mœopathy may be defined as a specious a strict course of life, including exercise, mode of doing nothing. While it waits on temperance, regular hours, and a diet in the the natural progress of disease and the re- main simple and wholesome, though somestorative tendency of nature on the one what fanciful in its exclusions. The same hand, or the injurious advance of disease on was done, so far as was proper, in the prethe other, it supplies the craving for activity, vious practice of all judicious physicians. on the part of the patient and his friends, The use of cold bathing is not new, having by the formal and regular administration of been employed as a hygienic process from nominal medicine. Although homeopathy time immemorial by the civilized world. will, at some future time, be classed with As a therapeutic agent, cold affusion was historical delusions, yet its tendency has resorted to more than half a century ago, undoubtedly been to undermine the reliance and has been practised ever since in a on heroic practice which prevailed in former greater or less degree. But the peculiar times, both in this country and in Europe. mode of applying water by packing appears There was, perhaps, needed a popular delu- to be original with Priessnitz, an ignorant sion to institute the experiment on a suffi- German, to whom it owes its popularity. ciently large scale, to show that the sick may Like the Russian bath, in which alternate recover without the use of troublesome and approaches to scalding and freezing are said severe medication. There are not wanting to be followed at last by very delightful senin history similar instances of good results sations, the hydropathic discipline, in those flowing from questionable sources. The who have soundness of constitution sufficient French Revolution has eventually bettered to insure a healthy re-action, is followed by the social condition of the French people; agreeable and often salubrious results. Yet and the Mormons have brought the wilder- the ineffective character of hydropathy is ness of the Salt Lake to a state of productive cultivation. Yet no judicious person vindicates the doctrines of those who were prime movers in these innovations, or holds them up as worthy examples for imitation. Sir Kenelm Digby produced a beneficial re-rence; and it is well-known, that Priessnitz, form in English surgery, and was able to banish the prevalent mode of dressing incised wounds with painful applications, by speciously going from the effect to the cause, and applying the active medicament, not to the wound, but to the weapon that did the mischief; thus giving to the former a chance to heal by the first intention.

seen in the multitude of disappointed invalids who return unrelieved from its establishments. I have been told, by persons who have resided at Graefenberg, that funerals at that place were of constant occur

himself a robust peasant, died in the prime of life, in the midst of his own water-cure.

The greatest benefit at hydropathic establishments is obtained by those who reform their mode of life by submitting to the restraints of the place. The luxurious, the indolent, the sedentary, and the erratic, improve most under a return to regular, natural, active, and temperate habits. Accordingly it is found, that gout, dyspepsia, lost appetite, hysteria, and the various forms of nervous irritability, furnish the most hopeful subjects for such institutions. The same patients might, in many cases, obtain the same relief in another place, by pursuing the water-cure without the water.

There is great reason to believe, that, at the present day, homeopathic faith is not always kept up in its original purity by its professors. Traces of the occasional use of very heroic remedies are often detected among the most unsuspected of its practitioners. And it must not be concealed, that there are instances in which the temptation is very great, even for the most reso- The universality of hydropathic applicalute convert, to come to the aid of the sick tion has been somewhat diminished by prowith reasonable and efficient doses of real longed experience. Priessnitz himself, almedicine. The man must be somewhat of though ignorant of science, and incapable a stoic who can look upon a case of severe of distinguishing one disease from another, colic, or of the multiform distresses which at last became cautious in his selections, and result from overtasked organs of digestion, nominally excluded diseases of the lungs and quiet his conscience with administering from his institution. inappreciable globules, instead of remedies.

4. THE EXCLUSIVE METHOD. This, It is not necessary to dwell upon the valike the heroic system, is various in its rious exclusive modes of practice, more or means of treatment, but differs from it in less universal in their application, with the professed universality of its peculiar which the columns of newspapers are daily applications. Hydropathy applies one rem-filled. Mineral waters, taken at the founedy, cold water, to all cases. Yet, like ho- tain, are often of great use to those who mœopathy, it combines with its special agent require a journey or a change of scene.

the threshold of their respective structures. Medical assumption may well feel humbled by the most insignificant diseases of the human body. Take, for example, a common furunculus or boil. No physician can, by any internal treatment, produce it where it does not exist. No physician can, by any science, explain it, and say why it came on one limb, and not upon another. No physician can, by any art, cure it after it has arrived at a certain height. No physician can, by any art, delay or retain it after it has passed the climax assigned to it by nature. is equally true of common pneumonia, of And what is true in regard to a boil typhoid fever, of acute rheumatism, of cholera, and many other diseases.

