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A WINTRY WALK
AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
WITH SINCEREST APOLOGIES TO THE SHADE OF HIAWATHA.
LONDON:
F. B. KITTO, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHOUT.
1867.
�EXPLANATORY.
The following lines contain an accurate account of what befel
the writer during a ramble, on May 13th, 1867, over the summit
of Glyder-fach and down by Llyn Bochlwyd to Llyn Idwal,
returning by Twll-du and over Glyder-fawr, to Pen-y-gwryd.
Weather, densely overcast and strong gale from E. ; reached
the clouds and newly-fallen snow at about 2,000 feet above sea
level, and had the company of both to the summit, a further
height of 1,200 feet. The air temperature in the valley had fallen
twenty-five degrees since the evening of the 11th.
From several aneroid readings, the writer suspects Glyderfach, the Lesser Glyder, to be at least equal in height to Glyderfawr, i. e. to rise 3,275 feet or more above sea level; and from
Snowdon the former looks considerably the higher.
H. B. BIDEN.
Witton, Birmingham, '
June, 1867.
�A WINTRY WALK AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.
Scene—The Heart of Snowdonia.
MAY 13th, 1861.
Reader, let a rambler tell you,—
One who oft, the storm defying,
Converse lone has held with Nature
In her grandest, sternest aspect,
'Mid the crags of wild Snowdonia,
Or, with pleasantest companions,
Scaled her lofty peaks and ridges
Oft by roughest, untried circuit,
One incurably afflicted
With ^-oaetyetkes scandendiP'caccreiZu’s —
Though he ne’er beheld the wonders
Of the far-famed Alpine ranges
How, this day, alone, he wandered
O’er the newly snow-crowned mountains—
"Winter’s snows had gone in April*
Spite of Post, Gazette, or Record.
Senseless work, would say the Guide Books,—
Sapient, cockney-followed Guide Books,—
Yet most useful to the novice,
Thus “ without a guide ” (!) to wander,
Courting well deserved destruction !
How he scampered o’er the quagmires,
How he floundered through the Gwryd,
�4
More correctly called the Mymbyr,
Slipping off the treacherous boulders ;
Scrambled up the Lesser Glyder
Spite of clouds, of snow, and easter.
Wind beloved (?) and sung by Kingsley ;
Would that he could thus have felt it
Freezing his poor toes and fingers.
Reached the drifting, level, cloud-roof,
Plunged behind its dim grey curtain
Darkly stretched o’er lakes and valleys,
Blotting out all higher regions,
Hiding every well known landmark;
Reached the eighteen-inch-deep heather
Water-logged with snow half melted,
Half way up the lofty mountain ;
Onward, upward, floundering, scrambling,
Through the fog and furious east wind,
Steering now by faith and compass,
Reached unmitigated winter;
Clambered up by blocks and ledges
O’er the frozen cliffs and boulders ;
Gained a loftier, colder region,
Where the gale made wildest music
Howling o’er the crested ridges,
Through the obelisks and turrets,
Serried battlements and cannons,
Dimly seen through drifting mist wreath,
Outworks of the storm-rent summit:
Wondrous handiwork of Nature,
Nought like this is seen on Snowdon,
Though each scene alike be snowed on !
Reached Castell-y-gwynt, whose crags were
Pointed, edged with fairest frostwork ;
Frozen mist, on blocks and ledges—
Silvery plumage, icy feathers,
Pointed bristling to the tempest;
Hung with icicles of crystal
Glittering bright in rows and clusters
From each point and “ coign of vantage.”
Reached the lofty rock-strewn platform,
Where the snow lay thick around him,
Where the great Stonehenge-like ruins,
Ruins of no human structure,
■
'
�5
Lichen-marbled, sno w-besprinkJed,
Looming spectral through the cloud-rack
In their ever changing groupings,
Stood or leaned in solemn grandeur.
Porphyritic trap their structure ;
Trap indeed the writer found it
Once, too far the crags descending
Northward from the lofty summit
Recking not of cliffs beneath him ;—Novice then at mountaineering,
Yet compelled by his position
Down that wall of rock to scramble
To Cwm Bochlwyd’s deep recesses,—
Down, by clefts and narrowing ledges
Through the haunts of kite and raven.
Reached the pointed sharp-edged cap stone,
Bright with snow and silvery frostwork,
Thickly fringed with icy pendants,
Gleaming through the mist like daggers.
Crossed the rugged pile of “ ruins,”
Summit of the lofty mountain ;
Reached the rocky steep o’erlooking
Tryfan’s cone of blocks and pillars,—
Deep Cwm Bochlwyd’s wild recesses,
All concealed in clouds beneath him :
Whence the ravens’ dismal croaking
Echoed from the crags of Tryfan
O’er the hidden deep abysses
Reached his ear, in sudden chorus
Piercing through the eddying vapour,
IMwf loud in expectation,
Scenting, may be, feast most welcome,
Should the wanderer’s ice-numbed fingers'
Losing hold on crags or boulders,
Send him headlong down among them.
Corresponding members doubtless,
Of that “ Red-tarn Club,” so famous
Once, as holding nightly revel
In the wilds of far Helvellyn,
(Till disturbed by “Mister Wudswuth”)
O’er the bruised and mangled body
Of the luckless Obadiah !
(See Chris. North his “ Recreations.”)
�6
'fc
'fc
5|c
How, his purpose now accomplished,*
O’er the mountain crest returning,
Feet and fingers numbed and senseless
Struggling with the furious easter
And its six degrees of freezing,
Underneath his chin he carried
(Load unwonted for the season,
On this thirteenth day of fifth month)
Frozen mist, an icy burden
Hanging to his draggled whiskers,
Till each patriarchal “ Billy ”
In the depths of lone Cwm Bochlwyd,
In that rugged grey-goat valley,
Might have owned him as a brother ;
But, alas, the goats have vanished !
Passed again the “ Tempest’s Castle,”
Where on high, in snowy mantle,
Fringed and edged with frosted lace work
Stood the “ Sentinel ” gigantic,
Lonely ward and vigil keeping
Through the heats and frosts of ages
By the rugged block-strewn glacis
O’er the lofty Col du Gribin.
Floundered down the narrow couloir,
Waging cool war with the snow drift
By the eastern flank of Gribin,
Whose arête of stony columns,
Though by Ordnance-map constructors
Hardly indicated, rises
Rough with crest of spiny fretwork
(If the fog would let one see it ! )
Gained the scree, so loose and shelving,
Down the rugged steep descending.
Reached Llyn Boehlwyd’s sparkling fountain,
Dripping well of clearest water
Where the crystal streamlets trickle
From the high-ranged porph’ry columns,
From the cliff so grim and barren
Northwest face of Lesser Glyder
Down the screen of richest verdure ;
Golden rod and scented rose root,
Mountain rue, and kidney sorrel,
* Fixing a minimum thermometer among the rocks.
�7
Ladies’ mantle, starry cresses,
&®Men saxifrage, and mosses,
Glancing bright in silvery ripples.
Welcome sight when heats of summer
Parch with thirst the mountain climber ;
Beauteous now witli fairest frost-work
AM enframed in purest snow-wreath ;
Forty-two degrees its waters
Now, as in the heats of August.
Lost at length the whitened snow-field,
Left behind the realm of Winter,
Lost awhile the piercing east wind
In the lee of rugged Tryfan ;
Left above, the drifting vapour ;—
Saw the snow-crowned Carnedd Dafydd
Clear awhile from gloom and tempest;
Saw Llyn Ogwen’s rippling waters
Fifteen hundred feet beneath him ;
Saw the lengthening vale of Francon
Bask awhile in pleasant sunshine ;
Hastened down to ice-ground Bocblwyd
(See Professor Ramsay’s “ Glaciers : ”—
No connexion here writh Murray;
Safe in print the writer had it
In the “ Brum. Gazette ” of August—
Of the twenty-fifth of eighth month—
Eighteen hundred four and sixtyJ
Reached Llyn Bochlwyd’s sheet of silver ;
Stood beside its lonely margin
Sometimes reached by roving angler,
Scarcely known to guide-book maker,
Scene but rarely seen by artist;
Stood awhile, the view surveying.
Wild and gloomy frowned the valley,'
Dark beneath its roof of vapour
Stretched across from peaks to ridges,
From sharp Tryfan’s headless shoulders
To decapitated G ribin ;
While the crags of Lesser Glyder,
Seamed with lines of white, descending
Glacier-like from cloud-hid snow fields,
Closed the darksome rugged picture.
Glorious are these lofty mountains
�8
Scarred with precipice and cavern
In the full revealing sunshine
Of the pleasant days of summer ;
(All untrod by highway tourist
Only bent to “do” the country)
Yet most glorious, when the sunset
Breaking through departing tempest
Floods with sudden, radiant splendour
( Golden lights and ebon shadows )
“ Castle ” pinnacle and “ turret ”
On the lofty crested ridges ;
While the lazy snake-like cloud-wreaths,
Rank by rank in long procession,
Stained throughout with evening’s purple
Crawl athwart their lofty shoulders,
O’er the dim retiring valleys
Grey with cliff-entangled mist beds.
“ Scene of sternest desolation ; ”
Yet, amid its barren grandeur,
Gems of loveliest tint or verd ure
“ Waste on desert air their sweetness.”-—(Reader, please forgive this rendering
Of a somewhat well-worn passage.)
Oft they smile in welcome beauty
On the mountain rambler’s footsteps :—
Parsley fern in ell-broad masses,
Dots the screes with tufted clusters ;
Mountain thrift, the sea-green rose-root,
Gnarly rooted, golden blossomed,
Star, and mossy saxifrages,
Bladder fern in brittle lace-work,
Alchemilla, mountain shield fern,
Oak and beech ferns, stemless catchfly,
Golden rod, the pale green-spleenwort,
Fringe with green the rocks and ledges,
Line the mossy caves and crannies ;
While the bristling, bright fir club moss,
Sturdy little mountain climber,
Though it not disdains the valleys,
Dots with life the loftiest ridges ;
Or its grey-green Alpine cousin
Struggles through the close cropp’d herbage ;
Or vivip’rous Alpine grasses
Wave in air their tufted offspring
�9
Held aloft on wiry foot-stalk ;
Or, in damp and sheltered corners,
Golden saxifrage encases
Rocks and stones with richest carpet:—
“ Common ” plant, but yet how lovely
Glimmering blue-green in the darkness
Deep within some dripping cavern,
Roofed with darker olive fringes
Of the filmy fern of Wilson ;
Chiefly found in wild luxuriance,
In the darksome damp recesses
Of the huge and loose-heaped fragments,
Relics of moraines, dissected
By the hidden, tinkling streamlets ;
Or in more illumined aspect,
Spangled with the snowy blossoms,
Gold besprinkled, emerald tufted,
Of saxífraga stellaris.
(Ending now this long digression,)
On again the rambler started,—
Scrambled down to well known Idwal,
(See Smith’s, Brown’s, or Jones’s guide-books;)
Many a hundred feet descending
To Llyn Idwal’s southern angle ;
Thence by the moraine so rugged
Up the centre of the valley
Tow’rds the distant “ Devil’s Kitchen,”
Gaping high in air before him ;
Onward, upward, climbing, scrambling,
Round or o’er the ice borne fragments.
*
*
*
*
Hark, what sudden, sharp crack-crackling,
Like the sound of rifle volley
Or the snap of closest thunder,
Swelling now to noise “uproarious,”
Echoes round the rock-walled valley ?
Is His Sable Highness cooking
In the gloomy cleft up yonder ?
Has his kitchen Inter busted ?
Whence can come such startling clamour ?
See, from out yon crown of vapour
Resting on the lofty mountain,
�10
Lines of dust, with seeming slowness,
( Strange effect of height and distance,)
Creeping down that steep escarpment,
Glyder-fawr’s north-western angle ;
Gleaming now with sudden radiance
In the level sheet of sunshine
Streaming ’neath the drifting cloud roof,
From Elidyr’s lofty shoulder
O’er the twilight darkening valley ;
See, from out the lowering columns
Right and left, the glancing fragments
Leaping, crashing o’ei’ the ledges,
Hurling down the loosened boulders,
Now with headlong speed descending,
Score the cliff with lines of ruin :
Nearer, sharper, grows the tumult,
Louder, grander, roar the echoes,
Till the rushing, stony torrent
Clattering down by screes and gullies,
Spent and worn, has found its level
All its noisy life departed.
On again the rambler struggled,
Reached at last Twll-du’s dark fissure,
Tempting spot to plant collector-;
(See the trusty “ Guides ” aforesaid.)
Yet one little floral beauty
Well deserves a passing notice ;—
Purple saxifrage ; its blossoms,
Soon as winter’s snows have left it
Rosy-tinting rocks aud boulders
On the old volcanic ash beds;
Loveliest little Alpine creeper,
With its slender thyme-like branches
Threading all the rocks with crimson.
Looked into the “ Devil’s Kitchen,”
Too much water, now, to enter,
Though the writer oft has clambered
Up the fallen blocks and ledges
Ad sanctissimum sanctorum,
Underneath the fallen boulder ;
Whence, on looking back, the landscape,
Lake and mountain, bright in sunshine,
Seen along the darksome crevice,
�11
Framed between its gloomy portals,
Startles with its golden radiance ;
Like the light of moon or planets
Yellow in the midnight darkness.
—Climbed to Llyn-y-cwn’s morasses,
—Saw the dim grey sea horizon
Faintly gleaming o’er Carnarvon,—
O’er the tower of Penrhyn Castle
Down Nant Francon’s long perspective ;
Saw in faintest ghostly outline
Moel Eilio’s grassy summit
O’er the lakes of deep Llanberis ;
All things else in mist were shrouded.
Scrambled on by screes and ledges,
Near a thousand feet ascending
Up the slope of Esgair-felen
To the brow of the Great Glyder.
Reached again the drifting cloud roof,
Reached once more the reign of Winter,
Faced again the piercing easter
With its six degrees of freezing ;
Crunched again the frozen snow sheets,
Half a foot in depth, new-fallen ;
Hastened on again by compass
Through the all-encircling mist wreaths,
(Centre of a faint horizon
Scarce a hundred yards in compass),
Through the gathering shades of evening,
O’er the lofty rock strewn platform ;
O’er a mile of stony desert,
Sharp edged shingle, “ snow-denuded.”
Now, a howling wintry desert,
Tempest-ridden, fog enfolded ;
Yet, in brighter, clearer weather,
Scarce you’ll find a nobler station
Whence to view the lofty Snowdon :
Whence to see the mountain monarch,
Whence to watch the changing colours
On his peaks and winding ridges
In some clear north western sunset
Of the longer days of summer;
Whoa Crib-goch in fiery radiance
Glows along each stony saw crest,
�12
Down each scree, with streams of orange;
While Cwm-glas in deepening shadow
Veiled -with haze of grey and purple
Dimly shews its tiny lakelets
Dark with rock-reflecting shadows
O’er the gorge of deep Llanberis :
And Y Wyddfa, “ the conspicuous,”
Towering high, in gilded outline,
O’er Crib-ddysgyll’s darkening ridges,
Crowns the scene of mountain glory.
Lost in distance man’s “improvements,”
All unseen, those huts unsightly,
Yet most welcome to the climber,
Faint or thirsty with his scramble
Up some rugged mountain buttress :—
Up Cwm-dyli’s “ rush of waters,’*
By the knife-edged crest of Lliwedd,
Up the cliff from Bwlch-y-saethau :—
Up the screes, from Cwm-y-clogwyn,
Up from Cwm-y-llan’s recesses,
To the “ Saddleback’s ” dread (!) shoulder,
Scene of regulation terrors !—
O’er Crib-goch’s spiky ridges,
O’er its wearying screes unstable,
Each loose stone a “ friction-roller”
Set with knives of flinty sharpness,
Roughest peak in all Snowdonia ;
From Cwm-glas’ deep recesses
By the spiny crest of Ddysgyl.
(Routes most dangerous ! most improper ! !
For the guideless mountain rambler.)
Why deform a spot so glorious
As the crested cone of Snowdon
With excrescences so hideous ?
Wooden shanties, roofs of patchwork,
Rusty funnels, empty bottles ;
Why not build in style substantial
Honest stonework, plain yet sightly,
In some neighbouring sheltered hollow ?
Leaving free the narrow summit
For the crowds who come to study
(When the drifting mists allow them)
Scenes of oft recorded beauty.
�13
While (to Glyder fawr returning)
Snowdon’s lengthening three-forked shadow
Leaps Llyn Gwynant’s silvery mirror,
Stalks across the wood crowned valley,
Climbs the slopes of Cerig Cochion.
And the Glyders’ gloomy profiles
Slowly creep up sunlit Siabod.
Stain his golden-glowing shoulders
With their deep embrasured outline.
While the Lesser Glyder’s ridges
Cut the sky with crested ruins.
Wondrous mountain architecture
Shining bright in level sunlight.
Or, perchance, in broken -weather,
-Scenes below, in fitful fragments,
Lake and streamlet, rock and woodland,
Here and there by turns emerging
Lom the snowy, rolling vapour
Shine revealed in sudden clearness :
While the sea-horizon, gleaming
Far and wide in radiant silver
Floods the distant scene with beauty,
Mottled o’er with flying shadows,
Saowy cloudlets, floating islands,
Gliding o’er its shining level.
While, around, the parting mist-wreaths, Lingering yet, in playful wanderings
Race along the rocky desert,
Round its pinnacles and turrets.
Or some sudden pelting shower
Sweeping o’er the lofty ridges
Gilds the scene with new-born lustre
Flashing in the fitful sunshine ;—
Floats away o’er sharp-coned Tryfan—
Wreaths his head with sudden glories,
Radiant circles, full orbed rainbows,
Ro mere lowland “ arch triumphant,”
Each concentric ring, completed
In the yawning depths of Bochlwyd,
Standing forth in fairest colours
From the dark, retreating nimbus.
While old Snowdon’s western shoulder
Ploughing up the sea borne currents
�14
Into higher, colder regions
Forms a train of sweeping cloudlets
Visibly increasing, growing
Out of evening’s purest ether ;
Till the long cascade of vapour
Streaming o’er his pointed summit,
Gliding down Cwm-dyli’s hollow,
Floats across the vale of Gwynant ;
Vainly struggles, hither, thither,
Stands in heaps o’er Pen-y-gwryd,
Tangled in the threefold eddy
Streaming up, from deep Nant Peris,
Round from Gwynant’s curving valley,
O’er the slopes of Gallt-y-wenallt.
Sight of snowy sunlit beauty
To the rambler far above it ;—
Source of discontented grumbling
To the helpless “walking tourist”
Buried ’neath its surging billows,
Coffee room imprisoned, fearful
Of the mountain mist or tempest ;
Weatlier-bound, the silly fellow,
Ignorant of scenes so glorious
On the lofty crests above him.
Thus in plaintive doleful numbers
Pouring forth his lamentation.
�15
LAY OF THE IMPRISONED TOURIST,
AS HE LAY “ USED UP” ON THE SOFA,
Stranger, who by love for mountains
E’er shouldst chance to be allured
To this den of dreary horrors,
Soon your weakness will be cured:
All the skies in cloud extinguished,
All the earth by mist obscured,
Imps cerulean, dismal vapours,
Reign supreme at Pen-y-gwryd !
Here the heavens are ever pouring
Drenching streams from fog-bank lurid :
Tears of sympathy incessant
Angels high in ether pure hid
Weep for us, poor luckless captives,
In this wretched place immured.
Traveller, that’s the reason why it
Always rains at Pen-y-gwryd !
Walker! Mr. Walking-tourist,
Fudge and nonsense, cease your growling ;
Off with those eternal slippers ;
Out, and scramble up the mountains ;
Burn that fossil, last week’s paper,
Last resource of mind most wretched,
Come, and soon will soul and body
Rise superior to the vapours.
Come, and see what glorious pictures
Nature shews, in ceaseless beauty,
To the thoughtful, loving student
Of her ever-changing features,—
Not forgetting Nature’s Author,
’Mid such tokens of His power,
(With all reverence be it spoken),
In whose hands are earth’s deep places,—
Whose, the strength of hills and mountains,—-
�16
Whose the sea is, for He made it,—
Who the outspread land created :—
Whose, are Earth and all her fulness,
Hail and lightning, snow and vapour,
Wind and storm, His word fulfilling,—
Ministers that do His pleasure.
*
*
*
*
4:
Yet what strange ironic contrast
To all sunny recollections
Was the scene, this wintry evening,
On the crest of lofty Glyder !
Howling tempest, whirling vapour,
Piercing frost, and crunching snow-wreath.
Reached at length his eastern shoulder,
Hastened down once more from cloudland ;
Saw the face of Llyn-cwm-ffynnon
Shine like silver far beneath him—
Welcome landmark through the twilight.
Passed the darkened cliff of greenstone,
Reached the doubly ice-grooved platform,
Witness strange, of two-fold glaciers;
Hastened down by roches moutonnees,
’Mid blocs perches by the hundred ;
Passed the spring-fed Llyn-cwm-ffynnon,
Where of late the char have flourished;
Hurried on, well nigh belated,
Scrambled down, in almost darkness,
Gained the road at lone Gorphwysfa,
Pen-y-pass, of late its title ;
Pen-y-“ pass ! ” a mongrel nickname
Cymru should be all ashamed of.
Nothing loth, reached Pen-y-gwryd,
Ever welcome Pen-y-gwryd!
Thus did end an eight hours’ ramble
All alone, across the mountains ;
(No one else wrould face the weather)—
High-away-there ! o’er the Glyders.
WHITE AND PIKE, PRINTERS, BIRMINGHAM.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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A wintry walk among the mountains
Creator
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Biden, H.E. [1832-1907]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "With sincerest apologies to the shade of Hiawatha" [Title page]. "The following lines contain an accurate account of what befell the writer during a ramble on May 18th,1867, over the summit of Glyder-fach and down by Lyn Bochlwyd to LlynIdwal ..." [Author's note].
Publisher
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F.B. Kitto
Date
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1867
Identifier
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G5312
Subject
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Poetry
Nature
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A wintry walk among the mountains), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
Sacerdotalism
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VERSUS
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.
Translated FROM THE ORIGINAL SWISS pamphlets bÿ
EUGENE OSWALD.
t
CHERRY & FLETCHER, 6, WARDROBE PLACÉ,
DOCTORS’ GOMMONS, E.C.
1869.
*
��PREFACE.
It is with the permission of one of the originators of this project,
Karl Biirkli of Zurich, that I take the liberty of laying this matter
before the English public. It is a subject well worthy of attention,
as it has both historical precedence and the advantage of being now
practically in existence in several cantons of Switzerland, and open
to the inspection of the curious, who may desire to investigate more
closely its rejuvenescence, and to those who may doubt the merits of
its real practical working. I therefore, without further comment,
place it before the English public.
W. F. COWELL STEPNEY.
The translator wishes to add that, while fully aware of the im
portance of the matter stated in these pages, and thinking it desirable
that they should become subject for inquiry and discussion, he does
not undertake a joint responsibility for all the views expressed.
E. 0.
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�DIRECT LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE,
VERSUS
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.
The experience of the last twenty years has entirely cured the
working classes of Europe of the idea that Imperial Democracy
and Imperial Socialism, that is, the dictatorship of a single person,
are capable or even willing to do anything for the social education
of the working masses. There have been merely apparent reforms,
dust thrown in the eyes of the people, while in reality the workman
is more than ever a victim of taxation and food for powder. Since
the coup d’etat of Bonaparte, the belief has, with great astuteness,
been spread among the working classes that political or state
reforms had nothing to do with social reforms, and that therefore
the working man should not occupy his attention with politics, but
solely with the improvement of his social position. The ruling
classes know only too well by experience what a great advantage
they derive from political forms favourable to themselves, and that
so long as the working population allows itself to be led without
volition in political matters, and has no direct influence upon legis
lation, it will not devise a form of government favourable to the
interests of labour. Socialism, even of the most radical kind, is a
mere bugbear, without any danger, because the political fulcrum is
wanting to its social lever, wherewith it may lift from off its hinges
the old form of society, with its poverty of the masses and its in
dividual wealth. Social reform is condemned to remain in a state
of theory until the right means are found to put it into practice,
and these means can be no other than, above all, to bring about
a governmental reform of such a nature that the laws shall hence
forth be made by the voice of all the citizens, and no longer accord
ing to the wishes of the privileged few.
French workmen are thoroughly wearied of the so-called Im
perial Democracy of Napoleon, they wish for a social democratic
republic. The workmen of Northern Germany are so satiated with
the imperialism, the cavalier dictatorship of Von Schweitzer, that
�6
they turn aside with disgust from this misleader of the people, and
go over with bag and baggage to the camp of the International
Working Men’s Association, where waves the banner of the right
of self-government, of social democracy, of a Confederate Republic
of Europe, and round which the workmen of Southern Germany,
of Austria, of Italy, and of Spain, begin likewise to rally in ever
increasing numbers.
But how is this socially democratic State to be organized ? This
is the all-important question for the workman. The International
Working Men’s Union should be perfectly clear and united upon
the point as to which kind of republic it prefers, so that in the
event of the breaking out of a revolution the working classes may
everywhere know what to do.
The political movement in Switzerland during the last two
years, chiefly in the canton of Zurich, is perhaps only a symptom,
a prelude to the great and deeply penetrating movement which is
about to agitate European politics. The bourgeois republic, or
Representative Democracy, is on the point of dying out in Switzer
land, for it has been found insufficient to combat the injurious
influences of the Jesuitism, as it were, of the great capital. It has
neither the strength nor the will to solve the social question, and
Pure Democracy now steps forward, by which the people take a
direct part in the legislation, and can therefore transform it in
accordance with their social requirements.
The idea of direct legislation through the people must be largely
spread among the working multitudes of Europe, in order that at
the forthcoming crisis of monarchy it shall pass into flesh and
blood, and shall create on a large scale, throughout the whole of
Europe, political institutions of the same kind as those which
already exist in Switzerland.
Representative government is everywhere the same. The work
men of Paris remember only too well how in the days of June,
1848, those middle-class representatives endeavoured to solve the
social problem with grapeshot; and, quite recently, the miners in
Belgium have found out that their constitutionalists, too, know of
no other means than powder and shot. Nay, even in the repre
sentative democracy of Zurich, there existed for more than twenty
years severe laws against the coalition of workmen, and against
the social and democratic press. So long as the workmen allow
the laws of the State to be manufactured and forced upon them by
those who live by using up the workman, so long will the laws be
unfavourable to the toiling masses, and favourable to the masters
only. When did a monarch ever make laws in the interest of his
people, and against the interest of his dynasty? First comes
himself, his interest, his dynasty, and the welfare of the tools who
support him in working the commonwealth for his own benefit;
�7
and it is only at last, when all these worthies have had their fill,
that the much-squeezed people are thought of at all, and then too
often stones are offered to them instead of bread. There are, in
deed, so-called Christian monarchs, who, like good-natured riders,
stroke or pat the neck of the creature panting under their weight;
-but that the heavily burdened animals, ridden to soreness, would
best be helped if the master and all his train would dismount, is a
thing which never occurs to the one above until the one below
throws him off.
In the same manner an aristocracy can make excellent laws for
themselves, but not for the people. Has the aristocracy of Eng
land, perhaps the cleverest body of the kind in existence, ever done
anything in the interest of the working man?
*
No! if they have
retained their position until now, it is only because they have not
shown over-much obstinacy in strenuously opposing reforms that
had become absolutely necessary. But, again, the legislators of the
representative state, although elected by the people, are not capable
of making good laws for the working classes, but yet are able to
make excellent laws for their own class, the middle class. And
why? Because, as experience teaches us, the majority of every
representative body consists of capitalists and their creatures, and
members of the middle classes, hostile to social progress. And
even as the slaveholder is, by his very nature, incapable of making
laws in the interest of his slaves, so the representative, being a
capitalist, is incapable of ever1 framing laws in the interest of the
workman. Representative democracy, though it be, comparatively
speaking, a far better form of government than a monarchy or an
aristocracy, is therefore not that political form within which the
world of workers can attain its proper place and social questions
can be solved. It might be more so, if working men, and especi
ally the peasantry, were always to send to the national council the
most intelligent of their own class only; but, unfortunately, the
experience of every country shows that this is done only in ex
*Note by the Translator.—Common fairness seems to require some
modification of, or exception to, the negative rule which the form of the
question implies. For instance, every workman living in or near London
enjoys the privilege of proceeding in the morning and evening by rail to and
from his work at a greatly reduced rate. The legal enactment which forces
the railway companies to make this reduction was originated in the House
of Lords. Earl Derby was the mover, and after speeches by Lord Stanley of
Alderly, Ellenborough, Grey, and Shaftesbury, the clause was agreed to by
the Upper House, on April 22, 1864.— Vide Hansard, Vol. 174, pH,488. The
House of Commons, with about a hundred railway directors among its
members, had to adopt it. Nor should individual exertions of many members
of the aristocracy be forgotten, such as Lord Ashley, now Shaftesbury’s
successful efforts in the carrying of the ten hours’ bill. One need not share in
the party views of the actors to recognize such acts.
�8
ceptional cases. As a rule, the people elect only members of the
so-called higher orders, because the pernicious prejudice, an out
come of monarchical periods, leads men to believe that Intellect
alone can produce good laws, and consequently highly educated
people are all that is wanted, while, in reality, Interest is the de
terminative cause in matters of legislation. Add to this, that the
salary of a member of a legislative body, and the travelling expenses
paid to him, are systematically fixed so low that for a member of
the working classes it is even economically impossible to fulfil the
functions of a representative.
The experience of democracy further teaches us that a people
can be far more easily misled when there is a question of persons
(such as elections for national or municipal councils) than where
there is a question of things (for instance, voting on laws); and
this for the simple reason that it is immeasurably more difficult
to probe the heart and character of a person than to go to the
bottom of a thing, that is, the meaning and intention of a law;
because it is far more easy to judge whether a certain law is made
in the interest of the working classes, than whether a councillor
will always speak and vote in the interest of the people.
Thus the touchstone by which true gold is to be distinguished
from false is this. In a true, pure democracy, or popular republic,
the people do not deal with persons only (elections of councillors)
but also, and indeed above all, with things (laws.) In false repre
sentative democracy or a middle-class republic, the people are only
allowed to occupy themselves with persons (election of councillors)
who proceed to make laws, and do so according to their own
pleasure, profit, and prejudice. What the middle-class democrats
want is that they alone are to govern the people, for the benefit of
the few. What the social democrats want is that the people should
govern themselves, for the advantage of all, by taking legislation
into their own hands and attending to it themselves, instead of
allowing others to attend to it for them—that is, they want self
help to the fullest extent, and therefore in the domain of politics
as well as elsewhere.
The history of the world abundantly proves that the law is only
a written expression of the interest of the lawgiver. To express
the matter somewhat prosaically, one may say that the spirit of
the law lies in the stomach of the lawgiver; the quintessence of
laws is determined by the legislator’s money-bag. This is all the
more true when not only an individual, but a whole class is in
question; not the dominion of one man, but the dominion of a
class. Never yet has the misusing class emancipated the misused
one, or spontaneously issued laws favourable to the latter. Only
when the misused class have become masters in the state, and have
taken legislation into their own hands, have the laws been made
�9
in their interest, that is, in the general interest, and then only
could that class develope itself according to its social needs. But
what applies to the third estate, the bourgeoisie, or middle-class,
is only the more sure, when there is a question of the working
class, of the whole people. Like as the chemical germ, the inner
impelling power of a plant requires, in order to prosper, certain
physical peculiarities, that is, external circumstances, such as a
favourable soil and climate, just so do the inner—and, so to speak,
chemical—impulses of society, or social ideas, require, in order to
unfold according to their nature, and to germinate in practical
life, a peculiar physical form of political life, that is, favourable
political circumstances. And these are the social and democratic
laws which never could have been made by princes or clergy (who
already possess Heaven here below) but can be made only by the
working classes, who longingly wish for such a social transforma
tion, an existence, worthy of man, in this world. No saviour will
ever redeem the people; they must redeem themselves. Thence
proceeds the universal stirring of the nations of Europe towards
emancipation. As a plant confined in a dark vault grows towards
an air-hole, to get within reach of sunlight, so the working world
of Europe struggles to escape from the close, dreary, and dull air
of monarchy to the brightness of democracy. When once in a
state of freedom, the people will be sure to grope its way instinct
ively into social redemption, feeling as it does every day its
sufferings, which, however, are giving it the necessary impulse to
make itself acquainted with the cause of the evil, and its remedy.
In a real democracy—wherein direct legislation gives into its
hands the instrument of perpetual motion, and the path for constant
peaceful revolution lies open before it—the people will create new
forms and laws, not according to preconceived social theories, but
according to real wants, as they make themselves practically felt,
and it will make its will prevail, as in Switzerland, by a stroke of the
pen, and no longer by firearms and bloody revolutions, as in
despotic states.
The fear which has been expressed lest the ideal conquests of
mankind should, in the social-democratic State, be less attended to
and less promoted than in monarchical or representative forms of
the commonwealth, is an idle one; for history proves that the
freer a nation is the more willing it is to bring sacrifices to the
cause of human culture, because it perceives that it is not the
spirit-crushing, sterile faith, but only the spirit-raising, fertile
science that can redeem the world. Nay, direct legislation by the
people is of all political forms the one which is most favourable to
the advancement of the education of the people, for every one has
an interest in his fellow man, who has co-operated in the making
of the laws, giving his vote with conscious knowledge ; and above
�10
all the so-called well-educated folks—to whom direct legislation by
the people appears in the fancied shape of a ruin of all culture, of
a modern irruption of barbarians—will have the greatest interest
in the matter, and will readily lend a hand to giving the masses
their schooling gratuitously, and, moreover, of as good a kind as
possible, and so making the higher institutions of learning
accessible to every one that is capable. Besides, direct legislation
is in itself a mighty engine of culture, seeing that the people are
impelled, by their most immediate interests, to get information,
lest they be, after all, bamboozled and misused by the men of socalled higher culture—which really is mis-culture—and their
lawyer-like subtleties. Strangely enough these very men—the socalled well educated, who think direct legislation incapable of
fostering the ideal wealth of mankind, and who, therefore, point at
it as a retrogression—these very men, we say, cannot sufficiently
admire the ancient Greeks as the principal supporters of civiliza
tion in antiquity, and seem not to recollect that those who had
made the greatest strides among the Greeks were the Athenians,
who had direct legislation through the people, that is, through the
free citizens, and that it was just this political form which contri
buted most essentially to the development of the Attic spirit; for
with the suppression of this political form, with the dominion of
strangers, the great minds disappeared.
*
The ancient Germans,
too, had direct legislation by the people in an organization similar
to that which has been preserved through the course of many
centuries in the “ Lands-gememden ” of the Forest cantons. The
Germans did homage to the political principle that every man is to
be a legislator, a military defender of the country, and a judge.
Is it not strange that the Romans, so well versed in legislation,
in war, and in the administration of justice, could put all the
nations of the old world under the yoke except just this nation of
Germans, though politically so disunited? And why? For this
reason—that a popular legislation, a popular army, and a popular
administration of justice had become flesh and blood in them, and
had produced men, against whose unalloyed strength the omni
potence of Rome was shattered. Unfortunately in the course of
time those Germans became silly enough to prefer the Roman
Trinity (God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) to the German
Trinity (legislator, soldier, and judge in the one person); and
they will be punished with scorpions by priests and Cæsars until
they re-establish the ancient Germanic institutions : legislation
by the people, the army of the people, and the administration of
* Half suppressed sigh by the Translator.—The Athenians gave no vote
to the immense majority of their working men, who were slaves; and it was
democracy that killed Socrates, whom the aristocrats had left in peace.
