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A
FAIR   EXPOSITION
OF
LL
OR
     THE PATHOLOGICAL SYSTEM  OF  MEDICINE,

                          with its

        KINDRED SYSTEMS AND BRANCHES,

                             BY
                               V
                ALVA  CURTIS, M. D

Founder of the First Physio-Medical College in the World
  viz : The Botanioo-Medical College of Ohio ; for Fourteen
  years President of its  Board of Directors, and its Profes-
  sor of  the Institutes  and Practice of Medicine;  Author
  of "A Synopsis of Lectures on Medical Science,"of "Lec-
  tures on Obstetrics," and for  Fourteen Years Editor of
  the B. M. or Physio-Medical Recorder.
 " Medicine is an incoherent assemblage of incoherent ideas, and is, perhaps, of all the
ehvsiological Sciences, that which best shows the caprice of the human mind. What did e
pay? It is not a Science for a methodical mind.  It is a shapeless assemblage of inaccurat,
sdeas, of observations often puerile, of deceptive remedies, and of formulae as fantastically
ionceived as they are tediously arranged."—Bichafs General Anatomy,vol. \,pagi 17.
 "Absurdity, contradiction and falsehood."—Chapman's Therapeutic's,vol. 1, page 47.

  'Ineffectual speculation."—Bigalow, Aanual Address 1835.
 •* Learned quackery."—Waterlwuse, letter to Mitchell.

The Science of guessing." " The art of conjecturing."—AbtTcromhi* Intel. Pew. p. 293.

v„,
V
£| 647 ^
      CINCINNATI.
Printed for the author, by Campmxl & Miller
             1860. 
I? SO
Copy Right secured, in the Southern District of Ohio, according to Law. 
PREFACE.
  The object of a preface is to give some account of, or rea-
sons for, the production thatfollows, orthe author's motivesfor
its publication.  Ever since the true science of medicine was
shadowed forth, by Dr. Samuel Thomson and other pioneers
of reform, a constant crusade has been kept up against it by
interested men, in the  hope of rendering  its doctrines and
practices ridiculous and unpopular, and thus preventing that
thorough regeneration  of  this noble science, which  would
greatly mitigate our sufferings, prolong our lives and multi-
ply our pleasures.  I say, by interested men, those who, hav-
ing studied long  and carefully the various systems of error,
and found them honorable and  profitable in practice, and
have  been therefore unwilling to acknowledge their errors
and the worthlessness of their labors, to give them  up for
truth; and to perform more labor for less profit, for the cause
of science and humanity.
  Many friends of reform, and practitioners and  teachers
of medicine, have done what they could to develope its prin-
ciples and illustrate its  practice; but  no one has yet attemp-
ted to furnish a full and safe defense of it, against the attacks
of its enemies—especially has no one ventured to branch out
from  his own fortress of defense, and attack the enemy on
the high seas of his own  crazy craft, and  to drive him into
the whirlpools and the certain  destruction into  which he
would gladly persuade  us that we are most rapidly tending.
Yet such a work is very much needed, and, though very con-
scious that his talents, his time and his circumstances all fall
short  of the magnitude and importance of the undertaking,
the author has resolved to do what he can, in  this hitherto
little  cultivated field;   in the  hope that it  will  be useful to
philanthropists of every character, grade  and condition  in
life, till something better shall  come forth to take its place. 
IV
PREFACE.
  It is well known that the author has had a very large ex-
perience in the work of defending the cause of truth, science
and humanity, and developing the true principles of medical
science.  And he hopes to be better able to fulfil any expec-
tations that may arise in other  minds from this knowledge,
than to satisfy himself that he has done all that he might have
done under more favorable circumstances.
  The subjects to be discussed are the following:—
  1st. Medicine as it is in the fashionable schools.
  2d. Medicine as  it should be.
  3d. The contrast between them.
  4th.  The answer to the questions, what is science and what
is quackery, and where may each be found.
  He will  occupy  as much space in treating on these  sub-
jects, as his time and circumstances may  admit, and his judg-
ment may deem advisable, in consideration of what has been
done and what is still needed. 
INTRODUCTION.
   T o a powerful and well disciplined mind, thoroughly acquainted
with the truths and facts of the case, it is both painful and disheart-
ening, to perceive how extensively a few comparatively obscure men
of moderate talent and little  information or less discrimination and
candor, have succeeded in persuading a large majority of the talen-
ted, intelligent and refined of the community, even of the professions
of Religion and Law; of the Statesmen, Philosophers, Philanthro-
pists and men of every trade  or occupation, and even thousands of
their own profession, to believe that the allopathic system of medi-
cine, is  based on the solid principles of science, and that its practice
is worthy  of the dignified title of an  art,  when, in fact, there  can
scarcely be found, in the whole  ranks of  the profession, in  ancient
or in modern times, a single  man distinguished for his talents, his
education, his accurate discrimination, his candor, honor and human-
ity, who has sincerely believed its doctrines, or placed any confidence
in its practices.  On the contrary, the most of them have publicly
denounced its leading doctrines, as a system of "absurdity, contradic-
tion and falsehood," and its practices as " horrid, unwarrantable, mur-
derous quackery."—Professor N. Chapman.
  Did the doctrines of allopathy  work only the profit of the deceiv-
ers, we might, to some extent,°excuse it; but, when it is demonstra-
ted, that the practice daily and hourly works out the life long ruin of
the poor, frail, mortal bodies of thousands  and tens of thousands of
our citizens, causing them to " drag out a few years of miserable ex-
istence  in extreme debility and emaciation, with stiff incurvated limbs,
a totalloss  of teeth and appetite," " a loathing to themselves and a
disgusting spectacle to those around them;" while, with  its millions of
victims  of  premature destruction, it peoples,  yearly,  the  dark  and
silent regions of the dead, our sorrow and chagrin at  the deception
are turned  into deep  lamentation, disgust and abhorence; and we are
constrained to exclaim—" By what unaccountable perversity of our
nature"  is it that we can be so wicked as thus to deceive, others, or so
blind and  stupid  as to be  deceived, in  such a  manner, to  our
own or their destruction! 
  6                      INTRODUCTION.

   Another of the  strangest phenomena which the operations of the
 universe present to the  contemplation of admiring  man, is  the  fact
 lhat truth and love, or Science and Benevolence, though the bright-
 est angels that ever left the throne of God, on an errand of mercy to
 poor, ignorant and  selfish man ; have ever, as a general rule, met the
 strongest opposition and the most ungrateful treatment, from the very
 persons whom they have so generously endeavored to enlighten, tore-
 fine and to bless.   Such  angels are the truths that have  heralded true
 medical reform, and such have been  the opposition, slander and abuse
 they have experienced.   Yet I hope that none will be startled at the
 assertion I now make, that nothing is easier than to prove, by the most
 abundant  and appropriate testimony, by the most indubitable facts,
 logical deductions  and tabular results, that this allopathic system is
 the  most erroneous,  absurd, dangerous and  destructive system  of
 quackery, and its practice the most wicked as well as the most spe-
 cious humbug, that the world has ever known; and that the very
 attempt to convince us that its principles constitute a solid science, or
 its practices a noble art, is an impudent insult to  our understandings,
 or morals, as it supposes us either ignoramuses, simpletons or knaves.
   To demonstrate  these propositions, will be the object of so  many
 pages of this work, as I may deem  necessary or desirable.
   The subject will be systematically and scientifically  treated under
 the following heads :—
 Chapter.  1.  Proof that Allopathy is not a Science.
           2.  Proof that its practice is not an Art.
           3.  Proof that its fundamental doctrines  are false.
           4.  Proof that its particular practices are injurious.
           5.  The character and tendency of its principles.
           6.  The character and tendency  of its remedies.
           7.  What is true Science?
           8.  What is quackery?
           9.  Where may each be found.
   This  part of the Cyclopedia, will be neatly printed on fine paper,
 stitched and covered, and  will contain about  200  pages, and be sent
 to subscribers by  mail.   Price  $1  in advance.   Every sixth copy
 awarded to postmasters and others, who send us five  dollars, post free
or paid, with the names and offices to which we shall direct them. 
EXPOSITION,  #c
                         CHAPTER I.

         General Denunciations of Medicine as a Science.

