Hygeio-Therapy Versus Drugipathy.

Sir,—Thankful for your courtesy and liberality in admitting my first article, I send you another. You require facts. Very good, you shall have them. And as no one has signified a willingness to controvert the propositions I have advanced, I will proceed to prove them.

First in order is the modus operandi of medicines. A writer in your April number (Richard Griffith, Ch.M.,T.C.D.) has touched the key-note of all medical discussion, of all medical reform, and, as I think, of a great medical revolution, in the pithy statement that, "the healing art can make no real progress until the absurd practice of administering poisonous and debilitating agents to weak and sickly persons is abandoned." I propose to show why persons should not be poisoned because they are sick—why such a "healing art" is absurd in science, and worse than useless in practice. And this will involve a refutation of the doctrine in which the practice is predicated.

All intelligent medical men will agree that drug medicines are poisons; and all persons will agree that poisons are causes of disease. Why should the causes of disease be administered to cure those who are already diseased? Can two wrongs make a right? The moralist might as rationally prescribe lying as a remedy for stealing. "Cease to do evil," is the beginning of wisdom with the true physician, as well as with the moral reformer.

All drug medical schools teach that certain drugs have the power or capacity, inherent in themselves, to act upon certain organs or structures of the vital organism; and that some of them (termed blood-food, cod-liver oil, preparations of iron, &c.,) supply certain elements to the system which its tissues need and can use. Neither page 5 position is correct. Medicines do not act on the living system at all; nor can the living system appropriate or use, for the replenishment or development of its tissues, any drug or mineral substance, or anything except food, water, and air.

And now for a few facts to illustrate:—Tobacco-dust (snuff), occasions sneezing; ipecac occasions vomiting; jalap, purging; squills, expectoration; calomel, cholorrhœa; antimony, sweating; digitalis, diuresis; arsenic, inflammation; alcohol, stimulation; ether, exhilaration; chloroform, narcosis, &c. Because of these effects, tobacco is termed a sternutatory; ipecac, an emetic; jalap, a cathartic; squills, an expectorant; calomel, a chologogue; antimony, a diaphoretic; digitalis, a diuretic; arsenic, a tonic; alcohol, a stimulant; ether, a nervine; chloroform, an anæsthetic, &c.

Now, all drug medical schools teach, and the people generally believe, that medicines act on certain organs or structures preferentially, because they have a "special affinity" for those organs and structures. Thus, calomel is said to have a special affinity for the liver, alcohol for the brain, castor oil for the bowels, antimony for the skin, astringents for the membranes, tonics and stimulants for the blood-vessels, emetics for the stomach, &c.

These, Sir, are facts. And there are certain other facts which seem to complicate and confuse them, and, indeed, to upset the whole absurd, yet time-honoured, "dogma of the dark ages," that medicines act on the living system. Every medical man of experience knows that the effects of medicines depend very greatly on the dose or quantity, and also on age, sex, temperament, habit, idiosyncrasy, diathesis, &c. For example, a very small dose of alcohol, opium, or tobacco, occasions a moderate disturbance of the whole system—the nervine effect; a larger dose occasions a greater general disturbance—the stimulant effect; and very large doses occasion prostration and insensibility—the narcotic effect. Small doses of emetic tartar occasion sweating, and larger doses, vomiting. Small doses of calomel occasion salivation; larger doses, purging. Small doses of rhubard occasion constipation; larger doses, diarrhoea. Small doses of corrosive sublimate, hydriodate of potassa, chloride of gold, &c., are said to be alterative; larger doses occasion inflammation; and still larger, emesis. Antimony, ipecac, protochloride of mercury, lobelia, and many other drugs, in certain doses, often repeated, occasion, at the same time, expectorant, choleraic, emetic cathartic, diaphoretic, and diuretic effects.

Here are facts enough for one article, since no one of them has ever, been explained by the medical profession. And now for the rationale. If these drugs really act on certain organs or structures in virtue of inherent affinities for those organs or structures,—it page 6 follows—and by irresistible logic—that the larger the dose the greater, invariably, is the given effect. But such is not the fact. A small dose often occasions a certain effect in one part of the system; a larger dose occasions a different effect in a different part of the system; a still larger dose, a still different effect somewhere else.