Particular springs also appear to exeft a sciences mankind have made no greater adbeneficial effect on particular maladies, vances than ourselves, and are still upon though not panaceas for all ills. Wateringplaces, which combine amusement with exercise, are the temporary safety-valves of over-taxed physicians, and happily afford arks of refuge to multitudes of chronic valetudinarians. Electricity supports one or more establishments in all large cities, both in its simple form, and combined with all other imponderable agencies of mind and matter. Few persons go uncured of chronic maladies without having given it a sufficient and satisfactory trial. Finally, the host of empirical remedies which fill the attention of a very considerable portion of this quackridden world, leave no human maladies out of the catalogue of subjects to their mysterious power. The drug aloes, in its hundred pill combinations, levies incessant contributions on those who purchase the privilege of being slaves to its use. Opium, variously disguised with aromatics to conceal its presence, gives temporary but fallacious respite to fatal diseases, under the deceptive names of pectorals and pulmonics. It is superfluous to prolong the consideration of general and exclusive remedies. No person accustomed to witness the various morbid conditions which invade and occupy the human frame, active and passive, partial and general, trivial and dangerous, can ever consider them proper subjects for the same kind of treatment; unless, with Dr. Rush and Dr. Brandreth, he happens to be a believer in the unity of disease.

5. THE RATIONAL METHOD. If no alternative were left to the physician and patient but the extreme and frequently irrational methods which have now been briefly described, practical medicine might well take its rank as a pseudo-science by the side of astrology and spiritualism. But the labors of earnest and philanthropic men, during many centuries, though often speculative, misguided, and terminating in error, have nevertheless elicited enough of general truth to serve as the foundation for a stable superstructure. And, that such truth may hereafter go on to accumulate, it must be simply and honestly sought, even when its developments do not at once promote the apparent interest of physicians, nor flatter their professional pride of opinion.

It is to sincere and intelligent observers, and not to audacious charlatans, that we are to look as the ultimate lawgivers of medical science. Our present defect is, not that we know too little, but that we profess too much. We regard it as a sort of humiliation to acknowledge that we cannot always cure diseases; forgetting that in many other

the truth appears to be simply this: Certain In the present state of our knowledge, diseases, of which the number is not very great, are curable, or have their cure promoted, by drugs, and by appliances which are strictly medicinal. Certain other diseases, perhaps more numerous, are curable in like manner by means which are strictly regiminal, and consist in changes of place, occupation, diet, and habits of life. Another class of diseases are self-limited, and can neither be expelled from the body by artificial means, nor retained in the body after their natural period of duration has expired. Finally, a large class of diseases have proved incurable from the beginning of history to these the most favored members of the huthe present time, and under some one of man race must finally succumb; for even curable diseases become incurable when they have reached a certain stage, extent, or complication.

tioned cannot be strictly reduced under the It will be seen that the divisions last mennomenclature of nosologies; for cases, and groups of cases, may begin in one category and end in another.

intelligently the nature, degree, and tenIt is the part of rational medicine to study dency of each existing case, and afterwards to act, or to forbear acting, as the exigencies of such case may require. To do all this wisely and efficiently, the practitioner must possess, first, sufficient knowledge to sufficient sense, as well as knowledge, to diagnosticate the disease; and, secondly, make up a correct judgment on the course to be pursued. In the first of these, if properly educated and experienced, he will be able to make an approximation to the truth sufficient for practical purposes. In the second he will have to depend mainly on his well-ordered and logical powers of self

