Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. "Ames and the President don"t seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr.
Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?"
"I gave it to him," was the simple reply.
The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. "You!" he exclaimed. "Well--of course you naturally would be opposed to it.
But--"
"Tell me," she interrupted, "tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or--is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one"s att.i.tude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money--and I think you are--then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat."
"Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?" He laughed lightly at the thought.
"N--well--" She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. "Well," she finally continued, "let"s see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn"t it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine."
"But we have had to learn," protested the doctor.
"Do you realize, Doctor," she resumed, "that the teaching and preaching of disease for money is one of the greatest curses resting upon the world to-day? I never saw a doctor until I was on the boat coming to New York. And then I thought he was one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the pa.s.sengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and helpless human mind."
"Do you deny that great progress has been made in the curative arts?"
he demanded. "See what we have done with diphtheria, with typhoid, with smallpox, and malaria!"
"Surely, Doctor, you can not believe that the mere temporary removing of a disease is _real_ healing! You render one lot of microbes innocuous, after thousands of years of experimentation, and leave mankind subject to the rest. Then you render another set harmless. Do you expect to go on that way, making set after set of microbes harmless to the human body, and thus in time, after millions of years, eradicate disease entirely? Do you think that people will then cease to die? All the time you are working only in matter and through material modes. Do you expect thereby to render the human sense of life immortal? I think a sad disappointment awaits you. Your patients get well, only to fall sick again. And death to you is still as inevitable as ever, despite your boasted successes, is it not so?"
He broke into a bantering laugh, but did not reply.
"Doctor, the human mind is self-inoculated. It suffers from auto-infection. It makes its own disease microbes. It will keep on making them, until it is educated out of itself, and taught to do better. Then it will give place to the real reflection of divine mind; and human beings will be no more. Why don"t you realize this, you doctors, and get started on the right track? Your real work is in the _mental_ realm. There you will find both cause and cure."
"Well, I for one have little respect for faith cure--"
"Nor I," she interposed. "Dependence upon material drugs, Doctor, is reliance upon the _phenomena_ of the human mind. Faith cure is dependence upon the human mind itself, upon the _noumenon_, instead of the _phenomenon_. Do you see the difference? Hypnotism is mental suggestion, the suggestions being human and material, not divine truth. The drugging system is an outgrowth of the belief of life in matter. Faith cure is the belief of life and power inherent in the human mind. One is no higher than the other. The origin of healing is shrouded in mythology, and every step of its so-called progress has been marked by superst.i.tion, dense ignorance, and fear. The first doctor that history records was the Shaman, or medicine-man, whose remedies reflected his mental status, and later found apt ill.u.s.tration in the brew concocted by Macbeth"s witches. And think you he has disappeared? Unbelievable as it may seem, it was only a short time ago that a case was reported from New York where the skin of a freshly killed black cat was applied as a remedy for an ailment that had refused to yield to the prescribed drugging! And only a few years ago some one applied to the Liverpool museum for permission to touch a sick child"s head with one of the prehistoric stone axes there exhibited."
"That was mere superst.i.tion," retorted the doctor.
"True," said Carmen. "But _materia medica_ is superst.i.tion incarnate.
And because of the superst.i.tion that life and virtue and power are resident in matter, mankind have swallowed nearly everything known to material sense, in the hope that it would cure them of their own auto-infection. You remember what awful recipes Luther gave for disease, and his exclamation of grat.i.tude: "How great is the mercy of G.o.d who has put such healing virtue in all manner of muck!""
"Miss Carmen," resumed the doctor, "we physicians are workers, not theorists. We handle conditions as we find them, not as they ought to be."
"Oh, no, you don"t!" laughed the girl. "You handle conditions as the human, mortal mind believes them to be, that"s all. You accept its ugly pictures as real, and then you try desperately through legislation to make us all accept them. Yet you would bitterly resent it if some religious body should try to legislate its beliefs upon you.
"Now listen, you doctors are rank materialists. Perhaps it is because, as Hawthorne puts it, in your researches into the human frame your higher and more subtle faculties are materialized, and you lose the spiritual view of existence. Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superst.i.tion have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual."
"The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen."
"They are beginning to get away from it, little by little," she replied. "In recent years it has begun to dawn upon doctors and patients alike that the sick who recover do so, not because of the drugs which they have taken, but _in spite of them_! One of the most prominent of our contemporary physicians who are getting away from the use of drugs has said that eighty-five per cent of all illnesses get well of their own accord, no matter what may or may not be done for them. In a very remarkable article from this same doctor"s pen, in which he speaks of the huge undertaking which physicians must a.s.sume in order to clear away the _materia medica_ rubbish of the ages, he states that the greatest struggle which the coming doctor has on his hands is with drugs, and the deadly grip which they have on the confidence and affections both of the profession and of the public.
Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, "Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours," and, second, "No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease." In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, "He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs."
