»NT(vv^L A D DRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ERIE COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, JANUARY 7 , I « * 1 - BY REV. WILLIAM FLINT. M. I) ERIK, P K N N PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE CllKONICI.E ^ AR ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORB THE ERIE COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, JANUARY 7, 1801, / BT EEV. WILLIAM FLINT, M. D .5^ o. c£LnoQ ^■...... '—fr* »«^> t #**»■" BRIE.PENN, FWNTBD AT THE OFFICE OF THE UHBONICLB 1851, CORRESPONDENCE. 0». Wm. Flint. Dear Sir,—At the last meeting of the Erie County Mr- dical Society we were appointed a committee to solicit for publication a copy of your eloquent Address delivered on Tuesday evening, January 7th. Hoping that it may suit your pleasure and convenience to comply with the wishes of the Society, we remain with great respect, Your obedient servants, J. L. Stewart, F. Perkins, M. J. Johnson, Erie, Jan. 13, 1851. Brit, Jan. 14, 1851. ' Gentlemen,—I thank the Society for the honor done me in requesting a copy of my Lecture for publication. It is at their disposal. Being written without any in'ention to pub* liah, 1 did not note whence I gained my facts, and 1 have nei- ther time nor inclination again to-go over the books which I consulted. I acknowledge myself indebted to the " Criterion," to "Physic and Physicians," and to a most excellent prize essay by Washington Hooker, M. D. Hoping that the delu- sions which now, especially in this community, so lamenta- bly prevail may speedily be dissipated, I am, gentlemen,, your most obedient servant, W. Flint. . Dri. J. L. Stewart, F. Perkins, M. J. Johnson. ADDRESS. Gentlemen of the Medical Society, Ladies and Gentle- men,—T:,e sul.jectof " Medical Delusions" which the Socie- ty has allotted me, upon which to address you this evening, is one so vast in extent, embracing so great a period of time, and such an almost infinite variety of collateral topics, that but feeble justice can be done to it in a single lecture. I shall therefore attempt no labored philosophic exposition of the causes of these delusions; but giving a brief history of the art of medicine, shall afterwards notice some of those delu- sions, and shall show you from a few common sense and well known principles why they deceived and are still deceiving the community. As we shall have to do mostly with facts of history, and of daily observaiion, we shall have but little field for originality, or for beauty and grace of style. We shall draw freely fiorn every source within our reach, and trust to interest you only from the curious exhibition we shall be ena- bled to make of human weakness, folly and credulity. The history of the art of medicine begins with fable, and for the most part rests on dubious tradition. Endeavoring to penetrate the mists of the past, we find the object of our search hecoming more and more indistinct. Celsus, a celebrated Roman physician, proud as even then he might well be of his art, asserts that medicine and mankind must have originated at the same time. Mis words are, " Medicina nusquam non est.1' The learned Schultze, in his Historia Medicinoe, also with much wit and ingenuity maintains that our first parents were well skilled in physiology, and that Adam must necessa- rily have been the first physician. The sacred writings, to which we naturally look for infor- mation of the past, afford here but little assistance. Moses gave directions for the cure and prevention of leprosy, and enforced his teachings by the sanctions of religion. In the apochryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, it is said that " God crea- ted the physician and the physic, and that il is He that hath given science to man, and that it is He that healeth man." Indeed, the ancients almost universally ascribed the art of medicine to the gods. Cicero says, " Deorum immortalium inventioni consecrata est ars medica." The art of physic is sacred to the invention of the immortal gods. Hippocrates eays, "they who first found the way of curing distempers thought it an art which deserved to be ascribe 1 to the immor- tal gods, which is the generally received opinion." We are told, by Herodotus, that it was the custom at Ba- bylon, authorized by a solemn decree of the empire, to carry Cite sick to the market places and public streets, and every 4 passer-by was required to investigate the case, and if he knew any remedy to name it. This custom was observed alas among other eastern nations, and we find one or two allusions to it in Scripture. Says the prophet Jeremiah, " Is it noth- ing to you, all ye that pass by. behold and see, if there be any sorrow equal to my sorrow." And says St. Mark, allu- ding to the same custom, "And whithersoever he entered, in- to villages and cities and countries, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought that they might touch, if it were but the hem of his garment." In Egypt the art of medicine was early and warmly culti- vated by the piiests, who seem to have been the physicians. Alpinus, in his history of Egyptian medicine, reports that they discovered the art of curing disease from brute beasts; thus phlebotomy was taken from a practice noticed in the riv- er horse, which bleeds itself when plethoric by pressing its thigh on a sharp reed. Dogs and cats are known, when sick, to vomit themselves by eating grass; swine when ill refuse food, and so recover by abstinence. Among the Egyptians ori- ginated the delusion, which is still prevalent in many portions of our country, that the different parts of the body were go- verned by the zodiacal signs, and that when any section was diseased, a cure could only be effected by invoking the demon to whose province it belonged. In many of our almanacs, for the benefit, we suppose, of those who still hug the deceit, the human body is represented as thus apportioned—in the humorous language of Southey: ''There Homo stands, na- ked but not ashamed, upon the two Pisces, one foot upon each; the fish being neither in air, nor water, nor upon earth, but self-suspended as it appears in the void. Aries has alighted with two feet on Homo's head, and has sent a shaft through the forehead into his brain. Taurus has quietly seat- ed himself across his neck, the Gemini are riding astride a little below his right shoulder. The whole trunk is laid open, as if part of the old accursed punishment for high treason had been performed upon him; the Lion occupies the thorax as his proper domain, and the Crab is in possession of the abdo- men. Sagittarius, volant in the void, has just let fly an ar- row, which is on the way to his right arm. Capricornus breathes out a visible influence that penetrates both knees; Aquarius inflicts similar punctures upon both legs. Virgo fishes, as it were, at his intestine;-; Libra at the part affected by schoolmasters in their anger, and Scorpio takes the wick- edest aim of all." Absurd as is the supposition contained in this delusion, there are many, not otherwise credulous or ill informed, who vet most fully believe in it—who consult their almanacs with as much confidence in the virtue of the codiacal signs as they have in the accuracy of the time there appointed for the rising and setting of the sun. 5 The art of medicine passed from Egypt into Greece, and was thence disseminated through the whole world. Fifty years before the Trojan war, Esculapius was deified on ac- count of his medical skill, and his two sons succeeded him, enjoying neatly the same reputation for skill and success.— Some idea of the state of medical science in the days of Ho- mer.may be attained from the manner in which he describes Patroclus, dressing the wounds of Eurypiues: *' Patroclus cul the forky steel away. Win n in hi* hand a hitler rojt he bruised ; The wound he wat-h'd, ihe styptic juice infused— 'the closing flesh that install: ceased to jrlow, The wound to torture, and the blond to fl)W." When Meuelaus was wounded in the side by an arrow, llachaon, li^e son of Esculapius, is represented, after washing the wound and sucking out the blood, as applying a dressing of bruised roots to appease the pain: " Then suck'd the blood, and sovereign balm infused "Winch -Ornrufj gave, and Esculapius used " But it was reserved for Hippocrates, justly styled the "Fa- ther of Medicine," who lived about 450 years B. C, to sepa- rate and to elevaie the medical profession—to free it from rash empiricism—from the trammels of superstition and the frivolous dreams of philosophers. lie opposed the doctrine then generally inculcated of the celestial origin of diseases, and boldly declared that no ill came from the gods, but owed its origin to its own natural and manifest cause. In declar- ing this truth he set himself against a wide spread delusion; for even the learned Celsus, two hundred years after Hippo- crates, says', " Morbus ad iram deorum immortaliuin velatos esse, et ab iisdem opem passi solitam." But he had too much medical know ledge not to use active remedial agents; he there- fore writes, li Morbi non eloquenlia, sed remediis curantur." Pliny savs that Rome was settled 600 years before any physicians established themselves there—the sick being cured by means of charms, fascinations, incantations, amulets, &c. The book of Cito the Censor, " De Re Rustics," is a mani- fest proof of the superstition of the times. He proposes, as a certain cure of fracture, to have the limb bound up, and the following words sung once in every day, w Huat, hanat, ista pisla fisla, dominabo, damnastra el luxata." This doubtless, however, was full as effectual as a cure for odontalgia which we lately saw in a book of Homoepathic practice; which was, to hang a piece of opium, about the size of a pea, upon the outside of the cheek. This latter is a production of the lOtli .century. The first physician who practised regularly at Rome vrim Archagathus, a Greek; but making too free use of the knife 1* 0 and the actual cautery, he was banished the city. The next physician of note who appeared at Rome was Ascleplodes, and he deserves a passing notice as the father and model of all quacks. Commencing as a teacher of rhetoric, he soon abandoned it for the practice of medicine, and by his eccen- tricities and his boastings rapidly brought himself into notice. Like his modern children, he only was Sir Oracle, and, he affected to despise every thing that had been done before him. He ridiculed Hippocrates, nnd nicknamed his system, "A meditation upon death." Notwithstanding his quackery, he was a shrewd and observing physician, and did