60916 1 N, le - 4, ---- 9~Y I I WILLIAM RADDE, IMPORTER, BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER, 322 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. Importations of German, French, Latin, Greek, Sancrit, and other Foreign Books, for Colleges, Public and Private Libraries, etc. etc. Single Books imported to order. Orders forwarded by every Steamer, and also by the Liverpool Packets, and answered promptly by the return of the first Steamer after the receipt, if desired. W. R. would invite attention to his facilities for procuring English and Foreign Books fur Colleges, Public and Private Libraries, Booksellers, and the Public generally, on at least as good terms and with greater despatch, than they have ever been imported into this country by any other establishment. Books for incorporated institutions pay no duty. German and French Journals, Monthlies, Quarterlies, and Newspapers, received regularly by the Steameis for subscribers and the principal periodicals. WM. RADDE takes also this opportunity to inform the Physicians and friends of Hahnemann's system, that he is the sole Agent for the Central Homoeopathic Pharmacy at Leipzig, in the United States, and that he has always on hand a good assortment of HOM(EOPATHIC MEDICINES in their different preparations, as Essences (tinctures,) Triturations, and Dilutions, put up in cases containing 415 vials, with tinctures and triturations. Ditto with 175 ditto. Cases containing 144 vials, with low dilutions and medicated pellets. Cases containing from 27 to 400 vials, with pellets medicated with different (low and high) dilutions. Boxes with 60-80 vials containing dilutions. Boxes with 50-80 vials containing medicated pellets. Double and single leather pocket-cases of Medicine for Physicians. Boxes for family use, from three to six dollars. Also, all Isopathic Remedies. Refined Sugar of Milk, pure globules; vials, corks, diet papers, labels, etc. JUST PUBLISHED, JAHR'S NEW MANUAL OF HOM. PRACTICE, EDITED, WITH ANNOTATIONS, BY A. GERALD 1ULL, IM. D., Second American. from the third or Paris edition, New York, 1841. 2 vols. Bound, each $3,50, in paper, $3. -ALSO,ENCHIRIDION MEDICUM, OR MANUAL OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. THE RESULT OF FIFTY YEARS EXPERIENCE, BY C. W. HUFELAND, M. D. Counsellor of State, Physician in ordinary to the late King of Prussia, Professor in the University of Berlin. From the Sixth German Ed. Translated by Caspar Bruchhausen, M. S. Revised by Robert Nelson, M. D. Price, $3,00. GERMWAN AND FRVENCH WORKS. Hahnemctnn's Organon, 5 te Auflagre. "c Reine Arzneimittellehre, in 6 Bdn. 3te Auflage. It Chronische Krankheiten, ihre eigenthiftrnliche Natur und Homceopathische Heilung. 2te Auflage. Riick-ert's Systernatische Darstellung der Horn6op. Arzneien, in 2 Banden. cc Grundziige einer ku~nftigen specieflen Horn. Therapie. "i Kurze Uebersicht der Wirkungen Horn. Arzneien. 2 Bde. llartmann's Therapie. 2 Bde. Bcrnninghausen's Repertoriurn, 2 Theile. cc Verwandts-chaften Horn. Arzneien. Rau's Organon der specifischen Heilkuast, 1838. Real Lexicon, oder voIlstandi'ge Bibliothek der Horndopathie, 5 Dde. 1838. Jahr's Handbuch der Horn. Heilmittel. Rummel's Hiablick auf die Geschichte der Homdopathie. Weber's Systematische DarstelIlung der reinen Arzneiwirkungen, aller bisher geprfiften Mitteln. Hartlaseb snd Trink's Systernatisehe Darstellungder antipsorischen Arzneirnittel, U. S. W.) 2 Dde. Leipzig. Kretsckmer's Die Naturautokratie. ~Stapf'Is Beitrage zur reinen Arzneir-nittellehre. cc Archiv. fulr die Horn~opathische Heilkun St, 19 Dde. 1842. Hering's Wirkungen des Schiangengiftes, zurn airz flichen Gebrauche. Griesselich's Hygea, Zeitsch rift fuir specifisehe Heilkunst, 16 Bde.. 1842. F RENC H. Hal~nemann's Organon de 1'art de gu 6rir, traduit par Jourdan, Paris, 1834. cc Trait6 de matieire me'dicale C C Paris, 3 forts Vols. 8vo. "c Doctrine et traitement Hornceopathique des maladies chroniques, traduit par Jourdan, Paris, 2 vols. Svo. 18312. Leon Simon, Leqons de m6decine Hornceopathiquie. Paris, 1835. 8vo. Beautvais, Clinique Homceopathique, 9 vols. Paris. "c Effets toxiques ct pnthogf~netiques des m~dicarnens. Paris. Jahn, Notices dflementaires sur l'Homceopathie. Paris, 1839. " Nouveau manuel de m~decine Homouopathique. Paris, 1840,4 vois. SNouvelle Pharmacope'e et Posologie Hornneopathiques. Paris, 1841. WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. I 4 ENGLISH AND AMIERICAN WORKS. Hahnemann's Organon of Homoeopathic Medicine. Jahr's New Manual of Homoeopathic Practice. Edited, with Annotations, by A. Gerald Hull, M. D. " New Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia and Posology. Hering's Homoeopathist or Domestic Physician. Curie's Practice of Homoeopathy. " Principles of " " Domestic " Dunsford's Homceopathic Remedies. " Practical Advantages of Homoopathia. Ruof's Repertory of Homoeopathic Medicine, nosologically arranged. Translated from the German, by Dr. A. H. Okie. With additions and improvements, by Dr. Humphrey. Hartmann's Practical Observations on some of the chief Horn. Remedies. Trans. from the German, with Notes, by A. H. Okie, M. D. Jeane's Homceopathic Practice of Medicine. Everest's Popular View of Homceopathia. Simpson's Practical View of Homoeopathia. Dunsford's Pathogenetic effects of some of the principal Homceopathic remedies. PAMPHLETS. Bering's Concise view of the Rise and Progress of Homceopa. Medicine. Channing's Discourse on the Reformation of Medical Science. Eustapkieve's Hommopathia revealed. Croserio on Homcoopathic Medicine. Translated from the French, by C. Neidhard, M. D. J. L. Sullivan, M. D. Homceopathia, the science of specific remedies. Greene's Practical Advantages of Homoeopathia. Okie's Homoeopathia Explained and Objections answered. Count Des Guidi's Letter to the Physicians of France on Homceopathia. Homceopathia, with particular reference to a Lecture by O. W. Holmes, by A. H. Okie, M. D. An Answer to the " Homceopathic Delusions," of Dr. W. Holmes, by Chas. Neidhard, M. D. W. C. Bryant, Esq., Popular Considerations on Homoeopathia. What is Homacopathia? by John Epps, M. D. Robert Wessel/heft, M. D., some remarks on Dr. O. W. Holmes' Lecture on " Homcepathia and its kindred delusions." WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. mrr rn I i i DR. HULL'S WORKS. THE HOMOEOPATHIC EXAMINER, EDITED BY A. GERALD HULL, M. D. This Periodical, intended for lay as well as professional readers, comprises, in its two published volumes for the years 1840 and 1841, a mass of interesting matter for the friends of Homceopathia. It will be issued as formerly to illustrate the characteristics of Homceopathia, to repel the aspersions of its foes, and to chronicle with fidelity all the events of its current history, and should receive the support of its advocates. Subscription for the third volume, $5,00. No HUL.'S JAHR. JAHR'S NEW MANUAL OF HOM(EOPATHIC PRACTICE, EDITED WITH ANNOTATIONS BY A. GERALD HULL, M. D. This very elaborate work, in two volumes of 700 pages each, is the best practical compendium of the Homoeopathic system that has as yet been published. American practitioners and students will find it an indispensable guide to a just prosecution of the new mode of practice. Bound, each $3,50, in paper, $3,0). HULL'S EVEREST. A POPULAR VIEW OF IIOM(EOPATHY, BY REV. THOMAS R. EVEREST, Rector of Wickwar. WITH ANNOTATIONS, AND A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE STATE AND PROGRESS OF HOMCEOPATHIA IN EUROPE. BY A. GERALD HULL, M. D. From the Second London Edition.-Price $1. LPIFE OF HAHNEMANN, WITH AN ENGRAVING. BY A. GERALD HULL, M. D. New York, 1841. Price 50 cents. STATE AND PROGRESS OF HOIOMOEOPATHIA IN EUROPE, JANUARY, 1842. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. New York, 1842. Price 25 cents. ENGRAVINGS OF HAHNEMANN, India proofs, $5. Fine proof, $3 Small size, $1. DEAN, PRINTER, 2 ANN STREET. A POPULAR VIEW OF HIOM(EOPATHY BY THE REV. THOMAS R. EVEREST, RECTOR OF WICKWAR. " Pigmrei Gigantum i urneils impositi plus quamn homines vident.-BUE1Tox. " Vous ignorez te principe iui joue le premier rdle dans vos wus'res, et auquel vous devcz bien des succ~s: It est daus vos mnains, it tie tient quaý vous de le saisir: avec lui vosis ferez beaucoup mfieu.K cc que vous faites bien: voiss ferez. toujours bien ce que cýous 3tes SOurvent exposds S faire mal: enfin, VOuIs fcrcz encore souvent le bien, ho inaintenant it vous semnble impossible de rien faire.1-LAVOISIE, cited by DESSAIX. FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. WITH ANNOTATIONS AND A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE OF HOM(E'OPATH1A IN EUROPE. BY A GERALID HULL, M. Do NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. 1842. F' jit V ENTERED According to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by CHAS. G. DEAN, Inr the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District o( NEW YORK. NEW YORK-DEAN PRINTER-ANN STREET. U TO JOHN F. GRAY, M. D., THE FIRSTr AMERICAN CONVERT TO ILOMCEOPATIIA, THROUGH WHOSE MEDICAL ERUDITION, POWERS OF DIAGNOSIS AND PRACTICAL ACUMEN THE REPUTATION OF THE NEW METHOD HAS BEEN SIGNALLY SUSTAINED, THE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE AMERICAN EDITION OF THIS WORK, ARE DEDICATED BY HIS FAITHFUL FRIEND, A. GERALD HULL. j 0 m MEMO AMERICAN PREFACE. HOMMEOPATHIA has attained a position in the United States, which renders it as much an object of solicitous inquiry on the part of the laity, as in consequence thereof, it is a theme of vituperative dissertation on the part of our medical men, who aspire to a high rank in their day and generation, or of those who imagine themselves heirs of lasting fame, conditions which the success of the New School necessarily endangers. Its present triumphant progress serves as an expressive reproof to the Allopathic sages who have so long and frequently predicted its certain, immediate desuetude, and we are happy to find the advance of our system frankly conceded, in a single instance, at last, by one of the most respectable, and venerable periodicals of the Old school, " THE BOSTON MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL," which, in the 24th number of its xxiv. volume, contains the subsequent remarks:--" Notwithstanding the ridicule of some, the anathemas of others, and the contempt of many leading professional men, in regard to Homoeopathy, it is evidently gaining friends, even in staid New England. We have been as active as any one in endeavouring to open the eyes of the credulous, to what we believe to be wholly unworthy of serious thought; but instead of keeping the world where it was, we are obliged to acknowledge that a spirit of inquiry into the philosophy of this supposed improved system of medical management, converts very many to the comfortable opinion that half is better than the whole. In other words, all the efforts made thus far, hereabouts, to arrest the progress of the new doctrine, have failed; both practitioners and patients are increasing!" I W -._I,._ _ a AMERICAN PREFACE. It i Ii We tender the following eloquent pages, from the pen of a learned and able clergyman of the English Church, to the American public, as an explanation of the characteristics of our system, peculiarly adapted to general perusal, and as a keen and most just rebuke to those of our medical brethren, who daily misrepresent that system among their patients and friends. Mr. Everest effectually answers the charge circulated by the classes of Allopathists above indicated, in all countries and at all times, that there is neither science nor philosophy in the new system. We deem this a point of much importance in its propagation. The public should know that the durable and beneficent cures which are every where produced, by the real members of our school, are not the work of fortunate conjecture, as is too generally the case in the good issues of the common method, nor of a stumbling routine of blind empiricism, but that they are results obtained upon the well defined principles of a real, and imperishable art; results which may be repeated under an almost infinite variety of conditions and external circumstances. The public should know too, that the practice of this art involves necessarily a fund of knowledge and a fullness of research, as well with respect to the laws of which it is composed, as of the peculiarities of each individual case of disease, to which the ignorant physician, be his pretensions what they may, has no readier access than any other ignorant man. The reader of Mr. Everest will perceive, that it is neither safe for himself, nor just toward the community, to entrust the treatment of disease upon our plan, to that growing herd of doctors, who, with unblushing effrontery, set themselves up for Homceopathists, without being respectably fitted even for the common routine of Allopathia. There are notorious examples of this kind, in this and the neighbouring cities, men, who not only claim to be Homowopathists, but even affect to be teachers and sages in the art. AMERICAN PREFACE. These pretenders have not hesitated to acquire false fame, by bare-faced plagiarisms, or by equally base abuse of oral instructions. The ends of justice, and the safety of the sick require their exposure; but this must occur from the diffusion of the kind of knowledge contained in the essays of Everest, and the papers of Dr. Gray, published in this volume. The people may be rendered competent to penetrate the veil, always nearly transparent, which such men wear. We have added to the volume, also, our apercu of the condition and prospects of Hom(eopathia in Europe, brought down to the present date, from the first volume of the Examiner, and other late sources. This publication is much needed in this country, on account of the numerous statements which are circulated here, from imposing European sources, in amount that the system is " dead in Germany," " declining in France," " extinct in Russia," &c. &c. These statistics would be very much enriched by adding to them a sketch of the state of Homosopathia in the United States; but this must be deferred till a new edition of this work is called for. It will not be inappropriate to say that the number of adherents to the school in this country, is now large, and daily augmenting among physicians, and also among the ablest and most learned men of the community at large. Whereas during the first years after the public propagation of the system here, the two pioneers of the system, H. B. Gram, M. D. and John F. Gray, M. D., stood almost alone, meeting little else than supercilious neglect in the upper walks of the profession, and only rancourous personal hostility among the crowds of doctors who affect to know the philosophy of their art by intuition. It was not, indeed, till 1834 and 1835, after the French translations by Jourdan appeared, and the attention of the learned classes had been awakened to the subject, that practical results were found in the ý4L AE i I AMERICAN PREFACE. profession, and the attention of physicians came to be somewhat aroused. The contrast between the first and last eight years of the sixteen, since the first public step was taken in this country, is bold, striking, and filled with hope for the future-the latter disclosing a geometrical ratio of progression. We have now between one and two hundred graduates from our medical schools, who publicly adhere to the new practice, nearly one hundred of whom reside in this state; and throughout the country there are, to our personal knowledge, very many medical gentlemen of rare attainment, privately engaged in a practical examination of the subject. The " New York Homoeopathic Society," founded in 1834, for the trial of the drugs on the healthy, and for the propagation of the system, was greatly enlarged during the last year, and its objects increased, so as to embrace the establishment of an infirmary for the gratuitous treatment of the poor, on the plan of Hahnemann. The officers of this society are all laymen, distinguished for their learning, talents and active beneficence, amongst whom we name from recollection: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, ESQ HON. ROBERT H. MORRIS, GEN. JAMES TALLMADGE, Mayor of the city of New York. President of the American Institute, HON. OGDEN P. EDWARDS, late Lieut. Governor of the State. Late Judge of Circuit Court. HON. J. B. SCOTT, REV. JOHN F. SCHROEDER, D.D. Of the Senate of State of N. Y. Rector of St. Ann's Hall. REV. ORVILLE DEWEY, D.D. AUGUSTUS GREELE, ESQ. REV. WILLIAM PATTEN, D.D. DAVID FELT, ESQ. FERRIS PELL, ESQ. A. G. H. New York, 1842. [ r Wh~ CONTENTS. Page DR. GRAY'S ESSAYS, I.-Duty of Physicians of either School to study both systems, 153 II.-Educational requirements of the Homceopathic Physician, 167 EDITOR'S SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA IN EUROPE, I.-Its origin,....... 179 II.-Coincident opinions of old authors as to the principle,. 181 III.-Evidences in favour of Homoeopathia, from the older writers, 183 IV.-Opinions of eminent Allopathists of the present age,. 185 V.-Allopathists converted to Homceopathia,... 193 VI.-Reputation of Homceopathists and Homcepathia,.. 197 VII.-Professors of Homceopathia,... 206 VIII -Homceopathic Literature....... 208 IX.-Homceopathic Hospitals, &c.,.... 211 X.-Public trials of Homeopathia in Hospitals,. 217 XI.-Statistics of Homceopathic treatment,... 224 XII.-Conclusion,...... 229 LITERATURE OF THE FOREGOING ARTICLES,.,. 233 I TO HARRIS DUNSFORD, Esq. M.D. M.R.C.S. ETC. MY DEAR DUNSFORD, WHEN the trifle I now send you reaches your hands, it will excite in you, I fear, more regret than approbation. As a medical man, you will not like strangers interfering in your profession; as an ardent advocate of Iomoeopathy, you will grieve that it should suffer in such unworthy hands. One answer must suffice for both objections. Iomoeopathy has slept in this country since its birth, and, for all I see to the contrary, will be permitted to sleep out the rest of the century, unless some " stranger" provokes discussion. I cordially agree with you in grieving that it should be left to such hands. But Lilliputians can stick pins if they cannot wield clubs. A breath that would scarcely wave a leaf, may dislodge an avalanche. Ere long some one qualified to do justice to the subject will wrest the sword from the feeble hands that hold it at present. I dedicate this book to you, because to you I owe, if not my acquaintance with the doctrines of Ilomoeopathy, at least my practical conviction of the truth of them. Much IICL i I i -- -- ~-------~" i DEDICATION. cannot be expected from the leisure hours of a profession, which, I trust, has not been neglected. I dedicate this fruit of those leisure hours to you, because to you, under God, I owe it that they are not hours of disease. If you were in this' country, this attempt would probably never appear; at any rate, it would appear purified of its errors. You will pardon those errors when you remember that I know not one single individual acquainted with the subject, to refer to in any difficulty, and accept what is correct in consideration of the motives. When the noble family, with whom you are at present residing, shall permit you to return to England, I sincerely hope it will not be long before you yourself make known to the public the principles of that science which you practise with so much honour to yourself, and so much happiness to your patients. I remain, My dear Dunsford, Very faithfully yours, THOMAS R. EVEREST. Wickwar, Sept 30, 1834. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. IN the few months that have elapsed since the first edition of this work was published, considerable changes have taken place in public opinion as to the science which forms the subject of it. Then IIomoeopathy was in this country but little known. Its wondrous cures were scarcely heard of beyond the immediate circle of those who were the subjects of them; its doctrines had neither awakened the attention of the wise, nor been honoured with the stamp of truth, the anathema of the dull. If from time to time the surface was ruffled by a whisper that the age teemed with a new and mysterious system which taught to rekindle the flickering lamp of life by acting on it by minute doses as little material as itself, it did not long disturb the happy stagnation of the sleeping waters. The public, professional and non-professional, received the announcement without emotion. The doctor talked of it, and was merry; the patient listened, and was sad. The one prescribed as usual, and did not condescend to contradict; the other endured as usual, and dared not indulge a hope. There B.. t 1> X PREFACE. was a sun-burst upon foreign hills, but it was beyond our horizon, and few and slight were the clouds that reflected the light of the great unrisen truth. It is written in the doctrines of the Magians that the powers of darkness knew not for a long time that light was in the world. No sooner, however, did they perceive it, than they one and all rushed to extinguish it. It is probable that this mythos was invented by Zoroaster to impress on the minds of his disciples the reception they would meet with from mankind, should they be so unfortunate as to detect some hitherto unknown truth. The history of every great discovery does indeed confirm the doctrine of the Zendavesta;-first quiet contempt, next fierce hostility. Exactly this career IIomceopathy has run in every land where it has appeared; exactly this career it is just commencing in this country. Contemptuous silence has not succeeded in stifling it; it is too serious a business to be trifled with; and it is accordingly railed at in good set terms. The advocates of the science accept the change as an augury of success, for they remember, how that there was silence and a dead calm over the earth, as long as darkness lay upon the face of it: nor was it until God said, "Be light; and light was," that feuds and violence began. If indeed we had leisure to reflect upon the subject, we might ask why a science like Homccopathy should have every where excited such bitter hostility. An individual of great sagacity, rare perseverance, and the most unblemished character in every respect, whose hair has grown silvery white in the lonely pursuit of knowledge, whose rapid perception is chastened by the utmost patience in investigating, and caution in admitting conclusions, whose PREFACE. xi habits of thinking have been supplied with food by that truly extraordinary reading for which the Germans are proverbial, whose wonderful talents are exceeded only by his enlarged benevolence, after having dedicated his whole life to the uninterrupted study and practice of his profession, in the full conviction that his discoveries will be advantageous to his fellow creatures, presents them unreservedly to the world. Now it does not at first sight seem reasonable that the aged philosopher, and all who admire him, should be "condemned to everlasting redemption" for their pains. Is it a crime to wish to benefit one's species? The logic of power is not, it is true, the logic of the closet -nay, children are taught very early in life how the wolf found arguments against the lamb. And in times not very distant from our own, when vaccination was banned by the parliament of Paris, for example, to pour forth a medical malison upon Hahnemann might have saved the profession the labor of investigation, and supplied the place of arguments. Within these few last years, however, the age has grown rather picked, and where the fathers might have been satisfied with assertions without reasons, the children ask for reasons without assertions. Granting then for a moment, that the kind-hearted old man is mistaken, that the intense reading of more than half a century has been thrown away, the long nights of meditation, the long days of observation, the dazzling theory, the magic practice, are all wrong, and that the shoal of small apothecaries' lads who, from behind the smart counter, eke out the due dose from different golden-labelled bottles, who neither read, nor meditate, nor observe, but both theorize and practice-are right, is it too much to ask "wherein he is wrong?" May PREFACE. xiii It is unquestionably a great pity that learned doctors and grave reviewers, not to speak of the "1young gentlemen" of the press, should suppose that a question of science is to be decided like a street row or a faction fight. But a revolution, after all, is not to be made 'with eau de rose. And there, is comfort in it yet, for hard words luckily break no bones. Besides, if poor Truth has always to run the gauntlet thus while every little fifer plays the rogue's march, why should Ilahnemann or any one of his disciples complain? The sage himself indeed has found his consolation in the good he has done, in the mischief he has undone, in the gratitude of his patients, and in a conscience void of offence. For such lowly train-bearers as myself, we must remember Harvey and Jenner; we must remember how individuals have been put in the pillory for wearing so useless an article as a shirt, how chimneys were once denounced, how mattrasses were reviled, how stage coaches were considered grievous innovations, how the lporters of the Andes, who carried passengers on their shoulders in baskets, petitioned against the formation of roads; how, in short, "every improvement of every sort has been denounced at its introduction as injurious."~ If that be not enough, we must bear it in silence, as did that ancient prophet Balaam his rebuke, and persist in hoping that no worse motive than zeal without knowledge, seconded by a most marvellously bad taste, has hurried gentlemen into the language of the stews. One of these gentlemen, desperately doing battle against *V. Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 199. 0 xiv PREFACE. facts, has endeavoured, in his very title page to give IHahnemann the " coup de grace," by exhibiting " Animal Magnetism and Homaeopathy" as a sort of intellectual Siamese twins. Mr. Edwin Lee, I am perfectly aware, from the style of his book, despises politeness as unworthy of a philosopher, and thinks, with Jaques, that that they call compliment is like the encounter of two dog apes. Old fashioned people, however, must be humoured in their reluctance to throw off all the decencies of civilization. I earnestly entreat his pardon, therefore, while I take the liberty of informing him that Animal Magnetism and Homcoopathy are by no means identical, or even inseparable. With his permission, we will dissolve the contract and forbid the banns; they have no more in common than the company of apothecaries and the Indian jugglers. One wide distinction between them Mr. Lee himself might have discovered without the superfluous trouble of studying either of them, in this well-known fact, that the French Academy adopted Animal Magnetism by a majority, and rejected Homccopathy unanimously. To Mr. Lee I make a present of the inference. Mr. Lee commences his work by stating that " many persons talk about Animal Magnetism and IIomceopathy who know little or nothing about them;" it is true, and some write about them who are in a similar predicament. A critic, however, reviewing Mr. Lee's pamphlet, asserts that " it will of itself stop the system of IIahncmann from spreading in this country." I think otherwise. There is no knowing, however; and should it, in spite of my belief, accomplish the annihilation of IIahnemannism, I counsel Mr. Lee to write another, and go to the assistance of the PREFACE. XV distressed Mrs. Partington. Between her mop and his little book I should not be surprised if they were to succeed in keeping out the Atlantic. Another gentlemen, having, apparently to his great amazement,. discovered that in the year 1834, "above three hundred physicians and surgeons already practised Ilomoeopathy; that works had been published on the subject; and an illustrious lady restored to health by it " accounts for its success, to the great satisfaction of himself and the audience he was addressing, by relating the following not over delicate story, of which he pleasantly says IIomceopathy is " a happy illustration." In the Poggiana there is a story told of a countryman who bought six pills of a quack, which were to enable him to recover his lost ass. The pills beginning to operate on his road home, obliged him to retire into a wood, where he found his ass; in consequence of which the clown soon spread a report of the wonderful success of the elnpiric," &c. For my part, I can well believe that the taker of six purging pills might now and then discover an ass without retiring into a wood for that purpose. But although I am aware that the profession, nobly disdaining to be outdone by the " Lion of the North," Morrison, employ them upon all occasions, this is thee first time I ever heard of their be. ing used instead of arguiments. All kinds of diseases I knew were to be sent to the right al)out by them, but I did not know that medical men carried their fondness for them so far as to dose an opponent with them. Omne nefas omnemque mali 1PURGAMINA causami Credebant nostri tollere posse series xvi PREFACE. Mr. Pereira is a mirthful gentleman, and it is not without regret that I leave him and his story; but although it seems judiciously chosen for the latitude of Aldersgate street, it smells rather too strongly of the shop for me to dwell on longer without apologizing to my readers. Should angry Fate, however, at some future time compel me to swallow six purging pills, (Dii avortite omen!) I shall not fail to remember the estimable lecturer and his story of an ass. Next stands forth a mighty man, of some renown probably if we did but know his name, and curses Homcopathy by his gods because it is new. His reasoning is so beautiful that I mourn over my inability to preserve it entire in these pages. "Can they," he says, (i. e. the Homwopaths) "really expect men who have spent their lives in the study of medicine and the collateral sciences to listen to their theories? The medical man," he excellently urges on us, "whether physician or surgeon, has his own character at stake, and how can he try new experiments? Has he any right or authority to do so? Would he not, in short, be liable to punishment by the laws of his couutry for subjecting his patient to so strange a treatment?" (i. e. as to cure them without submitting them to the blessings of Allceopathy.) And thus he concludes, "1Seeing then that the medical men in England cannot adopt this system consistently with their character as Christians, their honour as gentlemen, or their duty as medical practitioners, we must come to the conclusion," &c. "1I have searched Aristotle through." said the Abbe" to Scheiner, "and find nothing of the kind mentioned; be assured that all the spots on the sun are a deception of your senses or your glasses." xviii PREFACE. A certain worthy baronet is reported to have said in the House of Commons, that "quiet error was preferable to boisterous truth." There is no doubt about it. The apophthegm is as correct as it is terse and neat. So thought probably the Academie when they advised the minister not to permit the JIomceopathic Institute to establish a Dispensary for the purpose of curing the poor gratis. So thought probably the same admirable body when they decreed that the blood did not circulate. So thought the same body when they denounced antimony. So they thought when they procured an "arrdt du parlement," prohibiting the use of emetic tartar. So they thought when, in a few years afterwards, they procured the revocation of the same arret. So thought that same body when, in a fit of lofty zeal, they commenced a crusade against innovators by proclaiming those vast wigs in which the past generation stored up their wisdom to be infinitely more healthy than the natural unraccommodated hair. Eminent however in their profession as are the respectable individuals who compose that august body the Academie, and great as is the influence they possess over the opinions of society, it is rather singular that they often failed in their praiseworthy efforts to preserve things from change. Whether from obstinacy, or from an ignorant impatience of dictation, or some other cause, so it was that people put no faith in some of the decisions of those who were wise by law as well as by fact. They would be inoculated, and they would not wear wigs, and the Academic could not prevail on them. They would use antimony, and the Academie could not prevent them. And the rebellious blood wotd and did and does circulate, in very spite of xx PREFACE. new system. And the more successful has been their practice on the old plan, the more jealous must they be of the new one. The seamen were the chief opponents of steamboats. The coach proprietors alone object to railroads, and while the old leaven circulates in the veins of man, so it ever will be. Away then with the puerile and unworthy affectation of decreeing and determining in hot blood questions like this, which demand the most exact and patient experiments. In the name of common sense we protest against the right of any Absolute Sir, with or without a tail of letters to his name, to take upon him the mystery of things, as if he were God's spy, and could unravel all those mazes of nature which are past the infinite of thought without even using his eyes for the purpose. Is it a small thing that such a man as Hahnemann who has studied more years probably than any of these "small deer" have lived-and stored up in the fathomless depths of his mind the contents of more volumes than they ever heard of, with at least five hundred medical