   Dr. J. Abercrombie, Fellow of the Royal Society of England, of
the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburg, and first Physician to
his Majesty in Scotland, says:—
   1. "There has been much difference of opinion among philosophers,
in regard to the place which medicine is entitled to hold among the
physical sciences; for, while one has maintained that it  'rests upon
an eternal basis, and has within it the power of rising to perfection,'
another has  distinctly asserted that ' almost the only  resource of
msdicine is the art of conjecturing.'"—Intel. Pow., p. 293.
   Dr. John Eberle, Professor successively in Philadelphia,  New
York, Cincinnati and Lexington, Ky.; says, of the fashionable theo-
ries of medicine:—
   t. " The judicious and unprejudiced physician will neither condemn
nor adopt  unreservedly any  of the leading doctrines advanced in
modern times."—Pref. to Prac, page 1.
   That is, not a tyro, mark it, but  "the judicious and unprejudiced
physician," the man who is best instructed in them, and the most cap-
able of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, even  such a man
is not certain whethe'r, not  a  few  wild notions of some idle theorist,
but " the leading doctrines," the fundamental principles of modern
medicine, are right or wrong!   Shade of Dr. Eberle! you surely will
not haunt me for trying to determine this unsettled question \
   The  "New York  Medical Enquirer" commenced  in  January
 1830, the name of which was  changed, in July following to the Amer-
ican Lancet, published in the  city of New York, and conducted by an
association of Physicians and Surgeons."  Vol. 1. No. 1. Advertise..
ment, says:—
   3.  "Ifwetakea retrospective view of the science of Medicine with
 its alterations and improvementn the last two c nturies, the medical
annals of this period will present us with a series  of learned disserta-
tions  by  authors whose names alone are now   remembered, while
their  writings, under  the specious term improvement, have left  us
only  the deplorable consolation  of knowing  that their  works  have
heaped  system  upon system,  precept upon  precept,  error  upon
error, each in turn yielding to  its follower.   Year after  year produces
a new advocate for a new theory of disease, each condemning its pre
■"ecessor, and each alike to be condemned by its successor. 
8
EXPOSITION.
   " Happy had  it been for the world, if the medical systems which
have been obtruded upon it, were only chargeable with inutility, ab-
surdity and falsehood.   But alas! they have often misled the  under-
standing, perverted the judgment, and given  rise to the most danger-
ous and fatal errors in practice.—A short view of the history of physic
will convince us of this melancholy truth.
   " We wish a more rational mode adopted for the promotion of med-
ical knowledge, than hair-brained theories and doubtful facts.   Obser-
vation, practice  and  experience, in the  administration of medicine,
with its effects on the system, may take the lead of scholastic learning
and hard names.  We must have facts instead of opinions, reasons
instead of theory, knowledge instead of titles  and certificates.
   The following is the declaration of Bichat, one of the greatest of
French Pathologists:—
   4. " Medicine is an incoherent assemblage  of incoherent ideas, and
is, perhaps, of all the physiological Sciences, that  which  best shows
the caprice of the human mind.  What did I say?  It is not a Science
for a methodical mind.  It is a shapeless assemblage of inaccurate
ideas, of observations often puerile, of deceptive remedies, and  of for-
mulae as fantastically conceived as they are  tediously arranged."—
Bichat. General  Anatomy, vol. 1,  page 17.
   "Dr. L. M. Whiting, in a Dissertation at an annual  commence-
ment in Pittsfield, Mass., said:—
   5. " The very  principles upon which most of what are called the the-
ories involving medical questions, have been  based, were never estab-
lished.   They are  and always were false, and consequently, the su-
perstructures built upon them were as  'the baseless fabric of a vision'
—transient in their existence—passing away upon the introduction of
new doctrines and hypotheses, like the dew before the morning sun."
—B. M. & S. Journal., vol. 14, page 183.
   "Speculation has been the garb in which medicine has been array-
ed, from that remote period when it  was rocked in the cradle of its
infancy, by the  Egyptian  priesthood, down to the present day; its
texture varying, to be  sure, according to the power and skill  of  the
manufacturer, from the delicate, fine-spun, gossamer-like web of Dar-
win, to the more gross, uneven and unwieldly fabric of  Hunter; its
hue also changing by being dipped in  different dyes as often as it has
become soiled by time and exposure.   And what has been the conse-
quence?  System after system has arisen, flourished, fallen and been
forgotten, in rapid  and  melancholy succession, until the whole field
is strewed with the  disjointed materials in perfect choas—and, amongst
the rubbish,  the  philosophic mind  may search for ages, without being
able to glean from it hardly one solitary well established fact.
   "Ifthis is a true statement of the  case, (and let him  who  doubts
take up the history of medicine;) if that enormous mass of matter
which has been, time out of mind accumulating, and which has been
christened Medical Science, is, in fact, nothing but  hypothesis piled
on hypothesis; who is there among us that would not exult in seeing
it swept iway at  once by the bosom of destruction?"—lb. page  187-8. 
exposition.
9
    5.  Professor Jacob Bigelow, of the Medical department of Harvard
  University, says :—
    "Medicine in^regard to some of its professed and important objects
  [the cure of diseasel is still an ineffectual speculation."—Annual ad-
  dress before the Massachusetts Medical Society, 1835.
    6.  Dr. Rush, in his lectures in the University of Pa. says :—
    " I am insensibly led to make an apology for the instability of the
  theories and practices of physic.  Those physicians generally become
  the most eminent, who soonest emancipate themselves from the tyran
  ny of the schools of physic.  Our want of success is owing to the fol-
  lowing causes: 1st. our ignorance of the disease.   2d. Our ignorance
  of a suitable remedy."—Page 79.
    7. Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Institutes and  Practice of Physic
 'n the University of Pennsylvania, remarks :—
    " Consulting the records of our Science, we cannot help being dis"
  gusted with the multitude of hypotheses obtruded upon  us at different
 times.  No where is  the  imagination displayed to  greater extent;
 and, perhaps so  ample an exhibition of human invention might  grat-
 ify our vanity, if it were not more than counterbalanced by the hu-
 miliating view of so much absurdity, contradiction and  falsehood.'"—
 Therapeutics,  vol. 1, page 47.
    "To harmonize the contrarieties of medical doctrines, is, indeed a
 task as impracticable as to arrange the fleeting vapors  around us, or
 to reconcile the fixed  and repulsive antipathies  of nature."—lb.,
 page 23.
    8. Dr. Gregory, of London, in*his Practice, page 31, says :—
    "All the vagaries of Medical Theory, like the absurdities once ad-
 vanced to explain the nature of gravitation, from Hippocrates to Brous-
 sais, have been believed to be sufficient to explain the phenomena,
 [of disease,! yet they have all proved unsatisfactory.
   " The Science of medicine has  been cultivated more  than  two
 thousand years.  The most devoted industry and the greatest talents
 have been exercised upon it; and, though there have been great im-
 provements, and there is much to be remembered, yet  upon  no  sub-
 ject have the wild spirit and the eccentric dispositions of the imagina-
 tion been more  widely displayed.   *  *  Men of extensive fame,
 glory in  pretending to see deeper into  the recesses of  nature  than
 nature herself ever  intended; they invent  hypotheses, they build  the-
 ories and distort facts to suit their serial  creations.   The celebrity of
 many of the most prominent characters of the last century, will, ere
 long, be discovered only in the libraries of the curious, and recollec-
 ted only by the learned,"—Page 29.
   1 must here add  that Dr. Gregory's statements respecting medical
theories, are endorsed by his American editors,  Professor Potter, of
the University of Maryland, and S. Calhoun, M. D., Professor in  Jef-
ferson  Medical College, Pennsylvania. They are therefore sanction-
ed bv the famous school of Baltimore, which disputes with the Penn-
sylvawian, for the honor of being ranked thefirst in the United States. 
10
exposition.
   9.  Professor Jackson, of the University  of Pennsylvania, tells
us, in the preface to his "Principles of Medicine," page 1, that—
   " The discovery of new facts, has shed a light which has changed
the whole aspect of Medical Science, and the works which have served
as  guides, are impaired in importance and value; they lead  astray
from the direction in which the Science progresses, and new ones are
demanded, to supply the position in which they become faulty.
   " The want of a treatise on the Practice of Medicine, in the room
of those usually placed in the  hands of students and young practi-
tioners, had long been felt."   *  *  "At first I contemplated merely
a practical book, compiled in the usual manner, founded on the  expe-
rience of preceding writers, compared with, and corrected and exten-
ded by my own.   I had made a  considerable progress in this method,
when I was arrested by the conviction that it was  essentially defec-
tive ;  that it did not meet the spirit of the age ; that it did not answer
the purposes of a rational instruction ; that it did not supply the defi-
ciency I had felt to exist in the commencement of my profession ;
that it had been followed in a servile  spirit, from the remotest eras of
the Science, and is, most probably, the cause that, after so long a pe-
riod after its cultivation, its practice  still continues of uncertain and
doubtful application."
   He therefore strikes out an entirely new path, and writes a  large
book which is no sooner out of the press than Dr. J. V. C. Smith, of
the Boston Medical and Surgical  Journal, pounces upon it with a sever-
ity almost equal to that of Dr. Pattison upon Broussais.   So they go-
   10. Menzel, in his specimens of Foreign Lit. andJScience, says:—
   " The  Science of Medicine enjoys an   immeasurable literature,
which, unhappily has not yet been able to  be  collected into  a Bible.
It  numbers creeds and sects  enough ;  and,  as Theological parties
finally come together in faith, Medical parties unite  at the most in un-
belief."—Menzel's  German Literature, vol. II, page 223.
  " The history of Medicine, which has been most thoroughly writ-
ten by Court Sprengel, furnishes a melancholy proof how much the
human race have been always groping about in error, upon one of the
most important subjects to them.  We need but compare ihe systems
of the most celebrated and best known physicians, to discover, every
where, contradictions of the grossest  kind.  What one derives from
the fluids another explains from the solids; what one wants to  cure
with heat, another  does  with cold; where an  opposite is recommen-
ded by one, a remedy similar to the [cause of the} disease, is recom-
mended  by another.   If one wants to cure the body by the mind,
another wants to cure the mind  by the body.
  " But, if it is asked how all these strangely, contradictory systems
could have come into being, the answer is almost always to  be found
in  the prevailing fashion of the times, which,  originally  had nothing
whatever to do with medicine."—lb. page 226.
  Thus,—"The age of vapors, of coquetish fainting fits, interesting
paleness and the like,"—" was the golden age of the doctors and
apothecaries, and mankind were obliged to let blood after Stahl; to 
exposition.
11
vomit after Hoffman; to purge after Kam pf; and exhaust deep alem-
bics after prescriptions  a jard long, full of -every stench of the old
world  and the new, in order to go  back again  finally to Helmont's
theory, that  the real seat  of disease was the stomach disordered by
 g'ctoring."—lb- page 230-281.  See the whole article.
   11.  Medicine is still in its infancy, M. Louis, see Paine's Commen-
tary, page 331,2.
   " Men  have for ages devoted themselves to therapeutics,  and the
 Science is still in its infancy "—" Physicians scarcely agree except
on points which are admitted without any examination,  or  as estab-
lished by long usage which has nothing to recommend it but time."
—" The reader will be astonished,  undoubtedly, that, in the nineteenth
century, authority could have been invoked in a Science of observa-
tion, without remarking that what  we call experience,  even now, is
nothing but authority!  "—" In fact, to what authorities do those most
celebrated for the wisdom of their precepts, refer, unless it  be to the
practice  of their  predecessors?"—"If the experience so justly scorn-
ed by Quesnay, is an uncertain guide in practice, it is because it pos-
sesses nothing of true experience ; but the reverse ; because it is, in
truth, only the common usage,  not justified by rigor;ous observation."
—" The pretended experience of authors is worth nothing, and, after
all their assertions and denials, we are no further advanced than be-
fore ; the experience to which  he refers, is evidently tradition,  cus-
tom, common  belief,—an  almost  worthless thing,—a compound  of
vague recollections."
   C. Hering, in his  Introduction to Hahneman's Organon,  says:—
   " Innumerable  opinions of the nature and cure of diseases, have
successively been promulgated; each [author] distinguishing his own
Theory by the title of System, though directly at variance with every
other, and inconsistent with itself.   Each of these refined productions
dazzled the reader at first with  its unintelligible  display of  wisdom,
and attached to the system-builder crowds of adherents, echoing his
unnatural sophistry ; but, from which none of them  could derive any
improvement in the art of healing, until a new system, frequently  in
direct opposition  to the former, appeared, supplanting it, and, for a
season acquiring celebrity.  Yet none were in harmony  with nature
for experience,—mere  theories  spread out of a  refined imagination,
from apparent consequences, which, on account  of their subtility and
contradictions, were practically  inapplicable at the bed side of the pa-
tient, and fitted only for idle disputation.
   " By the side of these theories,  but  unreconciled with them all, a
mode of cure was contrived, with  medicinal substances of unknown
quality compounded together, applied to diseases  arbitrarily classified,
and  arranged in reference to their materiality, called  Allopathic.—
The pernicious results of such a practice, at variance with nature and
experience,  may be easily imagined."—Page 25, 26.
   12. This author is one of the most distinguished disciples of Hah-
nemann, and advocates  of Homoeopathy, and yet  he says, page 17.
   " For myself I  am generally considered as a disciple and adherent
of Hahnemann, and I do indeed  declare, that I am one amongst the 
12
exposition.
most enthusiastic in doing homage to his greatness, but nevertheless
[ declare also, that, since my first acquaintance with Homoeopathy (in
1821,) I have never accepted a single theory in the Organon, as it is
there promulgated.  I feel no aversion to acknowledge this, even to
the venerable sage himself."
  13. D'Alembert.—" The following apologue." says D'Alembert,
"made by a physician, a man of wit and philosophy, represents very
well the state of that science."   ' Nature  is fighting with disease; a
blind  man armed with  a club, that is, a  physician, comes to settle
the difference.  He first tries to make peace.  When he cannot ac-
complish this,  he  lifts his club and strikes at random.   If he strikes
the disease, he kills the  disease; if  he strikes nature, he kills na-
ture.' "  "An eminent physician," says the same writer, "renouncing
a practice which he had exercised for thirty years, said, ' I am weary
of guessing.'"—Abercrombie, Intel. Pow., page 293.
  Dr. Abercrombie says:—
  " The uncertainty of medicine, which is thus a theme for the phil-
osopher and the humorist, is deeply felt by the practical physician in
the daily exercise of his art."—Intel.  Pow., page 293.
  14. Dr. James Graham, the celebrated  Medico-Electrician of Lon-
don, says of Medicine:—
  " It hath been very rich in theory,  but poor,  very poor in the prac-
tical application of it.   Indeed, the tinsel glitter of fine spun theory,
of favorite hypothesis, which prevails wherever medicine hath been
taught, so dazzles, flatters, and charms human vanity  and folly, that,
so far from contributing to the certain and speedy cure of diseases, it
hath,  in every age, proved the bane and disgrace of the healing art."
—Graham's Electric remedies, page 15.
  The following is the testimony of Dr's Brown and Donaldson, who
were educated in Edinburg, Scotland, then called the Medical Athens
of the world, a school to which physicians from every  country lately
went  to finish their education :—
   15. Dr. Brown, who studied under the famous Dr. Wm. Cullen, of
Edinburg, lived in his family and lectured on  his system, (a system
that has had  as  many advocates and practitioners as any other of
modern times,) says, in his preface to his own work,  " The author
of this work has spent more than twenty years  in learning, scruteniz-
ing and teaching every part of medicine.   The first five years passed
away in hearing others, in studying what I had heard, implicitly be-
lieving it, and entering upon the possession as a rich  inheritance.—
The  next five, I was employed in explaining and refining the several
particulars, and bestowing on them a nicer polish.  During  the five
succeeding years, nothing having prospered according to my satisfac-
tion, I grew indifferent to the subject; and, with many eminent men,
and even the very vulgar, began to deplore the healing art,  as alto-
gether uncertain  and incomprehensible.    All this time passed away
without the acquisition of any advantage, and  without that which, of
all things, is the most agreeable to the mind, the light of truth; and
so great and precious a portion of the  short and perishable life of man, 
exposition.                         13
was totally lost!   Here I was, at this period, in the situation of a trav-
eler in an unknown country, who, after losing every trace of his way,
wanders in the shades of night."
  I would here remark, once for  all, that I do not always agree with
the authors  in all the sentiments quoted.   I receive  no man's mere
opinions as infallibly true, till I have demonstrated them by evidences
that will not admit  of a  doubt.  For example, I cannot admit with
Dr. Brown, that he " had spent all that time without the acquisition of
any advantage."   He had discovered many a valuable fact for future
use.   If he had not learned, directly, what  medicine was, he had  dis-
covered, indirectly, what it was not; and thus narrowed the limits of
his fruitless researches, as well as stored up experience as the foun-
dation of his future medical philosophy.
   Testimony of  Dr. Donaldson, a Scotch Physician of high repute.
   16.  " I was educated in the Gregorian doctrines of the Edinburgh
school of medicine.   I was taught the theory of medicine as delivered
in  his Conspectus, and was exercised in the Cullenian discipline, di-
vested of all his hypothetical errors of spasm and atony of the extrem-
 ities  of arteries.  I learned  all the branches of the medical science
 under the distinguished and erudite professors of the most celebrated
 university and school of medicine in the  world, 1 always  embraced
 plausible truths, and rejected visible errors, in theory and practice.—
 I admitted doubtful  hypotheses to have no place in my mind, to influ-
 ence my future practice.  Even during my discipleship, I thought for
 myself and digested their  instructions with an unfettered and inde-
 pendent judgment and reasoning, and I had no  sooner completed my
 studies of the theoretical and practical science of medicine, and other
 branches of learning, in the College of Edinburgh, than I repaired to
 the schools of London, so famous for anatomy and physiology.
    Having finished my intended course in the metropolis of the  Brit-
 ish  empire, I launched into practice,  under the auspices of a real
 imitator of the  Edinburgh  school, and a follower of  Clarke, Lind,
 Thomas, &c, and  soon had ample opportunities of  witnessing the
 great insufficiencies of the medical practice of the present day, in the
 hands of the  most skilful administrators and  practitioners.  In this
 situation I  soon had occasions  to dissent from the doctrines of the
 schools, but years elapsed before I could bring myself to deviate from
 the  practice which they, and the most esteemed authors, taught in
 their instructions and works.  I hesitated in the old road until I should
 discover a new way by experience and observation to keep me from
 6tumbling  on the dark mountains of doubts and errors.  I consulted
 all the most celebrated writings of ancient and modern physicians; I
 searched for light in  vain, to direct my steps.
    During my travels in the East Indies,  in the  years 1810, '11,'14,
 '15  and '16, I had many opportunities  of trying every  method  of
 curing diseases  of all descriptions, and of proving the virtues and effi-
 cacies of all remedies commonly employed by  practitioners, as well as
  of making all necessary alterations in former modes of treatment, and 
14
EXPOSITION.
in the choice of remedies.  Fevers, fluxes, inflammations, affections
of the spleen  and liver, apoplexies, palsies, spasms, &c, were the
great diseases that attracted my attention, being under my own care
and treatment in those warm regions, and 1 was extremely mortified
to find all my remedies ineffectual to reduce inflammation or subdue
many of those diseases, by the common method of treatment; and my
pride was humbled at the repeated disappointments I encountered, in
being baffled to cure them with the common remedies, carried to the
same extent, and administered with the same diligence, as recommen-
ded in books, or by  professors of medicine ;  I administered purges,
barks  and wine, with the utmost rigor, in all classes of  inter and re-
mittent fevers ;  I exhibited saline purges, opiates, mercurials, sudori-
fics and nutrients, in  cases of dysentery, and found them all ineffec-
tual to arrest the progress of fevers, or to cure the affections of dys-
entery, in many severe cases.  I could not  produce an immediate
crisis  in fevers, nor remove the  agonies of fluxes ;  they still continued
to return, or to torture my patients,  in defiance of all the  remedies
that have been recommended by Drs. Blane, Lind, Clarke, Chisholm,
Cullen, Thomas, Philip, Hoffman, Boerhaave, Brown, Farriar, For-
dyce,  Currie, Darwin, Jackson, Wright,  Fowler,  Trotter, Haygarth,
Heberden, Lieutaud, Huxham, Russell,  Macgregor, Falconer, Des-
genettes,  Milne, Dewar, Bisset, Warren,  Pringle,  Buchan, Churchill,
Friend, McCord,  &c. who are  supposed to have delivered the senti-
ments of the medical schools in their days.  Neither were the reme-
dies employed  by the most noted of the ancients, as  Hippocrates
Celsus, Galenus, Asclepiades, &c, &c, more successful  in curing fe-
brile distempers.  Having read and  studied medicine of the ancient
and moderns, I was able to choose those remedies, proposed in their
writings,  best calculated to cure disorders of the human frame, in all
climates  of the earth, and to employ them to the greatest advantages
but, without the knowledge of the real nature of fevers and fluxes, I
still labored in the dark, and could not effect, in all cases, by the use
of such remedies, a solution of the disease under my care, with any
degree of certainty of success in the commencement.  I was unac-
quainted  with the principle on which those remedies acted to bring to
a favorable crisis.  I longed for that day when my knowledge of the
nature of the diseases, and of the virtues of the  remedies employed
to cure them, would  enable me to cure the  severest of them at plea-
sure,  and to liberate my fellow creatures from the iron grasp of mor-
tal afflictions, and I began to lament the universal  ignorance of the
professors of medicine, respecting the nature of diseases.
   From  that day till the present, I never have used the remedies com-
monly prescribed by writers on medicine, neither  have I followed the
doctrines of the schools in the  treatment of febrile diseases.  1 deter-
mined that no other patient of mine should ever  become a victim to
the common old treatment pointed out by the  professors of medicine,
and authors of medical books.  In the full belief of the doctrine which
experience had taught me, I soon had the pleasure of seeing almost
all my patients recover from fevers, in the space of two, three, four
or five days, whereas, according to  the old method of treatment fol-
lowed by my cotemporaries,  patients labored a month, six weeks, 
exposition.                         15
two or  three months, under a violent fever and its fatal dregs, and
either died or were restored by the mereeffbrts of nature, or languish-
ed under the irremediable consequences of such disease, during the
remainder of their lives, in misery and infirmity.
  Thus it may be perceived, by the foregoing collection of facts, how
I came  to possess a new doctrine and theory of fevers, and  to insti-
tute a new method of treatment on the foundation of a sure and certain
principle of practice, deduced from this doctrine, in the use and ap-
plication of remedies more rational and successful than appear in any
system of medicine ever exhibited in ancient or modern times, as far
as I know, by the annals of medicine;  and I now  come forward to
open the discovery for the general benefit of mankind.   In doing this,
I shall  be under the absolute necessity of exposing and rejecting all
former opinions respecting the proximate causes or nature of diseases ;
I shall have to combat the errors of the learned and  ignorant, both
in the theory and practice of medicine;  I shall  be forced to reject all
the erroneous  doctrines of  the schools  in which I was educated; I
shall  have to defend my sentiments against all the invidious maligni-
ties and contumelies of my enemies, on the basis of infallible princi-
ples,  deduced  from and  depending on  the truths and facts which  I
have  discovered in the nature of these diseases,  by experience, obser-
vation, reflecting and reasoning, so absolutely necessary to be known
before we can succeed in practice.  Many self-confident and ignorant
pretenders to the science and art of medicine, are inclined to suppose
that no errors can  exist, in the present theories of the  enlightened
 schools of Europe and  America, to combat, in the  treatment of dis-
 eases.
   In fact, no  physician whose  works I have  read, no professor of
medicine whom I have heard speak  on the nature of diseases, has
 ever  discovered, or even hinted at the cure of fevers ;  all have deliv-
 ered theories, which amount to open acknowledgements of their igno-
 rance of it; or have candidly professed the universal ignorance of all
 physicians in the world, of the former and present  times, respecting
 the nature of these diseases.
   I observed the plan  of cure followed by the East Indians in fevers.
 I saw the practitioners cure the most vehement cases of intermittent
 fevers in a single day, with  such a mathematical precision  and cer-
 tainty, as I never beheld in any region of the earth—by purging, vom-
 iting, sweating, &c.  I perceived that they also cured without know-
 ing the nature of disease, or the principles of their practice; and was
 led to believe all diseases curable, if we could only discover the rem-
 edies against them, and would apply those remedies in  due time and to
 sufficient extent, to effect these possible ends.   Their  method of treat-
 ment consisted in the  administration of a medicine  that effectually
 purged and vomited their patients, who were obliged at the same time,
 to  use  the steam bath, and  drink abundantly of warm  teas, until
 copious or profuse sweat was produced, and the fever was mechani-
 cally reduced, leaving nothing to be done by feeble nature, as the an-
 cient and modern practitioners of Europe were  accustomed to  do
 many  ages prior to the days of Bottalus and Sydenham.
   Having acquired a knowledge of these things relative to  the nature 
16
exposition.
 of febrile  diseases, I was induced to abandon the  common  plan  ol
 treatment,  and to institute a new method of curing them with  the use
 of new remedies.
   17.  Dr. W. Henderson, Professor of Medicine and General Pathol-
 ogy in the University of Edinburgh, in 1847, says :—
   " Some 80 or 90 per cent, of the patients who employ medical prac-
 titioners, would be better off without them."—Forbes's Young  Physic,
 page 94.
   18.  Dr.  John Forbes, whose titles would fill a quarter of this page,
 1 give  here only F. R. S., F.  G. S., Fellow of the Royal College of
 Physicians in London, Editor of the Brhish and Foreign Medical Re-
 view,  or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery."—
 Physician Ordinary and Extraordinary to Princes, Hospitals, &c, and
 member of almost all the Medical societies in Europe, after drawing a
 close comparison  between  Homoeopathy and  Allopathy, says:—
 (Young Physic, page 98.)
   " The most important inferences unfavorable to Allopathy are:—
   1. That, in a large proportion of the cases treated by Allopathic phy-
 sicians, the disease is cured by nature, and not by them.
   2. That, in a lesser, but still not a small proportion, the disease is
 cured by nature in spite of them;  in other  words, their interference
 opposing instead of assisting the cure.
   3. That, consequently, in a considerable  proportion of diseases, it
 would fare  as well  or better, with patients, in the actual condition of
the medical art, as now generally practised, if all remedies, at least
all active remedies,  especially drugs, were abandoned."
   "We repeat our readiness to admit these inferences as just,  and to
abide by the consequences of their adoption.   We  believe they  are
true.   We  grieve sincerely to believe them to be so;  but so believing,
their rejection is no  longer in our power; we must receive them as
facts, till they are proved not to be so." 
CHAPTER II,
                     THE PRACTICE IS NOT  AN ART.