much to ad- vance his profession. He opposed bleeding, and depended mostly upon gestation, friction, wine, a d the internal and external use of cold water. He divided diseases into acute and chronic, and was the first originator of the "Balinea pensilis," or shower bath. In the first century lived'Aurelius Cornelius Celsu9, some- times called the Latin Hippocrates, and well does he deserve the title. His works have descended unmulilated to us, are universally read and admired by the scientific physician, and form a conspicuous part of our standard medical literature. One hundred and thirty years after Celsus flourished Galen, physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who also did much to advance the science of medicine. But little is known of the progress of the art of medicine during the middle ages. jflStius, in his time, complained of the general use of quack medicines, nostrums, &c, and the immense price of those which were in repute. Danaus, he tells us, sold his collyrium, at Constantinople, for one hun- dred and twenty pieces of gold to each patient; and Nicos- tratus required two talents for his celebrated " osotheosis," as antidote against the cholic. Quackery and quack medicines were then, just as they are now, lull of promise, but full also of fraud and deceit. The inimitable Matthews, in his "Hu- mours of a Country Fair," has well described quackery both of ancient and modern times. His certificate of a celebrated specific reads thus: "Dear Sir,—1 was cut in two in a saw- pit, and cured by one bottle." "Sir,—By the bursting of a powder mill, 1 was blown into ten thousand anatomies. The first bottle of your incomparable collected all the parts toge- ther—the second restored life and animation—before a third was finished 1 was in my usual state of health.' It is true that this, in comparison with the past, is an age of quacks and nostrums. The legal and the clerical professions, as if jealous of the superior teaming, research and science of their medical brethren, for the most part are endeavoring to degrade the pro- fession—and to associate in the minds of the public, as of equal authority, the illiterate quack and pretender and him whose mind is enriched with the learning, the skill, the expert- 7 "ence of all past ages, and who'se heart glows with every nobfo and honorable emotion. Even our standard works, received and acknowledged as the result of much observation and ex- perience, by all medical men throughout the world, are de- clared, from the bench, as of less authority than the crude guess and suppositions of a sworn and living quack, ignorant of the first principles of medical science and .heory, and in- capable of forming any just judgment thereon. Such is de- clared, by the highest authority, to be the law in the con> monwealth of Pennsylvania. The quack, springing from the plough or the workshop, like Pallas, when she jumped full armed from the brain of Juve, is esteemed by our legal would be wise ones, without thought, study or appren- ticeship, completely consummate in all the requisites of hi* art. And by whom is it that the science and profession of medicine is tnus sought to be degraded? By gentlemen of the so called legal profession —by those whose mental facuK ties are most often employed, for the sake of a paltry fee, in making the worse appear the better reason—iq fact, in per- verting truth; by those who exercise all their wit, learning and eloquence, not to establish but to pervert the facts, and *o confuse and perplex the -poor jury and the persons examin- ed. Let us not, however, be* understood as censuring all law- yers or the profession of the law itself; while the present artifi- cial state of society continues they are a necessary evil, and must be tolerated for the little good they do. Pope says, "all partial evil is universal good," and so we mast bow to circumstances. There are in the so called legal profession pure and upright minds, which would scorn to do or defend a wrong, and to such, knowing the temptations which they have to encounter, we pay the highest respect and honorj but to the greater part of the profession we think the follow- ing anecdote applicable: " M. de la B-----, a French gentle- man, having inv,ted several friends to dine on a maigre day, his servant brought him word that there was oi.ly a single salmon left in the market, which he had not dared to bring away, because it had been bespoken by a barrister. «Here,' said the master, putting two or three pieces of gold into his hand, 'go back directly and buy me the barrister and the sal- mon too.' " Pardon us, gentlemen, for this digression; facta and recollections forced it upon us. To return now to our history. During the middle ages, the Monks and Priests seem also to have been the physicians. Charms, amulets, &c, being then very generally used as medicinal agencies, the Council of Laodicea, as early as A. D. 366, forbid the priesthood "the study and practice of enchantments, mathematics, astrology, and the binding of the soul by amulets." The priests, how- ever, continued the practice—their want of knowledge bei*- 8 supplied by mystery, and faith in the patient usurping the place of effectual prescription. Tnis ignorance and cupidi- ty of the monk.-, for they did not practise without a liberal fee, caused the Lreran Council, under tire noniiln-ate of Calis- lus 11, A. D. lli:{, to forbid the attendance of . riests and monks at tne bed side of the sick, other than is ministers of re- ligion. Still, however, it was followed, and P >pe Innocent II, in a Council at Rheims enforced the decree, prohibiting the monks from attending schools of medicine, and directing them lo.confine their practice to the precincts of their own monaste- ry. They still continuing to practise, a Literati Council in 1139 threatened all who neglected its orders with the seve- rest penalties, and a suspension from the exercise of all ec- clesiastical functions. At the Council of Tours, held in 1163, by Pope Alexander HI, it was maintained that the evil, in or- der to seduce the priesthood from the du:ies of the uliar, in- volved them in mundane occupations, thus exposing them to constant and perilous temptations. They were, therefore, prohibited the studies of medicine and the law, under the pe- nalty of excommunication. Stringent as were these mea- sures, they weie found inadequate to the intended purpose, and medicine was not effectually divorced from theology un- til a special boll from the Pope authorizing physicians to mar- ry produced the desired effect Having traced, in this faint outline of the history of medi- cine, the science down to il,e revival of letters in Europe, we leave it, and shall consider some of the more prominent delusions, which have attended its progress down to the pre- sent time. It would be no easy task to assign tl e earliest age of quackery in medicine. There is in the human heart un in- nate lo e of the mysterious, and mankind have ever since the creation of the world delighted in being deceived, thinking with the poet, that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to L>« wise." Most truly too has the poet said, _ " First man creates, and then he fears the elf— Thus ethers cheat him not, but he himself. He loathes the substance, but he loves the shell; You 'II ne'er convince a fool himself is so— He hates realities, and hugs the cheat, And still the only pleasure 'a the deceit." Well and truly too has Southey said, " man is a dupea- ble animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that know- ledge. There is scarcely any one who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling." A visit to a quack produces a pleasurable excitement. There is something wonderfully taking in the rashness with which we deliver ourselves up ao the illegitimate practitioner of medicine, whose learning 9 e«mes by nature and not by study. We are pleased when a large demand is made upon our credulity, and we can ima- gine ourselves almost miraculously cured of some real or supposed disease. Lord Bacon savs "that the impostor fre- quently triumphs at the bedside of the sick, when t/ue merit is affronted and dishonored; the people have always consi- dered a quack or an old woman as the rivals of true physi- cians. Hence it is that every physician, who has not great- ness of soul enough not to forget himself, feels no difficulty in saying with Solomon, 'if it is with rne as with the mad- man, why should I wish to appear wi>er than he is!'" The one indeed may starve, while the other thrives and goes laughing through and at the world. ' Jvidot, steniumquo riJebit." We pass briefly over the study of alchemy, as to investi- gate it minutely would occupy too much of our time. The objects of the alchemists were to convert other metals into sil- ver and gold, to remove all diseases and to prolong human life to an indefinite extent. It was pursued with great ardor in many countries, and even by some eminent men of our mother land. Lord Bjtfon speculated upon it, and Sir Isaac Newton is said once ™have entertained the possibility of finding the true philosopher's stone. Paracelsus, the most renowned quack of modern times, was also a distinguished al- chemist; he boasted that he could make man immortal, yet died himself "at the early age of forty-eight. He was Pro- fessor of medicine at Basle, but became renowned by a nostrum which he called Azoth, declaring it to be the t>ue philosopher's stone, the medicinal panacea, the tincture of life. He styled himself the monarch cf physicians, an<" said that the hair on the back of his head knew more than all authors— that the clasps of his shoes were more learned than Galen or Avicepna, and that his beard possessed more experience than all Ihe academy at Basle. " Stultissimus pilus occipitia mer plus seit, quam ornnes vestri doctores, elcalceorurn jrieo- rum annuli doctiores sunt quern vester Gaienus et Avicenna, barba mea plus experta est quam vestrse ornnes academise." When we compare this with the published boastings of mo- dern quacks, who acknowledge no superior, well may we say with Solomon, " There is nothing new under the sun—the thing that has been shall I.e." Medicinal substances were once.thought to possessvirtues varying according to their colors. Thus while was regarded as cooling—red, as heating. Red flowers were given for diseases of the blood, yellow for derangement of the biliary secretions. In small pox, red bed coverings were ordered, that the pustules might the more readily be brought to the surface, and every thing about the bed of the patient and even ID be greatly subjecf/to the influence of the passions und the^motions of the mind. Charms were also employed to avert evil, and to counteract supposed malignant influence--. Corals were used to keep off evil spirits and to avert the consequences of Jhc evil eye. "Corals," says Paiacelsus, "are of two sorts—one a clear, bright, shining red—the other, a purple, dark red. The bright is good to quicken phansie, and is against phantasi 8 or nocturnal spirits, which fly from those bright corals, as a dog from a staff, but they gather where the dark cave is."