disciples, and whole nations as a'Ifollowing,' should be flouted by every puny whipster, upon no better grounds than mere ex-sufflicate and blown surmises, as if he were not Hahnemann, but "Bottom the Weaver!" Is it usual, is it likely, that knowledge should thus drop into the minds and memories of the very babes and sucklings of science, and "the wing wherewith we lift ourselves to Heaven" be lent to the indolent and the dull, the pert novel-reading and card-playing smatterer of the coterie, or the lumbering tenant of a down-pillowed carriage, whose life is little more than a sick epicure's dream! Locked from the world that aged man hath passed his days in PREFACE. xxi searching for knowledge as for hidden treasure, and down comes an unhouselled sort of gazetteers, lecturers, pelting apothecaries, and all the sweep of vanity that plods forth yearly from the halls and hospitals, disfurnished of all but the due diploma, the very chaff and bran of learning, the "great unthinking" of the earth, but each " wiser in his own eyes than seven that can render a reason," and without knowing, enquiring, reading, asking, examining, or hesitating, talk as familiarly of the world's wisest sage, as maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs, and in perfect hopeless ignorance of his system, and the arguments and facts on which it is grounded, decree, denounce, and decide, as if it were a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller,* in which foul language might stand in the place of reason. Vain, however, is it to argue, vain to plead, vain to repeat till patience fails one, that IHomoeopathy is rejected by none except those who are entirely ignorant of it; vain to urge on them that as God did not consult them when he laid the foundations of the earth, so neither has he empowered any man to penetrate at once and without labor, the mysteries of nature; vain to implore them by their duty to their patients, by their sympathy with human nature, by their own inefficient practice, by the sufferings they behold and cannot mitigate, by the blue vein unsmeared, and the * Let the reader take as a specimen the following morsel of criticism. "1 It is plain that a system of this sort will be hailed by quacks as a fertile source for the delusion of fools, and increase of their plunder and profit," &c. And if he complains of warmth in these pages, let him trace it to such wanton insults as this, and pardon it. C ii xxii PREFACE. red blood spilled in order to save life, to study and try the new system. It is all in vain. Truth is a dog that must to kennel. Goliath vouchsafed no other notice of his opponent, than a fleer, a gibe, and a scornful curse. The writer of these pages has little more to add excepting to express once more his sincere regret that some one better qualified than himself to do justice to the subject has not relieved him of a task so little in accordance with his tastes and his pursuits. Writing as he does under the overwhelming conviction of his own incompetence to argue medical questions properly, and perfectly conscious how deeply Homceopathy must suffer from the very imperfect manner in which he is enabled to advocate it, the reader may be assured that he would gladly deliver to others a weapon he is so ill qualified to wield. Circumstances, however, forced the subject on his attention before it was much known in England: he believes it to be one of the immovable everlasting truths of nature; he has seen it every where rejected, contemned and spurned in contumely by men who knew nothing at all about it, and a sense of duty alone has induced him to endeavour to procure it notice; for there is neither honour, profit, nor advancement, in the path he has followed. Of the reviews of the first edition of this work which appeared in various periodicals, some sparkling with merry jests, some wearing the frown of indignation, it is not his purpose to speak; for this very simple reason, that it is a matter of very little consequence to himself or the public whether he individually is blamed or praised. Is the system of Hahnemann true? Is it true that similia similibus curantur? This is all of importance in the case: and PREFACE. ~,oi whether his advocacy of the system be right or wrong, good or bad, is of no more consequence than whether the ship which brought home the mahogany of which our chairs are made was well or ill steered on the passage. As to the "angry and partizan" tone which he has been told pervades the first edition of this work, and probably the second also, they who blame it are perhaps in the right. Ile might perhaps find some excuse in the language which has been most abundantly and unceremoniously applied to him and all the defenders of the new system. Doctors and Churchmen though we be, Master Page, we have some of the salt of our youth in us yet-we are the sons of women, Master Page. He has one consolation: that while he has spoken in indignation of the extremely culpable neglect with which the medical profession generally have received so magnificent a truth as HIomceopathy, he has called no individual either "fool," "knave," "quack," or "cheat." These are the holiday and lady terms which he is delighted to resign to the opponents of Hahnemann, for their own especial use, and may they long enjoy the monopoly of them. Peace to all such! Si nulli aliA re modestiA certe et linguam temperando adolescens senes vicero. For myself I may say that if Heaven would make me such another world of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I would not publish this work if I did not believe Hiomceopathy to be true. And I pray sincerely that it will please God utterly to confound and disperse to the winds every attempt of mine or others by which the progress of truth may be delayed for one hour. And if Hahnemann, I pause as I write, probably for the last time, that illus xxiv PREFACE. trious name, the name of one who, in a cheap estimation, 1.1 worth all his predecessors since Deucalion. "1Truth," as Bishop Horne tells us,* 1"is a guest that often brings those who entertain her into trouble." "And if the days of per.secution are past, the rack at rest, and the fires of Smithfield be quenched for ever, the world has engines still to assault the man that goes about to mend it."t It is too true: and the world's best friend has paid the usual penalty for loving his species. Yet even in this life he is not altogether without recompence. It is not that his sun is setting in as much splendour as it rose in gloom. It is not that he is honoured, followed, and caressed, that his, disciples multiply, his doctrines triumph. It is not that posterity will pile the column to his honour, and carve the marble to his praise. It is that his life has been a long labour of love. It is that he has been selected by Providence as an humble instrument of good: that through all the chances and changes of this mortal life, he has been preserved until the seed committed to his charge has outgrown danger, and can no longer be kept back by hot opponents or cold friends, by furious attack or inadequate advocacy. It is that in after times a generation by his means enfranchised from the errors and rescued from the sufferings of their fore-fathers, will cut upon his grave-stone the simple word E YEPJ'E T112'. *Serm. Vol. 1. P.. 246. tHartley Coleridge's Life of Roscoe.. P A POPULAR VIEW OF HOM EOPATHY. CHAPTER I HAHNEMANN'S DISCOVERY. AMIDST the improvement which has of late years been introduced into almost every branch of human knowledge, it is not a little surprising to find the most important of all, the knowledge of the art of healing diseases, if not remaining stationary, yet at least making none of that progress to perfection which might have been anticipated. While the severer Philosophy of more modern days has been so indefatigably and so laudably engaged in sifting the grain from the chaff, and in most instances has rejected much that was worthless-while experiment has everywhere else begun to assume the place of conjecture, and little been permitted to remain which did not rest on a firmer basis than hypothesis or assertion-in the science of medicine either the dogmas of schools still retain their au* 26 26 A POPULAR VIEW thority, and where most caution in admitting anything not rigorously and repeatedly proved was necessary, there least seems to have been used-or else* "1medical men plagued themselves with wandering among theories and idle schemes," grasping to-day without enquiry what was to be, rejected to-morrow without reason. The kindred art of surgery indeed has made large and quick strides to perfection; so large as to leave little probably to be discovered by posterity, or desired by patients. The art of the physician meanwhile, the knowledge that is of the properties of medicines, and the power they possess of healing diseases in the human body, seems to have remained almost unaffected by research. A few new medicines have been discovered, and some obtained by the aid of chemistry in a concentrated form; but little, comparatively with any other branch of human knowledge, has been effected by the combined skill and perseverance which have been applied to the subject: disease baffles medical skill now, as it did formerly, and pain remains unrelieved; and disease without rerfiedy, and pain without relief, are tolerable evidences that medical science has not reached perfection; and if so, the greater the talents which have been employed to improve it, the greater the probability that the path followed must have been a mistaken one, and that the principles adopted without previous investigation are erroneous. However this may be denied by those on whom educa* This is no assertion of mine, but quoted from the Medical Gazette. If it be true, it is no doubt very fair of the author to confess it; but it does not give one a very exalted idea of the t6Baconian principles," &c, of the scieince. 28 A POPULAR VIEW pletely, and surely, and easily, by the honourable and honest members of the Profession, they would never defile their fingers even with the outside of those dark atrocities, quack remedies. It is sheer despair-mere catching at straws. If ever the day shall dawn when the art of healing becomes what it ought to be-an art whose results are not dubious-that day will witness the expiring struggles of the worst Hydra that ever devastated a country. The uncertainty of cure is the parent of all these desperate expedients. Amidst that uncertainty, however, there are a few instances wherein medicine is eminently successful. A few diseases which invariably appear attended with the same symptoms, are completely in the power of the medical attendant, who, employing in each case the medicines which experience has taught him to be proper, triumphs over the disorder with ease and certainty. There is no doubting, no guessing, no hesitation, no compounding of drugs: the symptoms are declared, and the remedy is known at once. These cases are, as I mentioned, those only in which the symptoms are invariable: these remedies are called SPE. CIFICS. It does seem somewhat singular that the attention of the Profession has been so little directed to these invaluable remedies. In almost every other branch of human knowledge the registration,of facts has only led to the deduction and establishment of the laws by which those phenomena are regulated. Why should the phenomena of healing be the only exception? Why has it not been sought when and under what limitations medicines have the power of removing maladies? If nature acts invariably by eertain 30 A POPULAR VIEW course of this investigation, continued as it was for many years, must have been very great. Whatever they were, he bore them with a fortitude and perseverance which are more worthy of imitation than likely to find imitators, until, having with the greatest accuracy noted down every sympton which each medicament was capable of producing, he found himself in possession of a copious index, not merely to all the symptons which the various medicines he tried could produce in the human organism, but to nearly all those which morbific agents are capable of producing as well; that is to say, he had produced by some medicine or other, symptoms corresponding to almost all those of natural maladies. He had *been in the beginning struck with the singular resemblance between the symptoms caused by some specifics and the diseases which those specifics cured. He found, for instance, that Peruvian bark excited a species of ague very similar to that which it cured; that mercury caused symptoms so like syphilitic ones as to be at times indistinguishable from them. And suspecting that this similarity was the very principle by means of which the cure was effected, he had no sooner obtained a competent knowledge of the properties of different medicaments, than lie proceeded to apply that principle to the healing of diseases. The success of the experiment is said to have been complete. Had he been indeed what some have not blushed to call him, a Charlatan, he might have lived unassailed and died wealthy; but his noble nature spurned such contemptible inducements: with a splendid liberality, which we are proud to say is by no means rare in the annals of medicine, he gave to the world at once the whole theory and practice of his art, and laid open every secret OF HOM(EOPATHY. 31 which it had cost him so many arduous hours of labor and years of suffering to discover. Let it not be forgotten when the name of Hahneman is mentioned; neither let his reward be forgotten-obloquy, reproach, insult, and persecution. With no other object than to relieve suffering human nature, with no other means than patient study, with no other wish than to establish and extend the truth, above selfishness and beyond fear, he published all he had discovered; his requital for a long time, was such treatment as he would have deserved if he had wasted his hours in devising means for increasing suffering, if he had lavished his talents in crushing truth, or occupied himself in disguising with hard names the errors of a system which had nothing but antiquity to recommend it. Lucky it is for him, that he has another tribunal to appeal to, even posterity, who will adopt his discovery, if it turn out to be correct, or respect his motives if time should fail to confirm it. It must be evident at once, that resting, as Hahnemann's system does, entirely on experiment, no argument can either establish or shake it. It may be very plausible and yet untrue; or it may be true and yet our faculties not able fully to appreciate it. Nevertheless, an attempt to explain the principles on which it is founded may possibly tend to procure it a trial from some who may have conceived unreasonable prejudices against it. In the following chapters, therefore, an attempt will be made to collect some arguments which are scattered about in various parts of the writings of the illustrious Founder of it and his disciples, and thus to give a general outline of the reasoning by which it is supported. It will be almost superfluous to remark that any attempt to concentrate those arguments in 32 A POPULAR VIEW a less compass necessarily implies the omission of much that is valuable, even in the hands of one competent to undertake the task. The reader need not be told, therefore, what he must be prepared for under present circumstances. There is one comfort, however, that when he does meet with errors, he will know at once to whom they are attributable, and not lay on the great Hahnemann the blame which belongs alone to the ignorance of one of his admirers. EDITOR'S ANNOTATIONS. THE first allusion of the English divine to the defective progress of medicine furnishes a formidable argument in defence of Hahnemann's reformation. It is a double-edged steel, tempered with irresistable power. It severs the gordian tie of a medical hierarchy, which has too long arrested every manly effort to fly from mere theories to the pure results of observation. It is not generally known-indeed it is scarcely credible-that three thousand years have glided onward, during which more than two hundred medical theories have flashed into existence, sparkled a brief life and died away, not leaving one single example at the present time which has an age of half or even quarter of a century, while the theory of Hahnemann has been steadily progressing for fifty-one years, and is now more radiant than ever before the whole civilized world. Those who appeal to the sentiment of veneration against Homoeopathia, should be reminded of this-they should be told again and again that young or new as our system is, it still is twice as old as any theory of our day. And can it be believed that the much vaunted edifice of Allopathia-the mis-named science of medicineis constituted of two hundred theories, entirely unlike as to conception but all equally fruitless as to results; displaying a medley that the scholastic Allopathist may claim with Hecate's witch: " Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf; Witches' mummy; maw, and gulf, Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark; Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark; OF HOMCEOPATHIY, 33 Liver of blasp" -ming Jew. Gall of goat, and slips of yew, Sliverld in the mioon's eclipse; Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips Finger of birth-strangled babe, Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thureto a tiger's chaudrsn, For the ingredienits of our cau'ldron." Yet such is the fact. This edifice with all its piebald architecture and crumbling cement, still remains: while its priests, clinging to it in its venerable decay, opposing a humane and heaven-sent reform, and assailing its honest and noble founder, are impotently crying, with all the bittcrness of Pharisee and Sadtd'ucee, "9 crucify him, crucify him,'' -iand for what? Have their Idates IOuntlifault In this maI Th0ese rrmarks may be charged'lto the oiejtl(lces of a Iionricopl thist. Put them aside then, a..; -iwein'di the declaration of an eminent Allopathist, I)r. Parr, author of a isic eal.work of 21000 pages:-i" At present we must examine ilbe history and th1e progrress of medicine; and i1, for ages, we find reason to laimcnit its slow as> aiice towards improvenient, if -e soilntilies Iii"d it;atiiomsaiy, and occasionally even retrogade, the causes wvill furnish al.iiuilmlt proof of time imbecility of our boasted reason, of the vast extcut of science, of the limited powers cf humian intellect.' Xolfuanwr ' 1lenzel, too, Who wields no Llliputian pen, presents soine curious details for Aliopathiic diVr~.stion " The science of mnedicine efjoys cii inrureasurahsle literature, which, unhappily, has ne~t yet been -ible to be collected into a Bible. It numbers creeds and,r!(,ts enougti h; and a c; tliic si,:`cC I Inrties-inally come together in faith, uiedical paeties unile at the nost in unbelief. Nowhere does so much confusion and coutrad1ictioi p10e v:il am11ong3 the opposite parties -ntiohere so much iucertaIsity iii v y party.' "The his2 ioy (f) inedicinc,?Irti h hais lw snort lliorougrhiy virille b y2Y CURT SPSSENoEL, fui111:1"CS ( most. iC0'eiica!21yp I)roTf hose mutch tie hunman race have been gropi.g 7rabout inl err or upuu one f)f the most important SIdjects to them. We need but compare the sytstems of the most celebrated and best known physicians, to (liscover every where contradic1) 34 A POPULAR VIEW tions of the grossest kind. What one derives from the fluids, another explains from the solids; what one wants to cure with heat, another does with cold; where an opposite is recommended by one, a remedy which acts similar to the disease is recommended by another; if one wants to cure the body by the mind, another wants to cure the mind by the body. But if it is asked how all these strangely contradictory systems could have come into being, the answer is almost always to befound in the prevailing fashion!! of the time, which originally has nothing whatever to do with medicine." 36 A POPULAR VIEW The curative system of IIahnamann is so intimately connected with, and a right understanding of that system depends so much upon, the acquiring a correct notion of the principle of life, that, at the risk of being thought tedious, we will endeavour to set the subject in as clear a light as possible. Whoever reflects on the nature of the knowledge which the human mind is capable of acquiring, will find that it is two fold: consisting first of the simple observation and registration of facts; secondly of the discovery or determination of certain laws which unite those facts into classes, and as we conventionally term it, govern then. And if, after having established certain laws of this l:ind, we discover any new phenomena which can be referred either to facts already known, or c'se to any of those laws, we then affirm that we understand those phenomena. That a stone thrown up into the air would return to the surface of the earth with an accelerated velocity was known to every one from the earliest ages; but the motion of the celestial bodies was not in the least understood. When Newton, however, had discovered that the force which retained the planets in their orbits varied precisely as, Ind therefore was probably identical with that which caused a stone to descend to the earth, the revolution of the heavenly bodies was immediately said to be understood. It was, in fact, merely referred to, and classed with phenomena with which we were already familiar; for the descent of a stone is after all as utterly unintelligible to us as ever were the motions of the planets. When, again, the commissioners appointed in the year 1784, to enquire into animal Magnetism, referred all the remarkable effects they witnessed to OF H0m(E0PATHY. 3 37 the power of the imagination, they did but explain ignotum.per ignotius; for although people were then convinced that they understood the whole mystery, it was merely because they were already familiar with the effects of the imagination, not because they could in the slightest degree comprehend the action of it. The same thing takes place with all newly discovered phenomena: if we can succeed in referring them. to laws or facts with which we are already familiar, we consider ourselves to understand them; if not, we call them unintelligible. Now life is precisely one of those phenomena which is, and ever must remain, perfectly incomprehensible to us in our present state, because there is no other class of facts, no other laws of nature, with which we can compare it, or to which we can refer it. It stands single, solitary, isolated, resembling nothing that we know of, admitting of no explanation, of no comparison, of no illustration: one principle, and one only, which is in perfect contrast wvith all else that we see or know of around us, able of itself to alter and overcome all the inherent properties and tendencies of matter, to change what would otherwise remain unchangred, to preserve unchanged that which without it would speedily decay. Whoever then shall in any way attempt to explain the nature of that wonderful principle called Life, must be a visionary, and can have attended but little to the sort of knowledge which the human mind is capable of acquiring. All that we can hope to achieve is, by carefully marking the results of it, as we see them. in daily operation, to acquire something like a conception of the mode in which it acts, and the nature of the difference which exists 38 A POPULAR VIEW between living and unliving matter. Thus, and thus only can we hope to discover the correct method we ought to take to restore the harmonious action of that principle when it is disturbed, or as we call it, diseased. All inorganized nature,-all things we know of except those which possess life-are merely and completelypassive, and follow certain laws of decay and change according to the circumstances in which they are placed. Sow a dead seed in the ground-it rots and perishes: cut a twig from a dead branch, and no effort is made to restcre it: clip the wing of a dead bird, and the feathers remain as they were cut until they decay. Exactly the contrary of thi-. takes place when the quickening principle or power which we term Life is present. The seed pushes out roots downwards and branches upwards: the twig is speedily replaced by vigorous shoots: and the feathers of the wing soon regain their pristine length and form. Life, then, whatever be its nature, is that power which enables matter, up to a certain point, to resist external impressions, and to replace change * which has been brought about by foreign causes: in other words, it is a force of restoration, a PRINCIPLE OF RE-ACTION:t a pcwer ever "* Tous ces corps n'obeissent qu'aux lois mecaniques: exposes a une certaine action, ils ne peuvent rendre plus qu'ils ne regoivent: ils se manifestent par action et opposition. Mais le corps organique est dans un tout autre cas: non seulement il exerce action et opposition, mais encore il va au-delc de ce qu'il a requ, IL REAGIT.-Palingenesie de la Force Midicatrice, par le Docleur Beauvais. Arch. HIom. vol. 2, p. 128. f Pour arriver a une formule ginerale embrassant tous les caracteres de la vie, on s'est vu contraint de dire qu'elle offre bien de nuances -I OF IIOM(EOPATIIY. 39 exerted to preserve in a certain state that matter which it occupies, and incessantly acting to restore and replace that state if it be deranged by extrinsic causes. This active and energetic principle which thus enables the body under its control to disobey the customary laws of matter, to resist all foreign impression, and to restore what external causes may have disturbed, is not itself material: it cannot be touched or examined: it escapes all our perceptions and all our senses: it is nothing but a force or power-that is, it is purely spiritual, or as it is usually called, " Dynamic." When this mysterous preserving power is in full and vigorous operation, the organism is in that normal state which we call IEALTHI. The body is strong and sound: the mind at ease: there are no appearances of sickness, pain, anxiety or discomfort. But this power does not always exert the same energy of reaction even in the same individual. It is subject to certain disturbances, the nature of which we shall probably never be able to discover, because we can in 4ho degree comprehend the nature of life itself; and while we remain ignorant of it, we can hardly hope to acquire a very clear conception of the influences which disturb its action. All we know is, that whenever it is disturbed, that disturbance is communicated to the organism, and causes in the man certain changes in his manner of feeling and acting. Those changes or aberrations from the SPl'infini, suivant les substances ex les organes par 1'interm6diaire desquels elle frappe nos sens: mais que partout elle se manifeste COMME UNE FORCE DE REACTION.-Rapport fait en 1833 au nom d'une commission de la Chambre des Etats du Grand-Duche de Hesse sur une Petition de plusieurs communes qui reclamaient le libre exercice de l'lomceopathie, par le dipute Schacht. 40 A POPULAR VIEW normal state we call DISEASE. Resulting as they do from a change in the action of the force of life, they must be purely and entirely dynamic *-a new state of existence in fact: an alteration in the play of the power which reigns over the body, which might, a priori, be expected to effect a change in the construction of the material frame which f is under its control. Change of structure, therefore, is not the causet of disease: it is a simple result of disease: it is, like every other aberration from the normal state of a sound mind in a sound body, merely a token that the Principle of 'life, dynamic itself, is dynamically disturbed. This Principle of life is never disturbed without the individual feeling it: and that very feeling is what is called a symptom. The quantity of disturbance is measured by the symptoms: the whole, therefore, of what a patient complains of-the TOTALITY OF THE SYMPTOMS which betoken a non-normal action of the vital power, indicates the disease with which the individual is afflicted. And inas* La vieille idee qu'une maladie est quelque chose d'etranger i Pindividu qui en est atteint, un principe acre introduit dans son organisme, un monstre malfaisant a combattre, une entite, enfin, quel que le soit le facies qu'on lui donne, est une des plus funestes qu'ait popularise l'allopathie. C'est d'elle qu'est ne le besoin de trouver un agent destructeur du principe morbifique, un remade.a chacun de ces entit6s: et de la toutes les facheuses consequences qui en sont resultees par la pratique.-Bib. Horn. An. 34, p. 39. f Change of structure, when brought about by any violent external means, a blow for example, may, from the intimate connection existing between the body and the power which rules it, influence the play of that power, and derange its action. In all other cases, however, disease is purely dynamic, and change of structure a very natural effect of it. I OF HOM4EOPATIIY. 41 much as every individual feeling of disturbance is an external sign of a corresponding derangement in the harmnonious play of the power of life, that power is similarly deranged only in those cases where the feelings of disturbance are the same, that is, where the symniptoms are idc-ntical. In other ewords, no two cases of disease are identical unless all the symptoms of each, and no more, are found in the other. Ioice, therefore, the practice of classifying and arranging undetr the samIe name (ljcasC whose syvmptoms are not the sae. (as is d(one )in omudinary nosflw,) st lead to erroncous conclusions, and consetquently, to improper treatment. Every case ýof disease im an indliNilual case, rarely reseibling any other, rarely comnprehending the same, and only the same, syniptomns. L1'ven iIn pievatiling epedemics, although most of those who are attackledl are in some characteristic points ailcted in a simiilar mianner, it is not often that any two persons experience precisely and exactly the same symptoms and no others. And if the ltotlilty of the symptoms forms the key to the (otherwise inimpericeptible) disturbance of the harmonious action of the force of life-to seize on a few, or those of which the Ipatient complains most loudly, neglecting those which, though not equally prominent, are equally decided indlices to that disturbed action, and to treat the patient as if those few constituted the whole of his malady, is to commence an erroneous treatment on an erroneous principle. To collect those * Chaque cas de maladie (a l'exception des maladies revAtues d'un caractrc fixe,) est un individu a part, dont la sp-cificitý ou l'individualite se manifeste dans I'ensemble de ses symptimes propres.-Stapf, sur les Medicamens sp'cifiques. Arch. Hom. vol. ii., p. 263. t 3 42 A POPULAR VIEW more prominent symptoms in a system of nosology, and give to certain sets of them fixed names, as a reference by which the medical attendant is to be guided in any future cases where those sets shall be met with, omitting all notice of the minor, but not less marked indications of disturbance, which individualize each case, is to perpetuate that error as long, and to disseminate it as widely, as the reputation of the observer extends. And he who, when called on to attend a patient, consults the observations of others at other times, as recorded in printed works, and regulates his treatment by them, can hardly fail of erring in his choice of a remedy, since he is directing his treatment not against the actual disease under which his patient is suffering, but against the pathological name of one more or less resembling it.* Whatever may be the opinion of the Profession, the non-medical public, at any rate, will agree that the one and only aim of the physician should be to restore, as speedily as possible, to the normal state, the disturbed action of the force of life; that is to say, to remove as far as is practicable every feeling of discomfort of which his patient complains, with the least possible inconvenience or annoyance. In order to effect this object, it has hitherto been the practice to enquire into the CAUSES which have produced those changes in the manner of feeling and acting which we call disease, to the end, that the cause being known and removed, the effect might, as'a matter of course, follow it. The limited nature of human faculties, however, and the want * Nihil sane in artem medicam pestiferum magis irrepsit malum quam generalia quaedam nomina morbis imponere, iisque aptare velle generalem quamdam medicinam.-Huxham, as quoted by Stapf. OF HOM(EOPATHY. 43 of precision of human language, combine to render this a subject of great difficulty. All systems of medicine agree in this, that the cause of any malady should, if possible, be investigated as the first step to the cure of it: but all do not use the word in the same sense. If by the word causes be meant only such as are appreciable by our senses, a blow, for instance, unwholesome diet, the introduction of some foreign substance into the system, and so on, no treatment is likely to be successful which does not take them into account, and is not founded on a reference to them. But every cause is in itself an effect, until step by step, if our faculties would reach so far, we should arrive at the first cause of all phenomena. Our notion of the cause of any malady, therefore, will depend entirely on what link of the chain we seize. The appreciable causes of malady that we have just alluded to, produce feelings, that is, symptoms, not immediately, but mediately,-by dynamic action, where we cannot in the slightest degree follow or trace them. And if, passing on from those causes which are appreciable by our senses, we strive to fathom the NATURE of iseases-to determine the internal change-to explain the essence of the malady,* we leave our only safe-ground for the quicksands of conjecture; we desert sunlight and certainty for the will-of-the-wisp of hypothesis and the doubtful dreams of speculation. * L'homme ne connalt l'essence de rien, ni celle de la nature qu'il a sans cesse sous les ycux, ni celle du principo secret qui la vivifie. Ii parle des causes qu'il so flatte d'avoir decouvertes, et do celles qu'il se plaint de ne pouvoir d6couvrir; mais les VRAIES CAUSES, lCS CAUSES PREMIERES, il n'en connait aucune: elles sont toutes aussi cachces pour lui que l'essence des choses. II voit des effets, ou plutot il repoit des sensations.