It is true that in many cases the effect of a medicine is to be attributed entirely to the imagination, or to the belief that it will have such and such effects; but the statement of such extreme positions as these shows the irrationality of the theories upon which they are based. According to the above, if it were generally believed that alcohol were unintoxicating, nourishing, and bland as milk, it would be an excellent article with which to nourish infants; and, on the other hand, if it were generally believed that milk were intoxicating, all the influences of alcohol would be produced upon those who drank it. If the public could only be educated to believe alcohol to be nourishing, the entire mammalian genus might be nursing their offspring upon alcohol with equally good results. No insane asylum can furnish a more transparent delusion.
That drugs produce effects upon animals has been demonstrated beyond the possibility of contradiction, and that, when the animals did not know that they were taking drugs; and small doses have produced not the slightest effect, while large doses—the animals in each case not knowing that they were tak-