A homœopathic treatise on the diseases of children

Front matter

Kp^ v\

**.

HOMOEOPATHIC TREATISE

PART II. Diseases of Children 115

Diseases of the Skin, ...., 116

Erythema, 116

(vii)

viii Contents.

PAGE.

Cracks, 118

Burns, 118

Frost Bites, 120

Stings, 121

Erysipelas, 122

Zona — Shingles, 125

Pemphigus, 126

Urticaria, or Nettle-Rash, 126

Furuncles, or Boils, 126

Roseola, 134

Purpura, 143

Miliaria, 144

Sudamina, 145

Varioloid, 164

Varicella — Chicken-Pox, 165

Vaccina and Vaccinella — Cow-Pox, and Spurious Cow-Pox, 166

Itch, 171

Eczema — Humid Tetter, , 185

Herpes— Tetter, 187

Crusta Lactea — Milk Crusts, 191

Crusta Serpiginosa, 194

Impetigo, 195

Impetigo Rodens, 197

Tinea Favosa — Scald Head, 197

Tinea Granulata, 201

Tinea Annularis, 202

Pityriasis, 205

Strophulus, 205

Prurigo, 206

Psoriasis,. 207

Contents. ix

PAGE.

Syphilis of the New-Born, 221

Stomatitis — Inflammation of the Mouth — Muguet, 229

Aphthae— Thrush, 232

Gangrene of the Mouth, 236

Dentition, 240

Gripings in Infants at the Breast, 258

Colic, 259

Constipation, 260

Lientery, , 261

Dysentery, 265

Icterus — Jaundice, , 276

Peritonitis, 277

Ascaris Lumbricoides, 279

Ascaris Vermicularis, 285

Tabes Mesenterica — Atrophy of Children, 290

Coryza, 295

Epistaxis — Bleeding from the !N*ose, 298

Angina, 298

Asthma of Millar, 312

Bronchitis, 316

Pneumonia, 317

Pleurisy, „ 319

Hooping-Cough, 320

Phthisis Pulmonalis — Pulmonary Consumption, 324

Diseases of the Circulatory Apparatus, 326

Cerebral Fever, 329

Spinal Meningitis, 333 x Contents.

PAGE.

Myelitis — Inflammation of the Spinal Marrow, 334

Hydrocephalus, (Chronic) 334

Convulsions, 336

Chorea — St. Vitus's Dance, 338

Balbuties — Stammering, 338

Diseases of the Organs of Sense, 340

Ophthalmia, 340

Otitis, 340

Diseases of the Locomotive Apparatus, 341

Rachitis, 341

NOTE.

As the term ounce and ounces of water has Tbeen used in different formulaB in this book, it may be necessary, for the benefit of persons unused to this mode of measuring fluids, to state that, a fluid ounce is equal, in quantity, to two tablespoonfuls.

Author's Preface

In default of any other recommendation, this little work will possess that of being the only one upon the diseases of children which at present exists in Homoeopathy.*

It has been composed from the voluminous files of Notes, collected, as well at Paris, as in the provinces, but more especially during the five summers that the author passed at Bagnoles de l'Orne, in the capacity of resident physician at the baths of that place. The great number of absolutely new therapeutic indications which it contains, are consequently the fruit of experience.

The preliminary remarks by which the autnor has thought it his duty to precede the practical part of his work, are addressed to serious readers, who have as yet no fixed opinion upon the fundamental principles of Hahnemann's doctrine ; — a knowledge of which it is their object to popularize.

The Hygiene of Children, which succeeds this introduction, is especially designed for the use of mothers.

* The pamphlet of Hartlaub cannot be considered as a treatise upon the diseases of children.

viii Author's Preface

Finally, the Pathological part, properly so called, which forms of itself about three quarters of the volume, is clearly enough exposed (so at least the author hopes), to be intelligible to persons who, without having studied medicine, follow, nevertheless, with interest, the progress of Homoeopathy, and are accustomed to read occasionally works which treat of it.

INTRODUCTION,

Section I. What Homoeopathy Is

Samuel Hahnemann, to whom we are indebted for the fundamental laws of Homoeopathy, is, notwithstanding the insults, that folly and ignorance still offer to his memory, one of the finest geniuses the world has produced.

Among all the benefactors of humanity, no one, perhaps, has a larger claim upon its gratitude. We may safely predict that his reputation will increase with time, and that generations yet unborn will bless his name.

