OUR JOURNAL THIS MONTH.-First we have, as a continuation of the Health Lessons from Old Writers, "Primitive Physic," by John Wesley, written in 1735. Wesley was a good deal of a physician; he thought that ministers, especially those intended for missionaries, should have some knowledge of medicine; that is, of the more ordinary diseases, and their Warts and Corns, by Erasmus Wilson, F. R. S., author of the well known work remedies. on the Skin, is an article written by one who, of all men living, is the most competent to deal with that subject. Poetry, by Lydia M. Millard. Wants, by O. B. Frothingham. Who made Thee to. Differ? by Rev. John Beach. A synopsis of Galton's book on Hereditary Descent (to be continued.) Kitty Howard's Journal. Lessons for the Children. These last are well adapted for use in schools, being in the form of questions and answers. Colorado Springs, the new watering place of the West. Studies in Hygiene. Dessert, Topics for the Month, etc. etc., making altogether a very interesting and readable number. MRS EVERETT'S LECTURES-During the past month the ladies of Des Moines, Iowa, have been treated to a course of lectures by Mrs. Susan Everett, M. D., on Health Topics. Mrs. Everett has so won our admiration and confidence that we beg leave to call the attention of the public, especially the ladies, everywhere to the noble and invaluable work in which she is engaged. We are sure we express the sentiments of all who heard her, in saying that these lectures embody the most sensible and practical views, on the subjects treated. The reforms suggested. in habits of domestic life, dress and diet, are supported by sound reason and common sense; and the methods and means of accomplishing them are made plain and simple. The excellence and value of her suggestions are beyond praise. We bespeak for her the confidence of all who may have an oppportunity to hear her. then something more of its effects, feel leave to briefly refer to it again, hoping at some not far distant day, to be able to write up the subject more fully. Oxygen has been found to possess an efficiency previously unknown, and that re sults have been attained justifying a cordial recommendation of it to thousands of sufferers; at any rate, it is a relief from drugs, and we have sufficient confidence in it, and in the physicians who supply it, to advise all who are interested, to make careful inquiry, and satisfy themselves The diseases enumerated as coming particularly whether this remedy is suited to their cases. within the scope of the compound oxygen, are those of the lungs and air passages, dyspepsia, some forms of nervous disorder, and general deterioration of the vital forces. Dr. Mitchell may be consulted at his office, 26 East 22nd Street, and Dr. Durrie at No. 214 Broadway, in the Park Bank Building. BOOK NOTICES.-Dr. Dio Lewis, speak ing of Parturition without Pain, says, "I have read it with care. It is unpretending, solid, free from kinks, fatherly, brotherly, and clothed with language so simple, dignified, and strong, that I am sure it will secure a warm place among all intelligent and earnest people." The Chicago Advance, speaking of the same work, says, "Wood & Holbrook, of New York, publish a little manual for mothers, entitled, "Parturition without Pain," of which we need only say the general suggestions and opinions seem to be eminently sensible. His treatment of the subject is neither prudish nor indelicate, and mothers will hardly find elsewhere a volume of the same size which will furnish them so much helpful information on child bearing and the care of infants. ($1.00.) WORDS OF CHEER.-"Hanover National Bank-God speed you in your good work of THE HERALD OF HEALTH, and its sound docGEORGE H. ANDRUSS." trines. "I have received the February and March numbers and, allow me to say, they are the most sensible magazines upon the subject of Health that I ever read. I never saw a copy before, but I shall continue to take them as long as I like them as well as I do now. N. W. TAYLOR." "It would be well for the country if every family in the land could be persuaded to avail themselves of this valuable monthly."Exchange. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY WOOD & HOLBROOK, 13 & 15 LAIGHT STREET. WHEN BY JOHN WESLEY, IN 1735. HEN man came first out of the hands of the Great Creator, clothed in body, as well as in soul, with immortality and incorruption, there was no place for physic, or the art of healing. As he knew no sin, so he knew no pain, no sickness, weakness, or bodily disorder. The habitation wherein the angelic mind, the divine Particulæ Auræ, abode, although originally formed of the dust of the earth, was liable to no decay. It had no seeds of corruption or dissolution within itself; and there nothing without to injure it; heaven and earth, and all the hosts of them were mild, benign, and friendly to human nature. The entire Creation was at peace with man, so long as man was at peace with his Creator. So that well might the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy. was But since man rebelled against the Sovereign of Heaven and Earth, how entirely is the scene changed? The incorruptible frame hath put on corruption, the immortal hath put on mortality. The seeds of wickedness and pain, of sickness and death, are now lodged in our inmost sub stance; whence a thousand disorders continnally spring, even