the nitrate of silver supposes he is
guided by the solemn experience of the past, instead of by its idle
fancies. He laughs at those old physicians who placed such confidence in
the right hind hoof of an elk as a remedy for the same disease, and
leaves the record of his own belief in a treatment quite as fanciful and
far more objectionable, written in indelible ink upon a living tablet
where he who runs may read it for a whole generation, if nature spares
his walking advertisement so long.

NOTE B.--

The presumption that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, does
not mean that there are no rogues, but lays the onus probandi on the
party to which it properly belongs. So with this proposition. A noxious
agent should never be employed in sickness unless there is ample evidence
in the particular case to overcome the general presumption against all
such agents, and the evidence is very apt to be defective.

The miserable delusion of Homoeopathy builds itself upon an axiom
directly the opposite of this; namely, that the sick are to be cured by
poisons. Similia similibus curantur means exactly this. It is simply a
theory of universal poisoning, nullified in practice by the infinitesimal
contrivance. The only way to kill it and all similar fancies, and to
throw every quack nostrum into discredit, is to root out completely the
suckers of the old rotten superstition that whatever is odious or noxious
is likely to be good for disease. The current of sound practice with
ourselves is, I believe, setting fast in the direction I have indicated
in the above proposition. To uphold the exhibition of noxious agents in
disease, as the rule, instead of admitting them cautiously and
reluctantly as the exception, is, as I think, an eddy of opinion in the
direction of the barbarism out of which we believe our art is escaping.
It is only through the enlightened sentiment and action of the Medical
Profession that the community can be brought to acknowledge that drugs
should always be regarded as evils.

It is true that some suppose, and our scientific and thoughtful
associate, Dr. Gould, has half countenanced the opinion, that there may
yet be discovered a specific for every disease. Let us not despair of
the future, but let us be moderate in our expectations. When an oil is
discovered that will make a bad watch keep good time; when a recipe is
given which will turn an acephalous foetus into a promising child; when a
man can ente