— Lemnius says, "Coral bound to the n-ck takes off turbulent dreams and allays the nightly fears of children. It preser- ved such as bear it from fascination or bewitching, and in this respect is hanged about children's necks." Remnants of this-superstition are seen in the coral beads and necklaces with which mothers adorn their children, in some parts of our country, as we have had occasion to know, with full be- lief in their magic efficacy. Epilepsy is a disease in which charms have been used with much success. Dr. Kirton atates that he saw a man cured of a paroxysm bv simply cut- ting off s me of his hair and putting it into his hand. Rings have also been much used for this purpose. Thus in Berk- shire, Eng., a r.ng made from a piece of silver collected at the communion is considered a certain cure for convulsions and fits of every kind, if collected on Easter Sunday, its ef- ficacy is greatly increased. In the county of Devonshire, a fing is preferred made of three nails or screws that have II been used to fasten a coffin, and that have been dug up from the churchyard. Says Grose, "A halter wherewith any one has been hang- *d, if tied about the head, will cure the headache." Moss, grown upon a human skull, if dried and powdered and taken as a snuff, is no less efficacious. To cure a quartern ague, or the gout, it is directed to take the hair and nails, cut them small, mix them with wax, stick them to a crab or craw fish, and cast him into the river again. In the county of Exeter, Eng., it is said still to be the cus- tom of those afffoted with ague to visit at midnight the near- est cross-roads five times and there bury a new laid egg—for they believe that with the egg they also bury the ague. If the experiment fail, for it is often successful through hope and the agitation it occasions, they attribute it to some un- lucky accident which has befallen them on the way, .since in going and returning they must observe the strictest si- lence—taking care not to speak to or to nptice any one whom they may meet. It is a common practice in Devonshire, CoVnwall, and some other parts of England, to enquire of any one riding on a piebald horse a remedy for the whooping cough, and'what- ever may be named N regarded as an infallible specific. Grose says, that if a tree of any kind be split, and weak Or ricketty children be drawn through it, and the tree after- wards bound up, as the tree heals and grows together so will the children acquire'strength. Sir John Cullum saw the ope- ration performed, and he says, that the tree was split longitu- dinally about five feet, the fissure was held open by the garden- er, whilst the friends of the child, having first stripped him naked, passed it thrice through head foremost. This done the tree was bound up wiih pack thread, and as the bark heal- ed, so it was believed the child would recover. Ch rms for all diseases were once so much in fashion that it is difficult to make a fitting selection from them—we can mention .but a very few more. Sir Kenelm Dighy says, " It would seem a folly that one should offer to wash his hands in a well polished basin wherein there is not a drop of water, yet this may be done by the re- flection of the moonbeams only, which will afford a compe- tent humidity to do it; but they who have tried it have found their hands, after they are wiped, to be much moister than usual; but this is an infallible way to take away'warts from the hands, if it be often used." Andrew Boorde, who lived in the reign of Henry VIII., speaking of the cramp, says, "The kyngs of Englande doth hallowe every yere cramp rynges, which rynges worne on ene's finger doth help them which hath the crampe." We learn from Bishop Burnet that cramp rings were blessed s» 12 late as the time of Henry VIII., and there is still e*^n' * let er of Anne Boieyn, the Q ieen, in which she says, "^f^* Stephens, I send you here cramp rings for you and Mr. Gre- gory and Mr. Peter, praying you to distnuute them as you think best. Anne Bole\ n." . Pierius mentions an infallible antidote against the sting or a scorpion;—the patient was to sit on an ass with his face to the tail, for by this means the poison was transmitted from the man to the beast. Indeed but a few years have passed, since the most loathsome preparations were u-ed successfully as charms for the cure and prevention of disea-ses. Mummy had the honor to be worn in tie bosun, next the heart, by kings and princes and all who could aff.rd it. It was thought capable of protecting the wearer from the most deadly infec- tions, and securing llie heart from the invasion of all malig- nant t assions. A drachir of a prep nation, called treacle of mummy, taken in the morning, prevented the (larger of in- fection all that day. Thus decayed spices uid gums, with the dead body of an Egvptian, were thought to give long life. In the 19th century, a little pill of sugir is thought by equal- ly wise i ersons to do the same. But we can dwell no longer on the use of charms. Ther were doubdess ofui : es of great effi>!ticy, as eq ially inefficient and ridiculous means are now; but the wonderful cures that followed their employment can only be attributed to the "vis medicntrix natuiae," aided by faith and imagination, for thess, it is well known, often eflVci material changes in the human body, and induce healthy action; but of this we shall speak more hereafter. Among the more prominent of the " Medical Delusions" of the past and the present are the cure by sympathy and by the royal touch, Perkins' metallic tractors and the use of tar water; the wonderful cures of Valentine Greatrakes and Prince Hohenlohe, last and least hnmoepa.hy. It may be said that most of these delusions have pas ed awav, and that there is, therefore, no profit in considering them, but they all have their root in the same soil. The humbugs of the day ars fruit from the same stock: ill then may appropriately be class- ed and considered together. The cure, as it was called, by sympathy, was a most curi- ous Medical Delusion. What is now the common method of healing wounds appeared to the Surgeons of the times of James I. and Charles I. as most contrary to nature, and their anhappy patients suffered most cruelly in consequence. In* deed surgeons then, by their mode of treatment, seem really to have tried how far it was possible to impede instead of te facilitate the natural process of cure; and to those who are ac* quainted with modern surgery, it appears almost miraculous teat they were able to produce union of any wound whatever. 13 The fact that an incised wound will generally heal by a na- tural process, if it be accurately closed, whether this be done by bandage, suture or adhesive plaster, was then geneialU un- known— no surgeon in Europe ventured to heal wounds by the first intention, without pretending to have discovered by abstruse studies i ; philosophy and alchemy, a sympathetic and philosophical mode of cure. The history of the doctrine of healing wounds by the powder of sympathy is the history of adhesion—of union hv the first intention—a history which until tne time of John Hunter was never fairly developed or distinctly comprehended. The inventor of the sympathetic powder was the notorious Paracelsus, and the Paracelsian doctors flourished greatly in England and other lands about the middle of the 17th centu- ry; and although suca things as powdered muuimv, and hu- man blood, and moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains, were considered essential ingredients in the weapon oint- ments of that day, the practice was fur from being confined to the ignorant and vulgar, but learned men in great numbers believed in it, jist as has been the case with all medica. er- rors and fantasies down to the present time. One case will show the practical operation of this method of cure. Sir Ke- nelm Digby, secretary to Charles I., was driven during the civil wars into exile. Being at'M jntpelier in France, he lectured before an assembly of nobles and learned men upon the cure of wounds by the powder of sympathy. H-> related before them the cure of Mr. Howell, who whilst endeavoring lo part two of his friends who weve fighting had his hand cut to the bone. Sir Kenelm was applied to for assistance. " I told him," says he, "that 1 would willingly serve him, but if haply he knew the manner 1 would cure him, it may be, he would not expose himself to my method of curing, because by would think it, peradventure, either ineffectual or super- stitious." He replied, "The wonderful things which many- have relisted to me of your way of medicinement makes me nothing doubt at all of its efficacy; and all that I have to sar unto you is comprehended in the Spanish proverb, ' Hagise el milagro y hagalo Mahoma—Let the miracle be done, tho' Mahomet do it.' I asked him then for anything that had th« blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith bis hand was first bound, and dissolving some vitriol in a ba- sin of water, I put in the garter, observing in the interim what Mr. Howell did. He suddenly started, as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ail- ed? " 1 know not what ails me, but I find that I feel no moiv pain; methinks that a pleasing kind of freshness, as if il were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before." I replied, "Since then you feel already so good effect of my medica- 2 14 ment, I advise you to cast away all your plasters, only keep the wound clean and in a moderate temper between heat and cold.' To be brief, there was no sense of pain afterwards; but within five or six days the wounds were cicatrized and entirely healed." This was a /*ase of what was called a cure by the wet me- thod, but it was also effected in a dry way, and S'raus, in a letter to Sir Kenelm, gives an account of a cure performed by Lord Gilburne, an English nobleman, upon a carpenter who had cut himself severely with an axe. The axe, bespot- ted with blood, was sent tor, besmeared with an ointment, wrapped up warmly and carefully