ON COUNTER-IRRITATION 113 



of irritation to a distant part, or distant parts, of its area, 

 is a truth patent to every observer, and now generally 

 acknowledged, and therefore, capable of being taken advan- 

 tage of in dictating the line of treatment in certain diseased 

 conditions, the origin of which is due to the existence of 

 a removable irritant cause or stimulus. Hence we think 

 we are consequently further warranted in concluding that 

 the long since empirically established conclusion, that the 

 application of a counter-irritant to a free and easily reach- 

 able or accessible surface or peripheral area, can determine, 

 by the attraction of its superior and overmastering, albeit 

 artificially induced nervine influence and persistence, the 

 removal of naturally induced irritation to the scene of an 

 artificially produced irritation, and, therefore, by counter- 

 irritation, in which the latter must act on the former by the 

 exercise of a preponderating and neutralising influence 

 through the prevailing vital principle of ubi stimulus ibi 

 flux us, as regulating the circulation, or movement, of 

 both vital energy and matter. Thus the use of the term 

 counter-irritation is a defensible, as well as a most happy 

 and intelligible, one, and one, nevertheless, which can 

 claim a scientific permit, or authority, by reason of its 

 completely a propos applicability to the circumstances and 

 occurrences involved ; moreover, the warrant for its 

 therapeutic use is based on the fact that it is used by nature 

 in carrying out many of the curative processes adopted 

 by the vis medicatrix in removing pathological conditions 

 and maintaining the even balance of health it may be 

 said, with equal truth, in both the bodies corporate and 

 politic. 



Who that has observed his own sub-conscious ways of 

 feeling and realising sensory irritations, from the faintest 

 degree of psora to the most intense degree of neuralgia, 

 and of neutralising, or abating, their importunity and 

 provocativeness by sub-conscious or reflex means? and 

 who that has witnessed and analysed the apparently aim- 

 less and mostly reflex movements of the suffering infant, 

 but has been struck with the manifold ways in which 

 nature has endowed the sub- and un-conscious neuro- 

 muscular agencies to meet such oft-recurring nervine 

 troubles ? Thus the sensory inconvenience or irritation 