  Th 3 preceding quotations which might  be accompanied by others of a
similar  character  to any extent, the material being unlimited  in quantity,
prove,  beyond all controversy,that the medical theories of the schools, ate
not the doctrines of science:—that they "never were established; but are, and
always were false."
  The  following quotations will prove that "the superstructures  built upon
them," the practices of medicine,  are "baseless as  the fabric of  a vision."
(Whiting,) end wholly unworthy of the  dignified title of an art—that, what
is often called  "the art divine"  in honor of what it  should be, is, in feet
the most absurd and mischievous quackery  In the world.
   19. Experience of little value.—"When,  in  the practice of medicine, we
apply to new cases the knowledge acquired  from others which wo believe
to  have been of the same n&'.ure, the difficulties  are so great that it is doubt-
ful  whether in  any case we can properly be said to  act from  experience, as
we do in other  departments of science." * * " The  difficulties and sources
of uncertainty which meet us at every stage of such investigations, are, in fact,
so numerous  and great, that those who have  had the most extensive oppor-
tunities of observation, will be the first to acknowledge that our pretended ex-
perience must,  in general, sink into analogy, and even  our analogy too often
into conjecture.'5—Abercrombie, Intel. Pow.,  page 299.
  "What is called experience in medicine," says Professor Jackson, "daily
observation and reflection confirm me in the conviction, is a fallacious guide,
not more entitled to the implicit confidence claimed for it, than when it was
thus characterized by the great father  of the science—fallax esperientia.  In
fact, experience cannot exist in medicine, such as it is in those arts in which
experiments can be made under circumstances  invariably the same,"&c.
  Characters  or Symptoms of Disease.—"Since medicine  was  first culti-
vated as a science, a leading object of  attention has ever been to ascertain
the characters or symptoms by which particular internal diseases are indica-
ted, and by which they are distinguished from  other diseases which resem-
ble'them.  But with the  accumulated experience of ages bearing upon this
important subject, our extended observation has only served to convince  us
how deficient we are in this department, and how often, even in the first step
of our progress, we are left to conjecture.   A  writer of high eminence, (Mor-
gagni,) has even hazarded the assertion that those persons are most con-
fident'in regard to the characters of disease, whose knowledge is most limit-
ed, and that more extended observation generally  leads to doubt."—Intel.
Pow. pages 294-5.
  Progress of Disease.—"If such uncertainty hangs over our knowledge
of disease," says Abercrombie, "it will not be denied that at least an equal
degree  of uncertainty attends its  progress.   We  have learned, for example,
the various modes in  which  internal inflammation   terminates—as  res-
olution, suppuration, gangrene, adhesion and effusion: but,, in regard to a
oarticular case  of inflammation before us, how little notion  can we form  of 
18
exposition
what will be its progress  or how it will terminate!—Abercrombie, page 295.
   20. Action of external Agents.—An equal or even a more remarkable de-
gree of uncertainty attends  all our researches  into the action of external
agents on tho body, whether as causes of disease  or as remedies;  in  both
which  respects their action is fraught with the highest degree of uncertainty.
Intel.  Pow., page 295.
   "In  regard to the action of external agents  as  causes  of disease, we  may
take a  single example in the effects of cold.   Of six individuals who have
been exposed  to cold in the  same  degree, and, so far as we can judge,
under  the same circumstances, one  may be seized with  inflammation  of
the lungs, one  with  diarrhoea, and one with  rheumatism, while three  may
escape without any injury.  Not less remarkable is the uncertainty in re-
gard to the  action of  remedies.   One  case appears to yield with readi-
ness to the remedies that are  employed;  on another which we have every
reason to  believe to  be of the same nature, no  effect  is  produced in ar-
resting  its  fatal progress;  while  a third, which threatened to be  equally
formidable, appears to cease  without the operation of any remedy  at  all."
Pages  295-6. * See,  also, page 23.
  21. D'Alembert.—"The following apologue," says D'Alembert, "made by a
physician, a man of wit and philosophy, represents very well  the state of that
science."   ' Nature is fighting with disease; a blind man armed wiih a club,
that is, a physician, comes to  settle the difference.  He first tries to make
peace.   When he cannot accomplish  this, he lifts his club and strikes at  ran-
dom.   If he strikes the disease, he kills the disease; if he strikes nature he
kills nature.'"   " An eminent physician,"  says the  same writer renouncing
a practice  which  he  had  exercised for thirty years, said—" I am  weary of
guessing.'"  Dr. Abercrombie  continues—
   " The uncertainty of medicine, which is thus a theme  for the philosopher
and the humorist, is deeply felt by the practical physician in the daily exer-
cise of his art."—Intel. Pow., page 293.
   22. Prof.  Chapman, says:  '-Perhaps  we shall  ultimately learn  to  dis-
criminate  accurately, the diversified shades  of morbid action, and  to ap-
ply  to  each its appvopropriate  remedies.    As it  is, we are  plunged
into aDedalian  labyrinth, almost without a clue.   Dark and perplexed, our
devious career  resembles the  blind  gropings of Homer's  Cyclops  around
'hiscave."—Therapeutics, vol.  1  page 49.
   23. Dr. James Thacher, author of the "American New Dispensatory,"
of '-The American Modern Practice," "The  Biography of American Medi-
cal Men," &c, says, "The melancholy triumph of disease over its victims,
and  the numerous reproachful examples of  medical impotency,  clearly
evince  that the  combined  stock of ancient and modern  learning is greatly
insufficient to perfect our science.  *  *   Far, indeed, beneath the stand-
ard of perfection, it is still fraught  with  deficiencies, and altogether inad-
equate  to our desires."—Modern Practice, page 8.
   24. Dr. Jacob Bigelow,  Professor in Harvard  University, says, in  his
Annual Address before the Medical Society in 1835,  "The premature death
of medical men, brings with it the humiliating conclusion  that, while the
other sciences have  been carried forward within  our own time, and al-
most under our own eyes, to a degree of unprecedented advancement, med-
icine in regard  to some of its  professed and important objects, (the  cure of
disease,) is still an ineffectual  speculation."
   25. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, of the Harvard University at Cambridge,
near Boston, Massachusetts, who  was one of the three  professors first ap- 
EXPOSITION.
19
 pointed in the Medical  Department of that Institution, after lecturing in
 it for twenty years, retired, saying of all he  had been so  long  and so zeal-
 ously teaching—"1 am sick of learned quackery."
   26.  Dr   Rush, in  his  lectures  in the  University  of  Pennsylvania,
 says, "Dissections daily convince us of  our ignorance of the  seats of dis-
 ease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions."—''What mischiefs have we
 done under the belief ol false facts and false  theories!  We have assisted in
 multiplying diseases, we have done  more—we have increased their mortal-
 ity."—Robinson's Lectures, page 109.
   "Our want of success is  owing to  the following causes:  1st. Our igno-
 rance of the disease.   2d. Our  ignorance of a suitable  remedy."—Rush,
 Robinson's Lectures, page 79.
   27.  Dr.  L. M. Whiting said, in his Lecture at Pittsfield,  Mass.   "Were
 we to see a sportsman standing beside a grove, continually loading and dis-
 charging his piece without  aim among the  trees, and at the same time de-
 claring his intention to be the destruction of a bird, whose  song he  heard
 somewhere within it, we should without hesitation pronounce him not only
 non  compos, but also  a dangerous  individual, and fit  only for  the  strait
 jacket or a  mad house.  Yet  such, if we mistake not,  is very nearly the
 course pursued by many a routine practitioner, in  the  treatment of morbid
 conditions  of the body by medication.   Shoot away! is the motto; perchance
 we may hit the  mark;  if not, the law is our safeguard, and  we have the sat-
 isfaction of feeling that we have done the best we  could."—B. M. &S. Jour-
 nal, vol. xiv. page 190.
   The above quotations  will suffice for the present, because I shall treat, in
 ollowing chapters, of the particular means and processes which constitute the
 art.   It  may be said that Dr.  Whiting here  objected only to a  "routine
 practice."  True, but what is a  routine practice?   Is  it not  one according
 to rule or science?  Are not the operations of  mathematics all  routine?
 "What  would be thought of  the  Surveyor,  the Navigator, the  Chemist, the
 Botanist—any  scientific man but a doctor—if he should abandon his rules
 and go to experimenting?  The beauty and excellence of science consist in
 the fact that all its operations are governed by fixed rules, by strict adhesion,
 to which, all desired results are insured.   Medicine is the only exception.
 Talk to the Astronomer about abandoning his routine method of calculating
 the phenomena of the heavens, and trying this that or the other experiment,
 as physicians do in the practice  of medicine,  and what would he say?   His
 answer  would be, "I  know  that my rules are true and  my  tables are  cor-
 uect. If I  have not correctly solved my problem, the  fault has been mine
   the application.  I shall try no new plan nor means; but make a perfect
 application of the old."
  So it will be  in medicine, when medicine becomes a science, and its prac-
tice an art.   The routine practice will  then be the only one  approved.
   Nos. 6.   10.  11.  12. 13. 14. 15. 16.  17.  18. all  prove the worthless
 ness of the practice, as well as  the errors and mischiefs of  the theories of
+*<e system of the schools of ph"""'" 
CHAPTER III.
        the fundamental doctrines  of allopathy  are false.

