Preface.

The eclectic remedies mentioned in this book, especially the tinctures, are Lloyd's Specific Medicines. Many years' experience has proved them to be thoroughly reliable and convenient for dispensing. Prof. John Uri Lloyd, with his definite remedies, has done more to make converts for the Eclectic School of Medicine than any man in it.

Outside of the eclectic physicians who use specific medicines, there are twenty thousand physicians of the regular school that depend upon these remedies to heal the sick.

I have bought my homeopathic remedies for forty years of Boericke & Tafel, of Philadelphia, and know them to be perfectly reliable. Most of the tinctures and triturates are now put up in tablet form, a tablet representing a grain of the drug. This makes the remedies very convenient for dispensing and acceptable to the patient.

In testing remedies I do it in my own way and form my own opinion of what a remedy will accomplish, and when and how it should be given. As an example of how I test remedies, I used one hundred pint bottles of tincture echinacea on different cases of cancer before I became satisfied in my mind that echinacea will not check the growth of cancer. In all my writings I have been very careful about the statements that I made concerning a remedy, unless it had been tested by myself, not upon rats, mice, and rabbits, but at the bedside of the sick.

To understand the real remedial action of drugs we must know what their action is upon the human body in health. I have tested aconite, belladonna, nux vomica, gelsemium, and other remedies upon my own person and noted their effect in health. Then and not till then did I fully understand what the indications would be in diseased conditions. With all due respect for those who have gone before me, I do not take any person's "say so" about a remedy. I must test it myself and then I know by my own experience what the remedy will really accomplish. In this way I have built up a materia medica of tried remedies, and when I tell a brother physician that a remedy will do a certain thing he has learned to depend upon what I say. This is the age of medical nihilism, and the regular school is trying to belittle the study of therapeutics. There never was a period in the history of medicine when the study of definite medication was needed so much as at the present time. It is a crisis in our profession, with the drugless healers crowding hard upon the heels of the physician. It is self-evident that as physicians we have got to do more for the sick the next ten years than ever before or see the drugless healers grow and fatten on our failures.

It is a well-known fact that the average mortality in this country from disease, without medical interference, does not exceed seven per cent. It follows from this that if the medical doctors are to be of any use to the public, the average mortality under their treatment must not go above seven per cent. The average mortality from all diseases, under the eclectic treatment, will not be over one per cent. In every epidemic that has swept over this country from the cholera in 1832 down to the present time, including those of pneumonia, typhoid fever, typhus fever, diphtheria, cerebrospinal fever, scarlet fever, measles, etc., the eclectic physicians have been on the firing line; they have met the disease and conquered it. The people have learned to depend upon the physicians of that school when death hovers over their dwelling.

In eclectic colleges students are taught to believe in their remedies. They are taught the definite action of remedies. They are taught that nearly every disease can be cured and how to cure them. A student goes out from his eclectic alma mater with a fixed belief in his remedies, which he carries with him into the sickroom.

The eclectic school of medicine was the pioneer in this country in the treatment of chronic diseases and their success is too well known for present comment. I want the best there is in medicine for my patients, therefore I choose the best wherever I can find it. I will not give a remedy or do anything which will weaken the vital force. I give remedies in doses just sufficient to obtain their remedial action and nothing else. I am ready to "prove all things, to hold fast to that which is good." I am ready to "seize on truth wherever found, on Christian or on heathen ground." Therefore I am an eclectic; as the little girl said about the candy, "It suits me and I like it." I am an eclectic because I could not conscientiously be anything else. The eclectic physicians have never asked for any medical laws to protect them. They are not afraid of competition with their brother physicians. Medical laws are a creature of the regular school. Any law making it a crime to heal the sick is a disgrace to any state or country. The people have never asked for any medical law to protect them. It is the doctors of the regular school who want protection. They have had laws made taking away the divine right of the people to choose their own doctor when they are sick. As a result of these disgraceful medical laws the people are learning how to cure themselves without any medicine when they are sick. Today there are 17,600,000 people in our country that depend upon some form of drugless healing when they are sick and this number is rapidly increasing.

What can be done to stem the tide of drugless healing in this country? Simply this, we profess to be able to heal the sick and we have got to prove to the public that we are able to do it, or "throw up the sponge." If the eclectic physicians want to retain the confidence of the public they must fight shy of all these "unholy fads" that come from the regular school, serums, coal tar products, deadly narcotics, that kill more than they cure, anti-toxines that kill and cripple so many young children, useless surgery—unsexing and degrading so many of our women, vaccination that does not protect and that is a blot upon our civilization and a disgrace to our profession, surgical operation for appendicitis, the greatest fraud of the century. Show to the public that you have no lot or part in such matters. Then and not till then can you expect to hold the confidence of the public.

"Oh, medicine, what crimes are committed, what maladies are engendered in thy name."

Burlington, New Jersey, December, 1910.

Definite Medication, 1911, was written by Eli G. Jones, M.D.