- Cabanis. 44 A POPULAR VIEW The rock on which. all systems of medicine have split seems to have been this determined perseverance in endeavoring to lift a veil which man's Creator has interposed. It has been the attempt of all times and of all schools: and the want of success of one generation has failed in enlightening their successors. The theories of bygone ages have been dragged from obscurity, and ably sustained by the moderns, and the anatomical enquiries of the past have been carried to an extent that is truly wonderful in the present day. Even the vivisections of the Dogmatists have found imitators: and Majendic has not shuddered to continue, in a humbler manner, the experiments of Erasistratus; and with like success, for the prima causa morbi remains as dark a problem as ever it was. How should it be otherwise?t Telluric, atmospheric, * "The infernal Majendie;" Beckford calls him (Alcoba;a and Batalha.) It is a hard thing to believe, as we are told we must, that these experiments are necessary. Were it not better that mankind should " die, and perish, and rot" uncured, than purchase health at such a price? t A breath thou art, Servile to all the SKIEY INFLUENCFS That dost this habitation where thou heepst, Hourly afflict. The power of the moon in exciting disease under certain circumstances, (the virus lunare as it was once called, in accordance with the views of those who persisted in attributing every malady to a material origin,) is well known, if little considered. " On the corner of the moon There hangs a v:porous drop profound."-Macbcth. " It is the very error of the moon, She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad."-Othello. OF IIOM(EOPATIY., i45. I I.! electrical, galvanic, lunar influences-perhaps a change in that elastic medium which is supposed to fill space - is it not probable that in these or similar sources is to be found.the source of the disturbed action of the Force of Life, the origin of malady? Sympathetic affections, Imitation, Metestases, how utterly incompetent the faculties of man are to grasp them in the slightest degree! The mere friction of a cylinder of glass, the mere action of a little diluted acid on plates of zinc and copper, distressing news, a word misconstrued - nay: " Love or hope, noon or night, music, colours--everything has its own pecuiar power over us." Light or darkness, cold or heat, vengeance, pity, hatred, avarice, fear, how little material are all these influences! yet they avail not only to change the traits, the state, the structure of our bodies, but, under certain circumstances, give birth to long and painful maladies. And while the harmony of the fine and subtile Aura of life is thus lightly disturbed by causes which are not merely beyond our power, but, from the very nature of our faculties, beyond our perception, how idle even as a matter of curiosity, how mischievous if on the investigation is to be founded the treatment of disease, is it to waste time in searching after that which cannot be apprehended, and if )pprehended, could not be controlled. The secondary causes of maladies are in many cases evident to our senses; but even then we are utterly unable to appreciate their mode of action. We see for instance, a lancet dipped in a small pustule of the small-pox; minute as is the portion adhering to the blade, it is sufficient to conjure a storm in E i i A POPULAR VIEW the strongest man which shall well-nigh, if not totally, extinguish life. And yet for some days its action has been going on in the depths of the organism without our having the faintest notion of the reason why or the manner how. In the endemic fevers of marshy countries what do we know of the cause beyond this, that something originating in such marshes disturbs the normal state of the organism? Its mode of action, however, is quite hidden from us. How long is it again, sometimes, before a fever communicated by infection breaks out? and yet the seeds of it are lurking in the system, while we are utterly unconscious of our danger, and unable to detect any external sign of the occult changes which must have taken place in the organism. But however lamentable the presumption of--however erroneous must be the treatment founded on-this determination to enquire into the proximate causes of diseases, it is a mode of proceeding which is wisdom itself compared to that of referring them to the change of structure which attends them, or to changed secretions, as their cause. The non-medical public knows nothing of, and would hardly believe, the extent to which these opinions have been carried. The humoral pathologists are sworn adversaries of the fluids of the human body, and attribute to them the whole blame of the patient's sufferings. The solodists throw the shield of their protection over the fluids, and denounce the solids as the perpetrators of all " the ills the flesh is heir to." Some are for sweeping clean the bowels of a patient, because to the unhealthiness of their secretions they attribute all his painful sufferings, forgetting that those very secretions are unhealthy, because the force OF HOM(EOPATIIY. 47 of life is disturbed. Some are for carrying fire and sword to a sick man's liver, because the inaction of that organ produces all the other symptoms, forgetting that if that organ does not act, it is owing to a dynamic disturbance of the force of life. There is no end, in short, to the puerilities of this causal indication; nor is it much to be wondered at that they should exist, when such men as Cullen are found to call weakness (merely one of the symptoms) the cause of fever. It is time surely that men should take a more enlarged view of diseases than this. It is time that they should ask tlhcmelves whether it is not much more reasonable to look upon all feelings whatever, which distress any patient (that is, on the whole group of symptoms, every thing, in short, which is non-normnal), as mere collateral and cotenmporaneous measures of the disturbed action of the moving" force which regulates the whole machinery of the body as well as the sensations. It. is idle, it is childish to single out one symptom only from the whole squadron which have invaded a patient, and arbitrarily and without any shadow of proof to attribute all the rest of them to that one. Post hoc is a very difiirent thing from propter hoc, and because sym'ptoms are frequently connected together, it does not foblow that one is the cause of the other. InflJainination, irritation, morbid secretions, changed structure, pain, weakness, anxiety, fretfulness, every symptom, in short, whether of mind or of body-what are they one and all but signals and tokens that the'vital power is disturbed in its action?--flags of distress, as it were, Ahich the constitution hangs out for relief. And with just as great propriety might the pilot who has to bring a vessel into a place of safety out of a storm, attribute her danger A POPULAR VIEW to the inverted jack or to the guns of distress, as the phy.. sician attribute the disease of his patient to any one of these mere symptoms. Shall we be surprised then at the confessed imperfection of the art of healing? When the treatment of a malady is made to depend upon the cause of it, and that cause (not one which can be grasped in all its relations by our faculties) is made to depend upon the loose and unphilosophical mere suppositions of the medical attendant,* shall we wonder at the deplorable uncertainty of medicine? What must the practice of the sagest physician be but fortunate guessing? and if so, what is the practise of the great body who are not sage? Supposing that pharmacology was a perfect science, (a question we shall enter on in the next chapter) still how very many chances there are against the right medicine being administered to any given patient, when of. the different medical attendants no two perhaps would attribute his complaint to the same cause, and each one would adapt his prescriptions to his own belief? That the science of medicine, as it exists at present in England, is what it ought to be, or what it might be, or what in a few years it will be, few are blind enough to believe, still fewer bold enough to assert. The " Baconian principles on which medical science has of late become - * For an instance of the excessively loose manner in which causes are determined on, let the reader look at an account of a meeting of the WVestminster Medical Society, vol. 6 of the Lancet. Dr. Copland it appears, 1" had discovered that insects when drank in water become a common cause of dysentery by worrying, teazing and biting the alimentary canal." The evil of this is, that these gentlemen having thus re. salved upon a cause, treat their patients accordingly. OF TIOM(EOPATII.. 49 i'.rmly based in England," are all embodied in this one "that every minan shall do that which is right in his own eyes." Void of any (lefinite systeim, voi( of any fixed principles, the whole art seems to be divided between minere emlpiriciSlln and mnere dogmatism. The multitude talk largely and pompously of the principles of medlical science, and perhalps thy(10 do know no better; the small band of -vise men who are at tie head of the profession, acknowlceIge the imperfection of thciir art and speak humbly. If there be, however, those who (do in truth believe that miedicine, as at present practise(, is a " system" founded on riglt reasoning, and built upon fixed and definite principles, it would not be very difhcult to convince them of the contrary by passages selected from the minost eminent writers of the past and plrcselnt. 1What would they say, for instance, if a non-medical I man had written the following passage: " Que medica appellatur, revera confabulandi garriendique potius est ars quam luedendi..* Or this:--" But what have physicians, what have universities, or nmedical societies lone, after the labours and studies of many cnturies, towards lessening the mortality of pestilential (liseasc? Thley have either copied or contradicted each (other in all their piublications."t "* Sydenham. f Dr. Rush, cited )vby Stevens in his Observations on the blood, p. 191. See also Pereira's lectures on Pharmacology in the IMed. Gaz. Oct. 249, 1835. " 6We can hardly refuse our assent to the observation of the late Sir Gilbert Blanc, that in many cases patients " get well in I; t f h 50 A POPULXR VIEW It is painful to read such an avowal as this; to learn, on such high authority, the inefficiency of medicine. Dr. Rush speaks, it is true, but of one class of diseases, but all who know anything whatever of the subject, know how truly his avowal might be extended to many other classes of malady.* Great names are found supporting one view of the nature and cure of diseases, and as great names are ranked against them on the other side. Each has his own convictions, each acts on his own plan, each rejects the revelations of his predecessors. "On est revenu aujourd'hui des theories et des systemes. La plupart des medecins professent I'dclecticisme: chacun fait pour le mieux, d'apres sa conscience et suivant son savoir." In the midst of this melancholy confusion, one great truth stands out in bold relief, and fixes itself upon every reflecting mind, and that is, that there must be something fundamentally and radically wrong in the first principles of the science of medicine. The path which has led so many gifted and persevering men to nothing but darkness, could not possibly have been the correct one. spite of the means employed; and sometimes, when the practitioner fancies he has made a great cure, we may fairly assume the patient to have had A HAPPY ESCAPE!" Very candid, doubtless; but although this may be sport to the Doctor, what is it to the 'happily escaping' patient? Is it not time that this "' foolery, and something more," was at in end 3 * The Cholera, to wit. OF HOM(EOPATIIY. 51 EDITOR'S ANNOTATIONS. IT is a just censure upon all the Allopathic reveries, called systems, that they do not in the long run materially change the treatment of the suffering sick. After all the ingenious fantasies of the latest writers of the most distinguished rank in the old school, come the same eternal purges, vomits, blisters, issues, moxa, cauteries, bleeding, &c. Their Etiology and Semeiology are a wonderful kaleidoscope, ever revolving, but their " TREATMENT" is not in the least degree affected by either of the countless figures seen through this magic glass. Take for example Thomas' practice of twenty years ago, (now wholly out of use) and Marshall Hall's, or Southwood Smith's practice of today, and we meet the same purges and bleeding, vomiting and sweating, in the later as in the elder. The same will occur if we go back from Thomas to Cullen, and from Cullen to the Dutch, and from these to the Italians, and from these again to the Arabians, and lastly from these to the remote ancients. Here and there it is true we meet an addition of a specific remedy, but this, as in the case of bark or mercury, is the fruit of accident, and is for its whole age of discovery, under censure of contempt, and perlaps under legal restraint; but these have not been products of Allopathic theorizing-not result of the miscalled Science of medicine. They have saved millions from un. timely death, by taking the o1ace of the scientific purging and vomiting, bleeding and sweating, but this vast saving to the human race is fruit of the profound researclihs of Allopathy. All the countless aogues that have been cured by the Bark, all the millions of syphilitic maladies that have been arrested midway in their awful career by mercury, are sc many triumphs, not of the etiologies and semciologies of the Allopa-ists, dreams which ever end in the same routine of vomits and purges, bleedings and counter irritation, but of a blind empiricism, begotten Dy the accidental observations of the unlearned-an empiricism which is not solved by all the vain fires of the schools, which turns to scorn the reveries of the transcendental cause-seekers-and which, despite their inability to appropriate it to their so called science, to bring it within the scope of their rules, de Ii A POPULAR VIEW duced a priori from illusory hypotheses of Life-they are forced to adopt in the last resort, when the disease and the deathly course of their scientific routine threaten the existence of their poor patient. Excepting then an occasional forcible introduction of a specific, as hitherto from the profane vulgar, and of late from the more profane lommeopathist, the routine we find remains the same. In one age of the world, or under one master of that age, for example, they purge, hoping thereby to extract bad humours, which they imagine to exist in the blood; in another age, or under another master of the same age, they purge, in the same case precisely, for the equally imaginary purpose of chasing out some very vicious mucus, or bile, or liquor entericus (vicious secretions) from the stomach or intestines; or they purge to draw some excess of life (excitability, irritation, inflammation) down from the brain or lungs, or in from the skin, or up from the legs and feet, to the bowels, where it is quickly expended in the process which the purge has excited or where it is expelled with the contents of the bowels; or under other auspices, rejecting all the previous notions as unsatisfactory, they purge to rouse the bowels, and by sympathy the liver, and by sympathy again with the liver, the lungs, or skin, or brains or kidneys, to increased action when these are imagined to be torpid, by a sort of flagellation, as a smart drover rouses the lazy an'imals out of his reach by whipping those ir the rear whether they do their duty or not. Each age and each master of the same age, differ from all others as to the operation and end to be attained by cathartics, (excepting those merely mechanical) but al purge, some more and some less, in the same diseases, i. e. in all cases of ill health in which the physician has reason to believe that purging will not prove quickly fatal to the existence of his patient.-(Broussais and Brown were the only exceptions, but these accomplished the same imaginary ends by means not less conjectural or dangerous.) We might follow out the routine and take equally strong examples of the weakness of the schools-the absurdity of the Science of Allopathia-from each department of its presumptuous apparatus, but our readers can examine the transpareat prospect for themselves. They will find throughout, the same discord in principles, the same pretension of vast progress in the science, and the same eternal absence of all i OF IIOM(EOPATHY. real progress in the art of healing diseases-whether they examine the department of purging, vomiting, bleeding or sweating, &c., &c. Of course we do not include Surgery, Midwifery, or the nearly exact sciences with which these are allied, in the term Allopathia: Allopathia has no property in these arts, albeit, it is customary for dishonest men of that school to pretend that Allopathia is the mother of Surgery, Midwifery, Anatomy, Physiology, &c. Allopathia in the common acceptation, the effort to divine causes and to apply drugs upon causal indications, remains in practice essentially the same as to results; whatever may be averred to the contrary, independent of Surgery and without the aid which the empiricismn before spoken of lends to the practice of medicine in the cure of intermittents, itch, jaundice and syphilis, Allopathia is no whit better now than it was a hundred years ago: it is questionable, indeed, whether the Art of Healing stripped of these adventitious aids, have not rather lost than gained in modern times, by the mania for generalizing which has arisen in it from the success with which generalizing has been applied to the actual science. Is it not sonic proof against the transcendental schemes of Allopathia that amid all their diverse and often quite contradictory elements, there is no real progress made toward an art of selecting remedies; no success in explaining the action of such specifics as accident has thrown into the paths of practice; no scientific rule for arresting the deleterious action of poisons after they have left the stomach and bowels and have fastened themselves (so to speak) in the sensible and vegetative systems; no addition to vulgar observation in respect to hygiene and prophylaxis ' If any one of these countless schemes of pathology called Allopathia had possessed truth as a basis, why has it not extinguished the others, and rendered medicine a science, and made a plan, at least, for progress in the Art of Iealing. The beneficent researches of modern Surgery, the accidental discovery of vaccination, and the great civil changes which by defining and protecting the rights of man, have razed to earth the pestilence-breeding walls of a thousand cities, and "; turned the sword into the ploughshare, and the spear into the pruning hook"-have lessened the bills of mortality without the slightest assistance from Allopathia, nay, in spite 54 A POPULAR VIEW of its adverse influences upon the public health. It is vain to plead the reform in the treatment of small-pox enforced by Sydenham called ( the cold plan," for this was only a return to vulgar experience, from which a pernicious notion of Allopathia had for a while drawn off the learned world, and even that return was not a result of science, but of vulgar or accidental observation. On stripping Allopathia of the meretricious semblance of a union with modern Surgery, with vaccination and with civil reforms, we find her stationary in the midst of universal progress; we see great external show of action but observe no shifting of locality.. After all the brilliant achievments of Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry, effected within our own times, nothing better has come of Allopathic hobbyriding than a host of bold conjectures on Venous Congestion, and the " Philosophy of bleeding" people till they faint away, to find out what ails them, (Vide Martyn Paine, A. M. M. D. Med. and Physiolog. Corn. and Marshall Hall's Practice of Physic.) These are all the additions to the routine of purges and vomits, blisters and cups of permanent memory. (i A POPULAR VIEW own reaction the harmony of the normal state. In partic& ular cases too, when there is a determination of blood to certain organs, or a distension of the vessels, this reaction is much assisted by certain evacuations, bleeding or vomiting for example. In many instances, however, the reaction of life is not sufficient. Unaided, even when relieved locally by these evacuations, it does not possess the power to restore the normal state. It is often paralyzed at once, and offers no resistance,-or, after a struggle more or less severe, it yields to the energy of that superior power which attacks, masters, and extinguishes it if it does not receive efficient assistance. It is in these cases, when it is apprehended that the "vis natur," will be of itself insufficient, that the " vis medicamentorum" becomes necessary as an auxiliary. The Creator of man has endowed many substances with power to act in various ways on the force of life. All of them, without exception, possess the property of disturbing the harmony of its action, and by this very property are enabled to produce changes and modifications of the organism. These substances are termed medicines or medicaments, and " the art of medicine" is the art of selecting that one which is suited to each casethat one which, with the least possible risk, suffering, or consequent injury to the patient, will restore the harmony of the organism in the least possible time. Before we proceed to consider the general principles on which the administration of remedies should be founded, we may safely lay down one or two axioms which will apply with equal truth to every system of medicine, whatever shall eventually be the fate of IIomoeopathy. In the first place, inasmuch as medicaments have one and all the I OF HOM(EOPATHY. power of modifying and even of producing vast changes in the organism, it will be granted that the greatest caution should be used in the administration of them. Gifted as they are with the faculty of affecting the health to an extent of which those who prescribe them are probably quite unaware, no risk can be run in asserting that they should be employed only with the very greatest discrimination, that none should ever be exhibited excepting such as are adapted to the case, and those in the very smallest quantity, which not ' guess,' or 'belief,' but EXPERIENCE shall teach us is necessary. To employ any unnecessary medicament, or any suitable one in needlessly large doses, is, to say the least of it, to produce changes in the organism without advantage, often irreparable, always dangerous, and to trifle egregiously with the most destructive instruments. In the next place, the removal of the symptoms of which a patient complains, with the least possible suffering, being the one and only object of the physician, and this removal being only to be efbfected by certain substances which divine Providence has gifted with certain properties of acting on the living organism, it is the duty of the medical attendant, and it ought to be the chief end of his education, and object of his whole study, to make himself intimately acquainted with the nature, properties, and powers of each one of these substances. The tendency of the labours of his life should be, not metaphysical dreams or impossible speculations about imaginary causes, "unprofitable questions and disputations, intricate subtilties, de lania caprina, about moon-shine in the water," but to determine rigorously wherein, under what circumstances, and to what extent, each of those substances possesses the power of affecting F 58 A POPULAR VIEW the human organism: the individual virtues of each individual medicament. He who prescribes a medicine before he knows the whole power it possesses of exciting disturbance in the organism, is as unfit to be trusted with such dangerous instruments as a boy who knows not the effects of gunpowder with a loaded gun. The public should recollect, if the Profession will not, that whenever an improper medicament is administered, or a proper one in improper quantities, an artificial disease is excited by it proportioned in intensity and duration to the size of the dose and the length of time the use of it has been continued. How much of the disease existing in the world has been produced by natural morbific influences, and how much has resulted from the inconsiderate and improper use of medicine, it might be difficult to determine. A vague suspicion will indeed sometimes intrude itself on the mind, that it might not be difficult to discover cases in which the discursive reading of the physician had led him astray from the true object of his studies; in which he had plunged so deep into the wellspring of knowledge as to lose sight of all that vulgar but necessary information which floats nearer the surface; in which he was in very truth comfortably unsuspicious of the extent of the mischief he was perpetrating,* We cannot err, however, in asserting that every grain of medicine taken beyond what was necessary to effect a cure, has been productive of suffering for which he who prescribed it is alone responsible. When we recollect the * I beg to shelter myself under authority which no one will presume to dispute-that of Sydenham. tS Sape accidit ut facies morbi variet pro vario medendi processu, ac nonnulla symptomata non tam morb quam medico debeantur." f OF HOM(IE0PATIIV. 59 wasting delugre of drugs with which the uncertainty of the art of medicine has enabled every wvretcheId empiric to flood this country-the pocket-book recipes, grandl-mother's nostrums, family rece ipts, domestic, formula, l)atent medicines, famiIN melicine che-,ts,. and other perennial and inexhaustible fountains of evil, the m1zultitudinous compounds of modern pharmacy, the random-i mixtureos, the multiplied bottles and. boxes, 'rho doctor epidemic WVell stored with deletery mned'cines, Which wvhosoever took is dead since, and the utter recklessness in (lrug-sw 7-allowing ewhich has been confirmed, if not originally introduced by the colossal doses prescribed by physicans, we. cannot but believe that much of the sufl~ring to 1)0 found in this island is due to the abuse of those very substances which a kind Creator has provided for man's restoration. Re arding it then as a settled manxim that in every business lie who has to use tools should be vehll acquainted with them, and that a thoroughli and intimate knowledgre of all the virtues and properties of every pharmaceutical agent, is, iafortiori, essentially, indeed indispensably, necssary to evewry individual who unidertakes to restore the health) of his afflicted. fellow creature, it will be necessary to enquire next into the means, at present existingr to enable medical students to obtain thlat knowledge. When it is said that a thorough knowledge of the virtues of pharmaceutical agents is necessary, it is obvious that a mere general notion of those virtues is not sufficient; neither is it A POPULAR VIEW enough to acquire even distinct and accurate informationas to a few of the chief characteristic properties of them; neither is it enough, moreover, to have learnt that a certain dose of each may in ordinary cases be exhibited without destroying life. The knowledge of the physician should be infinitely more accurate and precise than this. It should extend to every substance which is in any way employed as a remedy, determining the limits of their action, the times and circumstances under which their activity is increased or diminished, the slightest effects that each is able to produce on the living organism, discriminating with extreme nicety the various phenomena by which each is distinguished from every other, determining with exactness the duration of the action of each one, and fixing, in every individual case, the minimum quantity which will suffice, under ordinary circumstances, to re-adjust the disturbed harmony of the human frame. Do then the means which at present exist suffice to enable medical students to obtain this definite and precise knowledge of the nature and virtues of medicines? Hear the sage of K6then:-" Three and twenty centuries have passed away in the endeavour to acquire it, and we are not now one step nearer it than we were then." Ignorant persons like ourselves receive such a declaration with an incredulous smile. We cannot doubt the skill and ability we have so often seen exerted for the benefit of a suffering brother; we cannot doubt the correctness of the knowl- - edge which has so often produced such happy results. But that venerable old man " hath for many years applied his heart to know and seek out wisdom." No ordinary measure of intellect has been committed to his keeping, no or*f OF HOM(EOPATHY. 61 dinary life has been his from his youth up even until this very hour. And if there be any grounds whatever for his assertion, if it be really true that the care of health has been confided to men, whoj with the best intentions, have suffered themselves to be led by their admirable zeal into the investigation of questions which, however interesting, only tend to decoy them from the path by which the true knowledge of healing is to be acquired-if Pharmacology has been almost totally neglected, and the unwearied diligence and vast genius which might have explored its very darkest depths have been wasted on toys and trifles, the demolition of a preceding system, or the erection of a new one, while the nature, properties, virtues, and powers of those substances which are sent for the healing of nations are undiscovered and unthought of-if medicines are prescribed by those who are not only unacquainted with, but unsuspicious of their effects, it is certainly high time that some of that light which of late years has been let in on every other branch of human inquiry, should at last penetrate even to the science of healing. The time for mystification should have passed away with the circumstances which rendered it necessary. The wisdom of our ancestors should have been buried in the graves of our ancestors; it is no more fit for us than will be ours for our successors; and we hope and pray, and devoutly believe, that the career which God has appointed unto man is a career of incessant improvement. In medicine more especially, error should have been quietly abandoned, with the canes and wigs which once were supposed to harbour knowledge. "For, as the illustrious German truly observes, in a question 62 A POPULAR VIEW respecting the most important duty man can undertake in this world, the cure of his fellow-creature, error is indeed most deplorable." Whether such error does or does not exist, it is impossible for those who are not medical men to decide, and it would be ridiculous in them to attempt to do so. But we have been assured by one who is not quite without arguments to prove his assertions that it does exist, and we will endevour to follow him in the train of reasoning by which he supports what he advances. We have said that there exist many cases of disease which the vis naturae is not able to resist, in which, consequently, it becomes necessary to summon the vis medicamentorum to aid life in its struggles. We have said also that the " art of medicine" is the art of selecting that one which is suited to each case. The first step in such an investigation is to lay down this axiom as a groundwork on which all knowledge on the subject must be built up,That no medicament whatever possesses any mere curative virtues. Every one possesses the power of acting on the hu. man organism; nor can that be called a medicine which has not such a power; and when that power is rightly applied, it becomes curative. It cannot be too strongly insisted on, it cannot be too frequently recalled to the mind, that no medicinal substance whatever is gifted with a property of restoring health distinct from that which it possesses of causing disturbance. The power of relieving symptoms is the power of exciting symptoms properly applied.* The o * It seems all this is denied. I beg to state that Barbier was no Homoeopath, and he says: ", Qu'un m6dicament est un agent douc de la facult6 d'agir sur I'organisme, d'en changer la disposition actuelle en donnant naissance a OF HOM(EOPATIIY. 