We shall conclude these observations with a few remarks on what are termed _patent medicines, nostrums_, or _quack medicines_, and their boasted pretensions in general. There is, in fact, but one state of perfect health, yet the deviations from this state, and the general species of diseases are almost infinite. Hence it will easily be understood, that in the classes of medical remedies, there must likewise he a great variety, and that some of them are even of opposite tendencies. Such are both the warm and cold bath considered as medical remedies. Though opposite to each other in their sensible effects, each of them manifests its medical virtues, yet only in such a state of the body as will admit of using it with advantage. From these premises, it is evident that an universal remedy, or one that possesses healing powers for the _cure of all diseases_, is, in fact, a non-entity, a mere delusion, the existence of which is physically impossible, as the mere idea of such a thing involves a contradiction. How, for instance, can it he conceived, that the same remedy should be capable of restoring the tone of the muscular fibres, when they are relaxed, and also have the power of relaxing them when they are too rigid; that it should coagulate the fluids when in a state of resolution, and again attenuate them when they are too viscid; that it should moderate the nerves when in a state of preturnatural sensibility, and likewise restore them to their proper degree of irritability when they are in a contrary state.