We must consider the cause ; what becomes 
 consequent to such cause, and how expressed; 
 how the cause may become multiplied ; how 
 the cause may be diminished by treatment; 
 how life may be prolonged to an existing 
 condition of instinctive toleration of sur- 
 roundings, — together with the display and 
 verification of the function of the several 
 vital properties involved. 
 
 Starting from the basis of the several de- 
 fined vital properties, we recognize that the 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 87 
 
 phenomena of activity is in fulfilment of 
 special action, directed by instinct. For the 
 exhibition of a special activity there must be, 
 or exist, some special cause; there must al- 
 ways in conditions of disease exist a previous 
 abnormal sensation. This sensation may or 
 may not be of conscious recognition. The 
 first new fact, or vital condition, which pre- 
 cedes the ushering in of disease, must exist 
 in an abnormal sensation. Disease cannot be 
 made to exist without a previous primary 
 abnormal sensation. Such sensation may be 
 caused by a great variety of material con- 
 tact, mechanical pressure on nerve extremity, 
 heat or cold. The elimination of certain 
 poisonous soluble products of pathological 
 vital action of previous disease through the 
 lungs may become a cause of abnormal sen- 
 sation to the nerves of lung tissue. In the 
 name of cause for pneumonia there must ex- 
 ist in the region of lung tissue, with nerve 
 extremity, either a material cause — condi- 
 tion of heat or cold — or mechanical pressure 
 
88 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. ' 
 
 on nerve tissue, from distended lung capilla- 
 ries. With some one or more of such ex- 
 isting facts there is a cause, which becomes 
 recognized in the name of sensation, — a 
 sensation abnormal, which sensation is a 
 fact, requiring instinctive attention, and is 
 responded to by the sending of a greater 
 volume of blood to the region of abnormal 
 sensation, developing inflammation. 
 
 We will now consider each of the primal 
 causes which may contribute to abnormal 
 sensation and development of such inflamma- 
 tion, or pneumonia. 
 
 The material cause may be from some sud- 
 den inhalation of material dust or vapor. 
 The 'primal heat cause might be the inhal- 
 ing of hot air. The cold cause might exist 
 from long breathing of very cold air. The 
 mechanical cause can be made to exist from 
 a prolonged superficial chill, producing a di- 
 minished capillary circulation, which compels 
 the blood to be stored away with a greater 
 distention of the blood-vessels of the internal 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 89 
 
 organs, — the lungs receiving an unnatural 
 quantity, together with the fact that nerve 
 tissue of sensation is generously supplied to 
 lung tissue : with this fact of nerve, and of 
 blood pressure on such nerve, there may ex- 
 ist an abnormal sensation, — on precisely the 
 same principle that applies with pressure of 
 blood in the head as a frequent cause of 
 headache. 
 
 Having established a cause for abnormal 
 sensation, in response to which instinct sends 
 an increased volume of blood, we are to con- 
 sider that such increased volume of blood 
 contributes to the multiplication of cause, pro- 
 ducing greater mechanical pressure, devel- 
 oping more heat, which becomes a dual and 
 secondary cause for a sensation abnormal 
 to a degree of possible pain. Thus we have 
 now to consider pressure, heat, and devel- 
 oped pain as cause and fact of sensation ab- 
 normal, to which instinct makes response by 
 keeping up too great a volume of blood to 
 the organ, — all of which associated facts of 
 
90 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 organic condition are called in the aggregate 
 inflammation. 
 
 In accordance with the theory of separate 
 vital property, we are enabled to comprehend 
 how this condition has been made to exist. 
 Now arises the question, When will such dis- 
 turbance cease ; and through what principle 
 in the nature of organic method can such 
 disturbance be made to stop? 
 
 Pneumonia is called a self-limited disease. 
 The limit of sucli activity is governed by that 
 principle we have associated with instinct, 
 mentioned in the third law of method in the 
 name of Toleration, which implies that cause 
 for morbid activity may exist. Yet a tol- 
 eration is expressed through instinct which 
 permits such cause to remain without special 
 expression of further activity. Thus through 
 the nature and possibility of modified prop- 
 erty of instinct we find the principle of or- 
 ganic method which makes it possible that 
 disease may be self-limited. Otherwise per- 
 sistent activity would continue to exhaustion 
 and death. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 91 
 
 With pneumonia, we have to consider 
 whether the severity of activity and territory 
 involved will destroy the lung tissue, or di- 
 minish the breathing capacity sufficient to 
 cause death, before toleration and resolve to 
 do so no more is established. While this 
 principle of toleration is always developed in 
 pneumonia if the patient lives, it is seldom 
 developed in chronic lung trouble. In many 
 cases of pneumonia, the severity of action 
 and amount of territory involved are not of 
 a degree or of a quantity sufficient to cause 
 particular anxiety. With such cases it is 
 said that resolution succeeds early, and Na- 
 ture perfects the cure. It should be taken 
 into explanation of such fact, that toleration 
 was thus early established from a milder 
 degree of cause, together with an organism 
 possessed of less tendency to become irritable. 
 
 In the treatment of pneumonia, we have 
 three distinct matters to consider ; namely, 
 the severity of action, the amount of terri- 
 tory involved, and nutritive support. From 
 
92 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 the fact that active phenomena are developed 
 of more or less severity from several causes, 
 it becomes rational that the treatment should 
 ever be to diminish each of the several causes 
 under our control. Existing heat of high tem- 
 perature being contributory of much cause, 
 we should seek to diminish such temperature, 
 which is very largely under our control, and 
 a cause quite largely existing in the early 
 stages of pneumonia. How shall we accom- 
 plish such purpose to best advantage, with a 
 superintendence which admits of momentary 
 modification, as the facts may seem to re- 
 quire ? We have adopted the method of 
 early, very early, enveloping the chest com- 
 pletely around the body with cool wet towels, 
 covered with dry ones, changing these per- 
 haps every twenty minutes for twelve hours, 
 if necessary, together with all the cool water 
 which the patient may desire, or even more. 
 When we have found a temperature early of 
 104° to 106°, such treatment has reduced the 
 temperature to 100° or 102°, thus mitigat- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 93 
 
 ing the degree of cause, and converting a 
 case of prospective active severity to milder 
 and safer relations of cause and activity. 
 While it is not desirable to reduce the tem- 
 perature to a normal standard, it is most de- 
 sirable and beneficial to keep the temperature 
 within safer limits. The German system of 
 cold compress and cold bath went most de- 
 servedly into disrepute, largely because such 
 application was used with a view to abort or 
 cure pneumonia, rather than the keeping of 
 the temperature a few degrees less. It was 
 practised more as a routine plan, without 
 regard to the difference of constitutional 
 strength or age of patients. To paralyze vi- 
 tal activity with cold is equally reprehensible 
 as with medicine. To abort pneumonia by 
 depressing the vital activity after certain 
 local changes have developed becomes dan- 
 gerous. The nature of pneumonia with the 
 robust suggests that continuous efforts to les- 
 sen the temperature a feiv degrees through 
 means under immediate control are of sig- 
 
94 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 nificant importance, — thus diminishing the 
 blood volume, and permitting more air space 
 to be utilized. Too much emphasis cannot be 
 given to such early appliance. 
 
 There is very much that might be said of 
 pneumonia, existing with the feeble ; our 
 remarks, however, are more directly appli- 
 cable to the sthenic form, which snuffs out 
 the life of the healthy and active. When we 
 recognize the full meaning and position of 
 abnormal sensation, as the existing condition 
 which contributes to more serious aggravation 
 of pneumonia, the subject of cause of abnor- 
 mal sensation will be attended to early, with 
 a recognition of great significance. The term 
 "catching cold" is quite too often a mislead- 
 ing term. The sufferer is far less liable to 
 injury from continued cold than from in- 
 creased and continued heat by organic pro- 
 cess, which should be early diminished. In 
 pneumonia, water not only aids in the cool- 
 ing of the blood, but is required to remove 
 soluble pathological product at an early day. 
 
H: 1 JULTURK. 
 
 W b a large factor work- 
 
 ing capital in disc 
 wal more 
 
 an too much m 
 
 may no benefic 
 
 uric process 
 In all Usease rm and 
 
 tribute aid to tht 
 rather than enc to c 
 
 m - the er: a I : 
 
 se:_ With all c 
 
 indicati m - zed ma; 
 
 eluded the din 
 
 for abnormal B in 
 
 be diseaa _ m- 
 
 pli: uires early inued 
 
 blc :id while it - . bo red; 
 
 the te i 5 * 
 
 for c; morbi . we m - on 
 
 find i sensation 
 
 that warn for fur- 
 
96 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 ther morbid activity. Thus, in many cases, 
 it becomes very important that large doses 
 of repeated opiates be used early, not only to 
 relieve the immediate pain cause, but to aid 
 in establishing partial toleration, or abroga- 
 tion. The treatment of the first two days 
 may accomplish much, in converting a case 
 of prospective severity into one of far less 
 degree. Mildness of activity develops tolera- 
 tion earlier, because there is less to tolerate ; 
 thus " resolution " to cease activity becomes 
 more early established in aid of self-preser- 
 vation. 
 
 The principle in operative prophylactics 
 with disease becomes possible through three 
 different relations with sensation. Recogniz- 
 ing that abnormal sensation precedes active 
 disease, it often becomes important to direct 
 attention to abnormal sensation. Nature 
 meets such requirement frequently by estab- 
 lishing a toleration of the presence of cause ; 
 while sensibility may appeal to abnormal sen- 
 sation through a supply of material of more 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 97 
 
 or less quantity, which presence may favor 
 a condition of more or less temporary abro- 
 gation of the function of sensation. With 
 such a presence, sensation cannot perceive 
 or recognize even to a degree of normal per- 
 ception, much less to a complete fulness of 
 abnormal degree. This condition is made to 
 prevail through the presence of the opiate 
 family of material medicines. The third 
 department is made to apply by a ^re-occu- 
 pancy of sensation ; while the diverting of 
 activity through a cause for a different sensa- 
 tion is a resource to be made applicable in 
 various diseases, which become suggestive 
 through a familiarity with the functions of 
 the separate vital properties, and their co- 
 operative relations with the executive prob- 
 lems in life. 
 
 This explanation of pneumonia and its 
 treatment is suggested through and in har- 
 mony with the theory of vital properties, in 
 fulfilment of special duty in the organic 
 problem, involved with relations of cause and 
 
 7 
 
98 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 effect both in development of the disease and 
 in establishing resolution or toleration, im- 
 plied in support of the principle which per- 
 mits such disease to be self-limited. So far 
 as we are able to make comparison, theory 
 and fact in association with defined vital 
 properties, together with all the phenomena 
 observable in pneumonia, appear to be veri- 
 fied in the problem we have had under con- 
 sideration. If we have failed to see all there 
 is in this problem, or given wrong interpre- 
 tation to fact, we earnestly desire to be set 
 right. Our wish has long existed to be cor- 
 rect with the interpretation of organic method, 
 as presented and executed through the prop- 
 erties and laws of organic force. We have 
 had twenty-five years of experience with this 
 method of treating pneumonia, and can truly 
 say that we have been rewarded with such 
 success as to persuade us to its continuance. 
 
 We think it is not denied that much of 
 the present practice with all disease is quite 
 largely based on the experience of experi- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 99 
 
 ment implied through historical and personal 
 attainment, rather than on any pretence of 
 presumed significance attached to laws and 
 methods of organic instinct. While such 
 experience may be of immeasurable value, 
 we are none the less deprived of such source 
 of knowledge when we seek to comprehend 
 and anticipate Nature's methods in true ideal 
 of organic fulfilment. If it is true that 
 organic power executes the phenomena of 
 disease, rather than a power or " active 
 principle " in alleged poisons, then it is con- 
 sistent to infer that a knowledge and correct 
 theory, or explanation, of organic method 
 would contribute much profit in connection 
 with experience. In fact, experience and 
 reason based on correct premises become the 
 highest possible individual attainment. 
 
 This volume is not intended to fulfil a de- 
 partment of theory and practice, but to es- 
 tablish a basis and illustration for such a 
 department on a different plan. We aim to 
 present a theory or explanation which will 
 
100 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 command respect as truly expressive of the 
 principles, properties, and laws of organic 
 method. 
 
 We omitted in the proper place to make 
 complete mention of all relations involved 
 with the vital property of sensation ; we fol- 
 lowed the direction developed, as irritable 
 and painful. We desire to mention that in 
 the opposite direction, with a sensation pleas- 
 urable, there is much to consider which has 
 developed practices of serious import both 
 with opium and alcohol, of which with the 
 latter we anticipate more special mention in 
 another part of this volume. 
 
 In the practice of medicine, sensibility will 
 be required to have much to do with sen- 
 sation, with a view to establish a different 
 sensation in many instances, where no other 
 problematic question is actively involved ; 
 also to make appeals to instinct indirectly 
 through sensation, for the purpose of estab- 
 lishing a different expression of the vital 
 property of Contractility. 
 
VITALISTS. 
 
 TV IT EDICAL history refers to a " medical 
 ^ *- sect" called " Vitalists," originating 
 with Van Helmont, and later espoused more 
 earnestly by Stahl, who recognized in organic 
 nature a principle of self-preservation outside 
 of physiological duties. This was the germ 
 ideal which later was recognized under the 
 name of vis medicatrix naturce, and now more 
 truly expressed through modern thought by 
 that of organic instincts. Stahl and others 
 have thought this power was intended to exe- 
 cute important duties for the organism, and 
 consequently should be endowed with a guid- 
 ing principle that should cause such ability 
 to manifest itself harmoniously in application 
 to the best interest of the individual, — which 
 would imply that this power should be guided 
 by reason. Experience determined that this 
 
102 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 power could not be trusted for intelligence ; 
 and as medical powers became more generally 
 recognized, this department of organic prin- 
 ciple fell into disrepute, and in fact was 
 largely kept in the background, out of sight, 
 and ignored through lack of attention, while 
 a cultured expectancy was developed of a 
 presumed ability expressed under the name 
 of " active medical property." 
 
