Article June 21, 1913 Issue

I was greatly interested and pleased by the article in your...

Allan F. McIntyre

National Food Magazine

I was greatly interested and pleased by the article in your November issue headed "Dietetics versus Drugs," by Professor Rutherford—interested in the statements and authorities given, pleased to see that your publication has independence enough to give your readers a word of truth regarding the allopathic or drug doctors. Notwithstanding their powerful (more or less) political association, or machine, I was reminded of your article today when I happened to come across an editorial in the Pawtucket, R. I., Chronicle, and I thought you might appreciate the irony of the last two lines particularly. It follows:—

"Speaking of disease, here is another deplorable confession from no less an authority than the Medical Record. In spite of the army of physicians, their discoveries, and their hecatombs of vivisected guinea-pigs, we may doubt, says the Medical Record, whether the sum total of diseases is any less than it was before the medical profession reached its present high standing. Preventive medicine has made 'little headway,' and 'in the opinion of some medical men diseases are on the increase.' In the deeper recesses of our consciousness we had suspected something of the kind ourselves, but such heterodoxy on the part of a layman would have exposed him to excommunication with bell, book, and candle, or at least with bacteria, serums, and antitoxins. But with the Medical Record behind us, we can afford to creep out into the open."

No doctor who has investigated the subject deeply enough to be capable of rendering an intelligent opinion, will claim that the practise of medicine is, or ever has been, a science, or an exact science. Science means "full, complete," "exact or systematic knowledge." Where are the drugs of fifty years ago,—or ten years ago, for that matter? Are they not constantly changing? Is not the experimenting or guessing going on continuously? Has it not always been so, ever since the days of Hippocrates? Has there in all these hundreds, or rather thousands, of years been found a positive drug specific for one single ailment? No, not one. Where, then, is the science, or exact knowledge of drugs? If it is not now an exploded theory that any drug or medicine can of itself cure, how many hundred years longer are we to be experimented upon before the public will cease to furnish the subjects? If drugs are such a good thing as the doctor claims, why is it, as he admits, that the use of them is lessening? If good, why should we not have more of them instead of less?

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