uring
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 presumption in
favor of whatever is nauseous and noxious as being good for the sick.

Again, we all occasionally meet persons stained with nitrate of silver,
given for epilepsy. Read what Dr. Martin says, about the way in which
it came to be used, in his excellent address before the Norfolk County
Medical Society, and the evidence I can show, but have not time for now,
and then say what you think of the practice which on such presumptions
turns a white man as blue as the double-tattooed King of the Cannibal
Islands! [Note A.]

If medical superstitions have fought their way down through all the
rationalism and scepticism of the nineteenth century, of course the
theories of the schools, supported by great names, adopted into the
popular belief and incorporated with the general mass of misapprehension
with reference to disease, must be expected to meet us at every turn in
the shape of bad practice founded on false doctrine. A French patient
complains that his blood heats him, and expects his doctor to bleed
him. An English or American one says he is bilious, and will not be easy
without a dose of calomel. A doctor looks at a patient's tongue, sees it
coated, and says the stomach is foul; his head full of the old saburral
notion which the extreme inflammation-doctrine of Broussais did so
much to root out, but which still leads, probably, to much needless and
injurious wrong of the stomach and bowels by evacuants, when all they
want is to be let alone. It is so hard to get anything out of the dead
hand of medical tradition! The mortmain of theorists extinct in science
clings as close as that of ecclesiastics defunct in law.

One practical hint may not be out of place here. It