without the aid of external violence. And how is the number of these increased by every thing round about us? The heavens, the earth, and all things contained therein, conspire to punish the rebels against their Creator. The sun and moon shed unwholesome influences from above; the earth exhales poisonous damps from beneath; the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, are in a state of hostility; the air itself that surrounds us on every side, is replete with the shafts of death; yea, the food we eat daily saps the foundation of that life which can not be sustained without it. So has the Lord of All secured the execution of his decree"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." But can nothing be found to lessen those inconveniences which can not be wholly removed ? To soften the evils of life, and prevent in part the sickness and pain to which we are con-tinually exposed? Without question there may. One grand preventive of pain and sick ness of various kinds, seems intimated by the grand Author of Nature in the very sentence that entails death upon us, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground." The power of exercise, both to preserve and restore health, is greater than can well be conceived; especially in those who add temperance thereto, who, if they do not confine themselves altogether to eat either "Bread or the herbs of the field" (which God does not require them to do), yet steadily observe both that kind and measure of food which experience shows to be most friendly to health and strength. It is probable physic, as well as religion, was in the first ages chiefly traditional; every father delivering down to his sons what he had in like manner received, concerning the manner of healing both outward hurts and the diseases incident to each climate, and the medicines which were of the greatest efficacy for the cure of each disorder. It is certain this is the method wherein the art of healing is preserved among the Americans to this day. Their diseases indeed are exceeding few; nor do they often occur, by reason of their continual exercise, and (till of late) universal temperance. | But if any are sick, or bit by a serpent, or torn by a wild beast, the fathers immediately tell their children what remedy to apply. And it is rare that the patient suffers long; those medicines being quick, as well as generally infallible. Hence it was, perhaps, that the ancients, not only of Greece and Rome, but even of barbarous nations, usually assigned physic a divine original. And indeed it was a natural thought, that He who had taught it to the very beasts and birds, the Cretan Stag, the Egyptian Ibis, could not be wanting to teach man. Sanctius his Animal, mentisque capacius altæ. Yea, sometimes even by those meaner creatures, for it was easy to infer, "If this will heal that creature, whose flesh is nearly of the same texture with mine, then in a parallel case it will heal me." The trial was made-the cure was wrought--and experience and physic grew up together. the book which he was reading. This he took up, and thoughtlessly applied to one of those sore places. Finding the pain immediately cease, he applied it to another, which was also presently healed. The same remedy he afterwards imparted to others, and it did not fail to heal any that applied it. And doubtless numberless remedies have been thus casually dis covered in every age and nation. Thus far physic was wholly founded on experiment. The European, as well as the American said to his neighbor, "Are you sick? Drink the juice of this herb and your sickness will be at an end. Are you in a burning heat? Leap into that river and then sweat till you are well. Has the snake bitten you? Chew and apply that root, and the poison will not hurt you." Thus, ancient men, having a little experience joined with common sense and common humanity, cured both themselves and neighbors of most of the distempers to which every nation was subject. But in process of time, men of a philosophical turn were not satisfied with this. They be gan to inquire how they might account for these things? They examined the human body and all its parts; the nature of the flesh, veins, arteries, nerves; the structure of the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, bowels; with the springs of the several kinds of animal functions. They explored the several kinds of animal and mineral, as well as vegetable substances; and hence the whole order of physic, which had been obtained to that time, became gradually inverted. Men of learning began to set experience aside-to build physic upon hypothesis -to form theories of diseases and their cure, and to substitute these in the place of experiments. As theories increased, simple medicines were more and more disregarded and disused, till in a course of years the greater part of them were forgotten, at least, in the politer nations. In the room of these, abundance of new ones were introduced, by reasoning, speculative men; and those more and more difficult to be applied, as being more remote from common observation. Hence, rules for the application of these, and medical books, were immensely multiplied, till at length physic became an abstruse science, quite out of the reach of ordinary men. And has not the Author of Nature taught us the use of many other medicines by what is vulgarly termed accident? Thus, one walking