ALLOPATHY V. HOMOEOPATHY. 
443 
it must be remarked, that excessive doses of iodine com- 
monly produce, in the lower animals, intestinal irritation — a 
far more frequent and obvious symptom than irritation about 
the throat. Now, certainly, if iodine owed its occasional 
efficacy, in cases of thick wind, to any homoeopathic action, 
it should, according to all analogy, be a most valuable remedy 
for diarrhoea, colic, and enteritis. Yet no homoeopathist, so 
far as I am aware, employs it in these cases. But wherefore 
should some of the symptoms produced by a medicine be 
selected at random as those which lead to therapeutic results, 
while others are admittedly barren of all such results ? By 
what rule or principle do the initiated select some symptoms 
as pregnant with valuable curative effects, and reject others 
as devoid of efficacy ? When we find this blind empirical 
plan pursued, not only with iodine, but with all other medi- 
cines, are we not justified in concluding, even without any 
further proof that any similarity between the effects of the 
medicine and those of the disease is merely apparent or 
accidental, a mockery or a deception? In further discoursing 
of iodine, Mr. Haycock mentions, that it occasionally gives 
rise to hardening and enlargement of the liver, and this 
he triumphantly adduces for the purpose of controverting 
my statement, that iodine, while capable of removing 
glandular enlargements, (e does not cause anything at all 
analogous.” Now, this is very paltry; and, although with 
blind faith in homoeopathy it might serve to account for the 
value of iodine in a few diseases of the liver, it still fails to 
explain the beneficial operation of that drug in cutaneous, 
mammary, and other enlargements. 
Aconite is next noticed, at very considerable length, as 
satisfactorily illustrating the homoeopathic doctrines, and Mr. 
Haycock, in concluding this subject, says : — “ It produces 
symptoms such as we find to accompany acute fever, either 
idiopathic or inflammatory.” This statement, although sup- 
ported by very respectable testimony, is perfectly valueless as 
evidence in favour of homoeopathy. If it be the possession 
of these properties — the power to produce fever and inflamma- 
tion which renders aconite so valuable in inflammatory 
affections, we should find that turpentine, ammonia, alcohol 
and ether, with most mechanical irritants, and a host of other 
substances should be equally, if not more, valuable ; for these 
substances resemble aconite in producing fever, while they 
much excel it in their power of developing inflammation. It 
is surely most illogical to select a medicine for the cure of a 
disease on account of its producing certain effects, and to 
overlook entirely other medicines, which exhibit in more 
