ies 



366 REVIFWS — DR. LANKESTER S LECTURES. 



whilst fully sensible of the dangers and various abuses attending the- 

 use of alcoholic drinks, is not prepared to go with them to the extent 

 of entirely coademuing all employment of them ; but even regards 

 their very limited consumption as bene icial. He is decided, and 

 somewhat vehement in his condemnation of Homojopathy when it 

 incidentally fails in his way in speaking of the varying effects on the 

 system of different quantities of the same substance : — 



" Such, then," he says, " is the connection between food, medicine, and poison, 

 that all our food may be made medicinal and all our medicines become poisons. 



" I need not remind you how such a view as this lays the axe at the root of 

 all pretensions to cure disease by remedies that can exert no influence on the 

 system. If you are eating or drinking, and men tell you they are curing your 

 diseases with infinitesimal doses, don't believe them. Your food is exercising a 

 far more powerful effect on your system than their remedies. The only remedies 

 that can be rationally employed as medicines are those ■which act as food on thi 

 system. If they are capable of increasing or decreasing the vital actions 

 your bodies, then they may or may not do you good, according to the skT 

 with which they are administered ; but away with the folly and imposture that 

 would lead you to believe that the natural actions of your bodies are influenced 

 by agents whose existence cannot be detected by the senses. I know nothing 

 more degrading in the intellectual history of the past, with its witchcraft, 

 charms, amulets, royal touches, and holy waters, than the belief of certain 

 portions of the medical profession and the public in the abracadabra of ' similia 

 similibus curantur,' and the efficacy of infinitesimal doses. You must excuse 

 these expressions, I speak strongly because I feel warmly. I am ever ready to 

 make allowance for the opinions and practice of my medical brethren. The 

 rational treatment of disease involves problems of the highest perplexity, in- 

 endeavouring to understand which, two minds, equally anxious to reach the 

 truth, may yet arrive at diSerent conclusions. But such conclusions, arrived 

 at by the painful road in which truth ever leads her votaries, are very different 

 from the ready-made hypothesis which is adopted to get rid of the difficulties 

 of inquiry, and which is acted on regardless of the sacrifice of human life, so 

 long as the selfish object for which it was adopted is attained." 



Nor is he very gentle in his treatment (and perhaps their case needs 

 some wholesome severity) of certain eccentric reformers who would, 

 in their zeal for simplicity of food, persuade us to abandon all spice 

 and condiments as something pernicious, and deserving the condemna- 

 tion of those who would regulate their appetites by reason. Speaking 

 of the extensive consumption of ginger in Great Britain, he adds the 

 reflection : — 



" What folly and madness, what waste and injury, must come of this con- 

 sumption of condiments and spices, if certain of our philanthropic wiseacres 