hung up in a closet. The carpenter was immediately relieved, and all went on well for some time, when the wound suddenly became exceedingly painful, and upon resorting to his lordship it was ascertained that the axe had fallen from the nail by which il was suspend- ed, and thereby became uncovered. This history would be unprofitable and uninteresting, were it not for the practical lesson which it aff>rds. Cures doubt- less were effected, but did the sympathetic powders accom- plish them? Tbe cures certainly followed their use, and so their virtues were lauded and they believed to he highly effi- cacious. Men reasoned as they are still too apt to d , " post hoc, propter hoc," that whatever follows a cause must be the result of that cause. They forget or know not the power of the human system to recover itself, especially'when aided by faith, b.iue, and a strong imagination. This " vis medicatrix naturae," as it ha< appropriately been termed, is indeed the chief agency in many cases in the cure of diseases. Some- times it is the only one, and very often effects a cure in spite of the mistaken and officious interference of art. So great is its power that the celebrated Dr. Wolcott confesses himself entirely ignorant whether the patient was < ured by the " vis medicatrix naturae" or by the administration of rnedicine. And yet quacks, and even good physicians and the public ge- nerally, are apt to leave this power out of view, and to attri- bute cures, as a matter of course, entirely to some favorite remedy which has been employed. This disposition we consider the great source of the me- dical delusions of all ages and cou tries. To show you that the cures attributed to the sympathetic powders were the re- sult of the efforts of nature, a few words will suffice. What is the mode of treatment now employed by the surgeon in the healing of wounds? To clear the wound from extraneous matter, to bring the edges in apposition, to keep them in con- tact by a proper bandage, to modify temperature and to give rest. And what is this but the method of the sympathe- tic curers? They washed the wound with water, kept it clean and undisturbed, and in a few days tbe union of parts, the 15 process of adhesion was perfected, and the cure was com- plete; yet this result was then wholly attributed to the sym- pathetic powders, since it followed their use. Has the 19th century improved in its ratiocination? We come now to another great medical delusion; that which attributed a sanative power in all cases of scrofula to the royal touch. This is supposed to have been a monkish invention to increase the reverence for kings, and was prac- Used in France and England. Jeremy Collier, in his Ec- clesiastical History of Great Britain, sa\s, "that Kin* Ed- ward the Confessor was the first that cured this distemper and from him it has descended as an hereditary miracle up- on all his successors. To dispute the matter of fact is to eo to the excess of skepticism, to deny our senses, and to be in- credulous even to ridiculousness." The power of healing by the royal touch was practised by all the kings of England, though without much parade, until the times of Charles I. and II. ".The former of these kings, says the historian, "excelled all his predecessors in the div.ne g,ft, for it is manifest beyond all contradiction, that he not only cured by his sacred touch, but likewise per- fectly effected the same cure by his prayer and benediction only. tfut in no reign did the practice prevail to such an extent as ,n that of Charles II. One of the historians of the ime gives a table of the number of persons touched by this king, from May, 1660 to May, 1680, distinguishing the num- ber of each year, the grand total amounting to the nlrr — incredible number of 92,107; at an average of 12 a day - Ihe touching was usually performed on Sundays and feast days, and the success attending it may be judged of by the following curious avowal of the king's surgeon: "When I consider his Majestie's gracious touch, I find myself really non plust, and shall ever affirm that all chirur- geons must ever truckle to the same, and come short of his marvellous and miraculous method of healing; and for further manifestations hereof, I do humbly presume to assert that more souls have been healed by his Majestie's sacred touch in one year than have ever been cured by all the physicians and ch.rurgeons of his three kingdoms ever since his happy restoration." mi, practice of touching ceased at the acces- sion of the present house of Brunswick But others beside these of ro}al blood have made preten- sums of curing diseases by the royal touch. The most cele- brated oj these was Mr. Valentine Gea.rakes, an Irish gen- tleman born ,n 1628 According to his own account of hfm- self, he began in 1662 to have a strange persuasion in We mind that the gift of curing the king's Jvilwss bestowed up! on him, and upon trial he found himself successful. After this, he ventured upon agues, and in time upon all diseases 16 whatever. At the request of the Earl of Orrery, he went to England to attempt the cure of Lady Conway, who was trou- bled with a continued and violent headache, and thoogh he failed in that case, he is said to have wrought many and sur- prising cures; an account of which he published himself, wiih the names of those who were cured, their diseases, the time when and the place where and the witnesses who were present. Many of these witnesses are persons of such unex- ceptioraMe credit that as we cannot suspect they were im- posed upon, so we cannot suspect that they would impose. Among them are grave divines, and eminent physicians, such ns Bishop Patrick and Dean Rust, Sir Wm. Smith, a' d Dr. Dent n. We give you as a curiosity the certificate of Rev. Dr. Rust, afterwards Bis' op of Dromete: "Being desired 10 rive my testimony of Mr. Greairakes and his rures, I do hereby certify that I have, with some curiosity, b»rn an olscrver of him and of his operations—and I take him to be a pen-on of an honest and upright mind, a free and open spirit, a cheerful anil ; jjieeable humor, an inof'i-naive conversation, of larg« and generous principles, and that carries on no design of faction and interest. I hava Icen an eyewitness of many hundreds that have come under his hands, especially during his stay at Lord Conway's for three wet ks or a month together, and I must profess myself convinced (however il be from an immediate gi:t or a peculiarity of complexion) that he has a virtue more than ordinary ; for though I have seen him touch many with little or no success, yet it must not be denied that I have seen, too, in very many instances, by his spitt'e and lh« touch or stroke of his h:ind, hu- mors put into odd am' violent fermentations, pains strangely fly before him, till he has chased them out at some ol the extreme parts of the btc'y ; the king's evil in a few days wonderfully dried up; knobs 01 kernels brought to a suppuration; humors ripened ; ulcerous »orea tkmr.id and amended; hard swellings in women'* bn.-ants abated; cold s.rd sensdess limbs u.-load to their brat and.life ; scabs all over the txdy, which ha\t been for many \ears and counted incuodile, deaden- ed aid dried up; many people relieved in cases of deafness, lameness, din i.ess of s;ght; tweniy sr\eral persons, in fits of the falling nek- nes-s, or convulsions, or hysterical passions, (for I am not wise enough to distinguish them,) upon laying his hands upon their breasts, (often upon the top of their clc'hes,) within a few minutes brought to their scdm s to as to be able to tell where their pain lay, which he has fol- lowed till he pursued it out of the body. I can say little to the per- maTcrcy of Lis cures—many, I do believe, continue firm, but several of tl.rte of the falling sickness I heard had relapsed before I left the country, but after much longer intervals than they were wont to enjoy. The foims of words he used are, 'God Almighty heal thee for his mercy's stke,' and if they profess to receive any benefit, he bids them gne God the praise, ard that (so far as I can judge) with a sincere devotion. This is, in short, the matter of fact, which is testified to be true by me " The cures performed by Prince Hohenlohe are of the same nature, and may be ascribed to the same cause. Having practised for some time in Germany with success, he became generally known in England some thirty years since by an extraordinary cure whtqh he is said to have performed on a 17 nun, at the convent of New-JJall, near Chemsford, Essex county. it should be known, that it was not necessary that he should see, or be near his patient, as prayers were the only means which he employed; he therefore remained at his residence in Bambtirg. The nun at New-Hall had been for a year and a half afflicted with a large and painful swelling of the right hand and arm, which resisted every medical application.— This being the case, the superior of the convent applied for Ihe aid of Prince Hohenlohe. The answer which he return- ed affords son e insight into the cause of the effect which he sometimes produced. " At 8 o'clock, on the 3d of May," he says, "I will, in compliance with your request, offer up my prayers for your recovery. At the same hour, alter having confessed and re- ceived the sacrament, join your prayers also with that evan- gelic fervor, and that entire faith, which we owe to our Re- deemer, Je.-us Christ. Stir up from the very bottom of your heart ihe divine virtues of true repentance. Christian chari- ty, a boundless belief that your prayers will be granted, and a steadfast resolution to lead an exemplary life to the end that you may continue in a state of grace." It cannot he denied that the advice was most excellent, both as regards the body and the soul. Dr. Badelly, ihe surgeon of the convent, gives the follow- ing as the result. "On the 3d of May," says he, "she went through the religious process prescribed by the Prince.