long since to a man with a terribly
sore mouth. On inquiry he found that the man had picked up a box of
unknown pills, in Howard Street, and had proceeded to take them, on
general principles, pills being good for people. They happened to
contain mercury, and hence the trouble for which he consulted our
associate.

The outside pressure, therefore, is immense upon the physician, tending
to force him to active treatment of some kind. Certain old
superstitions, still lingering in the mind of the public, and not yet
utterly expelled from that of the profession, are at the bottom of this,
or contribute to it largely. One of the most ancient is, that disease is
a malignant agency, or entity, to be driven out of the body by offensive
substances, as the smoke of the fish's heart and liver drove the devil
out of Tobit's bridal chamber, according to the Apochrypha. Epileptics
used to suck the blood from the wounds of dying gladiators. [Plinii Hist.
Mundi. lib. xxviii. c. 4.] The Hon. Robert Boyle's little book was
published some twenty or thirty years before our late President, Dr.
Holyoke, was born. [A Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies. The Fifth
Edition, corrected. London, 1712. Dr. Holyoke was born in 1728.] In it
he recommends, as internal medicines, most of the substances commonly
used as fertilizers of the soil. His "Album Graecum" is best left
untranslated, and his "Zebethum Occidentale" is still more
transcendentally unmentionable except in a strange dialect. It sounds
odiously to us to hear him recommend for dysentery a powder made from
"the sole of an old shoe worn by some man that walks much." Perhaps
nobody here ever heard of tying a stocking, which had been worn during
the day, round the neck at night for a sore throat. The same idea of
virtue in unlovely secretions! [The idea is very ancient. "Sordes
hominis" "Sudore et oleo medicinam facientibus."--Plin. xxviii. 4.]

Even now the Homoeopathists have been introducing the venom of serpents,
under the learned title of Lachesis, and outraging human nature with
infusions of the pediculus capitis; that is, of course, as we understand
their dilutions, the names of these things; for if a fine-tooth-comb
insect were drowned in Lake Superior, we cannot agree with them in
thinking that every drop of its waters would be impregnated with all the
pedicular virtues they so highly value. They know what they are doing.
They are appealing to the detestable old superstitious pr