A few weeks ago I met a very intelligent Indian chief. I had met him once before in Oshkosh, Wis., and remembering our meeting, the "old brave" became quite communicative. We talked of everything, from land tenure to transmigration of souls; but it is of the "medicine man" that I wish here to write.
"After all," said the chief, the pow-wow, as you call it, is the most effective remedy we have. Indian doctors rarely give medicine, and in olden times did not give any at all. We sometimes send for a white man physician; but the Indian generally gets worse under the drug treatment of the white man. When an Indian gets very sick and his friends get frightened, a powwow is held, and in most cases he gets well very soon. We are a much more healthy race than you are; and if the virtue of a thing is to be tested by its results, I think our medicine man with his pow-wow will out rank your doctor with his drug-store." I asked him what was the central idea of the pow-wow; what was done; how and why it cured. In reply, he said he could not explain it to me, because I did not understand the power of spirits.
"The pow-wow is essentially religious," he said, "and through his friendship with the Great Spirit the medicine man brings the power of the Great Spirit to crush the spirits of pain and disease that have gotten hold of the mind of the sufferer."
Sir John Lubbock, in his "Origin of Civilization," page 17, says: "The use of writing as a medicine prevails largely in Africa, where the priests or wizards write a prayer on a piece of board, wash it off, and make the patient drink it. Caillie met with a man who had a great reputation for sanctity, and who made his living by writing prayers on a board, washing them off, and then selling the water, which was sprinkled over various objects and supposed to improve or protect them."
A most intelligent physician said to me recently, "The best physicians give less and less medicine each year. The secret of success lies in securing the confidence of the public. In seven cases out of ten, I give pills made of graham flour and sugar coated, or a liquid colored with some harmless bad tasting stuff. I endeavor to inspire confidence, and then make my patient feel better by telling him he is better, and that by to-morrow he may sit up a little while. The physician who should depend upon drugs, and still keep telling his patient he was getting worse, would kill him after awhile."
All physicians admit that fear and mental dread of disease superinduces it. I venture to say that the universal opinion of doctors, as voiced by every newspaper of the country, that cholera is inevitable next year, will do more to make cholera epidemic than will the condition of the streets or the aroma of the Chicago river. With the present advertising of scareocratic views as to the absolute certainty of cholera, and with the present condition of the public mind upon that subject, consequent upon the daily publication of the opinions of alarmists, if cholera strikes our shores it will produce precisely the effect prophesied; for the prophecy oft repeated produces the mental condition in which it becomes true. I was in New York City when cholera made its appearance last fall. The papers and doctors, after cholera actually appeared, begged the people not to be frightened, as "in every cholera epidemic, for every one that dies of cholera, three die of fright." "To be afraid of it is to invite it. If you fear it, it will kill you sure," etc., etc.
This being the view of physicians and metaphysicians alike, I look upon it is as criminal to prophesy an epidemic and frighten the people in advance. —The Parthenon, Chicago.
