A Grandmother’s Protest Against Modern Medicine

I am 88 years of age and I have in my rocking chair day after day watching the suffering of my two grandchildren, sick unto death with scarlet fever. I have stood it as long as I possibly can without writing you in the interest of fathers and mothers who have dear children to be tortured and killed by what this age chooses to call the medical profession. I wish to enter a protest against the mode of treatment practiced by the modern doctor in scarlet fever. I reared 10 children during their youth; they all had scarlet fever, and no terrible disease fastened itself upon their bodies as a result of the fever. It was not our custom in early days to employ a physician to treat scarlet fever or putrid sore throat, now called diphtheria. The mothers of fifty years ago seemed to have little trouble in conquering these diseases. And I attribute their success to the fact that they used the treatment laid down in nature's code of medicine. The treatment can be summed up in one word—water. We packed the patient in wet sheets, keeping to this until the patient sweat profusely. This broke the fever and allayed that terrible thirst which accompanies scarlet fever, and soon the patient was convalescent. But this is not the treatment prescribed by the modern code of medicine. Instead, the science of killing folks, as it should be called, greases the poor child all over, thereby shutting up the pores and thus by shutting off those safety valves prevents the escape of the deadly poison that nature is trying to be rid of. And furthermore, that with the nasty and poisonous drugs is almost sure to kill the darling child.