VISEASES OF THE EYE. 5a 
mercurials.’ The confident belief in their power of causing ab- 
sorption of lymph, by operating on the blood, is not only opposed 
to sound theory, but, like blood-letting, is not supported by ex 
perience, which has been so confidently appealed to in their favor. 
I can not, ther2fore, resist the conclusion that the principles which 
led t) an antiphlogistic practice in inflammation were erroneous, 
and a:e no longer in harmony with the existing state of pathology. 
1 think it has been further shown, that in recent times our success 
in treatment has been great just in proportion as we have aban- 
doned ‘heroic remedies,’ and directed our attention to furthering 
the natural progress of the disease. 
Internal inflammations are cured, not by bleeding and drugs, 
but by a natural process as distinct and definite as the process of 
normal nutrition. What we may do by our interference, may 
either aid, promote, and even accelerate, this natural tendency to 
get well, or it may very seriously impair and retard, and even 
altogether stop, that salutary process. If, then, this view of the 
nature of the means by which inflammation is resolved in internal 
organs be correct, it is not unreasonable to assume that a very de- 
pressed state of vital power is unfavorable tu the healing process, 
Indeed, if you watch those cases in which nothing at all has 
been done, or in which nothing has been done to lower the vital 
powers, you will find that the mere inflammatory process itself, 
especially in an organ so important as the lung, depresses the 
strength of the patient each day more and more. You will per- 
veive, then, that, according to these views, there are strong @ priort 
reasons in favor of the policy of upholding our patients, even in 
the earliest stages of acute diseases, by such food as may be best 
suited to their digestive organs, such as is most readily assimi- 
lated, and calls for the least effort, the smallest expenditure of 
vital force for its primary digestion—nutritive matters, tea, 
sweetened milk, etc., and also alcohol, which is directly absorbed 
and tends to keep up the heat of the body. 
If, then, it has been satisfactorily shown, in consequence of our 
@lvanced knowledge of diagnosis and pathology, that an anti- 
phlogistic practice is opposed to the cure of diseases, it follows that 
many of the principles which have hitherto guided us in their 
treatment must be considerably modified. That medical practice 
has undergone a great revolution during the last fifteen years, ia 
a fact already so well established that it can be no longer denied 
