Now the natural mode in which all organs deal with injurious substances, or substances which tend to disturb them, is by pouring forth their respective secretions; but if, when stimulated, they have not the power to do that, then they evince, as the case may be, disorder or disease. Thus, for example: If we desire to influence the secretion from the liver, mercury is one of _the many things_ which will do it. But if mercury cease to do this, it will produce disease; and, if carried to a certain extent, of no organ _more certainly_ than the liver. Thus, again, alcohol, in certain forms, is a very useful medicine for the liver; yet nothing, in continuance, more notoriously produces disease of that organ. So that it happens that all things, which in one form disorder an organ, _may_, in another form, in greater or more continued doses, tend to correct that disorder, by inducing there a greater, and thus exciting stimulation of its secretions. This is the old dogma, long before homœopathy was heard of, of one poison driving out another. This is the way in which fat bacon, at one period, or in one case, may be a temporary or a good stimulant of a liver which it equally disorders in another; for as the liver is a decarbonizing agent, as well as the lungs, so articles rich in carbon are all stimulants of that organ; useful, _exceptionally_; invariably disordering, if _habitual_ or _excessive_. But if this be so, what becomes of the "_curantur_?" To that, we say it is far from proven. Medicine hardly ever—perhaps never, _strictly speaking_—cures; but it often materially assists in putting people in a _curable condition_, proper for the agencies of more natural influences. True. Well, then, may not homœopathy be good here? We doubt it; and for this reason: Medicine, to do good, should _act_ on the organ to which it is directed; it is itself essentially a poison, and does well to relieve organs by which _it is expelled_; but if you give medicine in very small doses, or so as to institute an artificial condition of _those sentinels_, the nerves, you may _accumulate a fearful amount of injurious influence in the system before you are at all aware of it_. And it is the more necessary to be aware of this in respect to homœopathy; because many of the medicines which homœopathists employ are active poisons; as belladonna, aconite, and so on. We have seen disturbed states of nerves, bordering on paralysis, which were completely unintelligible, until we found that the patient had been taking small doses of narcotic poisons. We have no desire whatever to forestall the cool decisions of experience; but we earnestly request the attention of the homœopathist to the foregoing remarks; and, if he thinks there is anything in them, to peruse the arguments on which we found the law of which we have formerly spoken[85].