74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



diseases nor formulas for prescriptions. It is differentiation as op- 

 posed to classification or generalization. The effect, expression, or 

 impression of disease, is not mistaken for disease as a cause. Subject 

 one hundred persons of both sexes and various ages to a cold rain and 

 then to a burning sun, and you will have as many different states as 

 persons. The disturbance of the vital force has found expression in a 

 hundred different forms. It is in the province of the homoeopathic 

 physician to locate the center of disturbance, and then to select as the 

 remedy, by a process of elision from the many similars in the materia 

 medica, the one which most nearly coincides with the expression of the 

 disease or symptoms. When this process sometimes involves the most 

 experienced and skillful physician in a profound study of one, two, 

 and three hours and of re-examination as the expression changes, re- 

 quiring due weight to be given to each symptom, both relatively and 

 positively, and then to assume the grave responsibility of administer- 

 ing a single remedy and awaiting the result, it will be readily seen 

 that those who are faithful to the law, and able to administer it, will 

 be few. 



By operation of the will a strong man liberates from a nerve-center 

 of his brain nerve-energy which, acting along the motor nerves, liber- 

 ates in its turn sufficient muscular energy to fell an ox. Here the im- 

 material, the will, has produced a most powerful material result. Sup- 

 pose for a moment that the nerve-energy had been misdirected, as in 

 case of shock from mental causes, and had all been expended within 

 the man, who would answer for the result ? 



In the heroic struggle which Nature, unaided, makes against dis- 

 ease, the assistance from Art necessary to speed the cure may in a great 

 majority of cases be set down in decimals, as follows : 



Nature -999 



Art -001 



and it will be pretty safe to say that, whenever the proportion is 

 against Nature, there will be no cure. 



It is the Tooir which Art is called upon to throw into the scales 

 and make them equal. If she adds more, she destroys the balance. 



The atomic dose is adjusted to restore the balance. It is the in- 

 finitesimal fraction Nature needs to make the unit health. 



If you accept the germ-theory of disease, and attribute to the 

 atomic germs, floating impalpable in the air, or carried long distances 

 through the mails on highly calendered writing-paper, from mere con- 

 tact with the hands of diseased persons, the power of communicating 

 disease and completely overwhelming the vital power, causing death, 

 you can not logically deny to the atomic dose all aid to the vital 

 power in resisting and defeating the attack of the atomic germ of 

 disease simply because the dose is atomic. Nature, unaided, in a vast 

 number of cases, successfully resists those diseases which are attrib- 



