[page 1]
Ode To Health
"Thou source of joy, Hygea, come,
And soothe the anguish of my breast;
Pleasure has fled, and Hope is dumb
Since thou hast ceased to be my guest;
Tasteless is all the sweets of home,
Joyless is life where I roam.

The Spring returns, and herb and tree
Put on a robe of emerald hue;
The Spring returns, but not to me
Come back the joys that I knew,
For those hast left me, cruel maid,
To pine in sorrow's sombre shade!

Around me sport the feathered throng,
Their glad notes echo through the air,
But ah! Delightless is their song,
It only deepens my despair!
I'll close my ears, I'll shut my sight,
Since nature yields me no delight!

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Ah! What is grandeur, -what is wealth-
Mere triffles they, -what are they worth
Compared to that first blessing, Health,
The greatest boon to man on earth?
O, give me that which Health affords,
I'll covet not the miser's hoards!

O, blest Hygea, hither haste,
And lead my to thy favored seat;
O, let be, ere life ends, to taste
The joys of thy serene retreat;
There let me rest in soft repose,
And drink oblivion to my woes!"
C.G. Skinner, Waverly Magazine.
Satan, although he has the reputation of being the
"father of lies," told the truth when he said, "all that a
man hath will he give for his life." And the venders
of secret nostrums understand the value which people
set upon health, and therefore take the advantage of
their necessity, and credulity, and thousands are thus cheated and humbugged not only out of their money but also out of their lives!! Why do men condemn secret societies, and at the same time advertise, and recommend secret nostrums?

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But we are told that they are "purely vegetable."
that may be true, and by this the people are deceived, forgetting that the most violent poisons in nature
are vegetable poisons. Are not strycnine, and prusic
acid vegetable productions? After a patient has
taken a few boxes of the wonder working vegetable pills,
or a few bottles of the magic bitters, or concentrated compounds, for a time he feels as much better as the
man when his shins stop smarting after having them
kicked. When poison or an injurious article is taken
into the system, the vital principle rouses up all her
energies to cast it out; and if she succeeds, she feels better
for a time after the effort. But why take in an enemy
to over tax the system, and expend so much effort to cast
him out again? The system thus wound up soon runs down again, and then some one recommends some new cure all,
the poor patient growing weaker under each succeeding effort, and like the weary animal under his heavy burden at
last lies down, and makes no further effort to arise.
And men occupying the sacred desk, the editor's chair, and
the doctor's office, as well as those in common life have
given the influence of their names in support of those secret,
so called remedies. I do not impugn their motives, but very much

[page 4]
doubt whether they have ever dug deep enough to get to the foundation of a system of medical practice, on which they
can at all times, and under all circumstances rest with
unshaken confidence. I have seen, and heard different persons on their bed of death lamenting that they had been deceived and injured by such pretended remedies. I have heard a young man say the night before he died that he had fifty dollars worth of such remedies on hand! but said I have been injured by relying on such means. He discovered his make when it
was too late. The failure however is often attributed to the
??? nature of the disease, or frequently to "Divine
Providence." In regard to the common fashionable med-
ical poisoning practice it is a greater mystery that any
recover under it, than that the greater number sick and die.
To day take the heartiest man that can be found, and let him
be treated with such poisons as the sick generally are, and
if by tomorrow he is not a very sick man, I shall be greatly mistaken; follow this course for a few days, and ten to one
if he ever gets well again. Is that the way to treat a man
who is already sick? Let common sense answer, or "Hark
from the tombs, a doleful answer from the tens of thousands who have been cut off in the bloom of life, and have been hurried there prematurely. The day of reckoning will surely come.["]

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Poison
To call poison a medicine is a missnomer,
and giving it a wrong name, and is thereby calculated
to deceive. Under all circumstances it is an enemy
to life and health and never until sin can produce
holiness, can poison produce health. The nature of
both is to destroy; and never until sin can purify
the soul and fit it for heaven, can poison purify
the body and prepare it to enjoy the blessing of health.
The natural tendency of sin is to pollute and ruin
the soul. The natural tendency of poison, when taken
into the system, is to beget disease, and impurity, to
destroy health and prematurely ruin and destroy
the patient, and this is always its tendency whether administered by friend or foe, in sickness or in health.
Like sin it is "evil, only evil, and that continually."
Mercury Hydrargyrum
"It is a curious fact among the "curiosities of
literature," that the standard books recognize fifty
one distinct diseases resulting from the medical ad-
ministration of the various preparations of mercury."
Dr Grall [??]. Encl. v. 2. P 313.