�11
justice by the people. The ancient democracy which, by monarchi
cal senselessness and ecclesiastical belief, has been torn away from
the people, must, by sense and science, be re-conquered and further
developed in the spirit of our age. Every one must again become
a legislator, soldier, and judge. He must periodically and in his
own person exercise the rights and practise the duties appertain
ing to those dignities. Here no division of labour, no substitution
of another person, is possible, if we would not fall into servitude.
If the people renounces the right to decide in the last resort on
laws, if it hands over this duty to one man or to a few men, then
these will soon arrogate to themselves the privilege of making the
laws only for themselves and against the general good. If the
people abandons the defence of its rights and its country to a
number of individuals, specially trained and set apart for this pur
pose, it creates a standing army—the most terrible tool in the
hands of the governors, which is used against its right and its
freedom whenever the civilian sheep become restive under the
monarchical shears. If the people leaves the right and the duty
to pronounce guilty or not guilty to permanent officials in the
place of the judge, it runs the risk of a bureaucracy and lawyerdem
springing up and growing, which judges us according to Heaven
knows what kind of outlandish—say Roman—law, but surely not
according to that law which has its basis in the convictions of the
people as to what is right.
Little Switzerland, penned in between mighty monarchies whose
population is a hundred times larger, has, notwithstanding all per
nicious monarchical influences, notwithstanding the miasma of the
theory of right divine, still preserved to herself, during centuries,
the old Teutonic health, the ever true principles of those Germans,
before whom Rome, the enslaver of nations, trembled; at least she
has preserved them in part, and especially with respect to the
arming of the people. Because the Swiss, a recognized defender
of his country, always had arms in his home—that is, had the
armed right of voting; because the Swiss never would hear of a
standing army; therefore has his republic been preserved; therefore
could the popular spirit, whenever it was aroused, easily make a
path for itself between intervening obstacles.
At present the plan of direct legislation by the people makes
way for itself with all that weight which a modern idea can re
ceive by the historical recollection of things as they were in
Germanic antiquity and in the heroic ages of the old Confederacy,
when the people were asked, and their sanction or rejection re
quired, even in the larger cantons, with respect to such important
questions as the making of peace and war, the establishment of
the religious reformation, the imposition of taxes and the like.
Already this direct legislation has legal existence in the larger
�12
cantons of the German portion of Switzerland, in Berne, Thurgovia,
the Grisons, but above all in Zurich, in which latter canton it is
laid down in the constitution in the most complete and purest
form. Already the movement has begun, which strives to extend
even to federal legislation this direct legislation by the people, and
to do this in such a form as will admit of its exercise by the people
of even the largest states.
Already the French Constitution of 1793, which bears in its
preamble the ever memorable Declaration of the Rights of Man,
laid down the principle of direct legislation by the people, though
in a form less developed than the one in which we have it before us
now-a-days. It does so in the form of the so-called veto, a certain
number of voters having to raise an objection, previous to a general
vote being taken with respect to a proposed law. Article 53 of
the French Constitution of 1793 says:—
“The legislative body proposes laws” {propose des lois.)
Art. 58. The bill is published and sent to all the municipalities
{communes) of the republic, under the title of proposed law {loi
proposée.')
Art. 59. If, forty days having elapsed from sending out the
bill, no objections have been offered, in the half of the depart
ments plus one, by one tenth of the primary assemblies regularly
convoked, the bill has been accepted, and becomes law.
Art. 60. If such objections have been raised, the legislative
body has to convoke the primary assemblies (for the purpose of
voting on the acceptance or the rejection of the law.)
Unfortunately, this Constitution could never be practically
worked, the weight of the difficulties with which the young Re
public had to struggle, both at home and abroad, not permitting
a peaceful development. But, as in general in the life of nations
a good idea never gets lost, and no step towards improvement is
made quite in vain, these ideas of 1793 slumbered on in the depths
of the heart of the French people. And when the second Republic
arose out of the revolution of February, 1848, and the social
democrat Rittingh arisen, of Cologne, in the years 1850 and 1851,
scattered among the people the idea of Direct Legislation by the
People, an idea whose further development and realisation he has
made the aim of his life, these thoughts at once kindled, and a
mighty movement was produced in men’s minds against the re
presentative state; a movement which could not have failed to
bear good fruit, had not the beautiful blossom been nipped in the
bud by the blasting coup d'état of Bonaparte, the so-called saviour
of society. For it is the fate of Cæsarism that the grass withers
wherever its foot falls. Out of that desert of reaction the seed
was wafted to the only remaining republican oasis, the soil of
Switzerland, where in the healthy life of the people it has gradu
�13
ally struck deep roots. Now that Cajsarism is decaying, and a
new breath of spring is pervading the nations, the seed that has
been sown is shooting up everywhere from the soil, fresh and
healthy, like a real crop of thought, and the idea of Direct Legis
lation by the People, germinating so long, takes practical shape in
the form of a political institution.
Of course direct legislation cannot be exercised in larger com
monwealths in the same mode in which it was once practised in the
public square at Athens, in the oak forests of ancient Germany,
and is still carried out in those cantons of Switzerland which
possess the “landsgemeinde.” The essence, that is, the participa
tion in the making of the laws, must continue, only,,the form in
which the participation takes place must disappear, and give way
to quite a different one, because the circumstances have become
different, have become enlarged, and will no longer allow the whole
people to assemble in one spot for the purpose of consultation.
Our century, however, with its magnificent inventions, has, among
other things, prepared and rendered possible democracy on a large
scale, by nearly annihilating distance, so that an extensive body of
people are so connected by steam and telegraph as to allow the
existence and movement of any single limb to be at once felt
everywhere, and to be received into the consciousness of all the
members. Therefore the old form, though venerable on account
of its antiquity, must be given up. ■
The show of hands of the “ landsgemeinde,” that is, open voting,
must now, when every one can write, be replaced by secret voting,
(the ballot,) in the municipalities, by means of electoral urns,
which, on the day appointed for voting, stand open for every
citizen to throw in his voting paper at such time as may be con
venient to him. By this plan the influence of capital, with its
improper suggestions by employers, whereby open voting is but too
frequently impaired, is completely put an end to. The workman,
under a system of secret voting, will be able to give a much freeer
expression to his wishes than if he is subject to intimidation, which
is too frequently the case with a system of open voting, where he
has often to pay by social disadvantages (loss of work, &c.) for the
free utterance of his political convictions.
The consultatibn in the “landsgemeinde” will now, when every
one can read, be replaced by printed explanations, to be given with
the bills, by discussion in the newspapers, and by free meetings
whenever the importance of the proposed laws call for such de
liberation.
The faculty of bringing a motion before the “landsgemeinde”
in the old cantons, will, in more extensive commonwealths, be
provided for by a differently organized popular initiative (right of
the people to make proposals.) It is proposed, with this aim, that
�14
any fraction of the people, say one tenth or one twentieth, as the
Constitution may determine, should be able, by a committee to be
elected for the purpose, to formulate its desire in the shape of a
bill, and ultimately to bring it before the whole people for decision
by popular vote.
Direct legislation by the people consists then in two essential
elements: the one of impulse and initiative, the other of deter
mination and decision. Whence we obtain :—
1. The Right of the people to propose laws; also to be called
Popular Initiative.
2. The popular vote on the laws, also called Referendum.
Between these two elements the functions of a regular organic
body are exercised by the Council, which is, indeed, no longer to
be a legislative body, but merely a law-proposing one, that is,
simply, a giver of counsel, which counsel the people may adopt or
not.
The Council is thus exposed to a cross fire which is calculated
to keep it from going to sleep. If the Council propose bad laws
(if they are guilty of sins of commission) these laws will be re
jected by the popular vote, or Referendum. If the Council do not
wish to propose good laws (if they are guilty of sins of omission)
the Popular Initiative steps in, making its own proposals.
Taking as an instance the canton of Zurich, the Popular Initiative
can manifest itself in two ways:—
1. If the thirteenth part of the people—in Zurich 5,000 initiants
out of 65,000 possessors of votes—make a proposal, it must be
submitted to the vote of the whole people.
2. If a single individual makes a proposal which is approved of
by one third of the Council, such proposal must likewise be voted
upon by the people.
Thus there are, in the canton of Zurich, three parties equally
entitled to bring proposals before the people for its vote, viz.:—
1. Five thousand initiants.
2. Any individual gaining the assent of the Council of the
canton.
3. The cantonal Council itself (consisting of about 220 members.)
Only the Council is the ordinary organ; the two others are
extraordinary organs, whose activity begins only when the ordinary
one proves inert.
In order to render this matter still more plain, we here insert
those articles of the Constitution of Zurich which deal with the
Popular Initiative and the Referendum. The Constitution begins
with these words :—
“ The people of the canton of Zurich give themselves, in virtue
�15
of their sovereign right to determine their own destinies, the
following constitution;” and in Chapter iii., Legislation and Re
presentation of the People, we read as follows:—
“Art. 28.
“ The people, with the co-operation of the Cantonal Council,
exercise the powers of legislation.
“ A.—Right of the people to make proposals.
“ Art. 29.
“ The right of making proposals which those entitled to vote
possess (Initiative) comprises the demand of the passing, repeal, or
alteration of a law, or of any such resolution as is not, by the
terms of the Constitution, expressly reserved to the competency of
the Cantonal Council. Demands of this kind may be made either
in the form of simply calling attention to the matter in question,
or by offering the details of a bill; and in either case motives are
to be adduced for the alteration proposed.
“ If a single individual or a constituted authority makes such
a demand, and it is supported by one third of the members of
the Cantonal Council, the question must be laid before the
people for decision. The right of personally advocating in the
Cantonal Council the alteration proposed is granted to the indi
vidual having made the demand, or to the deputy of the constituted
authority moving in the matter, provided that twenty-five members
of the Cantonal Council support the request of this personal
advocacy of the motion.
“ If five thousand persons, having the right to vote, make a de
mand of the kind aforesaid; or if a number of municipal meetings,
in which at least five thousand persons entitled to vote have pro
nounced in favour of such a demand, the decision of the people is
to be equally taken, unless the Cantonal Council have previously
responded to the demand. Any demand of this kind, having been
handed in early enough, the matter is to be placed before the
people for their decision, at the latest, at the second subsequent
regular taking of votes.
11 The demand or bill has in every case to be submitted, before
the vote, to the Cantonal Council, for them to give an opinion in
the form of a resolution.
“ In any case in which a bill proceeding from popular initiative
is submitted to the vote, the Cantonal Council, besides giving its
opinion, may place before the people a modified bill for decision
between the two.
�16
“ B.—Popular Vote.
“Art. 30.
“Twice every year, in spring and in autumn, the vote of the
people takes place on the legislatory acts of the Cantonal Council
(Referendum). In urgent cases the Council can order an extra
ordinary taking of votes.
“ There are to be submitted to the popular vote:
“ 1. All alterations of the constitution, laws, and concordats.
“ 2. Those resolutions of the Cantonal Council which that
Council is not competent to pass definitely (vide Art. 31).
“3. Any resolutions which the Council may wish to put to the
popular vote.
“ The Cantonal Council is entitled on submitting a law of reso
lution, to order-—beside the Vote on the totality of the proposal—•
exceptionally a vote on single points of it.
“ The vote takes place by means of the ballot boxes in the
municipalities. Participation in it is a citizen’s duty, binding on all.
“ The vote can only be by affirmation or negation.
“The absolute majority of affirming or negativing votes is
*
decisive.
“ The Cantonal Council is not entitled to give provisional validity
to any laws or resolutions requiring the popular vote, previous to
such vote being taken.
“ All proposals to be submitted to the popular vote are to be
published and handed to the voters at least thirty days before the
taking of the vote.
“ C.—Cantonal Council.
“Art. 31.
“ The competency of the Cantonal Council extends to
. “1. The discussion and resolution of all questions which are
to be submitted to the popular vote.
“2..........................
“3..........................
“4. The control of the entire administration of the country, and
of the action of the courts of law.
“ 5. The final decision on new expenses, occurring but once and
for a definite purpose, such expenses not to go beyond 250,000
francs; as well as on annually recurring expenses less than the
amount of 20,000 francs.
* That is, one-half of all the votes given, plus one, in contradistinction to
a vote by a two-thirds’ majority; or to a majority which, as being com
pared with the absolute majority, is only the largest of several minorities,-“
Translator.
�17
“ 6. The fixing of the annual estimates of ways ancl means, and
of expenses, in accordance with existing laws and resolutions. . .
“ 7. The audit of public accounts..................... ”
We should not like to affirm that the above articles have in
every case hit the mark exactly, and that they could be considered
as an infallible scheme, so to speak. Variety of individual views
will here and there find shortcomings. Yet these articles, as a
first serious attempt at realizing the idea, deserve in so far every
attention, as they offer a new form of commonwealth—a form pro
ceeding from the discussions and votes of an entire people, a form
wherein the community may grow and unfold itself, without let or
hindrance, according to its progressive wants.
We are firmly convinced that direct legislation by the people,
through the institutions of the popular initiative and the popular
vote on laws, can and must be introduced into the largest states ;
and that without these political institutions the social questions
cannot be solved.
The section of Zurich therefore think themselves not only justi
fied in bringing the idea of direct legislation through the people
before the forum of the Industrial Working Men’s Association,
but they consider themselves even under an obligation to do so,
convinced as they are that this idea—like the ever memorable
Declaration of the Rights of Men—will make its way round the orb
of the earth, as being the most effective means of realizing those
social rights.
The section therefore move the following resolution :—
“ The Congress of the International Workmen’s League at
Basle, considering that the law is the written expression of the in
terest of the legislator; that, in legislating, the interest of the
community is naturally to be decisive ; that experience shows
representative bodies to represent capital rather than labour, and
laws, therefore, to be made as a rule at the expense of the working
multitudes and in favour of capital ; that only by direct participa
tion in legislation that politico-social consciousness, which is the
first condition for solving the social questions, can efficiently pene
trate the people ; resolves :
il That it be the chief aim of the working classes to strive
towards the realization of the social and democratic republic, in
which legislation is exercised directly through the people.”
Everything for the people, and everything through the people !
By order of the section of Zurich,
The Reporter,
Zurich, August, 1869.
KARL BÜRKLI.
B
�18
THE CONSTITUTIONAL COMMISSION TO THE
ZURICH PEOPLE.
Fellow Citizens:—Four numerously attended popular meetings,
followed by a petition of 28,000 citizens, having, towards the
close of the year 1867, demanded the revision of the Constitution,
the same was decided upon on the twenty-sixth of January, 1868,
by the people of the canton of Zurich, by the great majority of
50,786 votes; and, at the same time, by 47,864 votes, the subject
was placed in the hands of a Constitutional Commission. After
long and thorough consultations, such as were demanded by the
great importance of the task, we now herewith lay before you the
result of our labours for acceptance or rejection. As our trans
actions from the beginning were public ; and, as they from time to
time were accompanied and supported by the active collaboration
of circles more or less extended, we can waive for the present
an explanation of particulars, and confine ourselves to giving pro
minence to the most essential points in which the project differs
from existing institutions.
Whilst, with the exception of decisions concerning constitutional
changes, the people have hitherto exercised their right of voting,
and of approbation or rejection, only upon questions of law, hence
forth all financial transactions, of more than ordinary importance,
shall appertain to the people; and, moreover, the right is to be
accorded to each citizen to introduce propositions for laws and
decrees, which, if they are supported by five thousand valid votes,
or, on the other hand, by a third of the members of the Council
of the canton, must be submitted to the decision of the people. At
the same time, the Executive Council is to proceed from the direct
choice of the people, to whom also a more direct influence is to be
conceded in church and school, by the abolition of all life appoint
ments, with all due respect to the vested rights of the actual oc
cupiers of the same.
This decided step, which leads from a representative state to a
comprehensive rule of the people, is advocated by us in the con
fidence of the matured intelligence of the people, and of the pre
dominance of the powers for good within it. And, for the same
reason, we do not hesitate to add here a series of propositions
which are demanded by the progressive ideas of our age, concern
ing humanity and human rights, viz., abolition of capital punish
ment, and of the penalty of chains, abrogation of imprisonment for
�19
debt, and of the degrading consequences of unmerited insolvency,
obligation of the State to make adequate compensation to those
innocently condemned and those illegally arrested, the lessening of
the term of minority, so as to enable persons to embark, at an
earlier age, in pecuniary transactions, extension and security of
the right of settlement, and facilitation of the right of civil
marriage.
Starting from the conviction that only by a more elevated
culture those forces can be awakened and maintained which a
people needs in order to govern itself, and to deveiope its ex
ternal and internal well-being, we have in the project laid down
conditions which aim at a seasonable extension of our common
school-system, conditions whose execution is reserved to the law,
and thus again to the examination and decision of the people.
A series of other articles of our project repose upon the endea
vour by a more just division of public burdens, according to the
measure of the actual capacity of bearing taxation, by an increase
in the means of communication, by protection to health, and by
support to be given towards the independence of the workman, to
exalt the productive powers of the country, and thereby the material
welfare of its citizens. The indirect salt tax is to be materially
lessened, and compulsory instruction in the common schools gra
tuitously imparted. The first military equipment of militia men to
be undertaken by the State. The State is to contribute in a more
comprehensive manner, and with an enhanced regard to the in
dividual wants of the municipalities, to the burdens of the poor and
to the expenses of road-making.
On the other hand, those prin
ciples of taxation of income from labour, which have been current
since the political regeneration, dating from the year 1830, are
henceforth to be extended, within equitable and suitable limits,
to incomes derived from property; and thereby, as well as by the
introduction of a moderate “ active-citizen ” tax, and a tax upon
inheritance, but particularly by a more correct assessment, which
justice demands with increasing urgency, means for the remission
of burdens and for the liquidation of the new expenditure of the
State may be gained.
A Cantonal Bank, long desired by the people, and long promised
by the leaders of former political movements, will be conducive to
the increase and consolidation of credit, whilst changes in the
manner of election and payment of notaries, in conjunction with a
contemplated re-organization of the notary system, are calculated
to facilitate and surround with suitable guarantees the transfer of
landed property.
As to the municipal government, the project aims at securing
the progress already attained by the law of the year 1866, and
with due consideration of existing relationships and modes of proB 2
�20
ceeding, handed down from of old, to open the door for further
development.
As to the administration of justice, the Constitution limits
itself—as the filling up of the outlines appears to be better left to
special laws—to the exposition of a few general propositions,
amongst which we particularly call attention to the demand that
regulations be made for a more speedy and cheap method of deal
ing with cases in both civil and criminal proceedings in courts of
law, with a view to the greatest possible security of justice being done.
Dear fellow-citizens:—We lay before you the constitutional
project as an entirety, to be decided upon by a simple vote, Yes or
No! because, by the Decree of the People, of the 26th January,
1868 we received an injunction for a total revision, and for that
reason must wish that a decision be come to upon our work as a
whole ; and further, because the taking of a vote upon each article
or upon each chapter would be connected with a chain of difficulties,
which might postpone ad infinitum the very desirable final decision ;
and again, because even if voting by portions were to take place,
yet another vote of the people would still be required to give to
the Constitution validity in its entirety.
We know, indeed, full well, that various shortcomings may be
found in the project, and that it cannot satisfy all expectations;
but we believe ourselves entitled to express the conviction that
within it are laid down the conditions for a decided progress,
such as our people themselves have demanded.
. It is for you, therefore, to decide whether our work responds to
the spirit and the will of the great popular movement, which gave
rise to it, and whether it subserves the welfare of the country.
May each one, therefore, on stepping forward to perform the
grave act of voting, as a good citizen of the republic, raise himself
above his individual interests, and dwrell on that only which tends
to the advantage of the community. And, if it should please the
people of Zurich to accept the proposed Constitution, may the
result be that each citizen, finding himself invested with more
extended rights than heretofore, shall also become conscious of
higher duties to be performed.
If our people in good faith take upon themselves these duties
and hold fast to them, then, we confidently hope, will the principle
of the rule of the people be approved and develope itself, and tend
to the furtherance of the honour, the strength, and the welfare of
our country.
In the name of the Constitutional Council,
Dr. T. SULZER, President.
L. FORRER, First Secretary.
Zurich, March 31st, I860.
�21
CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE CANTON
OF ZURICH.
The people of the canton of Zurich give themselves, in virtue of
their sovereign right to determine their own destinies, the follow
ing constitution:—
I.—Political Principles.
Art. 1.
The political power resides in the totality of the people. It is
exercised directly by the “ active ” citizens, and indirectly by the
constituted authorities and public functionaries.
Art. 2.
All citizens are equal before the law, and enjoy the same politi
cal rights, unless in cases where this constitution itself institutes
an exception.
Art. 3.
The utterance of opinion by speech and writing, the right of
association and meeting, are guaranteed. The exercise of these
rights suffers no other limitations but those which may flow from
common rights.
In actions of libel the proof of the truth of the allegation is
allowed. If it be shown that the statements complained against as
libellous are true, and have been published or retailed with honest
motives and an honest aim, the accused is to be found not guilty.
Art. 4.
The State protects honestly acquired private rights. Expropria
tion is allowable if the public weal demands it. For such forced
cessions a just compensation is granted. Disputes concerning the
amount of compensation are judged by the courts of law.
Art. 5.
The criminal law is to be modelled according to humane prin
ciples. Capital punishment and the penalty of bearing chains are
inadmissible.
The person accused of a crime or misdemeanour, as well as the
injured party, are to be admitted to all proceedings taking place
before the judge of instruction (magistrate), with the faculty of
appointing counsel and addressing any questions to the witnesses
which may serve to clear up the subject.
�22
Art. 7.
Personal freedom is guaranteed. No one may be arrested, ex
cept in the cases foreseen by the law, and with the forms prescribed
by the law.
To such as may have been illegally arrested the State has to
make proper compensation or satisfaction.
No means of forcing a confession are allowed.
Imprisonment for debt is inadmissible.
Art. 8.
The sanctity of the private dwelling is guaranteed.
A domiciliary visit can only take place either by consent of the
resident, or by authorization through a competent functionary,
who is exactly to specify the aim and the extent of this measure.
Exceptions of this rule are permitted if there should be danger in
delay.
Art. 9.
In cases of judicial restitution of persons innocently condemned
proper satisfaction is to be made by the state.
Art. 10.
Every functionary is, according to the terms of the law, re
sponsible as well to the State and the municipalities as to private
persons for acts done in his official capacity.
Art. 11.
The term of office of the Cantonal Council, and of all adminis
trative authorities and functionaries, is fixed at three years ; that
of judicial authorities and notaries at six years.
All constituted authorities are to be renewed in their totality.
In no administrative or judicial body may there sit at the same
time father and son, father-in-law and son-in-law, two brothers,
two brothers-in-law, or the father of a husband and wife.
Art. 12.
Any functionary who is removed from his place within his term
of office, and without fault on his side, has a claim for full com
pensation ; and if such removal takes place in consequence of an
alteration in the constitution or laws, for equitable compensation.
Art. 13.
All elections by the people of cantonal, county, and district
officers are made by means of the ballot box. The municipalities
are likewise at liberty to employ this mode of election.
�23
Art. 14.
The citizens of the canton or of Switzerland may, on fulfilling
the legal conditions, settle in any municipality of the canton, and
acquire the right of local citizenship. Those having settled in any
locality may not be subjected to other or higher local'taxes than
the local citizens (liverymen), with the sole exception of a mode
rate fee for the permission of settlement. A right (in the munici
palities) to refuse or withdraw the right of settlement, where the
local documents have been handed in, may, on principle, only be
derived from the proof of a manner of life in the person claiming
or having obtained settlement dangerous to public safety or
morality.
Art. 15.
Marriage has equal civic validity whether it be concluded by
the civic ceremony or by the ecclesiastical one.
The functions in this respect of the civil officers as well as of
the clergy of the birthplace and domicile of the bride and bride
groom are gratuitous.
Art. 16.
The faculty of entering on valid pecuniary transactions, the
right of voting, and the capacity of being elected for all offices,
begin simultaneously with the close of the twentieth year of life.
Art. 17.
Swiss citizens, having settled in the canton, are the equals of
the citizens of the canton in the exercise of all political rights.
Art. 18.
Suspension of the right of active citizenship, and of the capacity
of being elected, takes place—
1. With the loss of the faculty of entering on valid commercial
*
transactions.
2. On account of degrading crimes or misdemeanours, by judg
ment pronounced by a court of law.
3. In consequence of bankruptcy, whether the proceedings have
been carried to an end, or the bankruptcy has been annulled again,
but only in case of fault attaching to the bankrupt, and by a judi
cial decision. The suspension to continue from one year to ten.
4. On account of continued receipt of public alms, and only
whilst such period of assistance lasts.
* By declaration of lunacy, &c.
�24
II.—Economical Principles.
Art. 19.
All owing the duty of paying taxes have to contribute to the
burdens of administering the state and the municipalities in the
measure of the resources at their command.
The income tax and the property tax are to be ordered by classes,
according to the principle of a moderate and just progression.
Small fortunes of persons incapable of work, as well as of every
income that amount which is absolutely required for existence, are
free of tax.
The progressive ratio is not to surpass, as to income tax, the
fifth part of the simple ratio; and, as to property tax, the double
of the simple ratio.
As to municipal taxation (rates), a progressive tax on property
does not take place, but only a proportional one can be claimed.
The duty of contributing to rates for the expenses of the munici
pality is to be regulated by the state.
The right of voting implies the duty of making a moderate con
tribution to the public burdens, to be distributed equally on all.
The State raises a tax on inheritance, to be progressive accord
ing to the distance of the degree of relationship of inheritors, and
according to the amount of the sum inherited. The law fixes
those degrees of relationship and those minimum sums which are
to be exempted from this tax.
Legislation will make those regulations which may appear appro
priate to an exact ascertaining of the power of bearing taxation.
Tax privileges in favour of single private individuals or indus
trial companies are inadmissible.
No new taxes on the consumption of indispensable articles of
food can be introduced. The tax on salt is at once to be diminished.
Art. 20.
Cantonal and county officers, as well as notaries, receive, as far
as possible, fixed appointments in the proportion to the amount of
business to be transacted by them. Any fees and fines are, as a
rule, to go to the cantonal treasury.
Art. 21.
The exercise of every profession in art and science, commerce,
and industry, is free, providing however such legal and police
regulation as the common interest may require.
Art. 22.
The care of the poor belongs to the Municipalities. The State
affords appropriate contributions towards rendering the burden of
providing for the poor more easy to those localities which are in
�25
need of it. The State supports the efforts of municipalities and
societies towards the decrease of poverty, especially towards the
education of poor children, improvement in the care of the sick,
and reformation of neglected persons.
Art. 23.
The State furthers and facilitates the development of co-operation
resting on self-help. It institutes by legislation such conditions
as may be necessary for the protection of workmen.
Art. 24.
The State, with a view to the increase of a general system of
credit, establishes, as soon as possible, a credit bank.
Art. 25.
The highways, roads, and streets are to be classified according
to the importance of the traffic carried on in each.
The burden of making them and keeping them in repair falls to
the State and to the political communes (or municipalities).
*
The assistance of the State extends to all classes of road, except
ing bye-streets and lanes.
Art. 26.
The railways, which, on account of their importance in the
economy of the nation, enjoy extraordinary privileges granted by
the State, are to be administered under its control, so as to fulfil
their destined purpose.
Those portions of the territory of the canton which, in regard to
population and traffic, are on the same line with such as have by
means of State help been endowed with railways, have likewise a
claim to assistance from the State.
Art. 27.
The State undertakes the first military outfit of militia-men. As
to the replacement- of articles of military furniture which have been
used up or lost a law will fix details.
III.—Legislation and Representation of the People.
Art. 28.
The people, with the co-operation of the Cantonal Council,
exercise the powers of legislation.
A.—Right of the people to make proposals.
Art. 29.
The right of making proposals which those entitled to vote
Query : In what proportion?—Translator. .
�26
possess (Initiative) comprises the demand of the passing, repeal, or
alteration of a law, or of any such resolution as is not, by the
terms of the Constitution, expressly reserved to the competency of
the Cantonal Council. Demands of this kind may be made either
in the form of simply calling attention to the matter in question,
or by offering the details of a bill; and in either case motives are
to be adduced for the alteration proposed.
If a single individual or a constituted authority makes such
a demand, and it is supported by one third of the members of
the Cantonal Council, the question must be laid before the
people for decision. The right of personally advocating in the
Cantonal Council the alteration proposed is granted to the indi
vidual having made the demand, or to the deputy of the constituted
authority moving in the matter, provided that twenty-five members
of the Cantonal Council support the request of this personal
advocacy of the motion.
If five thousand persons, having the right to vote, make a de
mand of the kind aforesaid; or if a number of municipal meetings,
in which at least five thousand persons entitled to vote have pro
nounced in favour of such a demand, the decision of the people is
to be equally taken, unless the Cantonal Council have previously
responded to the demand. Any demand of this kind, having been
handed in early enough, the matter is to be placed before the
people for their decision, at the latest, at the second subsequent
regular taking of votes.
The demand or bill has in every case to be submitted, before
the vote, to the Cantonal Council, for them to give an opinion in
the form of a resolution.
In any case in which a bill proceeding from popular initiative
is submitted to the vote, the Cantonal Council, besides giving its
opinion, may place before the people a modified bill for decision
between the two.
B.—Popular Vote.
Art. 30.
Twice every year, in spring and in autumn, the vote of the
people takes place on the legislatory acts of the Cantonal Council
(Referendum). In urgent cases the Council can order an extra
ordinary taking of votes.
There are to be submitted to the popular vote:
1. All alterations of the constitution, laws, and concordats.
2. Those resolutions of the Cantonal Council which that
Council is not competent to pass definitely (vide Art. 31).
3. Any resolutions which the Council may wish to put to the
popular vote.
The Cantonal Council is entitled on submitting a law or reso
�27
lution, to order—beside the vote on the totality of the propoals—
exceptionally a vote on single points of it.
The vote takes place by means of the ballot boxes in the
municipalities. Participation in it is a citizen’s duty, binding on all.
The vote can only be by affirmation or negation.
The absolute majority of affirming or negativing votes is
*
decisive.
The Cantonal Council is not entitled to give provisional validity
to any laws or resolutions requiring the popular vote, previous to
such vote being taken.
All proposals to be submitted to the popular vote are to be
published and handed to the voters at least thirty days before the
taking of the vote.
C.—Cantonal Conncil.
Art. 31.
The competency of the Cantonal Council extends to :—
1. The discussion and resolution of all questions which are
to be submitted to the popular vote.
2. The request that the Federal Council be convoked (vide Art.
75, § 2, of the Federal Constitution).
3. The disposal of the military forces of the canton, as far as
they are not required by the Confederacy.
4. The control of the entire administration of the country, and
of the action of the courts of law, as well as the decision in any
conflicts between the executive and judicial powers. For the pur
pose of impeaching members of the Government Council and of the
Supreme Law Court the Cantonal Council may appoint a special
procurator (a public prosecutor).
5. The final decision on new expenses, occurring but once and
for a definite purpose, such expenses not to exceed 250,000 francs;
as well as on annually recurring expenses up to the amount of
20,000 francs.
6. The fixing of the annual estimates of ways and means, and of
expenses in accordance with existing laws and resolutions, reserving
however the above restrictions under No. 5; and the granting at
the same time of the amount of taxes required.
7. The audit of the public accounts, and of the accounts of
separate funds, the care for undiminished preservation of the public
domains, and for appropriate . (f) . and employment of the
income from them.
* That is, one-half of all the votes given, plus one, in contradistinction to
a vote by a two-thirds’ majority; or to a majority which, as being com
pared with the absolute majority, is only the largest of several minorities.—
Translator.
f Unintelligible misprint in the original.—Translator.
�28
8. The exercise of the right of mercy.
9. The order of such elections as are by legislation placed within
its competency.
10. The election of its officers.
Art. 32.
The Cantonal Council is elected in electoral districts whose num
ber and extent the law orders, in such wise that each district re
ceives at least two members.
The number of 1,200 souls gives a district a claim for the election of a member of the Cantonal Council; a fraction of above 600
souls is reckoned as a full number. As' to fixing the number of
the populations the Confederate census is decisive.
In electing a Cantonal Councillor not more than three successive
electoral acts are to take place; in the first two, absolute majority
decides, in the third, relative majority.
*
Art. 33.
The members of the Government Council cannot be members of
the Cantonal Council; yet in it they have a consulting voice, and
the right of making motions and presenting reports.
If any members of the Supreme Law Court are elected as mem
bers of the Cantonal Council they have a merely consulting voice
on the presentation of the reports from their court.
The Cantonal Council can call into its meetings experts with
consulting voice.
Art. 34.
The meetings of the Cantonal Council take place at Zurich, and
are, as a rule, public. Its members receive during the session a
moderate daily pay, and once in the session an appropriate com
pensation for travelling.
D-—Cantonal Foief and Election of Representatives of the Canton.
Art. 35.
The result of the popular vote in the canton, with reference to
the acceptance or non-acceptance of any alteration in the Federal
* Vide note to page 27. This is the mode of proceeding :—If the result
of the election shows a candidate not to have a number of votes equal to
one-half of the votes given, plus one, then the election is null, and a new one
has to take place, which will be decided on the same principle. If its appli
cation has twice failed, then, in a third election, a relative minority is, by
force of circumstances, considered sufficient; that is, the person having the
highest number of votes is considered elected, though that number may be
below the half of the number of voters — Translator.
f In the Assembly of the Swiss Confederation.—Translator.
'
�29
Constitution (Art. 114 of the latter) is at the same time to be con
sidered as the cantonal vote. The right of proposal (initiative)
granted by Art. 81 of the Federal Constitution to the ' different
cantons, can be exercised as well by the Cantonal Council as by the
mode of a decision of the people.
Art. 36.
The two members of the Swiss Cantonal Council are elected by
*
the whole electoral body of the canton, forming for this purpose
one electoral district, at the same time with the members of the
National Council,! and for three years.
IV.—Executive Power and Administration.
A.—Government Council.
Art. 37.
The executive and administrative authority of the canton, the
Council of Government, consists of seven members, who are elected
by the people, the whole canton being formed into one electoral
district^ at the same time with the Cantonal Council.
Art. 38.
The Government Council elect their President and VicePresident for a term of one year.
Art. 39.
The office of a member of the Government Council is incom
patible with any other appointment bearing a fixed salary. In
order to fill the office of a director or member of an administrative
council of a joint-stock company a member of the Government
Council requires the permission of the Cantonal Council.
Not more than two of the members of the Government Council
may.belong to either of the Federal Councils.
Art. 40.
Within the competency and the duties of the Government
Council are essentially:
1. The right of proposing to the Cantonal Council laws and
resolutions.
* This is one of the Federal authorities sitting at Berne, not to be con
founded with the Zurich Cantonal Council, and may be compared with the
American Senate.
f Another of the Federal authorities, to be compared with the American
House of Representatives.—Translator.
I That is, every elector voting for seven candidates.—Translator.
�30
2. The proper publication of all proposals to be submitted to the
popular vote, and of all proposals after their being passed into
laws, as well as the care for the execution of the laws, and of the
resolutions of the people and the Cantonal Council.
3. The intercourse with the Confederation and with the cantons
of Switzerland.
4. The control.of matters of education, of ecclesiastical affairs,
and of the administration of the poor law, as well as of all sub
ordinate authorities and functionaries.
