and pneumonia among children. Indeed, throughout the rural districts of our Southern States it is common to see children who have had or are inclined to croup allowed to go barefooted for a year or so, and with almost universal benefit.

25. Chin-cough or Whooping-cough.-Rub the back at lying down with old rum.

Whooping-cough must have been of a different sort to the modern form to have been frightened away at so simple an attack.

41. Windy Colic.-Parched peas, eaten freely, have had the most happy effects when all other means have failed.

Is it to be presumed that these act upon the principle of similia similibus curantur?

43. Consumption.—One in a deep consumption was advised to drink nothing but water and eat nothing but water-gruel, without salt or sugar. In three months' time he was perfectly well.

For one suffering from any disease, not to speak of consumption, to have lived three months on this regimen, and to be perfectly well at the expiration of that time, was indeed remarkable.

Or, every morning cut up a little turf of fresh earth, and, lying down, breath into the hole for a quarter of an hour. I have known a deep consumption cured thus.

49. Costiveness.-Rise early every morning.

52. The Cramp.-To one ounce and a half of spirits of turpentine add flour of brimstone and sulphur vivum, of each half an ounce; smell this at night three or four times.

This is somewhat after the method of Hahnemann, for no inconsiderable part of Hahnemann's Organon is devoted to the treatment of certain diseases by the smelling of his highly diluted drugs.

Or hold a roll of brimstone in your hand. I have frequently done this with success.

71. Eyes Inflamed.-Poultice of roasted or rotten apples will relieve, but white bread poultices will frequently occasion blindness. 87. Extreme Fat.-Use a totally vegetable diet. I know one who was entirely cured of this by living a year thus; she breakfasted and supped on milk and water with bread, and dined on turnips, carrots, or other roots, drinking water.

88. A Fever.-In the beginning of any fever, if the stomach is uneasy, vomit; if the bowels, purge.

This recalls the story of the naval surgeon who, when a sailor became sick, tied a cord around the patient's waist and inquired whether his pain was above the cord or below it. If above, an emetic was administered; if below, a cathartic. In this way he never had any cases difficult to diagnose.

92. A Slow Fever.-Use the cold bath for two or three weeks daily.

This is practically the same as the modern and highly successful treatment which has been recently adopted at many of our hospitals.

130. Lethargy.-Snuff strong vinegar up the nose.

If a man snuffs strong vinegar up his nose he will not suffer from lethargy for a while; that is certain.

134. Lunacy.-Take daily an ounce of distilled vinegar, or electrify.

134. Raging Madness.-Let him eat nothing but apples for a month.

It will be safe to guarantee, in this case, that before the month has expired the raging madness will have ceased.

136. The Bite of a Mad Dog.-Plunge into cold water daily for twenty days, and keep as long under it as possible. This has cured even after hydrophobia was begun.

If the patient is kept under the water long enough it will cure every case.

137. The Measles.-Immediately consult an honest physician. This is the only place but one in his whole book where he insists upon a physician being immediately called. He gives treatment with utmost composure to such trifling disorders as diphtheria, small-pox, erysipelas, poisoning, madness, and hydrophobia without a suggestion of a physician's assistance, but he evidently draws the line at measles.

146. Old Age.-Take tar-water morning and evening.

This water is more easily obtained than that which Ponce de Leon sought in Florida.

168. To Restore Strength after Rheumatism.-Make a strong broth of cow-heels and wash the parts with it twice a day. It has restored one who was quite a cripple, having no strength left in his leg, thigh, or loins.

179. Shingles.-Drink sea-water every morning.

190. Putrid Sore Throat (Diphtheria).-Lay on the tongue a lump of sugar dipped in brandy.

204. Stone (to prevent).-Eat a crust of dry bread every morning. 234. The Vertigo.-In a May morning, about sunrise, snuff up daily the dew that is on the mallow-leaves.

258. Worms.-Bruising the green leaves of bear's-foot, and smelling often of them, sometimes expels worms.

Hahnemann again. It may become some day a question in medical history whether Wesley was not the original homeopathist. At one period of his life Hahnemann subsisted by translating Latin, English, and French works into German, and he himself states that he got his first idea of his theory of similia while translating, in 1790, Cullen's Treatise on Materia Medica. Who knows but he may have seen Wesley's Primitive Physic, which was published forty years before this date?

