CHAPTER 2 MOVEMENTS TOWARD THERAPEUTIC REFORM

AN ATTEMPT to picture conditions in the practice of medicine and in the health habits of the public would be incomplete were we to dwell only upon the “heroic” treatment and drugging by the physicians in the first part of the nineteenth century, or on the general ignorance regarding the laws of life on the part of the people who lived then. There were trends and movements in the direction of progress. Both in European countries and in the United States men were experimenting and were finding out better ways of living and of treating the sick. Prominent physicians were becoming enlightened and were sounding warnings against the common practice of administering powerful and toxic medicines. Other and more rational methods of treating the sick were meeting with gratifying success, and voices of reform were being heard with increasing attention.SHM 28.1