the occasion
of any slight disturbance. The tongue was a little coated, and mercury
must be given; the skin was a little dry, and the patient must take
antimony. It was like sending for the constable and the posse comitatus
when there is only a carpet to shake or a refuse-barrel to empty. [Dr.
James Johnson advises persons not ailing to take five grains of blue
pill with one or two of aloes twice a week for three or four months in
the year, with half a pint of compound decoction of sarsaparilla every
day for the same period, to preserve health and prolong life. Pract.
Treatise on Dis. of Liver, etc. p. 272.] The constitution bears slow
poisoning a great deal better than might be expected; yet the most
intelligent men in the profession have gradually got out of the habit of
prescribing these powerful alien substances in the old routine way.
Mr. Metcalf will tell you how much more sparingly they are given by our
practitioners at the present time, than when he first inaugurated
the new era of pharmacy among us. Still, the presumption in favor of
poisoning out every spontaneous reaction of outraged nature is
not extinct in those who are trusted with the lives of their
fellow-citizens. "On examining the file of prescriptions at the
hospital, I discovered that they were rudely written, and indicated a
treatment, as they consisted chiefly of tartar emetic, ipecacuanha, and
epsom salts, hardly favorable to the cure of the prevailing diarrhoea
and dysenteries." In a report of a poisoning case now on trial, where we
are told that arsenic enough was found in the stomach to produce death
in twenty-four hours, the patient is said to have been treated by
arsenic, phosphorus, bryonia, aconite, nux vomica, and muriatic
acid,--by a practitioner of what school it may be imagined.

The traditional idea of always poisoning out disease, as we smoke out
vermin, is now seeking its last refuge behind the wooden cannon and
painted port-holes of that unblushing system of false scientific
pretences which I do not care to name in a discourse addressed to an
audience devoted to the study of the laws of nature in the light of the
laws of evidence. It is extraordinary to observe that the system which,
by its reducing medicine to a name and a farce, has accustomed all who
have sense enough to see through its thin artifices to the idea that
diseases get well without being "cured," should now be the main support
of the tottering poison-cure doctrine. It