 With a view to do justice to the ancient 
 mind, as well as to draw the line of distinc- 
 tion which determines the difference between 
 our doctrine of vital property — Instinct — 
 and the ancient doctrine of the vitalists, we 
 say the ancient mind only recognized that 
 there was such a principle applicable to the 
 affairs of life, which was certainly commenda- 
 ble. They determined nothing further which 
 represented this principle correctly. Along 
 the pathway of medical thought for centuries 
 this principle has been recognized. The late 
 Prof. Robley Dunglison, a medical scholar of 
 distinguished ability, says : — 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 103 
 
 " Physiologists have noticed in every living 
 body an instinctive action, — an action of the 
 living principle directing its operations to the 
 health and preservation of a living frame. . . . 
 The existence, then, of such an instinctive power 
 can neither be denied nor lost sight of in the 
 treatment of disease. The error has been that 
 undue weight has been attached to it, so that 
 the practitioner was altogether guided by its 
 manifestations, or fancied manifestations. . . . 
 Stahl, the great apostle of this doctrine, sup- 
 posed a power to be present in the system of 
 repelling morbific influence. . . . There are but 
 few cases, however, in which trust can be safely 
 placed in this power." 
 
 In this statement we find the curious fact 
 illustrated of how near both Stahl and Pro- 
 fessor Dunglison were to the discovery of the 
 true import of this important principle, exist- 
 ing, or implied, in the name of a special vital 
 property, — Instinct. While they failed to 
 recognize that both physiological and patho- 
 logical activities were guided by instinct, they 
 also failed to recognize the several vital prop- 
 
104 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 erties, each in itself distinct, as a one principle 
 or factor of life. Also, they both asserted, or 
 rather entertained the expectancy, that this 
 instinctive power, to be of practical use in 
 medical science, should be expressive of in- 
 tellect. They failed to recognize, that, to 
 comprehend life as a whole, it was extremely 
 important first to consider the separate, dis- 
 tinct, and unlike duties of life which consti- 
 tute this whole. The fact that such directed 
 power did not express intellect caused this 
 ability, in their judgment, to be set aside in 
 the background as an unreliable department 
 in the affairs of life. Professor Dunglison 
 says : " We often hear, for example, of 
 1 efforts of Nature,' yet the ideas attached 
 to the expression are very unprecise." Not- 
 withstanding the acknowledged existence of 
 such power, no satisfactory knowledge was 
 made applicable to the harnessing of this 
 power knowingly, and guiding it into useful 
 activities. 
 
 Yet this department of expressed power 
 
HKHEK MUKCAIi €ML 
 
 comprises mtt tie power existing that we h : 
 
 consider in disease and medwioe profafeasw 
 The nearness to discovery withoot actual dis~ 
 jr is of narrow dimension, and found in 
 the fact tL. - - ~e*wned Oat intt 
 
 ya&A be directly behind in assoeia- 
 
 hind /siKrvrr bs iation 
 
 :h this power. Inst :s not 
 
 expressive of in 
 
 can guide this power indirectly through reia- 
 
 as of a snpplied muse for a different sen- 
 
 ■ i e differe: ction to 
 
 What we claim to free 
 
 ment of organic nature is implied in the «fe~ 
 
 fining of the - .1 pro^ as - og 
 
 that one is not the other, and that each baa 
 
 perform of special and unlike fane- 
 
 a, executed within unmistakable boun 
 
 - f dis: — Antra . .:. and of 
 
 correlation in the practical affairs of 1 
 
 wl .nstitute the whole of executive 
 
106 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 method in the problems of organic life. 
 Professor Dunglison says: " The error has 
 been that undue weight has been attached to 
 it [the power] , so that the practitioner was 
 altogether guided by its manifestation, or 
 fancied manifestation." There is no " fan- 
 cied manifestation" as a recognition of 
 power ; while, if the ideal of expectancy was 
 to recognize intelligence, there might be very 
 much u fancied." This power, directed by 
 instinct, may do right, or it may do wrong. 
 The "manifestation" of this poiver is the 
 only basis on which to place a judgment. In 
 place of any possible " undue weight " being 
 attached to such "manifestation," it is the 
 only manifestation to be ever watched by the 
 physician, and differently directed as judg- 
 ment may determine. It is the power mani- 
 fest in disease that requires the ever watchful 
 attention of the physician, — to be let alone 
 when doing the best possible, and guided 
 when not expressive of the best relations to 
 life. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 107 
 
 This one fact, that this power is directed by 
 instinct, without direct intelligence, provides 
 in nature that department to be filled by the 
 physician, in a watchful oversight and guid- 
 ance of this power indirectly. Guiding this 
 instinctive power, rather than supplying a 
 presumed medical power, or u active medical 
 property," is the true duty of the physician, 
 which plan is more expressive of a science. 
 Professor Dunglison says : — 
 
 " It is within the college walls that the stu- 
 dent acquires the prominent facts of his pro- 
 fession, and the great principles appertaining to 
 its practical administration. He there learns 
 the theory or laws of phenomena, on which all 
 sound and rational practice is based. In no 
 art can sound practice exist without theory. 
 Theory is the mental process which binds ob- 
 served facts or phenomena together, compares 
 them with one another, and deduces appropriate 
 rules of practice. It is to theory that we are 
 indebted, not only for full practical usefulness, 
 but for every science. Facts are, doubtless, the 
 
108 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 elements of science, but the science itself does 
 not exist until these facts have been brought 
 together, sifted and compared, and general prin- 
 ciples or laws deduced therefrom." 
 
 We fear that Professor Dunglison's ideal 
 of accomplishment within " college walls " is 
 not realized. If organic force executes the 
 phenomena of disease, the nature of disease 
 must be implied in the laws of organic force. 
 Thus, if we do not understand the laws of 
 organic force, we cannot understand the 
 nature of disease ; and without a knowledge 
 of the nature of disease, no physician is suffi- 
 ciently cultured to give his patient the best 
 advantage of the possibilities provided in a 
 medical science. The doctrine of an " active 
 medical property" expresses neither a fact 
 nor a principle in medical science. 
 
"ACTIVE MEDICAL PROPERTIES." 
 
 /CONSIDERING that we have presented 
 ^ w/ a basis of fundamental principles on 
 which a new plan of medical science may find 
 support, it may be questionable whether good 
 cause remains for a further criticism of the 
 plan we have alleged to be without repre- 
 sentation in the affairs of life. When we 
 take into consideration, however, the general 
 habits, customs, and practices of a people, 
 together with the pride, interest, reputation, 
 education, and conscientious conviction which 
 is associated with venerable names, learned, 
 honorable, and influential, the most profound 
 and conclusive details will be required to 
 loosen the grip which has so long held fast 
 to the doctrines which have come down to us 
 through ages of revered respect. To give a 
 sketch of the origin and progress of the doc- 
 
110 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 trines of alleged medical science, from time 
 to time, is without profit on this occasion, 
 and only of historic interest and curiosity to 
 people who live in this age of modern in- 
 vention ; and whether any persuasive induce- 
 ment could be made to prevail in calling 
 a halt for a review of fundamental medical 
 premises, with any possible conviction of wil- 
 lingness to accept the dictates of a better 
 reason, by a consideration of what has been 
 said by a distinguished philosopher relative 
 to early thought, remains with the reader to 
 determine. Mr. Herbert Spencer says : — 
 
 u Early ideas are usually not true ideas. Un- 
 developed intellect, be it that of an individual 
 or that of a race, forms conclusions which re- 
 quire to be revised and re-revised before they 
 reach a tolerable correspondence with realities. 
 Were it otherwise, there would be no increase 
 of intelligence. What we call the progress of 
 knowledge is the bringing of Thoughts into 
 harmony with Things ; and it implies that the 
 first Thoughts are either wholly out of harmony 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. Ill 
 
 with Things, or in very incomplete harmony 
 with them. 
 
 " If illustration be needed, the history of every 
 science furnishes them. The primitive notions 
 of mankind as to the structure of the heavens 
 were wrong. The original belief respecting the 
 form of the earth was wrong, and this wrong 
 belief survived through the first civilizations. 
 The earliest ideas that come down to us con- 
 cerning the nature of the elements were wrong ; 
 and only in quite recent times has the com- 
 position of matter in various forms been under- 
 stood. In all these cases, man set out with 
 beliefs which, if not absolutely false, contained 
 but small amounts of truth disguised by immense 
 amounts of error." 
 
 With the subject of medical science, the 
 doctrinal or ideal plan of to-day is as it was in 
 the days of Acron, who is mentioned by Pliny 
 as the first to apply philosophical reason- 
 ing to medicine. Says an eminent medical 
 scholar : " It is not difficult to satisfy intelli- 
 gent men that there is a design in Nature ; 
 
112 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 but the problem consists in becoming able to 
 recognize what that design is." 
 
 Our present medical philosophy is but de- 
 duction, endeavoring to harmonize modern 
 facts with |tncient imagination. Instead of 
 considering ourselves a peer with ancient man 
 in the field of mental perception, we have 
 taken the position of a subordinate, and 
 adopted his contracted and erroneous views 
 of the great plan of human organic life. As 
 a profession, we are indulging in a glory 
 of intellectual attainment, and the world of 
 thought has been made to believe that our 
 present doctrines of medical science emanate 
 from unquestioned premises. We are sailing 
 over the sea of time, revelling in the sun- 
 shine of worldly fame, which contributes to 
 our pride and bestows its applause of honor. 
 Our department of learning is so skilfully 
 intrenched and barricaded that no other de- 
 partment can attack our citadel of wisdom 
 with any assurance of success ; we have the 
 ability to perpetuate our errors for another 
 
ff] JUDICAL CULTURE. 118 
 
 century to come, and feel that our pn 
 
 from 
 tli' i. It Incomes 
 
 d to cone ill bn 
 
 from the I- 
 
 ind 08, and i interpret the great 
 
 plan provi or the manil >n of human 
 
 : or continue in pnrenil o£ that phantom, 
 
 imagination, which fa in the 
 
 of the Deity* Axe we in th if age of 
 
 ii — an e of more intelli- 
 
 tce tli have - n to believe e 
 
 existed in the human to our 
 
 ie — th of antiquated erro 
 
 we 1. like the ancient 
 
 with Has the 
 
 :1 profession I prin- 
 
 ciple in Nature on which to develop the 
 tails of a . and lias it j( learn that 
 
 it U ? Must we sum d 
 
 bich hart n the 
 
 of medical phil re the 
 
 questions suggested for earnest consi . >n. 
 
 8 
 
114 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 Our present medical philosophy suggests 
 a practice based on the recognition of an 
 " active medical property" Whatever this 
 phraseology may represent, or be presumed 
 to represent, it becomes evident that great 
 importance is attached to what it may seem 
 to imply, when we consider the tons of med- 
 ical literature which are constructed each 
 year to do praise to its fame. 
 
 This accepted principle of imaginary " ac- 
 tive property " is made a basis for a theory 
 of practice in medical science, and substi- 
 tuted as a fundamental basis for what is 
 implied in the name of organic force. The 
 question may arise whether " active medical 
 property " and organic force, to the mind of 
 the cultured medical scholar, are one and the 
 same. It would seem not, when the direction 
 in pursuit of discovery is made to contribute 
 testimony. In experiments with material 
 medicine there is sought a property " active," 
 which is classified as belonging to the mate- 
 rial medicine, rather than of determining how 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 115 
 
 a certain medicine may relate to the human 
 organism as a cause, which shall occasion 
 vital action to be differently manifested. 
 The philosophy expressed in medical litera- 
 ture does not make material medicine a 
 cause, but it makes it " active " as a property 
 belonging to medicine, which provides for 
 such material both physical and active prop- 
 erties, — to which doctrine the United States 
 Dispensatory contributes full support. 
 
 It becomes difficult to distinguish, through 
 the strict significance of language, any differ- 
 ence of implied principle between " active 
 medical property " and the term " medical 
 power." Medical literature has never defined 
 the difference, or denied the applicability of 
 the term "medical power" to represent the 
 principle of implied relation. To the laity 
 the terms are synonyms. The term " medical 
 power" becomes frequently so undisguisedly 
 crude as to be repudiated in discussion, 
 while the term " active medical property " is 
 cherished with great appropriateness of sig- 
 
116 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 nificance. Should we say that the present 
 medical doctrines teach that alcoholic spirit, 
 and many other articles of materia medica, 
 give power or strength to the human organ- 
 ism, numerous representatives of medical 
 erudition will rise up in defence of educa- 
 tional dignity, and exclaim with demonstra- 
 tive emphasis, " Not so ! never, never ! •? 
 while they will accept with pride the doctrine 
 of " active medical property." Now, if medi- 
 cine acts, — if that is the right word, — it 
 must act by virtue of & power. There can be 
 nothing behind the act but a power. Thus 
 we must infer, if such language is expressive 
 of correctness, that material medicine gives 
 power to the human organism. This is pre- 
 cisely what the people do believe ; and it is 
 precisely what they should not believe. Such 
 a belief is a belittlement of the dignity of 
 science. It places the curative ability in the 
 medicine rather than in organic force ; it pro- 
 vides a medical science which has less use for 
 brains than for a great assortment of " medi- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 117 
 
 cal powers " ; it places the ignoramus quite 
 too frequently on equally acceptable premises 
 with the cultured physician. But while the 
 present plan may be of mutual satisfaction 
 to both patient and physician, and remain 
 a lucrative business with medicine pedlers, 
 such is far from affording scientific prem- 
 ises for the practice of a medical science. 
 Neither does it do justice to the legitimate 
 rights of a people who look to the medical 
 profession for the highest wisdom pertaining 
 to the continuance of life. 
 
