In this disordered state, we observe nature
providing for the re-establishment of order, by exciting some salutary
evacuation of the morbific matter, or by some other operation which
escapes our imperfect senses and researches. She brings on a crisis, by
stools, vomiting, sweat, urine, expectoration, bleeding, &c, which, for
the most part, ends in the restoration of healthy action. Experience has
taught us also, that there are certain substances, by which, applied to
the living body, internally or externally, we can at will produce these
same evacuations, and thus do, in a short time, what nature would do but
slowly, and do effectually, what perhaps she would not have strength
to accomplish. Where, then, we have seen a disease, characterized
by specific signs or phenomena, and relieved by a certain natural
evacuation or process, whenever that disease recurs under the same
appearances, we may reasonably count on producing a solution of it, by
the use of such substances as we have found produce the same evacuation
or movement. Thus, fulness of the stomach we can relieve by emetics;
diseases of the bowels, by purgatives; inflammatory cases, by bleeding;
intermittents, by the Peruvian bark; syphilis, by mercury; watchfulness,
by opium; &c. So far, I bow to the utility of medicine. It goes to the
well defined forms of disease, and happily, to those the most frequent.
But the disorders of the animal body, and the symptoms indicating
them, are as various as the elements of which the body is composed.
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