How are these facts to be explained? They never have been explained, and never can be, on the theory that remedial agents act on the living system. All attempts at explanation on this theory have only made confusion worse confounded, and now the medical profession is obliged to confess that the modus operandi of medicines is a profound mystery.

But, on the theory which is taught in the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College, the whole mystery is solved in a moment, and the principle involved becomes a self-evident truth. It explains, also, to an absolute demonstration, why the effects of medicines are so dependent on, and so constantly modified by, the ever-varying vital conditions of the patient.

The living system acts on the medicine.^* It acts upon them to resist them as poisonous, and to expel them from the organic domain. Instead of there being affinity between poisons and living structures, there is constant and eternal antagonism, and nothing else. Again, drugs are dead, inert, inorganic substances, and possess no inherent or other power to act on living matter. The living system is inherently active in relation to other things as a condition of existence. In the relations of living and dead matter, the living system is active, and the dead matter passive. This is but the simple statement of a law of nature. But the medical profession, in teaching and practising the contrary, has just reversed the order of nature, and has given us a false science and a most disastrous practice.

Tobacco dust (snuff) is expelled from the nose by a process termed sneezing. Now, sneezing is not the act of the snuff, but of the nose. Ipecac is ejected from the stomach by the process called vomiting. Is vomiting the act of the ipecac or of the stomach? The living system always resists and expels poisons and impurities in the best manner it can under the circumstances. Thus, if a small quantity of emetic tartar, or ipecac, be swallowed, the system can best get rid of it through the skin by diaphoresis. If a very large quantity is taken, it is resisted more powerfully in the first passages, and vomiting occurs. If a small quantity of opium, or alcohol, is swallowed, it is expelled most conveniently (with the least wear and tear of the organism) through the general circulation, and the process is called stimulation. But the drug does not

^* See Note A.

page 7 act on the circulating vessels, nor does it impart power, or anything else, to the system. It is simply carried through the system. The vital structures carry it through the circulation to the various emunctory organs, where it is eliminated from the body.

If a very large quantity of opium, or alcohol, is swallowed, it is resisted so powerfully in the first passages, that vomiting, or narcosis, occurs; not that the drug acts on the stomach or brain, but the actions of the living system are so intensely determined to the first passages, that the functions of the brain are necessarily suspended.

This rationale of the effects of medicine affords a conclusive reason why poisons should not be administered to sick persons, nor to well persons. Poisons make the well sick, the sick sicker. Every drug, every dose, provokes vital resistance, and causes waste of vital power. So far as drugs cure a primary disease, it is only by occasioning a drug disease.

But disease should not be cured. Disease is itself the remedial effort—the effort at purification and reparation. It is vital action in self-defence. For 3000 years, physicians have been dosing and drugging sick folks with all the poisons of earth, air, and sea—all the foul things of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, in the attempt to do what never should be done—cure disease. They have, through all these long ages, been warring upon the vitality of their patients. No; I repeat, disease should not be cured. Curing disease is practically killing the patient. It is the patient, not the disease, that physicians should aim to cure. And to cure a patient means, to restore him to the normal condition, not to poison away his vitality. The True Healing Art, as it is in Hygeio-Therapy, consists in removing the causes of disease, not in suppressing the remedial effort. And when I assert that I have taught and practised the Hygeio-Therapeutic system in the city of New York for more than twenty years, and have not, during that time, prescribed a drop or particle of drug-medicine of any kind, either in allopathic or infinitesimal doses, and have, during that time, treated many hundreds of cases of acute diseases, including typhoid fever, ship fever, yellow fever, small-pox, measles, scarlatina, pneumonia, diphtheria, dysentery, cholera, inflammation, &c., without losing a single case, you will, perhaps (if you can believe my testimony), suspect that there may be something in the new system worth inquiring into. And if you pursue the investigation far enough, you may possibly come to the conclusion that some hundreds of medical men have arrived at within a few years—viz., that the popular system of medicine has neither philosophy nor common sense to recommend it, and that the best good of the human family requires it to be discarded at once and for ever,—I am, &c., R. T. Trall, M.D.