Sixty years have passed since Homoeopathy made its appearance in the world. In consequence of the obstacles which, in the beginning, it encountered from the folly of some, and the envy of others, its progress was at first slow; it shared, in this respect, the fate of all great discoveries. At present, however, it has ceased to be a novelty; no medical school

counts more adherents. It is practiced in all civilized

(ii)

12 "What Homeopathy Is.

countries ; it has its representatives in Turkey, in India, in the two Americas, its dispensaries and its hospitals in most of the capitals of Europe. The books which treat of it would already fill libraries. These works, many of which testify to the great mental superiority of their authors, possess this remarkable feature in contrast with the medical books of the Old School, that they are all devoted to the development of the same principle. It is in fact the unity and invariability of this principle which constitutes the strength of Homoeopathy, and which so forcibly distinguishes it from those deceptive Utopias which, under the usurped name of medical science, have reigned in the schools from Empedocles to Broussais ; that is to say, for more than twenty centuries.

The history of medicine, during this long period, is a compendium of all the dreams, all the extravagances, and all the absurdities which it is possible for the human mind to elaborate, when it strays without an axiom in the domains of abstraction.

To judge it by its history, we must believe that, the medical art, which ceased to be anything when it endeavored to become a science, claimed always to ally itself to metaphysics. If by this ambitious alliance, it escaped the inconvenience of remaining within reach of the vulgar, it incurred the still greater one of losing itself in the clouds.

This strange substitution of sophistry for the pure and simple observation of nature, has its root in an

What Homoeopathy Is. 13

almost invincible tendency of the human mind. " Man," says Broussais, "is tormented by a desire to know the first cause of what he sees, and when the impossibility of discovering it is demonstrated to him he takes refuge in a supposition."*

We need not then be too much astonished if, from the most remote ages, physicians supposed the first causes of diseases ; and if, this first step made, proceeding from hypothesis to hypothesis, they have supposed even to the virtues of the remedies they prescribed.

The exposition of the system of Galen, whose sterile branches reach even to the present generation, is a summary of all the systems which have succeeded each other, from the infancy of rationalism down to the too famous so-called Physiological School. Abstractions of the closet, chimerical hypothesis, fantastical intervention of three spirits and four humors, whose harmony produces health, and disagreement disease; mysterious connection of these spirits and these humors with the four elements of Aristotle; in short, empiric expedients taken at hazard, to equalize, correct and purify at need, these imaginary principles : such was humorism in its cradle, and such the humoralism which was the favorite practice of our ancestors, and of which the grossest errors are perpetuated in the medical practice of the present day.

Thank Heaven, Homoeopathy has nothing in com-

* Examen des Doctrines Medicales, tome 1, page 9.

14: What Homceopathy Is.

mon with these fatal extravagances which have so long made medicine a subject of laughter to the philosopher and of deception and dread to mankind in general.

Homoeopathy is not a creation, but a discovery.

It is not a system, but a method.

It has no other theory than the logic of facts ; no other principle than a certain law of nature, as evident as an axiom in geometry — as certain as gravitation and the rotation of the earth.

If the honor of being the first to signalize this law, whose incidental manifestation had struck from time to time some of his predecessors, may be contested with Hahnemann, his glory, his great glory consists in having proved that it was not an exceptional phenomenon, as was believed before him, but a general and constant physiological fact.

We shall consecrate the second paragraph of this introduction to the examination of this axiom of modern medicine.

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRANTUR. 15

SECTION II. SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CUKANTUK

As we have before observed, the system of Galen served as a model to all succeeding writers. In studying them, in fact, w T e may remark, that the object aimed at by all of them was to reduce to a certain number of entities, or, if you will, to connect with a limited number of morbid agents, material or dynamic, the diseases, so numerous and so dissimilar, to which man is exposed ; then, to oppose to each of these entities, or to each of these morbid agents, a group more or less heterogeneous of therapeutic means. Thence two orders of artificial, arbitrary, forced, unnatural classifications : classification of diseases — classification of remedies.

Let us first observe, that between these conventional diseases and the remedies to be opposed to them, no one thought of seeking to establish any relation. The idea of specific remedies was incompatible with the spirit of the system; so that no suggestion of this idea appears until toward the close of the middle ages ; that is to say, until the epoch when empiricism succeeded in stifling in its brutal grasp an art false from the beginning, and which, notwithstanding its

old scientific pretensions, was still more worthless

16 SlMILIA SlMILIBUS OuKANTUR.

and more dangerous than empiricism itself. But let us consider things in their origin.