— Mass being ended, Miss O'Conner, not finding the immediate relief which she expected, exclaimed «Thy will be done, O Lord; thou hast not thought me worthy of this cure.' Al- most immediately after she felt an extraordinary sensation through the whole arm to the ends of her fingers. The pain instantly left her and the swelling gradually subsided, although it was some weeks before the hand resumed its na- natural size and shape." Other cures still more wonderful followed, and the Prince was so overwhelmed with applica- tions from all quarters that he found il impossible to answer each individual case; he therefore adopted tbe system of of- fering his prayers for a particular district on certain appoint- ed days. For instance "7 o'clock in the morning on the 1st of Aug. was appointeoVor curing all the diseases in Ire- land, and notice was given to the religious communities in that island, that it would be proper for each of them at the same hour to perform a mass: such was the wonderful power of ihe Prince's supplications and the church's offerings, that many, perhaps thousands, were cured of various diseases." This delusion flourished for some considerable time, but gradually died away, though the Prince has been but a short time dead. 1* 18 In these three delusions *e same causes were at work to produce the cure of disease, the recuperative energies of na- ture, aided by strong faith and that influence which the mind is known ever to exert upon the body. That many were cured by the king's touch cannot be doubted, os we have said befoie; but we think it equally evident that this wai effected by the powers of nature, ai'led by strong hope, and in many instances the absolute certainty of cine. Such feel- ings are calculated at all times to impart tone to the system, and especially to benefit those of a scrofulous diathesis, in whom the vnal powers are generally weak und feeble. It should further he lememhered, that as the regal touch was not in all cases successful, so in those in whicli it succeeded, the concurrence of the cure with the touch may have been quite accidental, while other causes were operating to pro- duce the effect; the disease may have already been in a pro- cess of recovery; and at the time of being touched, either the strength of the patient's constitution may have brought the disease to a favorable crisis, or a tfnnge of air 01 exer- cise, or a new regimen, or other similar causes may have be- gun the cure. But whatever may have been the circumstances of the case, we are in general safe in referring the cure to the re- cuperative energies of nature, aided t>y the amazing power which impressions made upon the mind produce upon ihe body. In this case these impressions must have been most vivid. The person touched must have had his imagination heated with the religious solemnity of the ceremony, with the dignity of the king, and other striking circumstances which attended the touch. The means used by Greatrakesand Prince ITohenlohe must strike every mind as totally inadequate of themselves to the effect produced; yet these may most satisfactorily be account- ed for on the same principle as we have accounted for the cures by the king's touch. The means used by Prince Ho- henlohe were peculiarly striking, and in persons of strong imaginations and high religious sensibilities must have pro- duced o wonderful effect. To all the solemnities of a highly impressing form of worship, it will be remembered that he exhorts to an entire faith and a boundless belief that the prayers will be granted; and nature, aided by such a faith, will doubtless perform wonderful cures. One other fact should also here be noticed. The cures attributed to the prayers of Prince Hohenlohe were mostly of canes of a purely nervous character—palsy, lameness, defect of sight, hearing, &c. Dr. Pfeuffer, the physician of the hospital at Bamberg, asserts in his medical researches that these cases were all chronic disorders—not one of an acute character. A well experienced medical writer says that "the cures in the Ho- 19 henlohe cases depended entirely upon the degree of religious feeling or enthusiasm entertained by tbe sick." But some may d.,ubt whethtr the mind can thus influence and control the organs of the body. Before, then, consider- ing any ot er medical delusion, let us briefly examine this point. It is a subject to which we can here do but little jus- tice, but to it we a^k your candid consideration. That impressions made upon the mind induce surprising changes in the habit of the body, we are as certain of as we are that a change can be wrought on it by medicines or"any other external cause. The truih of this, so far as it relates to a change for the worse, will hardly be disputed. Can there be anything more incon rovertihly true than that care and anxiety, disappointment in what we had ardently wished for, or the loss of that which we have affectionately loved, by preying upon the mind and engrossing all its attention, will disorder the whole system, and become the source both of acute and chronic d.sease.ss Grief has been well called "a heavy executioner—nothing more crucifies the soul, nor overthrows the health of the body than sorrow." The Psalmist expresses this truth most truly when he says, "My soul melteth away for very heaviness." Shakespeare, with consummate knowledge of the workings of the human heart, makes Macbeth ask tbe physician: " Canst thou minister to a mind diseased, Pluck fiom the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written trouWes of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse ihe foul bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart]" But not to dwell upon the more silent workings of grief, undermining and ruining the health by degrees, consider the impressions made upon the body by fear, by anger, by joy, &c. If experience has not brought cases to your knowledge of the effect of the passions, the historian will furnish you with abundant instances, and the physician will corroborate his testimony. Most remarki ble in the history of France is the story of John de Poicteis, Count de St. Valier, Convicted of conspi- racy against Francis I. and condemned to lose his head at Lyons, fear and dread so affected him that in one night his hair turned so entirely gray that the officers of the prison the next morning did not recognise him. Although pardon- ed, he soon after died from the effects of the fear. Jaundice has been known to occur almost instantaneously upon a fit of anger, and within twenty-four hours after the re- ceipt of bad news. Joy has often been known to produce sudden death. Va- 20 lerius Maximus relates the case of two matrons who died with joy on seeing their sous return safe from battle. Juvenlius Thalma, to whom a triumph* was decreed for subjugating Corsica, fell down dead at the foot of the altar at which he was offering up his thanksgivings. Many such cases both in an- cient and modem times are on record. While the passions may produce disease and even death, there are also numberless cases well attested v here disease 1 as been alleviated and even cured by the same means.— Count de Chasagnac rela'es of himself, that when a general in the imperial army, and laid up in bed with a paroxysm of the gout, an alarm was raised that the Marshal de Tu- renne was on the march to surprise him. Though he'was not able before to move hand or foot, yet the fear of getting into the hands of the French wrought such a change in him that he got out of his bed—dressed himself and entering his carriage, all without help, was carried to a safe retreat.— Gussendus, a grave and serious philosopher, worthy of all credit, relates this anecdote of the celebrated Peiresque:— The palsy had deprived him of the use of his right side, and also of his sprech. In this helpless condition he received a letter from a friend which he read with a great degree of joy, and having, soon after, heard a song finely sung, he was so transported that he actually broke out into an exclamation of praise, and from thai moment his paralytic members reco- vered their freedom and activity. . But we need hot speak to physicians of the effect produ- ced on disease by the passions; they know them well, and if skilful daily seek to realize them. Hippocrates, and after him Aretseus, Paulus and Galen, together with mar y distin- guished modern medical writers, recommend as of great ser- vice in certain diseases to excite in the mind of the patient anger, fear, hope, joy and the like. Dr. Paris relates a curious instance of the power of imagi- nation or faith in curing disease. When the powers of nitrous oxide were first discovered, Dr. Beddces, imagining it to be a cure for paralysis, selected a patient on whom to make the trial, and entrusted the management of the gas to Sir Humphrey Davy. Before administering it, the doctor, to ascertain the temperature of the patient, placed the bulb of a small thermometer under his tongue, when the paralytic man, full of faith, but ignorant of the process to which he was to submit, thinking that the talisman was now in full opera- tion, in a burst of enthusiasm declared that he felt its effects throughout the whole body. The doctor took the hint, and desired his patient to return the next day; when the same ceremony was performed, and so on for a fortnight, when he was dismissed cured, no other means having been used. As fear is well known to induce susceptibility to conta- 21 gious diseases, so are they often cured by faith and hopt. When the cholera first appeared in Canadi, a man named Ayres, a full blooded Yankee from Vermont, declared him- self to be St. Roche, the chief patron saint of the Canadians, and renowned for his prayer in averting pestilential diseases. He was reported to have descended from heaven to cure his suffering people of the c olera, and many were the cases which he seemed to cure, while doubtless many others were dispossessed of their fright, who might hut for his inspirating influences have fallen victims to tiie disease. The only re- medy which he employed was a mixture of maple sugar, charcoal and molasses That'the eager confidence of the patient in the skill of nia physician, and the firm expectation of relief by his eff.rts, have sometimes a wonderful efficacy, cannot indeed be doubt- ed. Fienius, in his work " De viribus imaginatioins." corc- horates ibis opinion by the authority of Galen and others, and tells us that in general all physicians subscribe to it.