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THOMSONISM.
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cure him. Some of his agents were also arrested and imprisoned, but escaped punishment. Yet Thomson, and the thousands who had become interested in his cause, were not to be readily subdued even by the strong arm of the law. Commissioned with agencies and Family Rights for which the money had been paid, they struggled long and hard against every dictate of reason and common sense, and hundreds would never give it up until they found some other crazy bog to set their feet upon.

Being profoundly ignorant of everything relating to medical science, Thomson's theories were of the rudest kind. He said he had discovered that man was composed of four elements—earth, water, fire, and air. The first two constituted the substance of the machine, and the last two kept it in motion. Heat, he ascertained, is life, and cold is death—the stomach is the furnace, and food the fuel in health, assisted by medicine in disease. The stomach, like a fireplace or stovepipe, he supposed was liable to get foul, and clogged, and need cleaning out, and that all disease is caused by some