The first elements of therapeutics were a deduction from the precepts of hygiene. As this considered health an equilibrium resulting from the reciprocal neutralization of certain opposite forces in the economy, the first pathologists believed themselves wisely imitating nature in provoking artificially, against the abnormal and excessive tendency of a function at a certain time, a tendency equally excessive, of the same function, in an opposite direction. Thence, naturally, the dogmatic inclination for all the contrasts, whether physiological, or purely physical, which it was possible to obtain. The corrective of cold was heat; of humidity, dryness ; of satiety, abstinence, etc. More abstract considerations did not fail to give rise to new oppositions. The error of the hygienic precepts, generalized by the successors of Hippocrates, was especially in assimilating the living economy to inert matter, and in eliminating theoretically the power of reaction against the external world, which characterizes animal existence, and- whose character is such that the same physical causes have almost always upon organic and inorganic being, very dissimilar results. But if, as we begin obscurely to foresee, the harmlessness of these precepts was already very questionable, conceive what medical practice must become, when, to imaginary morbid principles, they ventured to oppose as contraries remedies absolutely unknown !

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRANTUR. 17

However, this fatal doctrine of contraries, invented by Galen, seduced away even the finest minds, which then exhausted themselves in vain endeavors to enlighten the chaos of medical art.

Points of departure the most opposite did not hinder its advocates from meeting, almost by fatality, upon this field of fiction, there to labor in the idle search of those abstractions which, under different names, form the basis of the vitalism of Stahl, as well as of the materialistic systems of Brown, of Rasori, and of Broussais.

The theory of contraries is then the common tie of all the medical doctrines anterior to Homoeopathy. Let the falseness of this theory be demonstrated and all the systems of which it is the key -stone will crumble at once.

This is what w r e shall endeavor to do, and this labor of analysis will cost us no great effort.

To cure a disease by means capable of producing in the patient attacked with it, a pathological condition contrary to that which it presents : such is the fundamental law of the theories of the Galenists, in other words, the ideal end of all the schools of medicine from Grecian antiquity clown to the present day. But the theory of contraries necessarily supposes between two things certain relations of form or substance, implying, so to speak, a sort of negative similitude, without which, all comparison becoming impossible, there is nothing for the mind to seize upon. In metaphy-

18 SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRANTUK.

sics, for example, affirmation and negation are contrary things, when relating either to two abstractions of the same category, or to two perceptions exercised by the same sense.

Thus, to the eyes, light is the contrary of darkness, as sound, to the ears, is the contrary of silence. We understand in the same manner, by analogy, but without prejudging, lest we err with regard to the nature of the phenomena, that cold is the contrary of heat ; dryness, the contrary of humidity; hunger, the contrary of satietj r . In being but purely relative to our senses, these dychotomies are not on that account the less legitimate, since, after all, the abstractions which they place in contrast have always for each couple identity of substance. But is health then the contrary of disease ? Is o ! for if, in an abstract and general sense, which represents nothing obvious to the senses, it be so considered, it is by no means the contrary of any definable disease. The contrary of a disease is another disease, at the same time analogous and identically dissimilar to the first. What a problem, just Heaven ! Who had ever wittingly the temerity to state it, and above all, the pretension to solve it !

I admit in all strictness and concede, for the moment, to the system-makers, the truth of their hypothesis; that bleeding is the contrary of hyperemia ; leeching the contrary of a local inflammation ; a purgative the contrary of the inertia of the intestines ; but the contrary of variola, of psoriasis, of cancer, of tubercles, of

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS ClTRANTUR. 1\)

herpes, of syphilis, of hysteria, of chorea, of epilepsy, etc., etc. Who has seen it ? Who knows it? Who can conceive it ? Who has a mind acute, and inventive enough to represent it ?

The doctrine of contraries is then without foundation. It is but a monstrous vagary, of which routine has propagated the dogmas — of which humanity has borne the terrible effects — and of which physicians themselves have not seldom deplored the emptiness. "Medicine does not advance," says Yan Helmont, "it turns upon its axis." And the celebrated Boerhaave, still more pointedly asked himself, in a moment of doubt and discouragement, if it would not have been better for humanity if there had never been a physician in the world.*

Nevertheless, empiricism, that is to say, chance, had from the most remote antiquity sown the germs of a doctrine opposed to that of contraries, which only waited the appearance of a man of genius to be fecundated.