  This  is  proved by the  testimony of its most intelligent  and faithful'
friends: (Nos. T.  10. 15.  16.) and by facts and sound reasoning.
  But what are these doctrines.
  28. Gregory says, "The doctrines of fever are of paramount importance,
and therefore constitute, with great propriety, the foundation of all patholo-
gical reasoning."—Practice, vol 1, page 44.
  29. Prof.  Marshall  Hall says,  page  98,  No.  362, endorsed  by
Profs. Bigelow and  Holmes, of Harvard University,  Boston  Mass:--"The
doctrine of inflammation is the most important in the Theory of medicine and
Surgery."  And No. 365, they all refer us to Profs. Hunter and  John Thorn*
son's works on Inflammation, as "absolutely necessary," to give us an "in.
timate acquaintance  with this  important subject."
  30. John Thomson, page 32, testifies as follows;  "It  has long been ac-
knowledged in the schools of medicine,  that the formation of  a rational ed-
ucation in physic must be laid in a minute and accurate acquaintance with
the appearances and treatment of the different kinds of fever, but, that the
knowledge of the phenomena of inflammation, is not less  extensive in its ap-
plications to practice, nor  less necessary  to the  acquirement of proper edu-
cation in the art or  science of surgery, seems to be only beginning  to be
perceived by medical men.  That this view, however, of the subject  of in-
flammation is just, must appear obvious, when we reflect that, of all the mor-
bid affections  to which the human body is liable, inflammation is not only one
of the most distinet in Us forms, and important in its consequences, but it
is also by far  the most frequent in its occurrence.   Indeed, there are no ex-
ternal injuries of which inflammation is not almost the immediate effect, and
but few, if any local diseases, of which it is not, in some degree or  other, to
be regarded as a  concomitant^ cause, symptom or consequence."
  [Verily, inflammation  must be  something  very  remarkable to  be  a
cause, a concomitant and an effect of the same thing!]
  " It is but  just to the late Mr. Hunter, to remark that he appears to have
been amongst the first Surgeons who became fully aware  of the importance
of a minute knowledge of those curious and singularly diversified appearan-
ces which  inflammation produces in the different textures and organs of the
body.   We learn from his writings and by his invaluable  collection and de-
scriptions of diseased parts,, that he spent upwards of thirty years in the in-
vestigation of this subject.  The grand results of his labors, have been be-
queathed to posterity in his Treatise on Inflammation, a work which, by es-
tablishing the pathology of Surgery upon the solid basis of observation, ex-
periment and accurate analysis, forms  a new era in  the  history of this art.
In  most points relative to inflammation, I shall endeavor to follow that dis-
tinguished pathologist, as my  best and most accurate guide."
   And  Prof.  Thomson does follow  Hunter, most strictly,  in these doctrines,
and from this fact, and the declaration  of Hall, Bigelow  and Holmes above
quoted, it is evident that the testimony of Hunter will either sustain or con-
demn  all  later  writers on  the subject,  and  the  doctrines  of the schools
which they establish and sustain.   But first,  more about the importance of
fever and inflammation. 
EXPOSITION.
21
   31. Prof.  Watson  says,  (page 94) "Inflammation must  needs occupy
 a large share of the attention, both of the Surgeon and of the physician.  In
 nine cases out of ten, the first question which either of them asks himself up-
 on being summoned to a patient is—Have I to deal with inflammation here?
 It is continually the object of his treatment, and watchful care."
   32. Prof. Paine says, "The most important principles in  medicine, are
 those which especially relate to inflammation and  lever."—(Inst., page 464.
   33. Prof. Clutterbitck says; "Fever is a disease of almost  daily and uni-
 versal occurrence."—Work on Fever, Preface, page 17.
                 ignorance  of fever and inflammation.
   34. Dr, Sotjthv/ood Smith, Physician to the London Fever Hospital, says:
 "Among  the objects  contemplated  in the establishment of this Institution,
 two things were conceived to be of paramount importance; first,the accumu-
 lation of facts,  by which the true  nature  of fever might be more certainly
 ascertained; and secondly, the  cautious trial of remedies  by which a more
 sure and successful mode of treating this fatal disease might be discovered."
 S. Smith on fever, page 1.
   35. Prof. Gregory says:  "Fever has proved  a fertile  theme on which
 the ingenuity of physicians in all ages has been exerted; and a glance at the
 attention which it has received from every medical author, both ancient and
 modern, would be  sufficient to impress upon any one the importance of the
 doctrines it embraces.
  "How difficult  is the study of fever, may  be inferred from this  that,
 though  so much has been  written concerning it, there  is  no one subject in
 the whele circle of medical science, which still involves so many  disputed
 points."  Still, much as they are disputed, the Doctor  adds,  "The doctrines
 of fever are of paramount importance, and therefore constitute, with great
 propriety,  the  foundation of all pathological reasoning."—Practice,  vol. 1,
 page 33-4.
  "It has been a favorite topic of inquiry among all writers on fever, What
 is its  nature?  In what particular state of the fluids or solids does it consist?
 The subject has been prosecuted with great dilligence, but  the result of the
 investigation is very unsatisfactory.   *  *  All their theories are open to
 many and strong objections."—ib., pages 49,50.   "The pathology of fever
 is so  obscure, that  it affords but little help  in determining i\e  plan  of treat-
 ment."—Page 35.
  36. Dr. Thacher, the venerable author of the  American New Dispensa-
 tory,  says:
  "Notwithstanding the great prevalence of fever  in all  ages and in all cli-
 mates, and the universal attention which it has excited among medical ob-
 servers ever since  the days  of Hippocrates, the  disease  still  remains the
 subject  of  much  discussion; and its essential nature, or the proximate
 cause of its  symptoms, is  still a problem  in medical science."—Practice,
page  198.
  Further.— Numerous  hypotheses  or opinions  respecting  the  true
nature and cause of inflammation, have  for ages been advanced, and for a
time, sustained; but, even at the present day, the various doctrines appear to
be considered altogether problematical."—Practice page 279.
  37. Prof. Eberle says, "The history of Practical Medicine consists of
 little else  than a review of the doctrines which have  risen  and sunk again
concerning the nature and treatment of fever."  *   *   "It  is in this depart-
ment that  observation and  research  have been most industrious in accural: 
22
exposition.
latino  materials, and that hypothesis has luxuriated in her wildest exuber-
ance."—Practice, vol. I, page 13.
  38. "Fever," says Gregory, "is  the most important, because  the most
universal and the most fatal of all the morbid affections of which the human
body is susceptible."  *  *  "The physician must always be  prepared to
expect  its  occurrence.   It is  that by the presence  or absence of which all
his views of treatment are to  be regulated;  whose rise, progress  and  termi-
nation, he always watches with the closest attention.  [He  surely  ought  to
have learned something  about it by this time, if he has so watched it for four
thousand years.]  Some idea may be formed of the great mortality of  fevers
from the statement of Sydenham, who calculated that two-thirds of mankind
die of acute diseases, properly so called; and two-thirds of the  remainder,
of that lingering febrile  disease, consumption."
  The above quotations show  us that the doctrines of fever and inifammation
are the foundation stones, or  fundamental principles of the Allopathic sys-
tem, and that  they are very uncertain  and unsettled.   The following, as
well  as many  of the above, show  that, in all the books of practice, fever
and inflammation are counted as disease.
                        inflammation,  disease.
  39. Thacher calls  it "the disease,"  (28)—Practice,  vol. I. page 43.—
Thomson  (22,)  says the same of fever  and inflammation.
  40. Watson says, (Practice page 94,) Inflammation is "a special form of
disease to which all parts of the body are liable—a disease that meets us at
every turn."
  "It affects all  parts, that are furnished with blood vessels, and  it  effects
different parts  very  variously.  It is more easily excited by many  external
causes, and therefore it  is  more common than any other  special disease.
A great majority of all the disorders to which the human frame is liable, begin
with inflammation orend in inflammation, or are accompanied  by inflamma-
tion during some part of their course, or resemble inflammation in their symp-
toms.   Most  of the organic changes of different parts  of the body,  recog-
nize inflammation as  their cause,  or lead to it as  their effect.   In short, a
very large share of the premature  extinction of human life in  general, is
more or less attributable to inflammation."
  41.  Paine says,  (Institutes, page  464.) "Inflammation and fever are the
two orders of disease which make up  the great amount of human maladies,
and form the grand outlets of  life."  "Idiopathic fever  is a universal disease
inflammation always local."
  But why need I quote testimonies to prove that fever and inflammation are
called, by  the allopaths, disease, when every one knows that all their sys-
tems of pathology and nosology,  are built upon the symptoms they exhibit?
Answer, because all modern pathologists refer us  to Thomson and Hunter,
for the doctrines of fever and  inflammation (See No 21,) and Thomson him-
self refers us to  Hunter, (No 22 above,) and therefore 1 am going to prove,
yb Hunter, that these doctrines are false.  C. 
exposition.
23
              inflammation is a simple physiological act.
   42. INFLAMMATION. Hunter  says; (vol. 3.  page 285,)  "Inflamma-
 tion, in itself, is not to be considered  a disease, but as a salutary operation
 consequent either to  some violence  or  some  disease."  "Inflammation  is
 an action produced for the restoration of the most  simple injury  in  sound
 earts, which goes beyond  the  power  of union by the first intention."
   Again, page  293.   "Pure inflammation is rather  an effort of nature than
 a disease."
   Again, page  286.   "From whatever [exciting] cause it arises,  *  *   it
 is an  effort intended to  bring about a  reinstatement of the parts  to nearly
 their natural  functions."  "Disease" (page 233) is a disposition to produce
 wrong action."
   This is not "restoring natural functions;" of course it is not inflammation.
   Again, "Healthy inflammation probably consists of only one kind, not being
 divisible, but  into  its  different stages, as being that  which will always at-
 tend  a healthy constitution or part, is to be considered rather a restorative
 action than a diseased one, and would appear to  be the  effect  rather of  a
 stimulus than an irritation.   The  unhealthy admits of  vast variety, [the
 causes of disease  being almost numberless,] and is that which always at-
 tends  an unhealthy constitution, or part, and  will be according to the kind
 of health in that constiution or part, but particularly according to the consti-
 tution."  *   *   "The simple act of inflammation, cannot be called specific,
 for it is a uniform or  simple action in itself: but it may have  peculiarities
 or specific actions superadded." (pageI286-7.) [by the causes of disease, C.,]
   Finally, page 292.  "Fever, in all cases or of all kinds, is a disturbed ac-
 tion,  like inflammation  itself."
   43. Here, then, we are taught the real truth in regard to inflammation and
 fever,  that they are   one and the  same  thing, accumulated action of the
 constitution, produced by the vital force, under excitement, and tending in all
 cases to the restoration of equiliblium in  the circulation and nervous actions
 —in the words of Hunter, "an effort intended to bring about a reinstatement
 of the  parts to  nearly [quite]  their natural  functions."  And  that all  the
 different appearances and results, in different cases of fever or inflammation,
 are to be attributed to the different states of the  constitution, or  the specifiic
 character or action of the exciting causes, Hunter's  "specifications superad-
 ded."  Thus, inflammation in Erysipelas, Small-pox, scarlet fever, and cancer
 are the same,  all proceeding from the action of the vital force, but the specific
 exciting causes are different,  each  "superadding"  its own "peculiarity or
 specific action," which gives all the different characters of the specific forms
 of disease.
  It follows of  course, then,   that the nosological distinctions in all the
 systems of medicine, should have been based solely on these "peculiarities,"
 and not on the vital symptoms of inflammation,  partial or general,  as they
almost  all are.   The doctrines of Hunter, then, and  of Thomson, and of
 all who sometimes adopt  them, as Watson  who  says, (Practice page 94.)
  44. "It is by inflammation that wounds are closed, and fractures repaired,—
 thatparts adhere together when  their  adhesion is essential to  the preserva- 
24
EXPOSITION.
 tion of the individual, and  that foreign  and hurtful matters are conveye
 safely out of the body.   A cut finger,  a deep sabre wound alike require in-
 flammation to reunite the divided parts. * *  The foot mortifies, is killed by
 injury  or exposure to  cold, inflammation will cut  off the dead and useless
 part," (page 95.) are proof that inflammation is  not disease.
   45, Prof. Paine teaches the  same  doctrine, when he says,  (Inst, page
 465, No 711. "Inflammation takes its rise  in purely physiological conditions,
 and holds its progress and decline, under the same great natural laws of the
 Constitution.'^
   If these assertions be true, and they certainly are, fever and inflammation
 being "a simple act of the constitution," always "tending to bring about a
 restoration of  the system or its organs,  to  the healthy functions," can never
 be properly  called disease, and, of course, the fundamental doctrines of the
 schools which make this  act and  its derangements produced by the action
 of the specific causes of disease, and the combined  effects of the actions of
these two forces, "the foundation of all pathological reasoning, (Gregory,
 Thomson, Hall, Bigelow, Holmes)  must  be  utterly false and pernicious,
"and all the superstructures [the practices] built upon them, must be baseless
as the fabric of a vision," (No  5) nay, more, inasmuch as they are  conduct-
ed by violence, bloodshed  and poisoning, they must  be "horrid, unwarrant-
able, murderous, quackery.''—Chapman.
  It matters not  that Gregory, Watson, Paine, Thomson, and even Hunter
himself teach, in other places, a  doctrine the  very opposite of what I have
here quoted from them.   I have  reported the true, but the systems of path-
ology and practice are built upon the false; and they must be false, 
CHAPTER  IV.
                    allopathic remedies mischevious.