63 power of creating disease, which a medicament possesses is, when rightly administered, the power of healing disease. Hence the science of inedicine becomes divided into two separate and distinct branches. The first is the knowledge of the power which each medicament has of exciting disease: the other is the knowledge of the circumstances under which that power becomes curative, that is, the proper administration of rnemedies. It may possibly be tedious to dwell any longer on this point, but it is of so much importance that it will perhaps be pardoned us if we endeavour to render it quite familiar to the mind of the reader, who, in all probability, has been taught a very different theory by those who, having lost the key of knowledge themselves, would faiu prevent others from entering in. Let us take one of the commonest medicines as an example. Whoever, being at the time in perfect health, will swallow a sufficient dose of rhubarb, will find that it produces certain effects on him, the chief of which is relaxation of the bowels. This very property it is which gives to rhubarb its principle value as a medicine, this very property it is which enables it to cure cerdivers mouvemens organiqucs, a diffcrentes mutations: que ces mouvernens et mutations, effets priniitifs, sont les causes generatrices de tous les avantages th6rapeutiques que procurcnt les agens pharmaco. logiques: quo ces derniers ne posscdent point de vertus curatives rielles et indcpcndanles, et ne guirissent point par des propriites effectives ct absolues: quc sculement ils livrent au mndecin un pouvoir tres-ctendu sur l'action des organes." But after all it is a self-evident truth, obvious enough to all, except those who are blind because they will not see. It is an old story too Nil prodest quod non Ikdere possit idem. r OF HOM(EOPATHY. 65 exactness." And surely we might have supposed that so important a branch of science, and one so obviously necessary, would have escaped utter neglect. Surely it was not unreasonable.to expect that every property of every medicament as far as it can disturb the organism would be known to every physician? Surely it was not too much to ask that before men ventured to prescribe any medicament for their fellow creature, they should have learned accurately and exactly how far and in what way it was capable of disturbing the existing regularity of the organism of that fellow-creature?* And yet it is very singular that the therapeutic powers of medicines, accidental as they unquestionably are, depending, as they unquestionably do, on the manner in which their pathogenetie powers are applied, have alone occupied the attention of medical practitioners, while the vis medicamenti, the health-disturbing energy which is concealed in every medicine, has been completely passed over. There have been those-whose tongues would have blistered in their mouths, if every man had his deserts-who have called IIahnemann an empiric and a charlatan. From charlatantry, heaven knows, no profession is free; as for empiricism, to erect the noblest system, complete and perfect, and harmonious in all its parts, on the profoundest in* Did none of the eminent medical men of later days meet with these, words of Haller:-cg Nempd primum in corpore sano medela tentanda est, sine ulla peregrinh miscela, odoreque et sapore ejus exploratis, exigua illius dosis ingerenda, et ad omnes qum inde contingunt affectiones, quis pulsus quis color, qume respiratio, qum nam excretiones adtendendum,"-or had they no leisure to think of such trifles as the effects of medicines upon the health of man f 1I 66 A POPULAR VIEW vestigation, is not what we usually understand by the word. To administer medicines in ignorance of their nature, to prescribe random mixtures plend manu, to proceed on no system, and to have no principles whatever excepting that of ordering that medicine which it has been said, or related, or perhaps prophesied would do good, this is sometimes called experience, sometimes empiricism. Time will do justice between all parties, and while it strangles in its birth much specious novelty, will at the same time at last, we may venture to hope, render the art of medicine something more than an."ars conjecturalis." It is said to be founded on "experience." Montaigne was half right at any rate when he said: "L'experience est proprement sur son fumier au sujet de la medecine, ou la raison lui quitte toute la place." I OP flOMCEOPATHY4 ChIAPTER IV. SOURCES OF THE ALTOPATIHIC MATERIA NEDICA. THE system of education pursued at present is unquestionably calculated to form the most able anatomists, physiologists, pathologists. The wonderful talents that have been for so many years devoted to these branches of knowledge could not fail of introducing into them a high degree of precision and accuracy; but no one will be hardy enough to assert that such knowledge as this is sufficient for the physician. Anatomy is that branch of science which makes us acquainted with the structure of the material frame; which investigates, determines, and gives names to the separate pieces which compose the body; but this, as Dufresne has well observed, is "pure natural history, an integral part of zoology." Physiology, in the same way, following the same author, is that branch of science which exhibits to us the organism in its collective state, when the different parts which compose it, move, and act in harmony and without disturbance; and this again is nothing else than one section of pure natural history, the history of the functions of the organism. And in pathology the enquirer has passed from the study of the healthy functions to that of those functions when disturbed, from the natural history of man in health to the natural history of man suffering under organic or functional derangement. But the question is, whether such knowledge is sufficient for the physi. 68 A POPULAR VIEW cian? However delightful such studies may be, and however conducive to a rapid and clear perception of the or- I gans principally affected, the question is, can this be considered medical knowledge. " Can such a man be called a 'medicus,' or healer, because he is perfectly acquainted with the natural history of man as well in sickness as in health?" Surely not. As subsidiary information, as knowledge, part of which may be highly useful, part of which is indispensably necessary to the healer of diseases, it cannot be overrated. And therefore they do greatly err who represent Homoeopathy as dispensing totally with anatomical and physiological studies. Who does not know how many sciences there are connected with every profession, every one of which is merely auxiliary to the chief object of the student? If Michael Angelo had been nothing but an architect, if he had never directed the energies of his mighty mind to the acquisition of any thing besides the rules and measures of his own immediate profession, where would have been St. Peter's Church? If Babbage had been nothing but a mathematician, where would have been the calculating machine? And little do they know of the system of IIahnemann who represent him as "not considering a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, or pathology," as of any i consequence to the physician. All that is asserted by homceopathists is, that these are, as I before observed, subsidiary branches of science, useful doubtless, but not by any 1 means the chief object of his art, which is to acquire such a complete, accurate, and intimate acquaintance with every medicamental substance, with all its properties and powers so far as they influence the health of man, as to enable him I OF HOIM(EOPATHY. 69 to apply those properties to the cure of disease in the readiest, easiest, safest, and least painful manner. Until the time of Ilahnemann, this great truth, however evident, was, if not denied, at least studiously kept out of sight. The talents of past times were directed to some such miserable object as the classification of diseases or the nomenclature of the various parts of the human body; and the splendid abilities of successive generations were thus led astray from the true and proper object of their profession, and wasted and frittered away on objects of mere secondary importance; in searching after causes which it was impossible the human mind should ever comprehend; or some puny investigation, transfusion for example, or some similar dream; in the improvement of a bistouri, in the invention of a syringe, in acquiring neatness in performing an operation, or in hardening the heart, and steeling the feelings, to prick the retina of a living rabbit, or divide the nerves of a dog. The necessary consequence was, that the vast science which embraces the knowledge of the powers of medicaments on the human body was neglected; pharmacology was a sealed book, a path whose entrance was hidden by the briars and thorns which had been suffered to grow until every trace of it was lost, until, in fact, the treatment of every case of disease, seems to have been abandoned to some score or two out of the infinite multitude of medicines with which Providence has furnished man for his body's health. It is one of themselves, at any rate, who says-and that in the metropolis of England, in the year 1825: " IT IS A FACT THAT IN FOUR-FIFTHS OF THE DISEASES INCIDENT TO HUMANITY, WE ARE DIRECTED BY THE BEST AUG i 70 A POPULAR VIEW THORITIES TO PRESCRIBE PURGATIVE MEDICINES, WITH A VIEW TO CURE THOSE COMPLAINTS." It has been before stated that in every medicament there are two apparently distinct properties, its active or pathogenetic power, and its curative power, that is to say its pathogenetic power properly applied; and we may reasonably conclude, that every substance which possesses the power of acting on the organism, is applicable to some case or other of disease, and would, in that case, operate a cure. Hahnemann asserts that hitherto nothing whatever has been learnt of the pathogenetic properties of medicaments, and consequently that there exists no knowledge which will enable a practitioner to select the remedy most suited to each case. There are four sources, he says, from which all that is known respecting the powers and properties of medicines has been derived, and from no one of them could any accurate or specific information on the subject be acquired. In the first place, certain general therapeutic qualities are attributed to particular substances. One is still, as it was said to be in the time of Dioscorides, 1700 years ago, a diuretic, another a sudorific, a third an anodyne, a fourth an antispasmodic; and such is still the description of them given in the pharmacological works of the present day. Hahnemann asserts, however, that in many instances they fail of producing the effects attributed to them. Nor is such failure at all wonderful, for though, under particular circumstances, each might produce those peculiar to it, yet it does not follow that those effects are to be produced under circumstances totally different. Supposing it to be literally true, however, what has even then been learnt excepting one property of each medicament? Nothing what t OF H0MCE0PATIIY. 7 71 ever is known of the action of any one on the rest of the organism; nothing of its special and peculiar power of affecting any other part of the frame; nothing of its influence on that part of the organism which is already affected; nothing of its power of disturbing that which is not affected. Taken in large quantities, such and such a substance, for instance, becomes an anodyne. Thus much is supposed to be known respecting it, and it is prescribed and taken accordingly. A very desirable end, no doubt, to relieve pain! But who knows what symptoms of other kinds it is exciting all the while? Who knows what suffering it is preparing in return for the temporary ease it has given? Are there no instances on record, none even suspected, where opium, for example, has thus acted? Has no mischief ever been caused by the vast doses of this deleterious drug given to soothe suffering? And-if new symptoms follow the use of these dangerous anodynes, they are referred to the disease, or perhaps looked upon as imaginary, and the patient declared to be affected with that curious complaint which baffles medicine, Hypochondria! The knowledge of the properties of some medicaments, in the second place, is derived from the physical qualities by which they are characterized, and their taste or odour is sufficient to determine their powers. One tastes bitter, and immediately it becomes a "1tonic," it strengthens the system, it accelerates digestion; hops, or quinine, cobocynth, or quassia, all come alike to him who is possessed with the fury of prescribing. Bitter medicines are decreed to have only one mode of action on the organism; tonics they are, and tone accordingly they must give. It is hardly po~sib),e to conceive how eminent men should ever have I L r 72 A POPULAR VIEW yielded their assent and lent the sanction of their names to such mere-day dreams, and contented themselves with these husks and peelings of knowledge on a subject so important. Chemistry, in the third place, is summoned to the aid of the medical teacher, as if that had anything to do with revealing the pathogenetic properties of medicaments. The object, the only object, of pharmacology, is to teach us what power each medicament possesses of affecting the human organism. Common sense would have said, "determine by experiments." The doctor sends us to the laboratory and the still. The active virtue that is sought, is a mysterious property, residing in the medicament, too | subtile to be submitted to our eyes or fingers, no more visible than the power which lurks in a cylinder of glass before it is submitted to friction, no more tangible than the faculty of the magnet, an energy, a " vis," an imponderable, unretainable FORCE, as little material as the galvanic fluid, or the DUNAMIS of Life, acting dynamically, not immediately on the material frame, but on the principle of Life, and by means of its agency on that principle, producing in us sensations: known to us, in fact, and appreciable by us, only by its effects;-and to send us to the still or the retort, and tell us of maceration and concentration, vegetable fibre and albumen, extracts and essential oils, is really a singular mode of proceeding in the eyes of an ignorant person. Until lately, indeed, when it was supposed that mercury acted chemically on the poison of syphilis circulating in the blood, it might have seemed reasonable to submit medicines to chemical analysis. But suppositions always lead men astray, and so did this. Chemistry can tell us that calomel is composed of certain proportions of mercury and OF HOM(EOPATHY. 73 chloride in combination; but how should chemistry tell us that chloride of mercury will excite salivation and cause ulcers when brought into contact with the living organism? How can it tell any one property any one medicine possesses of acting on the human frame? The chief knowledge, however, which we possess of the properties of medicaments, has been drawn from observing their effects on the organism when suffering under disease "ab usu in morbis." Undoubtedly, with proper precautions, a certain quantity of mere empirical knowledge might be thus collected. We should not indeed err much, in all probability, if we were to assert that all the valuable and useful information which has been acquired on the subjeet of medicaments, was derived from this practical observation of their effects on patients. But that even this information must be very imperfect, and open to much suspicion, will be apparent from the following considerations. The knowledge derived ab usu in morbis would assume something of this form. " A certain disease was cured by a certain medicine, and therefore that medicine is a good remedy for that disease wherever it is met with." In the first place, supposing all this to be literally true, before a system of pharmacology could.be thus constructed, it would be necessary to try each individual medicament on each individual case of disease, before it could be determined which possessed the property of curing any particular one in the easiest and safest manner. tIow many centuries would elapse before this knowledge was exhausted, we can only guess from the number which have elapsed, without leading to any thing like sound information on the subject. And, even then, although specific remedies might eventually ~X II ii r t~T: ri!: i f:: r: it A rPOPULARtVIEW be discovered for specific diseases, there could, by no pogssibility, be any specifics discovered for the ordinary disea-I ses of the world, those which are generic. If indeed maladies would accommodate themselves to the decrees of the pathologists, a few more specifics might ultimately be discovered, and, by the industry of ten more generations, the number of those valuable medicines increased from/ four or five, to six or seven possibly.* Maladies, however, are not thus accommodating. A remedy, therefore, might, by the process of exhaustion, that is, trying everything, be hit on for the malady of one patient, and another patient be afflicted with what medical books ordain to be the same malady, but the symptoms not being precisely the same, it would by no means follow that the same substance would be a remedy for the second case. Independently, however, of the impossibility of discovering specific remedies by this mode of proceeding, even if it were possible, nothing could by this means be ever discovered of the pure pathogenetic properties of medicines, nothing of their faculty to excite as well as to cure disease. Now it seems to be at last acknowledged, since Barbier's work, that every medicine does excite disease. Ought not physicians then to know what diseases the medicines they prescribe have the power of exciting? If they do not possess this knowledge, they are working in the dark withI instruments whose powers they do not understand-led perhaps by chance ipmetimes to the result they desire, and *Even this after all is doubtful. The cholera, though a specific disease, has set at nought thle counsels of all the doctors of all latitudes, as if to exhibit to the world how inadequate is the present mode of conducting pharmacological investigation. OF 1I0MUE0PATHY4 75 I ii even then possibly doing more mischief than they do good, by aggravating some symptoms while they destroy others; quelling one head of the hydra, and giving life to others; quenching fire in this place, kindling it in that. We shall now understand the better the meaning of Sydenham's very remarkable assertion, before quoted, that 11nonnulla symptomata non tam morbo quam medico debeantur." There is, however, another source of uncertainty still remaining, which must necessarily give rise to more confusion, and render it impossible to acquire anything like accurate knowledge of the properties of medicaments. We have hitherto proceeded upon the supposition that each medicament was administered pure and single, and allowed to exhaust its action before another was permitted to interfere with it. Unfortunately this is not often the case. Not satisfied with administering one substance at one time whose properties they are ignorant of, many compound and confound into one dose two, three, four, or more, and thus form a mass whose properties they could no more guess at, even if they were intimately acquainted with those of the simples, than a person who had never tried the effects of gunpowder could discover them from his knowledge of sulphur, nitre and charcoal. When so many different ingredients are thumped into one mass, why is it supposed that each will separate when it reaches the stomach, and proceed forthwith to execute the duty it was ordered to do? If, besides, the compound should prove beneficial, how is pharmacological science benefited? How are the properties of any single member of the mighty combination to be guessed at in consequence? Who can tell, in any particular case of cure, to which of the medicaments 76 A POPULAR VIEW the cure is to be attributed? Who can tell, in that shower of grape, which struck the malady? Who can tell which did good, which did nothing, or which did harm? " Every virtue attributed to a medicament which has not been administered alone and without admixture with any other substance, and which consequently may be considered as almost unknown as to its mode of acting on the living organism, is an illusion or a falsehood." Strange it is that such mere guess work, such blending and beating together of unknown individuals into an unknown mass, should still be permitted by the many eminent men who adorn the noble Profession of medicine. "De tout cet amas," said Montaigne, "ayant fait une mixture de breuvage, n'est-ce pas quelque espece de reverie, d'esp6 -rer que ces vurtus s'aillent divisant et triant de cette confusion et melange pour courir a charges si diverses? Je craindrais infiniment qu'elles perdissent ou eschangeassent leurs etiquettes et troublassent leurs quartiers." This was written two centuries ago; but it is nothing new for wisdom to cry in the streets unheard." EDITOR'S ANNOTATIONS. THIS even-handed justice, so slow in its elaboration from the alembic of the medical philosophers of venerable Allopathia, ever and anon impels us to respond to the allusion of the English divine regarding Anatomy, Physiology, &c. And though as to those who will be blind and who will be deaf, it seems, indeed, but casting pearls before swine, to reiterate the peculiar and undeniable requisites of the Homceopathic school, yet humanity may be profited if the truth reach one honest child of philosophy, who investigates and weighs testimony fairly. Many Allopathic physicians, (thank heaven, there are very honourable exceptions,) may shrug their shoulders, look wise, and contemptuously OF HOMCEOPATHY. 77 through the spectacles of self approval, and have great influence with those who found their faith on the oracle of the family Doctor; but have they the right to echo calumny on calumny, and to detract from the merits or attainments of their equally well educated brethren of the profession for the single and heinous offence of endeavouring to cure their. fellow sufferers, more expeditiously and more safely than can be possibly done by their lancets, blisters, tartar emetic ointments and poisonous drugs! To such we say, once for all, the hand writing is on the wall-the MENE, MENE TEKEL TPHARSIN proclaims their destiny! Fifty-one years of gradual progressive experimentation have raised Homcopathia to a position of acknowledged force; and we fear the refusal to examine its well developed truth, by the Allopathists, will only confirm the reputation of the profession for belligerant propensities. Chesneau du Marsais says, " Truth can only be discovered by peaceful minds: it is only adopted by kindred spirits. If it change the opinions of men, it is only by insensible gradations-a gentle and easy descent conducting them to reason. The revolutions caused by the progress of truth are always beneficial to society, and are only burthensome to those who deceive and oppress it." Now as to the remark that anatomy, physiology, pathology, &c., are not essential to the education of the Ilomceopathist, it is totally untrue; it is insisted, on the contrary, by the members of the Homoeopathic school, that its practitioners shall be first educated in all these and other requirements of medicine, and that the study of Hommopathia is to be superadded, by which only they can be competent judges of both systems. And also it may be stated that the Homceopathic physicians of this city, are all regular Doctors by the Diploma's of Allopathic Institutions. With regard to these unfounded aspersions upon the character of our school for Science and Learning, we refer those of our readers who have leisure to pursue the subject, to DR. GRAY'S papers at the close of this volume,, ON THE DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL TO STUDY BOTH SYSTEMS," and " ON THE EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE HOM(EOPATHIC SCHOOL. The following extract from a kind of code de foi adopted in 1838, IS: ii' 13,& ~r i.. i i:1!j 1 E, i., 78 A POPULAR VIEW unanimously by the great Central German Society of Homoeopathists, at an Anniversary Session, not only confirms our position abundantly, but also exposes the same humiliating absence of justice and magnanimity on the part of our opponents in the old world, as we have to encounter here: "i We cannot hinder our critics from believing or from asserting, that the Homeopathic physician may entirely dispense with the treasures of their knowledge. We will here only add to what has already been said upon this subject, that the selection of a Homceopathic remedy is not a mere mechanical process, requiring only an effort of memory or a recourse to registers, but that it demands the most comprehensive examination, and pre-supposes an extensive acquaintance with medical doctrines: a knowledge, which in many cases must appear to the Homoeopathist more necessary, than it would to the physician of the old school. We cast back most decidedly the groundless aspersion, that tlp Homeopathic physician, in his method of treatment, can dispense with the knowledge of anatomy, physiology, tetiology, nosology, pathological and comparative anatomy, and we again repeat, that the knowledge of what is clearly established in all these doctrines, is entirely indispensable to him. The marks of distinction between the two schools lie in the Materia Medica and the Therapeutics, and not at all in different views concerning the value of the doctrines just enumerated. We consider men, who, without professional instruction, undertake to cure Homoeopathically, not as physicians but as dilettanti, such as the old method also produces, and whom we do not authorise; moreover, we consider physicians who believe that these fundamental doctrines of medicine may be dispensed with, as labouring in another school than ours: we cannot and will not share their merits, nor appropriate to ourselves any part of the opposition which they may receive." OF HOM(EOPATHY. 79 CHAPTER V. SOURCES OF HOM(EOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA. THE illustrious founder of Homoeopathy was too deep a thinker not to perceive very early in his career the nature of the sources from whence the knowledge of the properties of medicaments was derived, and too severe a reasoner to let the errors of the system,* founded on that knowledge, escape him. Wild conjectures and still wilder assertions had usurped the place which ought to have been occupied by strict and rigorous experiments; the disputing school of Thessalus, the empirical school of Serapion, alike found followers. Theory followed theory, and system replaced system, with as much facility as if the question had been about the colour of a coat, or the fashion of a shoe-tie, instead of the health and life of man. Century after century beheld new methods born and pass away as their predecessors had done. Humorism was abondoned in favour of * The word " system" is here used in compliance with custom, but it is erroneous, nevertheless, to call medicine, as at present practised, a system. To administer a single medicament in any case, because, it is said to have been useful in a similar case, is not a system, but pure empirical practice. Neither can the combining many together be with any propriety called a system, unless there be some definite and fixed principles on which such combination is to proceed; and there are no such principles. ii IsI i~ -i II,i ii 80 A POPULAR VIEW solidism. Hoffman retreated in his turn before Boerhaave, whose "system presents only a plausible conciliation of all conflicting hypothesis! Eclecticism vanished before Haller and Irritability; and Brown revived the strictum and laxum of antiquity. Learned doctors, giddy with the eternal revolution of systems, might one and all have exclaimed with Faust: Da steh ich nun, ich armer Thor! Und bin so kMug als wie zuvor. The medical world, like the crew of a leaky ship arguing about the cause and situation of the leak instead of pumping, was splitting metaphysical hairs instead of healing diseases;* and amidst a chaos of contradictions nothing seemed permanent except the sufferings of the patients and the inability of the physician. Whether any thought of this nature was indistinctly glimmering in the mind of the friendless scholar, as with twenty ducats, his whole fortune, in his. pocket, he repaired to the university of his native country, to study medicine there, we cannot tell. But a few years only had elapsed before we find him renouncing a profession which bold theory and blind empiricism had divided between them, and devoting himself to the task of instituting a series of experiments on the nature and properties of the various substances which possess the power of acting on the human organism. Profoundly convinced that the science would never attain any tolerable degree of accuracy until it was based, neither on hypothesis nor on empiricism, * See Bige], vol. i. and Edin. Rev. No. cx, OF IIOM(EOPATIIY. 81 but on a scientific investigation, on a complete and thorough examination into facts; and deeply struck with the reflection, that before medicaments could be employed with any certainty, their true effects on the organism must be accurately known, he perceived at the same time that the source of all the uncertainty of medicine might be traced to the fact that almost all that was known of medicaments had been discovered by their effects on the sick alone. The various errors which must have sprung from that practice, the uncertainty thrown over the whole by compound prescriptions, and the many inappreciable perturbing causes which might influence the result did not escape him; and he saw that there was but one really scientific method of discovering all the properties of medicaments, and that was, to observe carefully and accurately all the effects, all the sensations and changes they produced, when administered to the healthy. A wide and untrodden field was before him; he felt, at once, that from the labours of his predecessors he could derive no assistance; abandoning, therefore, all the phantoms which had so long led science astray, he applied himself patiently and steadily to the execution of the gigantic task which he had set himself. It is the fashion at present to smile calmly and assume a most gentlemanly and dignified air when the name of Ilahnemann is mentioned. "Ah, he, indeed!" says one, with the quietest self-satisfaction in the world; while another rejects, with a languid and contended grace, all notice of a subject which makes large demands upon his patience: and a third, unable to appreciate doctrines which were not sucked in with his mother's milk, deems that the best and easiest mode of settling the question is to decide 82 A POPULAR VIEW upon it without the fatiguing labour of preliminary enquiry. If the lives and comforts of human beings were not at stake, it would be amusing to see how easy it is to pronounce on that of which one knows literally nothing; and to smother, as it were, with an emphatic wave of the hand-thus-the results of a patient investigation of many year's duration. It is not possible, however, but that full justice should eventually be done to the genius and labours of Hahnemann. Seldom, indeed, has the world seen talents of a first rate order combined with so much unwearied diligence, accurate observation, patient endurance, and scrupulous adherence to facts. Had he, in the slightest degree, resembled any of those gentlemen who are so good as to smile at his labours, the trumpet of self-praise would soon have interrupted the solitary exercises of the recluse, and a hostilie built theory would have been reared on two or three ill-conducted experiments. Luckily for mankind, his was a mind of a different order. For many years he submitted voluntarily to privations of every kind, a severe regimen, daily and often extremely painful sufferings caused by the repeated ingestion of small doses of very active poisons, that he might establish, on a firm and lasting basis, without any admixture of gratuitous assertion or idle hypothesis, a meteria-medica containing the pure pathogenetic properties of medicaments. The principles which Hahnemann laid down for his guidance in the construction of this vast monument of unrivalled genius and unparalleled edurance, were such as almost to preclude the possibility of even the slightest errors. All substances adapted to the use of the human body are OF HOM(EOPATHY. 