known that the digestive organs have been overtaxed. The case may
prove--anything. A local inflammation not yet made manifest by local
pain; the commencement of continued, or remittent, or exanthematous
fever; in a word, there is scarcely any ailment of children of which
this may not be the commencement. _If_, on careful examination, no local
disease can be made out, we have no correct indication for special
treatment. Give nature fair play. Put the child into a warm bed in a
warm room, keep it quiet, stop the supplies of food, but not of water,
and wait. When reaction takes place, if there be anything serious, it
shews itself, and we then know what to attend to. Very frequently, the
case is one of mere ephemeral febrile disorder, from exposure to cold;
and in two or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without
having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing?
When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation,
by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The
equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited
the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided
ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as
it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate the
stomach and bowels.' Here the do-nothing doctor actually assisted
nature; he took care that she should not be thwarted in her operations,
and he stood by watching the case, like an attorney at the examination
of a prisoner, who does nothing, but whose presence is essential to his
client. If the usual counteracting remedies had been administered, a
disease would have been induced, for which a process of convalescence
would have had to be gone through. If the globules had been given
simultaneously with the hygienic treatment described, Homoeopathy
instead of nature would have had the credit of the cure.

'In all chronic blood-diseases,' says Dr Hall, 'medicines are useful,