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unhealthfully, pleasurably or painfully, no matter which, the function is still a manifestation of the life and product of its force.

And thus we reach the salient feature of that great problem of medical science, the nature of disease. How we shall treat it, is necessarily involved in a knowledge of what it really is. The time is past when it can be considered a mysterious something that has pounced upon us, unwelcome and unbidden, like the midnight assassin, the only relief from which can come through killing him with poison. The force of life, explains how it is that agents which destroy, or tend to destroy the one, also tend to destroy the other, and how the millions in every age have been deluded to their destruction in the attempt to get rid of their diseases. But paralysing the heart to stop a fever, deadening the sensibilities to relieve pain, prostrating the vital powers to remove restlessness, in a word poisoning a patient because he is sick, is no part of the practice of the intelligent twentieth century physician. To employ such measures is to prove one's self ignorant of the very first essential of successful practice, a knowledge of the nature of the thing to be treated. It is the physician's duty to aid Nature, not to combat her; to supply the conditions for good health, not to fight disease.

An excellent illustration of the nature of disease is found in that great representative form of it, inflammation, which is Nature's process of healing, even the ulceration often connected with it being Nature's work of cleansing the part preparatory to the healing process.

And it never fails to heal when the power is sufficient and the conditions are favorable. The conditions are all summed up in two words, rest and cleanliness, which, having been supplied, makes the surgeon at least to rely with confidence upon the healing powers of Nature. What i cough but the effort of Nature to relieve throat, bronchia or lungs; what is vomiting or purging but the effort to expel irritating matters; and what is fever but the process of purifying foul tissues to the extent of breaking them down and burning them up? And how senseless to try to stop these or any other operations of Nature! To cure cough remove the foreign substance or divert the blood from the congested parts, and soothe their irritation which a little hot water skillfully applied, steam inhaled, or an infinitesimal dose of a similar medicine, will do more quickly than any violent application. To cure purging and vomiting wash out the alimentary canal. For diarrheas and dysenteries no treatment ever equalled full and repeated hot water injections in connection with restored circulation to the surface and extremities which the application of heat and especially of skillful rubbing will greatly aid. In the cure of fever remove its occasions,

cleanse the Augean stable, radiate the excessive heat by the application of water, and let the water be cool and soothing, not cold or hot, for both these are irritating, and fever is increased by irritation while it is reduced by soothing appliances. Under such conditions the similar remedy will work like a charm.

Then let the patient rest and Nature will do the rest. A necessarily fatal fever is exceedingly rare, but the patient must rest within as well as without, if the cleansing processes of the fever shall be efficiently done. What do we mean by rest within? We mean to cease imposing on the vital organs work in addition to the extraordinary operations in which they are already engaged, in breaking down tissue and burning it up. Seldom, if ever, a case of prolonged fever occurs until the tissues of the whole system have become poisoned, and the fever should not cease until these tissues have been substantially purified. It is during convalescence, and not during the fever, that they are renewed; and the attempt to renew them while the fever continues, and there is no desire for food and no capacity to appropriate it, is among the most ridiculous and absurd forms of medical practice. The work of the interior organism consists almost wholly of receiving, digesting and assimilating food and circulating its products, to attempt increase of which work while it is already overburdened with the labor of getting rid of what it already has, is practice without rhyme or reason. To introduce new and clean material to be mingled with foul matters that are being got rid of, is to continue the taint that occasioned the fever, and so to continue the fever. Present day stuffing processes in all forms of disease are but another proof of empiricism run mad.

But if we may not stuff the man who, if he does not loathe, has at least no desire for food, what shall we say of forcing upon the helpless organism the poisonous stimulants which every unbiased mind knows are destructive to health. But we must sustain the vital powers, we are told. How does the application of agencies known to be destructive to these powers, sustain them? Does forcing a tired horse with spur and lash to make him pull harder or go faster sustain his strength?

Who will say that the appearance of strength thus induced is the equivalent of its possession? Does the engineer increase the amount of his steam when he increases the appearance of it by blowing it off? Then how does calling forth a patient's power to resist the violence of a poisonous stimulant add to his powers? And is it the power we seem to have that keeps us alive and heals our diseases, or the power we really do have? Is it true that when power has passed beyond our

observation it has ceased to exist-that when we feel weak we are therefore weak; or feeling strong we are strong? On the contrary is it not true that power always exists, invisible and intangible, before it works, and always continues invisible until we begin to use and expend it? The manifestation of power is coincident with its expenditure, not with its possession. "My righteous one shall live by faith," says the good Book, because no man can live by sight and yet be right.

Some advocate the use of cold baths in varied forms of disease, and produce with them results fully equivalent to those from the use of alcohol or other drugs. They are a form of violence which arouses vital resistance just as does any other violence, and gives an appearance of strength all the while the victim is being exhausted. No manknows, or can know, how much vitality he has until he uses it; every form of violence induces its use and makes us conscious, not of the power we are saving and which is saving us, but of that which is going from us into work done. No drug, no stimulant or tonic, can yield to us what it does not have; the power it seems to give, is the power it is taking away; so that the more we use of it the weaker we get and the more of it we want; it always produces on the reaction the very ailments it seems to cure. The yell of fire at midnight when we are in the tenth story of a hotel, is as strengthening as is any other stimulant or tonic.