    The following testimony proves, if  this kind of evidence can prove any
 thing, that the particular practices of Allopathy, are injurious and destructive;
 not occasionally so, by misapplication or mistake, but positively so, by their
 very nature and tendency.  I have adduced evidence which proves that, accor-
 ding to the authorities of the Allopathic school, (see  Sydenham,  Gregory,
 Thomson,  Watson, Paine, &c.)  two thirds of all mankind die of acute forms
 of disease, styled by  them fever and  inflammation.   I have  quoted from
 Payne,  Watson and  others, the statement  that fever  and  inflammation
 "make up the great amount of human maladies, and form the great outlets of
 life."—Paine's Institutes,  No 710.
   46. "Therapeutics or the application of remedies to the treatment of dis-
 ease, is the great end of all medical inquiries."  Professor Paine says: (In-
 stitutes No.  854.)—
   47. "Remedial agents  operate upon the same principle as the remote
 causes of disease.  They can never transmute the morbid into  healthy con-
 ditions, that is alone the work of nature."
   "The most violent poisons are our best remedies."  "  JJbi virus, ibivirtus."
 Where poison is, there is virtue!.
   48.  flooper says, "all our most valuable medicines are active poisons"—
 Dictionary.   Th«  B.  M. & S. Journal says.  (Vol. 9 page 43.) "All pois-
 ons, whatever their differences in other respects, agree  in this;  they sudden-
 ly and rapidly extinguish a great proportion of the  vitality of the  system."
 Professor John  P.  Harrison says, of one of the most commonly employed,
 that it is "a powerful depresser of the  energies of life."   <
              blood-letting the sheet  anchor  of  practice.
   49. Marshall Hall says, (Practice No. 302) "The doctrine of inflamma-
 tion is the most important in  Medicine and Surgery."  And he and others,
 as I have already shown,  consider  inflammation an acute form of disease,
 which must be reduced.  He further says,  (No.  819.)
   50  "The subject next in order, in treating of the Theory of Medicine, re-
 lates to the U3e of certain important remedies, and amongst these blood-let-
 ting ranks pre-eminently as the  first.
   Prof.  Clutterbuck,  in his "Inquiry into the' seat and  nature of fever,"
 page 474, cays:
   51. "Blood-Letting,  unquestionably, is the best, because the  most effect-
ive remedy we possess, in the treatment of indiopathic fever, as well as in*
 flammation in general."
   52. Prof.  Paine, Institutes, No. 836. d. says; That, for inflammation and
congestion, "blood-letting is known to be the most efficient remedy."   "Gen-
eral Blood-letting is the proper mode of depletion, in all forms offerer, and
in all the active inflammations of the internal  viscera."—lb. 956.
  Professor. J.  Morehead, of the Ohio Medical College, in an Essay on
Blood-letting published  in Prof. Eberle's Quarterly Journal for  June, 1837,
says, page 24.
  53. "In the whole range  of medical science, there is probably no other 
26
exposition.
 truth better ascertained or of greater value than this,:  that, for inflammation
 when seated in the serous tissues, or in the parenchymatous portion of any
 of the organs contained in the three great cavities, free and energetic Blood-
 letting is entitled emphatically to the name of the remedy: and all the other
 remedial means are to  be regarded as but subordinate and auxiliary to it."
   "Under  the  conditions  of  disease for  which  in truth it  is  remedial,
 no substitute can be found or admitted  for it."
   54. Prof. Paine says:  Medical  and Physiological  Commentaries, vol II.
 page 325:
   "England has not yet abandoned the Lancet, and here, in  America, it is
 as ever, the anchor of hope, in  inflammations and conjestive  fevers.''
   This is the testimony of a large  proportion of the Allopathic faculty   To
 quote more  here is useless.
              blood-letting, dangerous and destructive.
   I have said  the "first indication  in practice, this "sheet  anchor in fevers
 and  inflammations," is dangerous and destructive; and  I prove  this by the tes-
 timony of the  same men who approve of and use it:
   55. Dr.  Hunter said, "Blood-letting is one of the greatest  weakeners, as
 we can  kill  thereby."
   56. Prof. J. F. LiObstein says, " o far  from Blood-letting being benefi-
 cial, it is productive of the most  serious anu fatal effects—a crutl practice—a
 scourge to humanity.  How many thousands of our fellow citizens are sent
 [by itj to an untimely grave! how many families are deprived  of their amia-
 ble children! how many husbands of their lovely wives! how many wives of
 their husbands!  Without blood there is no heat, no motion in the system—
 in the Blood is the  life.   He who takps blood from  the patient, takes  away
 not only an organ of life, but a part of life itself"—Essay on Blood-letting.
  57. Salmon.—"So zealous are  the Blood suckers of our age," says Sal-
 mon, in his "Synopsis Medicince,':  "that they daily sacrifice hundreds to its
 omnipotence, who  fall by  its  fury,  like  the children who, of old, passed
 through the  fire to Moloch, and that without any pity,  left to commiserate
 the inexplorable  sufferings of their martyrs, or conscience of their crimes
 which may deter them in future from such  villanies, the bare relation of
 which would make a man's ears tingle, which one cannot think of without
griet, nor express without horror!"
  58. Robinson—"An eminent physician has  said that,  after the practice
 of Blood-letting was introduced  by  Sydenham, during the course of one hun-
 dred years, more died of the lancet alone, than all  who in the  same period
perished by war.—page 121.
  59.  Dewees.—"It would appear, that the first or inflammatory stage of puer-
peral fever, the stage in which bleeding has been so eminently successful, has
no discovered  character by which it can be distinguished from the second in
which this operation is forbidden, after the lapse of a few hours."—Females,
page 441.
  " We would ask, What is the evidence  that  the first stage has run its
course?  This is an important question, and  one from our present data that
cannot, we fear, be answered satisfactorily.    Hitherto this condition  of th
disease has been inferred rather than ascertained."—lb. page 438.
  The same author says,  page 372,  "Our bleedings are not always renewed
from the arm, for, as soon  as we  get the pulse  pretty  well  down by this
means, wa have leeches applied over the parts nearest to the  seat of the in- 
exposition.
87
rlammation, in such numbers as shall abstract at least eight or ten ounces of
blood, and encourage their after bleeding by the application of moist warmth.
Should these abstractions of  blood prove  not effective, and pain, fever and
other unpleasant symptoms continue, but especially great pain and tenderness
in the parts; if the pulse does not call for general  bleeding, we repeat the
leeching, nor stop until the end is answered, or until we are convinced our
efforts will be unavailing, by the approach of the second stage or by the ad-
dition of peritoneal inflammation.—lb.
   60. Prof. Morehead already quoted, No. 53: says:
   "The intelligent physician who  has learned  by the  sad and bitter teach-
ings of the sick room, to judge  of  the powers of the lancet, not merely un-
derstands, but, without  any glaring impropriety of phrase, may be said to
feel, that it  is an agent which can never be  neutral in its operation; that,  if
not productive of actual good, it must have an inevitable tendency towards ill;
that, in its capacity, whether for benefit or for  mischief, it is  possessed not
merely of great but Herculean  force; that, under the conditions of disease for
which in truth it is remedial, no substitute can be  found or admitted for it;
that, when employed, however, in cases to which it is not suited results al-
ways serious, not unfrequenfly/c^a/, but too surely follow its misapplication;
that, for repairing the consequences of using it when not needed or improper,
no other means exist except  the slow and  precarious  process  of nutri-
tion;  and that, in the circumstances under which its misuse is most actively
and certainly mischievous, such reparative process  is almost always suspen-
ded, and consequently no remedy remains for counteracting or removing the
injuries which it has inflicted!"
   This is startling language, but it is simply just; and we ought not  to be sur-
prised at the conclusion justly drawn from the facts  stated.
   "Having  habitually present to his understanding, a strong and lively per-
ception of these truths, such a  physician learns to regard a resort to the lan-
cet as of all remedial measures, that which most requires caution, thorough
consideration, and anxious circumspection; and to hold, as a solemn maxim
 a professional conduct, that, if it is not employed with a judicious and wise
adaptation to the  cases in which  it  is  used, it  deserves to be viewed with
somewhat of the abhorrence that attaches to  the knife of the murderer!"
   61. Prof. Marshall Hall says: "The diseases of children best under-
stood, are those which arise from irritation, and principally in the Stomach
and bowels, and the irritation of teething and inflammation.    I may observe
indeed, in this place,that,of  the whole number of fatal cases of disease in in-
fancy, a great proportion occurs from the inappropriate or undue application
of exhausting remedies.   This  observation may  have a salutary effect in
checking the ardor of many  young  practitioners, who  are  apt  to  think
that, if they have only bled  and purged and  given calomel enough, they
 have done their duty; when, in fact, in subduing a  former they have excited
 a new disease, which they have not understood, and which has led to the
fatal result."  Quoted and approved  by Prof. J. P. Harrison.—Therapeutics,
 vol.  II.  page 189.
   Remark.—Who taught the'young practitioner to bleed, purge and give cal-
omel?  Are not these  processes styled, by their "Professors, the sheet an-
 chors of practice?"   If so, why not  use.them till the case is cured!  But do
 'sowte young pr action ers" have and lose, a great proportion cf the fatal ca-
 es of disease in infancy?   It is rather unfair to blame young practitioners for 
28
EXPOSITION.
doing what the old ones teach and practice.  We have known many a little
innocent to be killed in this way by old Professors.
  62. Prof. Hall says; Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, Vol 1. page 296;
"The immedate effects of loss of Blood,  are, syncope convulsion, delirium,
coma, sudden  dissolution: the more remote are excessive reaction, mania,
coma, amaurosis and sinking."
  "Amongst the immediate effects of the loss of blood, must be mentioned
that of sudden and  unexpected  dissolution.  The patient does not recover
from a state of syncope; or, without syncope, he may gradually sink after
Blood letting.  It has  taken  the  most able and experienced practitioners by
surprise."—ib. 299.
  Remark.—We thought the cautions necessary only to "young practition-
ers!"  The doctor gives illustrations, numerous and interesting, of the vari-
ous effects of the 'Uoss of blood," to which we refer the reader.  It is vain
to say that these results proceed  from ignorance of the indications for Blood
letting, of inexperience in  the practice, as we have proved and shall do it
more effectually anon, that the  most scientific and experienced cannot tell
when blood should be drawn, nor how much.   -See above.
  63. Prof.  J. P.  Harrison says:  Therapeutics, vol.  II. page 180: "The
morbid consequences  which  spring  from the  excessive  use  or  the misdi-
rected employment of Blood-letting, are of so serious a nature, that the prac-
titioner should sedulously guard against them."
  64. Prof. Maguardic in his lectures in the College of France, says:  ib.,
"I assert loudly, and fear not to affirm it, that blood-letting induces,  both in
the blood itself and  in  our tissues,  certain  modifications and  Pathological
phenomena which resemble, to a certain extent, those developed  in animals
deprived of atmospheric oxygen,  of drink and  of solid  food."   *  *  "En-
gorgement, cedema pneumonia, and the entire train of What people are pleas-
ed to  call inflammatory phenomena, are products of loss of blood."  "He
considers  the utility  of Blood-letting,   at  best problematical, while  its
injurious effects are at once positive, frequent, and widely extended."
  65. "The sudden  abstraction  of blood by the lancet, always acts in  a de-
gree correspondent to the quantity drawn, and the ability of the constitution
to withstand the weakening effect of the remedy."—ib. 183.
  "The immediate morbid  phenomena  observed on  the sudden loss of
a large quantity of blood, are, convulsions, delirium, coma and appoplectic
stupor."  *  *  "The most common results, when inopportunely or exces-
sively employed, are, vertigo; a feeble and slow, sometimes quick, fluttering
or scarcely perceptible  pulse; cold, clammy perspiration; sickness  of  the
stomach, confusion of vision; dyspnoea; gasping for breath; great restlessness,
a deep sense of sinking, and finally syncope."—*  *  *
  "Prostration without reaction, may be protracted for several days, and then
death release the  patient  from his sufferings.    Or reaction may come  on,
and then wejhave a series of symptoms closely resembling cerebral inflamma-
tion."  *   *—ib.
  66. Prof.  Copland, of London, says:
  "When carried too far in cases of excitement,  where the nervous  or vital
power is not depressed, and the blood itself is rich or healthy, reaction gen-
erally follows each large depletion, and that often exacerbates or brings back
the disease for which  it was employed, and which had  been [apparently re- 
EXPOSITION.
23
lieved by the primary effects of the evacuation.  *  *   Thus every observ-
ing practitioner will have noticed, that a  large depletion when  carried to
deliquium [prostration] will  have entirely removed the  sjmptoms of acute
inflammation, when the patient has recovered consciousness; and that he ex-
presses the utmost relief.
  "But it gradually happens that the inordinate depression—the very full syn-
cope that is thought essential to the securing of advantage from the depletion
is   followed  by  an equally  excessive  degree  of vascular reaction—with
which all the symptoms of inflammation  return; and the general reaction is
ascribed entirely, but erroneously, to the return of the inflammation  instead
of the latter being imputed to the former, which has rekindled or exaspera-
ted it, when beginning to subside.  The consequence is, that  another very
large depletion is again prescribed for its removal, and the patient, recollect-
ing the relief it temporarily  afforded him, readily consents, Blood is taken to
full syncope—again relief  is felt—again reaction returns,—and the local
symptoms are reproduced, and thus, large depletion, full syncope, reaction,
and the supervention, on the origins 1 disease,  of some or all the phenomena
described as the consequence of excessive loss of blood, are brought before
the practitioner, and he is astonished at the obstinacy, cause and termination
of the disease, which under such circumstances generally ends in dropsical
effusion, into the cavity on which the affected organ is lodged; or in convul-
sions, or in   delirium  running  into  coma; or in  death from exhaustion, or
from one of the foregoing states; or,  more fortunately, in partial  subsidence
of the original malady and  protracted convalescence.   Such are the conse-
quences which but too often result when Blood-letting has been looked upon
as the only or chief means of cure—the  "■sheet anchor,i of treatment, as it
has too frequently been called and considered during the last twenty years."
Copland's Diet. Prac. Med.  vol. 1. page  177.
   Remarks.—On the supposition that  Blood letting is a curative or even a
directly and properly palliative means of treatment, it is passing strange that
it should be  followed by such terrible  effects  as the above.  That, when the*
nervous or vital power is  not depressed  and  the  blood is rich and healthy
it  "brings back  the disease."   Still more  strange  that  the "irritation"
of "reaction" should be taken for inflammation by the  most scientific and ex-
perienced practitioners.
   67. Prof. John  Mason Good  says:
   "The  immediate effect of profuse  and repeated bleeding is exhaustion.
While this exhaustion continues, there is a diminution of  action of every
kind, and hence  an imposing appearance of relief to the symptoms of dis-
ease: but it no sooner takes place than an instinctive effort is made by the
vis medicatrix naturae, to remedy the evil  hereby produced, and to restore
the system  to its former balance of power.   This balance is called a rally-
ing or reaction of  the  living  principle.  The arteries contract  to adapt
themselves  to the  measure of blood  that remains; the sensorial organ is
roused to the secretion of a large proportion of nervous  power to supply the
inordinate drain that takes place during  the general commotion, all is in a
state  of temporary hurry and urgency, and for the most part irregularity of
action, while the instinctive effort  is proceeding.   And  hence, no sooner is
the immediate effect of prostration, exhaustion or syncope  overcome, than
the heart palpitates, the pulse beats forcibly with a jerking bound, the head
throbs, the eyes flash fire, and the ears ring with unusual sounds.  Now,  is 
30
EXPOSITION.
 often haspens that these concurrent signs are mistaken for proofs of latent  or
 increased vigor, instead of being merely proofs of increased action; and ac-
 tion too, that adds as largely to the  exhaustion as  the  depletion that  pro-
 duced it; and the unhappy  patient is bled a second, a third, and even i
 fourth time, till no reaction  follows,  at which time it  is strangely suppon a
 that the entcna, plethora, or inflammatory  diathesis is subdued  and lused
 into a calm, because the patient has  been so  far and  fatally drained  oiled
 living principle, that  there is no longer any rallying or reactive power re-
 maining* and gives up the ghost, in a few hours,  to the treatment, instead
 of the disease."—Good's Study of Medicine, vol. 1, page 407.
   Here we have the direction of Dr.  Dewess  to bleed  "as long as the un
 pleasant symptoms continue," and the declaration of Dr. Good,  that those
 symptoms  will continue "till  the  patient has been so  far and so  fatallt-
 drained of his living principle, that there is no longer any rallying or reacy
 ive power remaining, and gives up the ghost in a few hours to the treatment,
 instead of the disease!"
   Hence, to bleed scientifically, as  taught in Philadelphia and London, and
 wherever  these  text  books of the highest anthority are adopted, is to bleed
 till the patient "gives signs of woe that all is lost."   Or in plain English,  it
 is to commit  wilful murder.
   But it is said that these terrible effects arise from  the abuse of Blood  let-
 ting.   That we should mind the indications for  its  use,  and not employ  it
 improperly.  The following will show that there arc no sure indications.
   68.  The venerable  Dr.  James  Thacher says: "We have no infallible in-
 dex to direct  us.  It is impossible, from the state of the  circulation in fever
 or point to any criterion for the employment of the lancet;  the state of the
 pulse is often ambiguous and deceptive.  Circumstances require the nicest
 discrimination's the result is often very different in cases seemingly anal-
 ogous. A precipitate decision is fraught  with danger, and a mistake  may be
 certain death."—Thacher's  Practice, page 208.
   69. Prof. Mackintosh says: "Some  patients are bled who do not require it,
 and the consequences are injurious; others are bled  who  cannot bear it, and
 who ought to be treated by  cordials,  and the result is fatal."—Mackintosh,
page 690.
  "No physician, however  wise and experienced, can tell what  quantity of
 blood ought to be taken in any given case.—Ib. page 418.
   70. Prof. Morehead says:  "Every body has heard of  practitioners, with
 whom, in every case for which  they did not know exactly what ought to be
 done, it was a settled rule of  practice  to make trial of the lancet."
   "So often,  likewise, have  I  heard  it  said,  even  of physicians counted
 «»inent in their profession, that, to prevent their patients dying, they bled
 them to death;  and I fear that such charges  have foundation in truth."
   71. Opium.—Inflammation or fever, and irritation, being styled by the Allo-
 pathic faculty, the two great forms of disease, to which the  human  body is
 subject, and the use  of free  blood letting to  cure  the  former, tending to
 produce the latter, (See Good  and Copland, Nos. 66 and   67) the next in-
 dication to the reduction of the inflammatory action, is to  subdue the irri-
 t}iton.  For  this purpose opium is highly extolled and as  constantly used as
 atblancet is for inflammation or fever.
   „Preeminently endowed with the  most diversified therapeutic powers 
EXPOSITION.
31
and more extensively employed in its various preparation?, than any other
single article of the materia medica, this great drug requires at our hands
a careful and extended inquiry  into its preparation, composition, modes of
administration,  practical  uses  and  morbid  effects^—Harrison's  Therap.
vol II. page 530.
  As I never  use it in  any form, nor  recommend nor countenance  its use
I shall consider only its "morbid (morbific) effects."
  72. "The constituents are  Morphia. Narcotina, &c.   "The Morphia is
the only one employed to any extent in the practice of Medicine.   Narco=
tina has been  extensively given in India as a  substitute for "quinine, and
its anti-periodic  power is  attributed to its  stimulant property."—Ib.  532.
  A stupifying agent must be a glorious stimulant!  The chill is a manifes-
 ation of incipient reaction, and it is  no  wonder that the deadly narcotine
checks it.
  73. "Modus curandi of Opium, and of the salts of morphia," For seven
separate  purposes, this important and  valuable drug, is  in daily, hourly
use.  1.  As a stimulant;  2.  As a Narcotic;  3.  As an astringent;  4.  Asa
diaphoretic; 5.  As an Antispasmodic; 6.  As an antiperiodic;  and 7. as a
modifier of other remedies."—Ib.  534.
  In  his first  vol. the. Professor says, there are but four indications to be
fulfilled in the treatment of disease!  And here are seven to be fulfiUecPby
Opium!   And the lancet and calomel  will have an equal share.  Bui this
is not the place for comments and criticisms; they will com*, in due course.
  74. Moi;bid effects  of  Opium!—"A very small portion of  opium will
sometimes produce  convulsions in  a  very  young  patient.   We have
known the half of a grain  of Dover's powder,  which  is but the twentieth
part of a grain of opium, [a homoeopathic dose,] induce fits in a delicate
child of a few days old.  Christison  relates several interesting e: anples of
death in children from small portions of opium.   An infant three clavsold,
got by mistake, about the fourth part of a mixture  containing ten dropo of
laudanum.  The child died in twenty four hours.  The administration of
three drops of Laudanum to a stout child fourteen months old, was followed
by convulsions, and death in six hours.   Another  child  of nine months
died in nine hours after taking four drops.  The pernicious custom  which
many nurses pursue, of giving infants  laudanum, or paregoric, to still their
cries at night, cannot be too severely reprehended.  This practice is fraught
with evil  results to the infant, and should never be permitted.'"
  In his essay above  referred to, Prof. J.  P.  Hairison  says, of Opium:  "It
stupifies  for rwhile, and  forces the  child into  an  unnatural  sleep."   flt
enhances  nervousness."  "If the brain is affected,  it  increases the disease
Inflammation  in the stonnc or bowels, will be made wors:, perhaps, incura-
bly worse by an opiate."   "It is hurtful,  because it is contrary  to nature."
"It is a medicine,—a foreign substance which  nature does not call  for, or
kindly receive as  long as she is in her  right  mood."  "Paregoric, Bate-
man's drops, laudanum or toddy, lays  the  foundation for head  complaints,
such as inflammations, convulsions, and dropsy of  the brain,"  A small
dos? of paregoric will often induce fits.  The  intellect of a child  will-be im-
paired by  it, although years may elapse  after  the  practice  is abandoned.
A permanent,  ill  conditioned state of  the  nervous system is induced by the
repeated giving of opiates to infants, that  never, through all subsequent life,
is entirely got  nd of  by the  most  strenuous  endeavors.   A tendency we
doubt not, to  insanity, is  thus engendered or augmented.  Such children 
33
EXPOSITION.
pass through the process of teething badly.  The stamina of the constitution
is weakened  by it.  The stomach  and bowels lose their  tone, and  cholera
infantum, or summer complaint is more apt to fasten on them."-Ther. p. 182.
  WThat a terrible warning  is  this, (also that of Professor Eberle 76,)  to
mothers and nurses, not to give to their children opiates—"anodynes,"  in
any form or for any purpose!  What an honor  to the  Eclectics, that  they
are so much more enlightened  and liberal than we are, that they can still
hug to their bosoms this viper of the poisonous materia medica!
  The nurses learn this practice from the Doctors, who  prescribe it "daily,
hourly," for "seven different purposes,"  See above,
  75. "Females are more  susceptible  than males, to the morbid  effects  of
the article.  We  have met with many instances of the great  intolerance
of the female system to opiates."—ib. 553.
  That is because opium "acts primarily on the  nervous  system;"  and,
women and children being more sensitive and delicate,Jare less able to res".st
its deadly  influence.   C.
  76. Prof.  Eberle, in his work  on  the diseases  of  children, page  199,
calls opium a "treacherous palliative," under which "the appetite and diges-
tive powers fail;  the  body emaciates,  and  the skin becomes sallow, dingy
and shriveled; the countenance acquires an expression of languor and suffer-
ing, and a general state of apathy,  inactivity and feebleness ensues, which
ultimately often leads  to convulsions, dropsy in the head, glandular indura-
tions, incurable jaundice, or  fatal exhaustion  of the  vital energies.   All the
usual soothing mixtures, such as Godfrey's cordial, Dalby's carminative, so
much employed for allaying the colic pains and griping of  infants, contain
more or less opium; and innumerable infants have been irretrievably ruined
by these popular nostrums!"
  Prof. J. A. Gallup, in  his  Inst, of Medicine, vol.  1.  page  187, says:
"The  practice  of using opiates as anodynes  to mitigate pain in any form  of
fever  and  local inflammations, is  greatly to be deprecated; it is  not only
unjustifiable, but  should be esteemed unpardonable."  "It  is  probable  that
for  forty years past, opium and its preparations  have done seven times the
injury that they have rendered benefit on the great scale  of the civilized
world."  Killed  seven where  they have saved one!  Page. 298, he calls
opium "the most destructive of all narcoctics," and wishes he could speak
through a lengthened trumpet, that he  might  tingle the ears  of empyrics and
charlatans in every avenue  of their  retreat."  See B. M.  Recorder,  vol.7,
page 332.
  Dr. J. Johnson  says: "The whole tribe of narcoctics, as opium, hyoscy-
amus, hop and laurel water, or prussic acid, are dangerous sedatives, present-
ing allurements to the unwary, with all the suavity and  meekness of the
serpent of Eden, and the deception too often is equally fatal."
  79. Rankin, in his Abstract, vol. 3. page 228, says: "An  able bodied
sailor, aged 62, took medicinally, two pills, each containing  a  grain and
a quarter of the extract of  opium, and was immediately attacked  with  a
convulsion fit and died."  "Cases are on record, which  show that a person
may recover from the first symptoms of poisoning, and yet ultimately die
from the effects of a single dose."
  Vol. II. page 32, the poisoning of three children by the sucking of unripe
poppy heads, is reported.  One died in four-hours, in spite of the effort of
the pkysiciai. 
exposition.                             33
                              MERCURY.

