THE MHORR GAZELLE. 



One of the most remarkable features which has 

 characterised the advance of modern therapeutics 

 (the application of drugs in disease) has been the 

 gradual abandonment of substances derived from 

 the animal kingdom, whilst remedies obtained from 

 plants — digitalis and strophanthus, strychnine and 

 belladonna, lobelia and colchicum — are daily em- 

 ployed throughout the globe. The animal world 

 is now hardly represented by any internal medica- 

 ments at all, unless one include the various antitoxic 

 serums used in combating diphtheria, plague, and 

 tetanus : these, however, are not taken by the 

 mouth, but are introduced under the skin. 



In ancient times, however, matters were far 

 different, many animal substances being long 

 employed, though now discarded as useless. 

 Castoreum, hyraceum, ambergris, and many other 

 drugs now abandoned were once in high favour : 

 and marvellous cures have been reported after the 

 use of agents which were (to say the least of it) 

 extraordinary ; whether the cures resulted on the 

 post hoc ox propter hoc principle is a matter for very 

 free speculation. Rondeletius recounts how a 

 tench applied to the feet of a sick man caused a 

 marvellous recovery: the sudden application of 



