tion (still recent, perhaps) was of milder character, he thereby repelled from its seat, by a species of ill-applied external homœopathy, the local symptom which had been established by nature on the skin for the relief of the internal disease, thus renewing the more dangerous internal malady, and by this repulsion of the local symptom compelling the vital force to effect a transference of a worse form of morbid action to other and more important parts; the patient became affected with dangerous ophthalmia, or deafness, or spasms of the stomach, or epileptic convulsions, or attacks of asthma or apoplexy, or mental derangement, etc., in place of the repelled local disease.22

When the diseased natural force propelled blood into the veins of the rectum or anus (blind hæmorrhoids), the minister naturæ, under the same delusive idea of assisting the vital force in its curative efforts, applied leeches, often in large numbers, in order to give an outlet to the blood there with but brief, often scarcely noteworthy, relief, but thereby weakening the body and occasioning still greater congestions in those parts, without the slightest diminution of the original disease.

In almost all cases in which the diseased vital force endeavored to subdue the violence of a dangerous internal malady by evacuating blood by means of vomiting, coughing, etc., the old school physician, duce natura, made haste to assist these supposed salutary efforts of nature, and performed a copious venesection, which was invari

22 Natural effects of the repulsion of these local symptomseffects that are often regarded by the allopathic physician as fresh diseases of quite a different kind.

ably productive of injurious consequences and palpable weakening of the body.

In cases of frequently occurring chronic nausea, he produced, with the view of furthering the intentions of nature, copious evacuations of the stomach, by means of powerful emetics-never with a good result, often with bad, not infrequently dangerous and even fatal con

sequences.

The vital force, in order to relieve the internal malady, sometimes produces indolent enlargements of the external glands, and he thinks to forward the intentions of nature, in his assumed character of her servant, when, by the use. of all sorts of heating embrocations and plasters, he causes them to inflame, so that, when the abscess is ripe, he may incise it and let out the bad morbific matter (?). Experience has shown, hundreds of times, that lasting evil almost invariably results from such a plan.

And having often noticed slight amelioration of the severe symptoms of chronic diseases to result from spontaneous night sweats or frequent liquid stools, he imagines himself bound to obey these hints of nature (duce natura), and to promote them, by instituting and maintaining a complete course of sweating treatment or by the employment of so-called gentle laxatives for years, in order to promote and increase these efforts of nature (of the vital force of the unintelligent organism), which he thinks tend to the cure of the whole chronic affection, and thus to free the patient more speedily and certainly from his disease (the matter of his disease?).

But he thereby always produces quite the contrary result: aggravation of the original disease.

In conformity with this preconceived but unfounded idea, the old school physician goes on thus promoting 23 the efforts of the diseased vital force and increasing those derivations and evacuations in the patient which never lead to the desired end, but are always disastrous, without being aware that all the local affections, evacuations, and seemingly derivative efforts, set up and continued by the unintelligent vital force when left to its own resources, for

23 In direct opposition to this treatment, the old school not infrequently indulged themselves in the very reverse of this: thus, when the efforts of the vital force for the relief of the internal disease by evacuations and the production of local symptoms on the exterior of the body became troublesome, they capriciously suppressed them by their repercutients and repellents; they subdued chronic pains, sleeplessness and diarrhoea of long standing by doses of opium pushed to a dangerous extent; vomitings by effervescent saline draughts; fœtid perspiration of the feet by cold footbaths and astringent applications; eruptions on the skin by preparations of lead and zinc; they checked uterine hæmorrhage by injections of vinegar; colliquative perspiration by alum; nocturnal seminal emissions by the free use of camphor; frequent attacks of flushes of heat in the body and face by nitre, vegetable acids and sulphuric acid; bleeding of the nose by plugging the nostrils with dossils of lint soaked in alcohol or astringent fluids; they dried up discharging ulcers on the legs, established by the vital power for the relief of great internal suffering, with the oxides of lead and zinc, etc., with what sad results experience has shown in thousands of cases.

With tongue and with pen the old school physician brags that he is a rational practitioner, and that he investigates the cause of the disease so as always to make radical cures; but behold, his treatment is directed, in these cases, against a single symptom only, and always with injurious consequences to his patient.

the relief of the original chronic disease, are actually the disease itself, the phenomena of the whole disease, for the totality of which, properly speaking, the only efficacious remedy, and the one, moreover, that will act in the most direct manner, is a homœopathic medicine, chosen on account of its similarity of action.

As everything that crude nature does to relieve itself in diseases, in those of an acute, but especially those of a chronic kind, is extremely imperfect and even actual disease, it may easily be conceived that the promotion by artificial means of this imperfection and disease must do still more harm; at least, it cannot improve the efforts of nature for its own relief, even in acute diseases, because medical art is not in a condition to follow the hidden paths by which the vital force effects its crises, but attempts to produce them from without, by violent means, which are still less beneficial than what the instinctive vital force left to its own resources does, but on the other hand are more perturbing and debilitating. For even the incomplete amelioration resulting from the natural derivations and crises cannot be obtained in a similar manner by allopathy; with all its endeavors it cannot procure anything like even that pitiful relief the vital force left to itself is able to afford.

It has been attempted to produce, by means of scarifying instruments, a bleeding at the nose, in imitation of that sometimes occurring naturally, in order to mitigate, for example, the attacks of a chronic headache. By this means a large quantity of blood could be made to flow from the nostrils and weaken the patient, but the relief afforded was either nil, or much less than the instinctive

vital force would procure at another time, when, of its own accord, it would cause but a few drops to flow.

A so-called critical perspiration or diarrhoea, produced by the ever active vital force after a sudden indisposition, excited by anger, fright, a sprain or a chill, will be much more successful, at least for the time, in relieving the acute disease, than all the sudorific or purgative drugs in the pharmacopoeia, which only make the patient worse, as daily experience shows.

But the vital force, which of itself can only act according to the physical constitution of our organism, and is not guided by reason, knowledge and reflection, was not given to man to be regarded as the best possible curative agent to restore those lamentable deviations from health to the normal condition, and still less that physicians should slavishly imitate its imperfect morbid efforts (to free itself from disease), and that with operations incontestably more inappropriate and severe than its own, and thereby conveniently spare themselves the expenditure of reasoning, reflection and judgment requisite for the discovery and for the practice of the noblest of human arts-the true healing art-while they allege their bad copy of the spontaneous efforts of doubtful utility made by the crude natural force for its relief, to be the healing art, the rational healing art!

What sensible man would imitate the efforts of the organism for its own preservation? These efforts are in reality the disease itself, and the morbidly affected vital force is the producer of the visible disease! It must, therefore, necessarily follow that all artificial imitation, and likewise the suppression of these efforts,