And here I stand with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before"

Like Faust, such sufferers study day and night the opinions of learned
doctors and follow their prescriptions with ardent zeal. The more they
study, the more doctors they consult, the more rapidly does strength
fail them, until at length they realize that, in spite of all their
lore, they are but "poor fools, no wiser than before."

For more than two thousand years it has been, in fact, as it is to a
great extent today; the physician prescribes to the best of his
knowledge, medicines compounded according to certain rules dogmatically
laid down in the schools.

Here we have at once the fatal mistake at a glance.

Instead of studying nature and the laws of nature, instead of using
natural means to _heal disease_, they administer deadly poisons to
_allay suffering_, poisons, which doubtless may be able to repress pain
or to temporarily suppress the symptoms of disease; but can _never
remove the cause_, which alone may rightly be called healing.

The drugs prescribed by thousands of physicians today, with but a casual
acquaintance with their action, are bound by their nature to produce
evils worse than the disease itself.

To cite an instance:

Physicians prescribe creosote in cases of consumption to stop the
expectoration of blood.