My attack on over-drugging brought out some hostile comments and treatment.  Thirty years ago I expressed myself with more vivacity than I should show if I were writing on the same subjects today.  Some of my more lively remarks called out very sharp animadversion.  Thus my illustration of prevention as often better than treatment in the mother’s words to her child which had got a poisonous berry in its mouth,—­“Spit it out!” gave mortal offence to a well-known New York practitioner and writer, who advised the Massachusetts Medical Society to spit out the offending speaker.  Worse than this was my statement of my belief that if a ship-load of miscellaneous drugs, with certain very important exceptions,—­drugs, many of which were then often given needlessly and in excess, as then used “could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.”  This was too bad.  The sentence was misquoted, quoted without its qualifying conditions, and frightened some of my worthy professional brethren as much as if I had told them to throw all physic to the dogs.  But for the epigrammatic sting the sentiment would have been unnoticed as a harmless overstatement at the very worst.

Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial change has taken place in the practice of medicine.  The habit of the English “general practitioner” of making his profit out of the pills and potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the dignity of the physician.  When a half-starving medical man felt that he must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him, he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that his drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable to him.  This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was doubtless the source in some measure of the errors I combated.

        Thecontagiousness of puerperal fever.

This Essay was read before a small Association called “The Society for Medical Improvement,” and published in a Medical Journal which lasted but a single year.  It naturally attracted less attention than it would have done if published in such a periodical as the “American Journal of Medical Sciences.”  Still it had its effect, as I have every reason to believe.  I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of “Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence,” and laying down rules for taking the necessary precautions against it.  The case has long been decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote two of the most celebrated professors of Obstetrics in this country opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and position.