Dr Trail's charge against the drug system is therefore this, that it is founded on a total misapprehension of the true nature of disease; that instead of recognising in the latter a friendly recuperative and purifying process on the part of the animal economy (an action quite as natural as that of health only occurring under abnormal conditions), it looks upon this action as hostile and unfriendly, as one to be opposed, thwarted, and put an end to, instead of encouraged, assisted, and judiciously directed. Hence, all their treatment, based on a false foundation, is directed to make war upon the powers of life, suppressing and silencing them by the exhibition of deadly poisons, from which destructive process a fatal and disastrous practice does, and must necessarily result. In illustration of this proposition, let us take a simple case of skin eruption. Here the Hygienic physician, recognising a natural effort of the body to expel some irritating or poisonous substance through that great scavenger of the system—the skin, aids and assists that effort, by increasing the eliminating power of that organ, by means of the hot air bath, wet pack, or other Hydropathic appliances; succeeding in this, the poison is expelled from the system, and the eruption disappears concurrently with the withdrawal of its cause. Let us now contrast with the foregoing the practice of the drug physician, of which it is the very antipodes. Looking on the eruption in question as an entity, an enemy at war with the system, hostile and inimical in its operations, he at once proceeds to suppress it, and succeeds in doing so by concentrating the irritation internally (whence nature was trying to expel it), by the administration of arsenic, mercury, iodine, or other poisons. The skin then assumes for a time its wonted appearance, and the patient being thus considered cured, is immediately congratulated on his recovery. But what is his real condition? The friendly effort of the system to remove an internal and dangerous irritation, to an external and safe position, has been defeated, and the system has been drenched with poisons, in addition to that originally oppressing it, whilst not a single step has been made to remove the first offending cause. When, after the lapse of some little time, the system has perhaps again collected strength, another effort to throw the internal irritation on the surface is made, to be again repelled by page 9 another course of arsenic, mercury, iodine, and astringent lotions, with similar results to those already mentioned, and so on to the end of the chapter. Under the one mode of treatment, a radical cure becomes effected by the expulsion of the offending cause, without injury or detriment to the health, but on the contrary pari passu with its marked improvement; under the other, the disease is never cured, unless in spite of the treatment,^* and the health becomes seriously injured, as a necessary consequence of the frequent administration of poisons. One system seeks to remove all sources of poison from the body, whilst the other as sedulously pours fresh poisons into it. Can any one, except a drug practitioner, for a moment doubt which mode of treatment is the most rational and natural, and consequently likely to be, as in practice it has ever proved to be, the most successful?

Let us now place before the reader the following opinions of the most eminent drug practitioners, regarding their own system, premising that the severest and most condemnatory language that its greatest opponent could employ against it, will be found to be more than equalled by the recorded confession of its most eminent disciples. It is difficult to understand how men could conscientiously continue to practice an art which they so fearlessly and unsparingly denounced:—

Sir John Forbes, late Court Physician to the Queen, and the distinguished editor of the British and Foreign Medical Review, thus records his opinion of drug medication, the result of the experience of a professional life: "Firstly—That in a large proportion of the cases treated by allopathic physicians the disease is cured by nature, and not by them. Secondly—That in a lesser, but still not a small proportion, the disease is cured by nature in spite of them; in other words, their interference opposing instead of assisting the cure. And thirdly—That, consequently, in a considerable proportion of diseases, it would fare as well or better with patients, if all remedies, especially drugs, were abandoned;" and he emphatically adds, "Things (i.e., the state of physic) have come to such a pass that they must either mend or end."^†

The venerable Professor Alexander H. Stevens, M.D., of the New

^* * See Sir John's Forbes's opinion on this page.

^† For this honest expression of opinion, Sir John was deprived of his position as editor of the above Review.

page 10 York College of Physicians and Surgeons, in a recent lecture to his medical class, says: "The older physicians grow, the more sceptical they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the powers of nature." Again: "Notwithstanding all of our boasted improvements, patients suffer as much as they did forty years ago." And again: "The reason medicine has advanced so slowly, is because physicians have studied the writings of their predecessors, instead of nature."

The venerable Professor Jos. M. Smith, M.D., of the same school, testifies: "All medicines which enter the circulation, poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce disease." Again: "Drugs do not cure disease; disease is always cured by the vis medicatrix naturæ." And again: "Digitalis has hurried thousands to the grave." And yet again: "Prussic acid was once extensively used in the treatment of consumption, both in Europe and America; but its reputation is now lost. Thousands of patients were treated with it, but not a case was benefited. On the contrary, hundreds were hurried to the grave."