5. The. judgment, in the last instance, of all disputes in ad
ministrative questions.
6. The drawing up. of the estimates of ways and means, and of
expenses of the public exchequer, and of the separate funds; the
presentation of the annual accounts, as well as of a report, to the
Cantonal Council, of the entire activity of the Government
Council.
7. The organization of the government offices, and the appoint
ment of all those functionaries and officers whose election has not
by constitution or law been entrusted to some other public appoint
ing body.
Art. 41.
The Government Council elects, for the term of office fixed for
administrative officers, the public prosecutor, on whom the duty is
incumbent of prosecuting, in the name of the State, crimes and
punishable offences.
Art. 42.
The functions and business of the Government Council are, for
the purpose of furthering their despatch, divided into Directions,
*
each of which is presided over by a member of the Government
Council. Final decisions proceed from the whole Council ; how
ever, within certain fixed limits, a final competency may be assigned
by law to the different Directions.
The Government Council distributes amongst its members the
Directions in such a manner that no member shall fill the office of
the same Direction during more than two continuous periods of
office.
Standing commissions, appointed by the Government Council,
may be added to the single Directions if the nature of their functions
require it. In all other respects the law fixes the organization of
the Directions and offices as well as the number and salaries of
officers.
Departments.
�31
B.—Administration of Districts.
Art. 43.
The canton is divided into Districts; any alterations in the
existing distribution of these has to be made by legislation.
Art. 44.
The administration of the District is carried out by a District
Council, consisting of a Lieutenant-Governor (“ Statthalter ”) as
President, and two District Councillors, to whom are to be added
two Deputy-Councillors.
Where local wants require it the number of District Councillors
may be augmented. Equally, wherever the extent of a LieutenantGovernor’s business’demauds it, a part of it may be handed over to
an Adjunct, to be transacted by him independently.
The election of these officers belongs to the inhabitants of the
district entitled, by Art. 16 to 18, to vote.
Art. 45.
The duty of the District Council is especially:
The control of the administration of the communes and their
domains, as well as of matters relating to minors and their
guardians; in certain cases, to be determined by law, the decision
in the second instance in affairs of guardianship and of the assist
ance to the poor; finally, the decision in the first instance in dis
putes referring to administrative matters.
On the Lieutenant-Governor especially is incumbent the execu
tion of the order of the Government douncil, as well as the
execution of such functions as are laid on him by the criminal law
and the police law, and the control of roads and streets.
Art. 46.
Any position in the district administration is incompatible with
that of a common councillor or clerk to a Common Council.
C.—Communes.
Art. 47.
Communes are ordinarily divided into ecclesiastical communes
(parishes), educational communes, and political communes (muni
cipalities).
The parish forms, as a rule, at the same time the educational
district.
The formation of new communes, and the union or dissolution of
existing ones, belong to legislation.
For special and local aims other associations may take placewithin the communes, especially the formation of civil communes.
�32
Art. 48.
The communes are entitled to regulate their affairs independently
within the limits of the constitution and the laws. Decrees of a
commune, barring their being attacked on grounds of informalities,
can only be called in question if they evidently transgress the
proper sphere of the commune, and at the same time involve the
imposition of an appreciable burden on those obliged to pay rates,
or if they improperly offend against considerations of equity.
Art. 49.
The administrative organs of the ecclesiastical communes
(parishes) and school districts, or educational communes, are:—
The assembly of the ecclesiastical commune (parish meeting ; )
The assembly of the school district and educational commune ;
The Church Council ;
The School Council.
The administrative organs of the political commune (municipal
ity) are :—
The assembly of the political commune;
The Common Council ;
Art. 50.
In all assemblies of the commune, the citizens of the commune,
having a vote according to Art. 16—18, and the cantonal and
federal citizens, established in the commune, have the right of
voting.
In questions of the administration of relief to the poor, of con
ferring communal citizenship, as well as in questions of the ad
ministration of purely communal separate funds and communes,
only communal citizens, residing in the canton, though within or
without the commune, are entitled to vote.
In the ecclesiastical communes (parishes or general vestries) on
the occasion of discussions on ecclesiastical matters, and of the
election of ecclesiastics, of members of the Church Councils, and
of church employés, only those of the citizens, and of those estab
lished in the commune who belong to the denomination in question,
have the right of voting.
Art. 51.
To the general assembly of the commune belong especially: —
The control of such portions of the communal administration as
may be assigned to it, the fixing of the annual estimates, the audit
of the annual accounts, the granting of rates, the consent to such
expenses, as may surpass an amount to be fixed by it, as well as
the election of its council, whose composition with respect to
citizens proper, and to those having a settlement, the law will
determine.
�33
Of the resort of the Common Council are especially : —
1. The preliminary discussion of all affairs which have to be
brought before the assembly of the commune.
2. The execution of the resolutions of the commune.
3. The administration of the domain of the community, with
reference, however, to Art. 55, § 2.
Art. 52.
The general assembly of the ecclesiastical commune, and the
Church Council, have to attend to the ecclesiastical affairs of the
commune; and, as a rule, also to the administration of relief to the
poor. The communes are free to elect a special authority for the
latter purpose.
Art. 53.
To the general assembly of the educational commune, and to the
Council of Education, belongs the care for the general national
schools.
All other branches of the administration of communal affairs,
with the reservation, however, indicated in Art. 47, § 4, are
handed over to the political communes and their organs. How
ever, where special circumstances make it appear desirable, a
union of several political communes may be formed, in order to
carry out in common any special branches of municipal adminis
tration, and appoint special organs for that purpose.
The celebration of civil marriage belongs to the Municipal
Council, or to a committee of the same.
Art. 54.
The care for minors, and the duty of assistance in case of im
poverishment, belong as a rule to the commune where the persons
in question are born. (Comp. Art. 22.) However, the legislature
may transfer, wholly or partially, these duties, and the rights con
nected with them, to the commune of residence.
Art. 55.
The communal domains, excepting the citizens’ purely separate
lands and commons, are in the first instance destined to satisfy
the public requirements of the communes.
The municipalities are left free to entrust to the communal
councils the administration of all communal property.
V.—Administration of Justice.
Art. 56.
A judgment given by competent authority cannot be set aside
c
�34
or modified either by the legislative or by the administrative power.
The right of mercy, however, is reserved to the Cantonal Council.
Art. 57.
Crimes and political offences, including offences of the press, in
which the defendant demands it, are tried before juries.
The law may also appoint trial by jury for other portions of the
law, both civil and criminal.
Art. 58.
The law determines the number, organization, competency, and
proceeding of the courts of law.
Courts of arbitration by mutual agreement are admissible.
Art. 59.
The mode of proceeding is to be regulated with a view to the
greatest possible security of right, as well as to speedy and cheap
dealing with the cases. For disputes concerning small amounts a
summary proceeding will be introduced.
Art. 60.
The officers entrusted with notarial business are elected from
among the examined candidates by the inhabitants of the notarial
circle entitled to vote according to Art. 16-18.
Art. 61.
Execution for debt is entrusted to an officer of the municipality.
VI.—Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs.
Art. 62.
The furtherance of the general education of the people, and of
the republican education of citizens, is the care of the State.
In order to increase the professional and industrial worth of all
classes of the people the national schools are to be extended so as to
embrace a more advanced period of youth. The higher establish
ments of learning are to be harmonized with the wants of the
present age, without doing injury to their scientific character, and
are to be placed in organic connection with the national schools.
Primary instruction is obligatory and gratuitous. The state
undertakes, with the participation of the communes, to provide the
means required.
The teachers of primary schools are to be thoroughly trained
with respect to knowledge and management. They are likewise to
be especially fitted for managing adult schools.
The communes control, through the local educational authorities,
�35
the management of the schools, and the performance of their duties
by the teachers. For every district, besides, a special educational
authority, or district school council, is to be appointed.
The organization of an education council—to be attached to the
direction of education—and of a school synod, remains reserved for
legislation.
Art. 63.
The freedom of belief, of worship, and of teaching is guaranteed.
Civic rights and duties are independent of religious confessions.
Every exercise of force against communities, associations, and
individuals is excluded.
The national evangelical church and the other ecclesiastical
*
corporations regulate their affairs independently, under the supreme
control of the State. The organization of the former, to the ex
clusion of all violence done to consciences, is fixed by the law.
The State undertakes, in general, the contributions it has hitherto
furnished for ecclesiastical wants.
Art. 64.
The ecclesiastical communes elect their clergy, and the educa
tional communes the teachers of their schools, from amongst those
capable of being elected.
The State remunerates the clergy, and—with the participation of
the communes—the teachers, in the sense of the greatest possible
equality and of a rise in the stipends appropriate to the require
ments of the times.
The teachers of the national schools, and the clergy of the eccle
siastical corporations assisted by the State, are subjected to a con
firmatory election every six years. If, on taking the vote, the
absolute majority of the members of the commune having the right
to vote declines to confirm the appointment, the place must be filled
up anew.
Teachers and ecclesiastics at the present moment holding posi
tions are to be considered as elected for a new term of office on the
acceptance of this Constitution; and in the case of their not being
re-elected have a claim to compensation according to their years of
office and to their services rendered.
This rule applies also to the clergy of the (Roman) Catholic
parishes.
VII.—Revision of Constitution.
Art. 65.
The revision of the constitution in its totality, or in single parts,
may take place at any time by the mode of legislation.
* Protestant.—Translator.
�36
In case the revision of the totality of the constitution be resolved
by the action of popular Initiative, a new election of the Cantonal
Council will take place, which will have to take in hand the
revision.
Bills referring to the revision are subject to a double discussion
in the Cantonal Council, and the second discussion is not to take
place less than two months after the date of the first.
In the name of the Committee of Constitution,
Dr. J. SULZER, President.
L. FORRER, First Secretary.
Zurich, March 31st, 1869.
TRANSITORY ENACTMENTS.
1. Articles 11, 15, 19—21, 23, 59-62, and 64 of the Constitu
tion will be applied only after the passing of the laws necessary for
their execution.
2. Article 14, in so far as it prescribes the abolition of the tax
on settlement, is applicable from the beginning of next year.
3. With regard to Article 18, § 3, it is resolved that the re
habilitation of such citizens as have, previous to the acceptance of
this constitution, lost their active citizenship in consequence of
bankruptcy, shall take place, ipso facto, after the lapse of ten years,
to be reckoned from the day of the declaration of bankruptcy,
unless such rehabilitation have, before the expiration of such
term, been declared by a judgment of court.
4. Articles 1-10, 12-14, 16-18, 22, 26, 28-58, 63, and 65, are
to be applied even before their principles are further developed by
future legislation. Consequently, all existing regulations contained
in laws and ordinances, and contradictory to those articles, are
herewith abolished.
5. In case of the acceptance of this constitution, the election of
the new Cantonal Council, as well as of the Government Council
and the two members of the Swiss Council of Cantons, will take
place on May 9th, according to the mode prescribed by the con
stitution. The Cantonal Council will meet on the second Monday
after the accomplishment of the third election, and at the same
moment the charge given to the Committee of Constitution is to
be considered at an end.
After having constituted itself and taken the oath, the Cantonal
Council proceeds to swearing in the Government Council, and then
issues, before any other business, a provisional set of standing orders.
Cherry & Fletcher, Printers, 6, Wardrobe Place, Doctors' Commons, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Direct legislation by the people versus representative government
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Burkli, Karl
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 36 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Cherry & Fletcher
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1869
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G5235
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Oswald, Eugene (tr)
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Government
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Direct legislation by the people versus representative government), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Conway Tracts
Democracy
Political reform
Referendum
Representative Government and Representation
Sacerdotalism
Social Reform
Working Classes
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Text
ON THE CURE, ARREST, AND ISOLATION
OF
SMALL
POX.
�“Above all Theory in the Art of Warfare, one practical
fact reigns triumphant—‘Defeat the enemy ’—a truth that
will always triumph over all theories.”—Garibaldi.
�TO THOMAS L. HARRIS,
Now OE Wassaic,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE IN ALL AFFECTION
INSCRIBED,
IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAY FIND THEM WORTHY
OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE,
AND AS A TRIBUTE AND A TESTIMONY
OF
A FREE
BROTHERHOOD
IN HEART AND SPIRIT.
�CONTENTS
Preface..................................................................................... .......
I. Small Pox...................................................................... 1
II. Erysipelas..................................................................... 14
III. Inflammation of the Spine, with Rheumatism . 20
IV. Inflammation of the Womb following Pregnancy 21
V. Chronic Inflammation of the Right Ovary .
. 22
VI. Earache with Impending Meningitis
.
.
.25
VII. Inflammation of the Parotid G-land .
.
.28
VIII. Acute Tonsillitis............................................................ 28
IX. Hcemorrhoids following Confinement
.
. 29
X. Inflammation about the Cjecum .
.
.
.31
XI. Enlarged and Irritable Breasts .
.
.
.33
XII. Chronic Abscesses ....... 34
XIII. Bunions.............................................................................. 34
XIV. Case of Threatened Mesenteric Disease Ar
rested ..................................................................... 35
XV. Cases of External Injury.......................................... 40
XVI. Ditto............................................................................. 41
XVII. Shingles Treated by Cantharides Lotions .
. 42
XVIII. Cellulitis..................................................................... 43
XIX. General and Local Cellulitis
.
.
.
.50
XX. Eruptive Fever........................................................... 62
Medical Freedom..........................................................67
Appendix.............................................................................. 87
�PREFACE.
Talking one day with a friend I made the remark, that I
never ceased to wonder that the enormous cost involved
in the railways, is justified by the public convenience,
and requited by the public money; and that I could
not but draw from this an inference that every good
thing, however onerous, is worth while doing. “ Ah!” he
said, “that reminds me of a woodcut in one of Bewick’s
books, in which a husbandman is ploughing the field,
and underneath him is written—‘ Justissima Tellus.1 ”
For nature is so munificently constructed as to yield back
in crops whatever seed of good we put into her; to repay
with living inheritances of power whatever trouble we
bestow upon her; to bank for us with compound in
terest of her own intentions; to enhance all faculty and
all freedom; to be diligent to the diligent, niggard to
the niggard, loyal to the loyal; to be in the long-run
supreme poetical justice; and in short to grow forth our
natural wants and wishes, world-sized, into entire ac
complishments.
Medical nature is a part of this mighty motherhood,—
this predestined conception of our human wants; this
bearing of them in the womb of time, and bringing them
forth in forms which partake of the creative current
which flows through both the parents, that is, through
man and the world, from the throne of The Supreme.
But only according to the seed of want, and according
to the husbandry, is the yield which Justissima TeUus,
�viii
PREFACE.
our most account-keeping, stock-taking, and income-ap
portioning ground, bestows upon us.
If we ask little
and insist little, nature, which loves our littleness because
it is our freedom, is charged to maintain us uninfringed,
by giving us little.
And now to come lower down,
medicine has asked but little of nature; and has only
got what she asked.
I have written the following pages to embolden us to
ask for more; because more can be had, on just, if not
on easy terms.
The treatment of diseases has too much ended itself
in the prescription pure and simple; and the prescription
has too much confined itself to something to be put into
our primce vice,—our mouths. It is the most obvious
way, and the least trouble. But it has led to a waiting
upon disease, in place of grappling with it. Nay, as
Prescription is not always obeyed by Disease, it has led
to the Nightingale theory that disease is a reparative
process, and destruction, of course on the great scale,
very complete repair; and this led in earlier times to
treating disease, as a conqueror can hardly fail to be
treated, with royal honours; welcoming it with open
gates, strewing flowers of compliments before its path,
coaching it softly in express medical carriages, welcoming
it home in the palaces of health ; and making its bed,
for rest and for begetting, of the softest down of medi
cal acquiescence.
This was exemplified in the treatment of small-pox;
in which even so late a writer, and so really great a
physician as Elliotson, declares that there is very little
to be done, except upon general principles; the bed
where the monster is preying upon the man being care
fully watched, and only the monster’s rudenesses patted
into rhyme with physicianal propriety.
Thus our Elliotson says : “ There is nothing peculiar
*
* Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1839, pp. 412-3.
�IX
PREFACE.
in the treatment of this disease. It is only the treat
ment of an ordinary fever. . . . Any inflammation
that may occur . . . requires to be attended to.
You must constantly be on the look out for these affec
tions ; but the treatment is certainly to be conducted
altogether on general principles. You have only to
remember that you are treating, not merely an inflam
matory, but a specific disease.”
It would have seemed that though the inflammatory
complication wanted general principles, the specific
disorder required specific remedies. However, in thus
extracting from Dr. Elliotson, let it be known that I
impugn a system, and not that eminent man, to whose
skilful general treatment indeed, under Providence, I
owe my life; and the wedge of whose persistent courage
and powerful natural faculty has opened the medical
age to a part of the new and true good things which it
now possesses.
But the old treatment of small-pox was more defer
ential to the good disease than even the treatment on
“general principles.” The late Mr. Carpue narrated to
me a case which illustrates this. A small-pox patient
grievously held, was imnvmed with his disease in the
deepest oubliette of bed, and blanket, and coverlet; and
curtained all round and all over in his four-poster;
and every door shut, and every window draped; and
every cry for air and water deafly disregarded; and the
mantle of all his stenche® wrapped round and round
him until he was the mummy of his own decays; and
as might be expected, he died. Then the effluvia were
so horrible that overnight he was laid in a summer-house
at the bottom of the garden, and when they went with
disgusted caution and curiosity to him next morning, he
had, by virtue of fresh air and general principles, come
to life again; and he ultimately recovered.
This, perhaps, may have been one of the last cases in
A
�X
PREFACE.
which the royal entertainment of small-pox, and the
petting and pampering of it, were practiced; and in
which Justissima Tellus was regarded as the proper
terminus of the triumphal procession of the disease
through the streets of the man, with the colleges of
physicians and surgeons swelling its train.
Since then, air and cleanliness, and water and diet
have shorn the small-pox of the richness of its de
structions, and some general principles of treatment, in
contradistinction to pampering, have had fair play.
But still the same system has been maintained, though
more cleanly, more respectably, and most scientifically.
It has been maintained under the belief or general prin
ciple that small-pox has a certain course to run, and
must not be checked in its career. The aim, therefore,
has been, in the orthodox body, to limit its excesses, as
Dr. Elliotson proposes; and among the Homoeopaths,
to find specifics for its whole career. My aim is, to dis
allow its career, and knock it on the head as soon as
possible. For I am acquainted with the results of both
practices; and I dislike those results. In Homoeopathy
I have seen cases which have been most carefully, and
if you like beautifully treated, on the theoretical grounds
of the allowance of the entire disease; also in which
diet has been limited, also on theoretical, and I believe
false, grounds; and the patients have been permanently
weakened by the disease and the dietetic system: and I
know that hi those cases the treatment has been ineffi
cient, and the specific remedies not grappling with the
vast bulk of the disease, have been at the best but so much
internal hygeine.
And therefore I also know that the
efficiently specific treatment of small-pox is still a desi
deratum, and that success in arresting the disease is the
only specificity worth having.
I dare to hope that I have attained to a part of that
success. This has been by local remedies; the Veratrwm
�PREFACE.
xi
Viride as general local treatment; the Hydrastis Cana
densis as specific local treatment.
The same remedies
internally as specific internal treatment. This local
treatment, not only for this but for almost all other
diseases, is the new labour and trouble which I believe
will be repaid with new health by Justissimum Corpus,
which, in its faculty of grateful return for work done and
trouble taken, is the very blossom and glory of Justissima
Tellus. The fairy wishing-cap of infinitesimal dynamic
doses does indeed set the eyes wistfully towards the dis
tant plains of health; but it requires hard Roman work,
and railway generations and ages, of local digging and
delving, to carry, not the eyes but the material body
itself, where the wishes can go in a moment. The road
for this, like all other roads, must be born into the world
with pains.
- The success of local treatment at present to be regis
tered is:—
I. The disease has been abridged in duration.
II. The inflammation and primary fever accom
panying it are certainly and speedily
abolished.
III. The secondary fever is annulled.
IV. The itching of the pustules is annulled, and
the patient has no motive to pick the face.
V. The stench of the old disease has no place.
VI. The suffering is reduced to a minimum.
VII. Owing to the perfect antiphlogistic action,
nourishment and stimulants can be borne
almost from the first.
VIII. There is no pitting, and, a fortiori, iio seam
ing ; only, of course, the complexion is
altered for a time.
IX. Any private person, male or female, medical
or lay, with care and courage, can treat
the disease successfully, owing to the sim-
�PREFACE.
plicity of the means: an invaluable result
where professional services are not at
hand. And multitudes of patients, for the
. ' . . . same reason, can easily be treated at
once.
The probable hope and scope of local treatment
embraces other heads still.
I.
The arrest of the disease at the outset, by early
recognising and promptness of application.
II. The extinction of the infection, by the entire
mass of the disease, its pieces, dust, and
effluvia becoming coated with and neutra
lised by the Hydrastis ; which appears,
therefore, to isolate the malady from the
very attendants, and hermetically to seal it.
.
Ill- Immunity for the healthy from the disease,
by the prophylactic powers of the Hydrastis
taken internally, and by sponging baths, with
a teaspoonful of Hydrastis Tincture in them,
night and morning, for infected families and
attendants on the sick.
These means can be easily employed by whole neigh
bourhoods. At Guildford, a few days ago,-1 saw the
Surrey militia encamped in the fields, and was told that
this was on account of the small pox, which was raging
in the town. What a valuable thing it ■will be to possess
a remedy which guards new comers against the existing
infection, and which taken in the spring of the year, when
they say the small-pox has a tendency to come from its
lair m that locality, also preserves the population, and
thus ultimately extinguishes the beds of the disease.
These, results and these hopes ought to commend my
method for instant trial to Boards of Guardians in neigh
bourhoods such as Birmingham, where the whole town is
in alarm on account of - the small-pox; where infection
spreads by the very act of massing the sick in hospitals;
�xiii
and where the parochial rates will be greatly increased
by the public expenses of the disease.
So much at present for small-pox. Am I not justified
in saying that the trouble taken in the local application
of the specific which I have discovered, to the entire sur
face and mass of the disease, is repaid, as no less positive,
material, persistent remedies 'have ever before been '
repaid, by alleviation, abridgement, and cure? For this
method, mark you, of local application of drugs to the
very part which is ailing, or else to the very skin of the
organ and part, is more positive and material than any of
the orthodox conceptions of general treatment, and yet
perfectly harmless; and unlike the case of gross medicines
given by the mouth, expends the greater part of its force
not upon the system, but upon the locality, and, we may
say, the essence of the disease. It is also inevitably
specific in the lowest, and, therefore, the strongest sense :
e.g., in localization.
And with regard to inflammations generally, I know of
none to which the local treatment is inapplicable; and if
I am not too sanguine, in most, cases of congestive inflam
mation the Veratrum Viride is as easy a specific as Arnica
is in bruises, and will introduce a simplicity into ordinary
cases of internal inflammation, now requiring a medical
man, of which as yet we have no idea. Truly, as the
method costs more trouble than the administration of
Homceopathic tinctures, it need not be used indiscrimi
nately ; but wherever bronchitis or any chest inflammation,
peritonitis, or any abdominal inflammation, or any cerebral,
or spinal, or other inflammation, does not at once yield to
Aconite and Belladonna, and ■ to Veratrum Viride and
Podopliylline, then I should with-no delay apply Veratrum
Viride lotions and baths, and maintain them perseveringly
till entire relief is experienced. Nor need the method be
limited to Veratrum Viride, for AcemA, Gelseminum
Virens, and- in short any and every drug has a local part
�xiv
PREFACE.
to play, and should be put close to its work as occasion
requires. The point to be borne in mind is, that the skin
is the face of all the organs, and of all their diseases, and
that they can severally be reached by rapid specifics
through the skin.
The horizon of my cases thus treated is continually
extending, and I shall hope to present further reports of
these new specifics and their methods, from time to
time.
I must not dismiss this subject without confessing how
much I owe to Dr. Grover Coe’s admirable book on Con
centrated Organic Medicines, a book distinguished for me
dical insight, and therapeutical genius as well as know
ledge, and in which I have found everything I have here
laid down inculcated, excepting the specificity of Hyd
rastis to small-pox, and of local applications to all organs
labouring under perilous diseases. Dr. Coe, indeed,
constantly mentions local applications, as of Baptisia to
Phagedenic Erysipelas, &c., &c. ; but the systematic
application of medicated lotions to the whole body, and
its several parts, I have not found in’him, and I suppose
the practice on a large scale is peculiar to myself.
To
Dr. Pattison also I owe much of my knowledge of the
American drugs, and I think I am right in stating that
we are not far apart in our method of local administra
tion.
To Mr. Skelton, sen., of Great Russell Street, I
am also indebted for an unstinted share of his varied
therapeutical experience, though he has been treated so
shabbily by the doctors that I wonder he should have let
me inside his door.
And here a word may be excused on Mr. Skelton’s
recent history, as he has imparted it to me. Mr. Skelton
is a medical eclectic in the American sense of the term;
that is to say, he employs all the vegetable products and
principles, so far as he knows them, in the treatment of
disease; he is also a thorough English herbalist. He
�preface.
XV
repudiates mineral medicines.
He is perhaps the most
fearless apostle of medical freedom in this country, and
longs to extend the blessings of health-education, and the
best and safest practice, to the working men and women
of England. In this respect he is just the sort of man that
Garibaldi would like to know.
Some four or five years
ago he wished to become a member of the Royal College
of Surgeons of England as by law established, and for
this purpose he qualified himself by an attendance upon
the lectures and hospital practice which the College pre
scribes before a man is entitled to be examined for his
diploma. And then he sent in his papers, and proposed
himself for examination. And now, dear public of these
reputed free islands, will you believe it? he was in
formed that he would not be admitted to examination
unless he recanted his eclectic and herbalist faith, and
publicly admitted the superiority of the orthodox practice
to his own.
This he could not do; and not being able
conveniently to go to law with the Royal College, he
remains plain John Skelton, sen., as he was.
By this act the College declares that it is not only a
body for granting degrees of competency ascertained by
examination, but also a tribunal for inquisition into the
faith of those who would be its members, and a corpora
tion of executioners for forcing their faith into the mould
and thumbscrew of its own.
Was this contemplated in
its Acts of Parliament ?
It is a complication in Mr. Skelton’s case that he was
the first to introduce prominently into this country the
Hydrastis, Podophylline, Veratrum Viride, Macrotin,
Caulophylline, Myricin, and in general those American
drugs which the ablest members of the Royal College of
Surgeons of England are now beginning far in his wake
to try to learn to employ, and the use of which he was
asked to recant as the condition of his claim to college
membership.
Is not this matter a providential fulcrum for a move
�xvi
PREFACE.
ment in favour of medical freedom? The College lig
atures its own neck for fear it should swallow the bread
of unorthodoxy: just as some European governments
which have very little food in their parts, tie Custom
Houses round their people’s throats to prevent English
victuals from going down them. We can only hope that
the hunger in both cases will grow, and express itself,
until the straitness of this false rule is terrified into
relaxation.
For my part, as the reader will see, I am no believer
in medical professions, or indeed in professions at all as
successful ways of cultivating any branch of the truths
and goods, the arts or sciences, of nature, of man, or of
heaven. Liberty and the spirit, using all our faculties,
and among the rest the faculty of association, are the
forces which I know are coming from God to supplant
the present state of things. Incarnations, not institu
tions, are the substantial bodies which will constitute
the new world, and open the mighty gates of the divinely-,
human arts and sciences. Gifts not berths will be the
desire and the prayer of those who are permitted to
enter on this new time. And the uses of the world will
be carried on by great and various societies, full of order
and liberty, full of love and of light, full of spiritual and
reasonable endurance, and each man’s character in them
a full and conscious recipient of the gifts and graces of
his art.
When will these things be ? I do not know why they
should be long in coming; for in public power and
respect the professions as by law established, are
dwindling: free trade, and all science, and all voluntary
associations, are examples of what can exist without
them: change has long since begun, and change in our
days is instinct with speeds, as the father of a nation is
instinct with ■ progeny. Courage, therefore, to all who
are in the new way! Half a dozen earnest men, led on
�PREFACE.
xvii
by Garibaldi Skelton, may commence an agitation which
year shall awaken the whole public, produce oneness
of feeling through the several dukedoms of physic, witness
the flight of its despotisms, and annex even the kingdom
of the two colleges to the commonwealth of our art
regenerated.
But now, after all liberation of medicine has been
accomplished, or rather coincidently with every im
provement which will give fair play to the genius of
healing, there remains, in ever new and increasing pro
portions, the exigency of sanitary art and science. This
is to medicine what material and social conditions and
necessities are to morals, their institutions, and their
grounds. This is prevention, while medicine is only
cure. This is the circumambient spirit of health, or
disease, and their widest seed-field.
And if it be taken
to embrace the questions of food and starvation, and of
habits of life, it may fairly be regarded as the most im
portant branch of health-culture.
At present, however, I have but few words to say
about it: and those few chiefly of practical import, as
they have been suggested by my own experience.
Diseases, especially epidemic diseases, have two parents,
a father and a mother; that is to say, an essence or germ
residing in the earth or the air; and a corporeal nidus
or clothing, or obscene vapour or miasma arising from
uncleanness of some kind. Therefore the devil is the
father of diseases, and the dirt of neglect is the mother.
Take away the mother, and the father will still be there,
but unable to breed in that degree. He may breed sin,
inward vileness, perhaps also apoplexies and palsies,
death, vital starvation, all decay from the mental and
spiritual side, suffocation of nobleness and the sense of
God, but probably without his mate, which is filthi
ness, he cannot breed corporeal pestilence. And as we
are bound to be clean first, and to get rid of evil from
�xviii
PREFACE.
the outside, so sanitary science, sewage, drainage, space
of dwellings, and the like, are enjoined upon us by all
our medical commission.
Many people wonder how houses take small-pox,
scarlatina, and the like infectious and contagious com
plaints, seeing that there has been no traceable contact
with those who are suffering from the same. But even
if this be the case, which is difficult to prove, we have
only to reflect that the continuous atmosphere is one
wide repertory of all the miasmas of the world, as well
as of all its better things. These are evidently - most
active, as well as spatially most gigantic; thin, if you
please, to our senses ; but monsters interlocked, and
probably as big as our firmament; and they only await
a womb, a matrix of uncleanness, to engender their
kind in human bodies, and produce all parasitic fevers.
Moreover, it is obvious from constant history, that ever
and anon a new accession arrives from the deep, a new
destroying angel, and a cholera or a new plague is born.
We can chronicle several such advents in our time ; and
the spread of their progeny shows how unclean we
were; how we embraced with our corresponding circum
stances each monster-shape, and how speedily and how
greatly pestilence and death were born. For our posi
tion in the present day is a very undefended one. There
is almost no individuality left; and yet individuality on
the divine side is the one fortress of our bodies, of our
minds, and of our souls. The reason why we, and not
somebody else, have been created, is, that we may be
ourselves, and nobody else. But now everybody wishes
to be according to somebody else; that is, to be some
body else as far as he can. The consequence of which
is, that the human sphere is invaded, pierced and lost.
Kind reader, let us dwell a little on this, perhaps to
you, novel consideration. First, there is such a thing
as the human sphere; that is to say, all our faculties,
�PREFACE.
xix
and all we are, corporeal, mental, spiritual, streams forth.
Each part streams forth in its own order. First, the
Soul streams forth, and being the highest and subtlest
of all, the furthest in its aims, it penetrates through all
the rest, attains its ends of construction, in them rests
most actively, ever on the sense for what infringes ; and
is the outermost covering as well as the innermost essence
of the man. This mighty universe of sphere surround
ing each of us, breathes with our breath and lives with
our life; but also is torn by our violence, and suffers in
our decay. Next, if you choose so to consider it,
though only for illustration, the mind streams forth; 'with
less penetration because it is grosser; to a lesser dis
tance ; and its periphery, far less closely grained, is more
capable of invasion, of rupture, and of decay; even faint
forces of ideas can permanently injure this human
fortress, which so many think is the stronghold of their
being. So, in like maimer as the mind, every instinct
streams forth. So, in like manner, every organ streams
forth: and where each ends, it constitutes a tender
spheral surface which has come through its own spaces,
and is set for ever in the invisible firmament which
guards the man so far as it is intact. Lastly, the bones
and the bodily senses stream forth, and are insphered in
their own creative life; but being the grossest of all,
they cannot penetrate far, but lie folded upon themselves,
like eggs in which all the other world is reflected; and
a very little abused, they are tendencies to denials of the
spheres, because they have so little of their own to
affirm. These facts, which sound at first like wild
assertions, are implied in the very nature of faculties,
which can only be limited by their own ends, and those
ends must be out of themselves; which granted, then
it follows, that tlie soul comes through all the rest, and
has a psychical end in the world, in other words a created
shape there; and if so, a full communication between
�Xx
PREFACE.
that outward shape and itself; in other words, a SoulSphere. And so of the other faculties, q. e. D‘
Now what has all this to do with sanitary science?
For you, good reader, nothing if you please; or, if you
will proceed from spiritual grounds, much. For this
subject of human spheres, and their invisibility, lies
near the root of those causes which pertain to the taking
of disease. In short, we may say, that if the soul
sphere is violated or broken, the man will take spiritual
diseases, mad atheisms, universal lusts, and the like: if
the mind sphere is ruptured, insane mental ambitions
and philosophies will invade, be absorbed, and produce
mental degradation and decay; and if the organic sphere
be broken, bodily miasms will intrude into the nervous
and vital expanses, and epidemic and other maladies will
be taken. Now, these apparently-remote asseverations
have something to do with house architecture.
For it is a rule that nobody ought to be influenced,
except according to his internal essence, by anything or
by anybody. And this rule should be reflected in a
man’s house. The first requisite of a house is, to be
exempted from the world; to have a roof to shut out
the sky, walls to shut out the winds, a door to shut out
mankind; and a floor, with cellars underneath it, and
then a floor again, to shut out the earth, and the earth
sphere. In this way the house reflects the sphere, and
completes the individuality, of the owner.
Now, mark the latter point, about the floor .and the
cellar underneath it. I have noticed in my practice,
that persons inhabiting rooms built directly on the
ground, -with no intervention of underground chamber,
are far more likely to have epidemics and influenzas than
those who tenant rooms separated from the earth. The
power of the earth-effluences is mighty ; and if the
organism is not very strong, is sure to invade it; and
then through the hole of invasion the omnipresent
�PREFACE.
XXI
miasmas, one or more, drive home their impregnation.
Therefore, it is an indispensable rule that so great a cause
of ferment and change as living on the surface of the
active ground, should be avoided.
This holds even where the ground is clean; for the
cleanest earth-sphere getting into a human body is a
calamity and a fall. But where foulness is superadded,
of course the terrible miasms are invited, and commence
their fatherhood.
But sanitary art has much to do after contagious
disease has been already engendered, in claiming power
from the State to limit its excursions. In dealing with
this subject I can only address myself to one crying evil
which has come under my notice. I mean, the practice
of re-letting lodgings after persons affected with con
tagious disorders have occupied them, without any com
plete purification of the apartments having taken place.
If in bad drainage and want of cleanliness are the roots
of these diseases, we may fairly also say, that on infected
walls, and floors, and carpets, and chairs, and beds, are
the seeds which they sow and shed upon the healthy.
I have known a case in which a death from scarlatina
has taken place in a set of apartments; and these after
wards have been let again to an unsuspecting family
with children, who in a couple of weeks have become
the victims of this terrible trap; and the same poisonous
walls have again silently and cruelly communicated their
charge of miasm to another sufferer still, who has barely
escaped- with life from the illness which she took. These
events are of everyday occurrence, especially in the
principal health-resorts, where town children are taken
to enjoy the country, or the seaside.
