I know it is, and it is with great reluctance that I preach it, as I am by no means in favor of taking medical matters out of the hands where they belong, to place them into the hands of such as have had no medical education. I despise quackery, and I wish physicians could be prevailed upon to take the matter in their own hands. But, the following anecdote will enable you to judge what we may expect in that quarter, and whether I am justified in preaching rebellion against the old routine--for I deny going against science and the profession--and for a new practice which has proved to be safer than any hitherto adopted.
In 1845-46 there was an epidemic in Dresden, a city of 100,000 inhabitants, where I then resided. Its ravages in the city and the densely peopled country around it, were dreadful. We had excellent physicians of different schools, who exerted themselves day and night to stop the progress of extermination, but all was in vain. Dying children and weeping mothers were found in some house of every street, and whenever you entered a dry-goods store, you were sure to find people buying mourning. At last, as poverty will frequently produce dispute and quarrel in families, there arose, from similar reasons, a dispute between the different sects of physicians in the papers, which became more and more animated and venomous, without having any beneficial influence upon the dying patients. Sad with the result of the efforts, and disgusted with the quarrel of the profession, I gathered facts of my own and other hydriatic physicians' practice, by which it was shown that I alone, in upwards of one hundred cases of scarlatina, I had treated, had not lost a patient, and that, in general, not a case of death of scarlet-fever treated hydriatically was on record. These facts, with some observations about the merits of the respective modes of treatment, I published in the same papers, offering to give the list of the patients, I had treated, and to teach my treatment, gratis, to any physician who would give himself the trouble of calling.--What do you think was the result of my communication and offer?
The quarrel in the papers was stopped at once; not a line was published more; no one attempted to contradict me or to show that I had lost patients also; all was dead silence; and of the one hundred and fifty physicians of the city, _one_ called, and, not finding me at home, never returned. And the patients? Well, the patients were treated and killed--after the occurrence I thought I had the right to use the word--as before, and the practice was continued in every epidemy afterwards.