Medicine: Uncommon Sense

"For whooping cough, pass the child nine times over and under a donkey from left to right." That is a prescription of the 17th Century. For the same complaint, 100 years ago, a doctor would have shaken his head, stroked his beaver, written Pil. Quin. Sulph. on a brown pad, and the mother would have thought she had a cureall. Today medicos do not always find it necessary to fortress their ignorance with esoteric metaphors; many can talk, some can even write, of their calling refreshingly, candidly, in simple words. An example is Dr....

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