The Thomsonian Treatment Of Disease - Part 2

"It is impossible to perform a surgical operation of any magnitude without producing several injurious effects, each one of which argues against operations as a means of cure save in exceptional cases:

[Editor's note - This is obciously no longer true today, but instead referred to probably crude and early forms of surgery where infection control was not understood]

"1. The amount of vitality destroyed by the fear and dread of passing through an operation, combined with the operation frequently places cases beyond hope, a case that might easily have been cured if the correct treatment had been prescribed.

"2. To cut into the deep tissues of the body makes a severe wound in addition to the already existing condition. The amount of vitality required to heal such a wound draws heavily on the vital force of the patient.

"3. The anaesthetic usually administered under such circumstances still further reduces the vital force of the sufferer.

"4. The pain and weakness caused by the operation has a similar effect.

"Any one of these detrimental influences frequently is sufficient to bring about the death of a very weak patient.

"Consider for a moment, the contrast: If, instead of fear, you substitute hope; if, in place of pain, you give ease and comfort; if, instead of benumbing and deadening the sensatory nerves with a poison, you stimulate and strengthen with a real medicine, the life of a patient is often saved when otherwise that life would be lost. It is an appalling fact that actual murder is often committed by performing needless surgical operations, and prescribing benumbing poisons as medicine.

"Why have old modes failed? Simply because the means employed were not adapted to accomplish the end desired.

"For instance, in speaking of a certain case, you will sometimes hear a physician say: 'I have tried everything, but nothing seems to do any good.' Now the real remedy or remedies suitable in the case he may be wholly ignorant of, consequently, he has not tried everything.

The number of agents tried, even if millions, count for nothing, and most of them may actually have been, harmful, if their tendency was not in line with the objective aimed at. A physician should be able to judge of this. Herein lies the test of his skill. The correct remedies have a tendency to produce the results sought, but a million non-indicated substances will have no power to bring relief and eradicate cause.

"One such authority, from whom we-have quoted, made the claim that all medicines are poisonous. Now real medicines are not poisonous at all. One might just as well, and with equal truth, say that all foods are poisonous. The very nature of poison is to destroy living matter. True medicine is a substance which tends to supply necessary material to the bodily substances and to increase the life principle in man.

"Poisonous substances irritate and provoke the vital centers to increased activity, and frequently, in spite of being poisonous, if the person to whom given possesses a goodly degree of vitality, a cure will result. In such cases the drug, or drugs, act upon the inert system as does the driver's whip on the fagging horse. But poisons never add any permanent energy to the vital centers in man, and in cases where the force in these centers is very low, their effect is to exhaust it entirely and thus cause the death of the sufferer.

"Real medicine, whether in the form of an herb or a food, is a substance that will increase the energy in the vital centers without working any injury. Taking this view of the matter, a view which is the opinion of the foremost investigators at the present time and is substantiated by every experiment made by dietitians, it will be readily seen why the old school of medicine has been so frequently unsuccessful and has had to change from one theory to another, changing from poisons to toxins and serums of animal origin, and why they have been disappointed in the results obtained."

It will also be recognized by every thinking man, that if we are to gain our object, we must take the right course, employing the means and measures necessary to success. There are hundreds of non-poisonous remedies now in use which are being more and more substituted for the poisonous drugs formerly prescribed and to the great benefit of all concerned.

This is part of the online book, the Thomsonian System of Herbal Medicine. It is an historical text. For the index, please see this page: History Of Herbal Medicine