add a strong decoction of equal parts of hops and chamomile flowers. But in most cases of spring disorders, stimulants of any kind produce only temporary exhilaration, while the blood is thickened and made worse by them. The blood needs cooling and renovating in those who are fleshy, and purifying and enriching in those who are lean. Therefore, bitters are not what nature requires for spring repairs, and the alcoholic property cheats the drinker by making him feel momentary improvement, while the real sources of weakness and discomfort remain undisturbed.

Cathartics usually act locally upon the contents of the stomach and bowels by dissolving them, and quickening peristaltic action, without in the least stirring up healthful activity of the liver and gall-ducts. Consequently, those who resort to simply purgative or cathartic medicines are only improved by the local unburdening of the stomach and bowels, while the blood and inactive liver remain untouched. The result in this case is, no permanent relief, and nature is left, after all, to help herself as best she can.

The course which ought to be pursued by those who find themselves physically out of order in the spring, is to consult some physician in whom they have confidence. Reliance cannot safely be reposed in the thousand and one blood-purifiers and sarsaparillas which stand in solid battalions on the shelves of the apothecary, nor in the anti-bilious pills, or liver pills, which are advertised in the newspapers. The former are little more than colored sweetened water and alcohol, and the latter possess usually no other than purgative properties. Summer sickness may be prevented by spring renovation, but any hap-hazard attempt at the latter may only the more surely prepare the system for the former. If " a stitch in time saves nine," when applied to our garments, it may apply with equal truth and felicity to the body the garments envelop. But all botch-work should be avoided as the least economical in the end.

Other Suggestions

For the prevention of disease may be found in various parts of this volume, and especially in the chapter immediately preceding, to which this is simply a correlative. It would be supererogatory to make this chapter as complete as the subject would require, if the one on the "Causes of Nervous and Blood Derangements" were omitted. Then, again, in matter coming after this, on chronie

maladies, marriage, etc., hints on the prevention of disease will naturally find expression where infirmities growing out of physical or social discord are treated upon.

In taking leave of this chapter, therefore, with its seeming incompleteness, the author takes consolation in the belief that the reader will find somewhere in the pages of this volume, the information which may possibly be sought and not found in the essays herein presented.

CHAPTER IV.

COMMON SENSE REMEDIES.

AVING glanced at the proximate and many of the remote causes of disease, and made some suggestions for their prevention, next in order is a consideration of appropriate remedies. In pointing out and commenting on these, I expect to encounter the universal denunciation of old-school physicians, and some opposition from the new.

I am often asked the question-"To what school of medicine do you belong?" My reply is-no school, except the school of nature, which I shall christen the Utilitarian School. I have been a diligent pupil of all the old masters, and have investigated all systems. I am now a devoted pupil of nature; intuition is my counselor; common sense my pharmacopoeia. In other words, I am independent-bound by the tenets of no medical association, and consequently prejudiced against no new discovery which can be made subservient to suffering humanity. Whatever I find in earth, air, water, and science, useful as remedial agents, I appropriate, and resort thereto, when occasion demands, without fear of being confronted by a conservative brother who sees merit in nothing which has not the sanction of antiquity

I have wasted much time in the exploration of what is inappro priately termed medical science, but have always found instruction and entertainment in the great book of nature. The literary productions of old-school writers are often interesting and contain much sophistry; nature is refreshing and pregnant with truth.

Hippocrates flourished over eighteen hundred years before the modern science (?) of medicine was founded. He was even unacquainted with the circulation of the blood; yet he was styled the

"father of medicine," and his success in curing disease so excited the superstition of the ancients, that many of them believed he stayed the plague of Athens. Some are born physicians. Hippocrates was. Every man possesses a special talent for something, and he who becomes a doctor when nature designed him for a reaper, will mow down human beings when he should be cutting wheat.

Redfield, the physiognomist, says that he can tell who are natural physicians by the bones in the face. He describes them as men having an elevation of the arch of the cheek-bone, called the zygomatic arch. He says that one possessing this peculiarity, other things being equal, is not only inclined to study and practice, but will have a certain instinct for it, which will materially assist his scien tific knowledge." "Without this faculty, and its sign, in a superior degree," continues that popular physiognomist, "no person ever attained to skill and eminence in the medical profession, or even made a good nurse. The North American Indians have this sign very large, one of their characteristics being high cheek-bones, and they are equally remarkable for their 'medicine men'--so much so, that some persons consider the name 'Indian Doctor' a sufficient offset for ignorance and presumption." With regard to my natural qualifications, my interested readers will pardon me for saying that, besides possessing the sign Redfield describes, my medical proclivities manifested themselves at an early age. My parents have often reverted to my boyhood, when pill-making, &c., entered conspicuously into the diversions in which I indulged, and facetious neighbors dignified the contents of my juvenile waistcoat with the title of "Doctor."

With these remarks, prefatory and egotistic, I will enter upon the legitimate mission of this chapter, which is to advocate the merits of those classes of remedies which have rendered my practice so eminently successful and popular, and to expose some of the most prevalent medical errors of the day.

Vegetable Medicines.

The trees, shrubs, flowers, and plants, I contend, possess, in a refined form, all the medicinal properties of the mineral kingdom. Their numerous and far-reaching roots span rocks, ramify in various strata of soil, and extract from good old mother earth her hidden medicinal treasures, which are transposed to regions of air, light

and heat, where chemical changes are effected which at once deprive them of their grosser characteristics, and render them far more effi cacious and harmless, as antidotes for human infirmities, than they can possibly be made in the laboratory of the most skilful chemist.

It is said that "if a bone be buried just beyond and a little at one side of a root, the latter will turn out of its direct course and go in pursuit of the bone, and when it finds it, it will stop and send out numerous little fibres which, forming a net-work, will envelop the bone; and when all the nourishment has been sucked out of it, the root will again pass on its way, and the temporary fibres thrown out around the bone will gradually disappear." Fig. 76.

Thus the inflexible relic of a decomposed carcass may be transformed into a beautiful flower! What human chemist can do this? And yet it is trifling, compared with what nature is daily producing in her boundless laboratory. The roots of herbage and trees have the same power to extract the useful properties of minerals, and, in a measure, derive their nourishment from the various ingredients of the soil. An intelligent writer tells us, that " one of the most remarkable properties of plants is the power with which they are endowed of selecting their food. The soil contains various

IN HER LABORATORY.

tation, and the little fibrous

roots that fill the ground select from the whole, and suck in through their minute openings just the kind suited to the nature of the plant or tree to which they belong. All plants will not thrive on the same