mal evacuations, first for days, next for weeks, although they
continue to alternate more or less with constipation, or painful,
insufficient, hard stool, until they terminate sooner or later,
according as the disease is more or less deep-seated, and had lasted
more or less long, in permanent restoration of the normal secretions and
excretions of the digestive organs. At the same time the many distresses
which the abnormal condition of the bowels and stomach had occasioned in
the head and heart, disappear; the poor patient who had been a prey to
so many sufferings, feels like one born again.

This is the general result, unless psoric, sycosic, syphilitic or
vaccinine complications should be present. Unfortunately the abuse of
cathartics excites these miasms if they exist in the organism, and at
the same time prostrates the reactive powers of the organism, and
enables its enemies to rise against it. The distress becomes more and
more complicated; disorganizations, alterations of the fluids,
disturbances of the assimilative sphere, nervous derangements from
simple illusions of the sentient sphere, and occasional trembling and
twitching, to spasmodic and convulsive movements, and final extinction
of nervous power, marasmus of the spinal marrow or a ramollissement of
the brain; these are the consequences of such miasmatic complications.

In such a case Apis alone is not sufficient. We have to employ such
antidotes as _Sulphur_, our most powerful anti-psoric which, unless it
had been abused previously, never leaves us in the lurch in the presence
of psora; _iodine_ which, under similar circumstances, becomes
indispensable wherever psora and sycosis are combined; _bichromate of
potash_ or _fluoric acid_, if psora, syphilis and mercurial poisoning
are united; and lastly, _tartar emetic_, or again _fluoric acid_, if the
vaccine poison alone, or in combination with the other poisons, occupies
the foreground.

This is not the place to treat of these special forms of human distress,
and to individualize their treatment; I shall endeavor to do this on a
more suitable occasion. I shall have to limit myself here to a
superficial sketch of the treatment, adding merely that a single dose of
the specific antidote will act best if given highly potentized, and that
the improvement should afterwards be allowed to progress as long as a
trace of it remains visible. But as soon as the improvement stops and an
exacerbation sets in, which is