system, by those who administer them right and left.

Says the "United States Dispensatory," "Medicines are those articles which make sanative impressions on the body." This may be important if, true. But, per contra, says Professor Martin Paine, M.D., of the New York University Medical School, in his "Institutes of Medicine": "Remedial agents are essentially morbific in their operations."

But again says Professor Paine: "Remedial agents operate in the same manner as do the remote causes of disease." This seems to be a very distinct announcement that remedies are themselves causes of disease. And yet again: "In the administration of medicines we cure one disease by producing another." This is both important and true.

Professor Paine quotes approvingly the famous professional adage, in good technical Latin,

"Ubi virus, ibi vitus,"

which, being translated, means, "our strongest poisons are our best remedies."

Says Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons: "All of our curative agents are poisons, and as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient's vitality."

Says Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., of the same school: "All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce disease."

Says Professor St. John, of the New York Medical College : "All medicines are poisonous."

Says Professor B. R. Peaslee, MD., of the same school: "The administration of powerful medicines is the most fruitful cause of derangements of the digestion."

Says Professor H. G. Cox, M.D., of the same school: "The fewer remedies you employ in any disease, the better for your patients."

Says Professor E. H. Davis, M.D., of the New York Medical College: "The modus operandi of medicines is still a very obscure subject. We know that they operate, but exactly how they operate is entirely unknown."

Says Professor J. W. Carson, M.D., of the New York University Medical School: "We do not know whether our patients recover because we give medicines, or because Nature cures them."

Says Professor E. S. Carr, of the same school: "All drugs are more or less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing."

The authors disagree in many things; but all concur in the fact that medicines produce diseases; that their effects are wholly uncertain, and that we know nothing whatever of their modus operandi.

But now comes in the testimony of the venerable Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., who says: "Drugs do not cure diseases; disease is always cured by the vis medicatrix naturae."

And Professor Clark further complicates the problem before us by declaring that, "Physicians have hurried thousands to their graves who would have recovered if left to Nature." And again: "In scarlet fever you have nothing to do but to rely on the vis medicatrix naturae."

Says Professor Gross: "Of the essence of disease very little is known; indeed, nothing at all." And says Professor George B. Wood, M.D., of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia ("Wood's Practice of Medicine"): "Efforts have been made to reach the elements of disease; but not very successfully; because we have not yet learned the essential nature of the healthy actions, and cannot understand their derangements."

On the other side of the Atlantic the claims of the existing medical schools to popular favor, do not appear to rest upon any surer basis than they do here, if we may judge from the following opinions expressed by some of the most eminent authorities in the British Kingdom:

"The medical practice of our days is, at the best, a most uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence." DR. EVANS, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

"There has been a great increase of medical men of late, but, upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion." JOHN ABERNETHY, M.D., "The Good," of London.

"Gentlemen, ninety-nine out of every hundred medical facts are medical lies; and medical doctrines are, for the most part, stark, staring nonsense." Prof. GREGORY, of Edinburgh, author of a work on "Theory and Practice of Physic."

"It cannot be denied that the present system of medicine is a burning shame to its professors, if indeed a series of vague and uncertain incongruities deserves to be called by that name. How rarely do our medicines do good! How often do they make our patients really worse! I fearlessly assert, that in most cases the sufferer would be safer without a physician than with one. I have seen enough of the malpractice of my professional. brethren to warrant the strong language I employ." Dr. RAMAGE, Fellow of the Royal College, London.

"The present practice of medicine is a reproach to the name of Science, while its professors give evidence of an almost total ignorance of the nature and proper treatment of disease. Nine times out of ten, our miscalled remedies are absolutely injurious to our patients, suffering under diseases of whose real character and cause we are most culpably ignorant." Prof. JAMEISON, of Edinburgh.

Assuredly the uncertain and most unsatisfactory art that we call medical science, is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions; of conclusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn; of facts misunderstood or perverted; of comparisons without analogy; of hypotheses without reason, and theories not only useless, but dangerous." Dublin Medical Journal.

"Some patients get well with the aid of medicine; more without it; and still more in spite of it." SIR JOHN FORBES, M.D., F.R.S.

"Thousands are annually slaughtered in the quiet of the sick-room.' Governments should at once either banish medical men, and proscribe their blundering art, or they should adopt some better means to protect the lives of the people than at present prevail, when they look far less after the practice of this dangerous profession, and the murders committed in it, than after the lowest trades." Dr FRANK, an eminent author and practitioner.

"Our actual information or knowledge of disease does not increase in proportion to our experimental practice. Every dose of medicine given is a blind experiment upon the vitality of the patient." Dr. BOSTOCK, author of "History of Medicine."

"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon, and the effects of our medicines on the human system in the highest degree uncertain; except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined." JOHN MASON GOOD, M.D., F.R.S., author of "Book of Nature," "A System of Nosology," "Study of Medicine," etc.

"I declare as my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience and reflection, that if there were not a single physician, surgeon, man midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail." JAS. JOHNSON, M.D., F.R.S., Editor of the Medico- Chirurgical Review.

So it comes to this, that during three thousand years remedies have been accumulating until between two and three thousand drugs are recorded in the archives of the medical profession, and yet we have the admission of some of the highest authorities on the subject that the nature of disease is still a mystery, that the "modus operandi" of drugs is equally obscure, and that in consequence there is profound uncertainty as to the relation of drugs to the diseases for which