Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge.

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    obesity to wasting; and depression to excitement. Cold is relieved by its antagonist—heat, and vice versa. Deficiency is made up by addition and superfluity, by withdniwnng that which produces it. Excess of electricity is relieved by non- electric elements ; precisely the same as non-nitrogenized or non-vitalized matters are the antagonists of the nitrogenized and vital agents. If medicine does good, it must be upon the principle of neutralizing or opposing elementary matter, which is the cause of disease, consequently by an anta- tagonism; if it does hann, it is by adding to that which produces disease. Therefore, whatever plausible reasons may be set forth under the head of ‘ Similla simiUhns ciiraniur ’ aro fictions. As well may fire put out fire, and water decrease a deluge. Whatever good that is done by medication by any sect or class, depend upon it is done by some natural antagonism ; even if good is done in the end by m-ong medicines, it is by some inscrutable and occult means in opposition to our philosophy. Good cannot be corrected by evil; nor can evil be made good by any addition to it:—it is impossible. Battles are won by the strong or by strategy, which is equal to strength; but they are not won by their opposites. Nothing can make wrong, right; or right, wrong; each must increase in power by an addition to its own elements. Natural laws can act but in one way, and the nearer we approximate to them, the more good we do :—they may a])poar complicated in such a wonderfid piece of ma- chinery as the human body, and fnistrato om- best intentions; but we are perhaps more indebted to their opposition to otm acts than wo arc aware of. If allopathy, if homoeopathy, if charlatanism do good at any time, it is not by their jiresent theories. Any mode of practice which requires abstruse reasoning or metaidiysical arguments to support it, may bo set do\vn as doubtful; because truth requires so few words, whilst that which is desired to be believed requires many. High-flown assertions often entrap, as well as peri)lex the mind; and those wlio have a leaning towards anything occult, yet cannot discriminate, l>clieve by a species of faith, because they cannot understand. From the fact of the homceo- pathists using the active elements of very powei-ful drugs, which are always alkaloids, taken in conjunction with those princiides wliich I have laid down, that 75 to 80 per cent, of
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