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Now, what chance of escape can a poor sick patient
have, who must run the gauntlet among over fifty
enemies, all well armed, every one of whom stands
prepared to give him a blow as he passes. Is it any
wonder that there is so many fresh graves in the burying grounds?
Effects of Poison on the Living.
I have seen persons through whose jaws calomel had eaten holes, others whose legs were only a burthen to them, dangling in every direction, I have seen those who were made idiots
by it, and one little girl of four or five years of age left
deaf and dumb from its administration. Go where you will
and you will find persons whose mouths are filled with foul
and rotten teeth, sometimes produced by one dose of mercury. Extracting the teeth may to some extent relieve the mouth, but does not remove the pains and aches which it has produced throughout the rest of the system, causing the disconsolate sufferer often to exclaim with the poet.
"O, life thou art a galling load, A long, a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I." And the charge is frequently laid
at the door, of the blessed God of infinite goodness and mercy.
By submiting to such treatment parents entail suffering on
on their posterity, it may be the third and fourth generation.

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"Our best Medicines are Poisons."
So say prominent physicians, and teachers of
medical science in the Allopathic Schools both
in Europe and America. Hooper in his Med.
Dicy. Says, "all our most valuable are active poisons."
Prof. Paine in his, Institutes, says, "Remedial agents
opperate upon the same principle as the remote causes
of disease. They can never transmute the morbid
into healthy conditions, that is alone the work of nature."
"The most violent poisons are our best remedies."
See Prof. Curtis' Med. Crit. No 47, 48.
Dr. J.B. Newman in his "Home Doctor["] says, "Medicines
then never cure of themselves; they only induce a different disease." "Whenever a cure is effected in disease it is
nature that performs it, in other words, the vis medicatrix working for her." "There is in the body a secret principle,
which never manifests itself except to cure in disease.
When unhealthy influence opperate on the life power, it
sinks under them, and a chill is distinctly felt; the sinking
would continue until death ensued were it not for this secret principle, called the conservative power, or Vis Medicatrix Naturae: this power uses up and does battle with the injurious influence, the fewer and other symptoms that are seen succeeding

[page 8]
the chill, not being the disease itself, but merely signals
thrown out by the conservative power to show that it is
battling for our good." Is not then every does of poison
which is given under the pretence of medicine, directly aiming at the destruction of this vital principle, which our
all wise Creator has endowed us with for our preservation? Does not the doctor join issue with the disease for our destruction: and is not the fatality attendant on such
practice, a plain evidence that it is contrary to nature.
Ask the bereaved mourners who throng our streets, they can tell, although their bleeding hearts may not all the expression. In usual health a few days or weeks ago, was taken with
what we thought a slight illness, run down very fast under
Dr -s treatment, and is now covered in the silent grave!!

Testimony of some Eminent men in regard
to the Poisoning Practice.
"Drugs do not cure disease, disease is always cured
by the vis medicatrix naturae."
"A medicins which enter the circulation, poisons
the blood, in the same manner as do poisons that
produce disease." Prof. Jos Smith. M.D.
"Mercury is the sheet anchor in fevers; but it is on

[page 9]
anchor that moors your patient to the grave."
Prof. H.G. Cox. M.D.
"The drugs which are administered for the cure of
scarlet fever, and measles, kill far more than those
diseases do. I have recently given no medicine in
their treatment, and have had excellent success."
Prof. B.F. Baker. M.D.
"Mercury when taken in any form, is taken into
the circulation, and carried to every tissue of the body.
The effects of mercury are not for a day, but for all
time. It often lodges in the bones, ocasionally causing
pain years after it is administered. I have often de-
tected metalic mercury in the bones of patients who had
been treated with this subtle treacherous agent."
Prof. E.S. Carr. M.D.
"All medicines are poisons." Prof. S. St. John. M.D.
"As we place more confidence in Nature, and less
in preparations of the apothecary mortality diminishes."
Prof W. Parker. M.D.
"We are not acquainted with any agents that will cure
consumption. We must rely on Hygiene."
"Cream is far better for tubercular patients than cod
liver oil, or any other kind of oil." Prof. Alamo Clark. M.D.