  As mercury has, for several centuries, been considered, by the Allopathic
faculty, the most effectual remedy for  disease within the compass  of their
knowledge—as they also admit that it is one of the most mischievous agents
ever used as medicine—that they know not  how it operates in any case, to
cure or kill—and, finally, declare that  it has produced more terrible effects on
the human constitution than any other article they use—I think it proper to
quote here pretty largely from their testimonies respecting this " all conquer-
ing Samson of the materia medica "—Harrison, vol. i.
   It  is  not my purpose to give the reader here its physical qualities, nor
the history of its discovery and its various uses.  My object will be accom-
plished when I shall have presented the best accounts of its supposed medical
virtues and uses, and its " tendency to mischief when injudiciously used."  I
begin with Prof. Harrison :
   78. " First regarded as a poison,  then  most cautiously  employed in the
form of ointment, it [mercury] has, step by step, advanced with the improve-
ments of the pharmaceutic art, in a bright career of reputation  and favor,
till it has possessed an immense  space in the field of practical  medicine, and
now, by many, it is  regarded as the first, greatest and best remedy Divine
Goodness has ever revealed, in answer to the diligent search of man, to  mel-
iorate and cure the bodily ills to which man is subjected."—Harrison, vol. i,
p. 233.
   "Mercury was first employed byfthe Nubian physicians,  Avicenna and
 Rhazes;  but they ventured to use it only against vermin and in cutaneous
 diseases.  We are indebted to the renowned empiric, Paracelsus, for its ad-
 ministration internally."—Pereira's Materia Medica, p. 583.
   " Of all the remedies which chemical science has conferred upon the art of
healing, there stands no single article so pre-eminently endowed with a divers-
 ified capability of curing disease as calomel."—Harrison, vol. i, p. 168.
   " When we declare that its powers are unique and unrivaled, we only em-
 body the general testimony of the profession in  its favor."—Ib.
   " Mercury is the great anti-inflammatory, anti-febrile alterant of the materia
 medica."—lb.
   Prof. N. Chapman says :
   79. " Of all the purgatives this is the most important, and is susceptible
 of the widest application in  the practice of physic.   There is scarcely, indeed,
 any case in which purging  is required, that it may not be so regulated, either
 alone or in combination,  as to meet the several indications.  It  has the sin-
 gular property of imparting force to many of the mild, and moderating the
 severity  of the drastic, medicines.   Whenever we wish a  strong  and promi-
 nent  impression to be made on the alimentary canal itself, and through it
 on the  neighboring viscera, and especially the portal circulation, by general
 consent, it is consecrated to these  purposes.    It is, hence, chiefly  relied
 on  in fevers,  especially  bilious fevers—in obstructions of the bowels—in
 cholera—and is unquestionably the most  appropriate purgative in the  early
 stage of dysentery.  Besides the superior efficacy of calomel in these respects,
 it is recommended by the facility with which it may be administered. Nearly
 devoid of  taste and odor, and  minute in  dose, it will often  be taken  when
rother medicines are  refused, and may be so disguised as to  be imposed on
       3 
34
EXPOSITION.
 the most suspicious or unmanageable of our patients."—Chapman's  Thera-
 peutics, vol. i, p.  182.   (See No. 142.)
   80. "As an adjuvant  to  blood-letting, mercury is  considered  the most
 powerful of  all the antiphlogistics."   "It is almost  universally  depended
 upon, in this country, for the purpose of  removing  the  derangements  of
 organization  which active  inflammation  may have  produced in many of the
 tissues of the body."—Prof. G. M'Clellan's Surgery, p. 57-8.
   81. "Mercury is  the great anti-inflammatory, anti-febrile  alterant of the
 materia medica."—Prof. J. P. Harrison, Therapeutics,  vol. i, p. 147.
   "That it cures we know, but how it cures we know not."—lb., 261.
   "Next to  blood-letting, mercury seems  to be  our principal remedy  in
 inflammation, especially of the  mucous  membranes of  the larynx, trachea
 and iris."—Marshall Hall, Bigelow and Holmes,  No. 577.
   '' This mineral [mercury] is a very powerful agent in  controlling  inflam-
 mation, especially acute, phlegmonous, adhesive inflammation, such as glues
 parts together and spoils  the texture of organs.   It is of the greatest im-
 portance that you should accurately inform yourselves concerning the various
 effects of mercury upon the system."—Watson's Practice, p.  154
   It is "a very potent, but a  two-edged weapon."—lb., p. 154.
   " Of late years, various  forms of inflammation  have been most successfully
 combated by the  use of mercury."—Pereira's Materia Medica, p. 595.
   As inflammation in its various forms is said to "makeup the great amount
 of human maladies, and constitute  the  grand outlet  of  life :' (Paine, Wat-
 son, Hall, Bigelow, Holmes),  it follows  that the " most  powerful  agent  in
 controlling inflammation " must  be, indeed, " the most  valuable remedy "  in
 the materia medica; and it should not be counted wonderful that, by those
 who believe this doctrine,  there should be  " scarcely a disease in which mer-
 cury,  in some of its forms, is not prescribed."—Hooper.
   82.  " According to Armstrong, ' bleeding is the right arm, and mercury
 the left arm,  of medicine."—Cincinnati Journal  of Homeopathy, p. 81.
   83.  " There is scarcely a disease in which mercury in some of its prepara-
 tions  is not exhibited."—Hooper's Medical Dictionary.
   84.  " From its  [mercury's]  power of at once limiting or removing effusion,
 it is very plain how valuable must be its administration in all inflammatory
 affections of important internal organs."—Miller's  Principles of Surgery,  p.

                  THEORIES OF THE  ACTION  OF  MERCURY.
   85.  " Mechanical Hypothesis.—Astruc (De Morb. Ven., vol. xi, p.  149) and
 Barry (Medical Transactions, vol. i, p. 25) fancied  that mercury acted by its
 weight, its divisibility and its mobility."

   86.  Chemical Hypothesis.—Some have advocated the chemical  operation
 of mercurials, and have endeavored to explain their curative powers in  dis-
 ease in reference to their chemical properties.  Thus Mitie, Pussavin (quoted
 by Richter, Ausfuhr Chzneim, vol. iv, p. 305), and  Sweddiaur (Practical  Ob.
 on Venereal  Complaints) assumed  that  mercury acted  chemically on  the
 syphilitic poison,  as acids and  alkalies do  on each other; while Gertanner
 supposed that the efficacy of mercurials  depended  on  the oxygen  they con-
tain.   Dr. Cullen (Treat,  of the Materia Medica, vol. ii,  p. 446) endeavored 
EXPOSITION.
35
to account for the action of mercury on the salivary glands in preference  to
other organs, by assuming that it has a particular disposition to unite with
ammoniacal salts,  with which it passes off by the various  secretions.  He
thus accounted for the larger quantity of mercury which passed off by these
glands, and which, being in this way applied to the excretions, occasioned
salivation.  Dr. John  Meanay substituted another hypothesis, but equally
objectionable: " Mercury," says he, "cannot pass off by the urine, because of
the phosphoric acid contained in that fluid, which would form, with the mer-
cury, an insoluble compound.   It must, therefore, be thrown out of the  sys-
tem by other secretions, particularly by saliva, which  facilitates this trans-
mission by the affinity which the muriatic  acid, the soda, and the  ammonia
of the secretion, have for the  oxyd of mercury, and by which  a compound,
soluble in water, is formed."
   87.  Dynamical  Hypothesis.—Some writers have principally directed their
attention to the quality of the effects induced by mercury, and have termed
this mineral, stimulant, sedative, tonic and  alterative.  Those who assume
that mercury is a stimulant or excitant, are not agreed as to whether one or
more parts, or the whole system, are stimulated; and, if particular parts,
what these are.  Hecker fixes on the lymphatics;  Scone, on the arterial ca-
pillary system;  Reil, on the nerves.
   88.  On the other hand, Comodi, Bertele  and Horn consider it a weakening
agent or sedative.   Some think that mercurials, in small doses, are stimu-
lants, but, in excessive  doses,  sedatives.  This is  the  opinion of Dr. Wilson
Philips.
   89.  " Dr. Murray calls mercury a tonic;  Voght terms it an alterative, sed-
ative resolvent;  Sundelin, a liquifacient;  Mr.  Hunter accounted for its
action by saying that it produced  a different action  from the disease."—
Pereira's Materia Medica, vol. i, p. 594.
   " For the most part,  th» local action of  the mercurial compounds may be
regarded as alterative and more or less irritant.  Many of the preparations are
energetic caustics.   Mr. Annesly asserts, from his experiments on  dogs and
his experience with it in the human subject, that calomel is the  reverse of
an irritant; in other words, that, when applied to  the gastro-intestinal mem-
brane, it diminishes its vascularity."—lb., p.  585.

                     ITS  EFFECTS ON THE CONSTITUTION.
   90.  "Mercury, gradually introduced into the system, seems to exert a
tonic effect on both  the extreme blood vessels and the lymphaties—that is,
on the exhalents and  the absorbents—thus  preventing or limiting impending
effusion, and at the same time expediting  the removal of that which has
been already exuded."—Principles of Surgery, by James  Miller, F. R. S. E ,
F. R. C. S. E., Prof, of Surg in the University of  Edinburgh, p. 102.
   91.  "It certainly alters the red globules  and diminishes the undue propor-
tion of the  fibrin  in  a remarkable  degree, and will, in a short time, break
down  the inflammatory exudations and  adhesions among  inflamed parts,
which have resulted from the  preceding stages of the disease;"—M'Clellan's
Surgery, p.  57.
   92.  " But the great remedial property of mercury is that of stopping, con-
trolling, or altogether preventing, the effusion of  coagulable lymph ; of brid-
ling adhesive inflammation."—Watson's Practice, p. 155. 
36
EXPOSITION.
   93. We regard mercury as an empirical and perturbatory remedy.  By its
 stimulant property it deranges the vital and organic forces."—Prof. Golphin
 in Revue Medico-Chirurgicale, torn, ii, p.  134.
   94. " Of the modus operandi of mercury we know nothing, except that it
 probably acts through the  medium of the circulation, and seems,  in many
 instances, to substitute its  own action for that of the disease."—U. S.  Dis-
 pensatory, p.  350.
   " When we produce  a mercurial impression to cure fever, we substitute
 the action of the remedy for that of the disease.
   "The therapeutist will avail himself of  this law of morbid action to  sub-
 stitute  an artificial, definite and controllable constitutional action, for one
 that is abnormal, unlimited and not corrigible by any power in the system."—
 Har., Mat. Med., vol. i, p. 157.
   In the same volume, Prof. H. says:
   95.  Mercury  "exercises  a curative  power" (194), and yet (p. 48,  49) it
 "promotes  scrofula and  glandular diseases, and hastens decomposition."
 "That  mercury cures, we  know—but, how it cures, we  know  not"  (264).
 "There is some mystery about it" (150).
   96.  "It is not an excitant, but a most powerful  depresser of the  energies
 of life"  (146).   " It is not a stimulant to  the vascular system"  (227, 245).
 " It irritates the heart and arteries and invariably depresses the nerves " (228).
 " It excites the heart's action, or  depresses  the  powers  of life,  as  the case
 may be" (146).   "It  is the greatest  curative  agent"  (147,233).   " Pro-
 motes the secretions (146).   "Calomel  subverts nature"  (9).   "Demolishes
 the very pillars  of human health" (312).  "Acts physiologically,  therapeuti-
 cally and pathologically" (218).  " I pretend  not to penetrate into its action
 further than a  careful  observance of  the  phenomena it exhibits."—Essays,
 page 177.
   97. ;: Mercury acts upon the system  as a stimulant;  but what the peculiar
 nature of that stimulant is, it would be in vain to inquire."—Eberle's  Ther-
 apeutics.
   98. " Mercury produces universal irritability,  making the constitution
 more  susceptible of all impressions.    It  quickens  the  pulse, increases its
 hardness, and  occasions a  kind  of temporary fever.   It  produces hectic fe-
 ver.   In some  constitutions, it operates like a poison."—Hooper's Medical
 Dictionary.
  99. "Mercury excites restlessness, anxiety, and a very distressing and irri-
 table state of the whole body.  In some it  produces delirium, in others pal-
 sy and epilepsy."—Dr. Bell.
   100. Prof. Drake, in the  Western  Journal of Medicine, vol. 2, p. 636,
 says:  " Mercury has been found in the bones, blood, brain and nerves."

   101. Eczema Mercuriale—"Alley saw  forty-three cases of this  disease,
 eight of which terminated fatally."—lb., p. 588.
   102.  Ulceration and Sloughing.—"Ulceration  of the mouth  is a well
known effect of mercury.   Ulceration of the throat is likewise a consequence
of the use of this mineral."—lb., p. 589.
   103. Neurosis Mercurialis.—"Various symptoms, indicating a  disordered
condition of the nervous system, are met with in persons who have been  ex- 
EXPOSITION.
37
posed to the baneful influence of mercury, such as wandering pains, a trem-
ulous condition of the muscular  system, sometimes accompanied with stam-
mering, and occasionally terminating in paralysis, epilepsy or apoplexy."—
lb., p. 589.
   104.  Cachexia M&rcurialis.—" This condition is characterized by disorder
of the digestive organs, loss of appetite, wasting, incapability of much exer-
tion, with increased secretion from all the organs, especially from the saliva-
ry glands.   Mr. Travers says mercurial cachexia is characterized by irritable
circulation, extreme pallor and emaciation, tenderness of the region of the
pancreas, and the evacuations are frothy, whitish, tough and often  greenish,
at least in the commencement.   These symptoms may be fairly referred to
an affection of the pancreas analogous to that  of the salivary glands."—Pe-
reira, vol. i, p. 588.
                PATHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF MERCURIAL  ACTION.
   However difficult the faculty may have found the  task of explaining the
modus operandi of  mercury on the human system, the following  extracts, as
well as  the preceding, show very clearly that they know something of the
results which  follow its exhibition.   The  reader  will please  to be careful,
however, not to  be imposed  upon, as  the faculty are, by the fatal error of
supposing that all these results are the legitimate effects of  the action of the
drug.   He should always bear in mind that mercury is a simple agent, and
can produce but one effect, and that must be  for good or for evil—-for the
vital force" or against it: and  that all other effects than those that are legiti-
mate of mercury, must be attributed to  other causes.   Let him especially
remember that all the irritation, fever and inflammation, that follow the ex-
hibition  of mercury, or any other  drug, are  attributable to the vital  force
alone; and  that the great business  of the observer is to ascertain whether
the agent which excites them  acts in harmony with this  force or against it;
and to  prescribe accordingly.   He  will see, if he watches carefully, that
mercury is  said to produce  good effects, only when controlled by the vital
force and prevented from producing bad ones; and that, when  it gets the
upper hand, it produces its own  effects, viz., paralysis of the nerves, ulcera-
tion, mortification,  sloughing of the glands and muscles, and caries of the
bones, which shows that all the  good  ever done on its exhibition, is done by
the vital force in spite of  it.
   105.  Mercury is " a Samson to do evil as well as to do good."—Prof. Geo.
M'Clellan's Surgery, p. 58.
   106.  " If it be resorted to as a constitutional remedy in the first stages of
disease, it will be seen to augment the disturbance, and, perhaps, convert the
fever into a morbid form of irritative excitement."—Ib.
   107.  " In some cases the gums slough, the teeth loosen and drop out, and,
occasionally, necrosis of the alveolar process takes place.   During this time
the system becomes extensively debilitated and emaciated, and  if no inter-
mission be given to the use of the mercury, involuntary actions of the mus-
cular system come on, and the  patient ultimately dies of exhaustion."  " I
have repeatedly seen inflammation and ulceration of the mouth and profuse 
38
EXPOSITION.
salivation induced by a few grains of calomel or some  other  mercurial."—
Pereira, p. 587.

