THE

Journal of Health and Disease.

JULY, 1847.

ADDRESS.

This Journal, as its name implies, treats of Health in reference both to its preservation and restoration.

In reference to its preservation, PHYSIOLOGICAL knowledge will occupy a considerable space in the pages of the Journal, and the various conditions, necessary to be realised in order to the preservation of health, will be fully and carefully detailed. In connexion with these conditions, the range taken will be wide; thus introducing an opportunity for detailing any important facts in chemistry, natural history, and general science.

The great idea, which will pervade the work in this particular, is, that the Creator has established certain laws in relation to man's physical, organic, intellectual, moral, and religious conditions; that obedience to these is happiness, disobedience is misery; that these results are not merely accidents upon such obedience and disobedience, but are the necessary, the must be results; that each class of laws has an independence in relation to the rest; that obedience to the one does not free man from the consequences of disobedience to the others: in fact, that the best moral man, if disobeying a physical law, must be, and is punished; and the most immoral man, if obeying the physical law, must be and is benefited: that the immoral man, who, in being so, disobeys a moral law, must be punished; and the moral man, who, in being so, obeys a moral law, must be, and is benefited.

B

Another part of this Journal will have reference to the restoration of health. In this department the Journal will be medical—that is, it will teach the truths in regard to remedial measures. It will contain demonstrations that the Creator has appointed a law, which regulates the actions of medicines in restoring health,—a law, fixed as are the laws in reference to the preserving health—a law, which, developing itself in the form, that medicines cure diseases by the power they possess of inducing similar phenomena in healthy individuals, is designated homœopathic sporos, (homoios) like, and rabos, (pathos) suffering. This Journal will therefore be a JOURNAL OF HOMEOPATHY.

The general reader may imagine that this will render the Journal unsuited to him. But this is not so, for the general reader is as much, perhaps more, interested, in becoming generally acquainted with these matters, than is even the medical practitioner. All medicines are poisonous; salts are poisonous; senna is poisonous; calomel is poisonous; jalap is poisonous; and the only possible case in which medicine is uninjurious, is, when the poison chosen is specific to the disease, and when it is administered in a quantity no more than is sufficient to cure it; every medicine not so occupied, even though in combination with another medicine, which other acts curatively, exerts a deleterious influence on the human frame. It becomes, therefore, of the highest importance to the general reader, to know something respecting the influence of remedial agents; so that he may be able to judge, not what will be suited to cure his disease, but what is likely to be the mode of practice most favourable to the uninjurious cure of his disease. Thus far, even to the general reader, will the medical department of the Journal be useful. It will also interest, in demonstrating the extensive benefits that do result under the application of the law in medicine, that, in reference to the restoration of health, obedience to this law of the Creator is happiness, disobedience is misery.

It will further impart confidence; since, if a fixed law is demonstrated to exist in medicine, certainty can be realised in the use of medicines; and, at the same time, as the highest skill is required in the selection of the appropriate medicines, it will, by establishing the conviction of the necessity of skill, in conjunction with the recognition of the law, place the enlightened member of the non-medical public in the condition of being determined to be free from the power of destructive empiricism, practised whether by the ignorant pretender, or by the educated physician, not regulated in his practice by the certainty of a fixed law.

It is believed that many, having derived benefit from the application of the homeopathic law, are anxious to diffuse the knowledge of the great truth. But they feel strongly that the medical profession will not aid in the diffusion. They feel that the public can gain the benefits to be gained from homœopathy by the obligation that they, the public, must create by their demand for homoeopathic treatment, that medical men must study homœopathy. The public must create the demand, and medical men will be found to give the supply. As long as the public are content with having the interior of the stomach injured by emetics, the intestines destroyed by purgatives, the kidneys exhausted by stimulating medicines acting thereon, the powers of life overpowered by depletion of blood, by the lancet, by bleeding, by leeching, and then, after being exhausted by these means, being spuriously strengthened by miscalled strengthening medicines, (all which are poisons,)-the medical practitioner, educated to. vomit, to purge, to diurate, to bleed, and to tonic, will continue to minister to the public want, and, in administering, minister death, and not health. The object of the friends of homœopathy is, by affording a knowledge of homœopathy, to produce a new want, thereby create a new demand, and thus ensure a beneficial supply.

The homœopathist, therefore, seeks to create and diffuse

the conviction, that there is a certain, an uninjurious way, by which health can be obtained; and regarding this diffusion a duty he owes to his neighbour, he will willingly, it is believed, co-operate in the attempt to bring before the public, the benefits which he knows have flowed, and will ever flow, from the application of the homoeopathic law.

ACTION OF BODIES IN INFINITESIMAL QUANTITIES.

The impossibility of the millionth part of a grain of medicine acting on the diseased organism is perpetually urged by the opponents of homoeopathy. But all nature testifies to action of matter in infinitesimal quantities.

Chambers, in his essay on the Curiosities of Vegetation, remarks," Zoologists tell us, when speaking of animalcules, that not a drop of stagnant water, not a speck of vegetable or animal tissue, but has its own appropriate inhabitants. The same may be remarked of plants; for we cannot point to a speck of surface, unless chilled by everlasting cold, or parched by continuous drought, that has not its own peculiar vegetation. The spores or seeds of these minute parasites are almost infinitesimally small: they are floating above and around us, unperceived by the naked eye, ready to fall and germinate wherever fitting conditions are presented. Nay, as certain changes in animal tissue are ascribed to animalcules, so have certain changes in organised substances, such as fermentation, been ascribed to vegetable growth. Yeast, according to this view, is a true vegetable, consisting of minute organised cells or spherules, which propagate with amazing rapidity so long as they find their proper nutriment in the fermenting liquid. Nor is there any thing more incredible in the fact, that the little globular yeast plant should extract its nutriment from the fluid on which it floats, than that the water-flannel should extract its starch or lime from the water which it covers."

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE DESTRUCTIVE FACULTY, URGED ON BY VENERATION.

The following interesting facts were communicated at a meeting of the Asiatic Society, by Lieutenant C. Macpherson, of the Madras Survey Department, On the Religious Practices and Human Sacrifices of the Khonds.'

The Khonds are a wild race of mountaineers, inhabiting the higher ranges of the Gumsoor country, which lies between the Presidencies of Bengal and Madras, and who are, according to every probability, descended from those aboriginal tribes who peopled India before the emigration of the races who brought the Brahman religion and the Sanskrit language from the North West. Two other wild tribes, the Koles and the Sourahs, also inhabit Orissa, but the highest land, and the most extensive territory is in the almost undisputed occupation of the Khonds. The religion of the Khonds differs essentially from that of the people of the plains, in having no idols. Like that of most uncivilised people, it has no reference to principles of morality. Certain prescribed ordinances only are pleasing to their gods; and neglect of those ordinances are offensive to them; but nothing further is contemplated. It is also to be observed that, like many other tribes in a very low social state, the Khonds consider their supreme God to be a malevolent being, only to be propitiated by cruelties, while the subordinate deities are appeased by adoration alone, or by the sacrifice of cattle. The sun and moon are worshipped by simple reverential obeisance; the god of arms is propitiated by offerings of sheep, pigs, and fowls; the Jugah Pennu, or god of small-pox, by the blood of buffaloes; but the god of the earth, who is their supreme Divinity, cannot be appeased without human blood. This earth god, named by the Khonds, Bera Pennu, rules the seasons, sends the periodical rains, and communicates fertility to the earth. He also preserves the health of the people, and watches over the safety of their flocks and herds. All this favour is to be obtained on no other condition than the frequent effusion of human blood; and by this alone will the