He laughs at those old physicians who placed such confidence in
the right hind hoof of an elk as a remedy for the same disease, and
leaves the record of his own belief in a treatment quite as fanciful and
far more objectionable, written in indelible ink upon a living tablet
where he who runs may read it for a whole generation, if nature spares
his walking advertisement so long.
NOTE B.--
The presumption that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, does
not mean that there are no rogues, but lays the onus probandi on the
party to which it properly belongs. So with this proposition. A noxious
agent should never be employed in sickness unless there is ample evidence
in the particular case to overcome the general presumption against all
such agents, and the evidence is very apt to be defective.
The miserable delusion of Homoeopathy builds itself upon an axiom
directly the opposite of this; namely, that the sick are to be cured by
poisons. Similia similibus curantur means exactly this. It is simply a
theory of universal poisoning, nullified in practice by the infinitesimal
contrivance. The only way to kill it and all similar fancies, and to
throw every quack nostrum into discredit, is to root out completely the
suckers of the old rotten superstition that whatever is odious or noxious
is likely to be good for disease. The current of sound practice with
ourselves is, I believe, setting fast in the direction I have indicated
in the above proposition.
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