— The celebrated Peehlin says much to the same purpose. In his opinion, the power of the mind in determining the ope- ration and efficacy of medicine is very great. It will, he says, not only increase or diminish their u?u«l effects, but also change them to a manner of operation directly contrary, and communicate a healing quality to the most inadequate means, even to a bread pill disguised-as a medicine ana swal- lowed with best confidence in the skill of the person who ad- ministers it. Burton, in his anatomy of melancholy, says, "An essen- tial thing to be required in a patient is confidence; to be o good cheer and have sure hope that his physician can h«al him. Axioccus, sick almost to death, at the very s'ght of bo- crates recovered his former health.. Paracelsus says, that the reason why Hippocrates was so fortunate in his cures was not on account of any extraordinary skill which he had, but because the common people had a most strong conceit of his worth. Montanus, in his directions to a sick matron, tells her, if she will be cured, she must be of a most abiding pa, tience, faithful obedience and singular constancy, for if she remit or despair, she can expect or hope for no good success. We have not time to instance further from the last num- ber of cases before us, to show you the influence of the mind upon the body. Sterne spoke but the truth when he said, "The body and mind are like a jerkin and a jerkin s lining, rumple the one and you rumple the other." Pass we on to ot'ier "medical delusions" in which we may see the combined influence of imagination and nature in effecting cures. Bishop Berkley, who lived in the former part of the last century.' and justly esteemed by all as a most learned, pious, 2*2 and liberal divine, the ught himself much ulieved from a chronic complaint under which he suffered by the use of tar water. Prescribing it with much success for his friends, he imagined that, like Townsend with his snrsnparilla, he had found an universal panacea, a cure for all the ills to which flesh is heir. So confident was he in the virtues of his spe- cific, thnt he published two essays of considerable volume upon the vntues of tar water. He declared it to he a perfect cure for all impurities of the blooM, coughs, pleurisy, erysi- pelas, asthma, iivspe|»iii, cachexia, &e —that il was of essen- tial service in gout and fevers, and even a preventive of small pox. Indeed tar water was as universal a pan.n-ra in the good Bishop's estimation as cod-liver oil, though we would by no means rate the medica! virtues of the one with the other, is now with many credulous and over zealous practitioners. After speaking of its e.fli acy in fevers, the Bi- shop savs, "I have had all this confirmed by my own expe- rience in the late sickly sen-- >n of the year 1741; having had in my own family twenty-five fevers cured by lliis medi- cine water drunk copiously." The number of fevers cured in the Bishop's family must remind yon, gentlemen, of th° success that was said to attend the homoepathic treatment of cholera at Cincinnati. Many more were cured than there were cases reported in the city. L'cil.rn is, more than usual, yielding readily to twenty-four hours' abstinence, wa- dubbed cholera. And so doubtless the Bishop called every flish a fever. He forgot that there was a curative power in the human system itself, and so all the sick that drank tar water and recovered ho thought were cured by the tar water. He made the same mistake which mar y now do, he attributed the effect to the wrong cause. He died, how- ever, at lart, so suddei.ly " that there was not time enough," says Dr. Holmes "to stir up a quart of his panacea." We doubtless all wonder that such a wise and learned man did not know better than 1} attribute so much virtue to tar-water. But he did not, and men perhaps as learned have thought as much of equally ridiculous things, even of infinitessimal do- ses of sue! i inert suls'ances ns charcoal ant oyster shell. The history of medical delusions most clearly teaches us that folly is not confined to fools—thav by fallacies in physic t;e wi:■" as well as the simple are caught. The profoundest philosophers have placed confidence in fools, and done their bidding. Sir Robert Boyle and Lord Bacon may serve for examples, and Martin Luther gives this specimen of his weakness and ce lulity. "Experience," hesa\s, " has pro- ved the toad to he endowed with valuable qualities. If you run a siiek through three toads, and after having dried them in the sun, apply them to any pestilent humor, ihey draw out all the poison^ and the malady will disappear." Indeed, 23 there can be no greiter medical delusion tlnn the very com- mon one th*t clergymen and lawyers, since they ought to be wise and studious men, must therefore he good and safe judges of medical science and skill. We have been regular- ly admitted to both professions, mingled much with brethren of the two orders, and we must say that outside of their profes- sional pursuits or peculiar studies they are most frequent- ly the simplest of si.nple beings, " nun omnia possumu* ornnes." In 1796, a physician of Connecticut, by name Perkins, introduced a novel and for sometime most successful practice of medicine. He contended tiiat all diseases might oe cured by simply drawing over the parts affected certain pieces of metal which I e called tractors; and the effect was supposed to be produced by galvanic, electric or magnetic influence. In two years after their d.soovery, the tractors had been widely introduced into Europe. The fame of their virtue spread like wild fire. In eight years the humbug had be- come so popular that a "Perkinean Institution" was formed in London, with a large proportion of its members from among the ranks of the tilled, the learned and ihe reverend. The society had its public dinners in honor of the great dis- covery, volumes of certificates of cures were published; the committee a;testing that as early as 1602, 5,000 cures had been effected. '• Adirine, a professor in one of our New England colleges, thus writes, " I have used the tractors vvitn success in several cases in my own family; and although like Niamm, the Sy- rian, 1 cannot tell why tue waters of Jordan should be better than Abaria and P arpar, rivers of Duniscus, yel since ex- perience has proven them so, no reasoning can change my opinion." But there were some unbelievers, nnd they determined to test the virtue of the tractors. Dr. Ilivgarth and Dr. Fdlco- ner for this purpose selected from the general hospital at Bath five patient-, and submitted them to the operation of false trac- tors, made not of metal, but of wood, so painted as to resem- ble the genuine. The diseases of these patients were chronio gout and rheumatism. Upon the affected parts being stroked in the lightest manner with these pieces of wood, all the pa- tients declared taemselves relieved, and all returned public thanks in church for their cures. In one of these cases, the patient, Miss Ann Hill, exclaimed, " O, me! who could have thought it that these little things could pull the pain from one. Well, to be sure—the longer one lives, the more one sees, ah! dear." Similar experiments were made at the Bristol Infirmary with wood, slate pencil, tobacco pipes and with the same results. Men who were unable to lift up, or to use tb*ir arms in any way, were after the application of the sup- 24 po«ed metallic tractors speedily enabled to carry coals and other things of weight with great ease. When these facts were made known by the physicians who had practised the deceit, Perkinism was immediately at a dis- count, the institute was dissolved, and now the wrote scheme is remembered only as a pas' f >l!y—a wonderful delusion. The same error was committed by those who believed in the tractors as was made by Bishop Berkley in regard to the tar water. They forgot that the curative power of nature is always at work healing disease, and that faith, hope and ima- gination render il the most powerful assistance. They ibought that all who recovered after the use of the tractors were cured by them, just as Bishop Berkley did, that all who recovered alter using tar-water were cured by it. We now come to the more modern and still somewhat fa- shionable medical delusion, homoepathy, and because il is in certain quarters, and among ceilain classes so fashionable, though not perhaps so much as was once Perkins' metallic tractors, it deseives more than a passing notice. It is some- times called a "system of medicine," though to this il has no more title than a pot of boiling water to be called a pot of soup. It is a semblance and nothing more. Tne three great principles which IJthnemann, its founder, promulgated as lying a( the base of his theqry are these: 1st. The doctrine which is expressed by the Latin phrase, "similia similibus cnrantur," which he denominated the sole law of nature in therapeutics, but which might be called tiie sole Latin of his followers. 2 1. Tnat an increased power is given to medicines by an exceedingly minute division, supposed to be produced by agi- tation, trituration, &c. 3d. That psosa (vulgarly called itch) is the sole true and fundamental cause of seven-eighths at least of all chronic diseases. The principle "similia," dec, if it can be called a princi- ple, which principle is none, is toa: ihe sime thing that will cnuse a disease will also cure it, and vice versa. This miy have some slight foundation in fact, as was well known to physicians long before the d ;ys of Hahnemann, but it is fir from being an invariable law. An over dose of creosote will produce vomiting, as will an over dose of almost any other medicine; while at the same time creosote is a most efficient agent in checking excessive vomiting; but it does not, there- fore, follow that it cures vomiting in one instance solely be- cause it produces it in another. Tartar emetic, given in usual doses, will excite vomitiug alike in the sick and in the well. Now if this principle of homoepathy be true, tartar emetic in small doses should cure every case of vomiting, which it has not itself induced; but it will do no such thing. 