Says Professor C. A. Gilman, M.D., of the same school: "Many of the chronic diseases of adults are caused by the maltreatment of infantile diseases." Again: "Blisters nearly always produce death when applied to children." Again: "I give mercury to children when I wish to depress the powers of life." And again: "The application of opium to the true skin of an infant is very likely to produce death." And yet again: "A single drop of laudanum will often destroy the life of an infant." And once more: "Four grains of calomel will often kill an adult." And, finally: "A mild mercurial course, and mildly cutting a man's throat, are synonymous terms."

Says Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the same school: "From thirty to sixty grains of calomel have been given very young children for croup." Again: "Apopletic patients, who are not bled, have double the chance to recover that those have who are bled." And again: "Physicians have learned that more harm than good has been done by the use of drugs in the treatment of measles, scarlatina, and other self-limited diseases." And yet again: "My experience is, that croup can't well be cured; at least, the success of treatment is very doubtful. A different mode of treatment is introduced yearly, to be succeeded by another the next year." Once more: "Ten thousand times ten thousand methods have been tried, in vain, to cure diabetes." Still another: "In their zeal to do good, physicians have done much harm. They have hurried many to the grave who would have recovered if left to nature." And, finally: "All of our curative agents are poisons; and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient's vitality."

Says Professor W. Parker, M.D., of the same school: "I have no confidence in gonorrheal specifics." Again: "Nearly all cases of urethral stricture are caused by strong injections." And again: "The usual treatment of syphilis, by mercury, causes atheromatous deposits in the coats of the arteries, predisposing to apoplexy." And yet again: "It must be confessed that the administration of remedies is conducted more in an empirical than in a rational manner." Once more: "The pains of which patients with secondary and tertiary syphilis complain are not referable to the syphilitic poison, but to the mercury with which they have been drugged." And, finally: "Of all sciences, medicine is the most uncertain."

Says Professor Horace Green, M.D., of the same school: "The confidence you have in medicine will be dissipated by experience in treating diseases." Again: "Cod-liver oil has no curative power in tuberculosis."

Says Professor H. G. Cox, M.D., of the same school: "There is much truth in the statement of Dr Hughes Bennett, that blood-letting is always injurious and never necessary, and I am inclined to think it entirely correct." Again: "Bleeding in pneumonia doubles the mortality." And yet again: "The fewer remedies you employ in any disease, the better for your patient." And once more: "Mercury is a sheet-anchor in fevers; but it is an anchor that moors your patient to the grave."

Says Professor B. F. Barker, M.D., of the same school: "The drugs which are administered for the cure of scarlet fever and measles, kill far more than those diseases do. I have recently given no medicine in their treatment, and have had excellent success." Again: "I have known several ladies become habitual drunkards, the primary cause being a taste for stimulants, which was acquired in consequence of alcoholic drink being administered to them as medicine." And again: "I am inclined to think that mercury, given as an aplastic agent, does far more harm than good." And yet again: "I incline to the belief that bleeding is injurious and unnecessary." Once more: "There is, I am sorry to say, as much empiricism in the medical profession as out of it." And, finally: "Instead of investigating for themselves, medical authors have copied the errors of their predecessors, and have thus retarded the progress of medical science, and perpetuated error."

Says Professor J. W. Carson, M.D., of the same school: "It is easy to destroy the life of an infant. This you will find when you enter practice. You will find that a slight scratch of the pen, which dictates a little too much of a remedy, will snuff out the infant's life: and when you next visit your patient, you will find that the child page 12 which you left cheerful a few hours previously, is stiff and cold. Beware, then, how you use your remedies!" Again: "We do not know whether our patients recover because we give medicine, or because nature cures them. Perhaps bread-pills would cure as many as medicine."

Says Professor E. S. Carr, M.D., of the New York University Medical School: "All drugs are more or less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing." Again: "Mercury, when administered in any form, is taken into the circulation, and carried to every tissue of the body. The effects of mercury are not for a day, but for all time. It often lodges in the bones, occasionally causing pain years after it is administered. I have often detected metallic mercury in the bones of patients who had been treated with this subtile poisonous agent."

Says Professor S. St John, M.D., of the same school: "All medicines are poisonous."

