Of the Resemblance of Children to Their Fathers

Let me begin with a confession of prejudice: I hate physicians. Not the men, who are often pleasant enough, but the profession, which promises what it cannot deliver and charges for what it has not done. My father lived to a great age without ever consulting one; I have inherited both his constitution and his distrust. The stone that afflicts me was his too — it came down with the blood, and I have always felt that it is more honestly mine than any remedy a doctor might offer, which would be borrowed from other people’s misfortunes and other men’s theories.

The trouble with medicine is not that it is ignorant — ignorance is forgivable in any field — but that it is ignorant and confident, which is the most dangerous combination in practice. A doctor who said “I do not know” would be worth a great deal. The doctors I have met say “I know” and mean only that they have decided. They experiment on our bodies with preparations whose effects are uncertain and whose principles are disputed among themselves. When a patient dies they say the disease was too advanced; when he recovers they say their treatment was effective. The outcome confirms the theory in either case, which is the structure not of science but of superstition.

Nature cures most diseases; doctors take the credit and sometimes spoil the cure.

What I trust is the body’s own tendency, which is toward health whenever health is possible. Left alone, without the meddling of remedies that disturb and violate its ordinary business, the body accommodates itself to its own ailments more wisely than any physician accommodates it from outside. I have lived with my stone for years now, and I have managed it with my own customs — certain foods, certain habits, certain movements — that no doctor prescribed, because they were learned from inside the condition, not from a book about it. The book is useful; the condition is the authority.