"For instance, in speaking of a certain case, you will sometimes hear a physician say: 'I have tried everything, but nothing seems to do any good.' Now the real remedy or remedies suitable in the case he may be wholly ignorant of, consequently, he has not tried everything. The number of agents tried, even if millions, count for nothing, and most of them may actually have been, harmful, if their tendency was not in line with the objective aimed at. A physician should be able to judge of this. Herein lies the test of his skill. The correct remedies have a tendency to produce the results sought, but a million non-indicated substances will have no power to bring relief and eradicate cause.
"One such authority, from whom we-have quoted, made the claim that all medicines are poisonous. Now real medicines are not poisonous at all. One might just as well, and with equal truth, say that all foods are poisonous. The very nature of poison is to destroy living matter. True medicine is a substance which tends to supply necessary material to the bodily substances and to increase the life principle in man.
"Poisonous substances irritate and provoke the vital cen-
28 THOMSONIAN SYSTEM
ters to increased activity, and frequently, in spite of being poisonous, if the person to whom given possesses a goodly degree of vitality, a cure will result. In such cases the drug, or drugs, act upon the inert system as does the driver's whip on the fagging horse. But poisons never add any permanent energy to the vital centers in man, and in cases where the force in these centers is very low, their effect is to exhaust it entirely and thus cause the death of the sufferer.
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