Had Wesley contented himself with compiling a treatise from the authorities of his day they, and not he, would have been accountable for the aptness of the treatment recommended, but when he chose to differ from the faculty at almost, every point he rendered himself liable to be judged by the common standard. Nor can it be successfully urged that, as a busy clergyman, he was not familiar with, nor could be expected to be familiar with, the scientific thought of the day; but we have the best evidence that he made it his business to inform himself with this branch of knowledge.

According to the strict methods with which he regulated his life in every matter he gave a part of one day in every week to the study of natural philosophy and allied scientific studies. He found time to perform experiments in optics, and was familiar with the works of Euclid, Keill, Newton, and Huygens. Busy as he was in his evangelical labors Wesley kept himself in touch with all the knowledge of his day. So that, familiar with them all, he deliberately chose John Hutchinson in preference to Isaac Newton, Burnet to Hutton, and old wives to Cullen and Sydenham.

W. C. Cahall.

ART. VIII.-THEISM-A BRIEF STUDY.

A POSTULATE of any knowledge is a thinking mind and an object of thought. Primarily the process involves the opening of one's mental eyes upon an existent world. That world may exist within or without, or both within and without. Hence, it may or may not have material existence. As a matter of fact, every object of thought dwells in the mind in immaterial form, though material existence-perhaps, indeed, all existence--has a material outline, either real or conceived. Thought cannot dwell upon nothing, and every something must exist in at least what may be termed, objectively speaking, mental form. What I am pleased to call, in the absence of a better phrase, mental materialism is a necessary concomitant of every thought. God himself can only be conceived by a certain embodiment, and the incarnation was the necessary connecting link between humanity and divinity.

In the above paragraph it has been assumed that knowledge is possible. Involved in that assumption are an existent world and a thinking mind. Furthermore, we must concede a relation between the two. When these two existences have been brought into relationship, and have begun to interact, whether their offspring has varied or not cannot be positively stated; but certain it is that offspring has seemed to differ according to the point of view, or, to use a broader term, according to the environment, of the observer. One school claims that that theory "has for its foundation the notion of an unknowable force, which is known, however, to be subject to mechanical and necessary laws. . . All finite minds and persons are but its phenomenal and transitory products. There is but one actor and one thinker." "The unknowable declares the doctrine of mechanical evolution to be true." But this doctrine receives material refutation, and that, too, on the ground of its votaries, when we remember that this "mechanical evolution" has been criticised by other men and rejected. Whether the facts or only the environments cause the "unknowable" to give "out a doctrine in the one place as true and in another as the baldest absurdity and falsehood" is an interesting and important question. Certain it is that if the *Bowne's Studies in Theism, p. 108.

6-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.

theory of the unknowable is correct, then the teaching varies, or else the learners construe the same teaching with remarkable variety. If the difference is in the teacher, then he forfeits all confidence in our search for truth. No science is possible on such a basis, and no knowledge is reliable.

Substantially the same criticism may be made in the case of the "mental evolutionists," who claim that apart from experience we know nothing-that "all beliefs, whether fundamental or derived, represent only the deposit of experience in us."* So also of the "associationalist," who claims that we "think and believe as we do because we have become used to it." +

In all these schools and shades of schools, thought, the offspring of mind and the world of existence, is regarded as true, no matter how tinged or refracted by prejudice or environment, nor how incapable the mental machine to comprehend the vast relationships or natures presented.

A somewhat similar criticism applies to materialistic schools and modes of reasoning. In these, "thought is a product of the brain, as bile is of the liver." Hence, to speak of thought as true or false would be as absurd in these schools as to speak of bile as true or false. Operate the mental machine, and necessitated thought is produced. Responsibility has no place in these schools of fate. The machine grinds on, and the moral sense cannot distinguish between the true and the false. In fact, there is no moral sense. It must be apparent, also, that there can be no rational sense. Rationalism, in its popular and even in its scientific sense, is a misnomer. Fatalism is the term for the system that ignores God and harnesses every activity to inexorable, necessary, and necessitating law.

Permit us now to push forward to the following statements: 1. Mind exists with a rudder of rational principles; 2. This rudder is determinative for objective fact that is, it determines the course of thought, or no rational science is possible; 3. Hence this rudder, or rational creator, as a basal fact, must be granted, or no rational science is possible.

A brief comment upon these statements, and this paper ends. 1. That mind exists no one disputes. The old Cartesian. doctrine still stands: "I think, therefore I am." That argument granted, and the existence of mind is not only granted, *Bowne's Studies in Theism, p. 111. +Ibid., p. 113.