210 Medicine: 



minoids, alkaloids, aromatic and biliary substances. 

 Thinking on the many risks of self-poisoning and 

 on the exact chemical agency requisite to coun- 

 teract each of them scientifically, it seems a lawful 

 conclusion that more medical good will be done 

 for the most part by simple and general measures 

 to keep the body in health and strength than, 

 according to Voltaire's witty sneer, by pouring 

 drugs of which we know little into a body of 

 which we know less. 



Besides the subtile chemical poisons of physio- 

 logical disorder, medicine has now to tackle the 

 special toxins generated by the various hostile 

 microbes and the far-reaching damage which 

 they do — so far-reaching sometimes as to have 

 no end but the end of the life which they end. 

 The syphilitic virus, whether microbic or not, is 

 the proclaimed cause of tabes dorsalis and general 

 paralysis. Years after his specific infection and 

 its supposed cure a man is attacked by the Hash- 

 ing pains portending a tabetic degeneration of his 

 spinal cord, or exhibits the inflated feelings and 

 ideas preceding the cerebral devastation of 

 general paralysis, both diseases going down 

 thenceforth to their fatal endings. Strange to 

 think that one kind of microbe can be the latent 

 cause of the variety of symptoms, having regard 

 to their differences in different cases, the elective 

 affinities for particular organs, and the long 

 suspensions of activity during which it must lie 

 dormant, only to awaken from time to time to 



