or abused. A German poet rightly observes

Divide the THUNDER into single notes,
And it is but a lullaby for children;
But, pour it in one volume on the air,

And the intensity makes heaven to shake.

The same rule holds good in physic. Every thing depends on the scale or degree in which you apply a given substance to the body, and the particular circumstances and condition of the body at the time, whether such substance be a remedy or a poison. What is there that pertains to earth or air, that we may not usefully employ? If Man, in his ignorance or depravity, turn a particular power to evil account instead of to good, shall blame be imputed to the Almighty, who bestowed it on him as a boon? Let babblers beware how they commit themselves in this matter;-let them fully understand, that when they decry any agent in nature as being, in the abstract, a dangerous medicine, or a poison, they not only arraign God for his goodness; but expose, at the same time, their utter ignorance of his laws. Where men have not examined, surely it were only policy to be silent. Do medical practitioners ever prate in this language of imbecility? Too frequently, Gentlemen ;-but in their case, it generally proceeds less from a want of knowledge of the subject, than from a wish to disparage a professional competitor. Sordid practitioners know that there is no readier mode of influencing the sick, than by playing upon their fears. Not a week passes, but I am told by some patient-"Oh, I showed your prescription to Dr. So-and-so, and he said it contains poison !"-Bless my life! I generally answer, what a wonderful thing! Why, then, does not Dr. So-and-so get the College of Physicians indicted for the introduction of such substances into their medicinal pharmacopeia? Why does he not gravely arraign them for the processes which they have devised for the preparation of "medicinal" arsenic, "medicinal" opium, "medicinal" prussic acid, -and tell them boldly and at once that these are all so many concentrated essences of death and destruction, which no skill can render valuable, no scale of diminution adapt to the relief or cure of their suffering fellow-creatures?

that any of these substances ever poisoned any body, in the dose and at the age for which I and others prescribe it, and I shall have the pleasure of publishing the FACT (!) to the professional world, for their future edification. To whisper away an honourable man's reputation in a corner where he has no opportunity of reply, though a pitiful thing to do, is nevertheless a thing very often and very successfully done; to write or reason down the same man's character unfairly, on paper, is more difficult. Cautions-doubts-insinuations-these are the weapons by which you will be secretly supplanted in practice. Yes, Gentlemen, individuals who call themselves physicians, and who, without a scruple, would pour out a pint of your heart's blood at a time, will affect to start at the sixteenth part of a grain of strychnine, and shrug their shoulders significantly, at two drops of prussic acid! "How easy to put such men down!" I have been told. "You have only to ask them, if they ever knew an adult die of either medicine in these doses?and dare them to say, that they have not themselves killed hundreds, by taking away a less quantity of blood than a pint !" Both of these I have certainly done-but cui bono?-Reason and sense were on my side, it is true!—but what will either reason or sense avail him who stands, as I stand, ALONE,-when his enemies have a party to back them, with the patients' prejudices and fears in their favour besides? The practitioners of whom I speak, are all so many links of an extensive chain of secret and systematic collusion; they are all bound to support and keep by each other;-they have signs and counter-signs, and a common story to tell these men, like false dicers, do deeds never dreamt of in your philosophy." In a word, so far as medicine and medical practice are concerned, the English public are, at this moment, very much in the same blissful state of ignorance as the Emperor Constantine was with the doings of his guards." But stillbut still," said Sebastes of Mytilene, "were the Emperor to discover—”

preferring, with Cervantes, to strengthen my argument with their pith and point-not only because there is no proverb that is not true, but, because they are all sentences drawn from Experience, the mother of the sciences.

But to return to medicines and their doses.What substance in the Materia Medica would be worth a rush, if it were absolutely innocuous in every dose and degree? You all know that Rhubarb and Magnesia may each be given medicinally, to the extent of many grains ;but, may not both be so advanced in the scale of quantity, as to become equally fatal as Strychnine or Arsenic-were strychnine or arsenic to be taken in the usual dose of rhubarb or magnesia? May not our deadliest drugs, on the other hand, be so reduced in volume as to become as innocuous, to an adult at least, as a grain of rhubarb would be to an infant? Surely, there is not one of you, whether sick or well, who would object to an infinitesimal dose of arsenic-the millionth or decillionth part of a grain, for example! Ah, these homœopathists! I question if they always keep to such doses; for, when a man makes up his own medicines, he may gull his patients as he pleases. But, be that as it may, there can be no surer test of imposture, than to be told you may take any medicine, in any quantity. Can food itself be thus taken? If it could, where would be the necessity of cautioning gluttons about their diet? In truth, you can scarcely mention any one edible substance, that will agree, even in a moderate quantity, with all patients. One person cannot eat oysters, without becoming the subject of a rash. Another, the moment he eats poultry or veal, gets sick at stomach, though mutton and beef have no such effect on him. See, then, the truth of the old proverb, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison." Chesterfield says it is vulgar to

