stitution of the human organism, and of the functions it has to perform for the sustentation of life and health, the reader is in a position to consider the vexed questions that still agitate the medical world concerning the nature and source of disease. Not only so, but from what has been said about the general action of the Bath on that organism, the natural geniality of its influences in the treatment of disease, as contrasted with the means of Drug practice, can be more satisfactorily considered. But it consists with common sense, that before undertaking the treatment of disease, a distinct and rational idea ought to be entertained respecting the all-important question-What is DisThis shall now be considered.

ease?

CHAPTER XI.

Ignorance of Disease by the Drug School-Proofs afforded by the London Physicians-This ignorance the basis of Drug Practice- Disease as a remedial effort of Nature is subject to fixed and discoverable laws-Opinions thereon-Mal-Nutrition the source of all Established Disease—Evils arising from Medical Nosology-All Disease naturally divisible into Organic and Functional, and has its primary source in imperfect or perverted nutrition.

NOTWITHSTANDING the research and experience of all the Professors who have laboured Medicine for toilsome centuries, there is even now little agreement among the Faculty concerning the cause and treatment of any single disease! Although Physiology and Pathology have been successfully cultivated into useful sciences, the Profession as yet acknowledges no authoritative exposition respecting the nature of disease. The most discordant opinions still prevail on the subject, and the light of science has been turned aside, and the fruits of experience perverted, to sustain the unphilosophical teachings of Drug Schools, which are now, as they always have been, based on speculative fallacies as to the cause and nature of disease. The deplorable state of ignorance in which the Profession is now involved, is demonstrated by the appointment of the Therapeutical Committee of the Harveian Society of London, already referred to, for the purpose of gleaning some information about the nature of disease and the action of drugs! The proceedings of this Committee are also highly instructive, and afford convincing proof-were additional proof required—of how hap

hazardous and murderous Drug-practice, as blindly followed, must necessarily be. The Medical Journals, in reporting the first meeting of the Committee, say :

"It was agreed to commence proceedings by taking up the following subjects for investigation, viz.—The natural history of rheumatic fever, and its treatment by, first, alkalies; second, blisters. The natural course of acute idiopathic pleurisy, and its treatment by calomel and opium, with fomentations; iodide of potassium and fomentations, and the natural course of acute eczema.

"It was resolved to circulate the subjoined questions among the medical men of the United Kingdom. Queries-Have you found any of the following Drugs, viz., Digitalis, Cantharides, Chlorate of Potash, Belladona, Arsenic, Quinine, and Tincture of the Muriate of Iron (as distinguished from the other forms of iron) particularly useful in any special form of disease? In what form of preparation, and in what doses, are you in the habit of administering these drugs, and what results have you observed to follow their administration in the diseases to which you refer?

"Can you from your personal knowledge give any information respecting the use and doses of any drug not commonly employed, or respecting any method of treating any disease, which you have found particularly useful in your practice, or can you give information as to any fact in therapeutics not commonly known to the Profession?"

Here, then, is an authoritative declaration of the helpless ignorance concerning disease and drugs which now characterises the profession, after all the accumulated experience of centuries acquired by physicing countless thousands to death. It will be observed, however, that this Committee, representing the collective wisdom of the London Physicians, still cherishes exploded notions about Disease, and clings with bigoted faith to the unphilosophical assumption that it is something to be killed in the system or expelled from it, by mineral and vegetable poisons.

It is for the common sense of the public to judge of the estimation in which Physic and Physicians ought justly to be held, in the face of such confessions of deplorable ignorance made by the London luminaries of the Profession! Rheumatic fever, pleurisy, and eczema, are ordinary diseases, and yet these Physic-sages admit they are without any recognised mode of treatment, and want to know something about their "natural history" and "course!" Then look at the formidable list of

potent poisons they send queries through the country to glean information concerning-poisons which it is their daily practice to administer in varied doses to credulous dupes, without any certainty of benefit, but the reverse; thus recklessly experimentalising on diseases about which they confessedly know little, and with poisons, too, about the alleged remedial action of which they are equally in the dark! No wonder, indeed, that Dr. Bostock declared-" Every dose of Medicine given is a blind experimeut upon the vitality of the patient."

False and illogical notions about Disease, lie at the root of all Drug-systems, and are the basis of all Drug-practice. The study of Medicine can never be scientifically cultivated, nor investigations into the nature of disease, and the action of remedies, be rationally and hopefully conducted, as long as false principles are assumed, and the object in view is not to attain truth, irrespective of preconceptions, but to build up and sustain systems of Medication essentially erroneous, and opposed to Nature. As Dr. Andrew Combe observed, in his paper On the Observation of Nature in the Treatment of Disease:—

"The great defect in the study of Medicine, and in all investigations connected with it, at present seems to me to consist in the nearly total absence of guiding principles, and in the neglect of the great rules of Bacon, and more especially of the observation of Nature, as the only solid foundation on which Medicine, or any other science, can rest and advance towards perfection."

Preliminary, then, to any rational treatment of Disease, it is essential to have an accurate conception first, concerning the nature of what is called Disease, and, second, concerning the appropriateness of proposed remedies, which, to be appropriate, must be in harmony with Nature. On these points, clear and truthful ideas must be entertained, for it has been truly said, that "without clear ideas, logic is nothing, philosophy is nothing, reason is nothing, truth is nothing "—knowledge, indeed, is but a confused rhapsody. Let us then consider these points

The Ancients, we know, referred all Diseases to a special

supernatural origin, and their ideas were not more clouded, while they were much more simple, than those of modern Physicians, who have split into three leading schools on the subject. One teaches that all disease is referable to certain conditions of the fluids of the body; another that it consists in a peculiar condition and action of the solids; the other combines both theories, and implicates both fluids and solids. Sound philosophy, however, has nothing to do with such vain and fanciful speculations, but looks to Nature alone, and reads by the light of careful observation the varied phenomena of Disease.

Dr. Hooper, in his Lexicon Medicum, has correctly defined disease to be "any deviation from the natural and healthy action of the whole system, or of any particular organ." Disease is thus a departure, in a greater or less degree, from that perfect working of our vital organism which constitutes the state we call perfect health. It is not, therefore, a something foreign to Nature a something outside the human organism that has been put into it, but is the necessary result of the direct action of that organism itself. Hence disease is an effect ordained by the Creator to follow the exposure of the bodily economy to certain morbific influences, and is, therefore, subject to natural laws just as certainly and as invariably as Health is subjected, for as Dr. Andrew Combe observes:-"All the operations and actions of the living body, whether healthy or morbid, take place according to fixed and discoverable laws. God has left nothing to chance."

Thus, we arrive at a great truth-that, as the Creator designed the normal operations of our vital organism to be productive of health only, the phenomena which we distinguish as disease can never be the legitimate result of those operations, but must be induced by something that has interfered with and impaired their natural and healthful action.

Now, we have seen that the Creator has endowed the human organism with a preservative principle-the vis medicatrix natura, whose function is to resist the conflicting influences