194 THE ORIGIN OP CREATION. 



of the circulation, owing to the blood being vitiated. To bleedy 

 iu such cases, may for the moment relieve by reducing the 

 quantity, but certainly can never alter the quality or condition 

 of the blood. The dogma that every fever must run its course 

 of so many days, and that its various changes and stages should 

 be watched and named, is a most absurd and dangerous one ; 

 for, admitted that the fever is caused by vitiated blood, the 

 common sense treatment would obviously be to chemically change- 

 its condition, and to induce a free and full circulation of the 

 blood throughout the body : not to wait till symptoms of some 

 particular type of fever or other disease be developed, and the 

 whole bodily system is reduced and paralyzed. Or worse 

 still, ere symptoms are fully developed, to guess at the disease 

 and prescribe a strong medicine, which, if the surmise should 

 be wrong, may probably prove to be the worst drug the patient 

 could have taken. 



Suppose two men are in a room with a fever patient, and 

 both are attacked by the fever, but one man .recovers in a 

 few days while the other has the fever for weeks ; it will 

 then be commonly said that the one who recovered did not 

 have the fever at all. Is it not more likely thet the constitu- 

 tion or condition of the one was able to resist, or counteract the 

 influence of the disease, and thus throw it off sooner, while the 

 other wanted assistance from a physician, but the proper means 

 were not used. It is only reasonable to suppose, that if a strong 

 healthy man is able naturally or voluntarily to throw off a fever, 

 a weak man with proper assistance and medicine .ought to be 

 able to do so too. 



It is not our province, in a work of this kind, to enter into 

 a detailed system of medical treatment, for such a proceeding* 