It is twenty-two centuries since Democritus wrote to Hippocrates : "Hellebore, which restores reason to the insane, produces derangement in the healthy." Hippocrates himself had said : " Vomiting is cured by vomiting."

These two propositions, put forth by the two greatest physicians of antiquity, contained the most

20 SlMILTA SlMILIBUS CuEANTUR.

complete contradiction to all received ideas which it is possible to imagine.

Later, the popular observation of facts analogous to the singular curative virtues of hellebore and of emetics, propagated certain practices of which the experience of centuries only confirms the efficacy.

Everybody knows, for example, that the best means of alleviating the pain caused by a superficial burn, is to hold near the fire the burned part ; while this pain, momentarily suspended by immersion in cold water, is reproduced with increased intensity as soon as the immersion is discontinued.

Everybody knows also, that frictions with snow are, so to speak, specific for freezing, in cases where the contrary influence of heat would have no other result than to produce gangrene.

But by the side of these striking facts, empiricism, which, without suspecting it, undermines all systems, hatched other facts still more conclusive. They saw purgatives arrest diarrhea, that rationalism, at the end of its resources, had abandoned. They saw opium, on the contrary, that they had cried up against diarrhea, triumph over constipation, which the use of purgatives had greatly augmented.

These apparent singularities were so often repeated, that it was at length admitted that the greater part of purgative substances, at least, contained contradictory properties, and produced, successively, two orders of phenomena; first, the primary effect, augmentation of

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CtJRANTUR. 21

the peristaltic action, and of the intestinal secretions ; the other, secondary effect, dryness and inertia of the intestines ; so that we need not be surprised to find, in ancient treatises upon medical substances, the same substance, rhubarb for example, figuring at the same time in the class of purgatives and in the class of tonics.

This succession of contrary effects, generally established in regard to purgatives, is by no means a mode of action peculiar to this species of remedies. With closer attention, and above all, with fewer prejudices, physicians would have had no difficulty in understanding that all medicines, without exception, are subject to the same law ; and this first observation would infallibly have led them to verify that other capital point, that the primary effect of medicines, upon which turns the whole system of therapeutics, hardly ever constitutes more than a crisis of short duration, and generally insignificant results ; while the secondary effect, of which little notice was taken, persists for a long time, and in reality represents the virtues and final action of the remedies.

Thus it is easy to comprehend, that the generalization of such observations upon the double action of therapeutic agents, would have had the immediate result of completely overturning the reigning theories. But matters were not yet ripe for such a revolution.

However, this was very nearly accomplished in the sixteenth century, under the auspices of a wonderworker.

22 SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRANTUR.

Paracelsus, a sort of visionary and pseudo-savant — inventor of the famous doctrine of sympathies, and of the sympathetic ointment, and especially a great seeker after the real — Paracelsus discovered, one day, in one of the ingredients of a combination which, according to him, ought to produce the philosopher's stone, a marvelous remedy for one of the most dreadful diseases known. The remedy had this peculiarity, that it cured without provoking either purgation, sweat, diuresis, or any other species of trouble, apparent in the functions of the organism. This remedy was mercury, and the disease it cured, was syphilis.

The discovery of this fortunate employment of mercury, the insensible, silent, and as it were, secret manner, in which this precious medicine acted ; in short, and above all, the speciality of the cases in which it proved itself salutary, opened evidently new views of therapeutics.

The great problem of sjiecijics, so long laid down by empiricism, had at last, for one disease at least, received a solution. The doctrine of specifics, in a word, ceased to be a dream, to become an unquestionable reality. The whole future of medicine was contained in this ; but unfortunately no one thought of seeking the laws of specifics. It was still necessary, as in the past, to trust to chance, and grope along in the search for specifics ; and, as chance is a bad guide, a blind, a dumb guide — the more dumb the more you interrogate it — it happened that several centuries passed

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS ClTRANTUR. 23

before another medicinal substance was discovered to take rank by the side of mercury.

At last, however, quinine appeared, to double the number of specifics.

It was asserted that quinine* cured intermittent fever, in the same manner that mercury cured syphilis ; that is to say, without causing any of those violent perturbations that all other medicines produced, and from the nature of which were inferred the dominant quality and generic denomination of each.

