Not Occasioned by Compromise

It is gratifying to be able to state that the improved friendly relationship between the exponents of health reform and of the medical profession was not occasioned by any compromise on the part of the friends of reform. During the course of the preceding decades the success attending the work of the hygienists had had its influence in leading many of the more intelligent physicians greatly to lessen their confidence in the use of drugs. Typical of this changed attitude is the following statement made by Dr. Ira Remsen, professor of chemistry in Johns Hopkins University, in an address delivered before the medical and chirurgical faculty of Maryland:SHM 217.2

“The tendency of the present generation of physicians is, I think, to rely less and less upon the action of drugs and chemicals, and to pay more and more attention to the circumstances surrounding the patient, so the discovery of purely remedial agents is becoming day by day of less importance, and the accurate study of those substances which we all necessarily make use of—air, water, food in its various forms—is becoming the great problem in medicine.”—Quoted in Good Health, July, 1879.SHM 217.3

The sharp cleavage for a time between the health reform physician and the general practitioner had naturally led to mutual recriminations. The former was tempted to point with pride and perhaps with offensive egotism to the rationality of the methods he was using in contrast with the general practice of drugging; but the latter had some reason to regard the reformer, with perhaps only a few months of training in a medical school, as ignorant, fanatical, or quackish.SHM 217.4

The medical staff of the sanitarium, being now made up of physicians who had been instructed during their medical course by highly trained scientific and experienced specialists in the various fields of medicine, were in a position to recognize the great value of the research and discoveries made in the laboratories by trained technicians, and to command the respect of the medical profession.SHM 218.1