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General Considerations 8 ... _ V. Modus Operand! of 1reatment 34 11. Principles of Treatment 12 111. Accumulation of Vital Power 20 VI. The Facts and the Testimony i INTRODUCTION. It has been said, “ Where the doctors disagree, the disciples are at liberty.” According to this maxim, the disciples in the medical schools have no reason to complain of any want of liberty in regard to questions of medical science and practice. The differences between the various schools of medicine are so wide, and the points involved are so fundamental, that one may only too sadly complain of a very license of opinion which the above maxim allows. It were, indeed, a most desirable thing to be shut up by immovable barriers of demonstration to narrower limits of speculation and experiment. It were a thing most devoutly to be wished that medical science had attained, in the process of all its painstaking and commendable elaborations, some results so clear and indisputable as to compel all who honestly and candidly seek the truth to accept certain fundamental principles, or, rejecting them, to be self-convicted of folly or knavery. But with the profoundest respect for the medicalprofession, and a disposition to honor and applaud every physician who honestly exercises the duties of his high calling, still one cannot look with admiration upon the science of medicine, either as it is inculcated in the works of eminent Copyright, 1881, by Robert Walter, M.D. 6 THE NUTRITIVE CURE : authors, or as it is illustrated in the prevailing practice. For what is more conflicting than the conclusions of eminent medical writers as to the nature and causes of disease and the remedies proposed for their cure ? And this is true not only of those of different schools, but those of the same school. It is the reproach and derision of medical authorities that they can be quoted on all sides of every great practical issue of their art. They alternately commend and condemn the most widely known and com- monly used remedies, in regard to the same diseases, and under the same circumstances, and there is not a poison or nostrum, or process or com- pound which cannot exhibit the approving signature of some illustrious teacher or practitioner, as a valuable curative of disease, if not of all diseases. It does not require that one shall be very old to remember that former methods and means employed by the doctors in the cure of disease are now wholly discarded and utterly repudiated by those of the same school, as unprofessional if not wholly absurd and barbarous. Instances of this need not be given, as there are many survivors of the former practice ; and this maybe stated as either a compliment to the profession or in praise of the wonderful vitality of the patients of a former day, who bear in their bodies, in the shape of scars and gashes from lancet, cuppings, leeches, etc., the marks and evidences of certain “ heroic” practices once the chief reliance of the doctors. Some can still remember what deserts of burning thirst they travelled through, with “ water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” because the doctor said it would be certain death to let the famishing patient have even a sip of the life-giving beverage. What doctor would jeopard his reputation to-day by readopting the practice very common a score or more years ago ? If these great revolutions of the past and these contradictions of the present are taken together, they constitute a ground of grave suspicion on the part of unprejudiced and non-partisan readers and observers that the whole subject of medicine is enveloped in mystery and uncertainty, and that it is the part of wisdom to have as little to do as possible with the powerful and doubtful remedies of the profession.