320 



portion of strangulated intestine, or We know that we remove a 

 cause of extended disease when we remove a stone from the blad- 

 der, or amputate a diseased limb. These causes are unequivocal : 

 but in medicine, with a few admissible instances, the rest are for 

 the most part conjectural and assumed. At the same time, 

 it must be allowed that to keep in view the discovery of the cause 

 of a disease, is always an object worthy emulation, since the suc- 

 cess of our practice is never so certain as when, with adequate 

 means, it is directed to the removal of a known cause. 



32. When a remedy is employed without any view to the 

 removal of a cause, known or inferred, we must confess that it 

 operates by a latent causation, or by a process, with the agents of 

 which we are not acquainted. But although the cause is not 

 known, we may observe a remedy is curative which produces cer- 

 tain effects; and we infer a dependence of the cure upon such 

 effects: for example, we know that mercury will cure syphilis; 

 but observation has instructed us that mercury will not cure 

 syphilis unless it produce certain constitutional effects. We know 

 that disorders of the head or eyes may be cured by antimony; but 

 it is the business of observation to point out the terms upon which 

 antimony will cure these disorders. Their terms of cure, we 

 otherwise call dependences. In case of disease, in which there 

 is analogy of symptoms, we infer analogy of dependence; and 

 hence we employ the same remedies, upon the expectation of a 

 similar dependence of cure, in different diseases. Particular indi- 

 cations of treatment are founded upon precise analogies ; general 

 indications, upon analogies which are general, only because they 

 have a partial resemblance. 



33. Diseases have a general resemblance in this respect, viz. 

 that if they re not maintained by the material occasional causes 

 (which are those we aspire to remove) they are maintained by 

 assimilation: this is a general point of agreement in the nature of 

 disease. The corresponding general agreement in the operation 

 of remedies is, that the present assimilating state must be inter- 

 rupted before health is restored. Many agents must inevitably 

 agree in this effect; and we are.therefore furnished with a general 

 indication of cure, upon which we might presume, in the absence 

 of a particular one. The agents which agree in this effect are 

 numerous, we employ them upon analogy; and this analogy also 

 way be general or particular: general, as we find that most reme- 

 dies which produce sensible effects will influence the condition of 

 disease; particular, as when it has been ascertained that some 

 remedies will influence the condition of disease, and that others 

 will not. In the treatment of diseases upon a general principle, 

 or in all cases in which the operation of remedies is not to remove 

 known causes, the result of the modification they produce in the 

 state of disease is dependent upon the relations of constituent 

 properties of the spirit, under the artificial state produced by 

 remedies, and it is to the chances of these relations that w* 