The only remedy I can think of is a compulsory infor
mation conveyed to the health officer of each district
whenever any infectious or contagious disease occurs in
a house, and power granted to such officer or Health
�xxii
PREFACE.
Surveyor, to see that the out-going infected tenants pro
vide the means necessary for papering, whitewashing, and
sufficiently purifying the tenement they have occupied
during the illness. Also an open registry of such houses
should be kept hi the Health Surveyor’s Office, in order
that persons seeking lodgings may easily know where
they can be safe, and see the length of time that has
elapsed since any house was diseased.
This, I believe,
would have a good effect upon landlords, who, hi their
own interest, would no longer build upon the ground
without a well-ventilated cellar-foundation; and, in short,
would then find that the root of rent is health and clean
liness. At present the reverse is the case; for the more
degraded the population, and the greater the filth, the
larger the numbers of wretched lodgers, whose pittances
in their multitude represent considerable sums for some
hard man who lives in dry decency himself.
It is remarkable that the law is administered for pub
lic sanitary effect in cases of small-pox, while we never
hear of its intervention in the cases of other serious infec
tious diseases. Thus I read in the Birmingham Daily
Post, May, 23,1864, that “ a public caution has been in
serted in the papers informing the public that the expo
sure of a child infected with small-pox in any public
street or highway, is a misdemeanor indictable at common
law, and that the parties committing the offence are lia
ble to fine and imprisonment.” And in the same paper
it is recorded that a poor woman charged with this
offence was brought before the Bench of Magistrates.
Now, assuredly, small-pox is not a worse scourge than
scarlet fever, nor can one imagine a reason why it should
be selected for the action of Parliament, excepting that
it is the worst-looking of diseases.
If there is to be an
action in its case, the powers of that action ought to be
extended to all infections and contagions. And if a pub
lic street or highway is not to be terrified with the sight
�PREFACE.
xxiii
of this repulsive malady, then the private room and the
secure-seeming bed ought to be guarded by the stern
figure and outstretched wings of the State from every
unseen pestilence that walks the noon-day, and every
arrow of destroying miasm that flies in the night.
Here, in short, would appear to be the true realm for
State protection and State interference; nay, even for
State espionage. These powers, despotic and suffocative
when applied to the regulation of arts and sciences, in
dustry and culture, professions, trades and services, are
not only justified and benignant, but indispensable in
their proper sphere; in the protection of the equal rights
of individuals; in the wielding of common powers such
as no individual possesses, for the public health; and in
making it the interest and policy and necessity of each
person to set his house in order, and, by so doing, to con
tribute to the physical welfare of his neighbour. Right
eousness thus completely sought by the State in the ma
terial degree, will educate the public to exact from
medical bodies of its own creation, diligence and skill,
clairvoyance, inspiration and world-wide knowledge, and
godly humility and boldness, which will effect what can
be done in the way of artificial healing, and prepare the
way for things better still.
76, Wimpole St., W.,
and 4, Finchley Road, N. W,
May 24, 1864.
��I.
Small Pox.
It has been my good fortune, thank God, to discover a
method of treating small-pox and erysipelas in their
severer forms, and I now proceed to lay some details of
my treatment before the public.
The Hydrastis Canadensis, a drug already renowned
m the alleviation of cancer, having been first employed,
I believe, for that purpose in this country by Dr. Patti
son, is the remedy which embraces something like a
specific treatment of small-pox within its marvellous
scope.
It is now about five years since I treated Mr. E., a
gentleman living in Acacia Road, St. John’s Wood, for
this disease. It was a pretty severe attack, though not
confluent. The itching and tingling of the face at the
time of maturation, were so distressing, that I was sent
for specially to know if I could recommend any local
application. Recollecting the power which the Hydrastis
exerts upon irritated mucous membranes, and upon
irritable wounds and surfaces generally, I ordered the
face to be dabbed with a cold infusion of the Hydrastis,
a small portion being warmed for each application. The
relief Mr. E. experienced was instantaneous as well as
complete and lasting. The swelling of the face also
subsided quickly; and the case proceeded with more
than ordinary rapidity to a happy issue.
No second
1
�2
A NEW METHOD
case occurred in the house: a point of importance, which
I request the reader to bear in mind.
The next case I will record occurred last summer,
when I was called back to town to attend a friend, who
was the subject of a formidable attack of confluent small
pox. When I first saw him, he had been under treat
ment for several days by a colleague, who visited some
of my patients during my customary autumn vacation.
Although the case was so severe, there was no decidedly
bad symptom. However, I had reason for apprehension,
because H. P., Esq., had experienced an attack of scarla
tina the year before, which had much weakened him, and
left his constitution exposed to mischief from so grave an
attack as the present.
When I entered his bed-room, I was shocked at his
appearance. His handsome chiselled features, capable of
a delicate and versatile play which has made him a
favourite with the public, were almost undiscernible in
the huge carneous head, bossed and buttoned all over
with the rising eruption of confluent small-pox. His
eyes were closed up in the general swelling. The erup
tion extended pretty evenly over the body; and in many
parts was confluent there also.
I saw him on the 7th of August, and found general
fever rumiing high; pulse quick; immense congestion
about the head; and all the appearances, were it not for
the varioloid boutons which were so thickly arising, of
intense erysipelas of the head.
I prescribed at once a mixed lotion of Veratrum Viride
and Hydrastis, and gave the same remedies internally
in rapid alternation. Slops and a watery diet were
enjoined.
On the 8th there was still great swelling of the head
and neck; the pulse however was lower, and the same
remedies were continued.
On the 9th, a marked subsidence had taken place; the
�3
OF TREATING SMALL-EOX.
eyes could be opened; the pulse was reduced to 80; the
pustules were changing colour; the face and neck though
encased, occasioned but little suffering. There was hi
fact none of the usual irritation accompanying this
disease.
On the 10th, the improvement was still more marked,
and the fever and local hiflammation had so completely
departed, that the Veratrum Viride was discontinued, the
Hydrastis' alone being applied, and administered inter
nally; and this was continued for some days.
The history of the case is now told: the combat
between the small-pox and the ( Veratrum Viride and)
Hydrastis was ended by the 14th, when weakness was
the only complaint left. I ought to have mentioned that
my friend had been suffering from constitutional debility
up to the period of the attack I am recording, and was
in a most unfavourable condition for either repelling or re
covering from small-pox. Under other treatment, I think
it reasonable to suppose he would have succumbed to it.
After the first subsidence of the fever, I allowed him
wine and beaf tea, grapes, bananas, peaches, &c. &c.,
only limiting the quantity so as not to add gastric irrita
tion to the presence of the existing disorder.
On the 15th, he complained of great weakness of the
eyes, for which he had Euphrasia and Sulphur.
On the 18th, when he ought to have been at home for
my visit, he was away in Kensington Gardens.
No one else in rather a populous house near the Strand
took the complaint, to my knowledge; his wife, whose
face is a familiar one all over England, waited upon him
with tender assiduity, and slept in a recess opening from
his room, and escaped the infection. A devoted friend
came and received his instructions, and spent whole days
with him, and was unscathed.
The chief points I noticed in the case were:—1. The
rapidity with which the erysipelatous swelling accom*
1
�4
A NEW METHOD
panyiiig the disease, and the fever, yielded to the Vera
trum Viride and Hydrastis. 2. The absence of the
customary irritation both on face and body (the lotion
was applied wherever there was swelling or pain). 3.
As a consequence of this, the absence of the usual in
centive to pick or scratch the face. 4. The absence of
the odour which is characteristic of this disease in such
violent cases, involving so large an amount of suppuration
and scab as there was in this instance. 5. The rapid
convalescence in so delicate a patient. 6. The apparent
arrest of the infectious properties of the disease. 7. The
pitting was less than I have seen after such an ordeal;
it rather amounts to a general graining and alteration
of the complexion: in short, there is hardly any pitting,
and not a trace of seaming. What alteration there is,
would, I believe, have been considerably reduced had I
had the opportunity of applying the Hydrastis from the
first, and of stopping the fever and inflammation at the
outset; which might have been done without fail by the
early application and administration of the Veratrum
Viride and Hydrastis.
Case 2.—On the morning of the 13th of November,
1863,1 was consulted by M. W., Esq., who was suffering
under indigestion and malaise, and under some alarm about
small-pox, which was prevalent in the neighbourhood of
Covent Garden, and had attacked one of the work-people
belonging to his own establishment. For some days I
gave him Antim. crud., Rhus, Belladonna, and Aconite,
according to the symptoms present; and the small-pox,
a severe case of the noil-confluent degree, manifested
itself on the 16th. The fever and sore throat ran very
high, and for these he had Rhus and Bell., and Carbonate
of Ammonia in sensible doses. I saw him again in the
evening, and found no dangerous condition, but the same
symptoms maintained.
�OF TREATING SMALL-FOX.
5
On the 17th he was going on favourably, the pustules
were steadily evolving themselves. This gentleman
labours under a polypus of the nose, and perhaps this
circumstance had determined the pustule-producing
irritation more severely than usual to the throat, the
soreness in which was excessive, and the appearance
alarming. Great groups of pustules covered the pala
tine arches, the tonsils, the uvula, and the pendent poly
pus ; and the appearance, to a superficial observer, might
have suggested severe diphtheria m its earlier stage.
The distress was great, and in the evening of the same
day, when prostration set in, I gave him Hydrastis and
Baptisia alternately.
On the 18th a great change for the better had taken
place; he had had a good night, the throat was relieved,
though the pustules were still maturating; those which
studded the tongue all over were comparatively painless,
and the collapse, which had amounted to fainting, had
passed entirely away. He was allowed the Hungarian
wine Carlovitz, beef tea, and fruit, all of which he now
enjoyed.
The irritation of the face, which was considerable,
was, as usual, extinguished by the application of Hy
drastis in lotion; and wherever the accompanying cel
lulitis was severe, the Veratrum Viride did its unfailing
work in a few half-hours. This patient, who is a man of
talent, was struck with surprise at the immediate effect
of the Hydrastis lotions, and never failed to laud the
beneficent drug, and the discovery of its application.
So impressed was he with the rapid relief he had ex
perienced, that he sent the remedy to a poor girl, one of
his factory people, who was suffering under small-pox;
though whether it was applied or not, I have not heard.
He fully admitted what great things had been done for
him.
Under the action of these remedies the case proceeded
�6
A NEW METHOD
most satisfactorily. Irritation and inflammation were
annulled, picking of the face was prevented, and pitting;
the effluvium of the disease was cancelled, and no second
case occurred in the family. On the 3rd of December,
when he had been long convalescent, I saw him for the
last time, previous to his going to the sea-side.
In this case I only regret that I did not use the
Hydrastis from the very first, but waited until secondary
irritation and cellulitis were developed. One lives and
learns; and really, when I treated this gentleman, the
full power and import of these new means had but im
perfectly dawned upon me.
However, it was in this house that it first struck me
that in Hydrastis we have perhaps a prophylactic against
small-pox; a medicinal counterpart to vaccination. Certain
it is that Hydrastis^ locally applied, produces vesicular
and pustular inflammations of the skin and sub-dermoid
cellular tissues, and thus is, to some extent, locally Homoeo
pathic ; as vaccination is surgically Homoeopathic to the
same complaint. Accordingly, I administered to the mem
bers of this family small doses of Hydrastis tincture; and
this practise I shall continue in other cases, secure that
no harm can come of it. Dor experience has taught me
its power over varioloid disease, and if a neighbourhood
is invaded by the poison which communicates small-pox
to susceptible individuals, the whole neighbourhood
doubtless suffers in health and cleanness, though not in
the manner of that specific disease; and the Hydrastis
may counterwork the poison, even as it extinguishes the
formed cases of the epidemic. It seems reasonable that
the best cure to the sufferer should, in appropriate doses,
be the best preservative and tonic to the non-sufferers.
And though the point is difficult to prove, it is well to
persevere in the practice.
But perhaps one reason of the difficulty of proving the
preservative virtue of Hydrastis against small-pox may
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
7
be, that Hydrastis lotions and baths, by saturating,
coating, and altering the scabs, pieces, and dust of the
infected surface, do actually kill the reproducing powers
of the said morbific parts and particles. This may be
proved by experiment, by trying inoculation with small
pox matter with and without a mixture of Hydrastis;
and I commend the demonstration to the small-pox
hospitals. In the same manner, it seems probable, that
any remedy which will extinguish a disease, will also
destroy the infectibility of its particles and effluvia,
which opens a wide field for the application of Hydrastis
Baths in small-pox, and in those who fear it; of Bella
donna Baths in scarlatina, &c. &c. &c.
Case III.—On November 25, 1863, I was visited by
Miss L. J., set. 23, who was suffering from a sudden
acute pain in the back, and a blotchy, almost continuous
red eruption, not unlike measles, on the legs and thighs,
accompanied by great prostration. I prescribed Rhus
and Capsicum.
On the 27th she visited me again; her symptoms
were unchanged, but the rash had extended and had
become scarlet. Continue Rhus and Capsicum.
I was called to see Miss L. J., at her own home,
69, St. John’s Wood Terrace, on the 29th of Novem
ber, and found her labouring under small-pox, un
interruptedly confluent on the face and arms; while
the legs, thighs, and lower body were covered with an
eruption of purple petechial spots like the worst form of
measles. The eruption on the face and arms was one
shining vesicular button-work, accompanied already with
much swelling. I prescribed Phosphorus and Veratrum
Viride and a lotion of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis
.combined, to the skin externally.
December 2nd. The eruption proceeding; pulse 98.
She seems weaker. She left off the Veratrum Viride
�8
A NEW METHOD
and used Hydrastis alone and Hydrastis lotion. I saw
her again in ’ the evening; and only chronicled in my
note-book, “Fearful eruption. Hydrastis, wine and
brandy.” The patient is literally enveloped in a huge
bag of small-pox. Hydrastis lotions all over face and
body frequently.
December 3rd and 4th. Matters remained unchanged;
she still lived, and the eruption developed itself. On the
4th I learned that she had had her period ever since the
attack began. Continue Hydrastis in alternation with
Sabina.
December 5th. Already the eruption is peeling well
on the face. She has a most distressing cough, and her
voice is nearly lost; the period still continues. She is
to take Hydrastis, Bryonia, and Baptisia.
December 6th. The eyes and face are appearing; she
has no itching, and consequently no tendency to pick
herself. There is no pitting in the spaces where the skin
now begins to be visible. Immense development and
size of the pustular covering, for there are no distinct
pustules on the body and feet; petechial blackness, like
dark blood and water, over the whole of that part of the
eruption. No irritation; no secondary fever; no delirium
at night. Her cough and laryngeal symptoms continue
severe. Continue Hydrastis with Hepar Sulphuris, and
Hydrastis lotions to the whole body.
December 7th. Her throat symptoms are worse; pulse
96. Constant laryngeal cough. Her face continues to
peel; she still has no itching, and complains of nothing
but a heavy strap or saddle of scab on the nose and lips.
I administered Belladonna and Hepar, and occasionallv
also Baptisia and
Viride.
In the evening I paid her a second visit, and found
the cough much relieved; a result which she attributed
to the Veratrum Viride, which has a great expectorant
and resolvent power, Continue the Hydrastis ablutions.
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
9
December 8th. I could report her better; cough re
duced; no fever; no delirium; no itching; and what
struck her mother, who attended upon her, there was no
unpleasant odour from the skin, although the quantity of
sanious suppuration, modified only by the Hydrastis,
could not be exceeded on the same space of skin.
Dec. 9th and 10th.—Going on favourably. She is,
however, depressed about her future prospects. She is
a public singer, and has long been overworked and ex
hausted, and always of a delicate frame and health.
To-day her voice is low. The eruption peels apace. Con
tinue Hydrastis, and Veratrum Viride.
Her mother also has one spurious but decided pustule
on the arm, together with pain in the back, and general
malaise. She dabs her daughter all over with the lotion
many times a day, and doubtless has been inoculated
with the disease.
Dec. 11th.—Bryonia was given occasionally for the
cough; also Hydrastin for the conjoint purpose of specific
to the disease, and tonic to the stomach.
Dec. 17th.—Going on well; but weak. Hydrastis
and Xanthoxyllin.
Jan. 5.—Wonderfully well, and little pitted: there is
only one deep pit on the face, where I myself pulled off a
piece of the coating; the rest of the skin exhibits a fine
graining, which will be almost imperceptible in a twelve
month. I gave her Hydrastis, n. 30, in pilules, to go on
with, to keep up the general action of this benign drug
upon the system.
There are one or two points in this case which require
to be brought out into greater prominence. And 1st,
as to one which I have omitted till now—the diet.
Throughout the disease she had beef tea, port wine, and
brandy ad libitum, even at first, when the swelling and
inflammation were at the height. The case was erysipe
latous, typhoid, and putrescent, and happily responded
�10
A NEW METHOD
to free nutrition and stimulation. 2nd. The Hydrastis
lotions, the strongest that could be made, were most
assiduously applied, and always with a feeling of comfort
to the patient. The main treatment of the disease was,
I believe, local. At one period of the complaint, the
lotions to the legs, which were uncovered for the pur
pose, produced a chill that it was desirable to avoid; and
these lotions were therefore abandoned for a few days.
Doubtless, as a general rule, they ought to be applied
warm.
In the course of this case, another sister took scarlet
fever, for which I treated her. I mention this to show
the state of the house (69, St. John’s Wood Terrace),
in which L. J. was attacked by small-pox. A few
weeks previously a person had died of cerebral typhus
on the ground floor; also a child, which I did not at
tend, has since died of scarlatina on the second floor;
and two of L. J.’s sisters took scarlatina and recovered
from it. The drains of the house smelt abominably; and
all the circumstances conspired to produce the putrescent
type of small-pox which I have recorded. Nevertheless,
among L. J.’s numerous family, cooped up in one small
landing, no second case of small-pox occurred, excepting
the case of Mrs. J., by inoculation.
The marvellous power exerted by the Hydrastis over
the irritation and itching which constitute one of the
most troublesome features of this disease, extends also
to the similar symptoms in chicken pox; in which, how
ever, a weaker solution can be used, especially in the case
of children. The terrible itching of jaundice I have also
relieved at once by lotions, or still better by a medicated
bath, of Veratrum Viride.
Had one all the conveniences which exist in first-class
houses, or which are at hand in a small-pox hospital, my
treatment of small-pox in any bad case would be very
simple. As soon as the disease is recognized, and if pos-
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
11
sible before the eruption appears, I should give Veratrum
Viride and Hydrastis internally; and when the eruption
is declared I should continue them, with sufficient energy
to control the fever, and reduce the swelling of the parts;
and chicken broth, mutton broth, beef tea, wine and
brandy, as sedatives, and to keep the stomach alive and
active for the great demands made upon the vital powers.
Notwithstanding the apparent incongruity of the two
practices, I find them answer well in typhoid erysipelas
and carbuncle; and I know they will not disappoint us
here. Then I should give immersion baths, at 96 deg.
and upwards, of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis in com
bination at first; a bath every six hours: sponging the
frame also with lotions of the same, at intervals accord
ing to the exigency of symptoms and circumstances. If
the baths cause faintness, supply strength by judicious
stimulants. The fever and swelling soon subsiding, I
should rely upon Hydrastis baths, and lotions, and upon
the internal exhibition also of Hydrastis ; supplementing
it where needful by other remedies. Of these, perhaps
the most valuable where stomatitis in its worst form
occurs, or where the typhoid and putrescent tendency
threatens more and more, is the Baptisia Tinctoria, a
God-sent addition to the armoury of medicine against
fevers. The baths, I have reason to believe from what
I have seen already, would cut short the disease, and
probably render the one-twentieth part of the eruption
which would be left, amply sufficient to satisfy Nature
in her presumed expulsion of materies morbi, so necessary
in theoretical medicine. For I apprehend that the ex
tension and maturation of the pustules may fairly be a
local development and infection; and thus that there is
no more harm in arresting the greater part of the erup
tion, than there is in curing itch or favus by local
administrations.
These new medicines I have used in the concentrated
�12
A NEW METHOD
tinctures, but in small doses. Knowing as I do the truth
of the Homoeopathic law, and the power that infinitesi
mal doses exert under that law, I shall not be surprised
to find that dilutions produce excellent results internally
in small-pox; yet I have thought it safest at first to
handle powers which are unmistakeable.
Thus it will be seen I would treat the case simply as a
form of erysipelas from the beginning, and no more
think of allowing it to run its course, than I would allow
erysipelas to pursue its destructive way.
Time will
show how far the disease can be extinguished after it has
declared itself; but I believe it can be extinguished in
any stage, though best, of course, nearest to its commence
ment. If it can be thus cut short, the Veratrum Viride
will be the prime agent in producing this effect. Other
wise, when pustulation has occurred, and when the ac
companying cellulitis has given way to Veratrum Viride,
the Hydrastis is the remedy to be relied on for neu
tralizing the developed materies morbi, and abolishing its
irritation; also for coating it, and preventing its diffusion
and re-absorption.
When one comes to think of it, the spread of zymotic
diseases in the body itself, by combined infection and
contagion, seems very probable. From my experience,
I infer that part after part of the organs and tissues
catches the small-pox; and that each pustule enlarges
by the same law. A little leaven, after the disease
becomes palpable, leavens the lump. If this be so, the
disease should be arrested in its centres of development;
which I have already proved to be possible hi several
stages.
For in the cases I have treated, the disease has been
struck dead (if I may use a strong expression) just at
the point where the Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis were
used decisively; and the removal of the destruction has
been the only work remaining to be accomplished.
�OF TREATING SMALL-POX.
13
The complications in the last case (L. J.’s) were suffi
ciently formidable. The most unhealthy circumstances,
a pestilential house, petechial eruption, menorrhagia,
intense laryngeal and bronchial irritation, confluent
small-pox; yet all these conditions yielded to the com
bined powers of Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis; and on
the 21st of March of this year I had the delight of
meeting L. J. at my door in blooming health; the cutis
unattacked, and only the surface of the complexion
grained and slightly reddened by the disease.
Since L. J.’s recovery she has resumed her public
singing, but her voice is quite altered from soprano to
contralto; what voice she has got is much stronger than
it was before. During the disease her eyebrows came
off, but they have now grown again. She told me at
our last interview that she never felt any pain all the
time she was ill.
The method of treatment with Veratrum Viride
baths, is, I feel convinced, equally applicable in scarlatina;
and from the huge diaphoretic power of the drug ad
ministered internally and externally, I should expect it
to produce resolution in the most serious anginose
affections of the throat. I speak especially of cases
where Belladonna is insufficient.
In the small-pox in sheep, a very destructive disease,
and one which it behoves us for sanitary reasons to re
gard very anxiously, the same remedies could easily be
applied to whole flocks. Any number of sheep might
be driven through Veratrum Viride and Hydrastis baths,
with a small cost of labour several times a-day, and the
disease be limited, cured and extinguished. I commend
the subject to Professor Simonds, the Royal Agricultural
Society of England, and the Veterinary College.
The Hydrastis ought to be an inexpensive drug; the
swamps of Canada, stimulated by the wants of this side
of the water, will speedily yield enough to treat the
�14
ERYSIPELAS.
whole small-pox cases of the world. The Veratrum
Viride in its concentrated tincture is a little more
costly; but I presume it can be supplied of uniform
strength to almost any amount from the laboratories of
Messrs. Keith, and of Messrs. Tilden, of New York.
But I strongly advise the public to demand the American
preparation, and not to be satisfied without an assurance
from the chemist that the concentrated tincture is not of
British manufacture. Of the English preparation I only
know that it has neither the appearance nor the qualities
of the American, and that time and even life may be
lost by using it.
II.
Erysipelas.
The triumph of Veratrum Viride locally applied to
pure erysipelas, is as complete as the art of medicine
can desire. Diversity of cases of course requires cor
responding diversity of treatment; yet, from no slight
experience, I can declare that the Veratrum Viride is a
cardinal remedy in the disease now in question.
The first case in which I employed it was that of a
girl, servant to Lewin, the chimney-sweeper, of St.
John’s Wood. She came "with a raised erysipelatous
swelling on the forehead, exquisitely painful, and rapidly
extending. I painted it over with a camel’s hair brush,
•with the concentrated tincture. She returned next
morning, and reported the almost instantaneous subsi
dence and disappearance of the complaint, which never
returned. Since then I have known no case of failure
with this drug locally applied in erysipelas.
When I remember my old days of treating this dis
order, and the terrible cases I have witnessed—cases
rendered terrible by the inefficiency of the means at
�ERYSIPELAS.
15
hand for their suppression, and in which the best treat
ment was the disfiguring method of painting over the
whole head of the patient, scalp and all, with lunar
caustic,—when I remember these days, I am thankful
that a means so simple as a lotion of Veratrum Viride.,
coupled with plenty of stimulants and concentrated
nutriments, should avail to arrest the complaint, and
extinguish it rapidly, without suppuration, with no
suffering, and at small cost to the vital powers.
Case I.—May 21, 1863, I visited Miss M., in the
village of H., near London. She had been labouring
under erysipelas for some days, and I found her in a
typhoid state, with the pulse weak, quick, and fluttering,
the manner hurried, the tongue fleshy red, and dry hi
the centre; and vesicular erysipelas, with painful bulging
swelling considerably developed on the face and the
forehead. She is evidently a person of very feeble con
stitution. I prescribed Belladonna and Rhus internally,
and lotions of Veratrum Viride to be kept constantly
applied to the swelled parts.
Beef tea, brandy, port
wine, and the Hungarian wine Carlovitz, were taken in
alternation, according to want and weakness. I visited
her again at night, and ordered her to continue the same
treatment.
May 22.—Miss M. is better; the swelling subsiding.
There has been no action on the bowels for several days.
Podophyllum and Rhus internally; Veratrum Viride.) ex
ternally. Soups and stimulants continued.
May 23.—The swelling abated, but the face of a dark
purple hue; Arsenicum and Rhus internally.
May 24.—Going on well; but during this and many
subsequent days flushes of erysipelas of the area of a
hen’s egg occur in various parts of the scalp, and are put
down and smoothed away by a cap of Veratrum Viride
lotion.
�16
ERYSIPELAS.
May 25.—The right ear is attacked, and the swelling
promptly taken down by the same means. The Arsenicum
and Rhus are continued the meanwhile.
May 26.—I paid her an early visit, and found her
labouring under great prostration. Hydrastis and Carlo
Vegetabilis were prescribed. Saw her twice that day.
So also on the 27th. She then had a painful cough and
laryngeal symptoms. I gave her Cocculus and Apis,
and an occasional dose of Bromine, which I find to be a
first-class remedy in laryngeal as well as in pulmonary
complications. There seems no doubt that the erysipelas
is flying from organ to organ, and from the skin to the
internal parts. She continues the local application of
the Veratrum Viride wherever the disease appears, and
always with speedy result.
May 28—30.—She improves; but there is still prostra
tion, and dry tongue, with considerable soreness of the
mouth; also drowsiness, and apathetic countenance. I
gave her Baptisia and Opium, and on the 31st found her
decidedly mending. On the 3rd of June she had Bap
tisia and Myricin in alternation for the sore mouth and
dry tongue. On the 5th the tongue was healthy, and
she continued the Myricin, but in combination with Nux
Vomica. I took leave of her on the 8th of June, when
she was fairly well, and in excellent spirits.
This case may be considered in a twofold aspect. First,
as a case of nervous gastric fever with a strong typhoid
tendency. Secondly, as a case of erysipelas of the face
and head. I have seldom seen a more threatening case hi
both regards than was Miss M.’s at the beginning. The
treatment was twofold; local and general. The general
treatment, to anticipate a question in the medical reader’s
mind, did not arrest the erysipelas, which reappeared
in part after part, travelling about over the face, neck,
and cranium. The Veratrum Viride in a few hours did
arrest it, and ultimately suppressed and extinguished it.
�ERYSIPELAS.
17
No suppuration occurred, and no subsequent delicacy or
soreness of the parts; no tendency either to return of
the disease. My patient also has been remarkably well
ever since.
T&e Baptisia was of evident service in arresting the
typhoid tendency which displayed itself throughout a
large portion of this case. It is an admirable remedy
where Rhus does not succeed, and is very valuable as a local
application to sores that threaten a gangrenous termination.
This case lasted eighteen days, from the beginning of
my treatment to the convalescence: an unusually short
period, considering the feeble constitution, the intensity
of the local disease, its obstinacy of re-appearance, and
the typhoid complication; considering also that I was
not called in until the disease was dangerously established.
Case II.—In January, 1863, a low type of fever attended
occasionally with erysipelas, prevailed in my neighbour
hood, and afforded me several opportunities of putting my
local treatment successfully in practice. Of these cases I
have no detailed notes: only a register from day to day.
The following are some particulars of them.
Jan. 14th.—Caroline Bray, get. 3, was seized with
fever, and swelling (erysipelatous) of the vulva, for which
I prescribed Aconite and Belladonna, and cold water on
rags to the part.
Jan. 15th.—The parts are better, but covered with
white blisters. Bell, and Rhus.
Jan 19th.—Erysipelas on the body. Bell, and Rhus.
10 drops of brandy in water frequently.
Jan. 22.—Drowsy and costive. Podophyll.
Jan. 23rd.—Low and comatose. Leg and foot much
swollen. The erysipelas moving upwards. Great suffer
ing. Bell, and Veratrum Viride.
Jan. 24th.—No better. Erysipelas extending up
wards. Cough. Aeon. and Bryonia.
2
�18
ERYSIPELAS.
Jan. 25th.—Relieved.
Jan. 26th.—Transfer of disease to windpipe. Seems
dying. Injections of wine and beef tea:—Bromine, Apis,
and Sulphate of Atropine.
Jan. 27th.—-Relieved. Continue.
Jan. 30th.—A large blister has appeared on the feet.
Bryonia and Rhus.
Feb. 1st.—Erysipelas on the head. Sleepy. Bell, and
Tart. Emet.
. Feb. 2nd.—Sloughing. Ulceration of the foot. Ery
sipelas going on. Continue.
Feb. 3rd.—Erysipelas all over the body. Veratrum
Viride lotions all over. Bell, and Phosph, internally.
•Feb. 5th.—Relieved. Mercurius Corrosivus lotion to
foot. Continue Veratrum Viride to the whole skin.
Feb. 11th.—Abscess in the neck. Continue.
Feb. 13th.—Abscesses. Calcar. Phosphorata. Con
tinue Veratrum Viride.
Feb. 23rd. Continue Calcar. Phosph, and Veratrum
Viride. In a few days after the little patient was pretty
well.
This case, of typhoid fever, with a complication of
erysipelas, which traversed the entire skin, and visited
some of the internal organs, was virtually cured from the
first application of the Veratrum Viride. I pursued
the travelling fire from part to part, and trod it • out un
failingly under the feet of this drug. None of the other
medicaments appeared to me to face the disease;—the
Veratrum Viride previously tried internally was not
effectual.
Let me add, that this patient lived in a
neighbourhood that might well be a nest of fever; and
had a very bad constitution to begin with. My first
experience with her had been to cure her of a scrofulous
swelling of the bone and periosteum of the thumb, at
tended with ulceration—and for which amputation was
proposed—by lotions of Mercurius Corrosivus. Brandy
�19
ERYSIPELAS.
and wine were given freely throughout the above case,
and nutrient injections persevered with. Had I to treat
the case again, the differences would be, that I should
employ the Veratrum Viride from the first; and that
instead of the Mercurius Corrosivus lotion, which how
ever did service, I should use a lotion made with
Cantharidis. The reason of this latter will appear in
the subsequent pages. I did not use the Veratrum
Viride earlier; because, up to this case, I had always been
accustomed to paint it on the surface in the concentrated
form, and the surface here was too extensive: this de
flected my mind from the Veratrum Viride. It was,
however, with this child that I made the discovery
that Veratrum Viride lotions are so effectual in even the
worst cases of typhoid erysipelas, provided stimulants
and nutrient broths are given persistently. The injec
tions of wine and beef tea kept the child alive till the
Veratrum Viride arrived on the scene.
It would also be well, whenever such cases occur, to
employ the warm bath every six hours, medicated with
Veratrum Viride.
Case III.—Jan. 16th, 1863.—I was summoned to
Mrs. D., my coachman’s wife, already under medical
treatment for erysipelas of the head, and rapidly getting
worse. Rhus, and Bell. Brandy and Burton ale. Her
baby at the breast also has the same disease.
Jan. 19th—Erysipelas better, but dry, baked tongue.
Arsen, and Rhus.—Baby: Bell, and Rhus.; and brandy,
ten drops every two hours. It is hardly necessary to
pursue the daily register of these cases. They were
treated with the usual remedies, but also the Veratrum
Viride lotions were persistently applied, and with the
best results. The disease had done some of its destroy
ing work before I saw the patients; and hence the con
valescence was prolonged, and the baby had large
*
9
�20
INFLAMMATION OF THE SPINE.
abscesses on the body, which, however, healed easily,
and have left no bad health behind them. The efficacy
of the remedy at a late stage of the malady, seems
comfortably established by these three latter instances.
I will now give a few cases illustrating the action of
Veratrum Viride as a local remedy in various inflam
matory complaints.
III.
Inflammation of the Spine with Rheumatism.
Master K. C., set. 6, has been ill since the 1st January,
1864, when he took a severe cold and had violent shiver
ing : from this he partially recovered, but on the 15th
relapsed, had pains in the limbs and lower part of the
stomach, swelling of the joints, and flat red spots on the
skin, with lossof power in the legs. Since January 22nd, he
has been attacked with rheumatic pains, and when I paid
him my first visit on January 27th, I found him sitting
half-up in bed, and was informed that he had passed a
night of great suffering. He was feverish, and pulse 120.
He could not stand without being quite held up, and
indeed had lost the use of his legs. This led me to
examine his spine, where I found the pain was concen
trated ; and in a portion of the lumbar spine I detected
extreme tenderness on pressure, and even on contact,
betokening acute inflammation. I at once ordered baths
of Veratrum Viride, the same remedy locally to the
pained part as a constant application; and Veratrum
Viride and Podophylline internally, at short intervals.
Jan. 28.—He was greatly relieved. All the pain in
the spine was gone. He had no tenderness on pressure.
His pulse was 84, and he was able to stand by himself.
Jan. 29th.—He was well except a remainder of
�INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB.
21
rheumatic cold (for which I left him Bryonia and Ledum);
and a thick rash covering the loins. Here the case
terminated, I saw him no more; the rash gradually sub
sided after his taking considerable quantities of port
wine and nutriment; and his father has since informed
me that in a few weeks his usual health returned, and
he has been well ever since.
Had I not used the local remedy, the spinal inflam
mation and the consequent paralysis would have lasted
I know not how much longer; had I not used the Vera
trum Viride and Podophylline internally, these formidable
affections might have endured for weeks or months.
IV.
Inflammation of the Womb following Pregnancy.
Some days after her confinement, Mrs. P. sent for me
to relieve the inflammatory symptoms under which she
was suffering. I found high fever, very quick pulse,
and acute tenderness all over the abdomen, but especially
over the uterus; acute tenderness also in the vagina.
The perineum had been ruptured in the birth, and there
was great soreness of the external organs. I prescribed
the Ferafr’wz Viride and Podophylline internally, and in
three or four days all the threatening symptoms had
subsided.
