his patient is a common cause of inert advice, and nowhere more
distinctly so than when unwise physicians attempt to practise in their
own households on those they love.

There are very few instances of chronic ailments, however slight, which
should not be met by advice as to modes of living, in the full breadth
of this term; and only by a competent union of such, with reasonable use
of drugs, can all be done most speedily that should be done. I have said
"with use of drugs," for I am far from wishing to make any one believe
that medicines are valueless. Nor do I think that the most extreme
dosing employed nowadays by any one is as really hurtful as the neglect
to urge efficiently the value of definite hygienic means. There are,
indeed, diseases which can only be helped by heroic measures; but, in
this case, were I the patient, I should like to be pretty certain as to
the qualifications of my hero.

The popular view of the great hurtfulness of drugs is curiously
fallacious. I have spoken above more of their relative usefulness, as
compared to other means of relief, than with any desire to convince my
readers that they are such terrible things as some kinds of
practitioners would have us to believe. The dread of their employment is
a relic of the time of reaction against the senseless and excessive
dosing with calomel and strong purges, and nowadays, even as regards
bleeding, once wholly abandoned, it is clear that it still has at times
its uses, and valuable ones, too. As medicines are now employed, even by
the thoughtless, it must be rarely that they give rise to permanent
injury. Let any physician who reads these lines pause and reflect how
many times in his life he has seen lasting or serious evil results from
drugs.