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"Notwithstanding all our boasted improvements, patients
suffer as much as they did forty years ago."
Prof. Alex Stephens. M.D.
"All our curative agents are poisons, and as a consequence, every does diminishes the patients vitality."
Prof. Alamo Clark. M.D.
"The science medicine is founded on conjecture and improve-
ed by murder." Sir Astley Cooper. Fellow of the Londen
College of Physicians an Surgeons.
"There has been a great increase of medical men
of late, but, upon my life, diseases have increased in prop-
ortion." John Aernethy. M.D.
"More infantile subjects are diurnally destroyed by the
mortar and pestle, than in the ancient Bethlehem fell vict-
ims in one day to the Herodian massacre."
Prof. Reid, of Edinburgh, Scotland.
"Some patients get well with the aid of medicine, more
without; and still more in spite of it."
Sir John Forbes. M.D. F.R.S. Physician to Queen Victoria.
"Gentlemen, ninety nine out of every hundred medical
facts are medical lies; and medical doctrines are, for the
most part, stark, staring nonsense."
Prof. Gregory.

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"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon,
and the effects of our medicine on the human system,
in the highest degree uncertain, except indeed, that
they have destroyed more live than war, pestilence
and famine combined." John Mason Good, M.D.
F.R.S. Author of "Book of Nature." Study of Medicine 70 ???.
"I declare, as my concientious conviction, founded
on long experience, and reflection, that if there was not
a single physician, surgeon, man midwife, chemist,
apothecary, druggist, nor drug, on the face of the earth,
there would be less sickness and less mortality than
now prevail." Jas. Johnson, M.D. F.R.S.
Editor of Medico ???, Review.
"Oliver Wendell Holmes in his late speech before
the Mass, Med. Society, says, "the Presumtion always
is, that every noxious agent Including Medicine Proper,
which hurts a well man, hurts a sick one. The miserable delusion of Homocapathy builds itself on an anxiom
directly the opposite of this, namely, that the sick are to be cured by poisons. The only way to kill it, and all similar
fancies, and to throw every quack nostrum into discredit,
is to root out completely the suckers of The Old Rotten Superstition, That Whatever Is Odious or Noxious

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Is Likely To be Good For Disease."
J.C. Jackson in "Laws of Life".
Dr. Rush, on the cause of failure in medical practice,
makes the inquiry, why ninety nine cases out of the hundred
are lost, of those which are called the curable diseases?
He compared the present system of medical practice,
to an "unroofed temple, with a cracked foundation."
Again he says, "We have assisted in multiplying diseases;
we have done more; we have increased their mortality."
A most lamentable confession for such a man as
Dr. Rush to have to make. It however but soo well
agrees, with those eminent men whose testimony I have previously given. And let it be remembered that the
testimony does not come from poor illiterate and
disappointed quaks: but from men exalted to the highest rank in the medical profession.
Sir Astly Cooper's salary is said one year to have
over reached one hundred thousand pounds, and that
he had received a thousand guineas for performing
one surgical operation. Perhaps the following
statement will best help to explain his disappoint-
ment. On a certain ocasion, addressing a class of
medical students he remarked: "Gentlemen, we should