Quinine provoking neither vomiting, purgation, urine, sweat, nor sleep, was not then an emetic, or purgative, a diuretic, sudorific, or narcotic ; for the grand reason that it was bitter, and under the not less specious pretext that it tanned the gastric fluid, as the bark

* The Allopathic physicians include iron, also, in the number of their specifics. Let it be so — they have then three. What wealth ! And what a proof of the fecundity of clinical experience! Three specifics in two thousand years ! And yet, it is well to observe that specificity, in the absolute seuse, as understood by Allopathy, is really but a gross and lying fiction. There really exist specific remedies against such or such a group of definite symptoms, (we employ no others) ; but from the moment that these symptoms are absent, or no longer exist, the specificity ceases, and the remedy no longer cures, although the disease still exists and has not changed its name. This is equivalent to saying, that it is almost always necessary to have recourse to the employment, successively, of several specifics to cure one disease. This is the reason that Allopathists, who for the most part do not suspect these facts, see so often, what never fails to astonish them, mercury fail in syphilis ; quinine, in intermittent fever, and iron, in chlorosis.

24 SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRAKTOB.

of the oak did leather, they made it a tonic. But this silly denomination, while deceiving practitioners upon the real effects of quinine, was very far from explaining to them how it cured fever. In spite of the persistence and the sophisms of the classifiers, Peruvian bark remained simply and purely a febrifuge, as mercury was an anti-syphilitic. That is to say, that they admitted only as primordial facts, that quinine cured fever, and mercury, syphilis. But why did quinine cure fever ? why did mercury cure syphilis ? The science of the most skillful was silent upon this point.

But this terrible why ? — a stumbling-block to the doctrine of contraries — was destined to become the very corner-stone of an opposite doctrine; that is to say, the supreme law of true medicine.

We borrow from the excellent works of M. Auguste Rapou, the interesting history of this great discovery :

" Tired of the errors of the practice, the vagueness and insufficiency of the precepts of the schools, this celebrated reformer, (Hahnemann,) had abandoned the exercise of the art, in order to devote himself entirely to the labors of the closet. One day, occupied in translating the materia medica of Cullen, at the chapter on quinine, he was struck with the numerous and contradictory therapeutic properties attributed, without criticism, to this remedy, and the various hypotheses, more or less singular, to explain its anti-febrile action. Then, in one of those sudden inspirations of which the history of great discoveries offers some

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuRANTUK. 25

examples, "Let us cut the knot," he exclaimed, "I will try quinine upon myself, and observe its effects." He took a strong decoction of this bark, and was attacked with an intermittent fever, accompanied by its premonitory symptoms, and by its three stages of cold, heat, and sweat. To argue from cause to effect, of the febriflc properties of quinine from its anti-febrile faculty, to generalize this mode of action, and apply it to all specifics, such were, for so ardent a genius, the results of this remarkable experiment. He reflected upon these facts after the manner of Newton, and the conception of the law of similars was accomplished. " The generalization of the facts was, however, an exaggerated application of the analogy. This law of similitude was as yet but a preconceived idea, which could have little other value than as a possibly true hypothesis ; it was now to be proved by showing that it is manifested not only in the effects of quinine, but that it belongs to the mode of action of the various other medical substances. The certainty of this could only be established by a long series of experiments. Hahnemann devoted himself entirely to this object. Endowed with perfect health, he was willing for several years to put himself into a state of permanent disease. He tried, successively, the action of the specifics already known, and established for each this remarkable property of producing upon him a totality of symptoms analogous to the groups of symptoms against which, according to the writers, they showed themselves

26 SlMILlA SlMILIBUS ClJEANTUR.

efficacious. In all that had been written upon the action of simple drugs, and upon the effects of acute and chronic poisons, he saw the full confirmation of the results of his own experiments. At last, in order to make the counter-proof of his experiments, he administered to the sick substances which had produced upon the healthy a state similar to that under which they were suffering. Clinical success stamped upon this therapeutic law a last and irrefragable sanction." #

Behold then, at last, Galenism and its works irrevocably judged by the double means of experience and experiment, and behold the whole therapeutic arsenal of the Old School reduced to its real value; that is to say, to nothing.