83 either nutritious or medicinal;* that is to say, they either furnish nourishment when taken into the stomach, or they excite symptoms. In the normal state of the human organism, that is, in the state of perfect and absolute health, without any derangement of the functions, or any disturbance from dynamic causes, there would be no symptoms whatever; and if an individual in this state were kept cautiously out of the reach of every thing that could affect the mind, or disturb the functions of the body, and fed on simple and natural food alone, without any admixture of anything medicinal; and if, to the individual so circumstanced, a simple medicinal substance were administered, every symptom which he experienced would be referrible to that medicine as its cause, and might be included among its pure pathogenetic properties. In all probability, however, there does not exist a single individual possessing such perfect and undisturbed health as not to be subject at times to certain unpleasant sensations. From the continued use of unwholesome diet, from the effects of accidents, from hereditary tendency, and other causes, it very rarely, if ever, happens that an individual can be found enjoying perfect health, uninterrupted by any unpleasant feelings whatever; but if care be taken to select the healthiest that can be found, and all possible external cause of disturbance be scrupulously eliminated, the few symptoms of those indi* This is, perhaps, not strictly true. It is most probable that every substance has the power of exciting its own particular train of symptoms; cases have even been known where beef and mutton, milk and bread, when swallowed, caused disorder; but in a perfectly healthy state, the symptoms excited by the pure and natural diet are either constant, or else from habit not attended to. I! i 84 A POPULAR VIEW viduals will be constant, while the circumstances of diet. &c. in which they are placed remain constant. Proceeding on these principles, Hahnemann, and a few friends* disposed to assist him in his labours, commenced on themselves a series of experiments which lasted for more than twenty years. Preparing themselves by the most scrupulous adherence to diet which was merely nutritious and contained no element of disturbance, and previously noting every symptom to which each was liable, they swollowed in the morning, fasting, a small dose of the medicament to be experimented on, and, in case no symptoms manifested themselves, another in a few hours rather increased in quantity: all the consequent derangements of health were then observed in their slightest shades, and being entered in a journal kept for the purpose, were afterwards classified and arranged, and another set of experiments commenced with the same substance. In order, however, to prevent any chance of error in a subject of so much importance, the following additional precautions were adopted by the sagacious originator of the system. In the first place it was absolutely necessary that the substances to be experimented on should be perfectly pure and simple, and in the possession of their fullest energies. Rejecting, therefore, extracts and infusions which had been prepared beforehand, the fresh juice of indigenous plants was expressed, and mixed with an equal quantity of alcohol: every care was also used to obtain foreign plants, (which could of course only be procured dried), in the greatest purity, entire, and unprepared. "* Frantz, Hornburg, Stapf, &c, OF HOM(EOPATHY. 85 In the next place, inasmuch as the action of the same substance varied according to the age, sex, and idiosyncrasy of the subject to whom it was administered, it was not considered sufficient to experiment on a few individuals. His own family were all pressed into the service, and each substance was tried in various doses on many different persons, under every possible variety of circumstance, and beneath the immediate inspection of IHahnemann himself. The person experimented on was made to abstain cautiously from spices, green vegetables, fruit, &c. (Org. cxviii.) and to avoid all fatiguing labour of mind and body, all excesses, and every species of mental excitement. And if, before the expiration of any experiment it happened that any extraordinary circumstance occurred, capable of modifying the result in the slightest degree, a fright, for example, any annoyance, or external injury, or accident, or any departure from the severe regimen exacted, tihe symptoms were no longer noted-the experiment was at once broken off and recommenced. All symptoms, moreover, which were in the slightest degree doubtful were included in a parenthesis until farther opportunity was affolbrded of establishing or rejecting them. When the action of the medicament was exhausted, the symptoms which had been regularly noted in a journal as they occurred, were classified and copied off in the following order:-affections of the head, including vertigos of all species, headaches, disturbance of intelligence and memory; maladies of the forehead, eyes, nose, &c.; affections of the throat, &c.; of the lungs, heart, back, and limbs; then the general affections of the whole body, cutaneous eruptions, &c.; sleep or want of sleep; cold and heat; anxiety, 86 A POPULAR VIEW agitation; changes of character and disposition, and maladies of the mind. Little need be said to prove the value of such a Materia Medica as Hahnemann thus constructed. Had he proceeded no farther-had he never founded on these experiments a new and splended system of healing, they alone would have deserved the gratitude of mankind for ever. ie would at least have put us in possession of accurate knowledge on a subject never treated on before, Pharmacodynamics. We should have known at any rate the full and proper effects of medicinal substances, and no longer have been compelled to see and to suffer men working in the dark with instruments whose powers they did not comprehend. But this is but a small part of his merits. Hie has led the way (and honour be to him for it!) to a better and sounder philosophy. Ile has given to investigation an impulse of which no man can even guess at the ultimate consequences. Hie has taught us to base all our knowledge not in empiricism, but on pure experiment-to propose no shallow and misty theories-to rely on no vague and chimerical assertions-to assume nothing-to take nothing for granted, however slight or received-to admit nothing whatever that has not been repeatedly proved beyond the power of misrepresentation and the possibility of errorand to reject nothing that is asserted to be a fact, without due enquiry, merely because it may chance to disagree with our precpnceived fancies; but in all humility to submit our shortsighted faculties to the best and greatest and only true teacher,* EXPERIENCE, in the full conviction that * To trace accurately and record faithfully the phenomena which j OF HOM(EOPATHY. 87 there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of even the Medical Gazette. A teacher whom many might consult with more advantage to themselves than they are likely to gain from " hearing their nothings monstcred " in the pages of an ephemeral Review! A lesson that some would do well to learn, instead of speaking such an infinite deal of nothing, in which the reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall search all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are not worth the search. Nature spontaneously affords, is observation. Experiment is to exact of her still further information by noting the phenomena presented when the circumstances of the problem are designedly varied. Experience is the result of the judicious combination of both: not that blind unthinking dull acquiescence in all the senilities of all times on which every system of healing has hitherto reposed in slumber, to which every patentpill-monger appeals, and in which every old woman in the universe confides. I 88 A POPULAR VIEW CHAPTER VI. THE OPERATION OF DRUGS WITH RESPECT TO DISEASE: ALLOPATHY -ANTIPATHY -HOMCEOPATHY. THE Materia Medica thus constructed by Hahnemann and his disciples contained not only the Pathogenetic properties of medicaments, but, as it turned out, a picture (almost completed already) of all the known affections of the organism to which mankind are subject. The next question was how to apply these properties to the cure of maladies arising from morbific causes. Reverting to the axiom which was mentioned before, that medicines do not possess two actually distinct properties, one Therapeutic and the other Pathogenetic, but that. they can only be instrumental in curing diseases by the right application of their disease-creating powers, it will be evident that there are but three modes in which they can possibly be employed to restore health. One may be chosen which will excite in the healthy, [1 Which bear no relation to those of which the patient complains. 2 Which are the exact contrary of those of which the patient complains. r4 3 Which are analogous and similar to those of which the pa. L tient complains. We will speak of each of these separately. There is I OF HOW~E OPATIIY. 8 89 one preliminary observation, however, which should be carefully kept in mind. If a lump of lead were let fall on a stone, the law of gravitation which caused it to fall would retain it in contact with the stone. But if a ball of glass were let fall on the same stone, it would not remain in contact with it, but would bound up from it with a force of restitution bearing to the force of compression a ratio of 15: 16 nearly. That is to say, the elastic substance possesses in itself a property which, when called into action, opposes itself to, and enables the substance to resist for the time, the ordinary laws of nature. This is a very imperfect illustration of the mode in which the livingy orgTanism exerts its power. It bears within it a princilple which enables it to resist all the ordinary laws of nature. It is possessed as we have already mentioned, by a "6Force of reaction" called Life, which is incessantly exerted to resist all external attack, to preserve unchanged the material fr-ame which it quickens; which opposes itself' to the influence of morbific causes; which strives to repel all that attempts to disturb the harmony of the system, and to restore that harmony when it has been disturbed. But this is not all. If a steel spring fixed at one end be pressed down by the finger and then suddenly let go, the tendency of the spring to recover its proper place will carry it above the point from whence it was removed. This is another imperfect. illustration of the mode in which the organism reacts against any external disturbance and strives to recover its equilibirium. In cases where a medicine has been administered, this reaction of the principle of life against all disturbing causes is called the secondary or con ii ii 90 A POPULAR VIEW secutive effect of that medicine. An instance familiar to all is that of rhubarb. Taken in sufficient quantity it produces relaxation of the bowels; this is its primitive effect. Then comes the reaction of the organism-the property by which it not only resists change but carries its effort at restoration, like the steel spring, beyond the equilibriumand the relaxation is succeeded by constipation. This is the consecutive effect. Now if it be true that medicaments possess no therapeutic properties whatever expecting their pathogenetic properties properly applied, it follows as a strict and logical consequence that it is only by provoking the organism to reaction that medicines can cure disease. They cannot extinguish disease by their primary action, excepting for a short time. They can only create disease. They have in themselves no other power than that of making the organism temporarily suffer, and thus exciting it to react, to throw off the foreign impression and thereby restore its own healthy state. In fact, were it not for this property of reaction which the organism possesses, there could not be any possible means of recovering after an acute attack of disease: for the impression produced by the natural morbific cause would remain unchanged, and the patient would suffer all his life under the symptoms of the first disease by which he was attacked. Keeping in mind, then, this indisputable fact, that restoration to health is solely owing to the reaction of the vital powers, which reaction may be produced or provoked by pathogenetic agents, we will proceed to consider in turn the three cases mentioned above; and firstly, that in which the symptoms of the disease have nothing in common OF HOM(EOPATHY. 91 with those which the medicine administered has the power of exciting-in which in other words, the medicine has nothing to do with the complaint, Allopathy as it is at present termed. In allopathic treatment the medicine prescribed affects a different part of the organism from that which is already suffering; an artifical disease for example is created in the bowels when the head is affected. Now it certainly does not seem very reasonable to hope to cure one diseased part by appling a medicine which has no reference at all to that part. What must be the result of ordering a medicine which has nothing to do with the complaint? merely this: that as soon as it is administered some part of the organism which was not previously affected begins to suffer, and continues to suffer until the primary action of th6 medicine is exhausted, after which the reaction of that part commences, and its healthy state is restored while the original disease remains untouched. To treat the right foot for a complaint in the left, would be as doubtful a mode of proceeding as to treat a man in London, in hopes of curing his father in Van Dieman's Land. Yet this is precisely the practice of allopathy or counter-irritation. A patient sends for a medical man, he states to him his sufferings, he tells him where he feels pain; the medical man from his accurate knowledge of anatomy sees at a glance what portion of the organism the pain occupies, but unfortunately his education has not comprised the properties and powers of medicines, and he sends the sufferer a medicine which acts on a totally different part of the organism. Probably he proceeds to purg him, that is to say, he gives him a mcdicine capable of acting on the bowels: it would be in vain i J A POPULAR VIEW for the sick man to urge that it is his head in which he feels the pain and not his bowels. What is the consequence? If it be an acute attack the vis medicatrix naturce soon puts an end to it, and the patient in reality has, as Mr. Pereira very properly says, a "lucky escape." If, on the contrary, it is a chronic disease, it is not cured. Scrofula and consumption, asthama and gout destroys as many thousand now and inflict as much pain on the present generation as they did many centuries ago-nor has even the heroic Morrison succeeded in purging away these and similar scourges. There is no denying that if all that is wanted is to create a disease somewhere or other, without reference to the part affected, any medicine would cure any disease: it would be sufficient in any case to administer the first drug at hand without any reference to its peculiar properties: if it excited symptoms, it would restore health as a matter of course, if allopathic treatment were the proper system. Whether this short cut to cure has or has not been tried, none can tell save those who preside over the mysteries of pill and draught; probably, however, it has not been neglected, for every scheme, and every plan, and every assertion, and every conjecture has picked up disciples. Like men lost in a wood they have most industriously explored every path; why not this among the rest? Nothing certainly can exceed allopathy in sagacity excepting the "theory" of the wise men of Gotham who fenced their village round with hurdles to keep out the Cholera. Right or wrong, however, allopathy is the ordinary practice of the world, and has been so in some shape or other, for so many years, that it is quite interwoven with all our i. OF HOM(EOPATHY. 93 ideas of healing, and we are so full of preconceived notions on this subject, so accustomed to the usual system, that we must get rid of much deep-seated prejudice before we can bring ourselves to regard it in its proper light.* The world has in the course of centuries gradually become so reconciled to the administration of medicines whose pathogenetic powers bear no relation whatever to the symptoms of the disease to be cured, that we have even accommodated our very language to the practice. To take medicine, in ordinary parlance means to excite a disease in the bowels; and physic, in its general acceptation, implies purging medicaments. It is not a little singular, too, to remark to what shifts we have resorted to find a name for the practitioner of medicine. In times past he was an ilargo or MEDICUS: a IEALER.* If the thing ever existed the word has not survived it, and now, by the figure of rhetoric which' is called Euphemismus, he is simply a doctor, a teacher. The science of medicine, the best, the noblest, the most blessed knowledge connected with this world that the Diety has vouchsafed to his creatures, the knowledge of healing disease, has dwindled into the art of purging. La Saignee, rEmetique, le Purgatif ont traverse les siecles pour arriver jusqu'a nouse, qui saignons, e6mtisons, et purgeons, a l'6gal des anciens, avec cette unique difference, que nous avons * Nothing goes for sense or light That will not with old rules jump right. As if rules were not in the schools Derived from truth, but truth from rules. * It is rather singular too that the sick man becoms a patient, that is, a sufferer, as soon as he falls into the doctor's hands. I I 96 A POPULAR VIEW medicine acts. Press the spring, and it remains bent; remove the pressure, and it flies back instantly to its former position. You produce by antipathic medicines a primary curative effect; and if the disease is of such a nature that its attack is merely temporary, the artificial state medicinally produced avails to prevent it from mastering the patient, until life rallies and flings off both the natural and the artificial disease together. If, on the contrary, the disease is of such a nature that the organism cannot throw it off unassisted, then as long as the power exists which by its own energy rejects external and foreign impressions, so long the relief derived from antipathy can only be temporary and palliative. In an acute case indeed, as has been just remarked, if you could find a medicine which would just cover all the symptoms and produce the very opposite ones, you might possibly by large doses of it destroy the morbid symptoms, until the disease had run its natural course, and exhausted its power. But then, as a necessary consequence, would ensue a convalescence proportioned to the strength and magnitude of the doses administered, and the patient would have to combat a medicinal disease almost as bad as the natural one. This has happened frequently in those cases of Cholera which have been treated with opium and brandy. The antipathic medicines administered in enormous doses arrested the disease, and then the sufferer not unfrequently sunk under the remedy. Palliation, however, and that merely temporary, is the utmost to be hoped for from antipathy in chronic diseases, and that for the very simple reason before mentioned that each dose does but excite the organism anew to reaction, and OF HOM(EOPATHY. 99 This law being established, we proceed to the2. Of two dynamic effections the stronger invariably extinguishes permanently the weaker, if both are of the same species. It is abundantly clear that if the affections have no analogy, and are not of the same species, this law does not hold good. A complication of disorders may exist in the same patient at the same time; or in natural diseases which are dissirilar; the more violent may suspend the weaker for a while, and when it has exhausted its action the old disease reappears.* No one, whatever be his profession, can walk through this life with his eyes open, without seeing a violent attack of acute disease suspend for a while the chronic complaint which occupied the organism previously, and the chronic complaint reappear as soon as the other has run its course. But it is not so when two diseases which affect the organism similarly, and give birth to analogous symptoms meet. The weaker is then replaced by the stronger, and permanently and completely extinguished. The examples of this given in the Organon are many and convincing; and, in fact, it is an admitted thing the nature cannot sustain two similar diseases at the same time. The consideration then of these two laws of nature should long ago have led to the true method of healing diseases. * Who has not repeatedly witnessed it. Who has not, for example, seen pregnancy, (a constitutional disturbance, if not a disease,) suspend phthisis, dropsy, &c? But sec that splendid piece of original and deep thought, the Organon. (Q. xxx. &c.) Und diess geheimnisvolle Buch Ist dir es nicht Geleit genug? S OF HOMCEOPATIIY. 101 is effectually and completely restored to the enjoyment of health. Such is IHomoeopathy.* A comparison of the three possible modes of practice will show that Antipathy acts by silencing the efforts of nature, Allopathy by disdaining to notice them at all, and 1Lomceopathy by exciting them by introducing a dynamic modification of the organism analogous to the morbific one. It is not difficult to decide which of them is most consistent with reason. Whatever may be thought of the arguments here used, it should be recollected that it owes its discovery to no a priori reasoning-it was not arrived at by first rearing an hypothesis, and then hunting for arguments to support it, and twisting facts to establish it. It was the simple result of an investigation, of a painful, slow, laborious investigation into the causes and law of specificity. Ilahnemann found that law to be a very simple one, and having established it by repeated and decisive experiments, he proclaimed the great truth that there is a specific for every disorder in the medicament capable of exciting in the healthy, symptoms analogous to those of that disorder. The arguments by which it has * The theory of chronic diseases, beautiful as it is, must be omitted. But is it not remarkable that when it has been so long known how one class of chronic diseases originated (secondary symptoms of syphilis driven in,) analogy should never have led them to search for the origin of all chronic diseases in the repulsion of some similar miasm l. HIe who would acquire a clear conception of the reasons for the severe laws against those afflicted with leprosy contained in the book of Leviticus, and of the real mercy of that severity, must read Hahnemann's Theory of Chronic Diseases, in which he ascribes most of the chronic sufferings of the world to that miasm which he terms psora. h 102 A POPULAR VIEW been attempted to show that that law is reasonable and probable may or may not be correct. The fact remains., entirely independent of all reasoning upon it, that HIomceopathy does furnish a complete and radical specific for diseases, chronic ones especially, which ordinary medicine cannot touch; diseases which are to the quack a fortune, but to the honourable and upright practitioner a source of deep and heartfelt sorrow. For what noble mind but must mourn to see youth languishing, beauty fading, art exhausted, and amendment not even to be hoped? When ripe corn falls in its due season -when the sear leaves of autumn drop softly from the branches they no longer adorn-or when venerable Age, called by his master, and full of wisdom and of piety as of years, with duties done and destinies fulfilled, sets out on the journey which all mankind have to go--why, this is nothing. Let him pass-he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. But when the hurricane falls on fields not yet "white for harvest;" when the cherished bud is rent from the stem ere the flower was expanded; when the lustrous laughing eye of childhood is quenched; when youth shuffles off this mortal coil, and hands that "should have decked the bride-bed strew the grave;" when tottering limbs and thin white hairs bend over the stiffened corse of manhood in his prime: when female loveliness is struck by lingering decay when pain racks frames cast in nature's most kindliest mood, and the damp of suffering stands day and night on OF HOMOEOPATHY. 103 foreheads of such a texture that one would rather wear chains till the iron galled to the very bone, than beteem even the winds of heaven visit them too roughly; when the stored knowledge of centuries has been exhausted, the repositories of pharmaceutical lore ransacked, and all is found to be vanity, and the exclamation of the prophet may be read in the eyes if not heard from the lips of the physician, " 0 virgin daughter of Egypt, in vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou SHIALT NOT BE CURED;" THEN who does not feel come rushing over his soul a perfect conviction that kind heaven HAS furnished balm, if man did but know all he might know? that Thera is means: Many simples operative, whose power Will close the eye of anguishYea, blessed secrets, And YET UNPUBLISHED virtues of the earth. Let us indulge the hope that a few more years will see a change in this respect, and medicine become the science, not of treatment, but of cure; not of palliation, but of complete and perfect restoration. To extend the term of human life beyond its prescribed limits would be of course as impracticable as to make the machine, which is constantly at work, endure for ever without wearing out. The Almighty Maker has fixed the period, and creation can never furnish a medicine to postpone for one millionth part of a moment the inveitable point of time when it is decreed the silver cord shall be loosed. But when the movements of the steam engine are irregular, when wheel grates against wheel, and the functions of 104 104 A -POPULAR VIEW the mighty combination are disturbed to such a degree that if it be not speedily relieved mischief must inevitably follow, the skilful engineer applies oil to that part of the intricate machine which he knows to be in want of it, and the regularity of the whole system is at once restored. It is true he cannot replace a part which is once worn out, nor can he extend the existence of the engine beyond the time which the materials were made to last. But he can preserve its equilibrium unimpaired, and restore the harmony of its motion, if it has been accidently deranged. And just thus far we may, with all humility, suppose that it is permitted to man to interfere in the functions of the human body. It is true God is the disposer of sickness, but Ilie is the author of health as well. And however the knowledge of medical men may fall short of perfection, the pious christian will find it extremely difficult to believe that the same God who provided the means of redemption has permitted any disease without at the same time providing a remedy.* *A few familiar instances of Homoeopathic cure may be permitted. When travelling in Lapland, sometime ago, the face of my companion was frost-bitten most severely. We tried friction with a fur glove, but ineffectually, and at length were compelled to rub the affected cheek with snow. It was a severe operation out on a bare hill in a sharp wind, with the mercury sunk into the bulb; but it soon recovered the patient. A few days ago a member of my own family had a considerable quantity of water in a state of ebullition poured over her hand; some brandy was instantly heated and applied to the scald in large quantities. The agony was intense for a few minutes; by the next morning there OF HOM(EOPATHY. 105 was no trace of the accident, excepting a slight redness of the back of the hand, which disappeared before night. Who does not know that the best way to keep himself warm on the outside of a coach in a cold night is to drink, not hot spirits, but cold water? Who does not know that hot tea or hot spirits and water (in small quantities,) is the most cooling draught there is when one comes in a strong prespiration from violent exercise? But really all the world seem to have been long acquainted with Hornmopathy in some instances. Ask the most common labourer how to cure a fit of sneezing, and he will tell you to take a pinch of snuff. Let him again who is thirsty (unless his thirst be caused by salt), lay a small portion of salt on his tongue, and it will probably assuage his thirst. All these are domestic and vulgar instances of Hommeopathic cure, which are practiced every day and known to every body. K::.;I s r; 106 A POPULAR VIEW CHAPTER VII. THE SELECTION AND PREPARATION OF MEDICINE. WHATEVER may be thought of the doctrines of Homceopathy, and however opposed they may, on a superficial glance, appear to the generally received opinions of the world on the subject of healing, it is undeniable that the preparation and form of the medicaments of the new school have done more to repel adherents than any of its startling propositions. To people accustomed to boxes and bottles, to colossal doses of drams and scruples, to weigh out by the ounce sundry substances drawn from huge stores of multitudinous drugs, to mix and pound together and beat into one mass the omnigenous treasures of polypharmacy, there is in the idea of attempting to cure disease with a fraction of a grain of a simple and single medicament, so minute that imagination cannot follow the dispersion, and language scarcely find a name for it, something not merely ridiculous, but repulsive and almost criminal. There is in this nothing but what is very natural. It is true that our knowledge of the laws and operations of nature is exceedingly limited. We may know that a few things are, but it is beyond our power to say that anything is not. Confined, however, as our knowledge is, we can only reason from what we do know; and multiplied and repeated observation and experience can alone convince OF HIOM(EOPATHY. 107 us of the truth of a system which seems to contradict all that mankind has so long and so universally admitted. Nor is this prejudice, or prepossession, or whatever it may be called, altogether blameable. Without some such reverence for received opinions and established notions, we should be at the mercy of every hardy inventor of hypotheses and coiner of base-metal schemes. To-morrow would upset what yesterday reared. We should be for ever afloat on a wide sea of conjecture, believing every thing, and certain of nothing. But while we are thus reluctant to admit what does not come down to us hallowed with the approbation of our predecessors, we must not at the same time forget that in every branch of human knowledge there is much room for improvement; that the human faculties are capable of acquiring more information than they have hitherto obtained, and that every succeeding generation will in all probability admit as acknowledged truths, much which their forefathers would have classed among the merest dreams of a disturbed fancy. We ourselves have seen recognized as genuine many discoveries to which those who preceded us refused the " hall-mark." Newton was once regarded as a visionary. The inventor of the steam boat received no encouragement. And the application of coal gas to light the streets was rewarded with bankruptcy, a prison, and a broken heart. Little people with little minds should remember who it was that compared himself to a boy straying along the shore and amusing himself with picking up here a shining pebble and there a shell somewhat prettier than usual, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him: they 108 A POPULAR VIEW should reflect that another of a still loftier order than Newton has taught us, in 11 words that burn," that"1 proud man" is Most IGNORANT of what he's Most ASSURED; and that a third, the lightest dash of whose pen is worth all the other two ever wrote, hath told us, "1If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." Ordinary people should let such considerations as these teach them not to wed themselves with too much obstinacy to opinions which they have adopted for no better reason than because they were heir-looms bequeathed to them by "11their respectable grandmothers." Much that is venerable, much that is admirable, much that is most valuable, we have so acquired. But ancestral notions should be brought out and aired, like ancestral dresses. The collector who scrupulously retains all that is bestowed on him must necessarily retain much rubbish. And he who will not sift what his forefathers gleaned will probably be possessed of as much chaff as grain. Discoveries have, in fact, so multiplied upon us in modern times that we have almost ceased to be surprised at them. Nor does there seem any reason to doubt that the career thus commenced will be preserved in until the stored wisdom of the world consists, not in what is supposed, but in what has been proved. Whenever that period shall arrive, its novelty will no longer be a sufficient ground for the rejection of a system which appeals to experience alone., and every day will teach men more impressively that their knowledge is in reality not quite so great as they have hitherto fancied it to be-and far, far less than their ignorance. OF HOMOEOPATHIYb 109 Very early in life the illustrious Hahnemann determined to fetter the wings of that far-reaching mind which would surely otherwise have spent its energies in vain. Pride and presumption, he saw, had led the world astray. A settled conviction of the extent of their knowledge was the besetting sin of all alike, and the great obstacle to their knowing more. Words passed current instead of precise ideas, and whoever knew the name which others applied to some effect was considered to have exhausted all that could be discovered on the subject. The real enlighteners of mankind he found were those who, digging to their foundations, had submitted their intellects to the long drudgery of investigation; who never dreamed that any thing was to be discovered by man without painful study and slow labour. lie who would climb the ladder must do it step by step. The gateway to knowledge is low: he who would enter must stoop-the lower the safer-prostration in the dust is the surest means of all. The mighty German bowed himself to the ground as he entered, and rose ere long by the margin of the fountains of light. As soon as he had acquired a perfect acquaintance with the pathogenetic properties of certain medicaments, he did not delay to try on the sick the law of specificity which he suspected was the law of cure. It was not difficult to conceive that a dose of medicine destined to act on a part of the organism already affected must be very small. He reduced his doses considerably from those of ordinary practice; still he found the aggravation produced was far too great. Desirous of relieving his patients of all unnecessary suffering, he resolved to diminish the doses of each medicament until he had determined by practice the least ', F 110 A POPULAR VIEW quantity sufficient to produce the required result. Fractions of grains were found to be still too powerful, and it became necessary to seek a method of reducing them still lower; and at length he hit upon that which afterwards led him to such truly wonderful results. In a work, like the present, it would be out of place to enter into a detailed explanation of the mode in which the medicaments of homoeopathy are prepared. Whoever is desirous of seeing the whole system laid down at full length, with directions for the treatment of each individual substance admitted into homceopathic practice, may consult the Pharmacopaeia Homoeopathica of that highly accomplished gentleman, Dr. F. F. Quin, which contains the fullest information on the subject. It will be sufficient to say that the greatest possible care is used to prevent the slightest admixture of any foreign ingredient, so that there may be no chance of the pure action of the simple medicine being disturbed-that each one undergoes a long process of pounding with sugar of milk-that the formule for the preparation of them are laid down with the greatest possible precision-and that the attenuation or dynamization rather, of them is carried on to a degree which they only do not think useless who have had an opportunity of observing their effects.