4 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



can quell "undue pain. But we can not continue to supply medi- 

 cines that will take the place of proper living. The man who 

 neglects his own health, and expects the medical profession to 

 make up for his negligence, is somewhat like a person careless of 

 fire in his own house because there happens to he an efficient fire 

 department in town. The flames sometimes get extinguished if 

 the alarm is sounded in time. We can assist Nature in her 

 endeavor to cast out morbid products by various therapeutical 

 expedients. We can remove some of the exciting causes of dis- 

 ease, or else take the patient beyond their reach. We can place 

 him under the most favorable circumstances for Nature to do her 

 work, and at critical moments stimulate the flagging powers and 

 thus bridge over a yawning gulf. We can palliate many of the 

 distressing symptoms of disease, but we can not atone for all the 

 outrageous infringements of Nature's inexorable laws by dosing 

 with drugs, and, moreover, it is not likely that we shall ever be 

 able to do so. 



It is possible that we are upon the threshold of a new era in 

 the treatment of infectious and miasmatic diseases, in which new 

 reasons will be found for the survival of old remedies, and many 

 useful additions will be made to our pharmacopoeia. The wonder- 

 ful discoveries of Pasteur in France and of Koch in Germany, 

 and the splendid achievements of the former in his applications 

 of them, seem very fruitful of promise. But, notwithstanding all 

 this, it is much safer to be cautious about mad dogs than to run 

 any undue risks because Pasteur has evolved a means of lessening 

 the terrors of rabies. 



And now, in conclusion, I would venture to claim that the 

 answer to my three questions at the beginning of this paper is 

 found in the fact that there is a natural cycle to many diseases 

 wherein there is a tendency toward recovery that, to be sure, is 

 favored or retarded by a multitude of circumstances, but which 

 often takes place irrespective of medication. And this fact is the 

 substratum of all those differences of opinion that are continually 

 arising among superficial observers ; is a reason for the survival 

 of many absurd therapeutical theories ; is the explanation of the 

 existence of the vagaries of faith and of mind-cures ; and, what is 

 perhaps the most lamentable of all, makes it possible for the de- 

 signing to trade upon the credulity of the public with their oft- 

 times harmful nostrums. 



Besoabtes supposed, in 1668, that the displacement of the rocks and the ele- 

 vations of the surface might he caused by the earth's contraction. Newton ex- 

 pressed a similar thought in 1681, in a letter respecting Dr. Burnet's "Sacred 

 Theory of the Earth," hut was careful to add to his hypothesis, "I have not set 

 down anything I have well considered, or will undertake to defend." 



