Doctrine the second is, that every new theory accepted by any number of persons has some important truth at the bottom of it.
The first of these doctrines has its real meaning. It is true that there may be a common feeling of justice in the minds of ignorant people which shall override the decisions of a learned Chief Justice. It is true that a man may brutalize himself by a contemplation of theological cruelties, until decent parents are ashamed to have their children listen to his libels on the Father of All. It is true that a physician may become such a drug-peddling routinist, that sensible mothers see through him, and know enough to throw his trash out of the window as soon as he turns his back.
The second doctrine has its real meaning. Until men turn into beasts, they must have some arguments addressed to their reason before they will believe, and still more before they will act. Spiritualism has its significance, as an appeal from the gross materialism and heathen ideas of another life so commonly entertained. Mormonism has its logic, as an appeal from the enforced celibacy of one sex, and to the Oriental Abrahamic instincts of the other. Homœopathy has its fraction of sanity, as a protest against that odious tendency of physicians to give nauseous stuff to people because they are ailing, which sickened the pages of old pharmacopœias with powders of earthworms and album Græcum, and even now makes illness terrible where it reigns unrebuked.
Swallow these two paragraphs of concession as the infusion drawn from those two doctrines laid down at starting, and throw away the effete axioms as fit only for old women to coddle and drench themselves withal. Having done this, the reader is ready for the book the title of which we have prefixed.
Dr. Bigelow's name is a guaranty that it shall contain many thoughts in not over-many words. It is a pledge that we shall be emancipated from all narrow technicalities and officinal idols, while following his guidance. As a man of rare sagacity and wide range of knowledge, a man of science before he became a leading practitioner in the highest range of his profession, a philosopher whom his fellows have thought worthy to preside over their deliberations, a physician whom his brethren have honored with their highest office, though no man among them ever assailed the pleasing and profitable delusions of his craft so sharply,—he may well be listened to, even though he has given his life to the subject on which he writes.
As this little book is neither (to speak in pharmaceutic phrase) the water, nor the spirit, but the very essential oil, of the author's thoughts on the matters of which he treats, it is only by a destructive analysis we can resolve it into its elements. We shall only touch upon its contents, and recommend the book itself to all who have ever known sickness, or expect ever to know it, or to have a friend liable to it.
"The Paradise of Doctors" is a pleasant bait to those wary readers who will bite at the bare hook of quackery, but must be tempted before they will venture into a book of medicine which has not lying as its staple material.
Then comes a consideration of the five methods of treating disease now most prevalent in civilized countries; namely, 1. The Artificial. 2. The Expectant. 3. The Homœopathic. 4. The Exclusive. 5. The Rational.
Perfect candor, perfect clearness, the good-nature of a successful man above all petty jealousies, the style of a scholar who has hardly an equal among us in his profession and few equals out of it, the honesty which belongs to science, and the acuteness which is conferred by practice mark this brief essay. It follows in the same course of thought as the admirable "Discourse on Self-limited Diseases," the delivery of which many years ago marked the commencement of a new epoch in the movement of the medical mind among us. An hour's reading given to this new lesson of wisdom will turn many a self-willed, proud-hearted medical skeptic into a humble and consistent patient of the regular profession.
Thoughts on Matter and Force: or Marvels that encompass us: comprising Suggestions illustrative of the Theory of the Universe. By Thomas Ewbank. New York: D. Appleton & Co. London: Trübner & Co. 1858.
The human longing for the Infinite is as strong now as it was when the first ology,
