and the Convalescent--Winifred S. Gibbs.

Practical Dietetics--Pattee, Chapters IV, V.

Feeding the Family--Rose.

Diet in Health and Disease--Friedenwald and Ruhrah.

Feeding Children from Two to Seven Years Old--New York City Department
of Health.

American Red Cross Text Book on Home Dietetics--Ada Z. Fish.

Emergency Cooking--Pamphlet 708, American Red Cross.

War Diet in the Home--Pamphlet 706, American Red Cross.

Red Cross Conservation Food Course for Children and Special
Classes--Pamphlet 705, American Red Cross.

CHAPTER X

MEDICINES AND OTHER REMEDIES

ACTION OF DRUGS.--Modern medical practice increasingly emphasizes diet,
baths, exercises, and other hygienic measures in the treatment of
sickness. Drugs are given far less than they were a generation ago; yet
medicines are still the most familiar of all remedies, and the most
abused by those who persist in treating themselves. Misuse of medicine
even by intelligent people is astonishingly common.

Problems of sickness and health would be enormously clarified if the
uses and limitations of drugs were more generally understood. Many
people still believe that every disease can be cured by a drug if only
the doctor is clever or lucky enough to think of the right one to give.
Such beliefs result naturally enough from centuries of faith in charms
and magic, and occasionally are confirmed by remarkable cures apparently
brought about by drugs, but really pure coincidence or the result of
suggestion.

It is a fact that a few medicines are known which if rightly used
actually do cure certain diseases. An example of their action is the
curative effect of quinine in malaria. Such medicines, unfortunately,
are few. In the great majority of cases medicines do not cure disease;
their beneficial action is ordinarily indirect and is due to their power
either to increase or to check certain processes within the body.

It is here that the abuse of drugs comes in. Disordered bodily processes
give rise to symptoms of disease; and it is the symptoms of disease, not
the disease itself, that trouble the patient. A patient with typhoid,
for example, is not conscious of the toxins in his blood, but of
headache, weakness, and fever; the man with eyestrain is not aware of an
imperfectly shaped lens, but of headache and indigestion. What the
patient wants is to have his symptoms relieved; in some cases they can
be controlled by drugs, and the sufferer then conside