al
therapeutics is based on common sense study of the disease--finding out
what is the cause and endeavoring to abate that cause. The cause may be
such that surgery is indicated, or serum, or regulation of diet, or change
of scene. It may obviously indicate the administration of a drug. I once
heard a clever lawyer in a poisoning case, in an endeavor to discredit a
physician, whom we shall call Dr. Jones, tell the following anecdote: (Dr.
Jones, who had been called in when the victim was about to expire, had
recommended the application of ice). Said the lawyer:

"A workman was tamping a charge of blasting-powder with a crowbar, when
the charge went off prematurely and the bar was driven through the
unfortunate man's body, so that part of it protruded on either side: A
local physician was summoned, and after some study he pronounced as
follows: 'Now, if I let that bar stay there, you'll die. If I pull it out,
you'll die. But I'll give you a pill that may melt it where it is!' In
this emergency," the lawyer went on to say, "Dr. Jones doubtless would
have prescribed _ice_."

Now the pill to melt the crowbar may stand for our former excessive and
absurd regard for drugs. The application of ice in the same emergency may
likewise represent a universal resort to hydrotherapy. Neither of them is
logical. There is place for each, but there are emergencies that can not
be met with either. Still, to abandon one method of treatment simply
because additional methods have proved to be valuable, would be as absurd
as to give up talking upon the invention of writing or to prohibit the
raising of corn on land that will produce wheat.

No: we shall doubtless continue to use drugs and we shall continue to need
the druggist. What can he do to make his business more valued and
respected, more useful to the public and more profitable to himself? For
there can be no doubt that he will finally succeed in attaining all these
desirable results together, or fail in all. Here and there we may find a
man who is making a fortune out of public credulity and ignorance, or, on
the other hand, one who is giving the public more service than it pays for
and ruining himself in the process; but in general and on the average
personal and public interest run pretty well hand in hand. Henry Ford
makes his millions because he is producing something that the people want.
St. Jacob's Oil, once the most widely advertised nostrum on the continent,
cost its promot