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be cautious how we speak of quacks; for often
when we resign the patient in despair is cured
under their treatment." Dr. Gates, "Med. Truth Teller."
On an other ocasion addressing the students;
he said, "Gentlemen, Nature does a great deal, but the
doctors do but little."
Mercury - Further Testimony
"Practitioners of the first respectibility prescribe
on every triffling ocasion calomel, or the blue pill."
"But when the effects of mercury upon the human
body are accurately investigated and duly considered,
it cannot fail to appear, that infinite injury must
accrue from its use."
"Preparations of mercury, exhibited either internally
or externally for any length of time, increase in general
the action of the heart and arteries, and produce salivation, followed by emaciation and debility, with an extremely
iritable state of the whole system."
"Accelerated circulation of the blood in consequence of the
use of mercury is attending with the most obvious of
the circumstances which arise from inflammation.
Blood drawn from the arm of the most delicate and
debilitated individual, subjected to a coure ??? of mercurial

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medicines, exhibits the same buffy crust with blood
drawn from a person laboring under ???, and the
secretions from the skin or from the kidneys are greatly increased." James Hamilton. M.D. Fellow of the
Royal College of Physicians, and Professor of Midwifery
in the University of Edinburgh.
The following is from Prof. Barton of Louisiana.
"I shall be glad to see any thing else take the place of
calomel, after witnessing, as I have for the last sixteen
years, its horrid effects, in the wreck of constitutions,
the destruction of teeth, gums, jaws and faces, ???.
Do search for something less misschevious, if it is only
a tomato." Dr J. Gates in Truth Teller.
"Mercury placed on the shelf in a bowl in a
warm room, will salivate the inmates, in a few weeks,
even at a moderate temperature." ???.
"In 1810, the Triumph man of war and Phipps schooner received on board several tons of quicksilver, saved from
the wreck of a vessel near Cadiz. In consequence of
the rolling of the bags the mercury escaped, and the whole
of the crews became more or less affected. In the space
of three weeks two hundred men were salivated, two
died, and all the animals - cats, dogs, sheep, fowls, a canary

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bird, nay, even the rats, mice and cockroaches - were destroyed." Edinburg Med. An Surf. Jr, No. 26 p. 29.
Dr. Curtis' Med. Crit. No. 112 p. 38.
"Criminals condemned to work in the quicksilver mines
for life, are almost continually in a state of salivation: draging out a miserable existence, in extreme debility and emaciation, with stiff incurrated [??] limbs, and total loss of teeth and appetite, till death, in a few years, with a friendly stroke,
puts a period to their sufferings."
"In persons of highly nervous temperament, a single dose
of calomel has produced salivation; and it is somtimes
caused by dressing ulcers with red precipitate. Even the ocasional application of white precipitate or mercurial
ointment ot the head to destroy vermin has often excited salivation." Crit. From Dr. Jno Mason Good. F.R.S.

A Few Samples of Allopathy
Practice.
"By their fruits ye shall know them:' is a test
rule given by infinite wisdom. Let us for a little
apply it to allopathy.
The first case which I will give was in
My own Family: as follows.

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Blood Letting and Calomel
In 1831, I travelled on North Manlius circuit,
in the Oneida Conference of the M.C. Church N.Y.
I lived in Fayetteville, where my wife was confined
with her second child. Drs. Pulford and Shipman,
who were in partnership attended her. They gave her
calomel. Dr P. said to me after he had given it
that it was a very fine medicine. The next evening after
the birth of the child, they bled her. Women, who were
present spoke of the sudden change which the bleeding produced, as she immediately began to run down, and before twelve O.C. the next day, she was a corpse!!
So much for calomel and bleeding in my family.
Well might Dr. Hunn say, "Abominable is the mur-
dering quack, who, forever impatient to unsheath his bloodthirsty lancet, draws from a fewer patient the irreparable balsam of life."
"Mercury, the lancet, and the knife, are now almost
the only means made use of to cure disease, notwith-
standing their deleterious effects are evidently fatal
to multitudes." Prof. Rafinesque.
"An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." It is high time
this old rotten, evil tree, was cut down, and cast into the fire.