 While we say that such is the doctrine 
 taught, no intelligent physician accepts the 
 crude doctrine of a " power " being given, 
 although the United States Dispensatory as- 
 sures us that " alcohol is a very powerful 
 diffusible stimulant, . . . and gives additional 
 energy to muscles." This doctrine of ac- 
 cepted authority is quite generally believed 
 by alcoholic spirit drinkers ; and why not ? 
 While language may express certain ideas, 
 it may also be true that such ideas are not 
 
118 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 believed by the more thoughtful in the pro- 
 fession ; at the same time, no plan has been 
 made available to prevent the development 
 of such ideas. Even if the more highly 
 cultured do not believe the idea, the more 
 obtuse mind takes the inference literally ; 
 and the professional clientage, to say the 
 least, are being continuously educated to a 
 belief which has more confidence in " medical 
 power " to execute duties, than in a mental 
 power to guide organic force to the fulfilment 
 of duties. 
 
 The doctrine of " active medical property " 
 gives undue importance to medicine, while 
 the department of organic force is admitted 
 by our most prominent physicians to be a 
 problem for " future generations," and not 
 ours. The doctrine of " active medical prop- 
 erty " has been evolved from premises more 
 crude even than " medical power," although 
 no profit or credit is to be derived from such 
 mention. 
 
 The great and general belief, whatever may 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 119 
 
 be the name given, is that in material medi- 
 cine exists some wonderful principle, which 
 in itself becomes a constituted agent that ex- 
 ecutes curative process. Such is the idea 
 which has turned the human mind away from 
 the fertile fields where the principles of a 
 science may be found, into an exciting pur- 
 suit of an ignis fatuus. We also find it 
 stated in the United States Dispensatory 
 that " the materia medica, in its most com- 
 prehensive sense, embraces all those sub- 
 stances which are capable of making sanative 
 impressions on the human system." This 
 language is not only very obscure, but puts 
 the capability in the medicine, which is an 
 idea ever made prominent. Such capability to 
 do consists in being capable of making an im- 
 pression. This doctrine which has come down 
 to us in the idea of medical ability existed 
 at an early period ; and while the idea has 
 changed with the more cultured, the language 
 still remains in medical books and litera- 
 ture, and becomes a stumbling block and mis- 
 
120 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 director to all who cannot rise above the lit- 
 eral significance of such phraseology. In the 
 older works on materia medica we find med- 
 icine thus defined by Dr. Wood : " Medicines 
 are substances capable of producing by their 
 own inherent power certain modifications of 
 the vital functions." 
 
 Notwithstanding the wish, with the more 
 advanced thinkers, that the term "medical 
 power" may be eliminated from medical 
 literature, it remains true that this term 
 was never before used with such freedom 
 and frequency as it is at the present time. 
 While a grand open denial is occasionally 
 made of the appropriateness of the term 
 " medical power," we have yet to discover in 
 medical literature any expression of condem- 
 nation of the doctrine of " active medical 
 property." If such doctrine has been out- 
 grown, such fact has never been expressed 
 through medical literature. 
 
 There is a significant nicety associated with 
 these two forms of expression of a valued 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 121 
 
 principle which is presumed to pervade mate- 
 rial medicine. It is true the term " medical 
 power " is a crude form for the expression of 
 a thoughtful idea, while the term " active 
 medical property " is more elegant, and is 
 quite largely used where elegance is desired. 
 The term " medical power " is openly ex- 
 posed to pungent criticism without means 
 of protection ; while that of " active medi- 
 cal property " is barricaded and unget-at- 
 able by the ordinary critic. When analyzed, 
 no different idea can be extracted from the 
 language , although at first thought such would 
 not seem to be true. While the first term is 
 exposed to criticism, neither represents any 
 existing principle in medical science, and the 
 latter soon loses its presumed significance 
 when brought into immediate defined rela- 
 tions of useful purpose. 
 
 It is important that we dispose of the ques- 
 tion, What is it desired that this " active 
 medical property" shall do, as a primary do- 
 ing, and what is it desired to have accom- 
 
122 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 plished later j as a consequence of such early 
 acting or doing ? While there is recognized a 
 property called u active," does accepted medi- 
 cal philosophy require such property to act, or 
 is it required to do something quite different ? 
 Here is a noticeable fact in medical doc- 
 trines, that, when we get down to business 
 with this " active property," we find the duty 
 to be executed is, not to act, but only to make 
 an impression. There is a wide distinction 
 between acting and making an impression. 
 After the so called impression is made, some 
 other agency of entirely different name and 
 source is required to execute the special duty 
 of the problem. It is to be remembered that 
 an impression is not a something done, but a 
 something recognized or discovered by the 
 nerves of sensation. After the so called im- 
 pression is made, what is said to be done 
 next ? We are informed through medical 
 literature that " a reaction " is established. 
 This so called reaction is an action executed 
 by organic power. To make it a reaction, 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 123 
 
 the medicine must first act; otherwise such 
 action is primarily a direct action. 
 
 When we get down to fine points, we find 
 that the medicine only makes an impression, 
 in place of acting. In the practical affairs of 
 medical science we find that the use of medi- 
 cine is to cause some modification, or differ- 
 ent direction, of vital activity, of more or less 
 intensity. It is the organic force that does 
 all the acting or executive duty, while medi- 
 cine becomes the cause, whose presence occa- 
 sions such change of activity. When we 
 pursue this doctrine of u medical power " and 
 " active medical property" to the last ditch, 
 we find no mysterious principle of power or 
 active relations to exist ; the one great 
 demonstration called " making an impres- 
 sion" seems to be the total of its required 
 duties. The " impression " is still further 
 disrobed of mystery when we give true sig- 
 nificance to its relation of presence. The 
 medicine has fulfilled the same relation, and 
 made similar " impression" on the involun- 
 
124 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 tary department of vital power, as the whip 
 makes with the voluntary powers of the 
 horse : it has become a cause for a different 
 vital activity. 
 
 Medical theory has great complexity of 
 construction. In the practice of medicine, 
 the feat to be executed as a connective rela- 
 tion of the idea taught in alleged science, 
 which has been accepted with scholarly pride 
 as a scientific exploit, consists in the transfer- 
 ring of the so called " active property " into 
 a manifestation called vital " reaction." Now, 
 to make close connection, it has been necessary 
 to have the " active property " first make 
 an " impression," and the " impression " 
 to induce a vital " reaction." This great 
 double somersault act, which scientifically 
 converts " active medical property " into vital 
 "reaction," is permitted to be the unques- 
 tioned, appropriate language of medical sci- 
 ence, while in fact it is the most masterly 
 feat of linguistic jugglery ever perpetrated in 
 the name of science. While to-day this great 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 125 
 
 feat of contortion is considered quite proper, 
 and accepted with educational pride, yet, when 
 organic nature is correctly understood, the 
 bridging of this chasm between the imaginary 
 and the real will afford much amusement at 
 the method which the human mind resorted 
 to in the hour of its peril, when impaled on 
 the doctrines of traditional acceptance. 
 
 Now, this is a very circuitous way of mak- 
 ing known the fact that the presence of 
 material medicine may cause the vital power 
 to act differently. The doctrine of " active 
 medical property " has no more claim to 
 scientific attainment than the doctrines of the 
 alchemist, through which it was sought to 
 fulfil the expectancy of transmuting the baser 
 metals into gold. While the doctrine of 
 " active medical property " has long been ac- 
 cepted as a representative principle in medi- 
 cal science, like the pre-Copernican doctrine 
 of the sun's motion, there exists no support 
 for such acceptance except an erroneous 
 interpretation of appearances. 
 
OBJECTIONABLE QUALITY. 
 
 'THHE scientific name for that presumed 
 -*• principle which relates medicine to 
 the human organism in such manner as to 
 receive the name of " active medical prop- 
 erty," is expressed more truly, and in better 
 harmony with fact, under the title of objec- 
 tionable quality. 
 
 The true relations and principle are im- 
 plied in the fact that material medicine in 
 its atomic material construction, be it mineral, 
 chemical product, or certain organic produc- 
 tion, is so far removed from being nutritive 
 material that its 'presence becomes objection- 
 able within the domain of life to that degree 
 that a special vital effort, instinctively directed, 
 is exerted in relation thereto with a view 
 to expel the same. Who will deny the va- 
 lidity of this statement ? So far as relation 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 127 
 
 exists, the phenomenon called the action of 
 medicine is entirely a vital act, instinctive 
 with a view to self-preservation and elimina- 
 tion. The instinctive act may be safely ex- 
 pressed, or otherwise. When safely directed, 
 such expression is precisely similar, and is 
 the same kind of fact which at other times is 
 called the vis medicatrix naturce, or Nature's 
 method of cure. Such act is a pathological 
 vital act. Also, this same manifestation of 
 instinctive vital effort to expel material of 
 similar relation is no more or less than dis- 
 ease. Disease is pathological vital action ; 
 and pathological action is vital action in 
 relation to material, not for nutritive or 
 constructive purpose. When instinctively 
 directed, vital action is not safely directed. 
 We recognize such fact in the name of disease 
 that requires medication. Disease is a vital 
 act, which is frequently said to be due to the 
 presence of " morbific material." The so 
 called morbific material is not morbid as a 
 material, but objectionable in such place as 
 
128 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 a material; and it is a kind of ' material 
 the presence of which is not to be made use- 
 ful in the affairs of organic life. A morbid 
 vital act is required to eliminate such mate- 
 rial. This morbid vital act is pathological 
 vital action. Disease is quite frequently such 
 a dangerous vital act that the physician is 
 required to suppress or divert such act. Now, 
 the same principle becomes applicable to 
 suppress or divert such action as was implied 
 in a first cause to establish such diseased ac- 
 tion, or pathological vital action. That is, 
 some other material which is called medicine 
 may be placed within the vital presence that 
 may be a cause for vital action to be sup- 
 pressed, — or, differently and more safely 
 expressed, to fulfil the purpose. 
 
 The fact that such is the relation of non- 
 nutritive material to the human organism as 
 to cause a differently manifested vital act, 
 becomes the means through which the phy- 
 sician may make application to direct in- 
 stinctive vital action. This instinctive vital 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 129 
 
 action is all the action ever displayed by the 
 involuntary living organism. Thus, the phy- 
 sician takes the advantage of this fact and 
 method to change or modify pathological vi- 
 tal action in such manner as to be of best 
 interest for the individual organism, which 
 becomes the fulfilment of practical medical 
 science. While this principle of instinctive 
 vital action has always been thus instrumen- 
 tal in executing the duty, the physician has 
 largely given credit through medical litera- 
 ture to some mysterious principle inherent 
 in material medicine, called " active medi- 
 cal property." There is no way to solve dis- 
 ease and medical problems except through 
 a knowledge of the laws and methods of or- 
 ganic force. 
 
 We now wish to call attention to some 
 important statements made by physicians of 
 recognized eminence. Said Professor Gross, 
 of Philadelphia : " We know very little of 
 the essential nature of disease ; indeed, noth- 
 ing at all." Disease is not recognized in 
 
 9 
 
130 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 medical literature as pathological vital action, 
 but something done, or influenced, by an 
 agency which mankind experience great dif- 
 ficulty in comprehending. Said Professor 
 Davis, of the New York Medical College : 
 " The modus operandi of medicine is en- 
 tirely unknown." Said Professor Meigs, of 
 the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia : 
 " All our cogitations of the modus operandi 
 of medicines are purely empirical." Says 
 Professor Dunglison (in his Materia Medica, 
 Vol. L p. 94) : " The modus operandi of rem- 
 edies is not always clear ; yet by careful 
 analysis we can generally appreciate, in the 
 main results at least, although we may have 
 much difficulty in comprehending the precise 
 mode in which results are accomplished." 
 Commenting on his own statement, he adds : 
 "This applies especially to those cases in 
 which the agency takes place by sympathetic 
 influence, — an influence proverbially obscure, 
 and frequently invoked with the view of 
 covering the ignorance of the observer ; as 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 131 
 
 vitality and organic action are at times used 
 by the physiologist when a function cannot 
 be explained by any known physical facts 
 or arguments." 
 
 This is a very peculiarly worded expression. 
 The inference is, that when a physiologist 
 is not able to explain organic phenomena 
 through "physical" agencies, or agencies out- 
 side of organic process, to " cover such igno- 
 rance " he resorts frequently to the phrase 
 " vitality and organic action." In such com- 
 ment there is implied an exhibition of thought 
 confused through erroneous culture relative 
 to premises whose principles are in most 
 profound obscurity. 
 
 In such remarks as quoted we find a con- 
 fessed inability to explain hoiv a medicine 
 may do what it never did or can do, — that 
 what is called the modus operandi of medi- 
 cines is in fact pathological vital action, and 
 nothing different, is not recognized. 
 
 Said Professor Paine, of the New York 
 University Medical School, and author of 
 
132 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 " Institutes of Medicine " : " Remedial ' agents 
 are essentially morbific in their action. They 
 operate in the same manner as do the remote 
 causes of disease." Says Dr. Bigelow (Nature 
 in Disease, p. 17) : "The effects of remedies 
 are so mixed up with the phenomena of dis- 
 ease, that the mind has difficulty in separating 
 them." Much difficulty indeed ! 
 
 We find in these quotations the same prin- 
 ciple recognized which gives action to "reme- 
 dial agents," and which is required to make 
 operative the " remote causes of disease." 
 Such is most significantly true ; yet the 
 " agent essentially morbific in action" is the 
 " agent " pathological vital action, acting in 
 relation to both the " remedial agent " and 
 the " remote cause of disease." 
 
 The action which is called the modus 
 operandi of medicine, the action which is 
 called disease, the action which is called 
 medical action, the action which is implied 
 in the name of " active medical property," 
 the action which is said to express the " vis 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 133 
 
 medicatrix natures" are all given expres- 
 sion by that one principle existing in organic 
 nature, which is more truly and scientifically 
 expressed in the name of pathological vital 
 action, and action of the living principle, in 
 the general name of Organic Instinct. Not- 
 withstanding this statement may be in con- 
 tradiction to beliefs of mature age, it remains 
 true that no writer of medical literature has 
 ever been able to draw a line of distinction. 
 In the mean time eminent medical scholars 
 have said that " this generation, and genera- 
 tions to come, will have passed to their ever- 
 lasting rest before a discovery of the secret 
 of vital activity is made." If organic force 
 becomes recognized as a factor in medical 
 science, there should be some acknowledg- 
 ment of duty credited to such department 
 and properly outlined. 
 
