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COLOCYNTHIS. 217 
this diminution, without taking away the properties of the 
medicinal agent, will reduce its strength so as effectually to 
prevent its doing injury, while it allows it to be used success- 
fully. This is, in short, the natural and simple corrective of 
all medicines endowed with such powerful properties. It is 
evident that if a pint of alcohol, drank off at once, can kill a 
man, it is not from any inherent poisonous quality, but from 
the too great strength of the dose, and that two drops of alcohol 
would be incapable of hurting the man. It is also clear that if 
one drop of concentrated sulphuric acid would instantly burn and» 
corrode that part of the tongue on which it fell, it would merely 
be a mildly acidulated liquor, when mixed with a sufficient 
quantity of water. 
“This is the only way to discover the inestimable value, 
hitherto unknown, of those powerful (heroic) medicines called 
poisons, in cases which are the most difficult to treat, and to 
obtain their effects, whether in acute or chronic affections. No 
schools of medicine have hitherto succeeded in this, because 
their silly and childish method of softening powerful substances, 
and rendering them applicable for use failed, and they were 
obliged to give up the use of the most effective and salutary 
medicines. 
“Guided by the morbid symptoms induced in persons in 
health, I have succeeded in producing the most happy cures by 
Colocynth, giving as a dose only a small part of a drop of the 
octillionth or decillionth dilution of the above tincture. 
«To limit myself to a single example, colics of the severest 
kind are often quickly cured, according to symptoms, when at 
the same time the other morbid conditions were in some degree 
analogous to the symptoms of Colocynth.” 
Cuinicat Onservations.—Noack and Trinks(1.c.): According 
to Professor Martin, Colocynth promotes the secretion of mucus 
considerably, but not permanently. It acts similarly to spiritu- 
ous substances. Its primary effects upon the organism are so 
powerful, that the disturbances which it produces in it are suc- 