This case occurred some years since, and at that time
I was not aware of the cardinal importance of Veratrum
Viride locally, and by immersion baths to the skin; or I
believe two days, perhaps one, would have done the
work of four. For the last six years I have treated
many cases of uterine and ovarian congestion and in
flammation with the same means, and always with one
result; indeed I can scarcely think that any case of
puerperal peritonitis, taken anywhere near its commence
�22
OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
ment, would resist the sedative and resolvent powers of
the Veratrum Viride and Podophylline combined, with the
bath of the former medicine, or of both together, ac
cording to urgency.
V.
Chronic Inflammation of the Right Ovary.
Mrs. D., a lady residing in Yorkshire, consulted me
by letter on Feb. 28th, 1863. The account she gives is
that in autumn, 1861, she experienced slight pain only
on moving, and this pain has continued ever since, and
increases whenever she is weak. For the last two or
three months, and especially for the last few weeks, the
pain has been much worse. There has been marked
increase of pain since the 21st of February. On moving
the pain is like a sprain; but often when she is still there
is a shooting pain, which goes through the body with
throbbing, like twitches from proud flesh in a wound.
Sudden movement gives acute pain; stooping causes pain
from a little below the waist all along the right side,
with a feeling like giving way; lifting has the same effect.
Touch does not increase the pain, but pressure gives re
lief. Externally there is a swelled ridge on the lower
part of the right side of the abdomen, just beside the
thigh, it feels firm like a muscle or ligament. For a
week the pain has extended to the hip, and nearly to the
waist. On examination by her medical attendant last
evening, a pufly swelling was discovered a little above
the other, soft, and reaching to the hip. The pain is
worst the first thing in the morning; moving, dressing,
coughing, sneezing, aggravate it. She is now forty-six
years of age, and had no menses from thirty to forty-four.
For two years she has had slight catamenia, lasting two
days, and dark brown in colour. I ordered Veratrum
�OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
23
Viride locally, to be kept constantly applied; and also
■Veratrum Viride and Podophylline internally.
March 17th. The report is that the pain and swelling
have been much reduced by the Veratrum, Viride. The
higher swelling about the right ovary is almost gone;
and the pain there has well-nigh subsided. The lower
swelling inside the thigh, and the pain there, continue.
There is weakness and pain in the rectum; and for
fourteen days there have been painful internal piles, and
profuse bleeding with the evacuations. She has been
subject to this for many years. Continue the Veratrum
Viride and Podophylline for another fortnight, with
Tannic Acid at mid-day.
April 7th.—The piles ceased rapidly under the Tannic
Acid. The ovarian pain is subdued. The side pain—
arthritic-uterine—is no better.
It seems fixed inside
the thigh and hip, and is always felt in walking. Some
times lately she has had similar pains in the right kneeI gave her Macrotin.
April 22nd.—She consulted me personally, and I found
the status quo described at the last report maintained.
The only phenomenon elicited on examination was con
siderable relaxation of the womb.
She suffered after this from some return of the con
gestive ovarian pain, occasioned, as I presume, by the
shaking of her long journey, but which was again relieved
by the means which were successful at first; and I took
my leave of her on the 11th of May, prescribing Podophyll. and Hamamelis internally, and Tannic Acid occa
sionally for piles, should they recur.
I cite this case, not that the uterine disorder was
cured, but to show how rapidly and readily the super
ficial ovarian symptoms were extinguished by the simple
means which I employed.
The following letter from Mrs. D., whom I had not
heard of for a year, brings the record of her case to the
�24
OVARIAN INFLAMMATION.
present time. At an interview May 3rd, 1864, I found
her still labouring under occasional piles and slight pro
lapsus; the womb somewhat flaccid, and a little low
down; the rectum and its tissues also swollen and
bulging forward. She reports that the piles are always
relieved by Tannic Acid. She looks far better than
when I saw her last, and admits to greatly improved health
in the past fifteen months. As a more radical measure
for the hemorrhoidal sufferings, she is to have Collins.
Canad. n. 12, a pilule at night: Juglandin in the morn
ing, and Leptandria at noon; and of course the Veratrum
Viride whenever the ovarian and uterine swelling
threatens.
“ In February, 1863,1 applied to Dr. W. for treatment
under an affection, which he pronounced to be ‘con
gestive swelling of the right ovarium and surrounding
tissues.’ I was also suffering in another way from what
he designated, ‘ uterine symptoms, of old duration, and
the basis of the rest.’ For the relief of both, he pre
scribed the use of the tincture of Veratrum Viride.
After using the lotion as just directed, with bandage, for
about two weeks, the swelling was dispersed, and the
accompanying extremely painful sensations quite relieved.
On every occasion of their return in any measure, (but they
have never been so severe again since first relieved), I
have re-applied the lotion, latterly in its midiluted form,
(z.e., the pure tincture,) and by painting the part. And I
have invariably found relief. At the end of the year and
three months my general health is much improved, and
though liable still to a recurrence of the old symptoms
after any extra exertion or excitement, I am relieved in
a most important degree from anxiety and sufferings by
having within reach this valuable remedy.”
In the accessions of inflammation which accompany
�MENINGITIS.
25
tuberculous deposits and ulcerations of the bowels, the
Veratrum Viride lotion, covered in with gutta-percha
tissue, will abate the inflammation, pain and swelling with
great rapidity, though it exert no influence upon the
foundations of the disease.
VI.
Earache with impending Meningitis.
Nov. 29th, 1863.—I saw Miss Jessie B., set. 12, and
found her labouring under acute earache, for which I
prescribed Belladonna and Podophylline. When I called
the next afternoon, she was suffering great agony,
and so impatient of delay, that the family sent to a
medical friend in the neighbourhood, pending my arrival.
He agreed with me that the brain symptoms were
serious, and suggested the continuance of Belladonna.
The pains were acute, lancinating and stabbing, on the
middle of the line of the longitudinal sinus; the irrita
bility was extreme, and there was complete intolerance
of light. I prescribed Veratrum Viride and Podophylline
alternately; and also constant lotions of Veratrum Viride
to, in, and around the ear, and also over the whole scalp,
especially over the seat of pain; the lotions to be covered
in with gutta-percha tissue.
Dec. 1st.—Early in the morning I found her much
better; the pains almost gone, and all the symptoms
abated. Continue Feratfmw Viride and Podophylline at
longer intervals: also Veratrum Viride lotions. At night
the pulse had sunk to 80, and she was going on most
favourably.
Dec. 2nd.—Improvement still continues. In the even
ing, however, the earache and headache returned a little,
and I gave her Belladonna and Pulsatilla in between the
other medicines. After this time she had no return of
�26
MENINGITIS.
her symptoms. As a precaution she continued the
Belladonna and Pulsatilla, and then Bell, and Sulphur,
and Bell, and Hepar till the 10th of December, when
she went down into the country.
The Veratrum Viride was the agent in this case which,
on its local application, rapidly cancelled all the alarming
symptoms. I cannot demonstrate this to the reader,
who was not present at the case; but it was clear to the
patient, the nurse, and myself. The other medicines, in
infinitesimal doses, appeared afterwards to exert their
usual beneficial effects. But without the Veratrum
Viride and Pod. premised, the issue of the case in so
congestive and inflammatory a subject, would, I believe,
have been doubtful; and, at least, the duration of the
illness would have been longer, and the consequences
less completely abolished.
I do not know any inflammatory complaint affecting
the body, especially of the more rapid sort, to which
this or similar local and general skin treatment ought
not to be applied. Take congestive inflammation of the
liver. A theoretical account of it is, that the hepatic
nervous centres, the governing powers of the organ, are
weakened by some cause—by exhaustion, morbid poison,
or some other. The nerve-weakness allows the blood to
collect in the non-resistent, or non-contractile blood
vessels; and a blood-swelling of the organ takes place,
congestion, the first step of, or to, inflammation. You
give medicines by the mouth to relieve this state of
things; you propagate a telegraphic, or what they call a
reflex-action from the mouth and mucous membrane of
the stomach and bowels to the nerves of the liver, and so
to the blood-vessels. But why not also, always, a reflex
action from the nerves of the skin over the part to the
liver itself, and so to the liver nerves? Nature in
stinctively prescribes this local treatment. The other
treatment is a mere roundabout compared to it. The
�MENINGITIS.
27
skin over a part is a universal telegraph to the part
under it, and to the nerves of the part. You can most
nearly touch the hepatic plexus by touching the hepatic
skin. The cold water physicians have been better than
the rest here; only that their waters have not been
medicated, and in some cases medication, as with Vera
trum Viride, is an indispensable condition of the more
rapid cure.
Case II.—Threatened Meningitis.—The following is a
more complex case: Master E. P., aged 7, was seized on
the 29th of December with fever, great gastric disturb
ance, and acute earache. Christmas fare blamed. In
the evening he was so much worse that Veratrum Viride
lotions were applied to the head persistently.
Dec. 30th.—No better; Bell, and Merc, and Veratrum
Viride continued.
Dec. 31st.—Agonizing night; great photophobia.
Jan. 1st, 1864.—No better; Rhus internally, and
Rhus externally.
Jan. 2nd.—Afternoon, agonies in ear and head;
threatened meningitis; pulse feeble and intermittent;
Sulphate of Quinine to be repeated at discretion when
the pains come on.
Jan. 3rd.—Three visits; some relief after the Quinine,
yet no solid abeyance of the disease.
Jan. 4th.—Worse; Mercurius: also blistering paper to
the neck and region of the ear. Evening, worse still;
Mercurius, Asclepin and Euphorbin prescribed. Later at
night, all the symptoms worse. To have Glonoine, Aeon.
and Bell., Quinine if sinking.
*
Jan. 5th.—No worse; has had the Quinine several
times. Continue the medicines.
Jan. 6th.—Better.
Jan. 7th.—Much better. Quinine and Castor Oil.
Jan. 12th.—Quite well. The Veratrum Viride did not
�28
PAROTITIS.
act completely here, because the vital force was so
heavily assailed that the supplementary remedy Quinine
was indicated.
Besides Quinine, the Euphorbin and
Glonoine appeared both to Dr. P. and myself to exert a
marked influence on his son’s case, which was indeed
one that threatened galloping decomposition.
VII.
Inflammation of the Parotid Gland.
Peb. 22.—Dr. P. has a swelling under the left ear,
some fever and great malaise, and has too much to do
to be able to be ill many days. Great pain in the in
flamed and tumefied “ Socia Parotidis.”
I ordered
Aconite and Rhus alternately.
Feb. 23rd.—No better. The swelling is large and
tense, and involves the adjacent fasciae and tissues to a
considerable extent. Asclepias and Podophylline pre
scribed, and a hot bath with an ounce of Veratrum
Viride in it.
Feb. 24th. — Greatly better.
Immense sweating
followed the bath. The doctor reports that Veratrum
Viride baths would go for much in training if their use
were known. Continue Asclepias, beef tea, and stimu
lants.
Feb. 26.—No pain left, and scarcely any swelling.
The complaint is cured, and the busy doctor satisfied.
So, also, is his “ Socia Parotidis.”
VIII.
Acute Tonsillitis.
This was my own case. I tried Belladonna and Aconite
for some time without marked effect. My wife looked
�HAEMORRHOIDS.
29
into the throat, and was alarmed by the great swelling,
the dusky purple colour, and the foetor of the breath,
and by the excessive fever. She gave me of her own
prompting ten drops of Con. Tine. Veratrum Viride, and
placed a Turpentine bandage round the throat. In five
minutes I was in a bath of perspiration which lasted the
night. Belladonna acted well on the residue of the
disease. I was well in a day or two. This is some
years since, and before I knew of Veratrum Viride baths
and lotions.
IX.
Idoemorrhoids following Confinement.
Mrs. B. is suffering from this complaint, attended with
considerable external swelling.
She took Nux and
Sulphur internally, and a lotion of Veratrum Viride and
Hamamelis was kept constantly to the part.
The
-swelling abated at once under the application of the
lotion.
In these external applications it is my custom to
combine the Veratrum Viride with any other drug that
is pathic to the case.
The Veratrum Viride does its
general work as skin-opener, de-constrictor, and con
gestion-disperser; the other, if correctly chosen, puts
forth its more specific power. Thus, in injuries to the
face and eyes, resulting in unsightly swelling, I have
found unusually good and quick results from a weak
lotion of Veratrum Viride and Arnica combined.
Perhaps I shock Homoeopathic prejudices by mention
ing the combination of drugs, even in a lotion. Yet
repeated success in healing will justify anything; and
success is the only science of the art of physic. And in
many cases I have found combinations succeed. True,
you do not know which drug did the work: but why
�30
COMBINED MEDICINES.
should you ? when, perhaps, it was the combination that
did it; and when the knowledge of the truths of com
bination may be worth having, and involve a chapter
which Homoeopathy has yet to open:—the practical power
of its drugs combined. If Aconite and Bryonia * are both
Homoeopathic to Pneumonia, why should not the mind,
by a subtle and rapid instinct, build out of the twain a
compound means which will grasp the disease with a
combined force far more than equal to the solitary forces
of these drugs ? There comes a point in which you quit
the science of the probabilities of drugs, the splendid
and enduring fabric of Hahnemann, for the science of
recorded success in cures, to which the former is per
fectly subordmate in human interest; and in this latter
field of knowledge, every means of every school, and the
statistical result of whole schools, comes forward, and
if it deserves so much, is venerated as a fact.
* Apropos of combination, I copy the following from Grover Coe:—
“ Bnt perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Myricin is its power,
in connection with Lobelia, of allaying false labor pains. The peculiar
therapeutic property here manifested is the result of the combination.
Neither will answer the purpose alone. As soon as the pains are ascer
tained to be spasmodic, place the patient in bed, and administer the
following:—
R
Myricin
....... grs. xv.
Wine Tine. Lobelia
.
.
.
.
ss.
Boiling Water .
.
.
.
.
. ? j.
Add the Myricin to the boiling water, and after a few minutes the
Tine. Lobelia. Exhibit at one dose, and repeat in two hours, if neces
sary. This will seldom or never disappoint the practitioner, and rarely
is a second dose necessary. It allays the pains, quiets the nervous
system, and postpones parturition to the proper period. Delivery will
frequently be delayed from one to four weeks, and the matured energies
of the system will then ensure a safe and easy accouchement.”
�ABDOMINAL INFLAMMATION.
31
X.
Inflammation about the Ccecum.
March 21st, 1864.—W. M., Esq., has diarrhoea, with
great swelling and tenderness in the right ileum; there
is also spasmodic pain, and he cannot stand upright, but
is drawn together to relax and favour the right side.
The pulse is quick and wiry. Podophyllum and Vera
trum Viride in alternation. Veratrum Viride constantly
to the part, and in a hip bath at night.
March 22.—He is relieved. He says he felt quite
differently immediately after coming out of the bath.
Continue all the means.
March 23.—Improving fast. A space as large as a
hen’s egg is still hard, and painful on pressure. The
diarrhoea has gone. To have Bryonia and Mercurius;
Veratrum Viride lotion and bath.
March 25.—The swelling has so far subsided that the
chronic basis comes under examination. It appears to
be a thickening of tissues about the coecum. The recent
attack is cancelled. The residual tumour is deep, but
well defined. He is to continue the lotion of Veratrum
Viride, and to go on with Podoph. and Sulphur in
ternally.
March 28.—The lump is now hard and quite deep.
The account he gives of his attacks is as follows:—
First comes a “sneezing cold,” which is apt to recur on
successive days. If it does so recur, sensations of pain,
and pinching, and rumbling of wind begin to be felt in
the bowels. There is evidently a telegraphic relation
between the sneezing cold and the part which has been
now acutely attacked. Probably at some former period
a year or two back, a cold has fixed upon the coecum,
set up inflammation, and produced a thickening there;
or some impaction may have taken place. The sympathy
�32
ABDOMINAL INFLAMMATION.
between the nose and mouth and this part is so great
that (March 25th) the drawing of the breath through
the water in cleaning the teeth produced a temporary
aggravation of pain. Occasionally the pain shoots from
the part quite through the penis. With regard to the'
“sneezing colds,” he says that “he seems to get a
natural secretion in a certain length of time, which it
requires the sneezing colds to remove.”
The recent inflammation being quite removed, he is now under treatment for the deep seated lump. He is
to have Juglandin at night, and Leptandria in the
morning; and to persevere with Veratrum Viride band
ages, to be worn every night.
April 8.—He reports that he was well up to the
evening of April 6th, when he had a new symptom of
pricking in the nose and left cheek bone; then spasmodic
sneezings from 8 to 11 at night, “to sneeze it off.” He
slept well; but on the morning of the 7th of April had
a blown feeling low down in the belly; in the afternoon
a dead pain in the middle of the same region; and in the
evening at half-past 7 sharp pain. At half-past 10-p.m.,
he put on a compress of Veratrum Viride, and a second
at half-past 7 next morning. He also took Veratrum
Viride internally, ten drops at three times. He had no
sleep from 12 to 3. The pains began to cease about
4 a.m. on the 8th, and have gradually gone; and in the
course of the morning he called upon me in Wimpolestreet, and says .that he feels well.
To-day the old lump cannot be any longer felt. “ The
sneezing cold ” has produced none of the usual results.
As a precaution he is to continue the Veratrum Viride
baths, and to mix Veratrum Viride ten drops in ten
teaspoons of water, taking a teaspoonful every four
hours. Moreover, if the sneezing cold returns he is to
bathe the nose and face directly with a lotion of Vera
trum Viride.
\
�IRRITABLE BREASTS.
33
May 5.—He reports that he has had a bad cold ever
since the last visit; a sneezing cold, which comes on for
an hour or two every morning, and to-day has lasted the
whole morning; but only now for the first time pro
duces any soreness of the abdomen, but none of the old
inflammation. He knows nothing of the lump which
troubled him so long. His general appearance is singu
larly improved; instead of the hollow cheeks and stoop
ing gait which betokened a fine man in distress, his face
is beginning to be as substantial as his intention, and his
gait is solid. But these “ sneezing colds,” which are the
door that opens into all his weakness, must be barred
away; and this will take time. He is to have Hydrastis,
2 drops 4 times a day: a Feru&’em Viride bath at
present, and afterwards a dry Fm^nrn Viride apron to
be worn on the abdomen next the skin continually.
XI.
Enlarged and Irritable Breasts.
Caroline G. has been under treatment for some years
for pain and swelling of the mamma?. These symptoms
have been much aggravated of late during her critical
period of life. The breasts are enormous. She tried
Phytolacca for her sufferings, with good effect for a
time. Nothing, however, has so much relieved her as
sponging all over the body with a weak lotion of Veratimm Viride. Had she the conveniences of a bath, I
believe the cure might be complete. As it is, the relief is
remarkable. Being very corpulent, this patient is under
Banting’s drill, and I hope to report of her another time.
�34
LUMBAR ABSCESS.---- BUNIONS.
XII.
Chronic Abscesses.
J. B., Esq., labouring under Angina Pectoris and
Heart complaint, has a large abscess about the left lumbar
region, and another inside the thigh. In both of these
fluctuation can be distinctly felt.
They are increasing in size and are very inconvenient in sitting and
walking. The surgeon in attendance declines to do any
thing, alleging that it will be dangerous, and that they
must be suffered to break. The discomfort, however, is
so great, that I am consulted. Pretty strong lotions of
T eratrum Viride and Quinine in combination abated
suffering, diminished the size of the lumbar swelling,
entirely took away the large femoral collection of matter,
and much facilitated movement and sitting. The gen
eral health at the same time improved considerably; so
that his surgeon complimented him upon his altered
appearance. Mr. B. was very grateful for the amount of
relief. He died suddenly several months afterwards of
his internal disease.
In this case, as I have often seen before, the Veratrum
Viride emulated Iodine in its power of promoting ab
sorption.
XIII.
Bunions.
Veratrum Viride painted on these is generally a rapid
and perfect relief. I have frequently verified this in my
experience. Ihe fact will suffice without citing the
cases. There is no agent comparable to Veratrum Viride
for bunions or inflamed corns.
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
35
XIV.
Case of Threatened Mesenteric Disease arrested.
On the evening of the 5th of April, I was called to
see Master T. S., ten years old, and found him labour
ing under feverish symptoms, with cough and vomiting.
On listening to the chest, I found considerable inflam
matory congestion of the right lung. The bowels also
were costive.
Imprudence in diet, cherry tart and
dumplings, and a cold, were the probable occasion of
this state of things. I gave him first a dose of Podo
phylline., to relieve the constipation; and afterwards
Aconite and Bryonia.
April 6th.—About 3 p.m.: pulse 170. Acute pain
and tenderness on the whole right flank of the abdomen,
in all the tissues from the liver to the ctecum. The pains
like localized peritonitis: they also extended to the back
and the head, and he cried out with them. He had been
delirious in the night, and had perspiration with the pain.
One costive motion. He cannot stand for pain. The
cough better. Prescribed Podophylline and Veratrum
Viride. Veratrum Viride compresses to the pained parts,
and Veratrum Viride hip bath.
9 p.m., Pulse 78. Pain greatly reduced. Pose easy
and comfortable. Pie has stomach ache, probably from
the Podophylline ; a pain quite different from that just
recorded. Slight pain still from the liver to the caacum,
and all over the belly. He has had some nice sleep.
Continue the medicine at 3-hour intervals. Also the
compresses and bath.
April 7th.-—Pulse 95. Pain much better, but not
gone. The pain on the right side is worst about the
liver, and is less in its extension downwards to the iliac
fossa. He has no cough now, but when he is asked to
cough, the action hurts him. His facies is good. Very
slight pain on the left side of the abdomen. He ex
�36
MESENTERIC DISEASE.
periences great comfort from the Veratrum Viride baths. *
If the pain, which sometimes lancinates about, returns,
the bath takes it away. Continue all the means.
April Sth.—Pulse 100. Great pain from spasms and
gripes: Podophylline pains ? I now, however, learn for
the first time, that he has had spasms in the stomach for
several weeks. He has passed a restless night: his head
aches, and the bowels are constipated. To have Bella
donna and Nux Vomica alternately.
April 9th.—Pulse 100. He has no pain left, and can
bear pressure. Bowels still costive. Aconite 1 dose:
afterwards continue Bell, and AW. A dessert spoonful
of Castor Oil at night.
April 10th.—Pulse 120. A bad night. Dry skin.
Griping pain in the bowels, and distressing aching be
tween the shoulders. Has had Castor Oil twice, which
has brought away a very copious lumpy motion. Hardly
any pain on pressure: the peritoneal and tissue-symptoms
gone; but the intestinal irritation and griping keep up
the pulse. There is a catch in the breath as if there were
a drag somewhere. He is of an inflammatory, and in
regard to congestion and the rapidity of its consequences,
of an almost explosively inflammatory bodily tempera
ment. The face, however, is still good. Bryonia and
Mercurius alternately.
Chamomile fomentations with
Veratrum Viride tincture on the flannel, hot to the belly.
Hot bath with Veratrum Viride, if pain require it.
April 11th.—Hardly any pain or spasms. The ab
domen is still tympanitic in parts. Pulse quick. The
bowels have been relaxed in the night. An old asthma,
accompanied with extraordinary loud breathing, has
been reproduced. Skin hot, but greater tendency to
perspiration. Since I last saw him he has not required
the poultices or bath. Continue all the means as they
are needed.
April 12th.—Pulse 130. Marked delirium in the
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
rt rj
oi
night. Cough and asthma. Strong pressure on the
abdomen produces no pain. The cloud is now hanging
over another part of the tissues, and falls upon the lung
nerves and the mind-nerves at night. He is to have
Wine Tincture of Lobelia alternately with Belladonna.
April 13th.—Pulse 120. He is in the drawing-room
on the sofa, but cannot get up on account of severe pain
in the back. On examination, there is a protuberance
backwards of one dorsal vertebra, and considerable
tenderness is felt there on pressure. He has been
wandering in the night. His skin is now moist, and he
says he feels much better. Veratrum Viride compresses
locally to the pained spine.
Continue Lobelia and
Belladonna.
April 14th.—Pulse 120. He is now sitting up, and
has no pain in the back. No asthma or delirium in the
night. His bowels have been once moved. Continue
Viride to spine. Let him have a small mutton
chop. His appetite is craving. (Up to this period for
several days he had been taking beef tea and farinacea.)
April 15th.—The mutton chop has done him no good.
Again there is intestinal pain on pressure. He has
passed a restless night, and had two -small motions.
Prescribed: a dose of Castor Oil. Lach, and Coloc. in
ternally : Veratrum Viride compress to the whole belly.
April 16th—Pain less. Pulse 108. Gentle perspira
tion. Continue the Veratrum Viride compresses ooccasionally. Continue also Loch, and Coloc.
April 17th.—My patient is not getting on.
The
abdomen is like a drum, more or less sensitive all over.
For some days past I have been apprehensive of deepseated mischief; more particularly as he has always been
unable to button his waistcoat from a “ swelled feeling ”
about the bowels; and his eldest sister died of mesenteric
disease after measles. It seems too probable that the
�38
MESENTERIC DISEASE.
inflammations which I have successively combated, are
but the outworks of the same disease, which is now
throwing up fresh symptoms, and in their intractability
is showing its own deep and obstinate centre. I am
obliged to communicate my apprehensions to the parents,
who have indeed for some time past shared them; and
have always, as they inform me, contemplated the
probability of mesenteric disease in their little son.
To-day there is back-ache superadded to abdominal
pain. Pulse 108. I ordered Juglandin, from its mild,
deobstruent influence upon Ever, stomach, and bowels;
and Cod Liver Oil.
April 18th.—Pulse 120. There is an increase of ab
dominal pain and swelling. The pain on the right side
of the abdomen is short and breath-hindering. He is
to have compresses of Veratrum Viride, and a bath of
it: and for internal medicines, Juglandin and Leptandria.
April 19th.—Pulse 96. The abdominal swelling and
the pain are both greatly reduced. He can now bear
pressure. His tongue is cleaning, and he has had one
small motion. After the Veratrum Viride bath, he slept
from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., soundly and sweetly. He looks for
ward to the bath. Continue the bath and the compresses;
the Leptandria and Juglandin, and the Cod Liver Oil.
April 20th.—Master Tommy is up and about. His
skin is cool and perspiring, and he has no pain. He
enjoys the bath. He slept last night from half-past 10
to 7. His appetite is good, but he is to have only slops.
Continue the means diligently.
April 22nd.—Pulse 90. He is convalescent from the
present invasion emanating from his constitutional weak
ness. The spiritus morbi is there, no doubt, but e.anrimt,
act, because the existing materies morbi is dispersed.
His stomach is still high. He sleeps well all night, and
has had one. good motion; and he is going into the
�MESENTERIC DISEASE.
39
country to-morrow. Continue all the means; especially
the Veratrum Viride baths every night.
April 28th.—He came in from the country to see me
in Wimpole Street. His father and mother express their
astonishment, and cannot understand his case; remem
bering as they do, the similar symptoms, but different
issue, of their eldest daughter’s illness. He has now no
pain, and the abdomen is greatly reduced in size; and
we may evidently hope, by carefully watching its
dimensions as a meter of health, to effect a permanent
constitutional cure. His appetite is too good, especially
for bread and butter, which is one of the worst things
he can take, because the dry quantity of it tends to keep
up prolonged exercise of the abdominal functions, and to
fill the tissues with fluid. The liver is not acting quite
well, which perhaps depends on his change to the
country: the motions are light-coloured and hard: one
or two in the day. His prescription is, Silicea 12 every
morning: Leptandria 12 every night: Cod Liver Oil;
Veratrum Viride baths every second night for a week:
afterwards every third night.
Here for the present ends a case which ten days before
appeared to be almost hopeless.
The four remedies
used at last, and which decided the fate of the day: I
mean the Veratrum Viride baths, the Leptandria, Ju
glandin, and Cod Liver Oil, were each called up to the
field as necessity dictated; and I am sure that the com
bination helped each member of it. The case gives
happy hope of the circumscription and final extinction of
mesenteric disease, and shows at least how indefinite
time may be gained for the action of deep constitutional
remedies. But Master T. S. is still under treatment.
�40
EXTERNAL INJURIES.
XV.
Cases of External Injury.
In some cases of external injury, where time is of
great importance, as for instance, where the patient is a
public man, or a professional lady, the Veratrum Viride
is a valuable supplement to Arnica. Locally applied, it
has an undeniable power of abolishing traumatic inflam
mation.
Ihis is a vast convenience for surgery; and
also for medicine; for example, in such cases as peri
tonitis following penetrating wounds of the abdomen;
where the primary inflammation which supervenes is
fatal; and no time is left for the reparative process. In
such cases as these we should combat the inflammation
with lotions of Veratrum Virile^ and support strength
the meanwhile.
It is true I have had no formidable cases of the kind
to treat, but I reason up from the successful manage
ment of lesser injuries. In one case of hurt to the face,
and black eye, the consequence of a fall on the curbstone,
the disfigurement was so far gone in twenty-four hours
that an important appearance in public was made, with
no apology to a brilliant audience, and with the usual
eclat.
XVI.
Dec. 3, 1862, Walter Daws, a?t. 2, had a blow on
the face a month ago, which has caused a circumscribed
swelling, tense and very tender to the touch, on the
cheek bone. It is the result of a bruise of the pe
riosteum, and from the size and appearance of the
swelling, it seems probable that the bone has been
seriously injured, and that exfoliation might take place.
Arnica internally: Veratrum Virile to be painted all
over the tumour.
�EXTERNAL INJURIES.
41
Dec. 5.—Lump a little less.
Continue Veratrum
Viride, washing it off occasionally with a lead lotion.
Dec. 9.—Going on satisfactorily but slowly. Veratrum
Viride alone.
Dec. 24.—'The lump diminished.
Veratrum. Viride
locally.
Jan. 15, 1863, the lump less.
Fhrafr’wm Viride
locally; Plumbum n. 30, internally
Feb. 3.—Improving. Continue Veratrum Viride;
Sepia n. 30, internally.
Feb. 17.-—Langour, and stringy motions. No men
tion of the tumour. Pulsatilla in the day: Mcem’fe at
night.
March 11.—Tumour less. Eruption on the skin from
the Veratrum Viride. To have Sulphur 30 at night:
Mercurius Corrosivus lotion locally. I have not heard of
this patient since; but at the last date the effects of the
injury had well nigh vanished. Had I to treat the case
again, I should probably combine the Mercurius Corro
sivus with
Viride from the beginning; for the
effect of the former remedy on diseases of the bone and
periosteum, even in scrofulous subjects, is very striking.
In one child, I cured great enlargement of this nature
on the finger, and which proceeded to serious ulceration,
with lotions of Mercurius Corrosivus, and Cod Liver Oil
internally; such a case in my youth would assuredly have
gone on to the destruction of the finger, and rendered
its amputation inevitable. For this practice with the
Mercurius Corrosivus I am indebted to Mr. Moore, the
Veterinary surgeon, of Upper Berkeley-street. See the
admirable synopsis of cases which he has published from
time to time.
�42
SHINGLES.
XVII.
Shingles treated by Cantharides Lotions.
As these pages are mainly devoted to local treatment
as superadded to general treatment, I will now briefly
cite four cases which fall under the above heading.
1. Miss R. has an attack of shingles on the back
which yield rapidly to a weak lotion of Ace^m Cantharidis in water. I have no notes of the case, but a few
days terminated it; and there was very little suffering,
and no return of the disease.
2. Dr. P. has shingles on the knee. Two or three
applications of Aceftzm Cantharidis cured it, and no
further crop appeared. The stinging and pain were
reduced to nil by the lotion.
3. Feb. 13, 1864, Miss H. has shingles under the
collar bone, the groups extending across the chest and
to the opposite armpit. The symptoms not urgent or
distressing. Rhus prescribed. The next day an amount
of inflammation and stinging almost maddening occurred.
Acetum Cantharidis lotion prescribed, which killed the
eruption, affording immediate relief. In a few days the
complaint was abolished. The words are decisive, but
they correspond to the facts.
4. Feb. 26, 1864, D. —, Esq., has an unmistakable
crop of shingles on the body. Cantharides lotion exter
nally. Cantharides and Hydrastin internally.
Feb. 27.—The eruption withered.
No suffering.
Continue Cantharides., &c.
March 1.—Well.
These are strikingly homoeopathic results; and the local
application is itself additionally homoeopathic. In the
cases thus treated, the cutting pains, which are often so
persistent and even torturing long after the disease has
disappeared, have no place.
�CELLULITIS.
43
XVIII.
Cellulitus, including Pelvic Cellulitis, its Specific and
General Treatment.
There is an excellent article by Dr. MacLimont, on
“Pelvic Cellulitis,” in The British Journal of Homoeopathy,
Vol. xx., pp. 288-302. In this article, Pelvic Cellulitis,
is defined as, Phlegmonous Inflammation of the Cellular
tissue within the folds of the peritoneum or broad ligaments
of the uterus. Adopting this definition, on which I would
only remark that such inflammation may attack other
parts of the cellular tissue in the pelvis, as for instance
the cellular lanugo which surrounds and embeds the
rectum and connects it to the vagina—but adopting this
definition,—then I would further define general Cellulitis
as inflammation of the cellular tissue in any part of the
body. I am about to cite a case in which Cellulitis was
present from an early period of life, in various parts, and
ultimately in the pelvis; and which appears to be a case
of hope for the treatment of this terrible disease.
Dr. MacLimont says: “Itis somewhat remarkable that
so very frequent and formidable an affection as inflam mation of the cellular tissue of the female pelvis should,
to so great an extent, have been almost completely over
looked by authors on diseases of women.
“It cannot be that this is a new disease, or one be
coming more frequent in all classes of society. Why is
it then, that it is only within the last few years that any
detailed and satisfactory information has appeared of so
distressing, and often fatal a disease, and one, too, of
almost daily occurrence?
“ The reason is, that up to a comparatively recent date,
accoucheurs, both English and Foreign, were wont to
regard the very striking group of symptoms constituting
pelvic cellulitis as so many indications of metritis, peri
�44
CELLULITIS.
tonitis, phlegmasia dolens, &c., whilst those not very
unfrequent cases occurring in the non-puerperal, or even
single state, were too generally referred to cystatis, fibrous
tumour of the uterus, abscess of the rectum, hip-joint dis
ease, mesenteric tuberculosis, ulceration of the cervix, &c.”
This is true; but the Dr. does not inform us why
accoucheurs were thu9 “ wont./’ Great overlookings
of facts generally have interesting reasons. One reason
of the blindness now in question is, that science, among
its many tendencies to disease, has also the tendency to
false definiteness, and to denial of circumambient facts.
Anatomical science begins and is constituted in the clear
ing away first of skin, and next of cellular tissue. And
yet cellular tissue is as universal a high road as the
nerves themselves; and, moreover, a universally con
tinuous expense. It is to the body what space is to the
world, the tension or firmament in which all the organs
are set. Nay, it is in all the organs, and constitutes
everything that they are. And yet science, intent upon
organs, overlooks the material of which they are made;
and by which they are connected, compacted, and asso
ciated in a material sense. As though Astronomy should
deny the stellar interspaces, their imponderable world, the
body of the ether, and the intercourse of the systems.
This is much the same disease in science that has mani
fested itself in history; a few heads and organs of govern
ments, and their lives and acts, have occupied all the
attention due to the life and progress of the peoples; so
in Pathological Science, a few organs have monopolized
the regard due to the universal movements, inspirations,
currents and relationships of the body; and the cellular
tissue which is their channel and their home.
Now among general diseases, of which I. am persuaded
there are troops unrecognized, is this very disease of
Cellulitis; of inflammation of the cellular tissue in the
body, and in any part of the body: a disease which is to
�CELLULITIS.