25 Great tolerance of the medicine may indeed be established, as in the favorite French treatment of pneumonia, but it was never known to alleviate, much less to cure vomiting. Again, it is said by these theorists, that sulphur given to persons in health will produce an irruption similar to tfw itch. But is this true? Our good mothers in former days, and many mothers do the same thing now, were in the habit of giving their children every morning in the spring liberal doses of sulphur and molasses, under the impression that it purified the blood, and in other ways conduced to health. But did their Utile ones thereby receive the itch or any other cu- taneous disease? Many of you doubtless can answer from your own experience. We never heard of such a result. Hthnemaun affirms that Peruvian bark given to a heal- thy person produces chills and fever. This, says a writer in the New-York " Sjalpel," to whom we gladly acknow- ledge ourselves much indebted for this part of our lecture, "we from positive experience utterly deny." All that we can say for ourselves is, that we have never known or heard of such a case. And even these facts, which at first sight seem to support this principle of Hahnemann, may in other ways be more satisfactorily explained. Take the fact that it is better to thaw a frozen limb with cold water and snow than with warm water. What is the explanation] Simply this, that a gradual restoration of the part to its natu- ral state is better than to restore it suddenly. There is in this certainly no illustration of the principle similia similibus curantur, any more than there is in the fact, t at it is better to give food gradually to a starving man than it is to attempt to fill him at once. The loose character of the process upon which Haht emann relies to establish the great principle of bis theory may be judged of by a single example. He asserts in his Organon, that the smell of roses causes some persons to faint, and that therefore the smell of roses must, according to the principle "similia, &c," be an effec- tual cure for fainting, in proof of which he cites a passage from an old medical book, in which the credulous author states that the Princess Eudosia with rose water restored a person who had fainted. "Is it possible," exclaims Dr. Holmes, "that a man who is guilty of such pedantic folly as this, a man who can see a confirmation of his doctrine in such a recovery as this, a re- covery which is happening every day, from a breath of air, a drop or two of water, untying a bonnet string, loosening a stay lace, and which can hardly help happening, whatever is done; is it possible that a man whose pages—not here and there one—but hundreds upon hundreds are loaded with such trivialities, is the Newton—ths Columbus—the Hervey of the 19th century?" 3 26 Upon the second assertion of Hahnemann (for from respect to truth we dare not call it a principle) rests the whole of his materia medica; its doses were the millionth or decil- lionth part of a grain or drop. Hahnemann assures us that he can cure intermittent fever with millionth, and syphilis wiih sextillionth doses of mercury. To those who comprehend the manner in which medicine h*s been elevated to a science, and who know that all its valuab'e portions consist of facts, the very mention of such a schema, which sets aside all for- mer observations, contradicts all previous experience, upsets not only theory which may be wrong, but facts which can- not—in short a scheme which, insulting rational belief as fol- ly demands the most implicit credulity from its followers, must appe r to every philosophic mind as the height of fully. With such formidable weapons homoepathy sprang into exis- tencefand boldly undertook the modest task of not only curing all the ills that flesh is heir to, but of overturning in a day the whole superstructure of medical science, built upon the accu- mulated observations of more than two thousand years; and its followers still coolly assume that their master's great disco- very has blotted out all the therapeutics of past ages. But these views of the efficacy of infiuilessimal doses of medicine are visionary and totally unsupported by fact.— Every medicinal substance has its minimum point of action, below which its effects are no longer visible. A grain of opium taken by an adult produces a moderate but sensible efF:ct. Every additional grain increases this effec, and every reduction detracts from it, until its action becomes entirely inappreciable. Tiiese remarks apply to all medici- nal agents. Below their minimum point of appreciable ac- tion, Ihey may be given to a patient without the slightest benefit or injury, for any length of time, provided always that it be done without his knowledge. Tne opinion that any curative re3ult can be obtained, except through the ima- gination merely, from doses of any medicine reduced a mil- lion of times below the point where the most accurate obser- vers cease to perceive any effect, and that this reduction may be carried a million of degrees lower still, with constantly increasing effect, is an idea too utterly preposterous fur anv region outside the confines of a mad-house. Yet such is homoepath. "The effect of medicinal substances are twofold, viz., primitive, as the violent action produced by large quantities of certain drugs, purgation, sweating, &c, and secondary or homoepathic in which the action is determined to the diseased p irt, ihe active properties becoming more developed in pro- portion to the minuteness of the dose," in short, homoepath- ists are cautioned against too minute a subdivision of medi- cine, lest it should become so energetic as to give rise to 27 dangerous symptoms. But not only subdivision increases the power of the medicine; but even the shakes which are given it. We tremble when we think what mischief has been done by the incautious direction so often labelled on a draught— " When taken lo be well-shaken." Hear Hahnemann: "Besides the homoepathic medicament acquires at each division or dilution an extraordinary degree of power by the friction or shock imparted to it as o-eans of developing the inherent virtues of medicines, unknown before me, and which is so energetic that, of late, experience has obliged me to shake only twice, whereas formerly I prescribed ten shakes to each dilution." How Hahnemann discovered the mighty truth that the po- tency of medicines increases in the ratio of the decrease of the dose we know not. Homoepathists must indeed feel hu- miliated for poor human nature, when they reflect thgt Uio world so long believed the opposite pernicious and fatal error, while they congratulate themselves that they at least have found out that poisons kill not in large but minute doses.— How wonderful too and sagacious in the mind of Hahnemann must have been the process of ratiocination, by which he de- termined the necessay number of the shakes. But let us listen to the philosopher himself upon infinitessimals: " A grain of salt," he says, " is divided to a millionth de- gree of attenuation; this powder is dissolved in diluted alco- hol, and the division extended to the decillionth degree; car- ried to this degree of dilution, sea salt is a powerful and he- roical medicament which is only be administered to patients with the greatest caution." The absurdity of such a statement as this is evident to eve- ry physician and chemist, for there is no water or alchohol that does not contain a hundred times more salt than is here pre- scribed, and what adds to the absurdity is, that this remedy so beroical and requiring such caution, is given to patients who are taking millions of times mor-? of it with it every meal, whose secretions, whose gastric juices and every par- ticle of whose blood contains at all times and as an indispen- sable constituent millions of times more salt than is here pre- scribed with the view of its producing powerful medicinal ef- fects. A grain of salt dropt into the lake would be quite as appreciable, and its effects quite as heroic. Dr. F. F. Quinn, of London, among the most celebrated homoepathists now living, published a few years since a La- tin work upon his favorite theory. From it we will also se- lect one example of the potency of a simple and in usual doses inert substance. Fever few, " matricaria chamomilla," though once used, has long been banished from the shelves of the apothecary and the physician, its virtues being appreciated in the recipes 28 of old women, rather than in the prescriptions of physicians. Yet by Dr. Quinn its virtues have been diffused over thir- teen pages, and he declares it possessed of no less than two hundred and seventy-lwo active qualities. We will notice a few. The 29th reads thus: " Cogitaliones, idecc, evanascentes." The 45th requires that an infant should be dandled, telling us the important fuct that otherwise the baby would become restle-s. '• Xon nisi gestatus quicscero potest infans." The 51st evinces how closely homoepathists notice symp- toms. A patient taking a decillionth part of n grain of cha- momilla grows sulky for exactly the period of Uvo hours. " Momsilas per duas boras durans." ' The 88th property describes a peculiar kind of toothache. The singularity consists in the tooth contracting a \ iolent antipathy to hot coffee. "Odontalgia post haustum calidum (maxime, cofften) po- tum sevriens." But the 102d and 103d qualities of fever few are most wonderful. Under its potent influence, the teeth begin to lengthen, and even actually stagger. " Denies ctungali Dtijiiuin vacillatio." Listen once more to Hahnemann himself: "Gold, silver, platina, charcoal are without action on men in their ordinary state; but from ihe continued trituration of a grain of gold with a bundled grains of sugar there results a preparation which has great medicinal virtues. If a grain of this mixture be taken and triturated with another hundred grains of su- gar, and if this process be continued until each grain of the ultimate preparation contain a quadrillion part of a grain of gold, we shall then have a medicament in which the medici- nal virtue of the gold is so much developed that it will be sufficient to lake a grain, place it in a phial, and cause the air from it to be breathed for a few instants by a melancholic individual, in which the disgust of life is so far as to incline to suicide, in order that an hour afterwards this person be de- livered from his evil demon and restored to his laste for life." Surely common sense must have existed in a homoepathic state of dilution in the brains of men capable of conceiving and propagating such absurdities, yet we must confess, as we have before said, all the deluded are not of necessity either rogues or fools. There are many of enthusiastic disposi- tions easily led away by novelty or caught by specious argu- ments, who are neither absolutely weak in mind, ior wrong in purpose. Every day's experience shows us individuals w ho 29 display this intellectual singularity and the combination of vi- gor and weakness, of general right reasoning and special fol- ly, is at once curious and instructive. Such a combination is indeed incompatible with great soundness of mind, or much depth of information, but observation shows that it is consis- tent with brilliant intellectual qualities, with wit, eloquence or imagination. But this second great principle! of homoepathy has not been rejected by the scientific world merely on account of its absurdity, but only after full and fair trial. To give a specimens' the practical excellences of homoepathism, we cannot perhaps do better than to refer to the course pursued by the Russian government toward it. A Saxon physician, M. Hermann, the great apostle of the system in Russia, wa invested by the Grand Duke Michael