direction; for he will find, in the recorded scribe blindly for symptoms, irrespectively evidence of his predecessors, quite as much of their cause, is often in the highest degree to mislead as to guide him rightly. He will injudicious. The alvine discharges of dysfind many existing cases, in which for a time entery and typhoid fever are the natural he will know not what to do, and in which ventings of an inflamed, perhaps ulcerated, his safest course will be not to do he knows membrane: the pain and the excess may not what. It is better to resort to a little ex- be abated by the gentlest anodynes; but pectancy, than to rush into blind and reckless the attempt to check them altogether would action. Nature, when not encumbered with be like the drying up of an external ulcer, overwhelming burdens, and when not abused of equal dimensions, by the sudden applicaby unnatural and pernicious excesses, is, tion of astringents. The object might be after all, the kindest mother still." Art attained for a day, but the result would be may sometimes remove those burdens, and pernicious. Having already touched upon regulate those excesses; but it is not by im- this subject, I have only to add, that if many posing new burdens, and instituting new ex- of the troublesome appliances and severe cesses, that an end so desirable is to be at- exactions of modern practice were supertained. Before commencing any contem-seded by gentler, more soothing, and more plated course of treatment in a given case, two questions should always be asked: 1. Will it do good? 2. Will it do harm? A right answer to these questions will not fail to produce a light practice.

natural means, a good would be done to the human race comparable to the conversion of swords into ploughshares.

leviation or the removal of diseases; and he will recollect, that although nineteen out of every twenty of the new methods proposed may be worthless, yet the twentieth may perhaps possess some valuable quality. It is known that the most established laws of science cease to be such when their exceptions have been detected and made out. Some of the most important advances in human knowledge have been among the latest in date. The great American discovery of artificial anesthesia has been wished and waited for by mankind ever since the Flood; yet the effectual conquest of pain is, as it were, a thing of yesterday.

It is the part of rational medicine still to strive and study for the cure of diseases; It is the part of rational medicine to alle- not to assume fallaciously as practical truth viate the sufferings of the sick. And for what has never been shown to be true, but this end alone, were there no other, physi- rather to search and labor for new truth, cians would be necessary as a profession. for which it is never too late to hope. The For this end alone, any person knowingly rational physician will ever be ready to about to encounter the confinement of a self-weigh and examine, candidly and carefully, limited fever, or the lingering decay of a new practical questions and proposed modes cancer or consumption, would invoke the of treatment, whether introduced for the alguidance of a medical man whose judgment and skill were better than his own. The power of the medical art to palliate diseases is shown in a multitude of ways, active, cautious, and expectant. The pain of acute pleurisy is relieved by venesection; that of pleurodynia, by anodynes and external applications. The pain of acute rheumatism is postponed by opium; that of gout, by colchicum. Synovitis is favorably affected by rest; chronic rheumatism, more frequently by exercise. Demulcents, opiates, and even astringents, have their use in various irritations of the mucous membrance. Cathartics, laxatives, emetics, leeches, counter-irritants, cupping, hot and cold applications, It is the part of rational medicine to re&c., are of benefit in various local and gen- quire evidence for what it admits and beeral maladies. Yet these remedies, espe- lieves. The cumbrous fabric now called cially the more energetic of them, are often therapeutic science is, in a great measure, employed when not necessary, and become, built up on the imperfect testimony of credby their degree and frequency, rather sources ulous, hasty, prejudiced, or incompetent of annoyance than of relief. Violent ca- witnesses, such as have afforded authorities thartics are followed by increased constipa- for books like Murray's "Apparatus Medition, when milder laxatives or enemata would caminum," and Hahnemann's "Organon." not have induced that evil. Blisters, anti- The enormous polypharmacy of modern times monial ointments, salivations, &c., may con- is an excrescence on science unsupported tinue to afflict the patient long after the disease is gone. The effects of powerful depletion are felt for months, and sometimes for years. Excessive stimulation by vinous liquids may create or renew disease, or give rise to pernicious artificial wants. To pre

by any evidence of necessity or fitness; and of which the more complicated formulas are so arbitrary and useless, that, if by any chance they should be forgotten, not one in a hundred of them would ever be re-invented. And as to the chronicles of cure of

diseases that are not yet known to be cura-dence, self-approval, and success in proporble, they are written, not in the pages of philosophic observers, but in the tomes of compilers, the crudities of journalists, and the columns of advertisers.