45
the cellular tissues somewhat as erysipelas is to the skin;
and which like erysipelas may be firmly localized; or
may be fugacious, and wander from part to part; often
leading to suppuration, perhaps in important organs.
When I look back from the teachings of recent expe
rience through a practice of thirty years, I remember
many cases which probably were examples of the disease
in question; but which were regarded as tuberculosis,
complications of pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, and
the various internal inflammations and decays of parti
cular organs. I recollect a family of children who were
carried off by this disease. Of these cases I have no
notes; nor was there great encouragement at the time
to take notes. The chief features in these young persons,
who died from 12 to 16 or 17, was, cellular swellings
in the extremities—inflammation of the subcutaneous
tissues; general feebleness of health; and tendency to
inflammatory colds about the chest; defect of nutrition,
and of sleep; and constant general malaise; then after a
year or two inflammation in the chest-cavity, rapidly
flying from part to part: a kind of smouldering com
bustion which no sooner ceased than it began again in
the same or other parts; and was attended with all the
signs of suppuration; and sometimes with the expectora
tion of pus. The disease also wandered in the stomach
and bowels, and in the abdominal organs; but was less
local than the inflammation of organs, and less rapidly
destructive. . Treatment, from the old points of view,
seemed hopeless.
For at that time I was scarcely aware of the exist
ence of these general diseases in the interior of the
body; and therefore I only applied to the symp
toms specific treatment, and failed to cure, and often
failed to relieve.
Now, however, I know that one
practical fruit of the recognition of such general or cor
poreal diseases, in contradistinction to governmental or
�46
CELLULITIS
organ-diseases, is, the adoption of general measures of
relief, especially applied to the universal skin, which is
the proximate surface of the cellular tissue; the indicator
and regulator of the universal nervous system; and the
medium between the organic and the cellular man.
There are no doubt specifies too for this general disease;
but they will not readily cure without the adoption of
general applications through the instrumentality of the
skin.
In the family just alluded to, there was one singular
exception to the fatal result. The father had died of heart
disease; and one son inherited the same complaint. It
was valvular disease attended with loud regurgitation
sounds-. He had sleepless nights terrible with appre
hension. Once or twice a week he spat up from the
lungs a ball of pellucid tough matter about the size
of a small marble, almost like an uncooked fish’s eye.
His life declined, and sleep was postponed to a later
and later hour in the weary nights.
Pulse about
sixty. Anasarca beginning slowly in the legs gradually
mounted up until he could no longer go to bed, but sat
in his chair all night with his legs and abdomen like hard
boards. For dropsical swellings of the abdomen set in; and
hydrothorax supervened. Just at this time Dr. Rutherfurd Russell introduced the poison of the Cobra (Naja
Tripudians) as a remedy in heart complaints. E. W.,
my dying boy, had it. For the first few days no change,
except that he slept at 11 at night instead of 2 or 3.
Earliness of rest increased upon him. One by one every
symptom disappeared under the action of this single
medicament; and in a few months he was well; and ever
since he has been an upholsterer’s man, and has not
shirked the heavy porterage which belongs to that occu
pation. A remarkable result, when we remember that
his father died of heart disease; and that his brothers
and sisters perished of a decay which seemed to be
deeply present in the family constitution.
�CELLULITIS.
47
But was not his case also cellulitis in some central and
typical sting: not the coils of the serpent crushing the
body, but the unique fang emptied into the heart-valves ?
However this may be, had I to treat the case again, I
should early have used Veratrum Viride baths as a gen
eral antidote, without neglecting the specific Cobra which
stung the sting, and ultimately cured the disorder.
Before proceeding to more immediately practical re
sults, I would specially indicate that cellulitis, besides that
it may belong as a tendency to the universal cellular tissue,
may have a centre of localised mischief in any organ of
the body; and if it pursues its ravages, and travels with
its inflammation and swelling over the more superficial
*
regions, and can be detected through the skin, it also
tends, telegraphically and sympathetically, to invade the
interior of important organs, dwelling in their cellular
parenchyma.
In the case of J. B., Esq., recorded above (see page
34), disease of the heart and cellular abscesses on a large
scale; also cellular swellings in the inguinal and scrotal
regions, were connected with each other; no doubt by
continuity of tissue, and sympathy of structure. The
external swellings were the first symtoms that were
complained of in this case. And in angina pectoris, and
diseases of the coronary arteries, huge cellular indu
rations of the body take place: immense breadth of
shoulders, great board-like expanse of belly; limbs big
as anasarca; filled also with serum; but inflammatory
* Among travelling maladies we note that lesions also travel : as
though the contrecoup could display itself days and weeks after the
injury. I have seen a case of injury to the shoulder, and dislocation,
accompanied by black ecchymosis, travel in this manner: the black
and yellow expanse was some weeks in making its way over parts of
the arm as far as the elbow, which were perfectly normal in colour long
after the concussion. It was like an internal cellular purpura propa
gated from the spot originally injured.
�48
CELLULITIS.
serum in inflamed and hardened cellular tissue. At
whichever end the mischief takes place, there is reason to
suppose that a travelling cellulitis is in its origin and its
propagation: a disease always to be treated where it is
practicable by general measures through the skin.
I met with the remark in one of Mr. Skelton’s books,
*
that disease is only obstruction. Without making a rule
of it, what truth there is in his observation. Y et anatomy
and physiology have hitherto obscured, not illustrated,
the amount of truth. Looking at the channels and tubes
of the body, science has regarded life as a traveller on the
roads. Whereas life here is the roads as well as all the
passengers thereupon. And the roads are movements. So
life flows on in its microcosmal oceans, not through the
trees of nerves, arteries, veins, and ducts, which are but
its rivers, but over and above all through the expanses
of the man. Columns of pressure, and currents of fluids,
and volumes of influences, pass down, and through, and
across the body, not with anatomical, but with emotional
breadth: with the whole heart on the move, not merely
with the pulsatile artery. Life, too, can begin a column
of movement from any centre. But this is a rule:—
wherever any moving column is established, to obstruct
the lower part of it, is to paralyse for the time the whole
movement, and in sensitive subjects, to incapacitate the
man. Constipation in certain cases affords an evidence
of this: in sensitives to this complaint (of which one
every now and then meets with sad specirtiens), the mere
sense of stoppage mounts to the brain, and produces
sometimes acute suffering, and often general incom
petence. In asthma also, where the respiratory column
is impeded, the deep sense of stoppage causes windows
to be thrown open to make evidence of air. And it is
surprising how small a gratification of the sense and
* Family Aledical Adviser, by John Skelton, Sen., Lecturer and
Professor of Medicine, 105, Great Russell Street, 1861.
�49
CELLULITIS.
want of outflow will satisfy the requirements of nature,
and give ease to a patient.
A lady suffering from asthma asked me some time,
since, how it was that during a paroxysm a teaspoonful
of gin and water would occasionally produce a slight per
spiration, and with it an immediate relief to the distressing
symptoms. I answered, that the smallest symptom of
perspiration betokens an entire change in the deter
mination and direction of the fluids within the body.
For when the skin is locked up, the current of the
general life, which tends to surround every one of us
with his own effluences, is shut off at the surface, and
reversed within the body; and being reversed, it tends
back to its sources, and hinders and shocks their flow.
The re-instatement of the right direction—the conversion
of the fluids from the error of their ways—is, therefore,
all that is required in the first instance to the comfortable sense of life within the frame. And a mere indi
cation, a slight perspiration, will effect this marvellous
ciange; polarizing the whole of the given column of
fluids toward outward action, which is the very opposite
of inward obstruction.
These are not scientific, but they are healing truths,
attested in every-day practice, and tending to important
practical considerations: there are millions of such truths
within the same sphere of observation: they in no way
impugn physiological truths founded upon anatomy; but
they imbed them as the cellular tissue imbeds the
definite organs; and prepare them to be covered in by
the skin of the general observation and bodily conscious
ness of poor suffering humanity.
4
�50
CELLULITIS.
XIX.
Case of General and Local Cellulitis.
About Christmas, 1860,1 was called to see Miss E. S.,
and found her suffering from acute local and hysterical
disorder. There was evident inflammation in the pelvic
cavity, and great general excitement. I learned that
she had recently undergone an examination with the
speculum, and had been in torture ever since. The
hysterical symptoms often amounted to catalepsy. Her
voice was gone, and continued in abeyance for four
months.
I attended this lady almost daily for three years, and
I am thankful to say she is now well. Her case is so
remarkable that I will make an abstract of her own state
ment of it which she has drawn up for my use.
Her health since childhood has been poor. At 3
years old she had typhus, which left behind it a swelled
throat. At 12 she was thought to be in consumption;
for which she was bled, blistered, and leeched : fourteen
blisters for twenty-four hours each in one year. Sea air
removed the cough, and till 17 her health was better.
Then inflammation of the chest—bleeding, blistering,
and leeches. On returning home into Rutland she was
greatly afflicted with abscesses, which were treated by
leeches, poultices, the lancet. Her right arm was con
stantly in a sling. When that recovered she suffered
in the same manner from her throat, which was twice
cut: then the right side swelled very much, and the right
leg dragged in walking. At 21 severe scarlatina; and
after that no use in the right leg; its muscles were con
tracted ; she could not put it to the ground. One physi
cian pronounced her a cripple for life. Sir C. Clarke
considered the spine affected, and ordered her to keep
her couch.
After nearly ten years of lameness, and
�CELLULITIS.
51
entire confinement during the winter months to bed and
couch, and after having lost her voice for nine months,
she placed herself under the care of Dr. Jephson, of
Leamington, who salivated her. He succeeded in re
storing her voice, but it soon left again. During this
time she had inflammation of the bowels, for which he
applied forty leeches. “ After a year under his kind
care, she threw away her crutches, and was quite strong.”
He considered the complaint to be “ chronic inflammation
of the mucous membrane with nervous susceptibility and
irritation of the womb.” In 1849, she had a fall, which
bruised the hip and side, and shook her internally; and
taking a long journey soon afterwards, she became pros
trate, no food would digest, the effort to take it caused
fainting; her limbs were stiff and cold, and the right leg
so exquisitely tender that it had to be wrapped up in
cotton wool. She kept bed for two months. Blisters
and galvanism were tried: tonics restored her; and she
was able to resume her arduous duties as companion
to an epileptic lady who was mentally afflicted. In
1852, she was again prostrate, and under the care of
Dr. Marsden, at Malvern, for ulcers of the womb, which
he considered were occasioned by the fall. He applied
caustic, which caused great irritation and inflammation
of the spine, with spasms, and palpitations, and entire loss
of the use of the right leg. Dr. Russell was now consulted,
and wisely ordered mesmerism, which enabled her in a
few months to return to her duties at Leamington. Until
1860, she was able to be actively employed, but suffered
from a bad spasmodic cough in the winter.
On Sept. 7, 1860, she left home for Leamington with
a bad cough, and shortly afterwards passed a long tape
worm, and the cough was relieved; but she was unable
to move in consequence of the pain in the spine and leg.
She was attended and examined by Dr. S. and Mr. P.,
who found induration from piles and enlargement of one
*
4
�52
CELLULITIS.
ovary. Spasms and twitchings of the limbs were fre
quent, and continued till they caused exhaustion. She
came up to London, and the same mesmerism was
again tried, but now it only aggravated the spasmodic
jerking of the limbs. She was examined with the
speculum by Mr. L., which caused her great suffering,
and to use her own words six months ago, she has “ had
internal abscesses ever since. He made the discovery that
it was inflammation of the ovary.” After “intense
suffering, loss of voice for four months, and great pros
tration,” she called me in. I attended her at first in
conjunction with Dr. Pattison, and had the benefit of his
counsel from time to time, whenever local mischief was
urgent, or local irritation ran high.
And now the history of three years can be easily con
densed. The symptoms, which sometimes became in
tense, sometimes declined towards ease if not towards
health, were large and simple. In the first-place the
change of life was being transacted. There was evident
hysteria of a poignant character depending upon most
acute causes. The slightest jar produced an agony; a
little walk at the best of times was followed by an aggra
vation; the shaking of a carriage has more than once
consigned her to her couch for months. The nights
were alarmingly sleepless for these years; and, what
evidently produced the rest of the symptoms, there was
some travelling lesion appearing hi part after part of
the body, and leaving no part unvisited but the head
itself. This lesion was accompanied by evident swellings.
From time to time, there was great swelling over the
region of the womb and ovaries; great swelling about
the hips; swelling almost like lumbar abscess; swelling
of the upper part of the abdomen just under the stomach ;
great swelling of one breast, while the other remained
small; swelling as of anasarca of the limbs—sometimes
of one for weeks, and then of the other. In short, there
�CELLULITIS.
53
was a travelling tumefaction, which seemed to involve
some terrible mischief to one organ after another, as it
passed across their several orbits. Many times did it
appear as if the swelling must burst, internally or exter
nally; and often had the clothes to be adjusted to the
altered shape of the person. The pain, meanwhile, was
that of acute inflammation in its various stages; and,
from the constant element of spinal irritation inter
mingled, the burning was often not less than agonizing,
for long periods together; and, from the beginning of my
attendance, there were abscesses which burst in the
vagina, and, wherever they were situated, discharged
their contents by that passage. After severe attacks of
pelvic inflammation, fresh discharges took place—some
times of pus, sometimes of cores intermingled. These
attacks would last for weeks, and were accompanied by
great swellings, generally of all the accustomed parts on
the left side; e.y., the whole left leg, which once, as the
patient says, “became nearly the size of her body;” of
the whole left abdomen, internally; of the left breast, and
of the left arm. It was clear that there were volcanoes
of inflammation forming ever and anon in the universal
cellular tissue, and sometimes gaining an outlet for their
destructions by the vagina. The bowels were constantly
confined, though I never suffered them to remain so;
but if the homoeopathic deobstruents failed I used castor
oil, injections, or any other means that were necessary.
The state of the limbs was peculiar: for months the
right leg was drawn up, as in hip-disease; the heel could
not be brought to the ground, and any attempt to alter
the habitual position of the limb was agonizing, and led,
that night and the next days, to fresh cellular inflammations. These inflammations generally took place with
rapidity: a few hours sufficed to develop a swelling,
which it required weeks to disperse.
There was
never, however, any redness of the skin, though it
�54
CELLULITIS.
sometimes grew very thin under the increase of the
expansion.
The voice was generally lost when the suffering was
great; but I was almost always enabled to restore it by
breathing upon the larynx for one or two minutes.
There were frequent cataleptic attacks, one of them like
apparent death, during a severe exacerbation of the cellu
litis. The capacity for pain, owing to the spinal and
hysterical basis on which the inflammation was laid, was
extraordinary; but my patient has a mind of impertur
bable cheerfulness, great courage and faith, and a hope
which hopes in subordination, but not dictatorially.
Owing to her inward vitality, the psychical circumstances
were all in her favour.
As the case proceeded, our prospects did not improve.
Air and exercise would have done good, but they broke
the thin crust of health, and the smouldering cellulitis
was underneath: change of air, for the same reason, was
worse than useless, from the shaking of the journey.
About April, 1863, an event occurred which filled me
with apprehension, and from the consequences of which
I saw no escape. In the course of the abscesses, inflam
mation and sloughing occurred between the vagina
and the rectum, and portions of the fasces came with
every motion through the orifice, and passed out by the
vagina. Warm water injections, with Coxeter’s admi
rable syringe, were sedulously used, to render this state
of things tolerable. I communicated to the family that
a lesion had occurred, which might be expected to in
crease, and which might render life a burden, and almost
complete rest inevitable. At this time, the rectum was
the subject of intense distress; the cellulitis was no doubt
in it; and recent haemorrhoids, causing obstruction and
suffering, were superadded. For years previously, “the
action of the bowels had always caused great pain: ” now
the suffering was intense.
�CELLULITIS.
55
The last stroke of calamity which I have described—
this fistulous ulceration—was a fortunate thing for my
patient: it led to what I hope will prove a permanent
cure.
A few months previously, I had read Dr.
MacLimont’s extremely valuable article on Pelvic
Cellulitis, and had understood Miss S.’s case far
better for the reading of it. And now, in view of the
hemorrhoidal complication, and the great inflammatory
swamp surrounding and threatening the vagina and the
rectum and their continuations and cellular beds, I re
collected a passage in Dr. Grover Coe’s work on Concen
trated Organic Medicines, which was first brought to my
knowledge by my dear friend, Dr. Le Gay Brereton, of
Sydney, and which runs as follows :—
“ But the most remarkable influences of the Collinsonin
are observable in haemorrhoids and other diseases of the
rectum.
The most inveterate and chronic cases are
relieved, and frequently cured, by means of this remedy
alone. It should be given in large doses at first, say
five grains, and repeated every two hours, in severe
cases, until the system is brought under its influence
and the symptoms controlled, and then continued in
average doses, three or four times a day, until the dis
ease is eradicated. We have known it to act promptly
in suppressing hseniorrhage from the bowels, and in re
lieving those distressing pains characteristic of hemor
rhoidal affections. It is a valuable constitutional remedy
in many affections, and its persevering use seldom fails
to benefit the general health. It increases the appetite,
and promotes digestion and assimilation.”
And this acknowledgment of the great benefit I have
received from others, will lead appropriately to the
treatment which was adopted in this case.
Rest, as complete as possible, was a necessity for
nearly three years: the patient reclined upon an invalid
couch. As I said before, whenever rest was far infringed,
�56
CELLULITIS.
even by carriage exercise, fresh inflammations, swellings,
and sloughs, were the result in a few days or hours.
Miss S. did indeed usually sit up to her meals, but it
was at the cost of considerable suffering. Dr. Pattison
insisted upon entire repose ; and I prescribed a little
movement, that she might not lose the use of her limbs,
and the functional activity which the limbs excite: and
between us both she oscillated as well as she could.
From a very early period it was found that all shocks
of every description did mischief. Some stimulating
drops (Liq. Amm. Fortiss., tfc.) applied to the spine to
provoke counter-irritation, caused Tetanic spasms, and
prolonged alarming faintings; and loss of voice was
always left behind, besides generally increased stiffness
of some part of the body, or the limbs. The tissues
were evidently so sympathetic, so poorly innervated, and
so friable, that any tension sprained and broke them, and
left a rapid nervous inflammation to consume the injured
parts. We soon discovered that letting the patient alone
was indispensable to her safety.
It was easy to look back through the leechings, and
blisterings, and bleedings, and to know the woeful part
they had played in breaking the bruised reed. It was
also at last obvious to conclude, that the various doctors
had treated special organs, without recognizing the
general cellulitis, which, as a disease, and as a tendency,
lay at the basis of all the exacerbations of the case. It was
not, however, easy to devise anything more for this
hyper-sensitive patient than juclicious expectancy,—
leaving her alone, with occasional reserves of general
common sense. Opiates and hot fomentations when the
pain was unbearable; injections and Castor Oil when the
bowels needed it (and it was never expedient to allow
anything approaching to constipation); wine, and stimulants, and good living,—these were necessities which
enabled her to endure and to live. What more ?
�CELLULITIS.
57
When I saw her first she had tried Allopathy and
Homoeopathy, each for many years; and had traversed
several great belts of illness, and between them had
passed through periods of comparative health. We
might, therefore, hope, especially after the critical age
was past, that the disease would wear itself out again,
and a respite of years be given. I therefore did my best
to combat one distressing complication after another, as
it arose; and she also had courses of Sulphur, Calcarea,
Silicea, Hepar Sulphuris, and the other profound medi
cines which in so many cases work good by apply
ing themselves to the foundations of constitutional
disease. Aconite, Bryonia, Belladonna, Lachesis, Arseni
cum, Arnica, Granatum, Hydrastis, and numerous other
medicines in all dilutions low and high, were adminis
tered as they seemed to be called for. Veratrum Viride,
also, from an early period of my treatment, according
to Dr. Maclimont’s suggestion (but long before I read
his Essay), had been given internally, to combat the
successive inflammations; and all this, with more or less
good effect, but with no comprehensive curative result.
In short, after using all the means I knew, I had miti
gated my patient’s sufferings, and relieved her symptoms
one by one; but the attacks of the complaint were in
creasing, and the deep disease itself derided my efforts.
It was now that I found and tried the Collinsonia
Canadensis, a remedy to which I was led entirely by the
disease of the rectum, vagina, and the expanse of
tissues in which these organisms lie. For the erethism,
spasms, violent cough, and sleeplessness, which accom
panied the progress of destruction, I found Hyoscyamus
in narcotic doses very useful; I had frequently employed
it before under similar emergencies. Now, then, she
took these two remedies, the Hyoscyamus at night, and
the Collinsonia n. 3 at intervals during the twenty-four
hours. As soon as ever she began the Collinsonia, to
�58
CELLULITIS.
use her own phrase, it “ acted in a most marked manner
upon the skin and muscles. During all her previous
illnesses, she had never had any perspiration; but now
the drops were continually standing on her forehead.”
By June, 1863, her size was greatly diminished; the
bulging tracts of hip, and loin, and hypochondrium were
subsiding towards the natural level; and, marvellous to
say, the foeces occasionally made no passage through the
recto-vaginal ulceration.
Continuing the Collinsonia
daily, she was able to walk about without being injured
by exercise. Improvement continued till the 9th of
August, when a cab-drive shook her, and brought on
internal suffering; great swelling of the left side took
place, and the old tracts of cellular and other tissues
were charged with the contents of inflammation. There
was difficulty of passing water, and the urine was scant
and high-coloured. Her spirits were depressed.
August 28th.—I recommended her for the first time
hot slipper-baths, medicated with Veratrum, Viride; and
almost at once immense relief was experienced. To use
her own words, “ the muscles of the right leg were soon
set at liberty; and for the first time for three years she
could really put her heel to the ground, and in a little
time walk without a stick.” The swelling subsided. The
action of the bowels became regular and complete. The
ulceration between the bowel and the vagina closed of its own
accord; and has given no trouble since. This result has,
I confess, surprised me; and I must doubt whether there
are many more happy issues in the history of ordinary
medicine.
September 30th.—She could “walk a mile without
her stick, with great enjoyment.”
October 1st.—The general health is good, and the
step elastic; though she still suffers much at night.
She has entirely given up her couch in the day, and is
able to employ her time thoroughly. She still continues
�CELLULITIS.
59
the Veratrum Viride baths twice a week, and the
Collinsonia persistently.
It is not long since I received from her the following
letter, which continues her state, and shows her thank
fulness :—
“ March 20th, 1864.
“My dear Doctor,
“ I have had no return of internal ailments for the last
three months, only symptoms of what I have suffered in
the continual passing of what appears to be the cores of
the abscesses. Since the large swelling subsided in my
side and body from the use of your medicated bath, I
have had my throat, glands, and left elbow much
swollen, but I am thankful to say the Feratfrwm Viride
has dispersed the ailments. For some weeks during the
severe winter my knees have been very stiff and painful
from rheumatism. You have relieved them entirely by
Collinsonia; the effect of this is very peculiar, for
whilst I am taking it the pain goes from the affected
part; but gives a comfortable glowing sensation at the
roots of the hair, which gets quite crisp. I have at this
present time no aches, no pains. I walked nearly five
miles yesterday, and have been twice to church to-day;
and the joy and gratitude I feel I cannot describe. In
stead of sleepless painful nights, I enjoy calm refreshing
sleep, and rise in the morning ready for any work or
walk that comes before me—(‘Bless the Lord 0 my
soul, and forget not all His benefits.’) That our good
God may bless your skill and watchfulness to many
others, whose lives have been despaired of, is the prayer
of your ever grateful patient,
“E------ S--------.
“4, St. Leonard’s Terrace, Maida Hill, West.”
The last time I saw her medically was on March 30th,
when she was suffering from indigestion, and deficient
�60
CELLULITIS.
action of the liver. These symptoms were speedily re
lieved by Pulsatilla n. 12.
On that occasion she reported some circumstances
which were interesting, as connected with a drug so
little known as the Collinsonia Canadensis.
She re
ported that she had left off the Collinsonia for some
little time; and that since leaving it off, her “ hair felt
so limp as if she could do nothing with it.” She also
felt an achy coldness about the head, whereas before she
felt “ a comfortable glow enlivening at the roots of the
hair; the hair was also crisp, curly, and growing;” and
under the same medicinal influence the hair from grey
has been becoming black. While taking the Collinsonia
Canadensis she “ feels as if all the muscles have more
vigour; a lightness of body, as if she is fit for any
thing.”
After the Pulsatilla was finished, I prescribed the con
tinuation of Collinsonia, 30 and 12. Now, these high
dilutions of the medicine have a most penetrating effect,
extending their power over the whole organism. If any
one doubts it, let him doubt after a fair trial, and then I
will love his doubt.
This lady is now well: thank God. Three serious
questions occur:—1. Seeing that she has had intervals
of health before, will she now remain well ? Can she be
said to be cured ? I believe she will remain well, and
that she is cured, because the result, for the first time in
the history of her cases, is due to specific treatment,
which has been discovered for her particular case; and
also to general treatment answering to specific.
If
the complaint recurs, Veratrum Viride and Collinsonia
Canadensis may fairly be expected to extinguish it
at once. 2. How do I know that the Collinsonia
was the specific, and did the work ? Reader, did
you ever shoot a bird, and know at once you had shot
it, without having any ground for the knowledge
�CELLULITIS.
61
but its own intrinsic assurance ? The evidence was
irresistible, but can hardly be conveyed. The other
drugs I had tried struggled with the disease, and
succumbed to it: the disease crouched from the first
moment before this one, and melted into nothingness.
The whole life was altered: there was a consciousness of
health coming from afar, but surely coming—the advanced
pickets of it were already on the spot in the very first
dose of the Collinsonia.
But the Cellulitis returned after the cab-shaking of the
9th of August. Yes: and it may return again, in its begin
ning, under any imprudence, until the organism forgets the
habit of it. But there was one reason then, which there
will not be again: the tissues, infarcted and confarcted
for years, were loaded with effete materials, and the
Collinsonia, after having slain the present monster, found
before it an unliftable load of his former exuviae and
slough-skins. These could still be a seed of mischief,
and a multiform root of destructions.
The Veratrum
Viride was needed to disperse them, which it did by
aggrandizing sweats to the uttermost; by increasing the
power of the absorbents enormously; and by thus dimi
nishing the bulk and packing around old “cores,” it
allowed them to seek an outlet, and to drop from the
organization. It also destroyed the capacity for inflam
mation in the tissues, and rendered them incombustible
—as the whole course of these pages has shown that this
drug does. 3. Is the Collinsonia a specific for Cellulitis
in other cases? This question can only be answered
after an extended experience. I was led to it by its
patness to the attack on the rectum and to the haemor
rhoids ; and in cases similarly complicated, I should have
great confidence in its specific powers. But then, on
the other hand, these symptoms were of such late deve
lopment, that they seem to form no part of the ground
work of the disease; and therefore it may be, that the
�62
ERUPTIVE FEVER.
Collinsonia is really the remedy for many forms of
Cellulitis. The sceptical part of us will again suggest
that the Veratrum Viride was equally a specific in this
instance. I do not, however, see anything in its known
action, hitherto, to account for its cure of the recto
vaginal fissure, which was nearly obliterated before the
Veratrum Viride baths were employed.
XX.
Eruptive Fever, with threatened Paralysis of the Brain.
On the 1st of this May, I was called to see Miss R.,
a young lady from the Midland Counties, on a visit in
my neighbourhood, and found her with a flushed and
spotted face, and complaining of some pain in the back,
for which symptoms I prescribed Bryonia and Mer
curius.
May 2, at seven in the morning, an urgent message
summoned me to her at once. She had alarmed her
sister and the family by several fainting fits during the
night. When I arrived, she was labouring under strong
excitement, apparently hysterical. Her face was red
and swollen with a continuous eruption; and small
pimples, which created no great irritation, were thickly
dotted over the chest. The pain in the small of the
back was worse. I ordered her to continue the Bryonia
and Mercurius, and to have Ignatia occasionally if the
faintings returned.
At 30 p.m. I saw her again, and found her symptoms
*
aggravated. Her pulse was fluttering, and 110. Occa
sionally she lost her voice; at other times she could not
speak plain, so as to be understood. Her manner was
hurried and excitable, and I could not command her
silence. She complained of an electric feeling in the
limbs. The pain had left her back, and the face was less
�ERUPTIVE FEVER.
63
swelled; but the eruption extended now all over the
body, and was not unlike measles in appearance. She
had considerable cough. I prescribed Rhus and Phos
phorus, and Veratrum Viride lotions to the forehead.
For support—chicken-broth, mutton-broth, brandy, and
wine-and-water.
May 3rd, 11.10 a.m.—I was unable to see her last even
ing, having a call into the country. Now, when I paid
my visit, I found she had been alarmingly ill all night.
Pulse 100, very weak—nay, almost gone. The eruption
on the face was raised and scarlet. She had low, mutter
ing delirium. The prostration was utter, and her hands
and arms fell about as if completely paralysed. Cough
bad, and sore throat superadded. She had had no sleep.
Occasionally she could be roused to temporary conscious
ness, and then she said she was better. Her friend who was
with her was anxious to have Father A. in the house, to
administer the last sacraments, and I could not say that
such a measure might not be urgent, for, indeed, she seemed
to be dying. I prescribed Belladonna, Stramonium, and
ffisemewn, in alternation, at half-hour intervals; and
ordered a cap of Veratrum Viride lotion, covered in with
gutta percha tissue, and kept tightly on the head, to the
whole brain: the hair to be shortened sufficiently to
admit of its close application.
At 3^ p.m., I found her revived and sensible, though
she still spoke with morbid velocity, and would not hold
her tongue. The head, however, was decidedly relieved;
pulse 100. I found that the Veratrum Viride cloths had
not been applied, but the remaining hair had been wetted
with it, and gutta percha tissue superposed; now, however,
I had the cloths carefully applied. The extreme collapse
was lessened; she was sick and had some epigastric pain;
the tongue furred, but not fleshy. She had taken sherryand-water and beef-tea, frequently. To continue the
medicines at the same intervals. To the Veratrum Viride
�64
ERUPTIVE FEVER.
brain-lotions, I added some tincture of Keith’s Oil of
Capsicum—an invaluable local remedy, where stimulation
is required.
At 9 p.m. I found her more composed than she was by
the Report last night, but less so than she had been at my
last visit; pulse 102. Her answers were quite rational,but
the speech sometimes sharp and splintery. She had
passed no urine since 3 o’clock in the morning, but had
had one good motion. There was no prostration, but
constant sickness. The eyes were suffused, the skin hot,
but the palms moist. Continue the local and internal
medicines. Give Ipecacuanha occasionally, for sickness.
May 4th, 9^ a.m.—Pulse 96‘8. She is comparatively
calm and composed this morning, and the threatened
paralysis of the brain has passed. Her pose in bed is
good, and she can use her arms. The sickness left her
at half-past eleven last night. Her tongue is now clear
ing. The eruption is continuously red on the face, and
smooth there; but dotted, perseminated, and raised all over
the body, and even on the fingers. It is not, how
ever, very thick. The urine is now normal; and the
cough better; but the sputa are thick and suspiciouslooking, and sink in water. Her talkativeness is still
controlled with difficulty. She had small snatches of
sleep in the night, with talking in it; and two sleeps of
half-an-hour each. She feels the tingling of the Cap
sicum over her head and neck. Continue all the means;
the internal medicines, however, at longer intervals.
4 p.m.—Pulse 96. Copious tubercular-looking sputa.
Rale in right chest. Quite collected, and can sit up in
bed.
9.20 p.m.—Pulse 88. No hurry of manner. Continue
the medicines, but omit Veratrum Viride cap for a few
hours.
May 5th.—Pulse 72. Eruption lessening; calmer and
stronger. She had two hours’ good sleep in the night,
�ERUPTIVE FEVER.
65'
and many dreamy dozes. The expectoration is less.
Dulcamara and Calcarea Carbonica. To have some
under-done minced mutton-chop.
May 6th.—Pulse 80. The rash is still on the face;
sleep poor; cough and expectoration less; tongue, clean
ing. She felt better after her chop yestesday. She is
to take Cod Liver Oil, and continue the medicines, but
not the lotion.
May 7th.—A poor night, in consequence of swelled
face and abscess in the gums. Pulse 80. Continue.
May 8th.—Pulse 75. Seven hours’ sleep; occasional
hysterical laughing, which she does not remember after
wards. The suspicious expectoration gone, and replaced
by clear salivary spitting. She has a good appetite,
and was up for an hour last evening. This morning
she is writing notes, which I forbid; and has on her bed
Father Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sud, which she is
not to read. The eruption is still out on the face, but is
leaving the body; the tongue is healthily clean. Con
tinue Dulcamara and Calcarea Carbonica and Cod Liver
Oil.
May 9th.—The face peeling; pulse 72. A night’s
rest; functions regular; no cough or expectoration.
Continue.
May 11th.—Convalescent.
What part did Hysteria play in this case ? At first,
although there was an eruptive fever, I was inclined to
set down the nervous symptoms as purely hysterical. But
the attack on the brain, threatening paralysis, was too
alarming to be treated on that hypothesis alone. And
the anti-congestive Veratrum Viride., with the medicines,
produced instantaneous relief. Moreover, the subsequent
attack on the chest showed a travelling materies morbi of
a real bodily character. The fever was of that kind
which is sometimes called spurious scarlatina, and for
which Dulcamara is homoeopathic: during the progress
5
�66
of which, paralysis of the brain, or of the lungs, is some
times imminent.
And here I conclude these cases for the present, feeling
assured that the truly experimental reader will find in
them indications for a new and easy power of healing in
numerous diseases that have hitherto been fatal to kings
*
and poor people alike—from defect of the direct and
efficient ways and remedies which I now make known.
* Witness the deaths of the kings of Denmark and Wurtemberg,
from erysipelas, within these few months. I believe they might have
been alive now, and an iniquitous war have been postponed by a few
ounces of Veratrum Viride.
�Medical Freedom.
It is my intention from time to time to offer cases with
remarks, as an easy means of bringing new treatment
and occasional thoughts before the public.
The time is to come when general medical education
will surround my profession so closely, that its narrow
ness and exclusiveness, and its cliques, will give way
under the pressure of the public common sense; and no
authority will be left but the authority of facts. I
have a great hope in me to hasten that desirable time.
For it is evident that the simpler medical truth can
become—by medical truth understand truth in practice,
the only test of which is, success in practice—the more
enlightened public criticism must come upon the doctors,
and give them their degrees in every separate case. A
man’s or a woman’s repute will be his or her sole
authorization to practice. For instance, in the treat
ment of small-pox as I have now made it public, any
mother or grandmother may demand the remedies which
ensure the benefits recorded in the foregoing pages; and
if the doctor is not acquainted with them, and will not
employ them when pointed out, then such mother or
grandmother can take away his diploma in the case,
and either confer it upon herself, or provisionally upon
any other person whom she may appoint to conduct the
precious interests of the family health. There can be
no wise authority beyond her, or above her.
For competition will be the soul of success here, as it
*
5
�68
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
is in every other case. Given any field of nature or
experience to be explored, and all the faculties of man
are wanted for it; all the chances of birth are wanted
for it; all the gifts of God are wanted for it; all the
developments of time are wanted for it; all the freedom
of society is wanted for it; all absence of fear of man,
and fear for position, is wanted for it; all good genius
and good ambition is wanted for it; in short, numberless
men are wanted, each mind of them free, and original,
and inspired, as if there was nobody else in the world;
yet each instructed in his lower walks by the labours of
the rest; and all animated by a common faith in the
inevitable co-operation of good with good, and the ine
vitable consentaneousness of knowledge with knowledge,
though independence and freedom be the only law and
bond for each.