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General Washington's Last Illness.
By J. Reid M.D. Physician to the Finsbury Dispen-
sary, and Prof. of Theory and Practice of Physic.
I can only find place for a brief extract, in which
he says, "Think of a man being within the brief space
of little more than twelve hours, deprived of 80 or 90
ounces of blood: afterwards swallowing two moderate American doses of calomel and five or six grains of
emetic tartar: vapors of vinegar and water worse frequently inhaled; the doses of calomel were accompanied by
an injection; blister plasters applied to the extremities:
a cataplasim of bran and vinegar applied to his throat,
on which a blister had already been fixed; is it surprising
that when thus treated, the afflicted General after various ineffectual struggles for utterance, at length articulated
a desire that he might be allowed to die without inter-
ruption! To have resisted the fatal opperation of such herculean remedies, one should imagine, this venerable
old man ought, at least to have retained the vigor of his
earliest youth."
How sad, to replect, that after all the dangers and difficult-
ties through which that great man had passed he
should at least fall a victim to such terrible butchery.

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Lord Byron
Extract from work entitled, "The Glory and Shame
of England."
"The doctors dosed Byron from the beginning of his
illness with strong purgative medicines, took a great
amount of blood from him, which for a long time he
refused to have done. His system wasted rapidly; for during eight days of his illness, he took no nourishment except two spoonfuls of arrow root the day before his death. And yet it was only a common cold.
"On the seventh day of his illness after the most powerful purgatives had been resorted to, and he seemed to be rapidly declining, the doctors insisted on taking more blood;
he reluctantly yielded, and one pound was taken from
his right arm; his Lordship was new sinking every
hour. The Drs. insisted upon Bleeding him again that
same night, and told him it would probably save his life.
"Oh! Said he with a mournful countenance, "I fear, gentlemen, that you have entirely misstaken my disease; but here
take my arm and do as you like." The next morning, although he was in a very feeble state, the Drs. bled him again twice;
and in both cases fainting fits followed the opperation.
At two oclock they bled him again the same day, and thus he

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was hurried to the grave."
Who killed General Washington, and who killed
Lord Byron? Well might that good man ??? Fletcher
say, "It is better to die in the hands of the butcher, than
in the hands of the doctor."
Henry Clay, J.C. Calhoun, President Harrison, Polk,
and Taylor, these great men had the fashionable and
heroic treatment of calomel, antimony, opium and
the lancet; when perhaps in every one of them, a woman
with common sense, and a few simple herbs, and some water,
could have restored them to health; and their lives prolonged
for a number of years. Human life is too precious to be so
wickedly destroyed. Remember therefore, that God who
gave you existence, hath sad, "The life is in the blood."
Do not then suffer it to be foolishly thrown a way. Throwing
away a quart of it will not purify the rest; nomore than doing
the same thing would cleanse an impure fountain.
Perhaps it will be said, that bleeding is not practised as
much as it once was, true, but it has been stopped by
the exposure and light which the Botanics, quacks as they
are called, have shed upon this subject. Let the continue faithfully to expose the whole poisoning system, and the
time is not far distant, when a man will no more dare

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administer poison for medicine, than he would cut
the juglar vein, in pretence of curing a patient. We read
that "God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions. (Oct. 7. 29.) No doubt the administration of
poison for medicine is one of the inventions, and is one of the evidences of poor fallen depraved humanity. Surely
"an enemy hath done this."
I am not altogether in favor of the "let alone" system; and
yet I believe, it would be a thousand times better to let nature "alone," than to give poison under any circumstances.
But we are told that.
"There is Poison in Everything we Eat."
If so is there not already enough in it without adding
thereto, or do we think that Infinite Wisdom has
made a misstake in this matter, and that we have made the wonderful discovery that a little poison added ocasionally
will make up the deficiency. Well in what from shall we
have it? In alcohol, in lager, or in the little white pills,
or powders? Are there any of these in pure sound grain,
before it undergoes the rotting and decomposing process of the distiller, the brewer, or some other process by which the nature of those God given productions, are changed from a state
of health and purity, into a state of rottennes, and poison?

