^ISCULAPIUS. 521 



curative efforts of tissues and organs ; and by diluting into 

 annihilation and nothingness its famous similia, it leaves 

 said healing plus-forces to battle unobstructed with the ills of 

 the organization. Falling back into a "masterly inactivity," 

 the absurd ultimatum of the expectant method, the sublime 

 of the system of "laissez-faire," or let alone, it hands the 

 patient into the motherly care of Nature. In short, it in- 

 culcates the wholesome, though not very pleasant doctrine 

 to the sinner, that Nature is really a forgiving and kind mo- 

 ther, but that she requires penitence and perfect virtue, to 

 restore him to health, and that diet, temperance, self- 

 denial, and nothing (except faith) are terrible agencies in 

 curing disease, and have a power almost infinite over the 

 body and the soul to save them both ; that in the reliance 

 of homeopathy upon its inconceivable abstractions beyond 

 the reach of reason, or mathematics in its efforts to meta- 

 morphose matter into spirit by infinite dilutions, tritura- 

 tions, and mechanical comminutions, it may thus become 

 a spiritual and dynamic agent among diseases which it 

 asserts are spiritual and dynamic entities which must be 

 vanquished by powers of the same order; and withal, 

 constantly producing an array of alleged "post hoes" which 

 it can in no conceivable manner demonstrate to be " propter 

 hoes," but which can be clearly shown to be the result 

 of the action of known laws of organic life, it is clear that 

 it trusts veritably and absolutely to nothing. The sys- 

 tem has value as a rebuke and pronuncimento against the 

 arrogance and self-sufficiency of the Old School, with its un- 

 faltering faith in drugs, and has real significance as a criti- 

 cism upon the regular routine art, with its fossilizing pharma- 

 copoeias, its elaborate prescriptions, peck-measure pill-boxes, 

 and enormous dosing of nauseous medicines. It has also 

 value as a demonstration of the influence of mind over 

 matter, imagination over the body, or man upon man spir- 

 itually. By singing its song of incomprehensible abstrac- 

 tions, and reiterating its earnest promises of healing, the 

 patient is flung into the arms of an all-cherishing Nature, 



44* 



