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they tell us. Why, there always was just about so much disease in the world, in some form or other, and there always will be. We may, indeed, in particular localities, and for a time, have fewer diseases; or they may change their appearance, or be less or more fatal; but, taking a thousand years together, things remain about the same as they were always,"

Now, I will not stop to show the inconclusiveness of such a mode of reasoning as makes the past a measure for the future; nor to oppose the statements thus made by counter statements of my own. It is, perhaps, sufficient to say that such a belief belongs to a species of fatality alike common to Mohammedanism and paganism, but utterly unworthy of the sunlight of Christianity and Christian science. For even chance itself is subject to law.

A fourth and rapidly-increasing class (to which I belong) believe that man, as a race, is, for the most part, the author of his own miseries, especially his diseases. They believe it not only irreverent and wicked to throw the blame on any other source than human transgression, but absolutely unphilosophical and irrational.

They believe that God has established certain laws within the organic domain, as well as without it, which are as fixed

as immutable as those which were given at Sinai. They believe that obedience to all law, whether natural or moral, has its appropriate reward, here or hereafter, or both. They also believe that disobedience to all law, whether natural or moral, has its fixed, and, except in the case of special remission by a special provision, has its appropriate and irrevocable penalty. In one word, they regard man as, under God, the artificer of his own health and happiness.

To express their views in other words, and very briefly, they believe that, as a whole, disease is the product of manu

facture, just as truly and certainly as cloth, paper, or pins; and that the world has been, unwittingly or otherwise, engaged in this manufacture for nearly six thousand years. And it is time, they think, to "turn the tables," and manufacture health.

But how shall this be done, and by whom? How, I mean shall health be manufactured?

to say,

My reply will be, in part, negative. I will endeavor to show, in the first place, how it cannot be manufactured.

Not by mere hobbyism. By hobbyism I mean an undue attachment to certain measures or schemes which, at most, are only partial in their application and tendency. Thus some have seemed to suppose that by the exclusive use of coarse bread, or the external and internal habitual use of cold water, health might be greatly improved, and life lengthened indefinitely.

Now, while I will allow no one to go beyond me in his estimate of the recuperative power of a system which is sustained by mere bread and water, I do not hesitate to say, that as a means of manufacturing health, they are of very different value to different individuals. Coarse or unbolted bread, for example, so indispensable to human health generally, is, in some few instances, of diseased tendency. I have known one chronic dyspeptic destroyed by it.

Besides, however excellent either or both these may be, they are neither of them the "immortal elixir." There are many other things to be done or left undone, or taken or abstained from, before the world's curse can be removed, and man fully restored to Eden. Health and long life depend on air, exercise, temperature, purity, and cheerfulness, as well as on food and drink. The latter must, indeed, be regarded, but the former must not be neglected.

Notwithstanding the fact, that very little attention has hitherto been paid to the laws of health or hygiene, it is remarkably true, that when a lecturer or teacher presents these laws in a proper manner and urges their acceptance, they seem, to many, so reasonable, and conscience is so much roused, that there is a determination to do something, were it only to quiet her upbraidings.

The awakened individual seizes, therefore, on some prominent point or topic, and gives to this his whole attention. He thinks on it, converses on it, practises it. Soon it becomes to him the all in all of reform. It is so he supposes acea for human ills. It will soon remove the curse.

the pan

It will

make every one a Hercules, a Samson, or a Methuselah. This I call hobbyism.

There is, however, a hobbyism which is of a worse kind than even this. Certain remedial agents are introduced and lauded to the skies. They are said not only to palliate or remove our ills, but to bring back the deteriorated constitution into a renovated and improved state, that will enable it to last almost forever. They are the elixir of human life; and Paracelsus poor man!-lived a little before his time!

There is some slight apology for such hobbyism, I well know. Certain medicated preparations having been given to certain persons laboring under particular complaints, described by a particular name, say asthma or rheumatism, a few, as might have been expected, recovered under their use. Others, by hundreds or thousands, were apparently unaffected. Others, in great numbers, were made worse, and a few destroyed.

The few who have recovered under their use rather, as

*Paracelsus, who flourished in the sixteenth century, professed to have discovered an elixir of immortality. But, like other men, he died.

I should say, notwithstanding their use-are requested to give their names and approbation, especially if they are among the élite of society. These two, or three, or half a dozen names are trumpeted through the length and breadth of the land. The boxes, and cartloads, and shiploads of the precious stuff, so lauded and commended, are almost beyond computation.

The thousands who are not benefited are not heard from, and those who are injured, more or less, seldom make any report. The dead tell no tales, of course. The reputation of the medicine is hence considered as established. Every one who has a complaint which can be "christened " asthma, or rheumatism, or consumption, must procure and try it, and the fortunate vender not, usually, the discoverer-can

build temples to Esculapius eight stories high.*

It is believed, by many; especially those who are themselves in the decline of life, that our world, generally, has begun a retrograde movement. Some even say that, as things are now going on, it cannot last more than two or three centuries. If there is ought to sustain this belief, it is the delusion of mankind with regard to medicine, especially nostrums. In few ways is there so much disease manufactured as by their use. They should be labelled life-destroyers.

One of the most painful features of this insanity in regard to medicine is, the fact that good men, in great numbers, are helping it on; not physicians and apothecaries alone, but multitudes of others. A respectable bookseller in Boston told me that he sold Brandreth's pills, from his bookstore, in about two years, to the value of more than twenty thousand dollars. Other similar confessions might be made.

Alluding to an apothecary's shop in one of our cities.

Nostrum dealing is a many-headed affair, that cannot, in little space, well be described. Powders, pills, panaceas, elixirs, vermifuges, and cough drops make only a part of this fearful armament, in battle array against health and life.

The evil would be more tolerable if our strength to endure it increased daily, as Milo's power to carry the calf increased all the while he was carrying it. But, alas! the reverse were more true. Our strength to bear with the evil is all the while diminishing; and where shall the end of these things be?

This view of medicine does not so much reject medicine entirely as it does its abuses. It would lop off from this supposed tree of life its excrescences. But I have yet more to say. The legitimate and approved use of remedial agents, like nostrum dealing, will accomplish nothing in the way of manufacturing health. It will, at most, only serve the purposes of mere patchwork- happy for mankind if it does even that.

Of course I do not here use the word patchwork reproachfully, for the work it indicates, as the world is, may be needful. The agriculturist, even, in our own region, seldom has a virgin soil to begin with. Broken down, if not diseased, by wrong culture, he is employed, much of his time, in endeavoring to patch it up. The parent, the teacher, the minister, in attempting to form or to reform human character, has much to do of mere patchwork. The lawyer, the civilian, the statesman, how much these all have to do in the way of patching up broken civil law! Is it greatly to be wondered at, then, if custom has prescribed for the medical man little else but patchwork?

This tyrant custom, united with other influences, has hitherto allowed to medical men neither time nor disposition to