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The Modus Operandi of remedies, or the general principle upon which they effect salutary changes in the morbid states of the body, is involved in considerable obscurity, and has given rise to much ingenious speculation and scientific controversy. It would seem that the immediate impression of a remedy may depend upon mechanical, chemical, or vital agencies; and that the sanative impulse thus occasioned may either be Absolute, or Relative;—Primary, or Secondary;—Local, or General;—Direct, or Sympathetic;—Permanent, or Transient;—thus certain purgatives will occasion intestinal excretions in every condition of the body, and may therefore be justly considered as absolute agents; while diuretics, since they generally require for their success, a certain state of the living system, may with equal truth be denominated relative in their operation. That the obvious effect of a remedy may either depend upon its Primary, or upon its Secondary and incidental operation, will at once be apparent by inspecting the diagram which exhibits the classification of diuretic medicines; the same scheme will also shew that remedies may be local or general in their effects, and may excite an action in distant organs, either by entering the circulating mass, and being thus brought into contact with their textures;—by occasioning an impulse conveyed through the nervous system,—or by exciting a local impression upon the stomach and primæ viæ, and thus arousing their energies through the mysterious medium of sympathetic^[128] communication.