sect, but claim the right and privilege, nay, consider
it a duty, to select from all, such remedies as careful investigation,
scientific research, and an extensive experience, have proved valuable.
They resort to any and every agent which has been proved efficacious,
whether it be vegetable or mineral.

And here arises a distinction between _sanative_ remedial agents and
those which are _noxious_. Many practitioners deplore the use of
poisons, and advocate innocuous medicines which produce only curative
results. We agree with them in one proposition, namely, that improper
medicines not only poison, but frequently utterly destroy the health and
body of the patient. Every physician should keep steadily in view the
final effects, as well as present relief, and never employ any agent
without regard to its ulterior consequences. However, an agent which is
noxious in _health_, may prove a valuable remedy in _disease_. When
morbid changes have taken place in the blood and tissues, when a general
diseased condition of the bodily organs has occurred, then an agent,
which is poisonous in health, may prove curative. For instance it is
admitted that alcohol is a poison; that it prevents healthful
assimilation, solidifies pepsin, begets a morbid appetite; that it
produces intoxication, and that its habitual use destroys the body. It
is, therefore, neither a hygienic nor a sanative agent, but strictly a
noxious one; yet, its very distinct antiseptic properties render it
valuable for remedial purposes, since these qualities promptly arrest
that fatal form of decomposition of the animal fluids which is
occasioned by snake-venom, which produces its deadly effects in the same
manner as a drop of yeast ferments the largest mash. Alcohol checks this
poisonous and deadly process and neutralizes its effects. Thus, alcohol,
although a noxious agent, possesses a special curative influence in a
morbid state of the human system; but its general remedial effects do
not entitle it to the rank of a hygienic agent. We believe that medicine
is undergoing a gradual change from the darkness of the past, with its
ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, to the light of a glorious
future. At each successive step in the path of progress, medicine
approaches one degree nearer the realm of an exact science. The common
object of the practitioners of all medical schools is the alleviation of
human suffering. The only difference between the schools is in the
r