some years since in a grove of pines, at a time when many in the neighboring towns were afflicted with a kind of new distemper-man. little sores in the inside of the mouth-a drop of the natural gum fell from one of the trees on Physicians now began to be in admiration, as persons who were something more than huAnd profit attended their employ as well as honor; so that they had now two weighty reasons for keeping the bulk of mankind at a and ingenious Dr. Cheyne; who, doubtless, would have communicated more to the world. but for the melancholy reason he gave one of his friends, who pressed him with some passages in his works which too much countenanced the modern practice, "O Sir, we must do something to oblige the faculty, or they will tear us in pieces." Without any regard to this, without any concern about the obliging or disobliging any man living, a mean hand has made here some little attempt towards a plain and easy way of curing most diseases. I have only consulted herein, experience, common sense, and the common interest of mankind. And supposing they can be cured this easy way, who would desire to use any other? Who would not wish to have a physician always in his house, and one that attends withont fee or reward? To be able (unless in some few complicated cases) to prescribe to his family as well as himself. distance, that they might not pry into the mys- | such may be found in the writings of the learned teries of the profession. To this end, they increase those difficulties by design, which began in a manner by accident. They filled their writings with abundance of technical terms, utterly unintelligible to plain men They affected to deliver their rules, and to reasor upon them in an abstruse and philosophical manner. They represented the critical knowledge of Astronomy, Natural Philosophy (and what not ?), some of them insisting upon that of Astronomy, and Astrology too, as necessary previous to the understanding the art of healing. Those who understood only how to restore the sick to health, they branded with the name of Empirics. They introduced into practice abundance of compound medicines consisting of so many ingredients, that it was scarce possible for common people to know which it was that wrought the cure: abundance of exotics, neither the nature nor names of which their own countrymen understood; of chemicals, such as they neither had skill, nor fortune, nor time to prepare; yea, and of dangerous ones, such as they could not use with. out hazarding life, but by the advice of a phy-highest degree, to rescue men from the jaws of sician. And thus both their honor and gain were secured, a vast majority of mankind being utterly cut off from helping either themselves or their neighbors, or once daring to attempt it. Yet there have not been wanting, from time to time, some lovers of mankind, who have endeavored, even contrary to their own interest, to reduce physic to its ancient standard; who have labored to explode it out of all the hypothesis and fine-spun theories, and to make it a plain intelligible thing, as it was in the beginning; having no more mystery in it than this, "Such a remedy removes such a pain." These have demonstrably shown, that neither the knowledge of Astrology, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, nor even Anatomy itself, is absolutely necessary to the quick and effectual cure of most diseases incident to human bodies; nor yet any chemical, or exotic, or compound medicine, but a simple plant or root duly applied. So that every man of common sense, unless in some rare case, may prescribe either to himself or his neighbor; and may be very secure from doing harm, even where he can do no good. Even in the last age there was something of this kind done, particularly by the great and good Dr. Sydenham; and in the present, by his pupil, Dr. Dover, who has pointed out simple medicines for many diseases. And some If it be said, But what need is there of such attempt? I answer, the greatest that can possibly be conceived. Is it not needful, in the destruction? From wasting their fortunes, as thousands have done, and continue to do daily? From pining away in sickness and pain, either through the ignorance or dishonor of physicians ? Yea, and many times throw away their lives after their health, time, and substance. Is it inquired, but are there not books enough already on every part of the art of medicine? Yes, too many ten times over, considering how little to the purpose the far greater part of them speak. But besides this, they are too dear for poor men to buy, and too hard for plain men to understand. Do you say, "But there are enough of those collections of receipts." Where? I have not seen one yet, either in our own or any other tongue, which contains only safe, and cheap, and easy medicines. In alt that have yet fallen into my hands, I find many dear and many far-fetched medicines; besides many of so dangerous a kind as a prudent man would never meddle with. And against the greater part of these medicines there is a further objection-they consist of too many ingredients. The common method of compounding or re-compounding medicines can never be reconciled to common sense. Experience shows that one thing will cure most disorders, at least as well as twenty put together. Then why do you add the other nineteen? Only to swell the apothecary's bill. Nay, possibly, on pur |