"The hundreds of drugs listed in books on _materia medica_ I find are gradually being reduced in number to a possible forty or fifty, and one doctor makes the radical statement that they can be cut down to the "six or seven real drugs." Still further light has been thrown upon the debasing nature of the drugging system by a member of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange, in a recent hearing before the House Committee on munic.i.p.al affairs right here. He is reported as saying that it makes little difference what a manufacturer puts into a patent medicine, for, after all, the effect of the medicine depends upon the faith of the user. The sick man who turns to patent medicines for relief becomes the victim of "bottled faith." If his faith is sufficiently great, a cure may be effected--and the treatment has been _wholly mental_! The question of ethics does not concern either the patent medicine manufacturer or the druggist, for they argue that if the sick man"s faith has been aroused to the point of producing a cure, the formula of the medicine itself is of no consequence, and, therefore, if a solution of sugar and water sold as a cure for colds can stimulate the sufferer"s faith to the point of meeting his need, the business is quite legitimate. "A bunch of bottles and sentiment,"
adds this member of the Drug Exchange, "are the real essentials for working healing miracles.""
"Say!" exclaimed the doctor, again sitting back and regarding her with amazement. "You have a marvelous memory for data!"
"But, Doctor, I am intensely interested in my fellow-men. I want to help them, and show them how to learn to live."
"So am I," he returned. "And I am doing all I can, the very best I know how to do."
"I guess you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren"t you?" she said archly. "You haven"t really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little of the h.o.a.ry prejudice of the ages, and will carefully investigate our present medical systems, you will find a large number of schools of medicine, bitterly antagonistic to one another, and each accusing the other of inferiority as an exact science, and as grossly ignorant and reprehensibly careless of life. But which of these warring schools can show the greatest number of cures is a bit of data that has never been ascertained. A recent writer says: "As important as we all realize health to be, the public is receiving treatment that is anything but scientific, and the amount of unnecessary suffering that is going on in the world is certainly enough to make a rock shed tears." He further says that, "at least seventy-five per cent of the people we meet who are apparently well, are suffering from some chronic ailment that regular medical systems can not cure," and that many of these would try further experimentation were it not for the criticism that is going on in the medical world regarding various curative systems.
The only hope under the drugging system is that the patient"s life and purse may hold out under the strain of trying everything until he can light upon the right thing before he reaches the end of the list."
"And do you include surgery in your general criticism?" he asked.
"Surgery is no less an outgrowth of the belief of sentient matter than is the drugging system," she replied. "It is admittedly necessary in the present stage of the world"s thought; but it is likewise admitted to be "the very uncertain art of performing operations," at least ninety per cent of which are wholly unnecessary.
"You see," she went on, "the effect upon the _moral_ nature of the sick man is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out demons, why not employ him? For, after all, the end to be attained is the ejection of the demon. And if G.o.d had not intended minerals and plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them?
Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves.
Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the l.u.s.t of material acc.u.mulation."
"Well!" he exclaimed. "You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!"
"And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!"
she returned. "Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn"t it criminal? As for diphtheria ant.i.toxin, it is in the same cla.s.s as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter, and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to the human mind"s changing thought regarding it, always."
"Well then," said the doctor, "if people are spiritual, and if they really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying about a body with us all the time--a body from which we are utterly unable to get away?"
"It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation, but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not hold a single thought without that thought tending to become externalized--as Professor James tells us--and the externalization generally has to do with the body, for the mind has come to center all its hopes of happiness and pleasure in the body, and to base its sense of life upon it. The body, being a mental concept formed of false thought, pa.s.ses away, from sheer lack of a definite principle upon which to rest. Therefore the sense of life embodied in it pa.s.ses away with it. You know, the ancients had some idea of the cause of disease when they attributed it to demons, for demons at least are mental influences. But then, after that, men began to believe that disease was sent by G.o.d, either to punish them for their evil deeds, or to discipline and train them for paradise. Funny, isn"t it? Think of regarding pain and suffering as divine agents! I don"t wonder people die, do you? Humboldt, you know, said: "The time will come when it will be considered a disgrace for a man to be sick, when the world will look upon it as a misdemeanor, the result of some vicious thinking." Many people seem to think that thought affects only the brain; but the fact is that _we think all over_!"
"But look here," put in the doctor. "Here"s a question I intended to ask Hitt the other night. He said the five physical senses did not testify truly. Well now, if, as you say, the eyes do not testify to disease, then they can"t testify to cures either, eh?" He sat back with an air of triumph.
"Quite correct," replied Carmen. "The physical senses testify only to belief. In the case of sickness, they testify to false belief. In the case of a cure, they testify to a changed belief, to a belief of recovered health, that is all. It is all on the basis of human belief, you see."
"Eh? But--nerves feel--"
"Nerves, Doctor, like all matter, are externalizations of human thought. Can the externalization of thought talk back to thought? No.
You are still on the basis of mere human belief."
At that moment the doctor leaned over and tapped upon the window to attract the attention of some one in the street. Carmen looked out and caught sight of a tall, angular man dressed in clerical garb. The man bowed pleasantly to the doctor, and cast an inquiring glance at the girl, then pa.s.sed on.
"A priest?" inquired Carmen.
"Yes, Tetham," said the doctor.
"Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for his Church? I"ve heard about him. He--well, it is his business to see that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn"t it?
He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The Express--"
"Eh? The Express has heard from him?" inquired the doctor.
"Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress.
We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so we heard from Father Tetham. He is supporting the National Bureau of Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He--"
"Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news?