ON THERAPEUTICS. 
133 
The second object of tonic treatment is to support the 
system under the ravages of malignant diseases. 
In typhus, glanders, farcy, blain, cancer, and necraemia, 
the blood becomes charged with effete materials, which, 
although excreted in large quantities from various surfaces, 
are not removed quickly enough to prevent their injurious 
effects upon the body of the animal suffering from any one of 
these diseases. 
Therapeutic treatment should include the employment of 
agents capable of neutralizing the poisonous principles, in 
addition to the use of means calculated to improve the general 
tone ; but, up to the present time, chemistry has failed to 
enlighten us as to the nature of those animal products. 
The science of medicine, therefore, can only offer an ener¬ 
getic opposition to their effects by endeavouring to preserve 
the vital energies until the morbid particles are all ex¬ 
creted. 
In pursuance of this the only attainable object, those 
tomes possessing most powerful properties are preferred, and 
are commonly given in large doses, under the impression that 
no time can be afforded for the development of less active 
effects. 
Such a line of argument would be unassailable were it 
demonstrable that large doses and powerful agents produced 
the effects sought more rapidly than small doses or milder 
medicines. 
Experience, however, opposes this conclusion by facts of 
an opposite tendency. 
Excessive doses we have already objected to on the ground 
of the disturbance they occasion, leading to loss of appetite ; 
but small doses, even of the most potent agents, are digested 
without difficulty, and consequently without any derange¬ 
ment of the digestive functions. 
In the treatment of the diseases we are considering, mineral 
and vegetable tonics are usually conjoined and given in the 
food, which is at all times the most' consistent and convenient 
medium. Among the therapeutics available in these malig¬ 
nant diseases, the salts of copper, iron, barium, and arsenic, 
are very efficacious in combination with gentian and ginger. 
Cantharides and capsicum have also proved beneficial, and, 
in all'probability, the practitioner who employs the largest 
number of agents judiciously will be most successful. A 
change of medicine is often as important as a change of diet. 
Our own predilections are in favour of iodine com pounds. The 
action of an antiseptic seems particularly necessary in diseases 
attended with so large a secretion of effete matter, and as 
