drugs is equally obscure, and that in consequence there is profound
uncertainty as to the relation of drugs to the diseases for which they
are prescribed.

Can one cause cure another. Can a poison expel a poison? Can the human
system throw off two burdens better than one? If such a proposition
were submitted to us in any other domain we would indignantly resent
it as an insult to our intelligence.

There can be no question but that the public are largely responsible
for the existing condition of things, for whatever they demand they
can obtain, in obedience to the inexorable law of supply and demand:
which accounts for the rapidly increasing interest in hygiene. An
eminent authority on therapeutics says:

"The medical profession holds a most false relation to society. Its
honors and emoluments are measured, not by the good, but by the evil
it does. The physician who keeps some member of the family of his rich
neighbor on a bed of sickness for months or years, may secure to
himself thereby both fame and fortune; while the other who would
restore the patient to health in a week or two, will be neither
appreciated nor understood. If a physician, in treating a simple
fever, which if left to itself or to Nature would terminate in health
in two or three weeks, drugs the patient into half a dozen chronic
diseases, and nearly kills himself half a dozen times, and prolongs
his sufferings for months, he will receive much money and many thanks
for carrying him safely through so many complications, relapses, and
collapses. But if he cures in a single week, and leaves him perfectly
sound, the pay will be small, and the thanks nowhere, because he has
not been very sick!