For the benefit of the reader let me quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famous Philadelphia teacher of medical practice: —
It is impossible to calculate the mischief which Hippocrates has done by first marking Nature with his name, and afterward letting her loose upon sick people.
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, professor in Harvard University, declares himself “sick of learned quackery.”
Dr. James Johnson, “surgeon-extraordinary to the King,” says: —
I declare my conscientious opinion, founded on long observation and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality.
Dr. Mason Good, a learned professor in London, said: —
The effects of medicine on the human system are in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that it has already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined.
We are indebted to the faithful sketches and apt remonstrance of R. K. Noyes, M. D., in his History of Medicine, for this plain speaking: —
A drug or substance can never be called a healer of disease. There is no reason, justice, or necessity in the use of drugs in diseases. I believe that this profession, this art, this misnamed knowledge of medicine, is none other than a practice of fundamentally fallacious principles, impotent for good, morally wrong, and bodily hurtful.
