370 HEALTH. 



watching, and the application of a few obvious means mostly sug- 

 gested by the patient's feelings, than where a large apparatus of 

 drugs has been employed. Nevertheless, in every social state, the 

 physician, in some form or other, is indispensable, whether he be 

 called priest, magician, friend, mother, or by whatever name that 

 has authority over our mind and matter. 



But after all there is great necessity to do nothing relatively to 

 what has been done ; for we have been on a wrong track, and must 

 change it ; and by a common law of our nature, the new will seem 

 nothing to the old, so long as the old has new eyes to see it. 

 Buried, as the existing medicine is, among fuming acids, sharp 

 stimuli, chemicals and caustics, it cannot believe in the power of 

 gentleness, or the first smallness of good causes. Widely extended 

 though it be, we must pass it by ; but not without the recognition, 

 that it is the chaotic mother of children fairer than itself, and on 

 their account deserves to be respected. But now that these have 

 come, it only keeps them out of their fortunes by lingering too long 

 above ground, and cumbering the earth with its age and infirmities. 



The first considerable child which it has born,, is that science 

 which Hahnemann delivered — we mean Homceopathy, or the 

 treatment of "likes by likes," which was a legitimate fruit of the 

 previous drug medication. For in the whole, the idea of medicine 

 itself is homoeopathic ; it does not give health-producing agents to 

 engender health, but poisons which would issue in disease : it is, 

 therefore, the general application of the law, by which like is to be 

 cured by like. It is in the particulars that medicine does not re- 

 cognize the application of the Hahnemannian formula ; and thence, 

 whenever it comes into details, it is in contradiction with its own 

 idea. It is homoeopathic in theory, and allopathic in application — 

 a house divided against itself. And in the matter of doses, it is 

 subject to the like remarks ; for no one gives physic in the same 

 quantities as food, but a few grains of calomel, or a few fractions of 

 a grain of arsenic, are considered sufficient even by " heroic prac- 

 titioners" of the old school. Why is this, but that there is a 

 working in these poisons, which takes them out of the category of 

 the ordinary materials which we put into our mouths? And if a 

 grain will produce results upon a man of fourteen stone weight, 



