158 FLORA HOMM@OPATHICA, 
reach the point of attenuation sufficient to produce a complete 
cure, without acting so strongly as to retard it. 
«2. A very small dose of China acts but for a very short 
time, scarcely more than two hours; but the powerful doses . 
commonly given, act for whole weeks, unless vomiting or 
diarrhea relieve the system. By this we may judge how far 
the ordinary practice is* justifiable of prescribing immense 
doses of Quinine, often repeated several times in the day. 
“3. If the homeopathic law be true, and its truth cannot 
be denied, since it is founded in Nature itself,—if medicines 
can only cure such diseases as are composed of symptoms 
analogous to those they excite in a healthy person,—we shall 
find, by studying the symptoms produced by Quinine, that it 
really pertains to but few cases, and also, that its exceedingly 
powerful action often enables a single small dose to effect an 
almost miraculous cure. 
“ By cure, I understand re-establishment of health, not im- 
paired by any consecutive complaints. Do medical men attach 
to this word any other sense unknown to me? For instance, 
do they say that an intermittent fever is cured, when it has been 
suppressed by Quinine, in a case not analogous to it? 
“TI know that all maladies of a regular type, and almost all 
intermittents, even those to which China is not analogous, are 
suppressed and silenced by the over-mastering influence of this 
medicine, in immense and often-repeated doses. But are the 
unfortunate patients by this means really restored to health? 
Has not the remedy, by not sympathising with the existing 
disease, merely transformed it into another (though it does not 
return by distinct and regular fits), more continued and less 
apparent? ‘True, the patient can no longer complain that his 
paroxysms recur at fixed intervals; but observe the long train 
of sufferings, bodily and mental, caused by the remedy, to 
which death itself, in some instances, were a blessing. 
“Is this health? I confess it is not an intermittent fever, 
but no one can affirm that it is really health. It is another dis- 
