The prairie news. [volume] (Okolona, Miss.) 1851-1875, 1858-05-27

the earth as are expressed by the follow
ing figures 61,0OO,OOO,OOQ, 700, ,0OO,-
900, 900, 900, 100000.
One grain of drug dissolved in one
and half teaspoonfuls of alcohol would,
at its 30th attenuation, require mass of
alcohol filling up the entire space within
the orbit of neptune. OF this, a drop or
globule forms dose. Medical jurists
and lawyers know of no poison, however
strong and powerful, the billionth or de-
cillionth of which would in the least ef-
feet a man or harm fly. They tell us
the mere division of their drugs invests
them with tremendous power; but
they could not injure or affect the frailest
insect with one of their tremendous"
billionths or decillionths. For what in
fact, is billionth of grain! Why if
simple grain of sulphur were divided,
as the HomGopathists use it, and other
drugs, and if our old father Adam, when
called into existence, some six thousand
years ago, had then begun swallowing a
billionth every second and if he had
been permitted to live up to the present
time, doing nothing but swallowing night
and day sixty billionths every minute,
he could as yet, have completed only a
small part of his task. 1t would require
him to work and swallow at the same
rate for $4,000 years yet to come, in or
der to finish one single grain of drug,
which has little effect on his present de-
scendants in doses of 25 or SO grains.-
Yet the Hompopathists believe that a
few of the sulphur billionths which Adam
would have swallowed during these 30,-
900 years would cure, forsooth, an attack
of jaundice.
If we appeal to our standard-the stan
dard Of common sease--should not men
holding principles so outragcously ridicu
lous, be requested to withdraw from this
and other medical societies! But a bill
lionth was, after all, only the 9th dilu-
tion of a grain. HomGopathists have
dilutions far more refined, and doses far
I ite' infntesilnal than that. Some
allege that drugs should always be used
in their 30th dilution, or in decillionths
and Hohnemann averred that even the
smell of such dose is enough. When
they speak of the decilonth of grain,
they seem little to reckon what decil
lionth amounts to; for it is sum the
mere figures Of which can give us scarce
any conception Of its in6ntesimal amount
viz: 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000, 100000
000,000,0 900 600, 900, 100000. The world
is computed to contain at the present
time some, nine hundred millions of hui
beings. If all these had lived during
the past 5000 years, and each of them
had swallowed, every moment Of their
existence, decillionth of grain, such
as HomGopathists use, they would not
during these 5000 years, have finished
one single grain
These absurdites have been exposed
again and again, not only without retard-
ing, but probably accelerating the march
of Homeopathy; for, as | said before,
attack them and they Immediately cry
out "persecution,' thereby enlisting the
sympathies of the people. Science has
its optimists-believers that all things
are for the best-tbat the millenial glory
of perfect knowledge is at hand. But can
they account for the prevalence of Nor
monism, clairvoyant mesmerism, Siesian
hydropathy, ininitesmal homeopathy,
andspiritual knockings as being evidences
of the superior intelligence and wisdom of
this progressive era? Is pure reason as
yet popular in any one of the moral, ply
steal and medical sciences =? Has it ev-
er been--will it ever be paramount =
The Newtons and Franklins still belong
to the minority.
Quackery always was, is now, and will
be prevalent in company with ignorance,
credulity, inviting impudent arrogance,
deception and cupidity, to profit by the
same, as the great fortunes thus made
tistify. VIM. Henderson, probably the
ablest defender of Homeopathy. in a
work of his, adopts Hahneman's grand
test of Homeopathic treatment namely
that the medicinal agent which causes a
particular disease in the healthy, is the
remedy which cures the same disease in
sick. ,Hahnemann says:
"Those violent tertian and quotidian
fevers which l cured four and six weeks
ago, by means of few drops Of quinine
tincture, l observed in myself, yesterday
and to-day, almost exactly. after gradu-
ally taking, while in perfect health, 4
drachms of good cinchona bark, by way
of experiment" In the tropical margin
of this Republic, upon which the wave of
Homeopathy is now surging, the Jesuit's
bark (quinine) has been used in doses in
definitely large and small, for morning bit
ters, when no disease existed, and for real
and imaginary diseases from debility, sore
legs, anamia, up to typhoid and yellow
fever The human stomach and intes-
tines have been filled with its active prin-
ciple-quinine-at the rate of from one
to two ounces every "a hours; and yet