70 BOEDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE 



ment on all decisions of the lower medical tribunals, 

 and which requires more than one generation for its 

 final verdict. 



Once change the habit of mind so long prevalent 

 among practitioners of medicine ; once let it be every- 

 where understood that the presumption is in favor of 

 food, and hot of ahen substances, of innocuous, and not 

 of unwholesome food, for the sick ; that this presump- 

 tion requires very strong evidence in each particular 

 case to overcome it ; but that, when such evidence is 

 afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food 

 should be given boldly, in sufficient quantities, in the 

 same spirit as that with which the surgeon lifts his 

 knife against a patient, — that is, with the same reluc- 

 tance and the same determination, — and I tliink we 

 shall have and hear much less of charlatanism in and 

 out of the profession. The disgrace of medicine has 

 been that colossal system of self-deception, in obedience 

 to which mines have been emptied of their cankering 

 minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its 

 noxious growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their 

 impm'ities, the poison-bags of reptiles drained of their 

 venom, and all the inconceivable abominations thus 

 obtained thrust down the throats of human beings 

 suffering from some fault of organization, nourishment, 

 or vital stimulation. 



Much as we have gained, we have not yet thor- 

 oughly shaken off the notion that poison is the natural 



