food, water, exercise or rest, etc., it needs in its struggle for
health, and to remove all vitiating influences all poisons,
impurities, or disturbing influences of any kind. This is hygienic
medication, the natural and rational method of cure, and the more
closely it is examined, the more strongly it will commend itself to
reason.

It is a lamentable fact that the preservation of health is not taught
in the medical schools, neither is it explained in their books, and
judging from general practice not much regard is attached to it in
their prescriptions. But when the inevitable typhoid or malaria
appears as an inevitable consequence of neglected precautions, the
physician can drug without mercy, and, as we contend, on most
illogical grounds.

Who imagines for one instant, that quinine is a poison? Who is not
aware that arsenic is a deadly poison? And yet physicians and medical
journals calmly and gravely assert that arsenic is the better article
of the two, and recommend it as a substitute for quinine. Can any
intelligent person believe that a comparatively harmless tonic, and an
intense poison are perfect equivalents for each other?

It is stated on reliable authority, that during the civil war,
hundreds of sick soldiers implored the nurses to throw away their
medicine. They feared drugs worse than bullets, and not without
reason.

It is a curious fact that young physicians prescribe more medicine
than the older ones.