 The impulse of conviction inspiring to a 
 belief in the existence of such a principle in 
 Nature as is presumed to exist in the name 
 
134 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 of " active medical property " received un- 
 paralleled recognition through the announce- 
 ment of the discovery said to have been made 
 by Dr. Koch. Such influence of apparent 
 acceptance, recognized through the press, 
 gave a long lease of life to expectant useful- 
 ness of this department of mysterious nature. 
 It was stated that Dr. Koch had discovered 
 a rare " active medical property," — some 
 kind of u active principle," to execute cura- 
 tive process, — something wonderful, — a com- 
 pound of greal value and of high price. A 
 Boston physician went to Europe to learn 
 more about this wonderful ability, and sent 
 home a cablegram stating that " the action 
 of this material is certainly as wonderful as 
 that of any known medicine." Dr. Koch 
 says of his discovery : — 
 
 " Eegarding the manner in which the specific 
 action of the remedy on tuberculosis tissue is to 
 be represented, various hypotheses may natu- 
 rally be put forward. ... In what way this pro- 
 cess of cure occurs cannot as yet be stated with 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 135 
 
 a certainty. . . . There is no question of a de- 
 struction of the tubercle bacilli in the tissues, 
 but only the tissue enclosing the bacilli is 
 affected by the remedy." 
 
 It may be true that Dr. Koch has discov- 
 ered some compound the presence of which 
 is so inimical to life that this material in 
 presence of tuberculous growth of weak vital 
 attainment may occasion such tissue to sur- 
 render its life and break down, and thus be- 
 come susceptible of elimination. Such a fact 
 is not an isolated fact in nature, but is a fact 
 which has a variety of kin, and is far from 
 being strangely mysterious. New cicatricial 
 growth of tissue may and does frequently 
 break down under the shock which poisons 
 may cause to the life forces. Precisely the 
 same principle applies when strong acids or 
 alkalies are brought in contact with healthy 
 tissues externally. Such is the whole of the 
 discovery. And even should such become a 
 possible fact in numerous instances with 
 tuberculous tissue, it will remain a fact of no 
 
136 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 practical advantage. The laudations of the 
 period were not made in behalf of a discovery 
 of such a fact, but in praise of an important 
 discovery of " active principle," which medi- 
 cal men said that " for the present at least 
 it is impossible to explain." An editorial 
 statement in a scientific journal of high re- 
 pute said, relative to such material, " That 
 the mysterious substance is one of immense 
 strength, and capable of producing the most 
 powerful physiological effects, cannot be dis- 
 puted." Our theory of " physiological ef- 
 fects " persuades us to accept only vital 
 power as being possible to execute such 
 duties. 
 
 When we recognize the nature of instinc- 
 tive vital duty in relation to material objec- 
 tionable within the field of vital jurisdiction, 
 — which expressed fact has ever been recog- 
 nized as the fact which is made to testify to 
 the discovery of an " active medical prop- 
 erty," — it then becomes evident that there 
 are waiting a hundred million more possible 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 137 
 
 objectionable compounds with which to make 
 success/id experiment, with a view to the 
 discovery of " active medical properties." 
 Dr. Brown- Sequard says : " Physicians — un- 
 fortunately I speak of myself as well as 
 others — are biased. This bias prevents 
 progress. They have received an education 
 which has given them certain notions, and 
 these notions prevent a free examination of 
 certain questions." 
 
 On the subject of alleged propagation of 
 disease through the agency of bacilli and 
 nidus, while far from being an expert in that 
 department, we suggest that it is in harmony 
 with the nature of things that in all variety 
 of pathological product there exists organic 
 material which may be food for some variety 
 of microscopic life, vegetative or animal, ever 
 ready to thrive on such material when no 
 longer existing in protection of healthy vitaliz- 
 ing agency. Each variety finds some certain 
 product more favorable for development and 
 multiolication : and such a familv of bacilli, as 
 
138 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 a general fact, in place of being a cause of 
 such disease, finds possible condition for ex- 
 istence only in consequence of such disease. 
 In association with a bacillus found in con- 
 nection with a certain disease being judged 
 capable of propagating similar disease, we 
 have more than one kind of fact requiring 
 analysis. That is, What would become the 
 primary cause for abnormal sensation ? Is it 
 a bacillus, or the bacilli germ family as a 
 family, or the associated vitiated product in 
 which the family live, or the sewage material 
 and dead product of the family ? Through 
 such material there may be a cause — as a 
 product of multiplied bacilli, or a multiplied 
 vitiated product obnoxious — for a primary 
 abnormal sensation ; after which secondary 
 causes for abnormal sensation and develop- 
 ment of pneumonia, or other disease, can no 
 doubt be made to exist. While it is inferen- 
 tial that pneumonia may possibly be propa- 
 gated in this way from primary cause, from 
 some relation of the pneumococcus, it is far 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 139 
 
 more rational to infer that pneumonia with- 
 out such propagation often becomes developed 
 to a certain degree before even the first bacil- 
 lus could take up a " quarter section " in the 
 sputa. Now, while it may be true that pneu- 
 monia, or other disease, may be developed 
 from a great variety of cause for a primary 
 abnormal sensation, yet in the sputa of sev- 
 eral diseases from either cause may be found 
 a temporary home for the raising up a col- 
 ony of the microbe family or pneumococcus. 
 Thus we have good cause to believe that 
 sporadic pneumonia, as well as other disease, 
 comes into existence before the microbe in- 
 flux locates on the premises. 
 
 While it is true that the filth product of 
 disease with one person may become cause 
 for disease with another person, the interven- 
 ing agency of the microbe will be endured with 
 less fear by the next generation. Rather 
 than seek means for trapping the microbe, we 
 should be more hopeful in dealing with ab- 
 normal sensation. The microbe bacillus, or 
 
140 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 vitiated product, can have no other relation to 
 disease than a primal cause of abnormal sen- 
 sation ; and while such primal cause may 
 exist in such a variety of manner, it is but 
 rational that we entertain feelings of less hos- 
 tility toward the microbe. The ushering in of 
 active disease without a primary abnormal sen- 
 sation is an impossibility. Abnormal sensa- 
 tion always becomes the intervening fact and 
 existing condition between cause and effect; 
 and many unsolved problems await the recog- 
 nition and utility of the sphere of duty im- 
 plied in the separate vital properties. 
 
 When we recognize medical science as be- 
 ing a science based on the law of the power 
 which executes its phenomena, — the organic 
 force, — we must also recognize that we can- 
 not comprehend the law of organic force as 
 a unit, any more than we can comprehend 
 mathematics as a unit, but each must be 
 reached through the several departments 
 which constitute its whole ; and while recog- 
 nizing the function of the four ultimate vital 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 141 
 
 properties, we are required to define the sepa- 
 rate duty of each, and how they apply in the 
 problems of life. It is through a knowledge 
 of the duty and law that we are enabled to 
 give true significance to facts. A knowledge 
 of the law of gravitation supplied the evi- 
 dence for the astronomer to locate the tele- 
 scopic undiscovered planet Neptune ; and 
 directing the telescope to that point in the 
 heavens for the first time, the planet Neptune 
 was discovered. It was discovered through 
 the law, not from a general promiscuous hunt. 
 A knowledge of organic law not only enables 
 us to give true significance to fact, but ena- 
 bles us to eliminate many of our long cher- 
 ished deductions, which have been presumed 
 to be, but are not. 
 
 When we recognize that all cause of disease 
 has its first presence made known to the 
 human organism through an abnormal sensa- 
 tion by that special property, which fact of 
 presence is conveyed to instinct, then this 
 agency marshals the forces into activity to 
 
142 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 present those phenomena we call disease. It 
 then becomes apparent that the " germ theory 
 of disease" supplies no relation as a cause, 
 unlike an abnormal sensation ; and while we 
 recognize the multiplicity of varied causes for 
 an abnormal sensation, it again becomes evi- 
 dent that the doctrine of " germ theory of 
 disease " is quite largely a misnomer. The 
 doctrine, to be correct, should be germ theory 
 of cause. Disease is pathological vital action 
 in relation to cause ; and while the associated 
 filth-material with germs, or microbes, may 
 be a cause in some instances, it is well to 
 remember that a cause is quite distinct from 
 the disease. 
 
 It is evident under the law that quite too 
 much prominence is being given to the mi- 
 crobe doctrine in relation to disease, and too 
 little to the grand army of organic force, 
 which may resent such intrusion by inocula- 
 tion. A cause of disease is no more active 
 than a boulder on a railroad track is active as 
 a cause of a railroad accident. In each case it 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 143 
 
 is material in the wrong place. The effects 
 of medicine are not due to the action of medi- 
 cine or an " active medical property," but an 
 action of an entire different department rela- 
 tive to material in an unnatural place. 
 When we know the cause of disease, such 
 knowledge is quite frequently of but little 
 use in the treatment of disease. It is a 
 knowledge of the nature of disease, implying 
 the law of organic force with that hind of 
 disturbance, which contributes to our aid in 
 the treatment of disease. 
 
 When one looks at the disease problem and 
 its treatment, through the four vital proper- 
 ties and laws of organic force, an entirely dif- 
 ferent field of panoramic vision is presented. 
 If organic force does not execute the phe- 
 nomena of disease, and likewise those actions 
 which develop the effects of medicine, then we 
 shall be forced to admit that we are roaming 
 in a prolific field of delusive imagination. 
 
 The general and more specific effect of 
 medicine in relations with the human oro;an- 
 
144 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 ism is not a subject of previous conclusion 
 through the law, but a fact determined by 
 observation and deduction from experience ; 
 and while we may describe the phenomena of 
 appearance, it is of the greatest importance 
 that we accept deductions and theories in har- 
 mony with the laws of organic duty in relation 
 to the developed appearances. While some 
 material may be a cause for violent involun- 
 tary activity, other material presence may be 
 quite the opposite ; in fact, such presence for- 
 bids the possibility of activity, through which 
 contact there may prevail a temporary abroga- 
 tion of possible manifestation of sensation, — 
 thus making it possible frequently to abort what 
 would otherwise be a dangerous activity from 
 the presence of other material, and conse- 
 quent mandate from the commander in chief, 
 Instinct. In such instance a supply of such 
 material for abrogation of sensation is a 
 manoeuvre of Sensibility outwitting Instinct 
 by cutting the wires, we might say, which 
 communicate the knowledge of such presence. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 145 
 
 While certain material presence may abro- 
 gate sensation without complicating sensibil- 
 ity, other material in the name of sulphuric 
 ether, experience has taught us, will abrogate 
 both sensation and sensibility, and yet it may 
 remain possible to execute involuntary ac- 
 tivity of circulation and respiration through 
 the agency of instinct. Instinct is the first 
 vital property born, and the last to die, — a 
 wise provision for organic preservation. 
 
 In the following quotation from an emi* 
 nent physician, we find a statement which has 
 relation to the subject of first and secondary 
 causes in disease : — 
 
 "In the large mass of morbid conditions, al- 
 though the cause which immediately produced 
 the disease is taken away, the complaint con- 
 tinues. . . . The difficulty in discovering the 
 precise cause of a disease is often extreme. 
 Fortunately, the discovery is not always a mat- 
 ter of moment, inasmuch as the disease usually 
 continues independently of the cause ; and it is 
 
 10 
 
146 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 the disease — the modification in the structure 
 or function that constitutes the pathological 
 condition — which we have to combat." 
 
 While we cannot accept the continuance of 
 disease without a cause, we will first notice 
 the very delicate lines of distinction which 
 are made to prevail between our statement 
 that pathological vital action is disease and 
 the language here used. 
 
 At first, it would seem that the " pathologi- 
 cal condition which we have to combat " was 
 almost equivalent to the acceptance that path- 
 ological vital action was disease. The state- 
 ment is strongly persuasive in that direction, 
 and at the same time far enough removed not 
 to be convertible into such inference. A 
 " pathological condition" may imply both struc- 
 ture and action ; and when applied to struc- 
 ture it would be more correct to infer that 
 pathological condition was more the product 
 of disease than the disease itself. It is the 
 " function," or action, " which we have to 
 combat." There is a significant difference of 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 147 
 
 wide distinction, many times, between " path- 
 ological condition" and pathological action. 
 The distinction to be inferred would be with- 
 out interest in this place were it not so 
 closely connected with the statement that 
 " the disease usually continues independently 
 of the cause.'' Now, while it may be ex- 
 tremely difficult to determine the first cause 
 of such commencing disturbance, and even 
 when we do so determine and are sure that 
 such cause has been removed, we are required 
 to associate with cause the idea that disease 
 can exist only when cause occasions a sensa- 
 tion abnormal. The material cause, if such 
 it be, is the cause of what ? It must be a 
 cause of a new sensation, which is abnormal ; 
 otherwise no special instinctive vital action is 
 established. The special instinctive action is 
 the disturbance, or disease, — the pathologi- 
 cal vital action, which must always be pre- 
 ceeded by a cause for abnormal sensation, 
 and continued because a cause for abnormal 
 sensation continues to exist. 
 
148 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 Now, while a cause of disease must be born 
 in a name that affords cause for a sensation 
 abnormal, it remains true that secondary 
 cause for abnormal sensation will develop, 
 and continue to be a cause for continued path- 
 ological action even when the primary cause of 
 abnormal sensation has been removed. Such 
 may be illustrated through the fact that the 
 removal of a sliver from some fleshy part may 
 be followed by inflammation. One simple 
 fact rightly understood and truly interpreted 
 will teach as much as a thousand facts of the 
 same kind. A primary cause for abnormal 
 sensation may develop secondary cause in the 
 name of mechanical pressure, or heat on 
 nerve extremity, developing irritability or 
 pain, and abnormal sensation of greater de- 
 gree. Thus the disturbance would continue 
 unlimited, were it not possible to deploy vital 
 activity or establish toleration, natural or 
 artificial. 
 
