168 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



sand fingers are pricked thus every autumn -without one 

 such ' sinistre^ beiag the residt ? The morbific matter, 

 where mischief has resulted, is not inoculated, but lies 

 •within. Fortunately for this, as for other fish-woimds, 

 there have always been a hundred ready nostrums at 

 hand (each infaUible in its way), prescribed by ignorance . 

 and adopted by the credulous as equally safe and certain, 

 so that the only difficulty which presented itself to the 

 fortunate patient arose from his ' embarras des richesses ' 

 in the selection of the speediest cui-e. We have no in- 

 tention of making patients of our readers by inflicting 

 any of these nostrums upon them, but there is a passage 

 in Eondolet on the subject of fish-wounds generally, 

 which is so distinctly homoeopathic, and declaratory of 

 that false fundamental aphorism, ' Similia similibus cu- 

 rantur,' on which it founds its pretensions, that Rondo- 

 let and not Hahnemann seems really entitled, quantum 

 valeat, to the equivocal honour of first mangling the 

 iatric art, and of reducing both physic and pharmacy to 

 a farce ! The passage printed below dates nearly two 

 centuries back ; all that time the homoeopathic egg was 

 incubating, which burst its shell some thirty years ago 

 in Germany, and is now a well-grown goose in fuU fea- 

 ther, naturalized everywhere, the cackling pet of fashion, 

 foppery, and folly ; extremely easy to pull to pieces and 

 pluck, but soon recovering its lost plumage and anserine 

 strut, and likely, from the known vitality of the bird, 

 and the fostering care it meets with, at home especially, 

 to attain to patriarchal longevity.* A singular misuse 



* Principio miUiim est venenatum animal quod Teneni sui an- 

 tipharmacam non contineat, cum enim partes diversse sint, diverso 

 quoque temperamento inter se adversari necesse est ; deinde du- 

 plex antipliarmaci genus esse comperio, antvpathiam, et similitu- 

 dinem substantiis ; ut tepar venenatorum auimalium vulneri im- 

 positum similitudine substantia venenum retraliit, maximeqne 

 confert ea parte qui fel continetur. Carnes vero impositEe idem 



