The Theory and Practice of Counter-Irritation

supports. The author reviews at considerable length the history of the idea; but he does not wish to be esteemed an apostle of counterirritation : he expresses himself "more in sympathy with those who hold that 'the Devil himself, old Beelzebub, is nothing but a great Cantharid' (Baynard) than with those who would commend twelve consecutive applications of actual cautery for the cure of sciatica (Peter)." He combats many of the older interpretations such as were implied in words like revulsion, derivation, evacuation, vicarious action, and metastasis: these "should be allowed to fall out of medical terminology." And then he enunciates his own theory, which is based upon the idea that inflammation is a reparative process, that it is the