 The expression in medical literature, that 
 a " diseased action in a tissue goes on aug- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 149 
 
 menting until the function of other tissues 
 becomes deranged by extension of morbid ac- 
 tion by sympathy," is a fulfilment of changes 
 executed through cause and effect, as implied 
 with first and secondary causes. Such dis- 
 turbance is quite liable to develop with 
 mucous membranes and external skin, where 
 capillaries and nerve extremities are abun- 
 dant. In cellulitis the liquid product of mor- 
 bid action may become a secondary cause 
 for extension of disease. The vital property 
 sensation becomes the intervening agency 
 through which cause may be known and fol- 
 lowed by a development of active disease. If 
 there is no pathological vital action, there is 
 no active disease. There may exist certain 
 morbid sensation from prolonged causes, 
 which are termed nervous diseases, where we 
 may be able to detect but little special activity 
 of long continuance in any one direction, — 
 such morbid or abnormal sensation being fol- 
 lowed by a great diversity of transient mild dis- 
 turbance without regularity of manifestation. 
 
150 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 With acute disease frequently, and some- 
 times with chronic, the sensation is the condi- 
 tion to modify or suppress. Abnormal sensa- 
 tion is the only condition quite frequently for 
 complaints relative to which no morbid vital 
 action can be discovered. Sensation abnor- 
 mal, when known, should be alleviated as 
 early as possible, to prevent instinctive special 
 actions of dangerous severity, — which inci- 
 dent may be illustrated in case of colic pains, 
 or a mechanical blow on abdominal walls. 
 The use of opiates may abort or prevent 
 severe inflammation of the region. When ab- 
 normal sensation becomes known only from 
 subsequent results, it becomes the duty of 
 the physician to diminish sensation occa- 
 sioned from secondary cause, with a view to 
 diminish the severity and limit of instinctive 
 morbid action. Sensibility must make appeal 
 to suppress or differently deploy pathological 
 action, by first causing a different sensation, 
 thus indirectly guiding instinctive action as 
 judgment may deem most beneficial. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 151 
 
 In the treatment of disease, we have for 
 consideration a modification of sensation 
 early, an elimination of material cause, divert- 
 ing instinctive action when required, and 
 inducing more or less toleration later. Sen- 
 sibility may supply a cause, to which Instinct 
 responds with a special activity ; and such 
 relation of cause and effect is represented in 
 medical literature as the making of an " im- 
 pression," and establishing a " reaction." 
 
 In some diseases of the skin, which may be 
 first started from mechanical irritation, secon- 
 dary cause becomes developed each day suffi- 
 cient to have a continuous presence of cause 
 for an abnormal sensation and prolonged skin 
 disease. Continuous abnormal sensation is 
 made possible to exist to such a degree as 
 to develop superficial change of structure, 
 thus keeping a chronic abnormal condition of 
 cause and effect wholly confined to the skin. 
 Thus the term " neurotic disease of the skin" 
 becomes quite correctly applicable. Such 
 conditions of the skin are thus continued, — 
 
152 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 from which basis the indications for treat- 
 ment would be to modify superficial sensa- 
 tion by removal of local cause rather than the 
 adoption of constitutional methods. 
 
 When engaging in the solution of problems 
 in disease, from the basis of the four vital 
 properties, we are in possession of quite 
 similar aid to that afforded in mathematical 
 problems, involving addition, subtraction, 
 multiplication, and division. How each of 
 said departments applies, and becomes re- 
 lated to the problem, becomes the thinking 
 application in direction of a solution; also 
 the practical basis for application. And thus 
 with problems in disease and use of medi- 
 cine, — when we become equally familiar with 
 the duties and fulfilment of the separate vital 
 properties in the affairs of life, we think such 
 application in the direction of a solution. 
 There is no way to comprehend the subject of 
 mathematics except through the several de- 
 partments which make up its whole. There 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 153 
 
 is no way to comprehend the nature and laws 
 of organic force except through a correct 
 knowledge of the separate vital properties. 
 When we search medical literature for such 
 knowledge, we look in vain ! 
 
 Thus by recognizing the department to be 
 made operative, and how controlled and made 
 applicable, we have acquired the most essen- 
 tial knowledge on which to predicate the 
 practice of a medical science, and make ex- 
 perience more instructive. We may have a 
 rational reason for anticipation in advance of 
 what may be expected from statistical results. 
 We are enabled to sit in judgment with a 
 knowledge of the organic law of activity, and 
 can better comprehend the method and possi- 
 bility of appliance to the greatest aid in 
 conservation of vital energy. Expectant 
 treatment is always justifiable, when no good 
 reason based on a knowledge of vital activity, 
 can be found for interference. 
 
 If we are to recognize organic force as the 
 active agent in the affairs of human life, it is 
 
154 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 well to recognize the material stock used, and 
 the true relation of material not usable, and 
 render such aid as will best enable instinct to 
 perform its duty. Organic £orce carries on 
 the business of human development and con- 
 tinued preservation of duplicate, by a physio- 
 logical process, with a material stock in trade 
 consisting of nutrient material, air, and 
 water. In disease, or with pathological vital 
 actions, there is generally required a larger 
 proportion of water to facilitate the extra 
 elimination of the waste tissue and soluble 
 pathological product. 
 
 We have here submitted for consideration 
 what we allege to be an interpretation of the 
 nature and method of organic force, as mani- 
 fested through the human organism in sepa- 
 rate division of four ultimate vital properties, 
 each executing its part, included within limits 
 and boundaries of significant distinction, de- 
 termined and defined in accordance with the 
 special duties which each execute in the af- 
 fairs of life, — on which premises we allege 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 155 
 
 that it becomes possible to comprehend the 
 true nature of disease and the correct rela- 
 tion of material medicine to the human or- 
 ganism. We suggest that this plan and 
 interpretation be given such crucial test of 
 comparison with organic facts and methods 
 as to determine, through verification or other- 
 wise, what validity may attain to such repre- 
 sentation. We also ask the reader to make 
 comparison of this plan and theory of medi- 
 cal science as a whole, and in detail, with the 
 plan of medical science based on the doctrine 
 of " active medical property " ; a plan where 
 the primary claim of " active" ability is ad- 
 mitted to be of " mysterious " existence and 
 outside the limit of comprehension in any 
 of its essentials ; a plan of medical science 
 which is overflowing with valuable suggestive 
 facts, yet without system sufficient to give 
 respect to doctrinal theory of explanation ; a 
 plan which fails to develop a comprehension 
 either of the nature of disease or of the 
 modus operandi of its medicines ; a plan and 
 
156 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 detail which have developed a belief with the 
 laity, to say the least, that the presumed 
 agency implied in the name of " active medi- 
 cal property," when placed within the citadel 
 of life, will give battle in valiant deeds of 
 glory with disease, and engage in the work of 
 purification, renovation, and restoration, and 
 which will put the organic tabernacle in 
 commendable relations for the pursuit of 
 happiness ; a department of alleged science 
 relative to which the most highly cultured 
 scholars in the learned profession make the 
 most derogatory remarks of condemnation 
 and belittlement of its erudite scientific 
 accomplishment which language has made 
 possible in the hands of skilled and accom- 
 plished linguists; a plan which inspires the 
 laity to have far more faith in medical than 
 mental powers, and which is of great detri- 
 ment to the true position and value of a pro- 
 fessional education, and of greater detriment 
 to themselves. 
 
PARTIAL SUMMARY OP SCIENTIFIC 
 PREMISES. 
 
 OOME of the more salient premises for 
 ^ consideration here presented include 
 the defining and function of the several vi- 
 tal properties : that medicine has no active 
 property ; that the effects of medicine are not 
 due to the action of medicine ; that the use of 
 medicine cannot be predicated on its action, 
 but as a cause for a different vital act ; that 
 the cause of disease is not active ; and that 
 there is no such relation as the " active 
 cause " of disease. 
 
 We have defined the nature of disease as 
 being based on a principle which we have de- 
 fined in the nature and duty of organic force. 
 We have presented the principle involved 
 in the modus operandi of medicines as de- 
 pendent on active organic force, rather than a 
 
158 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 principle belonging to " active medical prop- 
 erty." We have presented the name and 
 nature of a principle as the first condition of 
 life properties, which precedes active disease ; 
 namely, abnormal sensation. We have pre- 
 sented the name of a principle provided in 
 nature for the termination of active disease, 
 which makes it possible that disease may be 
 self-limited, namely, toleration. The medi- 
 cal philosophy of record starts active disease 
 by having the cause act. The recognition of 
 the fact of self-limited disease has long been 
 accepted, without a presentation of principle 
 which shall permit such fact to exist. 
 
 Will any reader show, not in blank denial, 
 but through the philosophic relations of cause 
 and effect implied in the nature of organic 
 force, and in the nature of material medicinal 
 relation, that we are not right in every state- 
 ment of this summary ? If we are right, 
 the profession must accept as a truism the 
 assertion that medical science is higher up 
 among the events of nature than what is im- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 159 
 
 plied in the doctrine of " active medical prop- 
 erty." If we are right, the idea and thought- 
 level of a medical science with the laity, who 
 are the recipients of its application, and 
 whose lives are in jeopardy, should occupy a 
 higher position in the realm of fancy than 
 the receiving of a supplementary energy in 
 the name of an " active medical property " 
 from the hands of the ignorant and uncul- 
 tured in the science of organic force. 
 
CHEMICAL FOOD. 
 
 TN this place we will mention a department 
 -*- of supply which is indorsed and pre- 
 scribed to aid in support of the human or- 
 ganism, existing as a product of chemical 
 agency. 
 
 Omitting, for personal reasons, mention of 
 any particular preparation, we will say that 
 a great variety of such compounds are on the 
 market, supported by professional approval. 
 In contrast with such an expectancy, it is 
 claimed by many of our most accomplished 
 scientists that all material susceptible of as- 
 similation must be lifted up from its elemen- 
 tary condition by the agency of the vegetable 
 kingdom, before it can be vitalized by the 
 organic forces of the animal kingdom. The 
 animal may assimilate the vegetative product 
 or the structures of other animals ; but when 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 161 
 
 organic material has gone backward into 
 chemical change, and lost its organic struc- 
 tural atomic arrangement, such material is 
 no longer possible of assimilation. In other 
 words, the human organism cannot assimilate 
 or vitalize ultimate elements or chemical com- 
 pounds. If this doctrine is true, the many 
 preparations for " building up the organism " 
 existing as chemical products are a gross im- 
 position of dangerous relations, contributing 
 more to develop mercantile pursuits than a 
 supply for organic construction. When the 
 students of medical science recognize that 
 organic force, rather than " active medical 
 property," executes the many problems and 
 phenomena of life, there will naturally arise 
 the question, not only as to what are the con- 
 ditions most favorable and what laws are 
 implied, but what material will become of 
 most beneficial aid to the execution and com- 
 pleteness of its purpose, — whereof specially 
 prepared organic material and supplied aid 
 to digestion will be recognized as far more 
 
 11 
 
162 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 useful in toning up the system than chemical 
 compounds. 
 
 There are many practices in alleged med- 
 ical science which it would be of great ben- 
 efit to the laity to have reviewed by the 
 profession. 
 
SENSATION AND SENSIBILITY. 
 
 / nr v EERE is another co-relation between 
 -* the vital properties of sensation and 
 sensibility that we have not mentioned, which 
 is receiving some attention, and is worthy of 
 more than it receives. It is represented fre- 
 quently under the name of " hypnotic sug- 
 gestion," of more or less degree applicable to 
 the inducing of analgesia, or insusceptibility 
 to pain. This relation of possibility is quite 
 well known to exist between a sensibility of 
 one person and the sensation of another, — 
 quite unlike the mention of " temporary abro- 
 gation of all sensation." It is more a sepa- 
 ration or dissociation of the sensation of pain 
 from the sensibility, even to that extent 
 which permits of surgical operations with- 
 out pain while the subject may be either 
 
164 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 conscious or unconscious of the transpiring 
 event. 
 
 While a knowledge of such possibility has 
 been historically presented as a " mesmeric 
 event," we must recognize in such fact a 
 peculiar advantage, which the physician can 
 employ quite frequently with his patients, — 
 to them not perceptible, — that will effect 
 much in alleviating numerous disagreeable 
 sensations. There is also a co-relation be- 
 tween those vital properties existing with the 
 same individual, often perplexing and diffi- 
 cult for the physician to overcome. There 
 are many self-suggested complications which 
 take the name of disease, far more amenable 
 to tact, peculiar influence, and conviction, 
 than any effects of material medicine. Sensi- 
 bility can produce sensorial feelings which 
 are responded to by Instinct. The idea that 
 an emetic has been taken may cause erne- 
 sis ; thus ideality may often be productive of 
 good or evil results. We have had a variety 
 of very singular and interesting experiences 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 165 
 
 with such incidents, and while there is much 
 of interest and usefulness to be found with 
 such a possibility of relation, the subject would 
 require much space to do it justice. 
 
 When we recognize the fulfilment of life 
 duties on the basis of the four distinct vital 
 properties, it becomes evident that the lan- 
 guage of Dr. William B. Carpenter, when 
 referring to the " automatic " function of the 
 cerebrum, should be somewhat modified. He 
 says the cerebrum is a " superadded organ, 
 the development of which seems to bear a 
 pretty constant relation to the degree in 
 which intelligence supersedes instinct as a 
 spring of action." We cannot, however, thus 
 infer such competitive relation. Automatic 
 action of the cerebrum is wholly unlike the 
 automatic action of instinct. The two de- 
 partments are entirely different as to their 
 hind of duty ; although the function of the 
 cerebrum is a superadded development to the 
 developed function of instinct. The develop- 
 ment of intelligence holds essentially no com- 
 
166 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 paratiwe relations with instinct. The instinct 
 of the Hottentot's bodily organism is quite 
 equal to a Shakespeare's. Instinct is a de- 
 partment of life duties, implied in the de- 
 velopment of the bodily organism, whether 
 there be added more or less of cerebral intel- 
 ligence. The automatic action of the cere- 
 brum is a special associate quality with 
 intelligence or sensibility, which, in the pur- 
 pose of this volume, we find little cause to 
 mention. 
 