* To those indeed who have been accustomed to the " rule of thumb" preparations of Polypharmacy the many precautions adopted, the extreme nicety and precision, the minute subdivisions, the evanescent attenuations of Hlomoeopathy * The process is to mix by pounding for an hour one grain of the medicament with 99 grains of sugar of milk; then again one grain of this mixture with 99 grains more of sugar of milk, and so on. OP ITOMO3OPATIY.11 III will appear tedious and frivolous, as a matter of course. Whether some of those minute regulations might or might not be dispensed with, it is not for us to say. The real meaning of all that excessive accuracy would seem to be that JIahnemqnn, having invariably practiced this mode of preparation, and having invariably found the efficacy of medicaments so prepared, is naturally desirous of seeing one uniform mode adhered to. "1If," we may suppose him to urge, "you will adopt the precautions I have adopted, and prepare the medicaments as I have prepared them, I will be responsible for the result, if they are properly administered. I know what medicaments so prepared will do, because I have made thousands and tens of thousands of experiments with them on all kinds of patients. But I do not know what may be the effect of medicaments otherwise prepared; they may answer the same end, or they may not. I have never tried them, and I leave to others to decide on what they have not investigated, and to pronounce with certainty what will be the effect on the living organism of that which they have not submitted to many and conclusive experiments." But, alas!I it is a pity that we should have been so long accustomed to a loose, off-hand, ready-made sort of method of preparing medicines, that the very accuracy introduced by Hahnemann becomes one of the objections to his system, and that which should be the greatest argument in favour of Homcmopathy is actually employed as an argument against it. Had he, instead of dissipating a single grain until it is lost in infinity, and recommending that a single medicament should be employed at one time, and allowed to exhaust its action before another is prescribed; had he 112 A POPULAR VIEW instead of this essayed to increase and multiply our doses, and confound confusion still more with more frequent exhibition of more intricate recipes; had he made it one of the preliminary conditions of his mysteries, that every neophyte should renounce grains and drops, and addict himself to pound weights and pint measures, even that proposition could not have been received with more indignation than the attempt to cure people by homceopathic preparations. Diminish people's medicine indeed! prescribe in the nineteenth century less than was taken in the eighteenth! One would think that the throne and the alter were fated to fall with the slightest reduction in the capacity of a pill box, and that the standard ounce measures was a sacred heaven-descended image, on whose preservation depended the dynasty of the Guelphs and the liberties of the nation. Notwithstanding these apprehensions of most serious consequences, should Hahnemann's attempt to heal diseases by measuring out medicine more charily than is usual be suffered, it may be right to adduce a few arguments in favour of his method. It may be permitted to us to endeavour to show that, although human intellects could never have discovered a priori that such infinitely reduced medicaments would have any preceptible action on the living organism, yet that when discovered it is not altogether irreconcileable with our previous knowledge. A trial, however, is worth a thousand pages of argument. Homceopathy is not merely an ingenious system which you must take on credit. Here is no room for mistake. If the result of a few experiments, tried fairly according to Hahnemann's plan, and following his directions literally, be not satisfactory, the theory is not true. OF HOMCEOPATHY. 113 CHAPTER VIII. DOS E--DILUTION--DYNAMIZATION. IE who sees sundry grains of a certain medicine swallowed without any inconvenience, cannot bring his mind to believe that any preparation can excite such energy in that medicine as to make a very minute fraction of a grain of it sufficient for all medical purposes. There are several circumstances however, connected with the subject, which should be previously taken into consideration, which might tend to convince us that under IIomoeopathic treatment, very small doses even of unprepared medicines ought to produce effects on the organism. In the first place, the medicines of ordinary practice are scarcely ever exhibited pure and simple: and who can tell what is the effect of mixing together substances whose properties are not completely known? The antidote is possibly very often taken simultaneously with the poison; camphor and opium, for instance, are found in the same recipe, the one being almost a complete antidote of the other in most of its effects. In no case, however, is it likely that any single medicament could exert all its proper action on the organism, when others are mixed with it whose compound action must disturb, if not destroy the immediate action of any single one. In the next place, the diet of IIomoeopathy is such as to 114 A POPULAR VIEW preclude the possibility of any interruption from substances which exert any medicinal action. All raw vegetable juices, all spices, all essences, all odours, all prefumes, all theiform infusions, all that can by any possibility be supposed to exercise the slightest influence over the organism are strictly and rigorously excluded; so that the pure simple medicament may have the whole control over it, and be at liberty to act unfettered and undisturbed; and, at the same time, all mental exertion, or any shock that can in any way interfere with or divert the action of the medicament, is scrupulously avoided. How different all this is to the smelling salts and camphor, and eau de Cologne, and chlorides, and hot tea, which, right or wrong, are ordinarily permitted, no one can fail to observe; nor can any one doubt that when every interference is so carefully prevented, the one only substance which is allowed to act must act with inconceivably more energy, than when every breath the patient draws diffuses over the system a power capable of disturbing its operation, and every mouthful swallowed admits, if not an enemy, what at least cannot but be a very troublesome ally. In the third place, the principle which animates the body rises up in rebellion against a violent attack; thus, when a large dose is administered, nature is roused to reject the intruder altogether and immediately. Hence abundant evacuations of all sorts, caused by the size of the dose, which evacuations dissipate and carry off the virtues of the medicament. Vomitting, diarrhoea, bleeding at the nose, &c. salivations, convulsions, fever, are the modes in which these violent intruders are violently expelled: while a minute dose is left to act slowly, gently, and undisturbed OF 110MCEOPATHY.15 115 on the organism, and thus to produce without excitement all that kindly influence which is soon cut short, if the dose be increased, by a storm of reaction, in which all the individual and peculiar symptoms of the medicament are lost in inextricable confusion. Lastly, we must refer once more to the principle before mentioned, namely, that the doses of Ilamceopathy are destined to act on that part of the organism which is already affected; while in every other system of medicine they are given with the intention of exciting a disease in a part which is perfectly sound. Let it not be thought that little stress should be laid on this practice of administering medicaments to act on an already affected part of the organism. Neither slight nor trivial is the difference between the two modes. A blow, for instance, which would inflict very little pain if a sound part of the body were struck, would cause great agony if it fell on a festered finger. You may catch a cricket-ball in a sound hand, while when it is scalded or bruised you can scarcely bear the gentlest air of a summer evening to come into contact with it. Let a horse be unhurt, and you may rub his hide with an iron curry-comb-touch but with your finger the shoulder which has been galled by the saddle, and the poor thing will shiver from the mane to the fetlock joint. The eye that can steadfastly watch the lark half way up to heaven when uninjured, cannot bear the irritation caused by a chamber lamp, when it is inflamed, He who can at one time hear undisturbed the crash of battle, or heaven's artillery thunder in the skies, let him lie under the power of a fever, and the lightest tread of an attendant in the sick-room, a step that could scarcely bend down the hair bell, shall suffice to 116 A POPULAR VIEW kindle madness in him. Why multiply instances which all have so many opportunities of witnessing? It is abundantly clear that very little doubt ought to be entertained as to the powers of medicaments, destined as they are in Homoeopathic practice to act in a totally different manner from any thing that we have been hitherto accustomed to. The aggravation desired is infinitesimal, so of course should be the doses. Taking into the account all the reasons for their excessive diminution which we have here collected together, we shall certainly no longer wonder at the minute doses which experience has taught are absolutely necessary if the cure is to be gentle, and kindly, and undisturbed. But this is not all. We have been arguing hitherto on the supposition that the mode of preparation of Homceopathic pharmacy was the same as that adopted in ordinary practice. We have not yet mentioned the molecular friction which each medicament has to undergo previous to its final attenuation. I remember once long ago attending a lecture with a great many others, and feeling all at once a shock go through me that jarred the very joints of my bones and seemed as if it had struck my teeth deeper into their sockets. At the same instant of time, (for we had been directed to form a continuous chain,) every head in the room seemed as if struck by an invisible club, and two or three score of lusty frames were convulsed by some uncontrollable force which shook the limbs of vigorous one-and-twenty, as if they had been doing battle with three score years and ten. All this storm was conjured up by rubbing a cylinder of glass. Will any one who knows all this (and what child does not know it) pretend to say beforehand, that it is OF HOM(EOPATHY. 117 impossible by friction to excite a force which shall act on the human organism? All we assert respecting the medicaments of I[omncopathy is, that some force has been excited by the treatment they have undergone, which can, and will, and does, under certain circumstances, act strongly on the dynamic principle of life. The supposition that the dose is material has been apparently the chief source of all the disbelief in its power. Allopathy has in fact so drilled the belief of materiality into us that we are unable to conceive dynamic action. Not satisfied with doses which are certainly material enough, a material orgin has been assigned to disease also, and nothing is permitted to have the power of acting on the organism excepting that which possesses solidity and substance. But that in the preparations of IIomceopathy, a peculiar and especial medicinal force is developed by friction, is rendered probable by several considerations. In the first place, many substances, such as metallic gold, metallic silver, platina, &c. when pounded for some time with a neutral excipient, acquire a very powerful action on the animal economy. Some again, as silica, charcoal, lycopodium, and more especially alumine, acquire a force, increasing with the denominator of the fraction which expresses the degree of dynamization. The idea of division into parts is a mistake; you do not really divide the grain of medicine into 1-100ths, or 1-O00000ths; you develope a new power, and disperse it over so many consecutive portions of sugar of milk. The experiments of Korsakoff, moreover, seem completely to decide the question as to the materiality of the medicament. lie carried the dynamization through 1500 consecutive processes, so that the last contained of the L OF HOMCEOPATHY. 119 read, amongst other things, the Gulstonian Lectures for 1834, by Dr. George Burrows,* from which the following instance of the power of minute doses is taken. "M. Verniere poisoned an animal with the nux vomica, and having taken a portion of its blood, he injected it into the veins of another animal, which perished with the usual effects of that poison." * There are some remarks on IHomceopathy in these lectures by Dr. Burrows which must not be passed over without notice. After having asserted that the Homcoopathic doctrines of Hahnemann have been at once rejected as absured by practitioners in this country (what without any ENQUIRY at all, Dr. Burrows? They surely DARE not trifle thus with lives) on account of the impossibility of any efficacy in the minute dose recommended by that physician, he ventures to hint that " the theory of IIahnemann cannot be regarded so visionary as it appears at first sight," and proceeds to clear himself immediately from even the bare suspicion of being an Hlomeopathist. Now I ask this gentleman, why, instead of talking and arguing about the matter, he did not settle the question at once, by taking himself some of Hahnemann's preparations? Is it by words that these matters are to be decided? Ie acknowledges that he saw the system tried in 1828, and yet in 1834 lie has only to " think" and "( suppose" about the power of the minute doses? Is this the way in which enlightened physicians pronounce on the truth or falsehood of systems? Pudet hle opprobria nobis, Et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli. But truly delighted I am to read such words as these,-(These observations may therefore render it probable that much smaller doses than practitioners in general are in the habit] of employing in this country, when administered judiciously, may produce effects far beyond what is commonly believed." Thus much at least we owe to Hahnemann. It will notbe many years perhaps before the whole of his splendid truths are acknowledged. At present the immovable " Baconian principles," of great doses are, it seems, about to give place to the no less Baconian principles which prove great doses unnecessary. 120 A POPULAR VIEW What quantity of matter is it which taken on the point of a lancet from a patient suffering under the small pox will rouse into violent action the whole organism of the strongest person who is but pricked with it? What is the weight of the venom which runs down the rattle-snake's fang and rapidly extinguishes life? How many ounces or drachms are poured into the circulation, when the mad dog's tooth razes the cuticle, and throws sinews of iron and thews of brass into horrible convulsions, until death puts a stop to the misery of the poor sufferer?* I have seen one or two cases in which Homceopathy has not produced the expected benefit. Who wonders at it? The science is in its infancy,f and no one tries its power excepting those who, having previously tried everything else, can get no relief, No one comes to it until he despairs of cure. I have also seen one case in which the doses of IHomaeopathy were not felt. But I have seen Lycopodium X. produce effects too strong to be mistaken, especially on the 'moral.' I have seen Nux Vom. at one of the last attenuations, redden the external angle of the left eye (Vid. Mat. Med. Symp. 137). I have seen Conium, under the same circumstances, increase the sense of smell so as to render a well stopped bottle of lavender-water very preceptible in the room. I * It must not be forgotten that the medicines of Homoeopathy are laid on the tongue and left in contact with the nerves of the papille, instead of being swallowed. In all probability this mode of affecting the system is much more efficacious than the latter. f The science is in its infancy, it is true-but it is the infancy of Hercules strangling serpents in his cradle-or rather of Minerva issuing in full panoply from the Thunderer's brow. Strangely-visited people The mere despair of surgery he cures! OF HOM(EOPATHY. 121 have seen Belladonna X. fill the left cheek with the deep red blotches so peculiar to it, and this over and over again (it was given as a prophylactic); and in these, and many other cases, the patients had not the slightest idea of what they were taking. I have taken the Ilomceopathic preparations myself, both in sickness and for the sake of experiment when in perfect health, many times. I have felt Belladonna X. aggravate an ulcer, severely. I have felt Thuja X. excite very disagreeable symptoms. I have watched the effects of Nitric Acid X. and observed its consecutive effects beyond the time mentioned in the Materia Medica. I have tried the preparations at all times and under all circumstances of sickness and health, sometimes when I did not know what I took, sometimes when I did know, sometimes when I had no idea of the peculiar pathogenetic action, and sometimes when I had studied it beforehand in the Materia Medica, and I am at this moment suffering under the action of two Globules Dulcamara II. taken for amusement. It is beautiful and well worth the suffering, to watch the characteristic symptoms of a medicament appearing one after another, distinct, and clear, and decisive, and after a time retiring and leaving the organism perfectly free from the slightest trace of the little storm which had been passing over it,-to mark the extreme accuracy of the descriptions of Hahnemann and at times to experience new sensations which have escaped him. But why mention all this? Who will believe me? They will not believe Hahnemann himself. How should I except to be believed? lie who is unable to preceive the light of the sun at abroad noon is not likely to detect the faint glimmer of an humble satellite. OF HOM(EOPATHY, 125 to country, until at length in the little territory of Anhalt Kothen he found a resting place-in its reigning duke a protector. It will be sufficient to say, that, wherever he went, he found admirers and made disciples. His early associates and fellow labourers Stapf and Gross and a few others, settled in various parts of Germany had began to disseminate his doctrines; maniy successful cases at last excited attention, and at length the doctrines of the great reformer were carried beyond the bounds of Germany to other lands and other tongues. Italy seems to have been the foremost to receive the light, Dr. Necher, who had been cured by Hahnemann himself of a dangerous disease of the lungs, studied the principles of the science which had saved his life, and returned to Naples to repeat on others the successful treatment he himself had experienced:' nor was it long before, attracted by the splendid novelty, Dr. Iloratiis and several other practitioners, after a series of careful experiments, gave in their adhesion to the new doctrines. It was not at all probable that" fair but fallen Italy," contaminated by the curse of Austrian proximity, and unreluctant in her fetters, would admit. the smallest spark of light without emulating her German ally in eagerness to quench it. The reception HIomoeopathy met with in Naples was such as might have been predicted from medical ignorance flourishing under Austrian influence: but the ray issued from " the lamps of fire burning before the throne of God;" and man, though backed by Neapolitan craft inspired by the diplomacy of Metternich, availed not to extinguish it: it spread gradually and not unpersecuted from Naples over the whole of the Italian states. 126 A POPULAR VIEW In the year 1824, Bigel, the chief physician of the Grand Duke Constantine, accompanied to the baths of Ems the Duchess and her family; on their return they spent some time at Dresden, in which city Homoeopathy had at that time a few warm partizans. Attracted by the conflict between the advocates of the new and old systems, which had made much noise and excited considerable attention, he resolved to spend the leisure time afforded him by his accidental sojourn in the Saxon metropolis in investigating the question he found so acrimoniously litigated. " Je lus (he says) Hahnemann et ses adversaires avec la froide impartialit6 d'un homme qui cherche la verite; "-like every other individual without one single known exception who has done the same, the sceptic became a convert-the convert a partizan. He studied Hahnemann and renounced his own practice, and that renunciation he followed up by publishing in 1827 in his native tongue (French) a work in three volumes in which he zealously advocated and recommended to his countrymen the doctrines he himself had adopted. Bigel however published this work at Warsaw, where he resided. Few copies of it, if any, reached Paris, and in what is called the capital of the civilized world, the world's latest blessing was still " a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." About the same time however, Des Guidi, a practitioner of Lyons, whose lady had been for many years subject to a dangerous complaint for which the resources of the ordinary system furnished no relief, had carried her to Italy in the hope of restoring, by means of change of air and scene, that health which was beyond the reach of art. It is surely very singular that medical men do not entertain OF HOM~EOPATHIY, 2 127 some slight suspicion of the imperfection of their practice when they resort to nature to cure those diseases against which all their knowledge and all the stores at their disposal are ineffectual. Of how little value must his advice be, whose skill, with all appliances and means to boot, cannot restore that health which a few draughts of fresh air, at a few leagues of distance, are empowered to give back. There must be some fundamental mistake in the science which leads to results so little in accordance with common reason. While Des Guidi was in Italy his wife experienced a new and sudden attack of illness worse than those under which she had previously suffered. He called in several brother practitioners who prescribed secundum. artem, and left the patient worse than they found her. Hope had fled. Before the united forces of the disease and the remedies had destroyed the sufferer, one of Des Guidi's old companions, when they studied medicine in their youth, drew him aside, and earnestly pressed on him a trial of the new system of Ilahnemann: what could he do? his wife was perishing: her medical attendants gave her no hopes: and his own longY and extensive practice had taught him, that all had been tried which afforded any probability of saving her. In a fortunate hour he listened to his friend, and ere a few weeks had elapsed, Madame Des Guidi was rescued from the brink of the grave, and restored to a state of health which she had not known for many years. Struck by the extraordinary results he had witnesssed, the French practitioner hastened to make himself acquainted with the new system which had done so great things for him. Ilie proceeded forthwith to Naples, and there, under OF HOM(EOPATHY. 129 appear, than an unaccountable and uncontrolable impulse seems to have been communicated to the nation. Translation followed translation as fast as the press could supply them. New converts gave in their adherence, new journals sprung up to defend the so long despised system. And from that time, until the present hour, the progress of Homceopathy has been one uninterrupted triumph over old prejudices, cherished opinions, and mighty interests. We have thus traced this splendid science in its progress from a small town in Saxony over much of the civilized world. Had mankind preferred truth to profit, we should not have had to lament over so much unworthy opposition, so much disgraceful treatment. Yet has it advanced-yet has it flourished-Herring has gathered round him, in the cities of America, a large and prosperous school of disciples, and here too, true or false, "it is come up into our windows and entered into our PALACES" for "Princes have become its nursing fathers and QUEENS its nursing mothers." It is rather more than thirty-five years since Hahnemann published the first work properly on the subject of Homceopathy, but it was not until the year 1822 that any considerable impulse was given to his system. In that year Stapf commenced his "Archives;" the first periodical work devoted to the subject. The amazing progress which it has made in the fourteen years that have elapsed since then, may be judged of by the fact that there were forty warmest advocates of Homceopathy in Paris, upbraiding the Germans for employing their own language. He complains ridiculously enough of the ", Esprit de nationalite qui a conduit les Allemands k n'ecrire que dans leur langue." V. Arch. Vol. 2, P. 134. M 130 A POPULAR VIEW works advocating Homceopathy published in Germany in the course of the last year only. Eight periodical publications in the German language alone are dedicated to the propagation of it, and another is about to appear, if it has not already done so. Another is published at Geneva, another at Paris, another at Dijon, and one if not two!in America. In the Grand Duchy of Baden, where a few years ago, there was but one Homoeopath, there are at present forty. It is advancing we are told in Wurtemberg. A course of lectures on the subject has been given for three years at the University of Munich. A professorship of Homoeopathy has been established at Erlangen. In Vienna there are many, probably not less than forty, Homoeopaths. The government of Saxe Meiningen has given directions to the druggists to prepare Homceopathic medicines. The States of Hesse have pronounced in its favour. In Saxony, Silesia, Westphalia, Prussia, Hamburgh, Brunswick, Hanover, Mecklenberg, the new doctrines are ably taught and practiced. On the 10th August, 1829, when the jubilee of the great Hahnemann was kept at Leipzig, the first Homceopathic Society was founded at that town: there are at present six or seven similar societies in Germany. Peschier and Dufresne have kindled the beacon on the mountains of Switzerland, and in most towns of that country, Bile, Fribourg, Berne, Lausanne, Vevey, Aubonne, Martigny, &c., as well as in Savoy, and Turin, the new doctrine possesses adherents and is rapidly gaining ground in public favour. In the kingdom of Naples there are at least eighteen Homceopaths (probably more) one of whom is the president of the Academy of Medicine and first surgeon of the Military Hospital, another physician to the Queen, OF HOM(EOPATHY. 131 another a professor at the University, another physician to the Hospital of Invalids, another first physician to the army, another inspector in chief of the Civil and Military, Hospitals. In Rome there are four; in the states of the Pope nine; in the duchy of Lucca two.* In Paris, however, the state of Homceopathy is such as to furnish its admirers with the brightest promises of success. The wanton and ill-judged attack of the Academie, an attack altogether unsuited to the age and the place, has had the effect of drawing forth in defence of the prescribed doctrines talents which might else have remained in obscurity. There is now an Homceopathic Institute in that city, besides a numerous and widely extended society devoted to the promulgation of Homoeopathy. Three, if not four, hospitals in various cities are under the care of men who have embraced it; and amongst those who have lately stood forth as its warmest partizans may be mentioned Dr. Mabit, surgeon to the Hospital St. Andr6 at Bordeaux, who in a late work, relative to the decision of the Academie, has given an interesting account of the mode in which he was * In the Empire of Russia, too, it is said to be advancing since the death of some very Russian Russian, "t a terrible man with a terrible name" probably, who being chief physician to the Emperor Nicolas, aped his master, and put down truth as he puts down right. Now its advance in Russia may be fairly doubted. Is it not truth 1 is it not merciful? is it not fraught with good to man? I see no reason at all to believe in its progress in a country where the mind is chained and the body beaten. The Allopaths deny its progress there, and probably they are right. Allopathy is the science for the destroyer of Poland. If he ever reads (but tyrants don't read) it is not likely that lessons of mercy should find favour in his sight. OF HOMOEOPATIIY. 133 numbers already more than FIVE HUNDRED practitioners, all regularly bred medical men, all converts from some one or other of the endless sects of Allopathy, should have been promulgated, going on for half a century, and during the whole course of its existence been litigated, furiously opposed, sifted and riddled by the bitterest animosity, and winnowed by the acutest talents, and in spite of forty years of fury and forty thousand foes " flourish at this very time like a palm tree, and spread abroad like a cedar in Libanus," that all this should take place at our very doors, and that of all the well-bred and elegantly-smiling physicians of the metropolis NOT ONE ever heard of it, or if he did hear of it, vouchsafed an instant of his time to examine into it, Turn thy complexion there Patience, thou young and rose-lipped Cherubim! "But"-if I may dare with reverence to use the words, " But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of they SHALL see: and they that have not heard SHALL understand." It requires but moderate skill in divination to foretel that ere long the subject of Homoeopathy will occupy the attention of the medical men of this island throughout its length and breadth. The dawn of a better time is hastening on -already Jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top. And if the career of IIomccopathy in this country may be in any degree prognosticated from that which it has run in 134 A POPULAR VIEW France, we may safely predict that no sooner shall the Materia Medica appear in an English translation, than many will be found eager to wipe off the stain that the drowsy negligence of the Profession has cast on the fair fame of England. The Homceopathic Society which will probably be soon established in London, and the Homceopathic Journal which it is in contemplation to publish, will assist in troubling the placid doze of those who are far deafer than the deaf adder, because "hearing, they WILL NOT HEAR." Six times in succession did the prophet send his servant to the top of Mount Carmel to look towards the sea, and six times he went up and looked and said " there is nothing;" nor was it until the seventh time that he returned with words of better augury. The prophet's heart must have throbbed with strong emotions as he heard the tidings; for little though the speck upon the bright serene of the summer sky, he knew that it would soon dilate over the whole expanse, and pour down plenty on his country. Long, and not without anxiety, have they who early adopted the opinions of Hahnemann waited for some sign, however slight, of the coming blessing-a blessing which differs from that which Elijah waited for by how much the world exceeds Judaea, or " the life is more than meat." Humble as has been our task, and humbly as it has been fulfilled, let a natural feeling of exultation be forgiven us when at length it is in our power to say, " BEHOLD, THERE ARISETH OUT OF THE SEA A LITTLE CLOUD LIKE A MAN'S HAND!" OF HOM(EOPATHY. 