   108. " If you push this remedy in healthy persons, inflammation is  actu-
ally produced; the gums become tender, and red, and swollen, and at length
they ulcerate: and, in extreme cases, and in  young children especially, the
inflamed parts may perish: the cheeks, for example, sometimes slough inter-
nally.  Not only the gums, but the throat  and fauces, grow  red, and sore,
and sloughy."—Watson's Practice, p. 155.

   109. "Patients, who are kept under the influence  of mercury, grow pale
as well as thin:  and  Dr. Farre, who has paid  great attention to  the effects,
remedial  and injurious,  of this drug, holds that it quickly  destroys red
blood: as effectually  as it may be  destroyed by venesection."—lb., p. 155.
   " The facts I have already mentioned show, that it  has a loosening effect
upon  certain textures—that  it works by pulling down  parts  of the build-
ing."—Ib., p.  155.

   110. " Mercury occasionally attacks the bowels  and causes  violent purg-
ing, even of blood.  At other times, it is suddenly determined  to the mouth,
and produces  inflammation, ulceration  and  an excessive flow of saliva."—
Cooper's Surg. Diet., vol. ii, p. 170.

   111. " Mercury, when  it falls on  the mouth, produces, in many constitu-
tions, violent inflammation, which  ends  in mortification."—lb.,  p. 170.

   112. "In 1810, the Triumph man-of-war and Phipps schooner received on
board several tons of quicksilver, saved from the wreck of a vessel near Ca-
diz.   In  consequence of the rolling of the  bags the mercury escaped, and
the whole of the crews became more  or less affected.   In the space of three
weeks two hundred men were salivated, two died, and all  the animals—cats>
dogs, sheep, fowls, a canary bird, nay, even the rats, mice and cockroaches—
were destroyed."—Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Jour., No. xxvi,  p, 29.

   113. "A very frequent consequence of excessive mercurial salivation, and
the attendant ulceration and sloughing, is contraction of the  mucous  mem-
brane in the neighborhood of the  anterior arches of the  palate, whereby the
patient is prevented from opening the mouth,  except to a very slight extent.
I  have met with several such  cases.  In one  it followed the use of a few
grains of blue pill, administered for a liver complaint.   The patient remains
unable to open her mouth wider than half an  inch.   Several operations have
been performed by different surgeons, and the contracted  parts freely divided,
but the relief was only temporary.  In another  instance (that of a  child
four  years of  age)  it was produced by a few grains of calomel.   Though
several years  have elapsed since, the patient is obliged  to  suck his food
through the spaces  left  between the jaws  by the loss of the alveolar pro-
cess."—Pereira's Mat. Med., vol. i, p. 587.

   114. Mercurial Purging.—"Violent purging is a very frequent conse-
quence of the use of  mercury.  It is frequently attended with griping, and
sometimes with sanguineous evacuations."—Ib,

   " Dr. John Mason Good, Fellow of the Royal Society, London, the learn-
ed author of the " Book of Nature," Improved Nosology," "Studies of Med-
icine," &c.; says, in the latter work, vol. i, p.  62 ; 
EXPOSITION.
39
   115. " Quicksilver, in whatever mode introduced into the system, whether
by the skin, the stomach, or  the lungs,  uniformly stimulates the  salivary
glands, producing an increased flow of saliva, and is almost, if not altogeth-
er, the only substance we know of, which, introduced internally, universally
acts in this manner."  *   *   *  " From the general tendency of mercury
to produce this specific effect,  those who are engaged  in working quicksilver
mines, are almost continually in a  state of salivation:  and when, which is
often the case, condemned as  criminals to such labor for life, drag out a mis-
erable existence, in extreme  debility and emaciation, with stiff, incurvated
limbs, and total loss of teeth  and appetite, till death, in  a few years, with a
friendly  stroke,  puts a period to their sufferings.   *  *   *
   116. "Mercury, however, produces different degrees of effect, upon different
constitutions or states of the  body.   In a few rare instances,  it has exerted
no sensible influence whatever upon the excretories of the fauces: in others,
a very small quantity of almost any of its preparations has stimulated them
at once to a copious discharge.   In persons of a highly nervous or irritable
temperament, I  have known salivation produced by a single dose of calomel;
and that it is sometimes caused by  dressing ulcers with red precipitate, is a
fact well known to all experienced surgeons.  *  *  *  Even the occasional
application of white precipitate or mercurial ointment to the head to destroy
vermin, has often excited salivation."
   Prof. Thos. Graham, of the University of Glasgow, and member of the
Royal College of Surgeons in London, says:
   117. " When  I recall to mind the numerous cases  of ruined health, from
the excessive employment of  calomel, that has come to my own knowledge;
and reflect on  the  additional proofs of its  ruinous operations, which* still
daily present themselves,  I cannot forbear regarding it, as commonly exhib-
ited, as a minute instrument of  mighty mischief which, instead of conveying
health and strength to the diseased and enervated, is made to scatter widely
the seeds of debility and  disease of  the worst kind, among persons of every
age and condition."—Indig., p. 132.
   118. " There is not, in the materia medica, another article which so immedi-
ately and permanently, and to so great a degree,  debilitates the stomach and
bowels, as calomel:  yet this is the medicine which is prescribed and sent for
on every occasion..   Its action on the nervous system is demonstrative of  its
being an article  in its nature inimical to  the human constitution; since what
medicine  besides, in  frequent use, will excite feelings so horrible and inde-
scribable  as calomel and other preparations  of  mercury?  An excessively
peevish, irritable and despondent state of mind, is a well  known consequent
of a single dose  of this substance."—P. 134.
   119. " There is a circumstance, in the operation  of mercury, which ought
to engage the serious and attentive consideration of the profession, as well
as all who are in tlie habit of  taking  it themselves, or of  giving it to their
children—I mean the permanency of its deleterious effects.  An improper  or
excessive use of the generality of medicines is recovered from without [com-
parative] difficulty;  but it is not so when  the same error  is committed with
the mercurial oxyds.   They affect the human constitution in a peculiar man-
ner, taking, so to speak, an iron grasp of all its systems, penetrating even  to
the bones, by which they not only change the healthy action of its vessels
and general structure, but greatly impair  and destroy its energies.  I have
seen persons to whom it has been largely given for the removal of different 
40
EXPOSITION.
complaints, who, before they took it, knew what indigestion and nervous de-
pression meant, only by the descriptions of others;  but they have since,be-
come experimentally acquainted  with both; for  they now constantly com-
plain of weakness and irritability of the digestiye organs, of frequent low-
ness of spirits and impaired strength ; of all which, it appears  to me, they
will ever be sensible.  Instances  of this  description abound.   Many of the
victims  of the practice are aware of this origin of their permanent indis-
position ; and many more, who are at present unconscious of it, might here
find, upon investigation, a sufficient cause for their sleepless nights and mis-
erable days.  We have, often, every benevolent feeling of the mind  called
into painful exercise, upon viewing patients already exhausted by protracted
illness, groaning under the accumulated miseries of  an active course of mer-
cury, and, by this, forever deprived of perfeet  restoration.  A barbarous-
practice, the inconsistency, folly,  and injury of which, no words can suf-
ficiently describe."—Pages 136-8.
   120. "I have seen the constitutions of such  persons [who were supposed
to have the liver complaint] irrecoverably ruined by active mercurial courses;
but in no instance did I ever witness a cure effected by this treatment.  It is
painful to recollect that, in disorganized livers, mercury, carried to the extent
of salivation, is commonly regarded  as the sheet anchor, the fit and only
remedy; for I will venture to  affirm, that the far greater  number of such
cases grow materially worse, rather than  better by such use of it; and that
this  aggravation consists not merely in an increase of the patient's weakness
and morbid irritability, but that the  existing  disease in the  liver  becomes
more extensive and inveterate."—lb., p. 172.
   121. "If the opinions here set forth with so  much force be  correct—and
that they are  so we have not the least  doubt—what incalculable  mischief
must result from a practice founded upon the common notion of the absolute
necessity of a mercurial salivation, for the cure of what may be properly or
improperly named liver complaint! "  [Note by the  American Editor.]—lb.,
p. 127.
   Abernethy says:
   122.  K Persons who are salivated, have, as far as I have  remarked, the
functions of the liver and the digestive organs  constantly disturbed  by that
process."—Surgical Observations, p. 77.
   Blackall says:
   123.  " On the schirrus or tuberculated state of the liver, I have seldom seen
mercury make any [good] impression. But I have seen the mercurial habit
superadded by continual salivation, and then the  disorder become more com-
plicated and more speedily fatal."—Dropsies, p. 70.
   Farre says:
   124.  "Patients suffering under chronic enlargements of the liver, are not,
so far as I have observed, benefited by the operation of mercury; for, by the
time that the most careful examination can distinguish them, the progress of
the disease has been already so considerable, that the mercurial action tends
only to exhaust the power that art will, subsequently, in vain attempt  to
restore."—Morb. Anat. Liver, p. 21.
   Hamilton says:
   125.  "The  ordinary mode of exhibiting  mercury, for the cure of  chronic
hepatitis, not  unfrequently hurries on the disease, 0Fr by impairing the c©q- 
EXPOSITION.
41
stittttion, lays the foundation for  paralytic affections ;  and it may be  truly
affirmed that it thus often shortens life."—Abuse of Mercury, p. 79.
   Dr. Falconer, of Bath, in a paper where he forcibly animadverts on its
abuse, observes:
   126. "Among other ill effects, it tends  to produce tumors, paralysis, and,
not unfrequently, incurable mania.  I have myself seen repeatedly, from this
cause, a kind of approximation to these maladies, that embittered life to such
a degree, with shocking  depression of spirits and  other nervous  agitations
with which it was accompanied, as to make it more than probable that  many
of the suicides vyhich disgrace our country, were occasioned by the  intoler-
able feelings which result from such a state of the nervous system."—Trans.
Medical Society, London, vol. i, p. 110.
   Dr. Hamilton says:
   127. " In a lady who had such small doses of the blue pill combined with
opium, for three nights successively, that the whole quantity amounted to no
more than five grains of the mass, salivation began  on  the  fifth day;  and,
notwithstanding every attention, the tongue and gums became swelled to an
enormous degree ; bleeding ulcers of the mouth and fauces  took place, and
such  excessive irritability  and debility followed that, for  nearly a whole
month, her life was in the utmost jeopardy."—Abuse of  Mercury,  p. 24.
   Dr. Alley says:
   128. "I have seen the mercurial eruption appear over the entire body of a
boy about seven years old, for whom  but three grains of calomel  had'been
prescribed effectually as a purgative."—Observations on Hydrargyria, p. 40.
   Graham says:
   129. "Such  instances of the poisonous operation of mercury are not of
rare occurrence;  they are common, and only two out of a vast number that
have been and are still daily witnessed, many of which are  on record."—p,
136.
           THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PREDICTING ITS MODUS OPERANDI.
   130. "Some patients are slow to show ptyalism, even under great and sus-
tained doses.  Others have their mouths touched, perhaps severely, with but
a few grains.  Some suffer from  pain  and  purging, in whatever  form the
mercury is given, internally.  Some are actually poisoned by  the mineral, the
condition termed erythismus being induced.   The system may not suffer, but
the surface may—a very troublesome eruption occurring, the eczema  mercu-
riale.   Some systems evince their intolerance of the remedy  by gradual loss
of flesh, strength  and  spirits, an  asthenic  state, approaching to hectic, be-
coming established.  Violent salivation may be caused  by sudden exposure
to cold during the use of the medicine, or  it may depend upon  an idiosyn-
cracy of the system."—Practice of Surgery, by James Miller, p. 390—91.
  Dr. Bell states that he
   131.  "Exhibited three grains of  blue mass to a patient, which  caused
copious salivation."—Bell & Stokes's Practice, vol.  ii, p. 140.
   132.  "It is important to know that different persons admit of, or resist,
the specific agency of mercury in very different degrees; so that, in  some
patients, the remedy becomes unmanageable and hazardous;  while, in  others,
it is inert and useless.   It is most grieviously disappointing to watch  a pa- 
42
EXPOSITION.
tient laboring under inflammation which is likely to spoil some  important
organ, and to find, after bleeding has been pushed as far as we  dare push it,
that  no  impression  is made upon his gums  by the freest use of mercury.
Such cases are not uncommon;  and, unfortunately, they seem  most apt to
occur when the controlling agency  of mercury is most urgently required.
On the other hand, there are persons in whom very small quantities of mer-
cury act as a violent poison, a single dose producing the  severest  salivation,
and bringing the patient's existence into jeopardy.   This history was told
to Dr. Farre by a medical man, under whose notice it fell.  A lady whom he
attended  said to him, at his first professional visit to  her, ' Now, without
asking why or speculating upon it,  never give me mercury, for it poisons me.'
Some time afterward she met with the late Mr. Chevalier, and  spoke to him
about her complaints ;  and he prescribed for her as a purgative, once, two
grains of calomel, with some cathartic extract.  She took the dose, and the next
morning showed the  prescription to her ordinary medical attendant.  ' Why,'
said he, 'you have done the very thing you were  so  anxious to avoid—you
have taken mercury.'  She replied, ' I thought as much, from the  sensations
I have in my mouth.'  Furious salivation came  on in a few hours, and  she
died at the end of two years, worn out by the effects of  mercury, and having
lost  portions of the jaw-bone by  necrosis."—Watson's Practice, p.  157-
  Dr. Joy says:
  133. "We have seen a person salivated  severely by four or five grains of
blue pill, taken in divided doses."—Library Practical Medicine, vol. v, p. 410.
  134. "Mercury, in any form, excites in some individuals, and more partic-
ularly in those in whom salivation is not easily produced, a frightful degree of
erethism, with most alarming depression of the vital powers.  We have seen a
complete but temporary  loss of  sight, accompanied by various  evidences of
undue determination of blood to the head, supervene upon the occurrence of
a violent salivation, induced by the  application of camphorated*  mercurial
ointment, for a few days, to an enlarged testis."—lb., p. 411.
  Prof. J. P. Harrison,  in a lecture on Diseases induced by Mercury, says:
  135. "Its vapors salivated a whole ship's crew."—Medical Essays, p.  126.
  " Calomel has inflicted more mischief," &c.—lb., p. 128.
  " Calomel, even in large doses, has the effect of diminishing vascular ac-
tion."—Ib., p. 131.
  It  produces  " sore, tumid, and at  length  ulcerous |ums, and a swollen,
loaded tongue."—lb., p.  139.                  N
  "Mercury sometimes produces fatal effects in very small quantities."—lb.,
p. 147.
  " Mercury is often a most potent engine of mischief."—lb., 150.
  136. "An inscrutable  peculiarity of constitution renders it a matter of
great peril for  some  persons to  take mercury  in  any shape.   The smallest
dose of blue pill or calomel will, in such individuals create the most  alarm-
ing symptoms, and death will  sometimes result from the  taking  of a few
grains of either."—lb., p.