Free societies, free institutions will necessarily arise
out of this new medical humanity: order most punctilious
and most exacting will arise; but freedom will be the
king upon its throne.
But now we see the reverse of this, and health con
tracted and eclipsed in the prisons of medical establish
ment.
The maintenance of this present condition lies in the
Protection of Physic by the State. Continue this, and
an external and well-nigh irresistible aid is afforded to
the existing general condition of medical art and science,
as against anything which would considerably enlarge it;
still more, which would revolutionize it ever so benignly;
and, most of all, against anything which tends even
remotely to de-professionalize it, publicize it, and human
ize it. Continue this, and an art and science which depend
upon the natural truths of God, the capacities of nature,
and the genius of mankind, and which should be nourished
most intimately of all on the One Exemplar of Revelation,
and the fact of Redemption—that art and science are
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
69
commanded to eat the dry crusts of Parliament, instead
of the manna of Heaven, and the bread of the earth;
and lawyers and the magistracy stand with a ferule of
penalties to rap the knuckles and break the exploring
fingers of discoverers who dare to discover out of accord
with colleges, or who dare to discover at all if they are
not cloister-vowed, and cloister-bred. Out upon such
public insanity. Any other art, similarly narrowed,
would be similarly strangled. Engineering or chemistry,
in their existing condition in April, 1864, protected—or
what is the same thing—arrested by the State, would
stiffen into Chinese imitation, and their soul, which is
invention, would be lost; their worldly motive, which is
ambition, unbounded by other men’s power, would be
lost; and their huge sense of freedom, in which they
live and move and have their being, would be exchanged
for the degrading consciousness of the powdered head
and well-fitted livery of the State.
But medicine must be emancipated, and as the public,
directed by God, will have to do the work, I address my
medical life and thought to the public; and not specially
to the people in bonds.
Yet would I willingly calm the apprehensions of all
professional brethren.
1. Not a college, sect, or diploma will perish when
physic is free from State patronage and protection; that
is to say, unless public bodies choose to disband them
selves. The only power they will lose will be the power
of harming other bodies, or other people not of their way
of thinking. They will gain the power of emulating in
good works and open-mindedness all the useful people
whom they have called quacks, and imposters, and un
qualified practitioners, and who have been the moving
wheels of practice in all ages of the world. They will
gain the humanity of learning from the dog, when he
cures himself 'with grass, without practising the now
�70
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
ordinary ingratitude and inhumanity of kicking the dog
that is their teacher. They wiR sympathizingly learn
from the North American Indian, and the poor Hindoo,
the traditional healing virtues they have known since the
earliest ages; and their own old pharmacopeias will be
enriched, not then without acknowledgment, with the
sweet beginnings of simplicity, of nature, and of health.
Nay, the certainty is, that the existing colleges, owing
to the decrepitude of the public mind, always induced
by being protected, will be too enduring.
2. In the new time coming, when Parliament will no
longer prescribe a medical profession, and force the
British people to take the dose, the public will be more
apt than they are now to send for regular and collegesanctioned practitioners; provided the colleges give
themselves no airs, but compete fairly in the medical
race. For the colleges have the start, and can enter
the course with many chances of success; provided,
again, they can take to their hearts the new fact of
freedom, and love it as they ought.
At all events we may say it will be their own fault if
they are not the chief ministers at the public bedside.
This, however, will again depend upon the progress of
the art of healing; and institutionally upon other col
leges quite diverse from themselves coming upon the
scene, to enrich medicine, enflame competition and emu
lation, and extend the boundaries of that large kind
feeling which alone can melt away professional jealousy,
and which is the only climate in which all that is liberal
and humane can live.
But would I commit the lives of the community to the
possible intervention of uneducated men?
That, I
answer, is the very thing which has taken place at
present, and which I would invoke freedom to help me
to avoid. The education of the schools cannot fit men
for curing the diseases of their fellows; it is only one way
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
71
of launching them towards professional, but not neces
sarily, healing life. A man of no Latin, no anatomy,
no physiology, is every now and then a good physician,
though he sit on the lowest forms of society. He is
educated for that use, though he cannot write his own
name. By freedom, bring him into rapport with the
light of learning, if you can ■ but at all events kill not
the Divine power which is in him of doing good, because
he is not educated up to your bench. Perhaps you are
confounding education, which is the accepted art of
making gentlemen, with that grander education, or leading
forth, which every man can have, and which consists in
giving him freedom and a career, that his original gifts
may be led forth by their own way, and his own way,
into each one’s promised land of a useful and associated
life. To confound these two educations were a mistake;
for the great physician, look you, may come in a beggar’s
guise. There are no uneducated men save the men that
cannot do their life-work. Their success in that gives
them their diploma of knowledge every day. And no
college can take it away from them. And none ought
to have the power of obscuring it, by insisting that it
shall be pasted over with an artificial document of State
paper.
Want of skill and want of care in medical practice
amount to so much unjustified death per annum; but
who supposes that state protection of physic can increase
the amount of skill in the medical community? The
State, it is true, can exact from everyone, that he or she
shall pass through a curriculum of preparatory studies
and hospital attendance, to fit him to enter upon practice.
But of the studies, many may be useless, except as ac
complishments. From the studies, many useful ones
may be left out, owing to the bigotry of the elders
The diploma may be sought as the shield of protection
to the doctor rather than as the shield of health to the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
patient. Numerous men naturally qualified for medicine,
born doctors, may be, and are, shut out from their life
work, by the expense which confines the practice of
physic to the abler classes. All the State licentiates
leaning upon their diplomas, are apt from the very se
curity of their position to be mastered by a conceit in
which natural skill must languish. To be built up
against freedom, to be privileged, is to be built up
against nature; and gifts of God, which in this case are
given first in the heart, will be small where the receivers
of them deny the exercise of them to their fellows. To
be inhumane to your brother man, to be chartered
against him, is a bad preparation for ministering to the
sick, or the departing. The root and basis of medicine
is the love of healing in the universal heart and mind;
the stem of it is the instinctive perception and light
which is born to penetrate into health and disease; the
branches, and the twigs and the leaves of it are the
specialities of perceptions from the nature and the spirit
of mankind; which become special in the course of ex
perience ; the love of healing reigning and animating in
every one of them. Mere experience in its -widest
range is the soil the tree grows in, and the climate in
which it lives. You may garden, you may deepen, you
may purify and enrich this experience as you like; but
the tree grows through all the world, and sciences, and
societies, and states have nothing to do but first not to
define it, not to hinder it; and second, to help it if they
can. If it wants pruning, the force of public opinion
and public criticism, and the pressure of public safety,
are the only instruments that can lop its sacred life; and
all these will play an immeasurably greater part when
State patronage has passed away.
And now suppose you had broken your leg, and it was
badly managed by a regular doctor, a surgeon by Act of
Parliament; and that I had broken my leg, and it was
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
73
badly set by an unlicensed bonesetter; would not your
bad man, in an action at law, be far more Ekely to escape
from you scot free than my bad man? You know he
would; because he would be in the fortress of legafity in
the first place; and because he belongs to a powerful
clique which will gather round his incapacity, and stand
up and speak for him; and unless it be a very gross case,
say they could have done no better, and that his ante
cedents are perfect. The pressure of public safety towards
each individual is therefore greatly diminished by
officializing a medical profession; thus causing them all,
army-wise, to support each other, and giving them official
irresponsibility towards the suffering and the sick. And
if you could take away bonesetters and quacks altogether,
the medical profession would be utterly uncriticised and
unamenable. We may sum up this branch of the subject
with the axiom, that the more medicine is under the
protection of the State, the less can its practice be subject
to public opinion, or be under the correction of the law.
An impression has been sedulously cultivated, that
anatomy and physiology, pathology, and various other
branches of science, are the healing virtue in the world,
and that they, and written Practice of Medicine, con
stitute positive faculties in man; whereas they are mere
books, or at the best outlying experiences. Not one of
them has any direct relation, any rule of thumb, to a single
case that will hereafter occur. In every instance they
require to pass through a Eving medical perception to
be of any use. That perception, and aU that belongs
to it, is, as I have said before, a spiritual thing, and
must only be fed, but not substituted or overlaid, by
knowledge.
It is an appecite for doing good and
working cures, and experience and knowledge must
feed it; and this must take place upon true social con
ditions : that is to say, all the men who belong natu
rally to the caUing, must be encouraged, by the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
absence of State interference, to take their places at the
Board of Healing.
_ •
For, mark you, all science and experience depend for
their cultivation upon numbers of the right men: so many
earnest men to the square miles of medical truth, and
you will have greater crops of knowledge than if only
half the number were employed. And if you take away
protection from this medical corn of humanity, you will
have more colleges to grow it; waste lands of many
minds never cultivated before, sown with it; more
sciences, more extensive anatomy, physiology, pathology,
pharmacy, rising up from the new interest and curiosity
of the enfranchised medical masses; a greater closeness
of these sciences to the matter in hand; and a quantity of
non-medical minds, who have been forced by mere birth,
parentage, and genteel education, against their grain, into
the cultivation of healing, will be unable to stand the
natural rivalry of born doctors of all classes, and will
betake themselves to other callings. In the meantime,
there will not be more medical men, unless society
requires them, but there will be a constant tendency ever
increasing, that there shall be none but truly medical
men associated with the medical wants of the people.
This flush and influx of spirit and nature into the call
ing, will greatly—nay, incalculably—alter the spirituality
and naturalness of the art and its ancillary sciences.
Much will then be able to be done by genius and instinct,
which is now only vainly attempted by the cruel senility
of an effete profession. For the matter stands thus:—
Nature and its sciences must be cultivated, according to
the present exigency and mission of the human mind,
for these are the natural and scientific ages. Medicine
must be extended, falsely or benignly, from the pressure
of the sick upon the sound. The world of work revolv
ing with giddy velocity, brain and heart, and man and
woman, call aloud for central power to enable us to stand
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
75
upright in the rapid revolutions. If the medical faculty
—I mean the cohort of healers out of all men—is only
one-tenth nature’s strength, and nine-tenths noodledom
from one class only, the one-tenth must cast about
savagely, and most artificially, for the missing ninetenths of their natural mind and their natural array.
Failing to combat disease on such unequal terms, they
must endeavour to generate power, which is another
name for inspiration, instinct, and genius, out of mere
sciences; and these very sciences perpetually disappoint
ing them they must necessarily cudgel until there is
nothing left but analysis and detail. Woe then to the
bedside when knowledge itself is dust and ashes; and
woe to nature and her feelings when the rack and the
thumbscrew are applied as the only known means of
eliciting her loving, and on any terms but love’s, impenetrable secrets.
All this has gone on in our time and for ages past, but
now to clear understanding. If the medical calling had
been true to nature, and to human nature, in which
freedom and the order that springs from freedom are
abiding facts, the monstrosity of vivisection, of cutting
up live animals, never could have been thought to be a
means to the healing art. The great gorilla of cruelty
could never have been regarded as an ally of the Great
Physician. Perception, instinct, genius, the inspiration
of Christianity, which by making men love each other is the
heart and soul of all human arts, would have had it given to
them to heal diseases without the need of any suggestion
from a torture in which the demons must rejoice. It would
have been seen at once that to lay one knife edge upon a
living creature was to cut the supreme nerve that carries
the emotion of humanity right out from religion into the
medical mind. It would have been known instinctively
that the power of healing, coming as it should do from
Christ direct, is from that moment paralytic; that the
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
steady will can no longer lift it, and that the good it still
does is in momentary spasms from the lower emotions of
the man. How different from the river of power, pro
ceeding down the Divine steeps, terrace by terrace, to
humanity at large, through faculties which are essentially
humane.
And this horrible vivisection is a type of the other
distorting arts and sciences which the false cramping of
medicine into a State-built profession is one active means
of producing. Chemic, static, and material reasoning
have as little to do with restoration of health as physio
logy founded upon the cutting up of living animals.
Observe, I do not deny that vivisection may, as other
analytic methods have done, contribute hints, in the ages
while man is still cruel to man, to practical medicine;
but I deny our right, even with chloroform to stupify
animals, to gain knowledge in this way. There are
robberies and murders in nature, and science has no
more right to live upon their spoils, than citizens have
right to retire into comfortable drawing-rooms for life
upon the proceeds of daggers and dark lanes. There are
better riches for man and science than these, and im
measurably better ways of acquiring them. Time was
when the cutting up of living criminals did contribute to
the progress of physiological knowledge. There is no
doubt of that; but even Dr. Brain-Skewerhard would
scarcely advocate the practice as legitimate at the present
day. And now the feelings of every one of his cats and
his crows is worth more than all the science which their
maltreatment has ever brought into his store.
Before quitting this branch of the subject, let us notice
that the State also lends a heavy pressure to discourage
the introduction of women as medical practitioners.
This it does by chartering irresponsible public bodies,
such as the colleges of physicians and surgeons, who deny
the right of examination to women, however gifted or
�MEDICAL FREEDOM,
77
accomplished they may be; and these brave women, few
at present in numbers, and with no public support, are
obliged to submit without appeal to this corporate
despotism which has grasped the keys of the door of
. medical practice. Surely here, as in all other human
things, the law is freedom and experiment. If woman
aspires to try her hand in healing the sick, what is the
justification of that power which would deny her the
trial ? You think she had better mind her own business,
and attend to her house and its concerns; but why then
do you not mind yours, and leave her to herself ? If she
has not tried the medical life, how is it possible to know
what will come of her trial? You cannot penetrate a
chemical, or a fact in anything, by thinking; you must
have experiment, which has made all the difference
between the dark ages of knowledge and the light ages.
Especially in human capacities you must have experi
ment ; and without freedom, which State patronage
inevitably destroys, you camiot have experiment. True,
woman may be altogether unfit for this work, but let her try,
which is the one only way to prove her unfitness. Do not
with your State sword of ungallantry cut her down in her
first exercises, because you think she ought not to succeed.
I do not know whether she will succeed or not, and that
is clearly no affair of mine; but I do know that if I deny
her the right to her experiment, besides being guilty of
the most cowardly meanness and unmanliness, I am
denying in the highest instance the divinely ordained and
only successful principle of all the arts and sciences—I am
crushing the very masterpiece of experiment.
In short, medical social science reposes on the ground
of medical social experiment, just as natural science re
poses upon the ground of natural experiment.
Instead then of cutting up living animals, favour by
freedom the putting together of living humanities;
favour in this way at once the highest synthesis and the
�78
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
highest experiment; and be assured that if no other good
comes from it, disburdened and leisure-gifted human
nature will become the vehicle of a spirit and a fire, of a
generosity and an insight, of a thankfulness and a pene
tration, of a love and of a life, before which Isis will let
drop her veil, and the artificial difficulties which have
barred and frozen out the long lost way to the positive
ages will be melted from before our advancing feet by
the smiles of nature herself.
But besides excluding without trial one half of the
human race, and perhaps the better half, from the
inspired pursuit of healing, State interference also con
fines the cultivation and practice of medicine virtually to
the middle classes. That is to say, it ordains that the
genius of the physician is only to be found in one rank
of society. It erects a property-qualification for exer
cising the gifts of God in the chief of the inspirational
arts supported by the chief of the sciences. Apply this
all round, and how absurd it grins upon us. Imagine
that Parliament should insist that no painter, sculptor,
poet, or musician should be born in the upper or the
lower ranks1 What a belief in caste, and Chinese arti
ficiality would this imply; and what an atheistic denial of
gifts, of genius, and of the mission of Nature’s noble
men, wherever they may be. And yet Parliament,
without intending it, virtually does all this for the
medical estate, by interfering to give privilege to colleges
of the middle class, which thenceforth inevitably pro
ceed by financial arrangements, and enforced studies, to
make a man first a gentleman in accomplishments, and
afterwards to let him be a medical man if his gifts lie
that way; and to dub him so in any case. This, too, is
against social experiment, and affronts nature in her
scientific regard.
It is the great source of quacks
among the poorer classes; the said quacks being evi
dently persons with some gift for medicine, but with no
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
79
means of an education. Emancipate medicine from
State-trammels, and poor men’s medical colleges would
arise, and compete not ignobly with the other colleges.
The poor could then be attended by educated people
of their own sort, at small expense, and the masses
generally would be raised by having their own un
scorned natural professions, and a new class of bluff
honest common senses and artisan ways of natural life
and thought would be added to these noble arts. The
medical instinct and inspiration of humanity shall stand
upon their feet in the masses.
Nor, then, would medical nature be cashiered, as she
now is, of the splendid culture and chivalric honour and
insight of the upper men and women. What Lord
Napier was to logarithms; what Lord Rosse is to astro
nomical experiments; what the Duke of Sutherland is to
rescue from fire; what Wellington was to war; and Prince
Albert to the republicanism of the arts and sciences,
that might other lords and ladies be to practical medicine,
and the inventions which it so much needs. But make
it essentially a middle class affair, and the lower classes
cannot bring their gifts into it, and the upper classes
will not. Yet it is against all reason to suppose that
the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain do not
include a per-centage of medically gifted men; and also
that the same is not true of the people. The fact that
as a rule they yield no recruits to the divine mission of
curing disease, is of itself sufficient to show that some
devouring artificiality is preying upon them; and that a
huge injustice is done to gifts for which we are heavily
responsible before God, and to our fellow men. The
protection of medicine by the State is that artificiality
and that injustice. Remove it, and with it you begin to
remove the baneful belief—now all but universal—
that medical men can be created by culture; that real
culture can come from without, and that the nature and
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MEDICAL FREEDOM.
gifts of the men are of second-rate importance. Nay,
in the very act of removing it you reverse that creed,
and make the gifts primary, and set the culture in the
second place. Will you have less culture for that ?
Oh! no, infinitely more! The gifts will become then so
sacred, and the responsibility of them so exacting, that
the sharp and genial powers will raise colleges before
which the existing ones could pass no examination, but
■ great and corporate though they be, would inevitably be
plucked. Where there is a will there is a way. And
the great way is natural knowledge; but the will in its
purest manifestation is only another name for the de
termination of our gifts.
And now, to turn the tables, having shown the
blighting and vitiating influence of State patronage
upon medicine, there is another branch of despotism
quite of an internal kind, which deserves to be recorded
and protested against. There is the attempt to subject
medicine, not to State law, but to scientific law; the
aim, as the phrase goes, to make it into a positive
science.
The truth is, as I have stated before, that
medicine is not a science at all, although nourished and
fed perhaps out of all sciences; Medicine is an Art, and
an art reposes upon a gift of God, and according to the
intensity of that gift it is called genius, and according
to its native and willing openness to the power above it,
it becames inspiration.
And that art summons and
employs all the faculties for its furtherance; among
them, all the scientific faculties, and seeks instruction
and advancement from them all. But because it is an
unquestioning rush of instinctive life from the man into
his world and his calling, it cannot be dominated by
any rule or principle whatever less than the love of
medical good, and subordinately and as a means the love
of medical truth. The doctrine or rule must ever be
allowed to invade that centre, any more than the geo
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
81
graphy of the earth must be palmed upon the sun. If
you attempt to work it by rule, some one ambitious
principle will extinguish all the much needed others,
and you will have war first, and then inconceivable nar
rowness in your mind. You will fall into sects, and at
the entrance to each Mrs. Grundy will stand doorkeeper
in your soul. You will not venture to prescribe what
you know would do good, because it is not of your self
chosen rubric; and because your fellows will call you to
account for a breach of your bond. You will cease to
look all round for means, and will wear the blinkers of
so-called principle where the precipices of your own and
your neighbour’s danger demand the foot of the chamois,
and the eye of the eagle. Heaven help you, you will
be accoutred for blindman’s buff when you ought to be
king of the terrible Alps. And all for what ? that you
may pretend to an exactness which nature disowns; and
may enthrone the tiny frame of material science upon
the colossal ruins not only of art, but of faith.
It cannot be done; there are no positive sciences
but those of man’s own making—the houses which he
has built, and in which therefore he can be supreme—
the rest are all fluctuating, and so full of mystery before
and behind, so meant also for usefulness and not for
absoluteness, that careful and humble science may indeed
be a positive ship, made in excellent human docks, but
the great, and desiderated, and unattainable knowledge
is the sea itself, and God is in that sea. The bark rocks
and floats, and the further it voyages, and the more it
moves, the less likely is it to founder in the inscrutable
deep. Let it not want to become more positive than
speeding flight can make it; let it not attempt to drop
the anchor of conceit in the unfathomable places. Let
it not dare to say of any spot in the Divine ocean—This
is mine!
These matters may sound abstract, but they are of
6
�82
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
immense practical significance, and play an important
part, for good or for ill, at the bedside. For if you find
a practitioner who has a doctrine which he considers
absolute, and who derives his art from that doctrine, two
bad consequences will follow. In the first place, he will
set an overweening value upon the science, pure and
simple, of the case he is treating: the exacting doctrine
in him will have an unnatural appetite to be fed out of
that science; and the regard of the cure as an end will be
perpetually confused by the regard of the science as an
end. I have felt this so strongly myself in practice,
that I have been obliged to put it down: and to tear up
in my mind all magisterial doctrines and principles, and
to rewrite them on neutral and subservient parts of myself
in a humble and ministerial capacity.
By this means,
however, I hope I am attaining to a wider as well as
exacter science in the end: a science which radiates from
the conscious intellect of cures. But in the second place
the doctrinaire practitioner will be bound, or greatly
biassed,—by his own mind; by the surveillance of his doc
trinaire patients, whom he has helped to make into
pedants; and by the medical clique to which he belongs,—
not to do anything which outlies the doctrine which is
his creator.
Suggestions apart from that doctrine will
tend to reduce him to a chaos. What treble fear all this
implies ! What a slender exploration of the means of
nature!
What a regard to a centre of the fancy, when
sad and bleeding facts lie calling for pity, and ought to
avail to take one quite out of oneself, and to make one
gather succour from all things. Instead of this, the first
care is to practice within the doctrine, and to use no
weapon but what the armoury of the doctrine contains.
It is true you may have the highest confidence in the
doctrine, and may believe it is a universal rule, but the
universality is only a belief, and not an established fact;
and no number of human lives can make it more than a
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
83
belief; that is to say, a probable, and in the ratio of its
probability, a growing and a useful science.
Neverthe
less, you have no right to limit your powers of doing
medical good to such a belief or such a science. Observe,
it is not the science but its mastership that I impugn.
And I do impugn it, because it limits you with no com
pensation ; and because in a vast number of serious cases
it does not succeed; and because where it does succeed,
you have ever a duty to demand a greater success, in
greater rapidity and perfectness of cure. But here again,
your masterful doctrine tells you that when you have
served it faithfully you have done enough.
It will easily be seen that all this applies with force to
Homoeopathy, a doctrine to which I owe so much; in
which, so far as it goes, I thoroughly believe; and which,
whenever the supreme end of cure and my means of
knowledge allow, I unreservedly practice. I regard
Homoeopathy as the grandest natural and material feeder
which has yet been laid down by the genius of a man
from the nature of things into the spiritual body of the
healing arts. Yet Homoeopathy is but a doctrine, a
science, and a rule, and I will not derive medicine from
a science, or confound it with a science; on the contrary,
the science of Homoeopathy itself is a beautiful child and
derivation of an advancing medical art.
Let it occupy
a central, a solar place in the science of therapeutics by
drugs. There it can subsist. But no man can do good
by ignoring any of the wide realms which lie around it
and beneath it, and which are the domain of the collec
tive medical mind.
In the very matter of which the body of this little
work treats, the gist of the above abstract remarks is very
well exemplified. For I have been allowed to discover
that certain formidable diseases, small-pox to wit, can be
treated tuto^ cito et jucunde^ with a safety, rapidity, and
absence of suffering hitherto unknown, by simple external
�84
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
applications. In the first place, I had a powerful desire
to cure my patients well, and a dissatisfaction with the
present standard of well, in all schools.
This desire in
its measure is the natural heart of healing. Then, in the
next process, I knew that Hydrastis soothes irritated
mucous surfaces, and sometimes skin surfaces, and I
thought I would try it on the face of small-pox. The
only science here involved was an acquaintance with the
drug, and a little reasoning by analogy. I tried it, and
it succeeded marvellously.
And since then I have the
art of applying it correctly, increased by the experience
or knowledge of several cases. And I have faith and
confidence in its being a future blessing to the public; a
saving of innumerable healths, and faces, and lives.
But where is the positive science in all this ? A little
good knowledge suffices for a great deal of good practice.
It strikes me that I have been as little scientific as a
skilled blacksmith who makes a horse-shoe in a given
number of strokes. Of course he knows what he is
about with great accuracy; but that is all you can say
of his knowledge. The rest is educated instinct, and
excellent smithing. He may read about iron and heat,
and the biceps and triceps muscles of his arm, in over
hours ; and he will better his mind by it, and not hurt
his strong sinews ; but the science of his art must not
intrude itself book-wise into his forge, unless as fuel, or
he will soon be a bad professor and spoil horse’s hoofs.
Take the obverse, and suppose that I had enthroned
the Homoeopathic principle above my mind, and that I
had to grapple with dreadful small pox. The exigency
then becomes, to cure with a medicine which will produce
symptoms as nearly similar as possible to those of the
disease. I know no drug which will do this except
tartar emetic in one case which I have seen. I should
therefore have had to cast about through the whole of
Pharmacy for the drug in question; to reason by
�MEDICAL FREEDOM.
85
analogy from small symptoms to great ones, and per
haps I should have reasoned wrong; and after all I might
never have found what I wanted. And when I had
found it, I should have lacked precedent for applying it
externally. In the meantime, what patients unrelieved
and unsaved might be waiting at the doors of my posi
tive science before I could throw them open and invite
the sufferers into relief and into health! Perforce, I
must have hardened and narrowed and thus satisfied
my heart, to let such sad waiting go on. And at the
best, where would be the gain to science ? Science is
but the register of success ; and I should have had no
science of shortening the disease, no science of curing
the disease, no science of anything, but the worst sort
of expectancy ; the science of contentment with bad
things, and the science of waiting for science. In the
end, not Homoeopathy, but the small-pox would be my
king.
To obviate this I stood upright, as I have been
gradually for some years now endeavouring to do, and
regarded Homoeopathy, and all other means and pathies
whatever, as my appointed servants, and myself as the
servant of healing. And now I had no jealousies among
the servants, because I gave no privileges to any; and
I could pick and choose from all means, regardless of
the overweeningness of science, of the sectarianism of
patients, and of the despotism of medical cliques. In
short, I essayed to be free in my art; to wait upon
Heaven, and to use all ministers and faculties in their
degree of service. Feeling the blessed power of this
position, in contradistinction to the cramp and weakness
of my old one, I am in duty bound, even against the
charge of egotism, to impart it to my fellow men.
What then, it may be asked, becomes of Homoeopathy ?
I answer that it takes its place exactly according to its
proved services, and stands upon the irremoveable foun
�86
MEDICAL FREEDOM.
dation of its cures. It will be all that it ever was, the
most suggestive thing in the round of Pharmaceutical
science. Its dogmatism and its hugeness of minutise
will be cashiered, and Homoeopathy will be the stronger
for losing them. It will be girded afresh for a magni
ficent servitude to the ends of healing. Its martyrs will
still prove medicines on their own bodies, but with an
almost exclusive attention to cardinal results.
Its
registers of symptoms, curtailed by good sense, will be
mastered by those who court intimacy with drugs, and
studied continually afresh where the art of the physician
requires it. The only difference will be, that Homoeo
pathy will become enormously progressive, because it
will have no authority and no privilege, and will be
obliged to subsist upon cures. Reduced, so far as au
thority goes, to equality with other medical sciences, it
will become primarily ambitious of suggesting remedies,
and cease from provings which leave out the human
memory, and constitute a new matter and faculty of
absolute dust. But it will no more quarrel with other
means than the mariner’s compass quarrels with the
sextant, or the sails with the steam-engine of the ship.
Above all, mere instrument that it is, and mere instru
ment that all science is, it will never go mad again, and
believe that it is the captain of the medical crew; for
that captain is the Great Physician Himself, and all His
sons and daughters in the plenary freedom of His art.
�APPENDIX.
For some time past I have been in the habit of recommending
the Hungarian wines in the convalescence from fevers and
other diseases; and also in cases of vital debility, and its con
sequences. A large experience has now enabled me to endorse
afresh the commendation which I addressed to the importer,
Mr. Max Greger, *, Mincing Lane, and which is here ap
7
pended. The physician is often sorely tried to invent a new
nutrient-stimulant when the stomach is fastidious, and the
powers of life require recruiting, but are not to be reached by
ordinary bread, or ordinary wine. In such cases the novelty,
as well as the blood-invigorating qualities of the Hungarian
wines, render them rare friends at the bedside:—
June 27th, 1863.
Sir,—Since your wines were brought under my notice by
Colonel and Aiderman Wilson (Artillery Barracks, Finsbury),
I have had good opportunity of judging of their medical
qualities. My experience, especially of your Carlowitz wine,
is, that it agrees with persons who cannot take other wines;
that it has not the acidity which often renders the French and
Rhine wines inadmissible; that it is gratefully strong to weak
stomachs, and exerts a strengthening influence upon the blood.
Moreover, what is of great consequence medically, it is new to
the palate in flavour, and to the system in qualities. It is in
the best sense nutritious, and very valuable in that large class
of diseases and disorders which depend upon a feeble condition
and constitution of the blood. It is good in heemorrhages.
In an infant born with imperfectly closed heart, Carlowitz has
�88
APPENDIX.
sustained the strength admirably, while other means aiding
nature have been completing the organization.
Yours obediently,
Garth Wilkinson.
To Max Greger, Esq.
As a record and a protest I here reprint a Letter on Vivi
section, which I addressed to the Editor of the Morning Star,
and which appeared in that Paper on the 20th of August,
1863.
VIVISECTION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ STAR.”
Sir,—From my heart, and also from my head, I thank, you
for your leading article on Vivisection in to-day’s paper.
Allow me, as a small response, to burden you with the office
of forwarding half-a-guinea as our annual subscription to the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I hope and
trust that through the subject of vivisection now publicly
opened, and the controversy going on, this society will become
affluent enough to have special correspondents and reporters
wherever vivisection is practised under medical sanction. If
the horror is to be, let us know it, and let us judge of it. If
science is to be born from the throes of animal life, lut us also
be duly horrified and agonised, and suffer with the sufferers.
I have long been of Sir Charles Bell’s opinion that vivi
section is a delusion as a means of scientific progress. Of
course its results, like any other set of facts, constitute a
science in themselves; so do the results of murder, and so do
the results of picking pockets; an exact science, if you like;
and the earlier parts of the science will of course be subject to
correction by the later : and thus vivisection may show, and
has shown, truths and errors in the special walk of vivisection.
The science of animal agonies, like all sciences, can be cor
�APPENDIX.
89
rected, eliminated, and completed by experiments of fresh and
ever-fresh agonies. Buf it has been a mistake to suppose that
we were in the path of the humane sciences —in natural phy
siology, natural symptomatology, or within millions of leagues
of medicine, when with rack and thumbscrew and all torture
we were the inquisitors of the secrets of animal life. Under
such circumstances nature is inevitably a liar, and an accom
plice of the Father of Lies. I know that her, and his, very
lies are a science; but then they are not the science we take
them for, nor the science we want. They are not mind-ex
panding, heart-softening, or health-conferring science.
Vivisectional anatomy has contributed to medicine—meaning
by medicine the healing of diseases—virtually nothing, but
“ false paths and wrong roads.” Morbid anatomy has con
tributed marvellously little. Anatomy has done far less than
is supposed, though it keeps the eyes of the physician’s
imagination open, and enables him to tally conditions and
symptoms somewhat with parts and organic structures. If
the internal parts of the human frame were a closed page to
morrow, so to remain for the next half-century, and if the
symptoms and results of disease, and what will mitigate and
cure them, were the only permissible field of experiment, the
art of healing would lose nothing by ceasing to hold intercourse
with the sciences of structure and function—at all events, for
a time.
For example, I assert that the whole science of tubercle is
trivial and valueless in its results upon the curing of con
sumption; and equally inefficient in showing the cause of
consumption; and that cod liver oil and general regime, which
have no logical or real connection with the morbid anatomy of
consumption, are the present important medical agencies for
the treatment of that condition. And I assert that the whole
science of the Yivisectional and morbid anatomy of diabetes ;
the artificial production of it by lesions of the nervous system ;
the conditions of it in the liver, the lungs, and the kidneys,
have nothing to do with its cure, and throw no light upon its
cause; and that the fact that in many instances it can be cured
by the Hydrastis Gamadensis, the Leptandria, and Myrica
cerifera, has never yet been pointed to by any scalpel; and is
likely to be resisted by the men of the scalpel later than by
many others. What has the grand experience that a certain
�90
APPENDIX.
herb or drug will cure a disease, to do with a knowledge of the
particular wreck that that disease has left in the organisation
after death ? Pathological anatomy, except in surgical cases,
never suggests cure.
Now then, sir, let us take stock in this great Assize of
Humanity and the Healing Art versus the Cutting up of Live
Animals. Let us have definite tabulated statements of the
discoveries and results of the gain to man which has accrued
from the introduction of vivisection.
The great facts, the
benign arts that have been drawn out of the intestine agonies
of animals can be easily stated in lines, and columns of lines,
if they exist. Let us have them. We have had vivisection
enough. Whole menageries have been kept here and in Paris,
and all over Europe, to have their brains sliced and their
bodies mangled. It has gone on for hours a day, and year
after year. What is the stock in hand of results to humanity,
to healing, or even to “ permissible ” science ?
For, good
doctors, there are sciences, and you will find it out, that are
not permissible. It would not be permissible to suspend a
man or a woman by a hook, to know ever so exactly how they
would writhe; no, not even if you were a painter.
And,
therefore, I use the word, “ permissible ” science. And I say,
that if you cannot show some mighty results, far greater than
the discovery of cod liver oil, and of the circulation of the
blood, your persistent vivisection leads only to abominable
sciences, and to the blackest of all the black arts—the in
dulging of the human heart; and the gutta serena of cruelty
after that will soon obliterate the intellectual eyesight of
medicine.—Your constant reader,
Garth Wilkinson.
August 19th.
P.S.—I am informed by Mr. Skelton, sen., since these pages
were written, that in 1863 he became a Licentiate of the
Apothecaries’ Company of London, and this year has taken his
degree in medicine both in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and is
“ registered ” accordingly.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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On the cure, arrest, and isolation of small pox of a new method: and on the local treatment of erysipelas, and all internal inflammations, with a special chapter on cellulitis and a postscript on medical freedom
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Leath and Ross
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1864
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Health
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Conway Tracts
Inflammations
Medical Ethics
Sacerdotalism
Vivisection
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Text
SACERDOTALISM,
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS
OF THE NATIONAL SUNDAY LEAGUE,
BY
GEORGE J. WILD, LL.D.-,
AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1872.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�f
�SACERDOTALISM.
HE experience of life teaches us that most things
with which
varied
Tcharacter, and we have to do are of so features a in
display such different
different circumstances that it is rash to pass too
sweeping a judgment upon them. In history we find
many instances where times and seasons have made all
the difference between the good and evil of a system,—
an advancement or retardation of growth have rendered
that detrimental which before had been beneficial to a
people.
The subject of the present lecture forms no exception
to these remarks. It has its fair as well as its repulsive
side. Those who regard only the former will always
be its zealous defenders, those who look only on the
evil it has produced will be apt to be no less indis
criminate in their condemnation and abuse. Let us
endeavour to see where the truth lies between them.
