438 Observations on Organic Chemistry 



With the same easy credulity, people of this sort firmly believe that an 

 individual suffering from diabetes emits more water as urine than he par- 

 takes of through the mouth. They, indeed, weigh the water which the 

 patient drinks, but they take no account of the water in the milk par- 

 taken of (94 per cent.)i in the bread (24 per cent.), in the meat (70 per 

 cent.) Being either without the ability or the will to establish or 

 refute the statement advanced, they assume it at once to be an indisput- 

 able truth. 



If the public would take the trouble to test these marvellous stories 

 (a task no one seems willing to undertake), it would soon be discover- 

 ed that the evidence for them is precisely on a par with, and equally 

 entitled to credit, as the certificates of the efficacy of incomparable oils 

 for the cure of baldness, of bear's grease^ of vegetable pills, &c. On 

 inquiry, it would be found that the bald heads, the ladies of quality who 

 vouch for the marvellous cures, have just departed this life, or set out 

 upon a journey, — they are never seen. 



It is such people as these who believe the impregnation of the ovum 

 without contact with the seminal principle not only possible but posi- 

 tively certain, and who bring forward, in proof of this assertion, in- 

 stances which there cannot possibly be any opportunity of testing. 



In criminal law, upon a charge of manslaughter or murder, the judge 

 pronounces judgment only after the fact is well-established, — first, the 

 corpus delicti, than the accusation, then the sentence, but these gentle- 

 men care nothing about the establishment of the fact. If any rare 

 morbid state, any reputed effect of a remedy, any pathological pheno- 

 menon, with which they are unacquainted, falls into the hands of this 

 class of persons, all their egotism is aroused, truth is altogether disre- 

 garded. An imaginary criminal, as the cause, is created, whom they 

 subject to the torture and the rack. Old women, fools, and children of 

 all countries, are dragged forth to supply evidence, and the groans and 

 sighs of the suspected innocent are interpreted as confessions in proof 

 of their predetermined decision. Analogy is, with these people, con- 

 verted into the bed of Procrustes, they stretch or cut off the limbs of 

 facts and arguments, unscrupulously, and at their own sovereign plea- 

 sure. 



In instances where a medical author advances such strange and ima- 

 ginary opinions, the public seems to show an indulgence and kind 

 forbearance which certainly is never exhibited towards writers upon 

 other sciences. Too many established practitioners care less for the 



t Original— lion's grease, which our German friends employ instead of bear's grease, but 

 with equal effect ! ! 



