502 THE MOUNTAIN. 



periment of "doing nothing" in medicine, and discover it to 

 be abundantly successful and humane, are, of course, both 

 divine, and, although the results are "negative," yet is it "im- 

 possible to overestimate the consequences of such a life." 

 Hahnemann being the great zero in medical philosophy, plus 

 and minus must necessarily spring from his bosom. The 

 historic muse of science must chuckle vastly over this nut 

 for the sages to crack, and be rejoiced to find this only ab- 

 solutely pure spiritual intelligence of the ages, through 

 whom God's ray shines without smut or varnish, at last 

 saddling himself upon the meek and assinine formula, the 

 mournful skeleton of a theory of an infinite fountain of 

 all diseases, a ghastly " mother of dead dogs," incarnated 

 in three diabolical forms : syphilis, sycosis, and psora, 

 which last, being vernacularized, means common itch, or 

 Scotch fiddle. Unspeakably grand is this explanation and 

 solution of the whole multifarious world of diseases > at 

 the same time simple and sublime. This old-fashioned, 

 dirty, school-boy itch, is the great sin-fountain of seven- 

 eighths of all the diseases of man. Let us thank God 

 it was not the first of his eternal, all-embracing crotchets 

 that was selected as the last, and that each innocent tooth- 

 ache pang, or harmless scab, must necessarily come from 



that infamous French . . Beneficent itch, all hail ! a 



good mother art thou, and Pandora's box held thee almost 

 alone. And here the sinner, fallen in soul and broken in 

 body, is left with a gleam of hope and consolation inspir- 

 ing and unexpected. This itch, being the veritable origin 

 of evil, perhaps the ancient devil himself, has a magical 

 specific, a " similia similibus curantur," and hell is left full of 

 comfort and glory, for there disease cannot enter, as it is 

 destroyed in the egg by a divine specific, brimstone. 



Shade of Aureolus Philip Theophrastus Bombast de Ho- 

 henheim Paracelsus, with thine immortal " two hundred and 

 fourteen secrets," rise ! What now of the infinite Archimedes' 

 lever of all the world of diseases, the powder of the boar's 

 tusk taken in the act of , the irresistible virtue 



