_Therefore,_ it should be repeatedly cleansed.

920. Over-Work.

Late hours and anxious pursuits exhaust the nervous system, and produce disease and premature death.

_Therefore_, the hours of labour and study should be short.

921. Body and Mind.

Mental and bodily exercise are equally essential to the general health and happiness.

_Therefore_, labour and study should succeed each other.

922. Over-Indulgence.

Man will live most healthily upon simple solids and fluids, of which a sufficient but temperate quant.i.ty should be taken.

_Therefore_, over indulgence in strong drinks, tobacco, snuff, opium, and all mere indulgences, should be avoided.

923. Moderate Temperature.

Sudden alternations of heat and cold are dangerous (especially to the young and the aged).

_Therefore_, clothing, in quant.i.ty and quality, should be adapted to the alternations of night and day, and of the seasons; and drinking cold water when the body is hot, and hot tea and soups when cold, are productive of many evils.

924. Summary.

Moderation in eating and drinking, short hours of labour and study, regularity in exercise, recreation, and rest, cleanliness, equanimity of temper and equality of temperature,--these are the great essentials to that which surpa.s.ses all wealth, _health of mind and body_.

925. h.o.m.oeopathy.

926. Principle of h.o.m.oeopathy.

As h.o.m.oeopathy is now practised so widely and, indeed, preferred to the older system in many families, the Domestic Pharmacopoeia could scarcely lay claim to be considered complete without a brief mention of the princ.i.p.al remedies used and recommended by h.o.m.oeopathic pract.i.tioners, and the disorders for which these remedies are specially applicable. The principle of h.o.m.oeopathy is set forth in the Latin words "_similia similibus curantur_," the meaning of which is "likes are cured by likes."

The meaning of this is simply that the h.o.m.oeopathist in order to cure a disease, administers a medicine which would produce in a perfectly healthy subject, symptoms _like_, but not _identical_ with or the _same_ as, the symptoms to counteract which the medicine is given. The h.o.m.oeopathic pract.i.tioner, therefore, first makes himself thoroughly acquainted with the symptoms that are exhibited by the sufferer; having ascertained these, in order to neutralize them and restore the state of the patient's health to a state of equilibrium, so to speak, he administers preparations that would produce symptoms of a like character in persons in good health.

It is not said, be it remembered, that the drug can produce in a healthy person the disease from which the patient is suffering: it is only advanced by h.o.m.oeopathists that the drug given has the power of producing in a person in health, symptoms similar to those of the disease under which the patient is languishing, and that the correct mode of treatment is to counteract the disease symptoms by the artificial production of similar symptoms by medicinal means, or in other words, to suit the medicine to the disorder, by a previously acquired knowledge of the effects of the drug, by experiment on a healthy person.

927. Allopathy

Allopathy is the name given to the older treatment of disorders, and the name is obtained from the fact, that the drugs given, do not produce symptoms corresponding to those of the disease for whose relief they are administered as in h.o.m.oeopathy. The introduction of the term is contemporary with h.o.m.oeopathy itself. It was merely given to define briefly the distinction that exists between the rival modes of treatment, and it has been accepted and adopted by all medical men who have no faith in h.o.m.oeopathy, and the treatment that its followers prescribe.

[DEEP RIVERS FLOW WITH SILENT MAJESTY.]

928. Comparison.

Allopathic treatment is said to be experimental, while Homeopathic treatment is based on certainty, resulting from experience. The allopathist tries various drugs, and if one medicine or one combination of drugs fails, tries another; but the h.o.m.oeopathist administers only such medicaments as may be indicated by the symptoms of the patient. If two drugs are given, as is frequently, and perhaps generally, the case, it is because the symptoms exhibited are of such a character that they cannot be produced in a healthy person by the action of one and the same drug, and, consequently cannot be counteracted or neutralized by the action of a single drug.

929. h.o.m.oeopathic Medicines

h.o.m.oeopathic medicines are given in the form of globules or tinctures, the latter being generally preferred by homeopathic pract.i.tioners.

When contrasted with the doses of drugs given by allopathists, the small doses administered by h.o.m.oeopathists must at first sight appear wholly in adequate to the purpose for which they are given; but h.o.m.oeopathists, whose dilution and trituration diffuse the drug given throughout the vehicle in which it is administered, argue that by this _extension of its surface_ the active power of the drug is greatly increased; and that there is reason in this argument is shown by the fact that large doses of certain drugs administered for certain purposes will pa.s.s through the system without in any way affecting those organs, which will be acted on most powerfully by the very same drugs when administered in much smaller doses. Thus a small dose of sweet spirit of nitre will act on the skin and promote perspiration, but a large dose will act as a diuretic only, and exert no influence on the skin.

930. Treatment of Ailments by h.o.m.oeopathy.

Great stress is laid by homeopathists on attention to diet, but not so much so in the present day as when the system was first introduced.

The reader will find a list of articles of food that may and may not be taken in _par_. 961. For complete direction on this point, and on diseases and their treatment and remedies, he must be referred to works on this subject by Dr. Richard Epps and others. All that can be done here is to give briefly a few of the more common ailments "that flesh is heir to," with the symptoms by which they are indicated, and the medicines by which they may be alleviated and eventually cured.

931. Asthma

Asthma, an ailment which should be referred in all cases to the medical pract.i.tioner.

_Symptoms_. Difficulty of breathing, with cough, either spasmodic and without expectoration, or accompanied with much expectoration.

_Medicines_. Aconitum napellus, especially with congestion or slight spitting of blood; Antimonium tartaric.u.m for wheezing and rattling in the chest; a.r.s.enic.u.m for chronic asthma; ipecacuanha; Nux vomica.

932. Bilious Attacks

Bilious attacks, if attended with diarrhoea and copious evacuations of a bright yellow colour.

_Medicines_. Bryonia, if arising from sedentary occupations, or from eating and drinking too freely; or Nux vomica and Mercurius in alternation, the former correcting constipation and the latter nausea, fulness at the pit of the stomach, and a foul tongue.

933. Bronchitis.

_Symptoms_. Catarrh accompanied with fever, expectoration dark, thick, and sometimes streaked with blood; urine dark, thick, and scanty.

_Medicines_. Aconitum napellus, especially in earlier stages; Bryonia for pain in coughing and difficulty of breathing; Antimonium tartaric.u.m, loose cough with much expectoration and a feeling of, and tendency to, suffocation; Ipecacuanha, acc.u.mulation of phlegm in bronchial tubes and for children.

[SHALLOW BROOKS ARE NOISY.]

934. Bruises and Wounds.