Says Professor Martin Paine, M.D., of the same school: "Our remedial agents are themselves morbific." Again: "Our medicines act upon the system in the same manner as do the remote causes of disease." And again: "Drug medicines do but cure one disease by producing another."

"The science of medicine is founded on conjecture, and improved by murder."—Sir Astley Cooper.

"There is scarcely a more dishonest trade imaginable than medicine in its present state. The monarch who would entirely interdict the practice of medicine would deserve to be placed by the side of the most illustrious characters who have ever conferred benefits on mankind."—Dr Forth.

"The whole art of physic might be written on a single sheet of paper. When I commenced practice, I had twenty remedies for every disease; but before I got through, I found twenty diseases for which I had no remedy."—Dr Radcliffe.

"The great success of quacks in England has been altogether owing to the real quackery of the regular physicians."—Adam Smith.

"Our chiefest hopes (of medical reform) at present exist in the outer educated public. It is a sad but humiliating confession."—Dr C. Kidd.

"The medical practice of our day is, at the best, a most uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence."—Professor Evans, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

"Gentlemen, ninety-nine out of every hundred medical facts are page 13 medical lies; and medical doctrines are, for the most part, stark, staring nonsense."—Professor Gregory, of Edinburgh, Scotland.

"I am incessantly led to make an apology for the instability of the theories and practice of physic. Those physicians generally become the most eminent who have most thoroughly emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the schools of medicine. Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischiefs have we not done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more: we have increased their fatality."—Benjamin Bush, M.D., Formerly Professor in the first Medical College in Philadelphia.

"It cannot be denied that the present system of medicine is a burning shame to its professors, if, indeed, a series of vague and uncertain incongruities deserves to be called by that name. How rarely do our medicines do good! How often do they make our patients really worse! I fearlessly assert that in most cases the sufferer would be safer without a physician than with one. I have seen enough of the mal-practice of my professional brethren to warrant the strong language I employ.—Dr Ramage, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

"Assuredly the uncertain and most unsatisfactory art that we call medical science, is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions; of conclusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn; of facts misunderstood or perverted; of comparisons without analogy, of hypotheses without reason, and theories not only useless, but dangerous."—Dublin Medical Journal.

"Thousands are annually slaughtered in the quiet sick-room. Governments should at once either banish medical men, and proscribe their blundering art, or they should adopt some better means to protect the lives of the people than at present prevail, when they look far less after the practice of this dangerous profession, and the murders committed in it, than after the lowest trades."—Dr Frank, an eminent European author and practitioner.

"Let us no longer wonder at the lamentable want of success which marks our practice, when there is scarcely a sound physiological principle among us. I hesitate not to declare, no matter how sorely I shall wound our vanity, that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the physiological disorder called disease, that it would, perhaps, be better to do nothing, and resign the complaint into the hands of nature, than to act as we are frequently compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our conduct, at the obvious risk of hastening the end of the patient." In addressing his medical class, he says: "Gentlemen,—Medicine is a great humbug. page 14 I know it is called science. Science, indeed! it is nothing like science. Doctors are merely empirics when they are not charlatans. We are as ignorant as men can be. "Who knows anything in the world about medicine? Gentlemen, you have done me the honour to come here to attend my lectures, and I must tell you frankly now, in the beginning, that I know nothing in the world about medicine, and I don't know anybody who does know anything about it. . . . I repeat it, nobody knows anything about medicine. . . . we are collecting facts in the right spirit, and I dare say, in a century or so, the accumulation of facts may enable our successors to form a medical science. But I repeat it to you, there is no such thing as a medical science. Who can tell me how to cure the headache, or the gout, or disease of the heart? Nobody. Oh, you tell me doctors cure people. I grant you people are cured, but how are they cured? Gentlemen, nature does a great deal; imagination a great deal; doctors—devilish little when they don't do any harm. Let me tell you, gentlemen, what I did when I was physician at the Hotel Dieu. Some three or four thousand patients passed through my hands every year. I divided the patients into two classes: with one I followed the dispensary and gave the usual medicines, without having the least idea why or wherefore; to the others I gave bread-pills' and coloured water, without, of course, letting them know anything about it; and occasionally, gentlemen, I would create a third division, to whom I gave nothing whatever. These last would fret a good deal—they would feel that they were neglected—sick people always feel they are neglected, unless they are well drugged "les imbeciles," and they would irritate themselves until they got really sick, but nature invariably came to the rescue, and all the persons in the third class got well. There was but little mortality amongst those who received the bread-pills and coloured water, but the mortality was greatest among those who were carefully drugged according to the dispensary."—M. Magendie, the celebrated French Physiologist and Pathologist.

