Page 8 - Diagnosis_Reaver

sicians in New York City. Nine of them
each gave him an entirely different and
very often conflicting diagnosis. The tenth
frankly said he didn’t know. The author
related how he religiously took the
medicines of each doctor and ended his arti­
cle by stating that he still had his
headaches.

Diagnosis is guess work; it is not scien­
tific; there is no possibility of bringing it
within the realms of science. So long as the
first procedure of medicine is not exact,
nothing that follows can be any better. The
practice of diagnosis, prescriptions, shots,
treatments, etc., has added nothing to the
progress of the world; in fact, it has retard­
ed it. The world would have been better off
if diagnosis had never been known. It has
caused physicians down through the ages to
reason falsely on the cure of disease.

In his book — “ What Is Toxem ia?” J. H.
Tiden, M.D., had this to say about the prac­
tice of medicine; “ The old practice of
medicine was empiricism — guess and
guess again. Today it is guess, and prove it
by instruments of precision and laboratory
analysis. The findings must be interpreted,
for the laboratory is not ratiocinative;
hence; the final interpretation rests with
the doctor, who finds himself back where he
started — compelled to guess again. The
only difference between then and now is
that the old doctor guessed and adhered to
it, while the present-day doctor sends his
g ue s s to the la bora tory , and the
bacteriologist undertakes to prove his