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No Alcohol in Grain, Nor
Quinine in Peruvian Bark.
To obtain alcohol it is very well known that the
pure grain must go through, at least, a partial
state of putrefaction to produce the poisonous produc-
tion, and thus, by the perversion of man turning it
out of its natural state. And this unnatrual
production, is frequently reccommended and admin-
istered to the sick, and debilitated invalid, impart-
ing neither strength, nor nourishment, but rapidly
wasteing what little strength and vitality he has left
and thereby shortening his life, and hastening him to the
tomb. Alcoholic Medication.
has been a fruitful source of wretchedness and ruin
to great numbers of the human family. A goodly number
of eminent physicians have borne testimony against its use
for any medical purpose. Such men have an approving conscience and will by gratefully remembered by the more enlightened, and better informed part of mankind. Much however remains to be done, before this terrible evil is entirely banished by the medical faculty, and excluded from the chambers of the sick and dying. Light is spreading upon this subject, and such men, as ???, Youmans. Hicks,

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Curtis, Frall, with scores of others both in Europe
and America are nobly helping forward the blessed
enterprise. I think it was about 1856 while on a committee
of "Reforms," in the Rochester Conf. of the Wesleyan Conner-
ion, I presented a Resolution to memorialise the General
Conf. to erase from the Discipline in the article of the use
of ardent spirits the words "except for medicinal purposes." There was a long discussion upon the subject, and although
the resolution did not pass, yet there was a goodly number
in favor of it. It is time it was done. Through a misstake
of one of the secretaries, the report was entered on the Journal. I think it would now pass in all the Conferences.

Brandy as Medicine
"Brandy kills multitudes every year who enjoed per-
fect health before they began to use it, thence it seems fair to infer that it will kill the sick more speedily."
Dr. Lees said that he was living near Bucking-ham
Palace, in London, where Prince Albert was taken
sick. [with typhoid fever.] His case was doing well for a few days, when they began to give him brandy to strengthen him,
to enable him to recover more rappidly, the more he was stimulated the worse he grew until he died."

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"Some years ago when it was the custom to attempt
curing delirium tremens by giving brandy, one out
of every four died at Odinburg Hospital. Since
then, the professor of the miedical department has treat-
ed 300 cases of delirium tremens without alcohol,
without losing a single patient."
["]Prof. Gardner of the Glasgon University gave
a hundred men 30 oz. of alcohol, 17 died of the hun-
dred. An other hundred were allowed only three oz,
and eleven died out of the hundred."
"For a teetotal hospital at Leeds three hundred
patients, who took not a drop, all recovered.
"Of two-hundred and nine young persons who were not allowed either wine or whiskey, not one died." [These two
last lines ought to have followed the hundred.]
Let facts decided." W. Rural, Sept. 10, 1871 from Halls Jr. of
Health.
Peruvian Bark its Discovery.
Is said to have been by "a soldier burning with fever
in a South American forest, came to a pool of water.
He drank deep, and laid down to rest. He awoke greatly relieved, with his fever broken. He spread the news. The
pool was impregnated with the bark of the Chincona

[page 24]

tree growing on its bank. The bark was pulverised and administered to other patients, with the happy results."
J.T. Horne. American Wesleyan. July 16, 1873.
I take no exceptions to the above article unless, in a pre-
ceding part of it, in which he says, "Why then do we
affirmt hat quinine is a specific for fever?" and then fol-
lows, with theh istory of its discovery and use.
On which I would remakr that in the soldiers drink there
was no quinine, no more than there is acohol or whiskey
in wheat or corn. And here many are deceived, thinking
that quinine isin the bark, as flour or meal is in the wheat
or corn. The virtue in the soldiers' dirnk was in a decation
or infusion, of the bark in water. It teachers us the advanta-
ge of going to nature's Botanic Garden for our roots, and
herbs, and barks; and of getting them in hteir pure, simple,
and unadulterated state. It shows, that they are not to be decomposed, or rotted, or tortured, in the worm of the distiller, in the brewers vat, or in the chemist's laboratory.
"Plants are compund medicines, prepared
by the hand of God, for the use of man." Prof. Mitchel.
And when we take into consideration the wonderful
provision, which Infite goodness, has made for all our
wants; we should be lost, in wonder, love, and praise.