Alternative Medicine's Critique Of Allopathic Medicine.

Despite the differences between Hahnemann's and Thomson's drug, or between Palmer's and Still's theories, the philosophy of healing and its implicit critique of allopathy was (and remains) the same for all alternative systems. That philosophy was presented in a cartoon published in 1834, in the first issue of The Thomsonian Botanic Watchman, at the very beginning of the clash between orthodoxy and the new medical heretics.

This Thomsonian cartoonist shows a man mired in the slough of disease, despite—actually, because of—the ministrations of an allopathic doctor. The physician is attempting to bludgeon the disease into submission with a club labelled calomel. Calomel (mercurous chloride) was the most popular purgative in nineteenth century medical practice; in fact, with the possible exception of opium, it was the most frequently prescribed drug. As a mercurial, it could (and often did) produce severe side effects: ulceration of the mouth, loss of teeth, necrosis of the jawbone, and, most typically, a profuse, thick, fetid salivation. In the cartoon, the MD is assuring his patient that, “You must be reduced, Sir!,” intending that the disease will be reduced by calomel's cleansing of the intestinal tract. The patient, however, fears that he is being reduced to the grave: “The Doctor knows best,” he moans facetiously, “but send for the Parson.” In the middle of the picture, an objective observer attempts to get the doctor's attention, to show him there is a better way, the way of the Thomsonian healer to the right, who rescues the patient by pulling him up the steps of common sense

 By depicting the allopathic physician as seemingly “holding his patient down,” depicting calomel as a club, and having the patient call for the parson, the Thomsonian cartoonist is suggesting that allopathy attacks disease so brashly as to indiscriminately overwhelm the patient, too; its therapies are, in the language of a later day, invasive. However, Thomsonian remedies are indicated to be gentle and natural, and to support and enhance the body's own innate recuperative powers: “I will help you out,” the Thomsonian doctor tells the patient, “with the blessing of God.” He might as well say, “with the blessing of nature” because, in nineteenth century thought, God and nature were implicitly one. Thomsonians often stated the matter explicitly though, Thomson himself declaring that nature “ought to be aided in its cause, and treated as a friend; and not as an enemy, as is the practice of the physicians.” His approach had “always been ... to learn the course pointed out by nature,” then to administer “those things best calculated to aid her in restoring health”. He hardly stood alone.

Most alternative practitioners, in his day and the present, professed to consult and cooperate with the vis medicatrix naturae, the healing power of nature first described and praised by Hippocrates:“All healing power is inherent in the living system.” (Russell Trall, hydropath, 1864) “Naturopathy, with all its various methods of treatments, has always one end in view and one only: to increase the vital force.” (Benedict Lust, naturopath, 1903) Osteopathic manipulation removes obstacles to “the free flow of the blood ... and with the lifting of this embargo nature itself does the necessary work to restore the body to its normal state and even beyond it.... Osteopathy fights on the side of nature.” (M. A. Lane, osteopath, 1925)

In Figure, the diploma hanging from the physician's coat pocket is as prominent as his calomel club. Emblazoned with the MD, the diploma is emblematic to Thomsonians of the abstruse theoretical training the allopath has received and that dictates his practice. As the person in the middle of the figure observes, the allopathic physician is “scientific with a vengeance,” hellbent on doing what theory tells him ought to work, oblivious to the common sense that would show him he is poisoning his patient. But the error of his allopathic way is not just that he makes the sick even sicker with misguided therapies; his devotion to theory, the cartoonist suggests, prevents him from even attempting a fair evaluation of alternate remedies, remedies that cannot be rationalized by, or that seem to conflict with, his science.Hence, from the onset, homeopathic drugs were laughed at by allopaths because of what seemed the theoretical simple-mindedness of the “like cures like” principle and the impossibility of infinitesimals exerting any material action. Still's musculoskeletal manipulations were dismissed because of the perceived naivete of his “rule of the artery” theory; Palmer's chiropractic adjustments were dismissed because of the apparent silliness of the vertebral subluxation model; and acupuncture in the early 1970s was dismissed because of the alien concepts of qi and energy meridians.

The recent response of a university medical scientist to reports of clinical trials showing that patients who are prayed for recover better than those who do not receive prayers is a wonderfully direct summary of this historical attitude: “That's the kind of crap I wouldn't believe,” this scientist is reported to have said, “even if it were true.” (L. Dossey, unpublished). Complementary physicians contend that the scientific medical establishment has always had a negative attitude about complementary methods—most allopaths refuse to believe them even if they are true because they make no sense in terms of conventional science. Like the doctor in the cartoon, MDs as a group are seen by alternative practitioners to be scientific with a vengeance.