with full powers to dis- play in a course of clinical experiments its superiority over the ccmmon practice and theory of the day. One of the wards of the "Hospital de Tuttschin," which contained a number of soldiers affected with fever and aysen- tery, was allotted to his special management, during a space of two months. , The following table exhibits the results: Patients. Cured. Died. Removed. Common method, 457 364 93 Homeepathic method, 128 65 5 58 The Grand Duke wes satisfied and withdrew his commis- sion. Sometime after this, the minister of the Russian go- vernment gave M. Hermann authority to select his own hos- pital, and to make any arrangements he saw fit. The wards were fresh painted, and every hygienic precaution faithfully executed. Even the kitchen was placed under his entire control and superintendence, ard in order to pi evert the pos- sibility of any interference, a sentinel was placed before the door, and none permitted to enter during the occasional absence of M. Hermann. His first request respecting the patients was a very moderr.te and modest one, viz: that none should be sent to his hospital who labored under ulcers, sy- philis, dropsies, phthisis, &c, end that he should have the se- lection of all his own cases. Even under these circumstan- ces the results were most unfavorable. The proportion ot deaths to recoveries was much higher than in ordinary prac- tice, and the duration of the treatment was always protracted and tedious. Many also and varied were the trials of the infinitessima". doses of Hahnemann in most of the great cities of Europe. both in hospitals and private practice. Preparations of the homoepathic pharmaceutists alone were used, and the resui1 has been the same; they proved entirely inert and inefnea 3* 30 cious. Applied to acute and urgent diseases, they were found to produce not the slightest effect; but when tried upon chro- nic disorders, especially in those of the nervous and suscep- tible, the result was very different. Among such, sensations and symptons weie often produced in a manner more piompt and significant than results from the ordinary use of the most potent remedies, and cures were effected of a most striking kind. Results so contradictory readily found their solution in the fact that sensations as varied and remarnable, nu^,cures as decisive, were produced in the same class of patients when globules of starch or sugar alone were prescribed—the pa- tients supposing themselves tuking the usual homoepathic re- medies—just as was the case when wooden tractors instead of metallic were used—thus adding to the already innumera- ble proofs of the power of nature aided by the imagination, to cure a certain class of diseases. Infinitessimals are prov- ed to cure diseases precisely as charms and amulets, the king's touch, Greatrakes' strokings, Hohenlohe's prayers, Perkins' metallic tractors and the tar water of Berkley were once proved to do the same thing. The reasoning is this: A patient took a decillionth part'of a grain of oyster shell, three or four times? a day, and got well; therefore the oyster shell cured him. Says the juggler, as he performs some astonishing feat for the amusement of children and grown up infants, "you see that this is so—now I will use just a vei"y little of my powder, ' Hie, presto, change in a moment,' and it is so." Many who attend such intel- lectual scenes of amusement doubtless believe that the change is produced by the wonderful little powder, and therein com- mit the same error as the believers in the metallic tractors, homoepathy, &c. The application of the juggler's little pow- der is the antecedent of the result, just as the application of the homoepath's little powder is the antecedent of the results over which he boasts; and the one might, with quite as much cause as the other, call the result the effect of his little powder. The 3d doctrine of Hahnemann is so ridiculous that we need but merely mention it. "The itch," says the Medical Luminary of the 19th century, "is the the only real, funda- mental, and productive cause of all the morbid forms known by the names of weakness, nervousr ess, hysterics, hypochon- dria, mania, melancholy, epilepsy, spasms of all kinds, rick- ets, caries, cancer, fungus hsematodes, gout, jaundice, cyano- sis, dropsy, cataract, gravel, &c, &c, &c." A great mind strikes out a path for itself. Who would have imagined that the itch, a disease produced by a little in- sect, "acarius scabiei," was the cause of diseases apparently so dissimilar as cancer, cataract and the gravel, of rickets, jaundice and cyanosis? Perhaps the sage discovered the 31 wonderful .truth by practising himself for a long time upon the "Scotch fiddle." How many of his genteel and delicate followers truly believe that in their " weakness and nervous- ness they have nothing but the itch," we know not. Such was homoepathy under Hahnemann, "The shadow of a shadow—' An iiifinitessimal abstraction of etherial inaiity." As a system we may say of it, "nihil sed nominis um- bra," it is nothing but the shadow of a name, its professors were "homunculi non homines." Such was homoepathy; but what is it now? Does its whole strength continue, as in the days of its founder, to be in its weakness? Does it still find the decillionth part of a grain of table salt too potent to be used without the greatest caution? To say nothing of the stealthy use of common re- medies, what have its practitioners to do with such remedies as morphine, quinine, stricknine, delphine, veratvine and all those highly concentrated remedial agencies with which the achievements of modern chemistry have so much enriched the science of medicine? We find those now constituting the almost entire materia medica of the homoepath; not in- deed those little boxes which they sell for family u-e—they are but sugared playthings for children, but those which they use themselves; these are remedies so concentrated that ma- ny of them act powerfully in doses almost as minute as Hahne- mann's old infinitessimals, are easily sugared and comprised in the bulk of a pin's head. But what business has homoepathy with such remdies? The principle which underlays its ve- ry existence is dilution, dilution ad infinitum. What then has it to do with concentration? What can it honestly do with such remedies? His disciples cannot answer these ques- tions. To homeopathy, however, strictly and honestly prac- tised, we concede its full share of cures, effected through the medium of the imagination; but in this mode of curing, it has no higher claim upon public confidence than the medical de- lusions we have before considered, or one which we now re- member, if possible, more applicable; we mean the celebrated rain-water cure which flourished in New-York and Brook- lyn some twenty five or thirty years ago. Under that system$rfew drops of rainwater, administered daily, accompanied with similar restrictions with regard to diet, as those now imposed by the homoepath, made cures as numerous, as speedy and as remarkable as any ever made by the latter; and these cures were in both cases made in precisely the same manner, an improved regimen and invi- gorated hope being the real instruments, and a few drops of water, possessing no med cinal properties more in the one case than in the other, the apparent ones. We have treated 32 this delusion more seriou-ly tlnoi we think it deserves. rI he bubble, like all others, will soon burst, and then the public will wonder, as they have before, how they could so easily be deceived. The delusion, however, is not so extensive ns many imogire. The whole rumberof practitioners in New- York officinllv announced by the Hahnemann Academy of medicine is 35, while the regular practitioners amount to t*75. The proportion of I., rnocp&lhic doctors to the medical faculty in thai city, therefore, is 1 to 25, and the proportion lo the population is I for every 14,000. We doubt whether it is as great as this in tie country at large, and yet I la1 no- maniusm has flourished more thou half a century. But homoe- pathy has not arisen or flourished without being of much service to mfli kind. Arising at a time when positive medi- cation was practised by all physicians, it has broken in upon this practice of attempting the cure of almost all disea es by enormous and reiterated doses of emetic and purgative mcdi- cin<\ It has t'ided physicians in learning how much agency the curative power of nature exerts in removing disease.— For Ihis reformation in medical prnclice we owe lo Hahne- mann a debt of gratitude which will be felt and atknow- ledged long after his visionary theories are forgotten. Il ha* also conrUited largely to the public health, since ninny of the ten thous.nls who once swallowed every quack medicire r.ow content then.selves wiih abstt nieus diet, with sugar pills, and wonderful to tell, find themtehes n uch improved in health—though lo such ihe woids of the pi et are most appli- cable, '■ Th<» homcnpdihic system, sir, j usl suits mc to a tittle — It provrs of phytic any h vv you cirmot take loo little; If it he good in all complaints to take a dose so small, It sure'y must bo butter to take uo dose at all." We had intended to have examined <>!,er medical delu- sions of modei n date, but our tin e and patience are exhaust- ed. Gentlemen of the Medical Society—to you this subject is peculiarly interesting. Briefly and imperfectly as it has been exhibited, you see that there has been from time imme- morial a constant succession of medical delusions. It may be said of each, not only that the wonder grew, but that it ceased to grow and at length died, not indeed by violence, but died a natural Heath. Each, having withstood all assaults has quietly laid itself down to die, benumbed into the sleep of death by the chill of popular neglect, while the warm breezes of popular favor which it once enjoyed are now be- stowed upon some other delusion; so will it ever continue to be while man is what he is, "animal credulum et mendax." As one who has retired, 1 trust forever, from the profession, permit me to close with one word of advice. Respect your- 33 ntlic. and your profession and the world will respect you and it. Whatever may be the temptation, use no illegitimate means to increase your practice or your fame. Be yours the^ sentiment of Pope, But if the purchase co*t so dear a price, A* soothing follv. or exalting vice, Then teach me, Heaven, to scorn the guilty bar. Drive from mv breast that wretched hist of praue, I'lililcmished let me live or die unknown- 0, grant an honest faina, or graut me none. I