60 BOKDEE LINES OF KNOWLEDGE 



with tlie lives of their fellow-citizens. " On examining 

 the file of prescriptions at the hospital, I discovered 

 that they were rudely written, and indicated a treat- 

 ment, as they consisted chiefly of tartar emetic, ipe- 

 cacuanha, and epsom salts, hardly favorable to the cure 

 of the prevailing diarrhoea and dysenteries." * In a 

 report of a poisoning case now on trial, where we are 

 told that arsenic enough was found in the stomach to 

 produce death in twenty-four hours, the patient is said 

 to have been treated by arsenic, phosphorus, bryonia, 

 aconite, nux vomica, and muriatic acid, — by a prac- 

 titioner of what school may be imagined. 



The traditional idea of always poisoning out disease, 

 as we smoke out vermin, is now seeking its last refuge 

 behind the wooden cannon and painted port-holes of 

 that unblushing system of false scientific pretences 

 which I do not care to name in a discourse addressed 

 to an audience devoted to the study of the laws of 

 nature in the light of the laws of evidence. It is ex- 

 traordinary to observe that the system which, by its 

 reducing medicine to a name and a farce, has accus- 

 tomed all who have sense enough to see throuo;h its 

 thin artifices to the idea that diseases get well with- 

 out being " cured," should now be the main support 

 of the tottering poison-cure doctrine. It has unques- 

 tionably helped to teach wise people that nature heals 

 most diseases without help from pharmaceutic art, but 



* United States Sanitary Commission, Document No. 25. Report on a 

 Regiment near Washington, dated July 9th, 1861. 