 We pay due respect to this important de- 
 partment in saying that the automatic action 
 or unconscious cerebration of the cerebrum is 
 a wonderful development of life possibilities 
 at the present day, which is receiving special 
 attention in the hands of societies for psychi- 
 cal research. Many of the superstitious mys- 
 teries of historical mention, as well as facts 
 hitherto ignored or treated with derision, are 
 being lifted up to a rational recognition and 
 explanation through the higher possibilities 
 of cerebral achievement. 
 
RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 r I "HERE m 
 
 • _ 
 
 an me wonc 
 
 ful and useful 
 
 aman 
 
 :anisin ~ : 
 
 ^ion. an 'I 
 ] 
 I 
 I I I : ■ 
 
 \ In :. 
 
168 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 people been better prepared to become the 
 victims of imposition by medical swindlers 
 than in this generation. There seems to be 
 no possibility of escape. The public and the 
 law-makers hold the same views of expectancy 
 with the ignorant, that some wonderful dis- 
 covery may be announced at any hour, pos- 
 sessing all the curative abilities for which 
 they have so long looked in vain. 
 
 With such a public judgment the profes- 
 sion hold a position of unmistakable disad- 
 vantage, in the fact that while such is the 
 expectancy and direction of discovery taught, 
 there is less apparent consistency in denoun- 
 cing a possible greater discovery. A very 
 numerous people are fast accepting the belief 
 that medicine manufacturers are really at the 
 head of the profession. Is it not quite too 
 often true ? They are presumed to make the 
 wonderful discoveries in medical science, and 
 prepare the " active curative properties " in 
 readiness for duty; while the physician be- 
 comes the go-between or common carrier of 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 169 
 
 the wonderful discovery to the bedside of the 
 afflicted. We regret to say that appearances, 
 custom, and apparent common consent con- 
 tribute to the perpetuation of such a belief. 
 
 The medical profession of to-day are the 
 victims of a transmitted delusion of medical 
 philosophy, which makes the profession re- 
 sponsible for this age of gullibility and medi- 
 cated invalidism unequalled in the history 
 of human misfortunes. As fast as one re- 
 puted discovery has been determined by ex- 
 periment not to meet the emergency, two 
 more appear above the horizon clothed in 
 language more cheering. Thus there is de- 
 veloped a condition of delusive hopefulness 
 that maintains a cloud of superstitious belief 
 which is appalling to contemplate. The de- 
 lusion of cultured expectancy on one side, and 
 confessed ignorance of the laws of organic 
 force on the other, presents such a deplora- 
 ble state of thought that our people are ever 
 ready to make trial of every vaunted specific 
 of speculative discovery, — thus parting with 
 
170 HIGHER MEDTCAL CULTURE. 
 
 their money, health, and many times their 
 lives, in pursuit of this phantom of mysterious 
 curative agency. We must also remember 
 that the law of disease makes it possible in 
 many ailments to recover, with little if any 
 aid through medical appliance ; and that, 
 based on this fact, great reputations of cura- 
 tive power have been established with simple 
 compounds, whose curative principles have 
 been thus experimentally determined and es- 
 tablished, and vouched for by numerous re- 
 corded statistics of cure from the hands of 
 those who know the least about the subject. 
 In such cases, the principle implied in the 
 modus operandi is quite like the North Amer- 
 ican Indian method formerly used to arrest 
 eclipses of the moon. A general din and 
 clatter of all possible noises persistently en- 
 forced always experimentally succeeded in 
 driving away the monster who was preying 
 on the earth's satellite. While the culture of 
 civilization finds cause for much merriment 
 with such fancy, what can be more conclu- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 171 
 
 sive and accepted as satisfactory proof of an 
 existing curative agency in material medicine 
 than well attested records of experimental 
 trial with such remedies ? 
 
 As we have previously remarked, there is 
 no protection in law, and no protection in 
 thought outside of law. The people are edu- 
 cated to become victims, and turned over to 
 the tender mercies of the unscrupulous im- 
 postor, and censured for the credulity which 
 has permitted such development of events. 
 Thus for a long time generations have come 
 into the world philosophically weighted with 
 a destiny against which they have had no 
 power to contend. 
 
 As seriously as it may be possible to expe- 
 rience regret for this state of affairs, it be- 
 comes equally charitable to ask what is 
 being done in the way of enlightening the 
 people above such possibility of becoming 
 victimized ? Nothing, nothing at all ! They 
 are being educated into this condition. They 
 are educated against the possibility of ra- 
 
172 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 tional thought to be made applicable for their 
 own protection. They are not educated to 
 comprehend that a medical practice of scien- 
 tific guidance is based on the laws of organic 
 force, which affords premises of great supe- 
 riority to the cultured mind for the fulfilment 
 of such practice, but are educated to look for 
 aid through some mysterious agency of " ac- 
 tive" ability in material medicine, which is 
 open to discovery and practice by the uncul- 
 tured, of unquestioned expectant correctness. 
 It is lamentably true that an ambition to be- 
 come a millionaire in a brief time finds no 
 opening so equally hopeful as preying on 
 human credulity in brazen announcements of 
 a "wonderful medical discovery." This is 
 not only a personal matter of the greatest 
 importance, but it is also a national ques- 
 tion of the degeneracy and undermining of 
 the physical strength of the people, thus seri- 
 ously enhancing the condition of invalidism, 
 which should appeal to every thoughtful 
 philanthropist. 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 173 
 
 A true knowledge of medical science is not 
 alone for the cure of disease, but to enable us 
 to prevent disease. The study of physiology 
 in our common schools effects but little in 
 the way of prevention ; such study only con- 
 tributes to a comprehension of vital action in 
 health. The general principles of pathologi- 
 cal vital action should be taught; otherwise 
 no comprehension can develop of that depart- 
 ment we care not to experience and wish to 
 avoid. The time is coming — and it will be 
 of much greater value than a pension — when 
 each stafe will furnish free to all homes some 
 general instruction of the meaning of patho- 
 logical vital action, together with some gen- 
 eral principles of management in aid of 
 recovery and proper appliance until the ar- 
 rival of the physician. In place of this, we 
 now have a multiplicity of recipes and medi- 
 cal compounds for applied experimental prac- 
 tice, the relation of which, together with the 
 nature and law of the disorder, are sub- 
 jects entirely outside of the comprehension 
 
174 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 of the people. While the present plan of 
 " active medical property " has supplied 
 premises which reflect most seriously against 
 the acquirement of scientific principles im- 
 plied in organic force, it furnishes no prem- 
 ises for thought which can be distinguishable 
 by the laity unlike what the ignorant pre- 
 tender can supply, with equal fluency, in 
 praise of the many curative abilities pertain- 
 ing to his latest discovery. The people have 
 not been made to comprehend that there ex- 
 ist great and important fundamental princi- 
 ples in the nature of organic force,\)f great 
 significance in giving usefulness and distinc- 
 tion to a special professional culture. 
 
 So long as the doctrines of a medical sci- 
 ence are so low down in scientific attain- 
 ment that the ignorant pretender can often 
 command the entire confidence of the people, 
 and so long as medical practice is based 
 on the level of a presumed agency out- 
 side the human organism existing in the 
 name of " active medical property," there will 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 175 
 
 seem to be required some interference by the 
 legislatures to protect our people. When we 
 seek legislative interference to establish lines 
 and controlling judgment of protection, we 
 may find much consolation in the fact that 
 no legislative act has ever been required to 
 prevent ignorant people from making astro- 
 nomical calculations, or practising the science 
 of chemistry. It should be made susceptible 
 of comprehension that medical science is a de- 
 partment of science of organic forces, requir- 
 ing greatly superior ability to reap its many 
 advantages over what is required in the de- 
 partments of inorganic science. Medical ed- 
 ucation should elevate medical doctrines to the 
 standard of a science, in harmony with laws 
 made and provided. 
 
 The ideal medical science with a very 
 large majority of the laity is but slightly 
 removed from the low level of a mechanical 
 appliance of a medical power to keep the 
 organic machinery in motion ; while as a fact 
 no other department in the affairs of Nature 
 
176 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 in which the mind has had cause to make 
 research reveals such intricate and wonder- 
 ful expressions of Divine wisdom as may be 
 found in this department, with which the 
 physician has occasion to have intimate rela- 
 tions of acquaintance, — a required acquaint- 
 ance and comprehension so far above all 
 possibility of attainment without special cul- 
 ture, that no reasonable person entertaining 
 a belief in such a department of Nature 
 would dare trust for a day the management 
 of his invalidism in other hands than those 
 of one specially educated to comprehend the 
 laws of organic force which execute every 
 act of life. 
 
WHY DO PEOPLE DRINK ALCO- 
 HOLIC SPIRITS? 
 
 HHIS subject is so controversially related 
 -*• to the medical doctrines of the period 
 that it becomes difficult to do justice to this 
 source of human affliction without coming 
 into complicated relations with the depart- 
 ment of medical science. We find an ex- 
 pectancy with the people which is supported 
 by a common culture, or consent of belief, 
 which becomes experimentally seriously at 
 variance with long anticipated results. And 
 to make reply to the question, Why do people 
 drink alcoholic spirits ? would include prem- 
 ises which imply explanations dependent on 
 the doctrines of our medical schools ; and 
 we are persuaded to say that in the name of 
 two alleged reasons may be found cause for 
 such practice. 
 
 12 
 
178 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 One cause is dependent on the fact to 
 which we alluded when considering the four 
 vital properties ; namely, that sensation is a 
 department of human experience of irritabil- 
 ity and pain in one direction from the normal 
 standard of such life property, while in the 
 opposite direction a condition of agreeable 
 sensation can be made to prevail from a con- 
 tact relation of certain material, in the list of 
 which alcoholic spirit is included. Now, it is 
 further to be considered that the sensation 
 thus occasioned, which becomes more pleas- 
 urable or agreeable, and is sought to be made 
 more satisfactory, is very largely an agree- 
 able experience of comparative relation ; 
 that is, a previous disagreeable sensation is 
 being experienced, which it is desirable to 
 make pleasurable by the use of alcoholic 
 spirit. Now, it is this fact which contributes 
 to develop the inference that whatever causes 
 a person to feel better becomes valid evidence 
 in support of the appropriateness of the prac- 
 tice which has been pursued. While such 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 179 
 
 may be a justifiable conclusion in many in- 
 stances, it is far from being correct in all 
 cases. 
 
 It should not escape notice that such exhil- 
 aration is a deviation from that normal stan- 
 dard of sensation that is later followed by an 
 opposite disagreeable sensation that might 
 not otherwise have prevailed to that extent, 
 — which condition may again find cause ac- 
 ceptable for the repeating of the same prac- 
 tice. With many, a primary agreeable 
 nervine sensation is experienced which be- 
 comes quite fascinating as a condition of 
 pleasure, and is repeated in anticipation of 
 a " glorious good time," without thought 
 of what may attach to such practice later. 
 Thus one is deluded by an inferential reason, 
 which encourages a practice that develops 
 abnormal sensation on each side of the nor- 
 mal standard of a healthy sensation. That 
 is, one feels better, and he feels worse ; and 
 he thus continues to live a see-saw life of 
 up-and-down, trying to establish a continu- 
 
180 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 ance of normal balance of healthy sensation. 
 Such application often prevails with medical 
 treatment. 
 
 The reason and philosophy of the party in- 
 dulging in this experience is made to apply 
 only in one direction; that is, when he has 
 the experience of a disagreeable sensation, he 
 resorts to the experimental practice which 
 contributes to a better feeling, — omitting to 
 infer that the same cause may develop first a 
 better and then a worse sensation, thus never 
 recovering that continuous balance which has 
 no occasion for further appliance of antici- 
 pated improvement. The victim of delusion 
 with this fascinating experience fails to recog- 
 nize that the science of anticipated recovery 
 is implied in the omission of such remedy 
 rather than with its continuance. Thus the 
 department of sensation in human experience 
 often becomes persuasive to the drinking of 
 spirituous liquors. 
 
 While one cause is found with relations to 
 sensation, the other cause, of far greater mag- 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 181 
 
 nitude, is found in the belief — which is sup- 
 ported both by educational precept and by 
 a multiplicity of example — that alcoholic 
 spirit contributes a latent aid which sustains 
 and comes to human relief when vital powers 
 are prostrate, and thus runs the machinery 
 of life while the vital powers are recuper- 
 ating. From the United States Dispensa- 
 tory, the standard authority on matters of 
 this kind, we quote: "Alcohol is a very 
 powerful, diffusible stimulant ; in a diluted 
 state it gives additional energy to the mus- 
 cles and temporary exaltation to the mental 
 faculties. " This accepted authority does not 
 inform the reader that stimulation is a phe- 
 nomenon exhibited by the involuntary life 
 forces, of precisely similar principle, so far as 
 it is a gift of energy, as is that of the whip 
 which gives stimulation to the voluntary life 
 forces of the horse. 
 
 An eminent Professor says that " there are 
 conditions in which alcohol acts simply as 
 material for the production of force, and may 
 
182 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 be looked upon as a food which requires no 
 digestion, and sets free in a useful form its 
 latent energy." Without waste of words in 
 discussing the premises, it remains &fact that 
 the practice of drinking spirituous liquors is 
 based very largely on the belief that some 
 mysterious prophylactic or supporting agency 
 is derived from such compounds, — a belief 
 further supported by the agreeable sensation 
 produced by them, while no delusion ever 
 had a stronger hold on a people. Anti-alco- 
 holic literature is more freely circulated each 
 year, although such literature has never 
 made issue with doctrines of medical schools 
 to any noticeable degree, yet they have been 
 recognized sufficiently to require a review of 
 the premises. 
 
