Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/102

 accumulations, and expels them from the system, while its contained vif or vital principle builds up and restores. It is the only perfect vehicle of the curative principle in existence, and cannot be administered through the lungs by any system of inhalation to an extent sufficient to do much good, if any at all; and this discovery consists in a means whereby a combination of two or more of the seven named elements are made to generate vitality upon coming in contact with the gastric, biliary, and pancreatic secretions, positively, promptly, effectively.

Beautiful, blessed, life-giving, health-laden oxygen! It is thy triumph I celebrate! With thee, the physician of the future shall be armed at all points, for thou never failest in thy holy and perfect work! Royal principle! sweetly sleeping in the virgin's heart, and playing on the infant's lip! Thou givest zest to the story, and point to the epigram: and thou art the spirit of eloquence on the orator's tongue! On the rugged mountain-top thou art breathed forth by myriad giant trees, and in the valley thou sighest from the corolla of a flower! Thou art the destroying breath of the typhoon and sirocco; and thou the sweet perfume exhaled from the lily's spotless chalice! Thou givest strength and fury to the flame that wraps vast forests in sheets of living fire; and thou layest waste great cities, leaving them shrivelled and seared behind thee, as thou marcbest forward in thy wrath! And yet thou art gentle as a mother's love, — lovely as the blushing dawn, — true friend of man when he understandeth thy moods and law; but a bitter teacher of those who know thee not! Thou tender nurse, faithful friend, and chief of all physicians, —

"They reckon ill who leave thee out!"

— thou servant of Heaven! beautifier of earth! maker of happy homes! healer of all human ills! comforter of our souls! dispenser of life! foe of death! banisher of pain! — ever blessed, lovely beautiful, holy, and God-Sent Principle of Life!

The proper study of mankind is Woman! and precious few are they who really know anything about her, although millions of those who wear pantaloons and sport whiskers imagine that of all other studies of this mundane life of ours they have mastered that; but a greater mistake was never made since creation began,