Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/22

18 with regard to the treatment of disease in his day, but the theory upon which Stahl based his practice was ridiculous in the extreme. He taught that the soul was gifted with that most extraordinary power of self-intelligence which enabled it to detect the presence of any noxious influence, and not only thus recognizing their presence without any physical connection taking place, was capable of exciting those changes in the body which were antagonistic to the pernicious influences which otherwise would result as the effect.

In studying such a system, we can without difficulty understand the good which would be likely to ensue in a large proportion of those cases treated by Stahl; but he, like many others who base their practice on a theory of their own raising, carried his principles to that extreme which denied the possible efficacy of any drug, and the use of those remedies as bark, opium, and the like, were on no account permitted to his followers.

In Stahl's idea of the almost omnipotent