Editorial February 20, 1904 Issue

The Fostering of Fear

Mortal mind loses no opportunity to discover itself, and one of its latest exhibits has been honored in the press reports by the announcement of "An Exposition of the Characteristics of Consumption." This was held in one of our large cities and it is said that the gathering of experts gave all "the latest theories respecting the white death a competent presentation and discussion."

It is an interesting coincidence that just at the time that "up-to-date knowledge of this disease" was being acquired by these well-meaning specialists, an experienced physician, who is ranked "high in his profession," should be declaring in a neighboring city, that the drug system can be of no assistance in the fight against what is very frequently but the initial phase of the dread disease referred to. It having become apparent that the drug treatment of this and many other maladies is wholly ineffective, the materialist is impelled to look further for cause in order to make further experiment toward its removal. In so doing, however, he meets with so many possible and conjectured occasions of ailment that to put them in battle array and then ask poor humanity to guard against them each and all, is to beset life's every path with terrors and make it a constant scare, a ceaseless struggle to avoid the ills of which our fathers, as all concede, were happily ignorant.

This perennial prospecting for the sources of disease is called "Advanced Medical Science," and it is in good form to doff your hat in its presence, but the humorous instinct is rather irreverent, and not infrequently one has occasion to smile generously when some "knight of the quill" ventures to intimate that all scientific statements being duly considered, the outlook is becoming altogether too boogerish to be comfortable, and propounds a query like the following, which we quote from an exchange.

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