CORRESPONDENCE, 1867-70. 379 



that ' Popium endormit ' by the maxim ' parcequ'il a un vertu 1868. 

 soporifique.' From whom do yon get your quotation marks ? 

 Not from Moliere. Yon know the original at the end of the 



Malade Imaginaire : 



Mihi a docto doctore. 



Domandatur causam et rationem quare 



Opium facit dormire. 



A quoi respondeo 



Quia est in eo 



Virtus dormitiva, 



Cujus est natura 



Sensus assoupire. 



I never read this exquisite satire without wishing for a 

 Moliere to expose the school of thinkers of our day who invert 

 the process ; and having settled that opium has not and cannot 

 have a virtus dormitiva, will deny the sleep, or else declare that 

 it is only a coincidence. Eighteen years' experience has told me 

 that infinitesimal doses, so called, meet my symptoms as well as 

 the finite doses of the eighteen years preceding ; bnt the docti 

 doctores assure me that it cannot be, because there cannot be a 

 virtus curativa in doses so small. I think the Schoolmen were 

 the more rational of the two. 



I cannot understand how you liken the virtus dormitiva to a 

 case of the * scholastic doctrine of occult causes.' In fact, I have 

 never been able to arrive at such causes in the Schoolmen. I 

 know that these offenders are charged in our day, and since the 

 time of Bacon, with upholding certain things called occult causes, 

 but I cannot find any. Virtutes occultce and occult qualities I find 

 enough of. The following is my account of the matter. 



The class of inquirers who cultivated magic, a large part of 

 which was mysterious physics, npheld the existence of many 

 qualities which do not show on the surface of things, and cannot 

 be inferred from the sensible qualities. Many of these were 

 fictions and many were truths. The sources of these things were 

 hidden in a sense in which they presumed more common 

 qualities were not. Thus Cornelius Agrippa (De Occulta PTiilo- 

 sophia) says that though heat in the stomach digests food, yet 

 the external heat from fire, for instance, will not do it. Accord- 

 ingly the stomach has a virtus qucedam occulta, quam ignoramus. 

 As the dead stomach will not do, we say it is an effect of vital 

 force, and laugh at the Schoolmen for their hidden cause. 



