520 THE MOUNTAIN. 



under the teeth of Time. Until which consummation shall 

 arrive, let those feudal towers stand, like infernal gallows, 

 from which hang the bones of malefactors that rattle in 

 the winds of the ages, more loathsome to heaven than 

 that spectacle of horror of " the shaggy demon of the wil- 

 derness," the Tartar Khan's pyramid of ten thousand human 

 skulls. 



Inspecting this dismal catalogue of nostrum-makers who 

 are a poisonous mixture of quack and felon, and wander- 

 ing through the disastrous dance of this chaos of medical 

 systems and theories of healing, what is the wretched vic- 

 tim of the maladies of the body, who seeks relief for his 

 sufferings from the interference and assistance of the skill 

 of man, to believe ? especially what is he TO DO ? Is 

 this array of doctors all a mournful army of Sangrados, a 

 party of "knights of the rueful countenance," on fantas- 

 tic errands, and victims of Quixotic hallucinations; mournful 

 ravens croaking delusive make-believes over the sick man's 

 couch ? Is poor, sick, and sorrow-stricken humanity thus 

 ever to be deluded and made the sport of a mocking and 

 wicked fate, wretchedly victimized by a villainous order 

 of infatuations and deceits terminating only in the despair 

 and torments of death ? Is the proverbial uncertainty of 

 all medicine an inevitable conclusion from a critical survey of 

 the different fields of its operations, and the analysis of its 

 scriptures, canonical and uncanonical ? A synopsis of even 

 the most fantastic "ism," with a nett result of man's endea- 

 vors in this sphere, would be a desirable achievement. What 

 can the common sense of the hour fix as the absolute result, 

 the clean, scientific sediment from the boiling pots of each 

 of these portentous systems, prominent in the day in which 

 we live ? First of the fashionable quackery of the German 

 mystic Hahnemann, what do we know as real substance ? 

 what as most absolute shadow ? 



The doctrine of " similia similibus curantur" puts in re- 

 quisition the protective and conservative sanitary instinct 

 of the organism called " vis medicatrix naturae," the essential 



