376 HEALTH. 



it leads to a knowledge of drugs infinitely special and diversified 

 compared with the science that preceded it. 



The number of superstitions also that Hahnemann slew, entitles 

 him to the gratitude of all those who dislike to be frightened by- 

 unreal shapes which a strong man can walk through. He made 

 the true experiment of doing relatively nothing in medicine (p. 369), 

 and found that it was abundantly successful and humane. Purga- 

 tives were one nasty superstition which he banished. Bleeding was 

 another of these vampires. Long before we met with homoeopathy, 

 we wondered why we bled our patients in inflammations, according 

 to the common practice, when yet the attack struck in a moment, 

 and there was no more blood in the body after than before it oc- 

 curred ; and we thought that it was but a wrong distribution which 

 caused this rapid assault upon life, and not a plethora of blood ; and 

 that skill would lie, not in butchering the disease, but in restoring 

 the harmony which was lost. We had seen some of our best be- 

 loved friends sacrificed to the murderous lancet, and our's was the 

 hand which let out their life — though under the legalizing sanction 

 of the most accredited physicians. Would that we could recall the 

 dead; but they sleep well! Who has not had similar experiences? 

 And who, in the long run, will not reproach himself, if he does not 

 accede in an inquiring spirit to the New Medicine, which has availed 

 to exorcise this host of killing superstitions? 



Among the other benefits of homoeopathy, we reckon this also — 

 that it tends to make us think more worthily of our bodies. I defy 

 any man to be a physiologist who is in the habit of bleeding, purg- 

 ing, and poisoning the human frame. The body abhors him, and 

 dies rather than tell him its secrets. What idea can a man have of 

 life, if he is accustomed to take blood, which is the soul's house, in 

 pint basins from the frame ; and to think that he is doing nothing 

 extraordinary? What notion of living cause and effect can any one 

 entertain, if he deems that such an abstraction of our essences can 

 ever be recovered from so long as we are on this side the grave ? 

 What imagination can be felt of the music of man, by one who or- 

 ders purgative pills pro re nata to play upon our intestine strings, 

 in the delusion that their operation is temporary, and confined to 

 the first effects. I see in the whole physiological science the large 