In further illustration of this subject, I pass to the lower animals; and here again you will find that no earthly agent has been given us for absolute evil, inasmuch as substances which, in comparatively small quantities, may poison one class of beings, are food to another, in a volume comparatively large. The sweet almond, for example, so nutritious to man, is deleterious to the fox, the dog, and domestic fowl. The hog may be poisoned by pepper, the parrot by parsley; stramonium, or thornapple, which, when we prescribe it in physic, we do cautiously, and in small quantities, is greedily devoured by the pheasant with impunity; fowls enjoy the darnel- hogs, the deadly night-shade. The water hemlock, which is poison to all three, in common with man, is a most nutritious food to the stork, sheep, and goat. And the wolf is reported to take without inconvenience, a quantity of arsenic which would destroy the horse. You see, then, how completely the word poison is a term of relation.

The infinity of substances which have been successfully applied to remedial purposes, whether derived from the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, like the various CAUSES of the diseases for which we administer them, will all, upon investigation, be found to have the most perfect unity in their mode of action. Their influence relates solely to their motive power, differing from each other, where they do differ, merely in their capability of changing, in this way, the atomic relations of a particular locality or tissue rather than another; but in no other way presenting a doubt or difficulty as to their modus operandi. What John Hunter said of poisons, applies of course to remedies; they "take their place in the body as if allotted to them." Thus, Mercury and Iodine, in whatever manner introduced into the system, will still manifest their action, chiefly by

now dispute, what Mr. Faraday was the first to prove, that all three are in reality mere modifications of ONE great source of power. For, not only can the Electrical Force be so managed as to produce Attraction and Repulsion in all bodies, without in any way altering their constituent nature; but it can also, in most cases, be so applied to every compound body as to cause a true chemical decomposition of its ultimate principles. By the same UNIVERSAL POWER we can either make iron magnetic, or deprive it of the magnetic virtue. We can, moreover, reverse by its means the polarity of the needle of a ship's compass. Is Electricity, then, the source of Medicinal agency-the source of power by which opium and arsenic kill and cure? Before this question can be satisfactorily answered, we must first know the effect of the direct application of Electricity to animal life. What is its action when directly applied to living man? Gentlemen, it has caused, Gentlemen, it has caused, cured, and aggravated almost every disease you can name,-whether it has come in the shape of the thunder-storm, or been artificially induced by the far less energetic combinations of human invention. If, as in the case of the magnetic phenomena, it can produce, take away, and reverse the polarity or motive power of the needle; so also can it give, take away, and reverse every one of the particular functional motions of the various parts of the living body to which it may, under particular circumstances, be applied. It has cured palsy, and caused it also; but has not strychnia done the same? In common with arsenic, it|| has made the stoutest and bravest shake in every limb; and, like the same agent, it has cured the ague. In what, then, does its action differ from arsenic here? If it has set one man to sleep and kept another wakeful, opium has done both. Electricity has cured cramp and caused it; so have prussic acid and nitrate of silver. Do we not prove, then, beyond the possibility of question, that the action of these Medicinal substances is purely Electrical? By precisely the same power, mercury salivates, antimony vomits, and rhubarb purges. the very same power they may all produce reverse effects. The primitive agency of the purely Medicinal substances, then, is one and

By

the same, namely, the power of Electrically moving the body in some of its various parts or atoms inwards or outwards, according to the previous state of the Vital Electricity of the Brain of the different individuals to whom they may be administered. For, through the medium of the Brain and Nerves, do all such substances primarily act. The ultimate and apparently unlike results of the action of different substances, depend entirely on the apparent dissimilarity of the functions of the organs they respectively influence. As already stated, the temperature of the part or organ of a living body thus motively influenced, becomes in every case correspondingly altered. If it be asked in what manner opium or antimony can alter the temperature or motion of any organ through its nerves, I can only refer to the analogous changes which take place in chemistry, through the medium of the Electric chain or Galvanic wire. When acted upon by either, bodies which were previously cold become instantaneously heated, and vice versa,motion being the equally instantaneous effect in both cases. And, according to the degree and duration of the Electrical Force applied, do such bodies become simply electrifiedpreserving still their usual appearance and nature,―or chemically decomposed in some of their constituent principles-their atoms in either case being repelled or attracted in a novel manner. In a manner perfectly analogous, do every and all of our purely Medicinal substances act on the living organism. On the dead, if they exercise any influence at all, it can only be by preventing the putrefactive process, or by chemically decomposing the various parts. The old writers were right when they said "Medicina non agit in cadaver."*

