ALLOPATHIC TREATMENT. 115 



preventing its organization, and promoting its removal 

 by absorption. Much, of course, will depend upon the 

 patient himself: he must, with a fixed determination 

 and stoical bravery, RESIST, " once for all," the fascina- 

 tions of his daily dram ; he must place implicit 

 confidence in his doctor, and carry out with religious 

 exactitude his medical, dietetic, and hygienic rules. 

 But when that treacherous element the fibrine has 

 been thrown out, and when it has become organized 

 and becomes a part and parcel of the living body, 

 incapable of removal, and is already by its puckering 

 and contracting causing impediment to the natural flow 

 of the portal blood, and materially impeding the 

 natural secretion of bile, then the curative i power 

 of drugs will avail him not ; the medical treatment 

 henceforth can only be palliative. It therefore becomes 

 of the greatest possible importance that the disease be, 

 if possible, detected in its very earliest stage, in order 

 to counteract such grave and irremediable effects. But, 

 as we have clearly seen, this is not without serious 1 diffi- 

 culties, as the symptoms then are but few and often ob- 

 scure, and it is only by considering the previous habits of 

 the patient that we are led to see-in them the early tokens 

 of an organic, and but too often intractable disease. In 

 the person of a regular spirit-drinker, who has a coated 

 tongue, loathes his food, has nausea, with occasional 

 rejection of his meals ; and who complains of slight 

 fever, with pain and tenderness in the region of the 

 liver, such a case, it " need hardly be said," should com- 

 mand the immediate attention and the most judicious 

 and skilful treatment of the physician. 



ALLOPATH ic ALLY. At the commencement of the 