No! of the absurd conjectures of ancient medicine, of the false doctrines of the middle ages, of Brunonianism, of Rasorisin, of Broussaisism, there will remain, hereafter, but the sad remembrance of their extravagances, and of the evils they have produced. The expectant medicine, the negation of all medicine, had already asserted that the curative force of nature was the only reason of all the pretended success on which the active methods vaunted themselves.

The vast erudition of Hahnemann is, beside, employed to demonstrate to us that all the remarkable cures reported in the books, that nature alone would not have been able to effect, had always been the for-

* Aug. Rapou : Histoire de la Doctrine Medicale Homceopathique, tome 1, page 390.

SlMILIA SlMILIBUS CuKANTUE. 27

tuitous effect of homoeopathic remedies administered empirically.

Thus the law of similars, sustained by the history of innumerable facts and verified since its discovery by millions of cases, is definitely substituted, in the minds of men of good sense and good faith, for the too famous adage: contraria, contrariis, curantur.

The whole code of modern therapeutics is reduced to this precept: To administer for the cure of the sick, the medicine which produces upon the healthy a totality of symptoms the most similar to the totality of the symptoms presented hy the sich.

But the practical application of this precept implied a profound knowledge of all the effects produced in the healthy by each medicinal substance ; and it was to the gigantic task, a labor most urgently necessary, of re-constructing the Materia Medica upon an entirely new basis, that the immortal Hahnemann, assisted by his disciples, devoted thirty years of his life.

Section III. Dynamisation Of Medicines

That, in which especially consists the immense superiority of the Homoeopathic, over the Old School, is the advantage which belongs to the former, of proceeding always from experiment to experience, while the latter is guided only by experience ; that fallacious thing of which Hippocrates speaks, and which he distrusted with so much reason.

If we have had the good fortune to make ourselves understood, in the preceding paragraph, this proposition hardly requires farther explanation.

In fact, it is well known that w T hile the Allopathist borrows only from doubtful tradition the drugs so often whimsical or disgusting, that he administers to the patient, we make use only of simple substances, whose properties have been discovered, by experiments, many times repeated, upon the healthy. It results from this, that even in cases where we employ a medicine for the first time, we know in advance, with great certainty, all the effects we may expect from it.

In Allopathy, on the contrary, unless we give a forced and paradoxical extension to this maxim of Iamblique: "Medicine is the daughter of dreams," I maintain that it is impossible to explain otherwise than by accident or imagination, the introduction into therapeutics of any new medicine. But let us suspend these critical reflections, which every day's experience verifies, and which the good sense of the public, it is to be hoped, will soon render superfluous.

When Hahnemann undertook the heroic part of trying upon himself the toxical substances, of which it was so important to him to establish the pathogenesis, a double consideration induced him, from the first, to reduce very much, in his trials, the doses in which these substances w T ere ordinarily administered. He felt on the one part, in fact, that without this precaution, his health, however good it might be, would not long resist these daily toxications ; and on the other hand, a sort of intuition, the test of genius, told him that the proper specific action of these remedies, if such they had, should be different from those violent derangements produced by large doses.

Observation demonstrated his foresight. He was soon convinced that not only had physicians been deceived in what, till then, they had considered the proper action of medicines, but that the organic commotions, excited by the enormous doses in which they had been prescribed, so modified the manifestation of their peculiar action, that it had never been observed. In the preface to his Materia Meclica, Hahnemann expresses himself on this subject in the following terms :

"As to the duration of action assigned to each medicinal substance — which I have sought to determine by multiplied experiment — I ought to remark, that it can never take place when the medicine is administered in large doses, and in a case of disease, to which it is not appropriate. In either case, the duration of action is much abridged, because the medicine is, to a certain extent, thrown off with the evacuations, which are their result, (bleeding at the nose and other hemorrhages, coryza, flow of urine, diarrhea, vomitings, or sweat,) so that its virtues are promptly dissipated. The living body rapidly expels this matter, as it does the miasm of contagious diseases, when it weakens, and, in part, expels it by means of vomiting, diarrhea, hemorrhage, coryza, convulsions, salivation, sweat, and other movements and evacuations. Thence it happens that, in ordinary practice, neither the peculiar symptoms nor the duration of action can be known of antimony, of jalap, etc., because the excessive doses, in w T hich only these substances are administered, pushes the organism to disembarrass itself promptly of them. It is only when they do not produce this effect, that is to say, when they do not provoke evacuations, that we may observe their characteristic effects, so often important, and of long duration, but which are rarely noticed, and still more rarely recorded.