MR. HAYCOCK ON HOMOEOPATHY. 
327 
Glancing over Mr. Haycock’s book, I have further been 
much struck with the great number of medicines of a totally 
dissimilar action used for the treatment of one disease. The 
“best remedies” for chronic cough amount to thirty-two, 
those for tetanus to fourteen, and those for glanders to nine- 
teen. Homoeopathic medicines must assuredly be of little 
avail when so many are requisite for the cure of one disease ; 
for it is a notorious fact, that the employment of a large 
number of medicines for the cure of any particular malady is 
an invariable evidence of inefficiency in all the medicines 
used. With some of Mr. Haycock’s cures I have been much 
amused. As to rupture of the stomach, he says, “if the 
matter is doubtful, the proper remedies are— aconite, nux 
vomica, arsenicum, bryonia, and others of a like nature,’’ p. 
226. This is almost of a piece with Mr. Matthew’s capital 
account of a letter which was sent to an empiric in attesta- 
tion of an infallible specific, and which ran thus : — “ Sir, I was 
cut in two in a saw-pit, and cured by one bottle.— Yours, &c.” 
There is one part of Homoeopathy which has been frequently 
held up to well-merited ridicule as utterly inconsistent with 
truth and common sense, namely, the doses . Tincture of 
aconite, bryonia, belladonna, sulphur, and other drugs, are 
given by Mr. Haycock to horses and cattle in doses of less 
than a drop or a grain, and confidently relied on for the cure 
of many serious diseases. (Haycock’s c Elements ’ passim.) 
But such doses, although many times multiplied, have no 
obvious influence on healthy animals. We can confidently 
assure Mr. Haycock that his practice would not lose one par- 
ticle of any success which may at present attend it, if, 
enforcing attention to diet and regimen, he would consent to 
set aside his “ diluted tinctures,” “ triturated medicines,” and 
other inane nothings entitled Homoeopathic drugs, and 
adopt the following practice of the Lamas of Tartary, as 
described by a French missionary, M. Hue. <( If the Lama 
doctor,” says that gentleman, “ happen not to have any 
medicine with him, he is by no means disconcerted ; he writes 
the names of the remedies upon little scraps of paper, moistens 
the papers with his saliva, and rolls them up into pills, which 
the patient tosses down with the same perfect confidence as 
though they were genuine medicaments. To swallow the 
name of a remedy, or the remedy itself, comes (say the 
Tartars) to precisely the same thing.” — Travels in Tartary , 
Thibet , Sfc. } National Library , p. 75. 
Although Mr. Haycock’s tenets are untenable, and many 
of the details of his practice unreasonable and nonsensical, 
still we doubt not that he will find many converts, and even 