 Says Ex-Senator John J. Ingalls : " I ad- 
 mit the prohibition question is one of the 
 most stupendous questions that ever engaged 
 the attention of the human mind. It is one 
 of the greatest problems of the present cen- 
 tury." Now, we ask, why does this question 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 183 
 
 assume such mammoth proportions ? Simply, 
 because our institutions of law are trying to 
 suppress what our intellectual and scientific 
 institutions are advising our people to do. 
 Or, in other words, an effort is being made 
 to coerce a people to do right, while they 
 are continually being educated to do wrong. 
 Give our people correct thoughts, and we 
 shall have less use, or no use, for coercive 
 measures with the intelligent. Our medical 
 books and medical teachers continue to affirm 
 that alcoholic spirit gives support to the hu- 
 man organism, and this, together with the 
 administration of alcoholic spirit for nearly 
 every conceivable ailment, causes such an 
 irresistible tendency of conviction to this 
 erroneous belief that but few minds can 
 repel the persuasion. What reason have the 
 people for not thus believing ? 
 
 Such is the practice of the physicians with 
 the laity, and also of the laity with them- 
 selves. They most conscientiously think that 
 it is right, and they do not think that it is 
 
184 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 wrong. The direction of a thought may de- 
 termine the destiny of a nation. 
 
 While the temperance advocates may con- 
 demn the practice of dram-drinking, and 
 desire to inflict punishment for the practice 
 of what drinkers are educated to believe is 
 right, we should exercise much charity in 
 their behalf ; especially while they are strug- 
 gling to comprehend the mental problem 
 how it is that an alcoholic mixture well 
 sweetened, with mint in it, which makes 
 them feel better, and which the United States 
 Dispensatory affirms will " give additional 
 energy to muscles, and a temporary exalta- 
 tion to the mental faculties," can be any less 
 useful when they take it on their own judg- 
 ment than when they take it by advice of 
 the physician. The individual who prescribes 
 for himself knows better than the college 
 doctor that his muscles are tired, and that 
 his brain is in need of exaltation. While 
 our nation entertains much pride in its de- 
 veloped influences of education, we find that 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 185 
 
 in this particular direction the punishment 
 of the individual who seeks to profit by his 
 education is advised through legal channels. 
 
 Medical literature the world over informs 
 the people that alcohol is a " powerful stimu- 
 lant." It is important that we examine this 
 language, go down into it, find out what it 
 means and how it applies, — whether such 
 term is expressive of a scientific principle 
 and fact, or an undefined phraseology of 
 merely business convenience. If this lan- 
 guage is expressive of a something which has 
 a counterpart in certain phenomena, we should 
 examine the phenomena, get down from the 
 dignity of education to the business of com- 
 prehension, which may afford a correct idea 
 with the laity, and possibly with the profes- 
 sion in some instances. It becomes extremely 
 important to examine these phenomena, which 
 are implied in a fulfilment and presentment 
 in the name of " powerful stimulation," to 
 endeavor to learn their true explanation, — 
 whether or not the explanation holds any 
 
186 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 relation of sequence to the language which 
 is made symbolic of such phenomena as 
 a gift of energy derived from the alcohol. 
 It is important to compare the general be- 
 lief on this subject with the facts implied 
 in it. 
 
 What is stimulation ? what is really done 
 in the act of stimulation ? and what power is 
 involved in the doing ? Let us try and un- 
 derstand this correctly. 
 
 Now what is implied in the general belief 
 of the laity, as a presumed fact, is that the 
 word " stimulation " as an applied term signi- 
 fies that an artificial supply of power from 
 another source has been introduced to help 
 propel the machinery of life, or " set free its 
 latent energy " in aid of individual support. 
 Is this idea correct ? For the purpose of 
 illustrating the u powerful stimulant prop- 
 erty " or " action " of alcohol on the human 
 organism, we place in the stomach a certain 
 relative quantity of alcoholic spirit, and watch 
 for the new phenomena, the new facts of 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 187 
 
 activity ', which may come to our notice. We 
 discover an increased activity of the heart ; 
 a larger volume of blood is propelled through 
 the superficial vessels, with an increased 
 temperature of the skin. This fact is called 
 the evidence of stimulation, or manifestation 
 of the " action " of alcohol. We now know 
 what has been done ; but what power or ac- 
 tion really executed this new order of doing ? 
 The people have been persuaded to accept the 
 inference that this increased activity of the 
 heart, in this illustration, is due to the sup- 
 ply of an artificial energy introduced into the 
 human organism from without, which energy 
 is inherent in the alcohol. 
 
 It is now before us to consider whether 
 this increased activity of the heart, as a fact, 
 is due to the supply of a new power, or is an 
 increased action of the vital power of the in- 
 individual, thus directed in relation to the 
 alcohol with an instinctive view to elimina- 
 tion. This is a very important problem in 
 practical science. 
 
188 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 We are under obligation to consider both 
 forms of this proposition. In support of the 
 latter, we should seek such premises as may 
 afford a reasonable analogy. We find that 
 the great plan of life has endowed human 
 involuntary vital ability with a limited power 
 to expel foreign material. No one denies 
 this as applied to various other material, and 
 it is rational to infer that the plan remains 
 the same with all foreign material. And 
 who denies that alcohol is a foreign material, 
 when existing within the human organism ? 
 The possibility of a continued existence of 
 the individual requires that foreign material 
 should be expelled. Such is a living vital 
 principle, pointing in a direction which af- 
 fords us rational premises to infer, to say the 
 least, that the activity called stimulation is 
 none other than the individual vital ability 
 acting with more energy in this particular 
 direction. Experiment with alcohol has de- 
 termined that alcohol and its oxidized prod- 
 uct is eliminated or expelled very largely 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 189 
 
 through the skin aud lungs. Now to effect 
 this exit rapidly, an increased activity of the 
 heart is implied, to propel a larger volume of 
 blood in that direction. What power propels 
 the heart, — the alcohol or the vital ? It 
 seems that the alcohol either goes out, or is 
 put out : which is true ? The heart continues 
 in motion after the alcohol is out, in a manner 
 quite similar to that in which hearts behave 
 that move independently of alcohol. 
 
 We think it would be a very delicate prob- 
 lem to determine just when the " active " 
 alcohol power terminated, and the vital 
 power rallied to the rescue. Basing the 
 practice on the fact that the presence of a 
 certain relative quantity of alcoholic spirit 
 may afford cause for the heart to send a more 
 voluminous quantity of blood to the surface, 
 we have then to consider that behind such a 
 possible fact must exist sufficient vital energy 
 to execute such act; otherwise, the alcohol 
 presence holds serious relations. If the con- 
 ditions are favorable, and the physician wishes 
 
190 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 to employ this power of involuntary prin- 
 ciple — which is the only power he ever does 
 employ — with a view to establish a better 
 balanced condition of the individual circula- 
 tion, contributing to a more hopeful expect- 
 ancy of continued life, it is not prudent or 
 wise, from a scientific standpoint, to pervert 
 that philosophy or reason which explains the 
 fact. Such a perversion leads to establishing 
 premises derogatory to sound philosophy, in- 
 telligence, and scientific professional attain- 
 ment ; also, to dangerous complications. 
 
 On the other side, let us examine those 
 premises and facts which have prompted and 
 do inspire that kind of reasoning which has 
 endowed alcohol with " active stimulating 
 properties." The apparent proof is found 
 alone in the one fact that the human organ- 
 ism frequently manifests more power in a 
 certain direction after a certain quantity of 
 alcohol has been taken into the stomach. 
 This is the sum total of evidence in support 
 of the allegation that alcohol can "give 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 energy " to the human organism, 
 crude reasoning, based wholly on appe 
 with a deduction that fails to exhibit 
 thought of rational principle. It if 
 periment of bringing chemical coi 
 low down in classification into conti 
 tions with living tissues, and claimin 
 ability with the living principle in e. 
 the phenomena of activity. 
 
 Considering the fact unquestioned tl 
 exists a vital power to eliminate, it 
 inferential from a logical standpoint 
 that alcohol, a foreign material, in 
 contributing more power, does occasi< 
 to the existing vital fund in store. Ac 
 such premises, how can it be true 
 alcohol occasions a waste of vital po\ 
 ever possible that alcohol may be usej 
 administered in a condition of collaps< 
 
 This seeming paradox may be illi 
 first, by considering the fact that al 
 expelled largely through the skin, o 
 
 the heart's nrvtinn. heenmincr np.e.f 
 
192 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 affords a much greater fulness of superficial 
 circulation. Now, the condition of collapse 
 is one of internal congestion, with a super- 
 ficial deficiency of blood, — coldness of sur- 
 face. The unbalanced condition of the blood 
 tends more to death in many instances than 
 does the existing prostration. When this is 
 true, — remember it is not always true, — 
 and there is a remaining vital energy to a 
 certain degree, it becomes possible that the 
 presence of the alcoholic spirit may be a cause 
 for the vital energy to display its powers in 
 that direction which will establish a more 
 nearly balanced circulation, which condition 
 is far more favorable to the continuance of 
 life with a less stock of vital energy than 
 would be the existing condition of superficial 
 coldness and internal congestion. Practi- 
 cally, and with a correct philosophy to guide 
 us, it becomes a difficult problem to solve, 
 many times, whether the existing vital energy 
 in the individual case before us will safely 
 admit of this practice. If one believes that 
 
HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 the phenomena called stimulation an 
 from active energy belonging to the i 
 spirit, the practice is liable to that r 
 which would exhaust vital energy an 
 permanent collapse and death at 
 period. 
 
 We sometimes entertain the que 
 many recognize such principles a: 
 with the use of stimulants ? And 
 we have had good cause in some ins 
 believe that the practitioner in givi 
 holic spirit had no other idea t 
 expectancy that he was transferring 
 energy to his patient. Practising f] 
 rect premises, there would be mucl 
 courage the expectation that the us 
 liquid nourishment and external 
 with less alcoholic spirit, would be p 
 in many cases. The doctrine that 
 stimulation is a " giving of additional 
 to the individual when introduced wi 
 stomach, is in principle and fact qu 
 
194 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 gives to the horse when applied outside the 
 stomach. The two illustrations are alike, 
 with this distinction : the alcohol may occa- 
 sion the involuntary vital abilities to mani- 
 fest strength in a direction which would not 
 otherwise have been exhibited, while the 
 whip may occasion the voluntary abilities to 
 manifest strength in a different direction. 
 The philosophic delusion which encourages to 
 the belief that alcohol may tone up the sys- 
 tem may find that support in the dignity of 
 education which seems to forbid criticism 
 while the application of the whip to tone up 
 a horse would appeal to that society with a 
 long name. 
 
 Alcoholic spirit may sometimes be of pos- 
 sible use to cause a different direction of vital 
 activity under some circumstances ; yet alco- 
 holic spirit does not contribute energy. In 
 illustration of the doctrinal and applied use 
 of alcoholic spirit, with a view to contribute 
 supporting energy, we have an example for 
 which the English newspapers become re- 
 
sponsible. Prince Albert was " kept on 
 nlants for five or six days," but all 
 sudden prostration supervened, and t 
 phoid set in, and the end came. The 1: 
 of treatment which many eminent men 
 received during their last days is a s 
 not pleasant to contemplate with ration 
 pectancy from a standpoint of conservat 
 vital energy. Because no one doubts o 
 demns the propriety of certain treatmen 
 sents in itself no evidence of its correc 
 The human family are on record as 
 unanimous in many beliefs and practi< 
 serious detriment to both physical and 
 tal capacity. The people should take 
 cient interest in those subjects which 
 to the possibility of a continued exister 
 otherwise, and demand that some me; 
 be adopted to cause a review of the 
 implied principles involved in the pre: 
 The dignity of ignoring many imp 
 scientific questions is far from being 
 sistent, or conducive to the legitima 
 
196 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 mands and requirements of a people. When 
 we seek to propel the heart by the continu- 
 ance of the presumed alcohol energy,- the per- 
 son dies when the vital energy becomes 
 exhausted, rather than the alcohol supply. 
 The continuance of the presumed alcohol 
 energy always exhausts the vital energy. 
 Now this is a singular fact, provided that 
 alcohol contributes a gift of energy to man. 
 
 The so called toning up of the system with 
 alcoholic spirit receives approval, not for real 
 value received of strength, but for the more 
 agreeable sensation occasioned while the pa- 
 tient is gaining strength from nutritive sup- 
 ply, which is mistaken for an incoming of 
 strength, the agreeable sensation becoming 
 a soothing solace to hopeful expectancy. To 
 what extent we are justified in contributing 
 to agreeable sensation with such appliance is 
 a question not of legitimate discussion at this 
 time. The happiness of life comes to the 
 individual through their Sensation and Sen- 
 sibility, and many people seek to enjoy the 
 
former to an abnormal degree, rather 
 the higher pleasures of the latter, 
 should have appeared in the Great Bo< 
 phrase, " Be moderate with the pleasu 
 sensation." The pleasures of abnorm; 
 sation derived from alcoholic spirit, < 
 and tobacco are of great detriment b 
 the nervous system and to Sensibility. 
 The doctrine of " energy " as an assc 
 gift of alcohol is really one of the mo 
 portant subjects for consideration bj 
 generation. Do not permit yourself t 
 sign this question to insignificance. I 
 feel that your dignity of intellect is be 
 in being called to the importance o 
 question. It is this belief which is the 
 est and most serious delusion that errc 
 philosophy ever inflicted on a people, 
 ing the last twentv vears various bills 
 been introduced asking for Congres 
 acts authorizing a commission to inve; 
 and report on the evils consequent on 
 ing spirituous liquor, with a view to d 
 
198 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 some method which might be of general aid 
 in correcting such evil. The consolidated 
 statistics of misery that might be reported 
 would contribute little aid in frightening a 
 people into better w^ays. The true method of 
 correcting this unconscious tendency to evil 
 would be to include in such bill a require- 
 ment for a report which would appeal to the 
 people on an educational basis. While it is 
 true that such bills have always invoked the 
 aid of science, it has ever been lamentably 
 true that there has been no science born to 
 respond to the appeal. An act of Congress 
 to nationalize the importance of this subject 
 through a commission, to be handled as an 
 educational question and presented and sup- 
 ported on scientific premises which could not 
 be construed in aid of political influence, 
 would achieve more beneficial results and 
 promote more harmony with our people 
 than all methods heretofore suggested for 
 consideration. 
 