To this end it will be expedient in the first place to
decide what is meant by this term sacerdotalism. It
is derived from a word which signifies set apart,
consecrated, or dedicated to a deity,—so that the
Sacerdos is the person in special relations with the
deity,—the sacrifice is any thing offered to the deity,—
the sacra, or sacred things include all the rites and
ceremonies connected with the religious worship of the
Gods. There are many other words derived from the
�6
Sacerdotalism.
same source, but they all imply the idea of some
special relation with deity. Now, sacerdotalism in its
largest sense is the principle and spirit on which all
these are founded, and by which they are perVaded :
it is however generally more exclusively used in con
nection with sacred persons, that is to say, it implies
the spirit of priesthood and the theory on which it is
based.
The question, therefore, that I wish to suggest for
our examination this evening, is whether this theory
has been and is for the advantage or the detriment of
society. In the compass of a brief paper only a very
cursory view can be taken of so extensive a subject,
but it may serve to call attention to some essential
features of the enquiry. And let it not be thought
that such an enquiry is of merely abstract and
historical interest, since there is none I believe which
more demands our attention under the circumstances
of the present day.
In considering this question we must take care not
to lose sight of the fact I have already stated, viz.,
that the root-principle of sacerdotalism, the assumption
on which priesthoods and all their creeds are founded,
is that of some special private relation with the deity,
the possession of some particular privilege and power
different from that of other men. Wherever in the
world you find anything in the nature of a priesthood,
you will find this, as a matter of fact, to be the case.
In the hoary past we read of the Brahmins conveying
this notion by the assertion that they were derived
from the head of Brahma; the Buddhist priest acts as
a sort of necessary mediator to convey the prayers of
the faithful votaries to the courts above. In the
Mosaical religion the priests are represented as re
ceiving a special revelation and commission at the
mouth of God himself, who condescendingly comes
down on the top of a mountain and enunciates his
directions amidst thunder and lightning, and the sound
�Sacerdotalism.
7
of a trumpet. The Greeks had their divine oracles of
which priests were the ministers and promulgators,
and the Romans their augurs who explained the signi
fication of the auspices, and who were alone competent
to decide whether they had been taken correctly ; and
it has been the same in other nations. Moreover, all
these races have had their sacred books supposed to
contain revelations of the divine will of which persons
connected with the Sacerdotal class were alone con
sidered competent expositors. The Brahmins have
their Vedas and Code of Manu; the Buddhists their
Tripitaka; the Jews their books of the Law and
Prophets; the Ancient Persians their Zend-Avesta;
the Greeks and Romans their Books of the Sibylls.
If we turn our view to Christendom we find similar
phenomena. There, too, are divinely inspired writings,
of which the Church,—the Church as used in this
connection, meaning assemblies of the priestly body,—
of which the Church is authoritatively declared to be
the sole witness and keeper. There, too, according to
the theory, is an order of men set apart by divine
appointment and apostolic succession to be the means
of conveying the highest blessings of religion to the
world ; in the Romanist section of the Church, indeed,
the only channels by which the divine presence can be
secured in their mysteries, or pardoning grace be
assured to the penitent; among the majority of
Protestants the same notion being held in a modified
form, the authoritative exposition of doctrine, the
declaratory power of absolution, and the communication
of the benefits of the real presence in the sacrament
being retained in the hands of priests. The Anglican
conception of the power of the priesthood well appears
in the statements addressed to them in the ordination
service, one of which from the mouth of the Bishop
is in these words, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office
and work of a priest in the Church of God, now
committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.
�8
Sacerdotalism.
"Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven, and
whose sins thou dost retain they are retained. And he
thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of
his holy sacraments.”
In view of these facts, then, I think I am fully
justified in the assertion, that wherever there is a
priesthood there also is the assumption of some special
relation to the deity, and a special authority thence
derived.
I return then to the question, has this theory been
beneficial to society or not ? I must confess that I am
not altogether prepared to say that there have not
been certain advantages connected with it. In the
early stages of savage life, when men were first
beginning to emerge from a condition little above
the brutes, there was an advantage in hedging
round the most intelligent class with supposed divine
sanctions. It is possible that this was the only
way they had of commanding any respect or enforcing
any kind of order among their savage associates,
and that therefore this supposition was then a real
necessity and an indispensable aid to human pro
gress. It is, too, I think quite possible, that many
of these early teachers and priests really believed them
selves under the especial patronage and inspiration of
some god. Contemplative and philanthropic minds
meditating in the gloom of primeval forest or the
solitude of boundless plains, while they sighed for the
sorrows of their brethren and aspired after a day of
deliverance and a happier land, may well have come
to imagine that such a land was promised, and con
ceived that the thoughts kindling within them, and
the voices ever sounding in their hearts, came from
some power above. They unconsciously peopled the
silence and the solitude with phantoms, and then mis
took them for realities. Thus the tradition of divine
inspiration and of God’s speaking with men first
arose, and thus it has descended to our times: it arose
�Sacerdotalism.
9
at first in. an. honest belief, and though afterwards often,
mixed with fraud, yet it has seldom been wholly made
up of conscious deceit,—for a thing utterly fraudulent
would not have lasted so long. In. early Egypt we
read that the priests first taught the people the arts of
life, and instructed them by a system of irrigation to
convert those rising Nile waters, which they had before
half dreaded as a peril, into a source of fertility and
blessing. They too introduced the observation of the
hea vens by which the periods of rising might be foretold.
What wonder was it that the men, who first dis
covered that the stars were thus subservient to human
uses, as they gazed into those deep skies and read their
celestial lessons, should dream that their radiant rulers
were speaking to their hearts, should long to link their
destiny to some “bright particular star,” or even dare
to “ claim a kindred with them?” And what wonder
was it when the lowly toilers on the land heard from
these star-gazers lessons of guidance and found them
come true, that they should think their teachers con
versed with deities on the solitary mountain top, or
lofty tower, and exaggerate to their fellows the sanctity
and the mystery of that knowledge which struck their
simple minds with awe.
And still again at a later period we may be pre
pared to allow that the priestly class has done good
service to mankind. When, for instance, at the period
of the decline of the Roman Empire, it seemed as if
all the fruits of civilisation, all the results of the long
travail of 1500 years were to be overwhelmed in a tide
of barbarism, and the arts, laws and accumulated
learning of the past for ever lost, the Christian church
in many places presented a barrier to the storm, and
afforded shelter to treasures whose destruction would
have been irreparable. These facts are allowed even
by a witness so unexceptionable as the historian
*
Gibbon.
Some indeed have thought that we are in* Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c, 37.
�10
Sacerdotalism.
debted to the clerical body for at least as much destruc
tion as preservation of the monuments of ancient litera
ture. Hallam in one place seems inclined to attribute the
decay of learning “ to the neglect of heathen literature
by the Christian church,” * and elsewhere alluding to
the stupidity and carelessness of ecclesiastics, in respect
of the remains of ancient learning, he says “ so gross
and supine was the ignorance of the monks within
whose walls these treasures were concealed that it was im
possible to ascertain, except by indefatigable researches,
the extent of what had been saved out of the great
shipwreck of antiquity.” f In another place, however,
he acknowledges that if we be asked, “ by what cause
it happened that a few sparks of ancient learning sur
vived throughout this long winter ” of the middle ages,
“ we can only ascribe their preservation to the esta
blishment of Christianity. Religion alone made a
bridge, as it were, across the chaos and has linked the
two periods of ancient and modern civilization. J
At any rate, then, we may at least concede that in
whatever degree the clergy in the dark ages were able
to make a stand against barbarism and rescue the monu
ments of the past from destruction, they were indebted
to the principle of which we are treating, which
recognizes an order of men in special connection with
the deity. For the barbarians in their native forests
had long been accustomed to a superstitious regard for
their own priests, and would thus be naturally inclined
to shew a degree of forbearance to those who were
protected by the insignia of religion, however ruthless
they might be towards their unconsecrated opponents.
They would apply the torch without scruple to a palace
or a fortress, while they hesitated in front of a convent
or a church. Such remnants of antiquity therefore as
chanced to be sheltered in the latter had so far a better
* Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. ii. c. ix., pt. i. p. 337.
+ lb. c. ix., p. 519.
J lb., p. 355.
�Sacerdotalism.
11
prospect of preservation than those contained in
secular walls.
So far, then, we willingly grant that some degree of
benefit has accrued to mankind from the sacerdotal
principle in early stages of human development. A or
would we deny that other advantages of a less direct
nature are traceable at the same period, which space
*
will not now allow us to particularize. We have yet to
inquire whether the same advantages are perceptible as
we descend to more civilised times.
That the notion of an order of men set apart, and
endowed with a divine authority over their fellows is
one very capable of being abused, I suppose no
unprejudiced person would deny. Considering it ac
cording to our general experience of human nature, what
should we conceive to be the probable effect and
tendency of such a notion ? I think all candid persons
will agree that without very searching and continuous
checks, one very natural effect of such a notion must be
to produce in those under its influence a high degree of
spiritual pride. As time goes on, spiritual pride, like
all other, has a natural tendency to display itself; this
can only be done by the extension and consolidation of
spiritual influence and power. In the first place then
a priestly body under the influence of this feeling would
look about for the means of gratifying it; ecclesiastics
will ordinarily be deficient in direct physical force, they
will often therefore be driven to attain their ends by a
close alliance with the monarch, the warrior caste, or
the aristocracy of a country ; mutual concessions being
made so that they may join hands for the continued
repression of the vulgar.
But further,, of all kinds of power, spiritual power is
that which is most jealous of its rights and privileges.
* V. Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. II.,
167, also Soame’s Anglo-Saxon Church, c. IV. p. 215 and else
where, and Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, Vol.
VI., p. 433 et seq., and also I. 440, and II. 96, 97.
�12
Sacerdotalism.
Its representatives, ingrained with the idea that their
dicta are derived from a divine source, and their rights
conferred by a special appointment of God, are com
pelled to be uncompromising by the very theory of their
origin. To allow that their words are questionable they
think is to be unfaithful to the oracles of God, to be
lax in maintaining their rights is to betray the divine
honour. In fact they get so accustomed at last to
identify the glory of God and their own that they
become utterly unable to distinguish them. So that to
decry the statements of priests is to be called blasphemy,
or to touch their property in not common robbery but
sacrilege.
This necessity of their position in the same way
requires them to withstand all suggestions of improve
ment, or advancements of knowledge which do not pro
ceed from themselves. They are the divinely commis
sioned teachers, they possess the heavenly oracles, out
of which they have instructed the people on the world’s
origin and their own, on their destiny, the laws which
should regulate their lives, on what is good and what
evil. If they allow their dogmas to be at best doubt
ful, or grant for a moment that from some other source,
sounder knowledge may be derived, their pride of place,
their occupation is gone : there ceases to be any reason
for their existence. “ For why,” might men say, “do
we want messengers from the gods to teach us, when
we increase in knowledge without them, when we
can even perceive that much of their pretended
knowledge is erroneous ?” The logic of their position,
therefore, irresistibly compels priestly bodies to crush
inquiry, and if possible stifle its results. In some
cases of course these results are absolutely undeniable.
Then there will arise a strong temptation to keep up
the credit of their oracles by forced interpretations or
crafty interpolations which may bring them into con
formity with science. But every fresh discovery has a
more unsettling effect, every escape of new light reason
�Sacerdotalism.
*3
ably makes them tremble for their security. But power
which thus feels itself unstable is naturally dissatisfied;
it could not be expected to remain passive under the
slow and painful process of dissolution, and smilingly
look on till the last vestige of its influence was
stolen away. It instinctively perceives that to retain
the dominion it still has undiminished it must fight
hard to extend it, that it must throw out its roots and
strive to interweave its fibres with the very ground
work of human existence. It will endeavour, there
fore, to make every relation of society so intimately
dependent on itself, that to interfere with it in the
slightest degree shall seem to conservative minds like
risking every security of social order ; it must have a
voice, and a function, and a hand everywhere, so that
no war can be undertaken without its henison, no law
passed without its sanction, no property change hands
by transference or succession without its confirmation,
no family relationship be incurred without its authority
and permission, above all, no education proceed without
its direction. And where, perchance from want of
watchfulness, customs have crept in which tend to
nullify its privileges and bring its ministers down to
the level of common men, no pains must be spared by
the wily introduction of new laws, or by the invention
of fresh legal subtleties to countervail their effect.
But as the world grows in enlightenment, perhaps all
these measures fail and the situation is daily becoming
more critical. It becomes then at last more and more
apparent to the priestly order that they must demur at
no means, however questionable or desperate, to hold
together their waning dominion. Restive princes must
be won by flattery, the vulgar dazzled by pomps or
cowed by more awful terrors; both flattery and fear
must be applied to unlock the chest of wealth, that
most unfailing source of power,—if all else fail, the
zeal of fanatics must be invoked and divisions kindled
among brethren, that the light of new-dawning and
�14
Sacerdotalism.
dangerous truths may be smothered in the fumes of
bigoted passions and civic slaughters. Divide et impera,
divide and command, is a maxim which sacerdotalism
has more than once known how to use in her exigencies;
it may become dangerous for her that her subjects
should be too united, and a little heresy has often
been serviceable to warm up the cooling zeal of the
elect.
Such, or something like this, a philosopher in a by
gone age might a priori have conjectured would be
the course to which the sacerdotal principle would be
driven by the necessity of its position as society pro
gressed. And we shall find that such a conjecture
would have been strictly verified by fact. Though,
indeed, facts reveal to us an extent of unscrupulousness
and a superfluity of craft and violence which no imagi
nation could have foreseen. Amongst a large number
I can now only refer you to a few salient examples
which will serve to verify the principles I have pointed
out. First, then, as to the tendency of priesthood to
coalesce with the kingly or aristocratic class in order to
keep under the mass of the people. Of this we have
a variety of instances. Among the Brahmins there
was a certain antagonism at an early period between the
priestly and warrior castes, but they at length found it
expedient to reconcile their differences and join hands
in support of a creed which was so well adapted to keep
the lower castes in their proper places. At a later period,
*
however, by combining with the lower, the Brahmins
seem to have crushed the leading caste and got all
power into their own hands. It is supposed by some
that in like manner the next move of sacerdotalists in
Europe will be to court and seek to ally themselves with
the democracies. I can only advise all sagacious liberals
to beware of them. Among the early Egyptians there
seems to have arisen at times a similar antagonism, but
* V. M. Muller’s History of Sanskrit Literature pp. 77-81,
also p. 207, p. 485 seq.
�Sacerdotalism.
T5
eventually with the same result, of a consolidation of
the sacerdotal power. Even among a people with so
many democratic instincts as the Romans, and who
were nominally republicans, we find that for many
generations there was a close league between the
aristocratic and sacerdotal classes. No one could be a
Pontiff or an Augur unless he were also a Patrician,
and thus the whole power of war and peace, the
sanction of laws, and the partition of land, was retained
in the ruling hands. This artful exclusion of the
Plebeians was indeed eventually abolished by the
Ogulnian law, though even then the Pontifex Maximus
must still be a Patrician: however, no sooner was the
Empire established than we find the Priestly class in
close alliance with it, the Emperor either himself
monopolising or exclusively appointing to its influential
offices. In the Christian Church the same spectacle
presents itself. Hardly has the Christian priesthood
established its influence and obtained a numerous body
of votaries in the great cities of the Empire, than we
find it in close alliance with an imperial pretender; and
henceforth its prelates “rear their mitred fronts in
courts and palaces,” and the controversies of the faith
take their place amongst the intrigues of eunuchs and
clamour of courtiers. For their after successes against
the yet widely prevalent paganism, the Christian priest
hood are still largely dependent on the same principle
of currying favour with Kings or King’s wives.
Charlemagne is induced to convert the Saxons with
fire and sword,—Clovis and his Franks rescue the
sacred fold from the incursion of the heretics,—from
another royal hand is obtained the patrimony of
St. Peter,—and others consecrate the fruits of the
earth to the service of heaven in the institution of
tithes. Truly the Church had good reason for her
adoption of the maxim, “the powers that be are
ordained of God ! ”
By what arts the clergy endeavoured to consoli
�16
Sacerdotalism.
date their power and extend its influence in every
sphere of society, the history of every country in
Europe and our own land furnishes innumerable ex
amples. We find them not seldom instigating revolts
of young princes against their fathers who had
attempted to moderate clerical pretensions, teaching
wives to plot against their husbands, laying counties
and kingdoms under interdict, excommunicating ma
gistrates on all sorts of frivolous pretences, concocting
and dissolving marriages to further priestly encroach
ments, manoeuvring the laity out of their voice in
church affairs, and often, by artful concordats, monarchs
out of their rights of investiture; they brought it
about that clerics and their dependents should be ex
empt from the jurisdiction of the lay courts, they
obtained for their own courts exclusive jurisdiction in
all causes matrimonial, and the right of interference
in all matters connected with the nuptial contract,
marriage portions, and dower; wills and testaments
were brought under their sway : in many places to the
exclusion of the lay courts they obtained jurisdiction
over a large number of crimes, under pretence of their
being spiritual causes: they even had their own prisons
for lay offenders. Moreover, by artful contracts, and
■working on the superstitious fears of the dying, they
acquired in all countries enormous accumulations of
land, which no statutes of mortmain could check. The
English Statute Book in earlier reigns is crowded with
acts intended to control clerical rapacity, but all in
vain.
Common recoveries and uses and trusts still find a
place in our law books as monuments of priestly
ingenuity. It would detain us too long to go into
further particulars under this head; but any unac
quainted with the subject I earnestly recommend to
read the seventh chapter of Hallam’s History of the
Middle Ages, and any good edition of Blackstone’s
Commentaries, under the title Mortmain.
�Sacerdotalism.
J7
We have yet to give examples of the tendency of a
priestly class to oppose itself to discovery and intel
lectual advancement. Once upon a time the now
sleepy Buddhists were reformers ; but the high priestly
party in India, then represented by the Brahmins,
eventually extirpated these innovators by force of
arms. The religious authorities of Athens will never
escape the shame of having persecuted to the death
“ Socrates,” a good man, who they thought “ subverted
the people.” Of the Jewish priesthood it would be
superfluous to speak, for “ which of the prophets had
not their fathers persecuted1?” as one of their last
victims asked them. Since their days of misfortune,
indeed, the Jews have been mostly called to endure the
persecutions of others, and they have often set a bright
example to the rest of the world. But in ancient
times the Romans seem to have been the only people
who saw the necessity of keeping the priesthood in order,
and had some notion of the principle of toleration.
We must turn again to the Christian Churches if we
would find the most striking examples of the tendency
of sacerdotal bodies to oppose themselves to all outside
light. Their greatest father, St. Augustine, who may
*
be considered almost the creator of Western theology,
denounced the belief in the Antipodes on the ground
that no such people are mentioned in scripture among
the descendants of Adam, and he was a true proto
type of most of his followers. Boniface, Archbishop
of Mentz applied to the Pope for a public censure of
the same dangerous doctrine. The stock instance often
referred to is that of Galileo, who was imprisoned for
affirming the motion of the earth. Though so often
alluded to I quite agree with a recent able lecturer in
this hall that it is a story which should never be
allowed to slip from men’s memories, for it shows in a
* De Civ. Dei., xvi. 9. V. also Lactantius (Inst. III. 24),
and. Pascal’s Satirical Allusion {Provinciates, Let. 18.)
�18
Sacerdotalism.
most striking manner the ingrained tendency of all
*
priesthoods.
Science and scientific men cannot indeed now be
dealt with in the summary method of past days, but
who that remembers the bitterness with which the
truths of geology were formerly assailed on account of
their divergence from our sacred books, who that is
acquainted with the animosity aroused by the science
of historical criticism, and recollects the persecution of
Bishop Colenso and the “ Essayists and Reviewers,”
can doubt that the old spirit is still existent ? Indeed
as long as priesthoods of any sort remain it always must
exist, since the principle of science and the principle
of sacerdotalism are mutually exclusive of each other.
I recommend whoever doubts this to read the Ency
clical Letter and the Syllabus issued by the present
Rope not very long ago. If- finally evidence be
demanded of those cruel and extreme measures to
which, as I before stated, sacerdotalism, which is de
termined to maintain its pride of place must at length
be driven, instances crowd so thickly upon the memory
that the only difficulty is in selection. Read the
accounts of the horrible massacres of De Montfort,
where Christian priests bore the cross in advance to
inspire the ruthless soldiers to their bloody work.
What memories are evoked by the day of St. Bar
tholomew ! the dungeons of the Inquisition! the gate
of Constance ! the revocation of the Edict of Nantes!
the fires of Smithfield 1 And if you say these are
Papal enormities, and nothing like them is found
outside of the Church of Rome,—turn to the history
of the Church of Geneva, and read of Michael
Servetus, an accomplished physician, and the anticipa
tor of Harvey in the theory of the circulation of the
* For details of this story see the notes to Mr. Elley
Finch’s valuable lecture, “The Inductive Philosophy,” or
Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, book v., c. 3,
sec. 4.
�Sacerdotalism.
J9
blood,—witness such a man slaughtered at the hand of
the pious and Protestant Calvin! Read of the burn
ings of Puritans, of the sufferings of the ejected
nonconformists, of Bunyan’s cell at Bedford, of Cart
wright and others harried from city to city,—read the
trials and imprisonment of free-thinking merr whose
only crime was in printing books opposed to the
orthodox opinions, and you will see that Protestant
priesthoods though debarred from the trenchant blade
of their predecessors, have not been wanting in the
will though lacking the power to apply that ultima
ratio, that last unanswerable argument of sacerdotalism.
Surely the priestly principle ought to have produced
some untold unimaginable benefit to the world, in some
degree to compensate, or to make it possible for men
to condone such a long and weary catalogue of suffering
and tyranny ! I submit therefore to your judgment,
that whatever advantages this principle may have
possessed in the infancy of our race, whether as society
progresses it does not become greatly evil. Until the
citizen is developed the priest has a function, but when
men have risen to the dignity of citizens he is no
more a help but a hindrance.
I have endeavoured to show you what was naturally
to be expected from sacerdotalism, when childhood was
left behind and men began to think and question for
themselves, and adduced incontrovertible tacts which
prove that it considerably more than fulfilled such
expectations. And the experience is the same in all
parts of the world, under all forms of government, and
in all religions. It must have been so. A principle
which attributes divine authority and a control over the
conscience and over knowledge to a particular order of
men, could never have existed in a world intended to
move on, without producing collision, distress, and
convulsion. And as long as only a hundred men
remain in a nation who cherish that principle in their
breast, they will be in their measure a source of
�20
Sacerdotalism.
weakness to the body politic, a hindrance to progress,
an impediment to the free and natural growth of
citizen life. But this principle is very far at present
from being reduced to such narrow limits in this or
any country. On the contrary it plumes itself and
stalks abroad; powerful and even threatening parties
are still under its sway in this country and elsewhere.
In modern times however, its processes are so much
conducted under elaborate schemes of legislation and
forms of law, and so skilfully woven up with many of
the most essential interests of society, such as educa
tion, the care of the poor, the sick, and the criminal,
that men do not often observe its working. But that
it is no bugbear of the fancy the late course of legis
lation in almost every country on the continent must
convince the most incredulous. Within the last few
years the governments of Spain, Italy, and Switzerland
have been engaged in measures to restrain the preten
sions or guard against the renewed artifices of the
clerical order. Germany has been legislating on the
subject within the last month : in Belgium at this
present minute, clerical machinations have brought
affairs to a crisis. Read M. Lavelye’s article in the
November number of the “Fortnightly” if you wish
to see how dangerous the arts of a clergy may be to
civil liberty. Our own ministry have got a few
sacerdotal nuts to crack in Ireland, which I fear will
damage their teeth, with respect to education and the
conflict of Papal and English law,—and you may
depend upon it we have not heard the last of it in
relation to Education in England.
But I must leave further consideration of these
greater matters as to which sacerdotalism hinders
harmonious progress and obstructs the working of the
laws of the land, and proceed in conclusion to mention
one or two of the minor evils which also result
from it.
One salient form in which the sacerdotal principle
�Sacerdotalism.
21
is opposed to the welfare of modern society, is that it
breeds a class of men pledged to a foregone conclusion.
It cannot but be an evil, that as our ever-increasing
experience introduces us to fresh facts, there should be
an influentially placed class whose first question will
always be, not, what one would think must be the right
and natural one,—are these things true ? but, how do
they square with what we teach ? Will they in any way
discredit our time-honoured assertions 1 And if they are
thought to do so, will this class try and raise a prejudice,
and prevent the real merits of the case from being seen
where things cannot be absolutely denied 1 Is not this
to weight knowledge very heavily in its already suffici
ently difficult progress ? But the theory of an infallible
record in the hands of a divinely appointed order of
men necessarily drives them to such proceedings. They
suppose that their office lays them under an obligation
to maintain that what they have handed down is right;
to admit that they might have been wrong is calculated,
therefore they think, not only to breed suspicion with
out, but hesitation and defection within their own
camp. It seems to them, therefore, absolutely necessary
to present a bold front to the outside world,—as they
say, “ to magnify their office.” So we read of a clerical
dignitary in a debate on one of the petitions against
the Athanasian Creed; speaking against any concession
he said, “ the office of the Church is not to please but
to teach the people.” Who does not see lurking in these
words the old theory, that the priestly body has some
divine infallible source of information distinct and super
ior to that of study and scientific examination, which are
the only means open to ordinary men and mere worldly
students and philosophers 1 To maintain this attitude
they must do their utmost to exclude differences and
secure uniformity of teaching in their own body, and
under these circumstances the most professionally hide
bound and uncompromising naturally take the lead.
They see the necessity for increased care in the training
�22
Sacerdotalism.
of young ecclesiastics, so as to render them more imper
vious to outside impressions and zealous to carry on the
warfare against free-thought. Hence, they must be
caught young, and carefully indoctrinated, not in the open
air and under the mixed influences of great universities,
but in the close atmosphere of theological colleges, where
they can be thoroughly ingrained with the foregone conelusions they will have to maintain. Hence, the carefully
edited class-books, where everything disagreeing with
their own view is stigmatised as a heresy, and each point
is carefully classified, and supplied with a pat answer,
with the exactitude of a theological Bradshaw. Hence,
the dusty shelves groaning under ponderous tomes of
sham and exploded learning, to encourage the neophytes
to believe that if they cannot find an answer to all objec
tions within the limits of their own knowledge, that
somewhere, at least, in those endless folios, there is the
wherewithal to confound all adversaries. Under these
influences a tribe of young sacerdotalists is created well
drilled to answer the ecclesiastical rally, and to supply
the deficiencies of an older, more dispassionate, and as
they consider secular-minded class of clergy. Here will
always be found a serviceable body apt in all the arts
of ecclesiastical warfare, well skilled to amuse “ women
with saintly trifles,” and work on the superstitious fears
of the weak-minded, —active to go from house to house
and muster their allies in drawing-room and cottage, to
persuade them that in fulfilling their behests they are
doing God service, wary to teach them the ready watch
words, and breathe beforehand suspicions against new
truths; here too, may be found the men who have a keen
scent for the first savour of liberalism in a too candid
comrade, who can convey clerical delation with a shrug
and indicate heterodoxy with an ogle, who crowd clerical
meetings in close and steady order, and howl down in
concert every protest and remonstrance of their more
sensible and moderate brethren.
A further evil of which this sacerdotal principle is
�Sacerdotalism.
23
fruitful in society, is that it creates in many minds a
tendency to fanciful distinctions which have little
relation to truth and reality. Thus there is the Church
and the world, the one sanctified and sacred, the other
common and unclean ; literature, which connects itself
in any way with scripture, though perhaps utterly
foolish and" frivolous if not harmful, is religious and
sacred, other writings, however noble in spirit, if not
so connected, are profane ; this amusement is allowable,
that is wicked,—you may go to a concert, but not to a
theatre, to a tea-party, but not to a ball; the same
music is at one time secular, at another sacred; some
days are holy, others are common; this ground is
hallowed, that is only ordinary earth, as God made it.
Thus men become hampered and bound up with a
crowd of empty distinctions and sham sanctities bring
ing forth a crop of imaginary and artificial sins which
enervate weak consciences, and give scope for the sour
and censorious.
You yourselves are competent witnesses to this last
fact; for who could have instigated the recent attempt
to shut you out from this hall, but some one under the
influence of the melancholy delusion, that what was
innocent and improving recreation on common days was
sinful on Sunday evenings 1
The same thing produces in some circles of society
an exaggeration of trifles, a misperception of the true
proportion of things, and not seldom an absolute anility
of mind. Thus, with some, every little matter connected
with the Church, whether colour, shape, place, or
dress, is considered an essential of devotion, and an
object of clerical emulation and energy. With others,
every trumpery incident is magnified into a critical
moment for religion, the world with them is everlast
ingly coming to an end, the gas-strike and Hyde Park
spouters are “signs of the latter days,” and parsons donn
ing red petticoats are a fulfilment of prophecy. If some
stone is dug up in Palestine or Mesopotamia with a
�24
Sacerdotalism.
Bible name on it, immediately it must be dragged into
the ranks as a witness for scripture; forthwith there is
a muster of the initiated, and a premonitory rustle
round serious tea-tables, and soon arises over it such a
clatter of tongues that one would think the very
ark of the faith bad been rescued from the Philistines.
But a more serious matter than these lively divertisements is that social bitterness and exclusiveness of
which the sacerdotal principle is so often the root.
There are circles in what is called the religious world,
where almost every offence against society is excusable
except one. A man may be a bad father, or a profligate
and worthless son, he may be a heartless seducer, an
unprincipled rascal, a getter up of bubble companies, a
scientific swindler,—all these things may be forgiven
him, but if he be an infidel the door of hope is shut;—this is the one unpardonable crime that no good
qualities can compensate; though he is the soul of
benevolence and the model of every virtue, unselfish,
brave, learned, courteous and manly,—put him at the
very best he is but a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a limb
of Satan in the garb of an angel of light. There are
some even who carry their dread of contamination and
their desire to demonstrate their own clearness from all
lax principles to almost ludicrous extremes. In that
house so spotless in its stucco and whose whole aspect
is radiant with respectable orthodoxy, nothing that
defileth shall ever enter in : no pudding-headed foot
boy or buxom house-maid shall ever be there engaged,
unless put through their doctrinal paces and catechised
on the articles of their belief,—their shoes shall not be
mended by a free-thinking cobbler, and they suspect the
produce of a heterodox butterman,—the scullion must
be a strict communicant and value the privileges of a
serious family, where the very horses have learnt to
look down their noses, and no dog upon the premises
dare wag his solemn tail upon a Sunday.
' Before I close may I be allowed to impress upon you
�Sacerdotalism.
25
one caution. From what I have said of the evils great
and small arising from sacerdotalism, it must not be
supposed that I intend anything like an attack upon
the clerical classes whether of the Established Church
or any other body. This caution is necessary, because
some persons seem to find it difficult to distinguish
between a principle and those who may happen to be
connected with it.
To me it appears perfectly
legitimate to remark upon the evil of a system, and to
illustrate it by allusion to certain prominent types past
or present, without being considered to assail classes or
individuals.
For some of the worst features of
sacerdotalism, such as its exclusiveness, its spiritual
assumption, its dishonesty in dealing with evidence and
others, may distinguish laity as well as clergy. But
whatever the evil may be, no body of men living at the
present time is responsible for it: in its first origin it
was a natural growth and however much in the course
of history it has been aggravated by violence and fraud,
it has descended to us as part of our national heritage
and education, and we have been born under its influ
ence. In old countries things which have thus grown
with their growth can only be got rid of by patience
and mutual forbearance : by degrees we may hope that
light will permeate the darkest quarters, but the pro
gress of illumination will only be retarded by personal
bitterness. And in this country we have all the greater
reason for patience in these matters, inasmuch as our
clergy as a body have certainly been less under the
influence of sacerdotalism than any other,—many of
them indeed have offered a steady resistance to its
advance, and have been its most resolute and efficient
opponents. And at the darkest period in nearly every
Church, there have been men who were better than the
spirit of their own age, and who would have been
ornaments to any. At the same period that ecclesias
tical fanatics were urging on the cruel revocation of
Nantes, the saintly Fenelon had been advocating
�26
Sacerdotalism.
toleration, for which indeed not long after he became
himself a sufferer. The immortal Pascal and the two
devoted Arnaulds, Henri and Angelique, had adorned
the same Church not long before.
So, too, at the present, amongst ourselves, there are
among the clergy of all denominations men of large and
liberal minds, and notwithstanding occasional outbursts
of professional zeal or exalted notions in this or that
direction, a large body throughout the country whose
virtuous and benevolent lives every man of right feeling
must respect. We do not therefore revile men but
principles and systems; and even those most under
subjection to the system we are glad to acknowledge
have many claims on our regard, and are inclined to
consider it not so much their fault as their misfortune.
But when we behold amiable and in many cases acute
minds under the sway of principles which we con
scientiously consider, and which history proves to be,
utterly deleterious, may we not be allowed to regard
a system with all the more indignation and dislike,
which thus warps God’s fairest gifts, which turns those
who might have been the benefactors and teachers of
mankind into narrow religious recluses, and poisons
hearts of natural gentleness and benevolence with
theological hatred and the gall of the persecutor.
Bor myself, at any rate, I cannot but confess that I
consider this sacerdotal principle,—which is at the root
of much that is called religion and which may infect
laymen as well as clerics, which in its essence is the
assumption of special divine favour and prerogatives, a
usurpation over men’s consciences, and a blasphemy
against those powers of reason and that light of science
with which God has blessed our race,-—I consider this
sacerdotal principle the very direst evil and the bitterest
curse of civilised society. Through the false distinc
tions it creates, and the assumptions to which it gives rise
it often embitters all social life, it destroys the peace of
families, it makes foes in a man’s own household, set-
�Sacerdotalism.
ting the father against the son, the child against the
parents, the wife against the husband,—it is the very
bane and spoiler of all good fellowship, all openheartedness and kindly feeling.
And if as the old story tells us, there is an evil one,
an inveterate foe to man who roams about seeking
whom he may devour, entering human souls and dwell
ing there, and when he enters “ keeping his house ”
with such tenacity, that none can dislodge him, surely
it is that foul fiend, that accursed spirit of sacerdotal
pride and priestly assumption which sits in the living
temple of God, if not quite daring to proclaim that he
is God, yet inspiring his infatuated victims to declare,
“ the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are ”
we !
If there is anything that would justify the denuncia
tion of the French satirist, it is assuredly this atrocious
principle, not this particular religion nor that religion,
but that evil spirit which has too much prevailed in all,
that monstrous assumption which has raised its head
wherever priesthoods have been found. When I per
ceive in every place the difficulty, disorganization and
hindrance it is still creating, and when I remember the
long tragedy of the past, the terrible sum of misery,—
the tortured bodies, the broken hearts, the ruined
intellects,—for which it is responsible, the exclamation
almost rises involuntarily to the lips, crush the infamous,
“ ecrasez l’infame ! ”
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Sacerdotalism: an address delivered to the members and friends of the National Sunday League at St. George's Hall, Sunday, December 8, 1872
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Wild, George J. (George John)
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 27 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Sacerdotalism is the belief that priests are essential mediators between God and man.
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Thomas Scott
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[1873?]
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G5466
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Clergy
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Sacerdotalism: an address delivered to the members and friends of the National Sunday League at St. George's Hall, Sunday, December 8, 1872), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Priesthood
Sacerdotalism