730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



any other normal function : the anti-naturalists declared war against 

 free inquiry, assured us that the study of logic and natural science is 

 highly dangerous, and that the seeker after truth must content himself 

 with the light of ghostly revelations. We have since ascertained that 

 the ghosts are grossly ignorant of all terrestrial concernments, and 

 that their reports on the supramundane state of affairs are, to say the 

 least, suspiciously conflicting. 



In all but the vilest creatures the love of freedom is as powerful as 

 the instinct of self-preservation : the anti-naturalists inculcated the 

 dogma of implicit submission to secular and spiritual authorities. The 

 experiment was tried on the grandest scale, and the result has demon- 

 strated that blind faith leads to idiocy, and that absolute monarchs 

 must be absolutely abolished. 



The testimony of our noses justifies the opinion that fresh air is 

 23referable to prison-smells ; the anti-naturalists informed us that at 

 various seasons of the year, and every night, the out-door atmosphere 

 becomes mortiferous, and that sleepers and invalids ought to be con- 

 fined in air-tight apartments. We believed, till we found that the 

 most implicit believers got rotten with scrofula. 



Animals seem to live and thrive on the principle that palatable 

 food recommends itself to the stomach, and that repulsive things ought 

 to be avoided. The anti-naturalists reversed the maxim, and assured us 

 that sweetmeats, uncooked vegetables, cold water, drunk when it tastes 

 best i. e., on a warm day raw fruit, etc., are the causes of countless 

 diseases, and that the execrable taste of a drug is not the least argu- 

 ment against its salubriousness. During the middle ages parents used 

 to dose their children with brimstone and calomel, " to purify their 

 blood," and, for the same purpose, the most nauseous mineral springs 

 of every country are still pumped and bottled for the benefit of in- 

 valids. There is not a poison known to chemistry or botany but has 

 been, and is still, daily prescribed as a health-giving substance, and, in 

 the form of pills, drops, or powders, foisted upon a host of help-seek- 

 ing invalids. But, since the revival of free inquiry, we have compared 

 the statements of ancient historians and modern travelers, and it ap- 

 pears that the healthiest nations on earth have preserved their health 

 on the principle that guides our dumb fellow-creatures, and would 

 guide our children if they were permitted to follow their inclinations. 

 An overwhelming testimony of facts has proved that the diseases of 

 the human race can be cured easier without poison-drugs easier in 

 the very degree that would suggest the suspicion that every ounce of 

 poison ever swallowed for remedial purposes has increased the weight 

 of human misery.* And that same suspicion is forced ujDon us by 



* " It is unnecessary for my present purpose to p;ivo a particular account of the results 

 of homopopathy; . . . what I now claim with respect to it is, that a wise and beneficent 

 Providence is using it to expose and break up a deep delusion. In the results of homoeo- 

 pathic practice, we have evidence in amount, and of a character sufficient, most incoutestably 