The use of the word reaction in this connection is not only suggestive but truly scientific, and opens up a realm of reality whose equal is not easily found. All things the product of law is the dictum of science, which consists indeed of deductions from laws and not observation of apparent facts. One law is equivalent to ten million observeď facts; to know the law of their production enables us to produce, control, obviate, or at least explain them at will. It was the discovery of the law that gave us astronomy, chemistry, homeopathy, and every other science that is worthy the name. Science without law is a misnomer if not a fraud. With it we have attained to the knowledge that is power; with it we have made Nature our servant as well as our mistress. In this respect, if in no other, science and religion are in perfect agreement. It is "the law of the Spirit of Life that makes me free from the law of Sin and Death," said the great Apostle; while the greater Teacher said of another formula for achieving success, "This is the law and the prophets." We call attention to a law of Nature which rivals in importance all others; a law underlying all phenomena and conse-quently applicable to all departments of natural existence-a law as obobvious in the medical as in the physical world, and withal so simple

that no one need err as to its meaning. Its formula, as demonstrated by the immortal Newton, appears in the words:

"Action and reaction are equal and opposite."

And there is no exception to this law. Wherever and whenever in all the realm of being an action occurs, the reaction necessarily follows, which in physiology being its last or ultimate effect, is consequently its real and lasting effect. Stated in other words, and applied specifically to physiology, the real effect of any act, habit, indulgence or agency upon the living organism, is the opposite of the immediate, and therefore, apparent effect-the opposite of what the victim feels and what the physician observes.

And the emphasis is always upon the word "opposite." To determine the real effects of any agency or indulgence upon the human organism make the experiment with it, and then in accordance with the law, conclude that the ultimate result will be the opposite of what has been observed. This is what Hahnemann did. He first experimented to find out what symptoms certain drugs would produce, and then concluded that the ultimate effect would be the opposite, viz.: The drug would cure in the sick man what it produced in the well one. Next to the facts of homeopathy the known effects of opiates, narcotics, alcoholic beverages are the best illustrations. All experience has proved they produce in the reaction the very conditions they are intended to cure, so that the longer one uses them the more he needs them. These effects are not peculiar to a few drugs; they illustrate a law of Nature as universal as gravitation.

It is this law which constitutes the corner-stone of homeopathy, even though Samuel Hahnemann nor modern science was its first discoverer. Nineteen hundred years ago it was taught with an authority and emphasis never equalled. He who "spake as never men spake❞ applied it in those wondrous paradoxes which the ages have neither outgrown nor fully comprehended, such as "Give if ye would get;" "Sow if ye would reap;" "Judge not if ye would not be judged,” and all summed up in one great universal law of success, "All things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

Getting is surely the opposite of giving, and reaping of sowing, but according to these paradoxes while the thing got is always opposite in direction it is similar in kind-the harvest always corresponds to the seed sown; all of which justifies Hahnemann's law of similars, whose paradoxical nature makes it as certain as the paradoxes of Scripture are true.

The law of similars, therefore, is the law of success in every

department. "Go sell all thou hast and give to the poor" is the road to infinite riches. "No man hath deserted houses or lands" for Him who is the truth but "shall receive manifold more in this present time." "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again;" and what produces disease will certainly cure the similar one; or what is so often given as alcohol or opium to cure weakness or pain, or other symptoms, is the most certain agency of their production, all of which is true only because the reaction is the opposite in direction but similar in kind to the action.

Samuel Hahnemann was not therefore the first to deal in paradoxes, but he seems to have been the first to clearly perceive the paradoxical nature of disease as well as of its causes and cure. In Sec. 10 of his Organon he shows that disease, as well as health, is the product of the "immaterial vital principle," which underlies all vital phenomena, a truth which is fully explained by recalling the great fact that two things and two alone are necessary to the production of any result in Nature:

First, the power that produces, and

Second, the conditions for the operation of the power.

It is gravity that turns the water-wheel, and generates for us electricity, or grinds our flour, but of what use to this end would be the gravity without the wheel and collateral machinery? It is chemical affinity in the dynamite which first made, and then explodes it, and constitutes the force of the explosion, but how could the explosion be produced without the percussion cap, or its equivalent to set it off? So also how could we have a fever or pain without the vital force on the one hand, and injurious applications on the other? In every case of disease as in every case of health, therefore, there is the power that produces it and the condition for its operation. These are properly called also the cause and the occasion. A cause is well defined as "that by the power of which a thing is," while the occasion. is that which excites into operation the power that does the work. The cause or force of both health and disease is, therefore, the patient's vital force, while the occasion or condition is the habits, indulgences, conditions that call forth the vitality. When these are healthful we have health; but how can we continue to have health while breathing foul air, drinking impure water or other vile drinks, eating impure food or "wasting our substance in riotous living," until the force of life. is so depleted that the functions of the organism cannot be carried on easily and efficiently? Health means the easy performance of vital functions, while disease is the uneasy or diseased performance of the same functions.

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