228 ON THE VAGARIES OF MEDICINE. 



som was satirized for some of his remarks in the Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine, by setting his name to doggrel verse : 



" When patients comes to I, 

 I physics, bleeds, and sweats 'em, 

 Then, if they choose to die, 

 What's that to I ? (I Letts 'em.") 



Though a few men of real worth have been subject to uncalled-for 

 strictures, the profession may be safely said to have held its high posi- 

 tion throughout the most of its history. Lady Mary Montagu said- 

 " air, exercise, and company, are the best medicines, and physic and 

 retirement good for nothing but to break hearts and destroy constitu- 

 tions." And you all remember Macbeth's. contemptuous remark to 

 his physician :— 



" Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ; 

 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow^ ; 

 Raze out the "written troubles of the brain, 

 And with some sweet oblivious antidote, 

 Cleanse the stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff 

 Which weighs upon the heart ? 



Then — Throw physic to the dogs, TU none of it." 



There have been four great divisions, called the four pathse, which 

 have been charged upon the profession, but to which they plead not 

 guilty, though each has been acknowledged as having great merits in 

 the cure of diiferent complaints. The first is called the Antipa- 

 thia, and consists in employing medicines of an opposite effect to the 

 tendency of the disease, having for its motto — " contraria contraribus 

 opponenda," and in all cases giving purgatives for constipation, astrin- 

 gents for looseness, and opium for pain. Though this principle acts 

 correctly in many cases, the profession reject it as unsound, because 

 there are instances in which the opposite would be indicated. 



The next is called Allopathia, having for its principle the creating 

 another disease, counter to the one treated — their motto " Ubi irritatio 

 ibi fluxus ;" consequently their remedies were called counter-irritants 

 or blisters &c., or such as excited the action of an organ functionally 

 opposed to the diseased, as irritating the stomach to cure inflamation 

 of the throat'. By this theory is often produced the curative effect 

 of mercury, the discharge from the salivary glands serving to carry off 

 the over-wrought action of the liver. An interesting case is recorded 

 of an old-standing jaundice being cured in a few days by a suddenly 

 produced ptyalism, the discharge from the salivary glands being of a 



