THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 45 



THE KEMEDIES OF :N'ATUKE. 



Bt FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



THE ALCOHOL-HABIT {concluded). ' 



IL 



BUT, in tracing the causes which led to the present development of 

 the poison-vice, we should not overlook the working of another 

 principle which I must call a reaction against the effect of a wrong 

 remedy. We can not serve our cause by ignoring its weak points, 

 for, if we persist in closing our eyes to the significance of our mistakes, 

 our enemies will not fail to profit by our blindness. We can not work 

 in the dark. In order to reach our goal, we must see our way clear ; 

 and I trust that no earnest fellow-laborer will misconstrue my motive 

 if I dare to say the whole truth. 



The matter is this : At a time when the civilization of antiquity 

 had become extremely corrupt, a society of ethical reformers tried to 

 find the panacea for vice, as we now seek the remedy for intemperance. 

 But, instead of recognizing the local causes of the evil, they ascribed 

 it to the general perversity of the human heart. They, too, failed to 

 distinguish between natural appetites and morbid appetencies, and, 

 misled by the glaring consequences of perverted passions, they con- 

 ceived the unhappy idea that man's natural instincts are his natural 

 enemies. In order to crush a few baneful nightshades and poppy- 

 blossoms, they began a war of extermination against the flowers of 

 this earth. But that attempt led to an unexpected result : the soil of 

 the trampled fields engendered weeds that were far harder to destroy 

 than the noxious herbs of the old flower-garden. The would-be re- 

 formers had overlooked the fact that it is easier to pervert than to 

 suppress a natural instinct ; but the history of the last twelve hundred 

 years has illustrated that truth by many dreadful examples. The sup- 

 pression of rational freedom led to anarchy. Celibacy became the 

 mother of the ugliest vices. The attempt to suppress the pursuit of 

 natural science led to the pursuit of pseudo-science — astrology, necro- 

 mancy, and all sorts of dire chimeras. The suppression of harmless 

 pleasures has always fostered the penchant for vicious pleasures. The 

 austerity of the Stoics helped to propagate the doctrines of Epicurus ; 

 in Islam the era of the Hanbalite ascetics was followed by the riots of 

 the Bagdad caliphate ; and the open licentiousness of the English anti- 

 Puritans, as well as the secret excesses of their northern neighbors, can 

 be distinctly traced to the mistaken zeal of the party which had waged 

 a long and unrelenting war against every form of physical pleasure, 

 and hoped to find salvation in the suppression of all natural desires. 

 That doctrine has never become the permanent faith of any Aryan 

 nation, though now and then it has reached a local ascendency which 