"I may observe that, of the whole number of fatal cases in infancy, a great proportion occur from the inappropriate or undue application of exhausting remedies."—Dr Marshall Hall, the distinguished English Physiologist.

"More infantile subjects are perhaps destroyed by the pestle and mortar than in the ancient Bethlehem fell victims in one day to the Herodian massacre."—Dr Reid.

"We have seen somewhere a quotation from Van Swieten, in which that philosophic physician expresses the result of his wide-spread review of medical practice in the aphorism, 'All that art can do is to weaken life;' and truly that seems a fair description of the page 15 agents which have been handed down to us in the materia medica."—Editorial observations in Medical Mirror, January, 1867.

"Our actual information or knowledge of disease does not increase in proportion to our experimental practice. Every dose of medicine given is a blind experiment upon the vitality of the patient."—Dr Bostock, author of the "History of Medicine."

"I wish not to detract from the exalted profession to which I have the honour to belong, and which includes many of my warmest and most valued friends; yet it cannot answer to my conscience to with-hold the acknowledgment of my firm belief, that the medical profession (with its prevailing mode of practice) is productive of vastly more evil than good; and were it absolutely abolished, mankind would be infinitely the gainer."—Francis Coggswell, M.D., of Boston.

"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon, and the effects of our medicines on the human system in the highest degree uncertain, except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined."—John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S., author of "Book of Nature," "A System of Nosology," "Study of Medicine," etc.

"On no question perhaps have scientific men differed more than on the theory of the action of medicines. Either facts, essentially opposed and incompatible, have been adduced by the disagreeing parties; or, which is nearly as common, the same fact has received two distinct and opposite interpretations."—Dr Headland's prize essay on the action of medicines on the system."

Abernethy observes sarcastically: "There has been a great increase of medical men of late years; but, upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion."

"I declare, as my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, man-midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail."—James Johnson, M.D., F.R.S., editor of the Medico-Chirurgical Review.

The celebrated Dr Baillie, who enjoyed perhaps the largest and most fashionable practice that ever fell to the lot of any physician in the world, declared, after forty years' experience, "that he had no faith in physic," and on his death-bed frequently exclaimed, "I wish I could be sure that I have not killed more than I have cured."

"I have heard a most eminent physician say, 'that the best practice was that which did nothing; the next best, that which did little.'"—Hoffman.

"I visited the different schools of medicine, and the students of page 16 each hinted, if they did not assert, that the other sect killed their patients."—Dr Billing.

"The file of every apothecary would furnish a volume of instances where the ingredients of the prescription were fighting away in the dark."—Dr Paris, President of the College of Physicians.

Such being the deliberate assertions, declarations, and confessions of those who advocate, teach, and practice the drug system, let us see next what they say of the system which we advocate, and which they oppose:—

Says Professor Parker: "As we place more confidence in nature, and less in preparations of the apothecary, mortality diminishes." Again: "Hygiene is of far more value in the treatment of disease than drugs." And again: "I wish the materia medica was in Guinea, and that you would study materia alimentaria." And yet again: "You are taught learnedly about materia medica, and but little about diet." Once more: "We will have less mortality when people eat to live." And, finally: "I have cured granulations of the eyes, in chronic conjunctivitis, by hygienic treatment, after all kinds of drug applications had failed."

Says Professor Carson: "Water is the best diaphoretic we have." Again: "My preceptor used to give coloured water to his patients; and it was noticed that those who took the water recovered more rapidly than those of another physician, who bled his patients."

Says Professor Clark: "Pure cold air is the best tonic the patient can take." Again: "Many different plans have been tried for the cure of consumption, but the result of all has been unsatisfactory. We are not acquainted with any agents that will cure consumption. We must rely on hygiene." Aid again: "Cream is far better for tubercular patients than cod-liver oil, or any other kind of oil." And yet again: "In scarlet fever you have nothing to rely on but the vis medicatrix natura." Once more; "A hundred different and unsuccessful plans have been tried for the cure of cholera. I think I shall leave my patients, hereafter, nearly entirely to nature; as I have seen patients abandoned to die and left to nature, recover, while patients who were treated died." And, finally: "A sponge-bath will often do more to quiet restless, feverish patients than an anodyne."