135 EDITOR'S ANNOTATIONS. Our first impulse in perusing this sparkling sketch, which is six years behind the present brilliant position of Homceopathia, was to omit it altogether in the present publication and to substitute," THE PRESENT STATE OF HOMEOPA1THIA IN EUROPE," which is to be found in the Appendix. But as an admirer of all our fearless English apostle has written, I felt I was not justified in depriving the community of the smallest tithe of his truth-telling composition. All the advances the sys. tern has obtained in Europe, since 1836, are to be found recorded in the paper of the Appendix just alluded to; and I regret exceedingly that my immediate and pressing avocations impinge a long cherished design of giving a similar apercu of the State of Homceopathia in America. As it is, I beg leave to refer to an allusion to the American history of the system made by our Author:--( The Faculty of Medicine of New York have named Hahnemann an honorary member of their body." This compliment of nine years standing was conferred, not by the Faculty of Medicine of New York, which is a misnomer, but by THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF THE CITY AND COUNTY of NEW YORK, an as. sociation composed of all the legal Allopathic practitioners for this large community. This act illustrates a most interesting feature of our humanity, in showing, as it does, that even the members of the Medical as well as of the other professions, when their interests remain undisturbed and their avarice or ambition rests unmolested, can freely render just homage to the eminent in science, however great their variance in matters of opinion. The official documents of this transaction of the society, alike creditable to all parties concerned, are worthy of preservation, and we take pleasure in recording the following copy of them: SAMUEL I HAHNEMANN, M. D., Sir:-I take great pleasure in transmiting to you the inclosed Diploma of honorary membership in the Medical Society of this city. After a year spent in acquiring some knowledge of the German language for the purpose of studying the science of medicine, anew with I 136 A POPULAR VIEW serious earnest, I began [in 1827] to apply myself with zeal to Homoeopathia. I can assure you, venerable Sir, that this little research has repaid me abundantly for the labour it has cost me, and that I esteem it the highest happiness of my life to be able to treat disease according to the only truly scientific method. Under the firm conviction that you are the father of Therapia, and therefore most worthy of professional honours, I proposed your name for the Diploma herewith transmitted, and shall be extremely happy to hear that the document has reached its destination. Permit me, Sir, to subscribe myself, with profound respect, your disciple and obedient servant. JOHN F. GRAY, M. D. New York, April 6th, 1833. THE DIPLOMA. SOCIETAS MEDICA CIVITATIS NOVI EBORACI ATQUE COMITATUS9 OMNIBUS HAS LITERAS PERLECTURIS, SALUTEM. Virum Probum et Ornatissimum Dominum Samuelem Hahnemann, Auctorem Homceopathie, quem fama promit scientiarum medicinae et chirurgiae cultorem, liberalium honoribus artium provectum, placuit nobis Praesidi caeterisque Sociis hujusce Comitatus Concil. Med. Facultatis, Socium constituere Honorarium; atque auctoritatem ei donare privilegia et immunitates ad nostras Medicae Facultaties quae pertinent; ubique terrarum dextra et honore amplectendum. In quorum fidem hae literae pro Emerito Socio Doctore Hahnemann manibus sigiloque Archiatrum munitae lubentissime mandantur. Medicis Aedibus Novi Eboraci, A. 1833. DANIEL L. PEIXOTTE, M. D., Praeses, FRANCIS W WALSH, M. D., Scriba. SAMUEL AKERLY, M. D., Facultatis Scriba, (L. S.) OF HOMWEOPATHV. 137 HAHNEMANN 'S ANSWER TO THE LETTER OF DR. J. F. GRAY, ACCOMPANYING THE DIPLOMA, IS AS FOLLOWS: LIEBER HERR COLLEGE: Sie haben mir durch diess ehrenvolle Zeichen der anerkennung ineines Strebens, eine milde und wahre Heilung kranker Menschen statt der bisherigen, verderblichen Cur Methoden in die Welt einzufhlren, viel Vergnfigen gemacht, und ich finde mich vorzfiglich geehrt durch die Mitgliederschaft solcher Maenner aus dem, unserm Europa zum Muster dienenden Nord America, die aus reinem Eifer Zum Menschenwohl der uralten, allgemein herrschenden, wenig Nachdenken bedurfenden Cur Methode entsagen und dagegen die neue, richtig befolgt bei Weitem mehr Mf:he und Uberlegung fordernde, und dazu wohi noch bitter verfolgte Homceopathick zu ihrer Behandlung der krankheiten vorziehn, als achte Menschenfreunde. Der allgfitige Vater der Menschen, welcher uns diese Heilkunst schenkte seegne Jhre redlichen Bomuhungen! Diess schribA mit Liebe, Jhr ergebenster, SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. Kothen der, 17 Jul., 1833. I 138 A POPULAR VIEW CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION. I HAVE been told that this ephemeral production will excite the indignation of the medical profession. If by indignation be meant a determination to put down, by experiments, such a mere " picker up of crumbs" as the writer, and to prove that whatever Homoeopathy may be on paper it fails in practice, then sincerely do I hope that this book of humble pretensions, and yet humbler execution, may excite that feeling. Alas! I fear it will excite no such thing. It will fall into the hands of few-and in those few it will awaken dignified contempt, or the pity which palmy science vouchsafes to benighted ignorance. The millennium of a good practice requires a ruder shock to disturb it than can be given by the mere brutum fulmen of words. Yet, in case there should be those who feel sufficient interest in this trifle to get angry with it, I will take the liberty of addressing to such a few words ere my task be done and my theme die into an echo. Who has not visited some splendid emporium of jewelry -Hamlet's, for instance, or Ruddell's, where magnificence seems cradled as if in her own peculiar home? Heaped round in prodigal confusion lie fretted gold and bossed silver, chased chalices, burnished urns that outshine the sunWedges of gold,-heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered I 140 A POPULAR VIEW cage, when the indomitable old man is sent forth to bare his white head before a foreign throne, and beg an asylum against those whose wretched gains would have been shorn if truth were permitted to stand? I do thank God most heartily, for this one pure flame, which, like a lamp in a sepulchre, burns ever brightly amidst the corruption of human nature; for this one gallant and chivalrous feeling which prompts even the bedridden to side with the oppressed. In Albion, at least, there is not a stone that would not cry out of the wall, or a beam in the timber that would hold its peace, at an instance of oppression. If Homceopathy be an error, they of Brunswick and they of Leipzig have sent it over the world, as if the dun deer's hide had been bound on the feet of the messenger. And if you, gentlemen, would make it prosper here faster than it ought to do, only use personalities instead of arguments,,and ere long you will find the shadow of it glooming on your own hearth-stone. But if you are really desirous of putting it down, permit me to furnish you with a sword of etherial temper, before whose edge no error can standthe only weapon which will effect the end you wish. "You have it in your power to give Homceopathy her death blow. Take cases of disease one after anotherdescribe them according to the instructions given in the Organon-paint the totality of the preceptible symptoms of each so well that the author of Homceopathy himself could not complain of the want of precision in the picture-and (supposing that these are cases whose symptoms are found among the pthogenetic effects of any of these medicaments already tried) choose that medicament which, homceopathically speaking, is best suited to each case; give it OF HOM(EOPATHY. 141 alone, uncompounded, in such weak doses (so prepared) as the doctrine prescribes, keeping the patients carefully out of the reach of every medicinal influence; and if the diseases be not cured quickly, gently, and permanently, relate the whole number of cases, and cover Ilomoeopathy with disgrace, by proclaiming the want of success of treatment adopted rigorously after its principles." Until this be done, you must not wonder if men of all sorts delight to gird at you, and even such an one as I am take up a taunting parable against you. The cures which have been received under, if not performed by, Homoeopathy, are no longer denied. Yourselves do not venture to question them. Probably, however, you have been so long accustomed to see diseases defy medicine, that you attribute those cures to the agency of the same causes which you have not shunned to invoke to assist your own imperfect art. You attribute them, in the first place, to the mere effort of nature, unaided by medicine. Homceopathy you assure us is nothing more than "Medecine expectante."-Do not, gentlemen, permit a whisper of such a nature to escape beyond the hallowed precincts of Apothecaries Hall; reveal not to the uninitiated these more than Eleusinian mysteries; let not your hostility to the new system hurry you into the imprudent assertion that coloured water and bread pills are employed by yourselves as auxiliaries, and with success. Will not the paying public be led inevitably to ask why that success should be so costly? If, however, what you say be true; if what you who have never studied Iomoeopathy pronounce, be true, and what those who have studied it assert, be erroneous; if N 142 A POPULAR VIEW those who have dedicated years of their lives to it are wrong, those who never dedicated an instant to it are right, and all Hahnemann's arduous toils bring forth nothing but this " ridiculous mouse,"-that the medicines of Homceopathy are absolutely non-existent, why do you repudiate it so fiercely? It is nothing, in that case, but a branch of your own trade. According to your own showing, refractory diseases are to be coaxed and wheedled away by shadowy pills and visionary draughts. If this be Hahnemann's system too, every syllable of abuse you direct against it takes effect upon yourselves. He and his followers do not at least profess " medicine expectante." In the second place, admitting what probably you do not wish, certainly you are not able, to deny, the cures of Homceopathy; in the absence of all information on the subject, you determine to set them down to the score of imagination. Indeed? Well, gentlemen, why do you not adopt so very efficacious and pleasant a practice? You may possibly be wedded to your own theories, but we have no wish for the honours of medical martyrdom. Pray adhere to what theories you please, provided only that you practise that which will effect a cure in the shortest, pleasantest, and safest manner. Will you permit us to call your attention to a few words, which are not void of reason, and will perhaps find grace in your eyes as belonging to a past century. " Si M. (Hahnemann) n'avait d'autre secret que celui de faire agir l'imagination efficacement pour la sant6, n'en aurait-il pas toujours un bien merveilleux? car si LA MEDECINE D'IMAGINATION etait la meilleure,pourquoi ne ferions-nous pas la medecine d'imagination?" Whether there be much of the wisdom of the serpent OF HOM(EOPATHY. 143 in thus laying bare the sources from which much of the success which attends your exertions has sprung-whether it be prudent to permit your antipathy to the new doctrines to lead you to reveal the agents you employ, by pointing out the powers of unaided nature and the imagination as sufficient to account for all the surprising cures we hear of, is a question for yourselves rather than for us. But we shall all unite, I conceive, in convicting of the most heinous folly those most unreflecting few who impute to the diet required in Ilomeopathy the cures they cannot otherwise explain. If diet will cure consumption, scrofula, dropsy, angina and the myriad complaints for which all your learning and all your blue and red mixtures can do nothing-in the name of common sense, gentlemen, who will pay for being purged? No, gentlemen, even on your authority we will not believe, not only that physic is utterly useless, but that you know it to be so. Whatever we in our ignorance may think of "the potions and the motions," it is impossible that you should believe mere diet to be superior to them all. Publish it not in Askalon! Why, we can diet ourselves! You accuse the advocates of Homoeopathy of credulity. And yet, gentlemen, all who have been converted to that system belong to one of two classes: the medical men who have effected the restoration of patients, or the patients whose restoration has been effected. What other evidence do you rely on for the truth of your own doctrines? Or are your patients alone right when they assert themselves to have received benefit, and all those who eschew purgation obstinate resolutes who are not competent to judge of their own feelings? OF HOM(EOPATIIY. 145 abundant evidence of the truth of the assertion. If any one of them, however, contains a line unbecoming a gentleman, or a thought unsuited to a christian, the writer of it would be the first to tear it out if he knew which was defiled by them. Not thus is the dignity of science sustained, not thus is the cause of truth advanced. If he has endeavoured to make more widely known that which he believes to be true, he cannot think the intention is deserving of blame, however inadequate the execution. If he believes that there is a specific for the Cholera, for instance, ought he to keep silence, when every death that has been caused by it is nothing else than pure homicide, if Homceopathy be true? Ought he to hear medical men professing fairly their inability to deal with the destroyer, and yet keep silence? Ought he again to see case after cases of various diseases happening under his own eyethose cured whom even affection had ceased to hope forand yet keep silence? Ought he to mark the light of a great blessing gilding the rivers and plains of Germany, quivering on the hill tops of France and Italy, reflecting to the banks of the Hudson, and purifying even the marshes of Surinam, and beautiful England ALONE overshadowedthe white cliffs of England ALONE lying in the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death, and yet keep silence? Let it be forgiven him, if he expresses a doubt whether medical men in general are properly sensible of the dignity of the office they have undertaken. How proudly ought be to hold his head, who has bent his energies of mind and body to diminish suffering, and who shall be put in competition with him? Tell us not of names and titles, stars and ribbands, the mere gold-dust with which man loves to I 146 A POPULAR VIEW spangle mortality in order to hide its true complexion-talk not to us of the silken drones who waste their sickly lives in the sleek toil of living-refer us not to the crooked knaveries of little great men, pawning duties in life and hopes in death to aggrandize their littleness by a ball on the coronet or a belt round the knee. He who would see man on his noblest errand-man, on whom the spirits of the wise, as they sit in the clouds, might condescend to gaze without mocking us, must follow the man of healing on his daily rounds. Glitter and gilding, satin draperies, and intertissued robes of gold and pearl-pride spanieled to the heels by servile insolence, or lackeyed by knee-crooking slaves who would rather feed in the dust on scraps and orts than wrap themselves in virtue and stand upright-how should "kindly dews" fall on such nothingness as this? But the stars in their courses might well rain doubly sacred influence on him whose business it is to restore health, whose daily bread is won by dispensing happiness. March on in proud humility, Vicegerent of Blessing, for sure an approving smile must gild the onward path of him whose brother was "sick, and he visited him." If a grateful nation garlanded with oak the brows of him who saved a citizen, of what civic crown should he be thought worthy whose life is a career of such actions? But never be it forgotten, that if the charge of the health of his fellow creature be thus noble, it is at the same time one of the most solemn, with one only exception, the most solemn duty that man can undertake. Before it most of the ordinary duties and offices of life fade into insignificance. "The Vicar of the All-powerful to create anew to a certain extent the existence of his fellow creature OF IOM(EOPATHY. 147 destroyed by disease," or, if we shrink from the energy of IHahnemann's language, charged by his Maker with the superintendence and right use of those means which he has provided to alter, modify, and amend the jarring movements of the human frame, it is no ordinary responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the physician. On the accuracy of his knowledge and the correctness of his principles depend perhaps a father's happiness, a mother's hopes, the support of infants, the enjoyment of a wide circle, the prosperity of a neighbourhood, the liberties of a people perhaps, perhaps the peace of the world; yea, haply the opportunity of repentance. If such a man, so loaded with onerous duties, with such grave responsibilities, and such solemn consequences depending on him, were well aware of the nature of his office, he would shrink from the notion that he had already exhausted all information on the subject of healing; he would doubt his own powers; he would distrust his own judgment; he would weary Heaven with prayers for light and knowledge; he would deem it criminal to waste in indolent acquiescence an hour that might have been employed in investigation, and a sin against the majesty of Heaven to reject one single assertion connected with the science of healing until he had convinced himself, by actual trial, of its falsehood. The four winds would bring him tidings of all new-discovered simples; and not a finger-ache could be cured above the line of perpetual snow, but like Fine-ear in the tale, he would catch the whisper of it along the earth. But woe thrice doubled to him who is wise in his own eyes; who, knowing that a perfect and complete system claims attention on account of the multitude of its cures, a 150 A POPULAR VIEW glorious head above the clouds. Humanity would have gained; and the profession would have deserved and acquired fresh confidence and increasing respect; the "ignotum" would not have been mystified into the "magnificum;" and never would the presumptuous step of an intruder have dared to desecrate the vestibule of the temple of Esculapius if thus centinelled by Vigilance. Then indeed we should have lost one of our most plausible arguments, that no experiments have been given, because none can be given. The pamphlet originally intended has swelled into a volume. May its motive excuse its feebleness. That's in good truth a perilous shot out of a popgun that a poor and private displeasure can do against a whole profession of men of genius! I might as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather! But though this is but the slight ripple split upon the beach, let it be a warning, that far out at sea the waters are heaving with the storm. The full tide is coming in, and the tenth wave of medical improvement will ere long lift its threatening crest, and pour its flood of waters at the feet of those who would set bars and doors to it, and say, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no father; and here shalt thy proud waves be stayed. And let us pray that come it may, As COME IT WILL for all that! Sincerely do I entreat pardon of any whom these slight pages may have offended. With convictions like mine, it is not easy to dip the pen in milk and honey; and he who OF HOM(EOPATHY. 151 would not kindle with such a theme is troubled with few of the sympathies of human nature. I believed, and THEREFORE have I spoken. Would only that the sincerity of that belief rmay convince the profession that, right or wrong, Homceopathy has pervaded the whole of society, is throbbing at the extremities as well as at the heart, is curling the stream as well as crisping the fountain. The lighter the straw the better does it answer the purpose of showing which way the wind blows. Nor will even this attempt be destitute of value, if medical men shall look on it as a mere Weed Torn from the rock on ocean's foam to sail, as a mere bubble borne on the tide of opinion, but nevertheless serving as well as if it were of solider materials to indicate to what point that tide is setting. 5 153 DR. GRAYS ESSAYS. 1. DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL TO STUDY BOTH S YSTEMS. WE contend that physicians of both schools are under the strongest possible obligation to examine the rules of practice from which they habitually dissent, with an attentive and tolerant spirit, not only because such study produces greater circumspection in the care and cure of the sick, but because it promotes the progress of truth and sound conciliation. In the records and theoretic writings of both schools there certainly is much error, but assuredly also a great deal of truth, and the sooner a catholic eclecticism inspires both parties, the better for mankind at large and for the true honour of the medical profession. It is not true that the Homoeopathic method is inert or fanciful, or quackery,.or an imposture, as is gravely asserted by writers of the old school; on the other hand, it is not true that the thousand methods pursued hitherto, are all " totally depraved," void of good results, and to be instantly and wholly abandoned, as is affirmed by many of the new school. The adherents of both plans of cure do a great deal of positive good in society; at least those of them do, who are well educated, conscientious, and thoroughly stored with plain common sense. The truth, so far as practice is concerned, must therefore lie in some yet unascertained middle point between the two systems. The Homoeopathists, whatever the ultraists may please to aver to the contrary, not unfrequently find cases which are not well covered by the drugs most indicated, but which imperatively demand help, and help which the O 154 DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL records of Allopathia demonstrate may be afforded. There is a very obvious distinction between the successes which attend some of the time-honoured practical expedients of the old schools, and the truth of the various contradictory principles upon which such expedients have been applied. Enlightened Allopathists themselves confess very often, that the post hoc ergo propter hoc mode which infests their books of every age and time, is not a sound mode of making up a practical code, although the nature of their system coerces them into its adoption at all points. The Homceopathist can, and ought to make this distinction; he can reject the presumptuous theorizing, and yet retain and make important practical use of, the absolute facts which have grown up with such theorizing. On the other hand, the Allopathist not unfrequently finds his patient in circumstances of danger and suffering to which not one of his so-called general principles will apply, and in which he finds Allopathic experience at fault entirely. Should he reject without trial the method of all others which proposes to find a specific for every curable malady, whether new or old, known or unknown before? Certainly not. He' is bound to make the attempt, whatever may be his prejudices or doubts. Neither of these parties can be competent to his task in the predicaments quoted, unless he is a good student of both methods. It would by no means be difficult to exemplify this position and all the foregoing assertions from the practice of both schools; but we pass for the present at least, to the consideration of some of the many ascertained facts of Allopathic practice which sustain the doctorine of Hommeopathia. Of the absolute cures by single drugs, known to the old school, those by mercury, cinchona, arsenic and sulphur have heretofore been frequently cited and we think fully (incontrovertibly) explained by Hahnemann and his early disciples, as demonstrations of the truth of 156 DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL of seeing. The opium subject sees a great variety of spectres, as demons, assassins, reptiles, &c., in his chamber and around his bed and person, while his intellect is otherwise apparently sane; he acts madly indeed, but not more so than a sound man would, were he in fact assaulted as the patient's morbid sight convinces him he is. When this species of delirium tremens arises from the abuse of alcohol, opium is a perfect and speedy remedy; and as this is the most frequent form of delirium tremens, it of course follows, that opium is more often used with success than any other drug. There are however unimpeachable records to show that this drug has not only failed to cure some forms of delirium tremens, but also that it has in many cases, very directly contributed to the destruction of the patient. Eberle relates a case in which he saw coma convulsions and death follow its exhibition within twelve hours, although he says it was " a pure and uncomplicated case of delirium tremens." The symptoms of this case are not given, (Pract. Med. vol. ii, 175-177,) but it is quite probable that if the opium was indicated, the patient was destroyed by too large doses. The doctor does not attempt to explain the unfortunate result, nor give any clue by which his readers are to avoid re-producing it in other cases. He advises its use to a sufficient extent to produce a soporific effect, remarking simply that the quantity required for this purpose, is " often truly enormous." The Homceopathist might have given opium in the above case, but having his eye upon the symptoms which bespoke its adoption, instead of going to the extent of producing a fatal stupor, he would have ceased the moment those symptoms changed in degree, and have completed the cure by other appropriate remedies, also in mild doses, with the same cardinal and always safe rule in view. Knowing why the opium should be applied, and knowing when he ought to desist from its repe. 158 DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL tinued to die till the brandy and laudanum practice forced its way up from the stews into the hospitals and halls of physic, and then the post hoc ergo propter hoc expedient gave birth to the above farrago of fancies. Other doctors no less eminent, have said that the rum potations inflame the stomach, and that this is the first link in the disease, and they seek to remove their favourite cause by giving vomits. Does Allopathia give emetics for gastritis? Certainly not: ask Broussais! But now and then, a vomit cures a case of some kind of delirium tremens, without the application of opium, or camphor, or brandy; and, as Allopathia knows of only one disease under that title, and will recognize only one internal "proximate cause," these doctors say that because the emetic removed one or more cases of this imaginary morbid existence, therefore it is not in the head but it certainly is in the stomach. They have as good a right to the post hoc ergo propter hoc as the other eminent men, and they certainly make as brave and fair an application of it. But, if delirium tremens be gastritis, why not apply leeehes, cups and blisters over the stomach, and ordain ice water and very low diet? This is the way to cure gastritis scientifically. The truth is that in some cases of secondary symptoms produced by alcohol which approximate that group commonly called delirium tremens, there is great anxiety in the region of the stomach, oppression of the chest, great irregularity of the action of the heart, profuse sweatings, prostration of the strength, depression of spirits, furred tongue (ff a peculiar kind, and nausea and vomiting,-and of course, in such cases, ipecacuanha is indicated and will help the patient, whether given in minute or very gross quantities. Homoeopathists adopt no conjectures about the seat and nature of delirium tremens, they avoid them as giving rise to dangerous experiments; but they adopt all of 160 DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL Do they not apply blisters in nephritis; nux vomica, in paralysis; purges in diarrhoea; emetics, in small doses, in obstinate vomiting; opium in typhus stupida; moxa, blisters, rubefacients and issues, in internal diseases, as mania, phthisis, &c., arising from suppressed ulcers and eruptions on the skin, &c. &c.? Nor should it be forgotten that apoplexy can be caused by bloodletting, contradictory as it may appear to the speculative Allopathist, and subversive as this astounding proposition may and must prove to the fundamental dogmas of all Allopathia. That hemorrhages produce difficult respiration, even stertor, and apoplectic coma, is placed beyond a doubt, by the united testimony of many eminent writers of the old school. It should also be remembered that tartar emetic has been exhibited with very great success in apoplexy, yet tartar emetic, short of vomiting, will occasionally produce profound coma, and emetics certainly produce very serious congestions to the brain. The observation of such practical truths has led many a careful thinker to respect the researches and doctrines first promulgated by Samual Hahnemann; and their recurrence-for nature is true to herself and they will recur-must finally change the tone of the profession concerning Homceopathia. The time is certainly not far distant, when the few who lead in Allopathia, will find a remark made by Morveau, respecting chemical theories at the time when that science was bursting its shapeless chrysalis mould, equally applicable to medicine: " We never profit more than by those unexpected results of experiments which contracted our analogies and preconceived theories." And when that day arrives, the ultra Homceopathist must, we think, be ready to retrace many a step of assumption in reference to doses, which the wide and manifold experience of the great TO STUDY BOTH SYSTEMS. 163 mine the essential and important symptoms, but it is to get at the characteristic state, the proximate cause, rather than to help him in the choice of remedies; he blends the pathology and physiology together, not to choose remedies, but to help him to acquire objective ideas of the nearest cause, always assuming mentally that the medication will go on well of course, by itself as it were, if he can only know the cause; for he is beset with his ignis fatuus, "tolle causam." What wonder that such infatuation of physiology should never lead to sound and appreciable results! Without physiology the Homeopathic physician would be obliged, as laymen and mountebank imposters are, to treat by collating numerically one row of symptoms with another; comparing merely two registers, the one of disease, and the other of the drug symptoms. The attempt to decide upon analogies between natural and drug diseases requires absolutely, a recognition of the functions of the several organs separately considered, and as far as possible a comprehensive and minute recognition of the dynamic relations between remote and anatomically separate organs; as for example, the consensual relation between the kidneys and the skin, or between the skin and the lungs or stomach, and the like. Without this kind of knowledge, and a great deal of it is extant in the medical world, it would occur that apparent similarities would be adopted as real and acted upon when there were real and essential dissimilarities. No one unacquainted with physiology can be competent to decide upon the similarities which must be ascertained clearly before choosing a remedy agreeably to the fundamental rules of Homoeopathia. The Hommceopathist must also, as far as possible, know the morbid sympathies between separate organs, the most interesting and important part of pathological research, not so much on ac TO STUDY BOTH SYSTEMS. 165 "n the vain attempt to divine the hidden nearest cause of disease by deceptive appeals to physiology," we concur most heartily in the doctor's objurgation, After framing the hypothesis, the farther use of physiology is abandoned. It is not, therefore, of any real value in Allopathic practice; it does not contribute any substantial basis upon which the remedial means are chosen as in Homoeopathia; the hypothesis, commonly called etiology or general pathology, of fever built out of the facts of physiology, however fanciful, gratuitous or absurd it may be, usurps the place and offices of such facts, and governs the medication. The discrepancy between these hypotheses, based upon the same data and bearing about equal plausibility, should, it appears to us, create a salutary conviction of their weakness, and awaken quite anotler sentiment than the pride of utility and exactitude, which is a false characteristic of Allopathic writings. The real fevers, those of miasmatic origin, as for example, fever and ague, are, when at all palpably cured by drugs, cured by such as contradict the pathologic dreams of the writers. The most efficient remedies in fever and ague are quinine, black pepper, arsenic, coffee, wine, &c. According to which of these hypotheses respecting the proximate cause, is black pepper supposed to cure an intermittent? That drug is not, according to Allopathia, capable of diminishing gastritis, or phrenitis, nor is it very Allopathic to say that peppers will allay irritation of the nervous structures. By what mode of logic can a Broussaist explain the cure of his gastro-enterite, the sine qua non of fever, by pepper, quinine, or any drug that does actually destroy fever? He dare not call these drugs tonics, stimulants, roborantia, and cannot deny that they irritate, inflame, or stimulate. What can he do with his fever patient and act consistently toward his fever pathology? Nothing but to refuse him both food and remedies till he dies or P 166 DUTY OF PHYSICIANS OF EITHER SCHOOL gets well of himself, neither of which events occur very speedily in an intermittent fever. Such is actually the practice in the " systeme nouvelle physiologique." The adherents of this school must either deny their fundamental pathology, or be a very long time indeed in curing their cases of intermittents. This inconsistency is clearly set forth by Allopathists opposed to the school of Broussais; but these writers nowhere apply the same practice as an objection to their own pathologies. It is equally absurd for Clutterbuck or Southwood Smith, or their ingenious annotator, Dr. Eberle, to attempt to reconcile a cure of an intermittent by either of the remedies cited, upon their respective hypotheses of the disease, as it is for Broussais. By which possible turn of Allopathic invention can it be shown that black pepper, or red pepper, or quinine, or arsenic, or coffee is enabled to cure an inflammation in the brain, or in the membranes of the brain-or in the lining membrane of the bloodvessels (as Eberle supposes) or to remove any irritation in the nervous system. These are certainly the main indications of cure if the etiology be correct, and why are they not pursued; why, in every instance of fever, and, in fact, every other disease, in which a drug s found to act as a positive remedy, as a specific, are these sage results of physiology, these etiologic indications of cure, wholly abandoned and lost sight of-nay, absolutely contradicted, in most cases? Is it not because there has been no just application of physiology to therapeutics in the old school? We contend, as before stated, that the new school possess the true key to the rightful and efficient application of physiological knowledge in the practice, and we think it by no means impertinent to urge the study of the Homoeopathic mode, as a means of enabling Allopathists to supply this very palpable deficiency in the ordinary exercise of their art.: TO STUDY BOTH SYSTEMS. 