JOO 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there is all the toio cento difference of a duty 

 and a mischievous presumption. Can an 

 opponent of venesection not use a lancet to 

 scrape the ink off his finger-nails, without 

 incurring the reproach of inconsistency? 

 Nature never fails to protest emphatically 

 against the nauseous nostrums which the 

 drug-monger employs under the pretext of 

 relieving her embarrassments. Does she 

 ever protest against soap and water ? Does 

 sapolio irritate the human skin ? If not, a 

 consistent anti-naturalist should cleanse his 

 hands by means of a blister. In the opin- 

 ion of our medical hierophant it will proba- 

 bly aggravate the iniquity of the " idealists " 

 that the practical embodiment of their theo- 

 ries has proved a decided success. In the 

 United States alone there are forty-six well- 

 patronized hygienic sanitaria that restrict 

 the use of drugs almost, or wholly, to the 

 exceptional cases named on page 729 of 

 " The Popular Science Monthly " for October, 

 1881. Drs. Schrodt, Maurice Nagy, James 

 Knight, L. B. Coles, Abbott, Coleman, and 

 the disciples of Graham, Alcott, and Isaac 

 Jennings, have not recanted their tenets, and 

 count their followers by tens of thousands. 

 Unto all such Dr. J. R. Black ascribes su- 

 perficialness, bigotry, and a sound physical 

 constitution. The latter charge, I appre- 

 hend, can not be retaliated upon his own 

 converts. 



Hahnemann's heresies our critical ob- 

 server imputes to an optical perversity. 

 If his diagnostic spectacles enable him so 

 distinctly to discern the "poison of dis- 

 ease," he ought to know better than to ag- 

 gravate it by an additional poison. And if 

 the doctor believes that the tenuous pre- 

 scriptions of the homoeopaths can not be 

 considered as medicines, their success proves 

 the very point I am contending for, namely, 

 that in an infinite plurality of cases diseases 

 can be better cured without any drugs at all. 



Such " vaporific theorizing " as my plea 

 for longer pauses between meals, Dr. J. R. 

 Black thinks " scarcely worthy of notice." 

 If the history of dietetics were not so far 

 beneath the notice of a duly-ordained drug- 

 dispenser, the doctor would perhaps know 

 that many millions of the races who ap- 

 proach most nearly to the ideal of perfect 

 physical and intellectual development ad- 

 hered for sixty generations to the one-meal 

 system, and that the plan of reducing the 

 number of daily meals has been tested and 

 urgently recommended by Drs. Haller,* Gra- 

 ham, Joel Ross, Dawson,-}- Dio Lewis,:): C. E. 



* " Ein Oatholicon, eine fiberall giiltige Repel in 

 alien Krankheiten. ist die Zahl der taglichen Mahl- 

 zoiten zu redueiren." 



+ " It may be said, if we deprive the already 

 wasted body of nourishment for any length of time, 

 will we not run the risk of login;: our little patient? 

 To these questions I reply : /Starve the stomach ! 

 Give it re*t t " 



X " I have tested the sufficiency of eating once in 



Page,* and T. L. Nichols,! of London, as 

 well as by thousands who have tried its effi- 

 cacy for the cure of obstinate enteric dis- 

 orders. All these men Dr. J. R. Black de- 

 nounces as sensational cranks, savages, and 

 ophidians, and accuses me of an inconsistent 

 and " supercilious conceit over Dame Na- 

 ture," for disregarding her "monitions in 

 this matter." In his eagerness to achieve 

 the glory of a defensor Jielei, Dr. J. R. 

 Black does not shrink from such trifles as 

 logical solecisms. I have certainly never 

 missed an opportunity to urge the impor- 

 tance of consulting the promptings of our 

 natural instincts ; but does the doctor pro- 

 pose to apply that rule to the cravings of a 

 morbid appetency ? Or have his " thirty 

 years' reading and close practical observa- 

 tion " not yet taught him that the chronic 

 hunger of a dyspeptic is as abnormal as 

 the poison-thirst of a confirmed drunkard ? 

 " For the weak divide the task to be accom- 

 plished," says he as if the assimilation of 

 food were a mechanical operation. Dr. 

 Black's decalogue needs a revision if he 

 does not know that digestion is a chemical 

 process, and can be better accomplished in 

 a longer time (by prolonging the pause be- 

 tween meals) than by a division of labor. 

 And what has the illiteracy of a South-Sea 

 Islander to do with the competence of his 

 hygienic instincts ? Is the doctor's fund of 

 valid arguments so scant that he has to re- 

 sort to the expedient of an irrelevant charge ? 

 With the same logic the savage might refuse 

 to accept the moral tenets of a short-sighted 

 pale-face. 



And Dr. Black's depreciation of the eu- 

 peptic ophidian is hardly less injudicious. 

 No consistent follower of his school should 

 allude with disrespect to the trade-mark of 

 his craft the ^Esculapian pet that first sug- 

 gested the art of utilizing our fellow-crea- 

 tures by poisoning them. 



Felix L. Oswald. 



A IIOMCEOPATHIC CORRECTION. 

 Messrs. Eelitors: 



An article in your June issue, which at- 

 tempts to deal with the question of quack- 

 ery, refers at some length to the system of 

 medical practice known by the name of 

 homoeopathy. I do not write for the pur- 

 pose of exposing the fallacies or correcting 

 all the misconceptions of the author ; for I 

 am not certain how far you would be willing 



twenty-four hours, and have done work enough to 

 put a Vounger man to his trumps if he had to do it. 

 ... I keep up my strength and have held in check 

 my constitutional tendencies so that I have reached 

 old age." 



* " No person ever tried the plan and found rea- 

 sons for abandoning it. except from considerations 

 utterly remote from health." 



+ ''The oDe-meal-a-day system will largely in- 

 crease any person's working capacity." 



