With these facts before me, nobody can find it strange that I should feel some misgivings in laying before the world a drug endowed with such extensive virtues. Apis is one of those drugs, the abuse of which may prove as destructive as the use of it is a source of saving good. It is no anti-psoric, nor is it capable of antidoting the three miasms, or of inflicting medicinal diseases for life. Nevertheless, it is a deeply and speedily-acting drug, for it affects the whole internal mucous membrane, the nervous system, and the process of sanguification, thus disturbing the health for a long time. Its primary aggravating action, its deeply penetrating interference with the existing morbid process, which may lead to errors in diagnosis, and its power to exhaust the reactive energies of the organism prematurely, render it a very dangerous agent. These circumstances go to show that such an agent, in the hands of the partizans of the Specific School, may be as dangerously and injuriously abused as other important drugs have been. I cannot sufficiently warn my readers against such distressing abuses. Only he is protected from the danger of imitating such shameful absurdities, who listens to the words of our master: "Imitate this, but imitate this correctly!" Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistent hyphenation has been standardised, whilst variant and archaic spellings remain as printed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Apis Mellifica, by C. W. Wolf