 Erroneous education has ever made con- 
 
JtllVjrtlH<ri lUilUlL/Alj KjULjUJIXEi. 
 
 scientious conviction and acceptec 
 contributary to the continuance of 
 spirit drinking. The first step tc 
 to set right the thoughts of an i 
 people. Says Alexander Bain, in 
 on Logic, when alluding to the el 
 tellectual acquirements : " The ur 
 where to look for the next openhr 
 covery brings the pain of conflict 
 debilitv of indecision." When we s 
 premises and intricate relations of < 
 wisdom in this department of tin 
 forces, there is much to exalt th 
 mind with the belief that a highe: 
 pervaded the plans of our Creator 
 of our endowed abilities for a cont 
 istence on earth than man has yet s 
 comprehend. A new field for tl 
 open in this direction, replete with 
 ing expressions of adjustment whic 
 persede in expressed wisdom for 01 
 all other departments of scientific 
 the brief resume of this subject, we s 
 
200 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 accept such facts and premises for considera- 
 tion as are true. We must engage with this 
 subject in a manner and direction which is 
 consistent with a rational idea of business 
 from a standpoint of fact, and which human 
 intellect will accept as both logical and prac- 
 tical. We are to consider that the human 
 family drink or partake of alcoholic com- 
 pounds because they have been educated so 
 to do. Their beliefs are supported with an 
 honesty of purpose guaranteed by the doc- 
 trines of our medical schools. 
 
 The principles of our government, with its 
 liberties of thought and action supported by 
 the doctrines of our schools, makes it un- 
 reasonable to believe that our people will be 
 restrained to any great extent by legislative 
 enactments which are contrary to their hon- 
 est belief and judgment. We cannot afford 
 to be unreasonable and inconsistent with 
 our interpretations of the guiding element of 
 human nature, and thus direct our labors 
 with that opposition which is without rational 
 
JilUttJilK M£m<JALi LUL.TUKJ 
 
 reason for hope. We must admi 
 kind have been taught to drinl 
 compounds for the strength whic 
 supposed to impart to the human 
 We must accept the truism that 
 persons drink alcoholic compounc 
 self-prescribed or from professioi 
 with the belief that a strengthei 
 has thus been supplied them. r 
 tions to this statement are very I 
 this belief is supported by the d 
 our medical schools through all 
 historic mention ; and with this 
 reasonable to expect little, if ai 
 nent re term through legislation 
 
 also becomes distinctly sell'-evide: 
 must look either to compulsion 01 
 for relief. Compulsion does not I 
 mend itself to the human mind, 
 cation has never been tried. W( 
 have a subject before us which ap] 
 most profound wisdom of the a 
 find that the medical school doctr 
 
202 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 and alcohol does thus supply a power, the 
 agitation of this subject should cease at once, 
 and the people should be supplied with a large 
 stock of this alcohol power. 
 
 All methods for the suppression of alco- 
 holic drink have ever been neutralized by the 
 doctrines of the medical schools. This state- 
 ment of the subject and problem should not 
 be ignored. The people have a right to de- 
 mand a better doctrine from the medical 
 schools. This subject is not alone for pro- 
 fessional opinions, but one which relates to 
 the masses, and is without pride or dignity 
 of college culture to them. This doctrine of 
 power insures a belief practically carrying 
 to the hearts and homes of our people innu- 
 merable woes and miseries of a lifetime of 
 suffering. 
 
 Now, if this doctrine of a medical power 
 in alcohol is a delusion, what is to be done 
 about it ? What can be done about it ? The 
 remedy consists in calling the attention of 
 all thinking persons to this delusion, and 
 
in supplying them with premises wh 
 enable them to think on this subjec 
 think is to become educated ; to 
 only, is debasing to human mental 
 comprehend establishes a self-relianc( 
 guides actions into better relations, pi 
 and results. To whom should we 1 
 that pushing energy which carries 
 tion to the people ? This is not a ] 
 question. It is a subject not amen 
 party power. It is as far removed fr 
 possibility of adjustment by political 
 as would be the subject of any other 
 tional question in science. A right < 
 energy from an intellectual standpoin 
 do more to restrain and correct humai 
 tions in one year than all that legislai 
 do in twenty years. There must b 
 if we expect a harvest. The inhabil 
 the world at this period have becom 
 amenable to intelligence than coercic 
 tempted coercion against belief and ec 
 always was, and always will be, difl 
 
204 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 maintain, and fails to command respect. It 
 is well to remember that law is made for the 
 protection of our people, and that the' people 
 never demand protection or enforcement of 
 law without the belief that they are in dan- 
 ger. Therefore, while nearly all our people 
 do believe that alcohol imparts a useful poiver 
 to the human organism, it is not rational to 
 expect they will be very persistent for the 
 enforcement of a law which would suppress 
 such a vast amount of expected good. Thus 
 it becomes plain for our consideration, that 
 law succeeds to a moral conviction when it is 
 ever successful ; that behind the law must be 
 the conscience and positive conviction of our 
 people. 
 
 Our people are devising means to avert 
 such calamities, and are looking for hope in 
 some kind of legislation. Legislation may 
 be available with a certain number who are 
 
 k 
 
 never influenced through educational chan- 
 nels. Yet education becomes the only guide 
 for the intelligent. Yet there remains to be 
 
considered that if this medical d( 
 energy in alcohol, as set forth, is t 
 right has an ignorant legislature to 
 suppress, or punish the individual f< 
 ing and using the curative powers i 
 for the sustaining and strengtheni 
 vital organism ? If this doctrine of 
 energy is expressive of a scientific 
 legislation would be unconstitutioi 
 have already mentioned that this d 
 medical and alcoholic power is dej 
 the intellect. It begets a belief w 
 ports the assurance that little impo 
 lates to who shall supply this allege 
 It places a premium on premises for 
 bition of bombast and ignorance, ai 
 our people to be robbed a thousa 
 worse than all the lottery and gar 
 stitutions of the nation could effec 
 ing them to become easy victim! 
 unscrupulous ; while the true docl 
 vital power only is responsible : 
 activity exhibited by the living 
 
206 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 will become the most efficient protection 
 for the people, and establish a high ele- 
 vation for professional thought and- useful- 
 ness, commanding a respect never previously 
 bestowed on any department of scientific 
 culture. 
 
 The proof relative to the correctness of 
 this subject, as presented, does not rest on 
 human testimony any more than the doctrine 
 that the earth was the centre of the solar 
 system. It is true that the medical profes- 
 sion have given but little attention to the 
 study of this department of vital power, and 
 the laws which govern this special ability ; 
 they have been deluded into the attempt of 
 trying to explain their science from false 
 premises. 
 
 We have alluded to the laws pertaining to 
 this subject quite briefly, yet, we hope, suffi- 
 ciently to awaken an interest for further 
 research. No other department of erudition 
 has been supplied by Nature with such possi- 
 bilities for the development of genius, judg- 
 
ment, usefulness, and far-seeing dis< 
 of mysterious forces and compensat 
 ties, of the highest elaborated powe 
 have been presented for human consi 
 as is found legitimate to the scop 
 physician in the study of those vita 
 which relate to the preservation of 
 est organization of creative wisdom. 
 In conclusion, we believe that 
 premises of a medical science are 
 the laws of organic force ; and, so i 
 know, this is the first suggestion of 
 the basis of a medical practice from 
 trine of " active medical property,' 
 ference of statistical result, to 
 outlined of laws and principles ope 
 the department of organic force, 
 nothing is lost to the advantage c 
 ence, but more correct premises beco 
 able in making such experience 
 We may further add, that while w< 
 infallible, the premises of a science 
 the opposite ; and it would be a ver\ 
 
208 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 fact, with such experience in a new field, to 
 escape good cause for criticism. While we 
 have not been over modest in this direction, 
 we have sought to present such principles for 
 consideration as seem legitimately to belong 
 to this department. And we invite the 
 thoughtful reader to make a most searching 
 and critical review; and where we have exer- 
 cised more imagination than correct repre- 
 sentation of the transpiring events of organic 
 life, we trust no modesty will suppress the 
 making known such fact. We believe in a 
 healthy, honest criticism, which may prune 
 our department of its superfluities, and of 
 traditional doctrines that have ever been in 
 the way of a clearer perception of the prin- 
 ciples of a science. While we have only 
 introduced the plan of a medical science, it 
 should be the aim of all true disciples of 
 science to join in establishing premises for 
 a theory and practice which may do honor 
 to the intellectual pride of our department, 
 and thus develop the advantages which are 
 
alone possible with a special culture 
 will be appreciated and recognized v 
 everlasting gratitude by the deservii 
 legitimate requirements of an int< 
 people. 
 
 14 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 / nr*HE human organism never acquires 
 ■*- strength from other material than nu- 
 tritive. The idea of a medical property being 
 implied in a quality which heals and acts, and 
 the definition that to medicate is to " impreg- 
 nate with healing substances " are delusions. 
 Material medicine has only physical prop- 
 erties in common with other material, while 
 such material has medical relations in place 
 of " active properties." 
 
 We have presented a theory for the prac- 
 tice of a medical science based on the laws 
 of organic force, — a department of unsolved 
 problem, thus confessed by all writers of 
 medical literature who have sought to engage 
 with the enigma of life forces, — a theory 
 that can be verified by the phenomena of 
 
life in quite significant distinction t( 
 trine of " active medical property," 
 without representation among the 
 ing events of Nature. We have pr 
 theory of facts in medical science, r< 
 ary in its method of applied thoug 
 relation of disease problems and app 
 ical practice. We have presented a 
 for the development of thought ne 
 ersed by writers of medical philosoj 
 have set up a positive theory of m( 
 ence, not possible to be supported 1 
 diction, and as easily verified thr 
 transpiring events of organic naturi 
 possible in astronomical science to 
 theories of that department. 
 
 It is rational to infer that, a th< 
 science being absolutely wrong, th( 
 of it in relation to the lives of 
 would give us occasion to fear that 
 ous consequences might result froi 
 practice based on premises where e: 
 must be so frequently without p( 
 
212 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 while from the basis of active organic force 
 the disease problem and the treatment of va- 
 rious ailments would receive a very different 
 application of thought relative to methods in 
 aid of conservation of vital energy. 
 
 While a correct knowledge of medical 
 science or the science of organic force is a 
 department of paramount importance in aid 
 of that management which may contribute to 
 a possible continuance of life, it is not pre- 
 sumed an easy task to make a doctrinal 
 theory of such department appear void, not- 
 withstanding it may be fallacious, without 
 putting in its place a substitute. A theory of 
 a science which it is sought to retire, as well 
 as the one to be introduced, must each be 
 submitted to the most exacting crucial test 
 that rational reason can apply in explanation 
 of correctly verified phenomena. 
 
 While it is the people who are to become 
 the recipients and beneficiaries of a more 
 conservative and life-saving medical practice, 
 we trust they will cause such a critical re- 
 
 
view of the premises here set forth to 
 as to develop a universal recognitio 
 entire laity that one not cultured in 
 partment of the organic force of ] 
 methods of vital activity shall be ( 
 by universal individual proclamatior 
 and incompetent, from that meddl 
 the affairs of vital force in disease w 
 so long been permitted with direful i 
 speculative industrial pursuit. 
 
 The introduction of this new t' 
 medical science presents a singular 
 of rare occurrence in the history c 
 wherein is suggested a philosophical 
 relative to which antecedent philoso] 
 ering and including the same facts \ 
 little or no aid in determining the 
 ness of its alleged validity. How 
 determine the intrinsic worth, cor 
 and validity of this doctrinal theory 
 cal science, based on the four vital p 
 and laws of organic force as presente 
 volume ? Are we not compelled to : 
 
214 HIGHER MEDICAL CULTURE. 
 
 the same methods which have determined the 
 validity of other departments of theoretical 
 science ? The doctrines of alchemy were 
 not sufficiently comprehensive and verified to 
 be capable of weighing the chemical theory 
 of subsequent presentment ; but determined 
 laws of verified chemical science could weigh 
 correctly the fallacious doctrines of alchemy. 
 The pre-Copernican theory of astronomy was 
 not capable of making a true estimate, and 
 giving correct weight to the validity of the 
 Copernican philosophy, but the reverse. The 
 present doctrines of accepted medical philos- 
 ophy are not competent to weigh the validity 
 of the doctrines of medical science, based 
 on the vital properties and laws of organic 
 force ; but medical science based on the 
 principles of organic force becomes compe- 
 tent to give a correct estimate and valuation 
 of that medical philosophy based on the 
 imaginary principle called " active medical 
 property. 5 ' 
 
 Thus it becomes evident that the validity 
 
and correctness [of a theory of m 
 ence based on the principles of org* 
 like other departments of previou 
 oped theoretical science, must be c 
 within itself. It must be determii: 
 verification of correctly named prin 
 laws in harmony with facts, and in 
 with the transpiring events of > 
 medical science is based on organ 
 different plan and different law 
 representation, it becomes the dut; 
 cal scientists to contribute such in 
 Medical science is not based on 
 ment of man, but man is required 
 consistent and comprehensive ju< 
 the principles and laws of the s 
 order to make practical the advan 
 contributed. 
 
 THE END. 
 
.