*Arsenic, Oxymuriate of Mercury, and Alcohol in minute doses, act ELECTRICALLY on the living stomach, whether for good or for evil. In large doses all three act CHEMICALLY upon the same organ; for they then invariably decompose it; but the same doses applied to the dead stomach preserve it from (the putrefactive) The Mineral Acids, when properly decomposition. diluted, act Electrically upon the living economy. In their concentrated state they decompose every part of the body, whether living or dead, to which they may be applied. The poisons of the Cobra and Rattlesnake,

The

shall influence one part of the system rather than another, I must again recur to chemistry. Have we not Elective Affinity, or a disposition in inorganic bodies to combine with, and alter the motions or modes of particular bodies rather than others? By an Elective Affinity precisely similar, do opium and strychnia, when introduced into the living system, produce their respective effects; they manifest a similar choice of parts-the Elective power of the one substance being shown by its influence on the nerves of sense, and that of the other by its effect on the nerves of the muscular apparatus. But here again, you may, with the most perfect propriety, ask, why the influence of opium on the Brain should set one man to sleep, and keep another from sleeping? and why strychnia, by a similar difference of cerebral action, should paralyse the nerves of motion in one case, and wake to motion the nerves of the paralytic in another? answer is simple, and it affords a fresh illustration of the truth of this Electrical Doctrine. The atoms of the specific portion of Brain of any two individuals thus oppositely influenced in either case, must be in opposite conditions of Vital Electricity-Negative in one, and Positive in the other. And what but opposite results could possibly be the effect of any agent acting Electrically on any two similar bodies, whether living or dead, when placed under Electrical circumstances so diametrically opposite? In common with all medicinal substances, opium and strychnia may produce inverse motionsmotion outward or motion inward, according to the particular Vito-Electrical condition of the body to which they may be applied. And in this instance again, they only harmonise with everything we know of the great Universal Force to which we ascribe their medicinal influence. Their ultimate agency depends on Attraction and Repulsion. Here, then, Gentlemen, you have the most satisfactory explanation of an infinity of facts which, from their

so deadly to other animals, have no visible effect upon their respective species; nor, indeed, upon any animals that want the back-bone; they have no influence on shell-fish or mollusca. What but Electricity in its various modifications can explain all this?

puzzled every teacher and professor that ever endeavoured to grapple with the subject. The merit of this explanation I exclusively claim; and I state my right to it thus distinctly, that no F.R.S., no Queen's Physician-Extraordinary, or other great official, may hereafter have any excuse for attempting to snatch it from me,-whether through ignorance or forgetfulness of my name and writings he venture to PREDICT its future discovery, or deal it out bit by bit to his readers, in the equally novel shape of question and suggestion! Yes, Gentlemen, I exclusively claim the ELECTRICAL DOCTRINE of Medicinal Agency as mine-a doctrine which affords an easy solution of the greater number of difficulties with which our art has hitherto been surrounded. By following out its principles, you see at once why colchicum, mercury, and turpentine, can all three cause and cure rheumatism-why acetate of lead can produce and relieve salivation-why cubebs and copaiba have relieved gonorrhoea in one man, and aggravated the same disease in another-why musk may excite and stop palpitation of the heart-why the Fevers of puberty, pregnancy, and small-pox, have each cured and caused every species of disorder incident to the respective subjects of them-and why the Passions have done the

same.

Now, what better proof could you have of the real nature of the Passions than this? What better evidence that Rage, Terror, Joy, Surprise, are each and all of them indubitable Fevers, than that each and all of them have cured, caused, aggravated, and alleviated almost every human disease-every ache and ailment to which man is liable, from ague to epilepsy-from toothache to the gout! Like opium and quinine, every one of these Passions has a double Electrical agency-in one case, reversing the particular Cerebral movements on which existing symptoms depend-in which case it alleviates or cures ;-in another, calling them up or only adding to their rapidity when present-in which case it causes and aggravates simply.

But we have yet to account for certain apparently anomalous effects of all medicineswe have still to explain to you why opium, for

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