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and drink taken by the mouth, are very striking. Those who feel an interest in dietetic medicine will do well to consult Dr. Alcott's book, particularly the details of this case of Mr. Robinson, pp. 335-39.

The sympathetic relation existing between different parts of the alimentary canal has already been alluded to; but in the large intestine, viz. in the eæcum and colon, the physiology of which is not fully understood, a function exists in which the formation of fecal matter is carried on as a secretion, probably to relieve the blood of some of its impurity. The foregoing case of Jervis Robinson. sustains this view. In dyspepsia this function of secretion is often diminished. Costiveness is a common complaint with those who eat too much or take too great variety of food, and resort to little or no exercise. A majority of patients who apply for aid in dyspepsia and constipation seem to think it the duty of medical men to cure their ailments, and at the same time allow them to pursue the course of living which caused their disorder. This the intelligent and honest physician professes himself unable to do; hence the resort of thousands to quacks, who always promise a cure. I knew a quack-physician in the interior of New England who, in dealing out doses from his saddle-bags to an enfeebled woman, spinning at her foot-wheel, remarked to her that he understood the machinery of the human body as perfectly as she understood that of her foot-wheel. This statement, which she could not gainsay, gave her unbounded confidence in his skill.

Dr. Cheyne quotes the following passage from Dr. Barwick in the Life of his brother, who had for many years been confined in a low room in the Tower during the usurpation that at the time of his going in he was

under a phthisis, atrophy, and dyscrasy, and lived on bread and water only for several years there, and yet came out, at the restoration, "sleek, plump, and gay." "Many such instances," says Dr. Cheyne, "I could produce, but it would be lost labor." 1

1 Cheyne's Natural Method of Curing the Diseases of the Body and the Disorders of the Mind. London, 1753. Fifth ed., pp. 210, 211.

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Ir need not excite surprise that the masses of men who are ignorant of the part taken by the vital economy in the amelioration or cure of certain diseases (and in this number must be included many whose minds are highly cultivated on other subjects), should place their whole reliance on drugs, especially when they come put up in parcels prepared for easy swallowing, with printed directions and the most positive assurances of lasting benefit, and when, having tried them, they have had their faith confirmed by a temporary relief of derangements, as headache, giddiness, dimness of vision, dulness of thought, etc. The invalid takes no account of the wear and tear of the delicate machinery upon which the medicine has acted, but repeats the dose again and again, upon the return of the symptoms.

Pill-drugging, in our country, was carried to a great extent twenty-five to fifty years ago. A young man from Vermont consulted me on account of debility which he had a long time labored under. He said that he had taken six hundred of Brandreth's pills within a few weeks. I asked him if he thought he had derived benefit from them. He replied that he thought not, on the whole, but

suspected he had been injured, as he had lost much strength. "Why then do you continue to take them?' "Because," said he, "my way is to give everything a fair trial." I stopped his pills and tried to enlighten him into a safer way of treating himself. Another case fell under my observation, between twenty and thirty years since. While at the Medical College of the State of Maine, I received a call from a man under thirty years of age, pale, sallow, emaciated, and so feeble that it was an extra effort for him to ride two miles in a carriage, as he had done that day in order to consult me. There was no difficulty in accounting for his prostration and pains, when he informed me that he had taken thirteen hundred of Morrison's pills within the last six months. I gave him the best advice my experience had taught me, but, as I left that part of the country in a short time, I never heard from him afterwards.

A melancholy feature of the human mind is its liability to oscillate from one extreme to its opposite, in defiance of reason and common sense, and under no other impulse than the bare assertion of some unknown individual. A man comes forward and boldly asserts that medicines increase in potency in proportion as they are attenuated; in other words, the more they are diluted, or the farther their particles are separated from each other, the stronger they are as medicines; and when subdivided above the thirtieth degree of attenuation, their power becomes fearful. A single sniff at a vial said to contain the medicine, although wholly invisible, is liable to prove fatal! Multitudes of educated minds embrace this as a glorious truth. The same medical authority is hostile to cathartic medicines. It is not many years since I was requested by a widow at Cincinnati to visit her daughter, who was "suffering with

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sore eyes." A moment's inspection was sufficient. cornea in each eye had sloughed, and the contents of the eyes were falling out. Both eyes were lost. As they reported the case, it was between two and three weeks since the eyes became sore, apparently from exposure to cold. The dispenser of the new medicine came; used no evacuant means, gave little pellets dissolved in water, and kept the bowels wholly unmoved for the last two weeks. All this at the cost of both eyes.

The habit, if undeviatingly followed, of giving the bowels an opportunity for an evacuation soon after the morning meal, is important, and with some persons is an adequate preventive of constipation. Ordinary cases of dyspepsia, indeed most forms of chronic disease, as distinguished from those accompanied with inflammation or fever, may be favorably treated with little or no medication, if suitable dietetic and other hygienic measures are followed and faithfully persevered in; but the grace of persevering self-denial for a remote object is so sparingly cultivated as to leave a large majority of invalids of this class to adopt some other course for relief. I have heard a dyspeptic patient remark, "I could never relish slop diet; rye or oatmeal mush lies like lead in my stomach; wheat-meal mush and cracked wheat I do not relish, and the dry Scotch cakes and Indian bannock are not savory enough for my palate." Well, eat fruits; such as baked apples, sweet, pleasant, or sour; cherries, gooseberries, currants, grapes, stewed prunes, dates, figs, the footstalk of the leaf of the pie-plant, or rhubarb-plant. The root of this vegetable is laxative; I have found it to possess something less than half the strength of the Turkey rhubarb. The fruits just named should be ripe, and for their laxative effect should be eaten before anything else,

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