CHAPTER X
THE MEDICAL SECTS
In the reconstruction just sketched, no allusion has been made to medical sectarianism. We have considered the making of doctors and the increase of knowledge; allopathy, homeopathy, osteopathy, have cut no figure in the discussion. Is it essential that we should now conclude a treaty of peace, by which the reduced number of medical schools shall be so pro-rated as to recognize dissenters on an equitable basis?
The proposition raises at once the question as to whether in this era of scientific medicine, sectarian medicine is logically defensible; as to whether, while it exists, separate standards, fixed by the conditions under which it can survive, are justifiable. Prior to the placing of medicine on a scientific basis, sectarianism was, of course, inevitable. Every one started with some sort of preconceived notion; and from a logical point of view, one preconception is as good as another. Allopathy was just as sectarian as homeopathy. Indeed, homeopathy was the inevitable retort to allopathy. If one man "believes" in dissimilars, contrary suggestion is certain to provide another who will stake his life on similars; the champion of big doses will be confronted by the champion of little ones. But now that allopathy has surrendered to modern medicine, is not homeopathy borne on the same current into the same harbor?
The modern point of view may be restated as follows: medicine is a discipline, in which the effort is made to use knowledge procured in various ways in order to effect certain practical ends. With abstract general propositions it has nothing to do. It harbors no preconceptions as to diseases or their cure. Instead of starting with a finished and supposedly adequate dogma or principle, it has progressively become less cocksure and more modest. It distrusts general propositions, a priori explanations, grandiose and comforting generalizations. It needs theories only as convenient summaries in which a number of ascertained facts may be used tentatively to define a course of action. It makes no effort to use its discoveries to substantiate a principle formulated before the facts were even suspected. For it has learned from the previous history of human thought that men possessed of vague preconceived ideas are strongly disposed to force facts to fit, defend, or explain them. And this tendency both interferes with the free search for truth and limits the good which can be extracted from such truth as is in its despite attained.
Modern medicine has therefore as little sympathy for allopathy as for homeopathy. It simply denies outright the relevancy or value of either doctrine. It wants not dogma, but facts. It countenances no presupposition that is not common to it with all the natural sciences, with all logical thinking.
The sectarian, on the other hand, begins with his mind made up. He possesses in advance a general formula, which the particular instance is going to illustrate, verify,