  137. " By its rapid, irritating  impression on the gastric mucous tissue or
upon the skin, it [mercury] may act as a poison."—lb., p.  157.
  " I have seen another case, in  which the child took several doses of calo-
mel, before the mouth became inflamed, and was saved with the loss of nearly
all the teeth of both jaws and a portion of one cheek."—lb., p.  161. 
EXPOSITION.
43
  Another child, of six years, took six grains of calomel, and lost " the whole
left cheek," and " soon died."  Another " unfortunate victim of mercury lost
a part of his nose and most of the palate of his mouth, and died of  phthisis
pulmonalis ! "—lb., p. 160.
  See the whole essay, in the face of which Prof. Harrison has the effrontery
to intimate that mercury in not a poison 1


  "IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONTROLLING  ITS ACTION WHEN  IT  GETS THE UPPER HAND."
  138.  The secondary effects of the poison are manifested  in "caries of the
skull;  ozena [ulceration of the lining membrane  of the nose];  noli me
tangere [destructive ulcer of the face] ; caries and necrosis of the lower jaw;
inflammation of the tongue."—Miller's Practice of Surgery, p. 64, 129, 130,
136, 158.
  139.  " Of the remote evil effects of mercury on the system, much  might
be said."—Ib., p. 391.
  " In all aggravated cases of periostitis, mercury is usually much to blame.
No predisposing cause of  ostitis is  found more  frequent or certain  in its
operation than mercury.   The cachectic state induced by the mercurial poi-
son seems  manifestly to favor  the  occurrence of fragilitas ossium."—Ib., p.
230, 232, 262.
  Dr. Bell, when referring to the treatment of mercurial salivation, says]:
   140.  " Like all kinds of poisoning, of which this  is one, time  is required,
both for an elimination of  the deleterious agent from  the system and  for a
subsidence of the morbid phenomena, such as depraved secretions and per-
verted  innervation to which it gives rise."—Bell  & Stokes's Practice, vol. i,
p. 69.
   141.  "In producing their effects, all the mercurial preparations are decom-
posed, and the mercury in the metallic form  is either thrown out of the body
by the skin and lungs, or deposited in the glands and the bones."
  " In Hufeland's Journal, it is stated that a pelvis infiltrated with  mercury
was taken from a young woman who died of  syphilis, and is preserved in the
Dublin Museum of Midwifery."—lb., Note.   [Dr. Blundell, of London, has
another.]  " In this  place we can only contemplate mercury as a source of
disease."—Good's St. Med., vol.  i, p. 64.
   [It is often said  that, if mercury does  not salivate, it passes  out  of the
system and does no harm.   The pelves preserved, as mentioned above, show
the falsity of this declaration.
   We sometime ago read of  a case (book and page not now recollected) in
which, twenty years  after  its exhibition, mercury was brought into action,
produced all the above dreadful effects, and  destroyed the patient in spite of
all the efforts of the  faculty of a Parisian hospital to prevent it.]
   N. Chapman, Professor  of Materia Medica in  the University of Pennsyl-
vania, says:
   142.  " If you could see, what I almost daily see in my private practice, per-
sons from the South in the very last stage of miserable existence, emaciated to a
skeleton, with both plates of the skull almost completely perforated in many
places,  the nose half gone, with rotten  jaws and ulcerated throats, with
breaths more pestiferous than the poisonous  Bohon  Upas, with limbs racked
with the pains of the Inquisition, minds as imbecile as  the puling  babe—a 
44
EXPOSITION.
 grievous burthen to themselves and a disgusting spectacle to  the world, you
 would exclaim, as  I  have often done, ' 0, the lamentable ignorance which
 dictates  the  use  (as  medicine) of that noxious drug, calomel.'   It is a dis-
 graceful reproach to the profession  of medicine—it is quackery—horrid,
 unwarrantable, murderous  quackery.   What merit  do  physicians flatter
 themselves they possess, by being able to salivate a patient?  Cannot the
 veriest fool in Christendom give calomel and salivate?   But  I will ask an-
 other question, Who is there that can  stop  the career of calomel when once
 it has  taken the reins into its own possession ?  He who resigns the fate of
 his patient to calomel, is a vile enemy to the sick, and if he has a tolerable
 practice, will, in a  single season, lay the foundation of a good business for
 life;  for he will ever afterward have enough to do  to  stop the mercurial
 breaches: in  the  constitution of his dilapidated patients.  He  has thrown
 himself in close  contact with death,  and will  have to fight  him  at  arm's
 length so long as one of his patients maintains a miserable existence "  (79).
   Prof. Harrison, after saying:
   143. "Various explanations have been given of the modus curandi of this
 great anti-inflammatory alterant"  [mercury], adds, "that it cures we know,
 but how  it cures we know not " (192).   " The  mystery of its precise modus
 agendi remains unexplored "  (225).
   He has, however, explored it  pretty thoroughly, and given  us the effects
 it produces, which sufficiently demonstrate its modus agendi.   He says:
   " It produces a rapid sinking of the vital powers]" (24). " Very injurious
 effects upon  the  mouths  of  children—severe  inflammation, sloughing and
 death " (46).  " Palsy, ulceration and  diseases  of the  bones " (294).  " Irri-
 tates the heart and arteries, and invariably depresses the  nerves " (228).  "A
 most powerful subduer of the energies of life "  (227).  " It brings  on a most
 afflicting and incorrigible constitutional disease, which  often defies  the  skill
 of the most experienced and enlightened physician to cure " (187).  ': Slough-
 ing of  the cheek has arisen from washes and ointments applied to the head
 and other parts of the body" (231).  '.'Disastrous effects  have sprung from
 these applications"  (352). "Inflicts incalculable evil on the patient" (245).
 " Produces cancrum  oris " (305) [dry  salivation that rots away the mouth].
 " The most revolting mutilation of the face, foul ulcers on the tongue/cheeks
 and fauces"  (306).   "Demolishes  the very pillars  of human health" (312).
 "Eats off the nose  and the  bony palate of the mouth" (319).  "When we
 produce a mercurial impression to cure fever, we substitute the action of the
 remedy for that of the disease " (157).  " Its action  is not controllable under
 the most judicious treatment" (296).
   144. Cases and Illustrations.—"We once saw a little girl, four years old,
 with an attack of fever, who died from the mercurial cancrum oris.  Other
 children we have seen, more advanced in years, who fell victims to the disease.
 or who were mutilated by it,  their  countenances being shockingly deformed
 by the sloughing and subsequently puckered cicatrization.  Upon this topic
 our thoughts  have been much directed, from the melancholy termination'of
 cases of mercurialism in children, which we have witnessed in our own practice.
 We lost a case, from the ravages of mercury on the mouth, in a boy of eight
years old. who was apparently recovering from  hydrocephalus.   It has been
our lot to see more cases in consultation than in our own practice, in which
 death or  mutilation has occurred from continuing the use of calomel  too
long, or from giving it in disproportionate  doses in  attacks of sickness in 
EXPOSITION.
45
 children.  One dose of eight grains brought on gangrenopsis in a boy of ten
 years of age, who  had, several years anterior, been mercurialized.   Death,
 under  the most revolting mutilations of the face, took place in three weeks
 after he took the calomel" (305-6).

   In all these cases, the Doctor confesses that the disease  produced by mer-
 cury was far worse  than  the fever, hydrocephalus, hooping cough, and even
 syphilis (236), for which it was given.
   Hiram Cox, M. D., a graduate of the Ohio Medical College, and late Pro-
 fessor of Surgery in the E.  M. Institute of this city, says:
   145.  "Thousands yearly fill  a premature  grave, who are literally  and
 legally murdered by the reckless administration of  mercury;  yet  that same
 routine species of murder is continued and the community sanction  it.
   " I have been called in hundreds of instances to counteract  cases of  poi-
 son produced by men, to many of whose names, by some means  or other, the
 initials M. D. were  attached,"  &c.  " Thousands have gone to the grave," &c.
 " I could enumerate at least fifty cases of poison and death  by calomel, that
 occurred in  the practice of physicians who were practicing in the region of
 country in which I  practiced for seven years, many of whom were  sent to
 their graves, mutilated, disfigured and  partially decomposed, before  death
 released them from their sufferings.   Suppose each physician  of the thou-
 sands who are practicing in  the United States, after the Old School routine
 of giving calomel, were to hand in a list of deaths produced by that  mineral
 poison  that occurred within his knowledge and  region of labor,  what a stu-
 pendous amount of  mortality it would make! "  " How revolting  to human-
 ity is this picture !  and yet how listlessly does  this  community move on and
 permit this state of things to exist!"—W. M. Reformer.
   146.  In the preceding numbers we  have confined our quotations to  the
 three great,  indispensable remedies of Allopathy, the lancet,  opium and mer-
 cury, at once the indices to the character of its materia medica and the most
 efficient agents it embraces.   But we do not mean to intimate that these are
 all the remedies of that old, popular  practice.  There are  others  used in
 conjunction  with these, or as  substitutes for them.  But "whatever  differ-
 ences" they  may  present  in other respects, " they all agree in this—they
 suddenly and  rapidly extinguish  a  great proportion  of the vitality of  the
 system." "Poisons are, in general, the best medicines," says Hooper; and
 " the greater the poison, the  better the medicine," has long been counted an
 almost  self-evident principle.
   Among the adjuncts to, or substitutes for, the lancet, opium and mercury,
 we find a great number and variety  of agents, of very dissimilar character
 and  tendency, as  antimony, arsenic,  lead, zinc, niter, silver, copper, canthar-
 ides, digitalis, hyosciamus, cicuta, strychnine and the  most powerful narcotics,
 all which are classed among the causes as well as among the curers  of disease.
 For example, of one hundred and  thirty-four  forms of disease  enumerated
 by Eberle, he says that more than thirty are induced by the  agents  used  to
 cure disease—as mercury, arsenic, lead, cantharides, stramonium, opium and
other "irritating substances;" also by injuries from  malpractice. 
46
EXPOSITION.
  Prof. Dunglison also gives us, as the eauses of more than thirty malig-
nant forms of disease, the same "great remedial agents," with  blood-letting,
tobacco, spurred rye, opium, alcohol and other " acrid or corrosive  poisons."
  These forms of disease are, inflammation, acute and chronic, of all or any
of the organs, as  the brain, the  tongue, the tonsils, the throat, the stomach
and the intestines, the lungs,  the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the pleura, the
pericardium,  the peritoneum,  the joints, tendons and muscles, the  degenera-
tion and decay of all these and the very bones  themselves.  The very worst
forms of disease with which the human body has ever been afflicted are at-
tributed to " the  most effective weapons of medical aggression" that have
ever been  prescribed for them, and to the manipulations of rashness in  par-
turition.  Look at an array of these conditions, causes and cures.
  First, from Eberle :
Disease.	Cause.		Cure.	
Tonsilitis,	Arsenic, Mercury,	Bleeding,	Calomel,	Opium.
Enteritis,	Drastic purgatives,	Do	do	do
Peritonitis,	Injuries in parturition,	Do	do	do
Hepatitis,	Mercury,	Do	do	
Cerebutis,	Do.	Do	do	do
Nephritis,	Cantharides,	Do	do	do
Cystitis,	Do.	Do	do	do
Hysteritis, Rheumatism,	Instrumental labor,	Do	do	
	Mercury,	Do	do	do
Gout,	Do.	Do	do	do
Ophthalmia,	Do.	Do	do	do
Eczema,	Do.		do	do
Hematemesis,	Cantharides,	Do	do	do
Hematuria,	Do.	Do	do	do
Paralysis,	Lead, Mercury,	Do	do	
Chorea,	Mercury, Stramonium,	Do	do	do
Dementia,	Do.	Do	do	do
Delirium Tremens,	Opium,	Do	do	doD
Colica Pictonum,	Lead,	Do	do	do
Jaundice,	Mercury,	Do	do	do
Diabetes,	Do. Alcoholic Liquors,	Do	do	do
Dysuria,	Cantharides,		do	do
Hydrothorax,	Mercury,	Do	do	do
Ascites,	Do.	Do	do	do
Anasarca,	Do.	Do	do	do
In Dunglison	the contrast is nearly the same as	above, with the addition		
   147. The reader must be forcibly impressed by the number and the invet-
erate character of the several forms of disease above indicated, that were pro-
duced by mercury.   The following note, by Prof. J. B. Flint, of Louisville,
Kentucky, to his edition of Druitt's Surgery (p. 114), will explain the mystery.
   148. "Genuine  tuberculous scrofula  is less  common in the valley of the
Mississippi than on the eastern coast of the Union.  But a very large por-
tion of what is regarded and  treated as  scrofulous disease, in this part of the
country, appears to me to be merely the result of indiscreet mercurialization
Under the prevalent idea that biliary derangements either  constitute  or co-
exist with every departure from health,  some form of  mercury is administer-
ed in almost every prescription, and the whole capillary system of persons 
EXPOSITION.
47"
 who happen to be occasionally unwell, soon becomes impregnated  and poi-
 soned by this subtile, mineral.
   149.  " So, too, if an alterative impression is desired, under any morbid con-
 dition whatever, instead of employing regimen, diet and more harmless med-
 icaments, it is common  to resort  indiscriminately to mercurial  agents.  The
 consequences of such reckless  medication  [more properly, wholesale poison-
 ing !] present  themselves  to the physician  in  dyspeptic affections, chronic
 headaches, pains in the limbs, called rheumatism, &e; and to the surgeon in
 the more striking forms of alveolar absorption  and  adhesions, inveterate
 ulcerations of the fauces and nostrils, where  no specific taint has been sus-
 pected, and in various degenerations, malignant or semi-malignant, of gland-
 ular organs.
   150.  "Moreover, the evil does  not stop  with  the individual—for where
 important elementary tissues are so deteriorated in the parents, a constitu-
 tional infirmity will be  impressed on  the offspring, which, if it may not be
 called scrofulous from birth, is the most favorable condition possible for the
 development of the phenomena  of that diathesis, whenever co-operative in-
 fluences shall assail the unfortunate subject."
   151.  " The interests  of humanity, no less than the honor of medicine, de-
 mand that those who observe and understand these things should utter, on
 all proper occasions, the most unqualified protestations against such abuses
 of a medicinal agent whose timely and judicious use is so important to the
 healing art, and thus prevent it from becoming so detestable that its employ-
 ment will not be tolerated at all."
   Some of my  readers  have already asked why  I  have quoted so extensively
 from Allopathic authors. I answer, I have done it for several reasons:
   1.  To disabuse the public of their arrogant and impudent claims to all the
 medicaLscience in the world, and to the right of the obsequious submission
 of all patients to their dicta in practice.
   2.  To furnish to those who dare dispute their pretended wisdom and their
 arrogant  authority, with ample and effective weapons  for defense  and abund-
 ant reasons for  adopting an independent course.
   3.  I have  done it to  give ample  proof to physicians, as well as their pa-
 trons, that there is neither  science nor consistency in their principles, nor
 sense nor humanity in their practice.
   These extracts, from the  most  eminent of their professors  and  authors,
 demonstrate  as  clearly as human testimony and  example can do it, that they
 nave no faith in the doctrines  they teach, either general  or particular; and
 that, so far from having a  practice on which  they can confidently rely for
•safety and efficiency, they consider their best remedies " the most potent en-
 gines of  mischief"—"two-edged  swords," that have slain  seven-fold more by
their abuse than, they have cured by their judicious use, on the great scale of
their most scientific practice.
   They pronounce " the lancet the indispensable sheet-anchor of their  prac-
tice in inflammation;"   "mercury the great anti-inflammatory, anti-febrile
alterant of their materia medica ; " and opium the " magnum Dei donum (the
great gift of  God) for the  relief of a great  proportion of the maladies of 
48                             exposition.,
man:" and yet they ascribe to each and every one of these the destruction
of more lives than can be attributed to the other three great  curses  of hu-
manity—the sword, pestilence and famine !
  Will  not the reader turn in  disgust  from such a mortifying spectacle?
Will not the advocate of Allopathy himself here discover the  folly and in-
iquity of longer binding his living spirit to such a rotten carcass, and give me
his attention, while I unfold the cause of all the errors in theory and mischiefs
in practice of which the countless hosts of eminent and benevolent men, some
of whose statements I have quoted here, complain ?   Can the most strenuous
advocate of Allopathy longer doubt that there is, at the very root  of this
system, some fatal canker worm that stints the growth and mars the beauty of
its trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, and blast its long and earnestly antici-
pated fruits ?   Must it not seem to every one passing strange, that medicine
should " still be in  its  infancy" if it ever possessed, within its  lifeless shell,
the elements of manhood ?   If it ever had a scientific  basis, should we expect
to see such men as Lieutaud, Broussais, Louis, Hahnemann, Brown, Donaldson,
Henderson, Forbes, Waterheuse,  Jackson,  &c., surrendering  that basis as
worse than worthless—as chaining down the mind to an erroneous, destructive
creed—and setting themselves diligently to work to " make new observations,
out of which to form a sounder theory"?  Should we expect to see "Ameri-
can and  other medical  savans" assembling from year to year, and making  it
the burthen of their business to strive to ascertain the reason why their once
popular and venerated system is losing its authority and falling into silence and
neglect, if not contempt and ridicule, while multitudes of other systems, with
the title of reform, are rising up to crowd it out of fashion and to take its
place; if theirs, as they have made some thoughtless men believe, were "built
on the solid foundation of everlasting truth, and had  within it  the power  of
rising to perfection" ?   No, indeed!   Truth  is mighty, and will  prevail
wherever promulgated and applied.  That their system does  not answer the
end of its adoption (5, 6, 16), is proof irrefragable that its fundamental doc-
trines are not true.  But all the authors I have  quoted admit this  charge,
and the burthen of their  efforts has been to ascertain and rectify the error
(9, 19).   But, as yet, they have failed even in this.   Allopathy is no  further
advanced in its fundamental character than it was three hundred years ago;
and never will  be further than it is now, till its present base is revolutionized.
This  glorious work for scientific medicine, this desideratum in its  universal
history, I shall clearly and thoroughly perform in the next number of this
work.
   As references mar the beauty of the page and interrupt  the sense of the
text,  I shall make but few as I pass, assuring here  the reader, that  I shall
say nothing that I cannot amply prove, and that I will make  copious refer-
ences to all parts <*£ the work in the index,  where they will  be found by far
the most useful. 
 
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