Regular physicians

Regular physicians of the first half of the nineteenth century maintained
allegiance to their traditional drugs for other reasons as well. Doing something
active in place of waiting for nature instilled confidence in patients that the
doctor had power, and confidence stimulated recovery. Indeed, if the doctor
did not take action, more often than not the patient or his family demanded
it. “How often,” one physician complained, was he “forced by patients and
their friends to give medicine when it is not plainly indicated. . . . He must
cure quickly, or give place to a rival.” Finally, calomel, bleeding, and other
heroic treatments were the very things that gave the profession its distinctiveness
vis a` vis unconventional healers. As these enemies became ever more
strident in their attacks on traditional medicine, it was only natural for MDs
to close ranks and cling more tightly to that tradition as a badge of professional
identity, making depletive therapy the core of their self-image as medical
orthodoxy. In brief, a fair amount of lip service was paid to nature by physicians
of the mid-1800s, but when it came down to practice instead of philosophy,
they sided with art.