Says Professor Barker: "The more simple the treatment in infantile diseases, the better the result."

Says Professor Peaslee: "Water constitutes about eight-tenths of the weight of the human body, and is its most indispensable constituent." Again: "Water is the only necessary—the only natural drink." page 17 Says Professor Gilman: "Every season has its fashionable remedy for consumption; but hygienic treatment is of far more value than all drugs combined." Again: "Cold affusion is the best antidote for narcotic poisoning. If the medical profession were to learn and appreciate this fact [Why don't they learn it?—R. T. T.], the number of deaths from narcotism would be diminished one-half. And again: "The continued application of cold water has more power to prevent inflammation than any other remedy." And yet again: "The application of water to the external surface of the abdomen, is of great importance and value in the treatment of dysentery. I have also cured adults by this means alone." Once more: "Water is equal in efficacy, as a diuretic, to all other diuretics combined. Water is the thing that produces diuresis; all other means are subordinate." And, finally: "Water is the best febrifuge we have."

Says Professor Smith: "The vapour of warm water is the most efficacious expectorant we have." Again: "Abstinence from food is one of the most powerful antiphlogistic means."

"The principles of the water-cure treatment are founded in nature and truth. We have in our power a new and most efficacious agent for the alleviation and cure of disease in various forms, and, in proper hands, as safe as it is effectual. I should be no friend to humanity, nor to medical science, if I did not give my testimony in its recommendation.—Sir Charles Scudamore, M.D., F.R.S.

"It (hydropathy) more than doubles our power of doing good. Of course it will meet with much opposition, but none, come from what quarter it may, can possibly prevent its progress, and its taking firm root. It is like truth, not to be subverted."—Herbert Mayo, Esq., Senior Surgeon of the Middlesex Hospital.

"Its paramount virtue is that of preserving many a constitution from pulmonary consumption."—Dr James Johnson, Editor of the Medical Quarterly.

"The water-cure is founded on a rock; and the wind and waves of persecution will in vain assail it."—Dr Balbirnie.

"The water-cure is a stomachic, since it invariably increases the appetite. An important hydropathic principle is, that almost all its measures arc applied to the surface. One of the most formidable difficulties with which the ordinary physician has to contend is, that nearly all his remedies reach the point to which they are directed through one channel. Their only means of relieving certain diseases is by inundating the stomach and bowels with foreign and to them frequently pernicious substances."

"It is singular enough that almost all arguments used against cold bathing are the strongest theoretical arguments in its favour. Dr page 18 Baynard, a most sarcastic writer, gives us the following anecdote:—'Hero a demi-brained doctor, of more note than nous, asked, in the amazed agony of his half-understanding, how 'twas possible that an external application should affect the bowels, and cure pain within? ' Why, doctor,' quoth an old woman standing by, 'by the same reason that being wet shod or catching cold from without should give you the gripes and pain within.' "

"If a rude exposure of the surface to cold and wet is capable of producing internal disease, there is no doubt that a close relation exists between these agents and the morbid conditions of internal parts."—Sir John Forbes, M.D. (already quoted.)

"If men knew how to use water so as to elicit all the remedial results which it is capable of producing, it would be worth all other remedies put together."—Dr Macartney's Lectures at Trinity College; Dublin, 1826.

The British and Foreign Quarterly Journal, the leading advocate of drug medication, thus writes: "This mode of treating disease (hydropathy) is unquestionably far from inert, and most opposed to the cure of diseases, by the undisturbed processes of nature It in fact perhaps affords the very best evidence we possess of the curative power of art, and is unquestionably when rationally regulated a most effective mode of treatment in many diseases. Still it puts in a striking light, if not exactly the curative powers of nature, at least the possibility—nay, facility—with which all the ordinary instruments of medical cure, drugs, may be dispensed with. If so many and such various diseases get well entirely without drugs, under one special mode of treatment, is it not more than probable that a treatment consisting almost exclusively of drugs may be often of non-effect—sometimes of injurious effect?"

A most striking and practical illustration of the difference between the Allopathic and Hygienic systems of medication is given in the following