167 With respect to semeiology (diagnosis and prognosis) the "well educated in both schools concur in esteeming physiology as the basis for observation, and as indispensable to sound judgments; and no unprejudiced Allopathist will think of asserting that the enlightened disciples of Hahnemann are, by their painstaking accuracy as to all the signs and sufferings of disease, qualified from making as adroit and sound an application of physiological knowledge to this department of medicine, as their Allopathic brethren are in the habit of doing. If there be Homoeopathists who deny physiology and pathology to be useful, nay even essential aids to therapia, we beg leave to state our most unqualified disapprobation of such a preposterous idea. They cannot, it appears to us, determine similarities without such knowledge. It is not enough to find two rows of symptoms that appear to be similar; the sufferings must be parallel as to occasional causes, as to times of day, attitudes of body, motion and rest, &c., and more especially, as to their order in reference to their essential or primary and casual, or symptomatic character; and the power of distinguishing between the idiopathic and the symptomatic in regard to sufferings, the phenomena of disease, cannot be conferred upon any person ignorant of physiology. II. EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE HOM(EOPATHIC PHYSICIAN. IT is erroneously supposed by many intelligent persons in this country, that Hommopathists do not belong to the medical profession, or are not recognized as physicians by the laws of the land. HOM(EOPATHIC PHYSICIAN. 169 idleness and ignorance, usurp the place of the true priest at the altar of science and humanity! The false pretender to Homceopathic knowledge and skill, is, in our estimation, by so much the more deserving of exposure and contempt, as our method is more difficult of acquirement and more beneficent in its proper administration than that of our Allopathic brethren. Not that we would be understood to palliate in the slightest degree, the inhuman offence of a mere pretender to their method, but that we hold his offence to be more aggravated and injurious to society, who lays false claim, not only to the important branches of our science, which both schools assiduously cultivate in common, (surgery and 'midwifery), but also to the possession of the pharmacology and therapeutic philosophy which we have acquired, in addition to the research of the old school.* We shall now proceed to demonstrate the necessity of a higher grade of scientific and literary acquirements on the part of the Hommeopathic practitioner, than is, for practical purposes, required of the Allopathist. It must be premised that we are now speaking exclusively of the art of healing diseases, irrespective of the appliances of surgery as a distinct art, i. e. of operative surgery. It will scarcely be contradicted, that if Hippocrates could rise from the tomb, with no other and no less skill than that which * We beg it to be understood most distinctly, that the members of our school in this city are all of them members of the Medical Society of this county; and that to become so, they necessarily have pursued a proper course of studies, sustained an examination for the doctor's diploma of license, and have placed such document on record in the County Clerk's office. An infamous pretender is the single exception in New York, and this imposture has been properly exposed in one of our most respectable newspapers. * 170 EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE he possessed at the time of his death, more than two thousand years ago, he would be employed by our Allopathic brethren for themselves, in preference to any living professor of the art. The same choice would probably hold good in favour of several of the great succeeding masters, as of Galen, Celsus or Avicenna; and perhaps also of a few of the more modern, as Sydenhanm, Frederick Hoffmann and Stahl. Yet these all flourished before descriptive anatomy was at all perfected, before morbid anatomy was cultivated, before botany was a science; long before chemistry was known as an exact science, or even as a reputable art-and when physiology was enveloped in more than cimmerian darkness. The preference of these masters to any of our own times, would, we believe, be most fully justified by the results, if it were not embarrassed by the few cases in which mere blind chance has thrown specific (Homoeopathic) remedies into the common stock, as bark in intermittents, mercury in syphilis, &c. How then can it be said that pathology, as taught in the schools, is progressive, or how proven that the pathology of the Allopathists makes real application of these important modern discoveries to the cure of diseases? The truth is, that the Allopathist makes a most ingenious resum6 of these sciences in his pathology, but it is a vain and fruitless process; he cannot cure the sick one whit the better for being a better anatomist, chemist, botanist or physiologist, than his colleague who knows but little, and practices none, of these sciences. He may write exactly, talk learnedly, be indeed a luminary in the company of savans, while his humbler neighbour who never reads a book of any science, dissects either plant or animal, or knows a chemist's retort from a musical instrument, may, nevertheless, far outstrip him in the fearful combat with actual disease. If this be true, if indeed we have stopped within IIHOMEOPATHIC PIYSICIAN. 171 the acknowledged limits of every day's experience, if it be true that the practical man of the least exact knowledge be the safest or luckiest physician, what respect is due to the manner in which the schools make use of anatomy, physiology, botany and chemistry, to construct a science of curing the sick? The common practitioner only begins to be eminently successful, when he begins to retire from the science of Allopathia; to forget the pathology of the schools, to forget the sharp lines of anatomy, and when the day dreams of philosophies of living processes, have melted into undistinguishable oblivion. Then, when the transcendental stilts of the theorist are awkward to him, he takes to plain walking in the paths of experience; and, though he still theorize some to form a kind of mnemonic net work for his empiricism, he makes his hypotheses the servants of his experience, however they may contradict each other, and so gains in real skill as he advances in years. Not so with the scientific Allopathist. Like Brown, Rassori, Broussais, he follows his theory, a blind leader of the blind wise and studious, and profoundly ambitious-his career is only limited by ill results, by the thick coming deaths which hang around it, and is never stayed till he falls by his own weapons of relief! Our case is, oertainly, clearly, demonstrably the reverse of this disheartening picture. We must make real, correct, living and unceasing application of anatomy and physiology, of botany and chemistry; we may not forget them or any part of them, without treason toward our patients, our school and our consciences. 1. ANATOMY, for example, is indispensable to the IIomoopathists: not the far off, half forgotten lessons of the college hall of dissections, but the anatomy which distinguishes the tissues, which awakens us to the distinctions between the ganglionic and the cerebral nerves, which keeps us aware of the 172 EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF THE discrete process of life in the human system, which sharpens our attention to the natural groups of primary sympathies, and of their more and more extended relations, till we are able to conceive somewhat of the whole living phenomenal complex. This sharp, descriptive and philosophic anatomy, such as Morgagni began and Bichat left us, is indispensable to us, because without such science we cannot detect as readily and perfectly as we ought, the analogy between the drug diseases and the natural diseases--the similarity between symptoms, whether singly considered or taken in primary, binary and ternary groups; and upon the right detection of such analogies or similarities, the success of a science of healing depends. Anatomy and physiology aid us materially in establishing in our minds the true diagnosis; that is, in finding whether the locality of the principal sufferings of the two diseases, the artificial and the natural, be identical. This is a conditio sine qua non to the safe, easy and durable cure of the natural disease: and it is so much the better when the secondary or consensual sufferings also correspond as to locality as well as all other conditions. We do not make use of anatomy to aid us in the vain art of conjecturing the nature of disease, to inflate our pride of pathologic invention; for, between anatomy, as an exact art, and these visionary pursuits, there can never be the slightest affinity; exact science and gratuitous hypothesis cannot be interwoven, any more than alchemy and chemistry, or the practice of signanatures and the true mode of discovering the virtues of drugs can be made to coalesce. It is, we think, most unjustly commented on Hahnemann's Organon, by nearly all Allopathic writers on the subject, and by some of the uneasy neologist, of his own school, (such as Rau HOM(EOPATHIC PHYSICIAN. 173 and Griesselich,) that the important moment of locality is disregarded or grossly underrated. All that can possibly elucidate the semeiology of disease belongs most naturally, and we may say par excellence, to Hahnemann's method. It follows as a corollary to the first maxim of his therapia, that descriptive anatomy and morbid anatomy, used legitimately, are of the utmost interest and importance in determining the existence of an apt and real similarity between the effects of drugs and the phenomena of disease; for, though the sufferings in two given cases be similar in all other respects, yet they are materially dissimilar, if their interior locality can be known to be unlike; the absence of this moment destroys the analogy essential to a favourable result. The force of Hahnemann's argument on this, bears against the erroneous purpose which these researches are made to subserve by our Allopathic brethren-the attempt to detect the inscrutable essence of diseased vital action, to disclose for objective annihilation the causa proxima morbi. He cannot, with fairness, be understood to oppose the gathering of any sign, circumstance, or condition, which our senses, aided in every proper way, may help us to recognize, because these belong to, and form a part of, the totality of the phenomena, upon which we found our plan of cure, and from which we make the choice of remedies. Anatomy, therefore, is to be thoroughly studied and constantly cultivated, by the practical Homceopathist, as indispensable to success. 2. BOTANY, likewise, is an indispensable part of his education. Vegetable dissections are as important to him, in many instances, as the animal. Many of our remedies are derived from plants in a particular stage of their developement, and their juices IIOM(EOPATHIC PHYSICIAN. 175 if it fail entirely, it is just as well to supply its place with salts or calomel, or some compound of various drugs possessing the desired quality. The Allopathist, therefore, has no such pressing need of this science. He does not prescribe with reference to the universal forces of drugs, but with reference to their power to excite vomiting, purging, or sweating, or to the allaying of pain by one or two properties only. It, therefore, is of quite minor importance to him whether, in a given case requiring either of these effects, say purging for example, a drug be recent, pure and efficient in all respects, or the contrary, as some one of the many purgatives it is his custom to give with it, is very likely to produce the required effect; and if the whole compound fail entirely, it can very readily be followed by some other purgative compound. Accordingly, botany forms no part of the ordinary courses of instruction in the colleges of physic at the present day; and no candidate for license is rejected for any lack of botanical knowledge, however great; which certainly would not be the case if the Allopathists were in any event obliged to make indispensable use of such knowledge. Whatever an Allopathist, while he is a student, may learn of botany for its own sake as a delightful science, finding no practical need of it in his subsequent career, he invariably suffers it slowly to pass away from him for ever. The practical botanists of our country are not practitioners of physic in any respect but the name. The respectable Shaker herbalist, of New Lebanon Springs, monopolizes at present all the practical botany for the medical profession of this empire State. 3. LANGUAGES. All well educated physicians are able to read medical essays in the Latin tongue, and have at least some little acquaintance with the Greek. In our medical schools this knowledge is not required, as it is in most of the European IIOM(EOPATIIIC PHYSICIAN. 17 Having thus hastily sketched a few of the outlines of the requirements of our school, and glanced at the reasons why in it the most scientific is the most successful physician (the reverse of which is the rule in the old school at the present day) it remains that we explain why mere laymen do occasionally succeed in effecting real and durable cures of serious maladies by the use of our method. This would seem to be an argumentum a fortiori against us of a similar quality to that used by us in this paper respecting the unscientific practitioners of the old mode; but proper examination of the two cases will clearly show that the analogy is only apparent-by no means positive and real. The practitioner of the old mode is successful in proportion as he forgets or disregards the essential of his school -the reasoning a priori, respecting proximate causes, and relies upon mere clinical memory-in proportion as he ceases to be scientific (as that school must term it,) and becomes purely empirical. Whereas, the practitioner of the new mode must be useful to the sick in proportion as he becomes better acquainted with anatomy, descriptive and morbid, with physiology, with botany, and with the records of the effects and results of drugs and remedies contained in the German and French languages. The unscientific man may, it is very true, now and then luckily find a well defined case, one in which the symptoms are so plainly covered by the records of a drug as not to admit of mistake; and thus perform a cure which will fill the patient with surprise and gratitude. But he is not a whit the more competent or more apt to succeed as a physician, than is the maker of gunpowder competent and apt as a chemist. The quack cannot discriminate where discrimination is at all necessary. Take, for example, a case in which twenty-five symptoms are present. If a drug be found, the effects of which cover all R 179 PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATlHIA, JANUARY, 1842. I.-ITS ORIGIN. IN the latter part of the last century, SAMUEL HAHNEMANN, while engaged in the fruitless attempt to give to the discordant theories of the various writers on materia medica of quite modern times, some semblance of sound order, some rational tests for practical application, struck out a new path in the great wilderness of facts which environed the art of healing. No general principle of durable moment existed. Each writer had his own darling art of disentangling the riddle of every day's experience; each invented from his own ideality a mode of operation for each drug given to the sick, and every doctor had a number of these fond dreams for each several drug, accordingly as it might be exhibited to males or females, old or young, strong or weak, fat or lean, or applied against fevers, or palsies, activity or inactivity of the various viscera, &c., &c. To speak technically, each medical man (of any learning or talents) had his modus operandi for the drugs he gave, albeit he might frequently take the views of professors and metropolitan writers in respect to the methodus medendi. At the time of which we speak, about fifty years ago, the celebrated Cullen of Edinburgh was in the zenith of his glory. HIe also had undertaken the same task, the regulating of the discordant materia medica, and his work on that subject, however signal a failure it must be regarded, formed the platform on PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. 181 sembling fever and ague, and especially that form of the malady which the drug most perfectly removed. This result gave rise to the suspicion that this very great similarity between the effects of drugs upon the healthy human body and the symptoms of diseases produced from other causes, might be found to exist in every case of undeniable cure; and this led to the patient and laborious research into the medical writings of all languages and times (for which Hahnemann will forever be remembered with gratitude and admiration) to ascertain whether traces of the supposed law had not from time to time been developed. II.-COINCIDENT OPINIONS OF OLD AUTHORS AS TO THE PRINCIPLE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. Previous to his annunciation of IHomceopathia as a system of medicine, IHahnemann satisfied himself that several eminent authorities had imperfectly alluded to its principle. Thus Basil Valentine, in writings ascribed to Hippocrates, makes the observation that " similar effects must by similar creating causes be treated, and not by opposite agencies." Detharding found that an infusion of senna would cure a kind of colic in consequence of its power of creating a similar malady in healthy persons. Bertholon states that electricity is capable of extinguishing pains of disease precisely similar to those it has been known to excite in healthy individuals. Boulduc attributes the same power to rhubarb in its action on diarrhewas. St(rrck conjectured with some timidity, that the stramonium, in consequence of the various forms of mental hallucination and derangement it had been observed to produce on persons in health, * 182 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. might be successfully used in the treatment of maniacs, by creating new trains of thought. Stahl, the celebrated Danish physician, has been quoted by our founder as having expressed himself most explicitly on this idea as follows: " The received method in medicine, of treating diseases by opposite remedies-that is to say, by medicines which are opposed to the effects they produce, (contraria contrariis)-- is completely false and absurd. I am convinced on the contrary, that diseases are subdued by agents which produce a similar affection, (similia similibus,)-burns by the heat of a fire, to which the parts are exposed; the frost bite by snow or icy-cold water; and inflammation and contusions by spirituous applications. It is by these means I have succeeded in curing a disposition to acidity of the stomach, by using very small doses of sulphuric acid in cases, where a multitude of absorbing powders had been administered to no purpose." Rau and Hering quote similar opinions from other writers beside those mentioned by Hahnemann. Paracelsus, who also believed in applying specifics to diseases, in the course of his writings, observes: " It is a perverted method taught by Galen, to give remedies which produce the contrary of the disease; remedies ought to be administered which act similarly to it." Hieronymus Cardanus also manifested some doubts as to the Galenian method, in consequence of observing that diarrhoeas were so frequently cured by evacuants. 4 Thomas Erastus coincided with Cardanus and Paracelsus in their suspicions. These gentlemen did not carry out the inception of their experience; but it was received as singular, " passing strange," and they were honoured for their acute observation. IHahnemann elaborated this principle by tedious and life-enduring trials, but I 184 PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. Arsenic. The action of this powerful remedy upon the human economy is so well understood in modern times, that medical men will scarcely refuse to accede to the evidence of published records, in which Fallopius, Bernhardt, Roennow, Angelus Sala, N. Myrepsus, Slevogt, Molitor, Jacobi, J. C. Bernhardt, Jungken, Faune, Brera, Darwin, May, Jackson, Fowler, and E. Alexander, testify to its efficacy and curative virtue, for cancers, pestilential carbuncles, intermittent fevers, and angina pectoris. If phenomena similar to the diseases above designated can be produced upon the healthy organism, the curative operation of Arsenic, in these cases, ought not to be readily denied to be Homoeopathic. That this influence, then, was Homceopathic, we think is fully settled by the consecutive experience of Amatus Lusitanus, Heimreich, Knape, Heinze, Degner, Pfann, Verzasch, Buchholz, Heun, Tachenius, Guilbert, Preussius, Thilenius, Pyl, Greiselius, and Majault, who have witnessed among the poisonous effects of Arsenic, morbid appearances, in every respect similar to cancers, carbuncles, intermittents, and angina pectoris. Hyoscyamus. Van Helmont, Sauvages, Hamilton, Seliger, Hunerwolf, Planchon, Acosta, Stedman, Faber, Wepfer, Berniga'u, Tozzetti, Planchon, Sloane, Greding, and others, who had tried the Hyoscymus themselves, or watched its impressions upon others when poisoned with it, have attested the results which astonishingly resemble epileptic convulsions, mental derangement, hysteria, vertigo, and spasmodic affections of the eye-lids and pharynx. Diseases, bearing these precise names, have been signally cured by the Hyoscymus, as appears by the testimony of Stoerck, Fothergill, Hellwick, Withering, Gesner, Hecker, Schenckbecker, Collin, and others. Opium. Sydenham, Bell, Heister, Richter, Hoffman, and PROGRESS AND. STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 185 numerous others, have testified to the efficacy of the preparations of the Poppy, in convulsions, congestive fevers, coma, constipation, &c. Delacroix, Rademacher, Grimm, Vicat, and abundant authorities, contain any amount of intended or accidental results, sufficient to confirm the truth of Hahnemann's principle. Stramonium. Boerhaave, Crueger, Ray, Kellner, and Lobstein, have observed, that the Stramonium is capable of producing a peculiar delirium and convulsions, loss of memory, chorea, and madness. Sauvages, Schenk, Sidren, and Wedenburgh, have published to the world their treatment of symptoms bearing all the characteristics of the preceding named diseases, in which they were rewarded with curative triumphs. IV.-OPINIONS OF EMINENT ALLOPATHISTS OF THE PRESENT AGE, Germany. HUFELAND, the venerable Patriarch of German Allopathia, has conceded the existence of merit to the system of Hahnemann, whose first essay on Hommeopathia was published in this Medical Journal, and for whom he has acknowledged the highest personal respect. The success of a Hommeopathist, Dr, Stapf, in curing Egyptian Opthalmia among the soldiery in the garrisons of the Rhine, attracted the attention of the Prussian Minister of War, who solicited him to visit Berlin, to take charge of its military hospital, Lazareth or La Charitd. IHe accepted the invitation, and officiated to the entire satisfaction of the Minister. HUFELAND, who introduced Stapf to the assembled company of La Charite, then paid him a deserved personal compliment, and, at the same time, expressed these impartial views respecting the Honmce opathic system: 186 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. "Homceopathia seems to me to be particularly valuable in two points of view; first, because it promises to lead the art of healing back to the only true path of quiet observation and experience, and gives new life to the too much neglected worth of symptomatology; and secondly, because it furnishes simplicity in the treatment of disease. The man whom I have the honour to present to you, is not a blind worshipper of his system. iHe is, as I have learned with joy, as well acquainted with the entire science of medicine, and as classically educated as he is well informed in the new science. I have discovered in him an amplitude of knowledge, clearness of mind, and a spirit of tolerance, which last is the more worthy of notice in him, as it is not to be found in all the Homoeopathists." Hufeland also expressed the following opinion of Hahnemann, in Hufeland and Osann's Journal for 1826: " Homoeopathia is advancing in importance, and its Author is a man to whom we must concede our respect. That Hahnemann deserves this cannot well be denied, especially by the writer of this article, who has been united to him by the ties of friendship for more than thirty years, having always esteemed him as one of our most distinguished, intelligent and original physicians. Is it necessary to allude to our obligations to him for his discoveries of the Wine test, the Mercurius soluailis-in my opinion the most effective preparation of Mercury-the Preservative against Scarlatina and many others, and also to his various writings for the abundant proofs he has given of a philosophical mind and keen powers of investigation?" Hufeland subsequently wrote an essay on Homoeopathia, from which we make an extract, written with frankness and contempt of narrow prejudices that ought to rebuke his Allopathic brethren who consider caricature a better weapon than investigation in their hostility to a beneficent truth. "I was first induced to i 188 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. the most implacable opposition to his system among more medical men who have not practiced it nor even studied it." France.-BROUSSAIS, the founder and champion of the celebrated " doctrine physiologique," that has produced such a marked revolution in the practice of medicine, advised, in his public lectures, delivered in the Ecole de Med(ecine at Paris, that impartial trials should be made before Homeopathia was judged or condemned, concluding his address with words that are honourable to his candour and philanthropy. " Many distinguished persons are occupied with it, we cannot reject it without a hearing, we must investigate the truth it contains '" He proved the sincerity of his advice, by instituting a series of experiments on his own person, and in general practice, which were only interrupted by his lamented demise. Italy.-BRERA, who holds a distinguished rank among the Allopathists of Italy, has uttered opinions of Homcopathia with fearless liberality, which demand a careful perusal. In his Anthologia Medica, he thus writes: " Homocopathia is decried by some as useless and by others as strange, and though it appears to the great majority as ridiculous and extraordinary, it can nevertheless not be denied, that it has taken its stand in the scientific world; like every other doctrine, it has its books, its journals, its chairs, its hospitals, clinical lectures, professors, and most respectable communities to hear and to appreciate. Nolens volens, even its enemies must receive it in the history of medicine, for its present situation requires it." " Having attained this rank, it deserves by no means, contempt, but, on the contrary, a cool and impartial investigation, like all other systems of modern date: Homoeopathia is the more to be respected, as it propagates no directly noxious errors." " If Homoeopathia proclaim facts and theories, which cannot PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATIIIA. 189 be reconciled with our present knowledge, this is no sufficient cause, as yet, to despise it and to rank it among absolute falsities. Wo to the physician who believes, that he cannot learn to-morrow what he does not know to-day. Do we not hear daily complaints of the insufficiency of the healing art? And are not those physicians, who honestly suspect the solidity of their knowledge, the most learned, and, in their practice, the most successful? Such sentiments have undoubtedly induced most of the German physicians to study Homoeopathia, and to conquer their aversion to the new doctrine. Let us always recollect, that the greatest discoveries have given origin to the most violent controversies. Witness the examples of Harvey, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, &c." England.-DR. J. G. MILLINGEN, Surgeon to the British Forces and an Allopathic practitioner of distinction, has offered the following comments on IHomeopathia in his " Curiosities of Medical Experience:" " The mere hopes of being able to relieve society from the curse of constant drugging should lead us to hail with gratitude the Homa'opathist's investigations. That many physicians, but especially apothecaries, who live by overwhelming their patients with useless and too frequently pernicious medicines, will warmly, nay furiously, inveigh against any innovation of the kind, must be expected as the natural result of interested apprehension; and any man who aims at simplicity in practice will be denounced as guilty of medical heresy. Have we not seen inoculation and vaccination branded with the most opprobrious epithets, merely because their introduction tended to diminish professional lucre? "Others will exclaim, although the IHomcopathist (IIahnemann) disavows the vis medicatrix nature, that he solely succeeds by leaving the malady to the salutary efforts of the constitution. 190 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATIIIA. Here again we must admit, that were we to leave many diseases to run their course, we might be more successful in obtaining a cure than by rash and detrimental interference, founded on the principle that a physician ' must order something.' "But the facts I am about recording,-facts which induced me, from having been one of the warmest opponents of this system, to investigate carefully and dispassionately its practical points,-will effectually contradict all these assertions regarding the ineflicacy of the Homoeopathic doses, the influence of diet, or the agency of the mind; for in the following cases, in no one instance could such influences be brought into action. They were (with scarcely any exception) experiments made without the patient's knowledge, and where no time was allowed for any particular regimen. They may, moreover, he conscientiously relied upon, since they were made with a view to prove the fallacy of the Homoeopathic practice. Their result, as may be perceived by the foregoing observations, by no means rendered me a convert to the absurdities of the doctrine, but fully convinced me by the most incontestable facts, that the introduction of fractional doses will soon banish the farrago of nostrums that are now exhibited, to the manifest prejudice both of the health and the purse of the sufferer." At the conclusion of his experiments, Dr. Millingen adds: " I could record many instances of similar results, but they would of course be foreign to the nature of this work. I trust that the few cases I have related will aford a convincing proof of the injustice, if not the unjustifiable obstinacy, of those practitioners, who, refusing to submit the IIomoeopathic practice to a fair trial, condemn it without investigation. That this practice will be adopted by quacks and needy adventurers, there is no doubt; but Homceopathy is a science on which numerous voluminous works have been written by enlightened practitioners, PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATIIIA. 191 whose situation in life placed them far above the necessities of speculation. Their publications are not sealed volumes, and any practitioner can also obtain the preparations they recommend. it is possible, nay, more than probable, that physicians cannot find time to commence a new course of studies, for such this investigation must prove. If this is the case, let them frankly avow their utter ignorance (f the doctrine, and not denounce, with merciless tyranny, a practice of which they do not possess the slightest knowledge. " Despite the absolute persecution that Hahnemannism (as this doctrine is ironically denominated) is at present enduring, every reflecting and unprejudiced person must feel convinced that, although its wild and untenable theories may not overthow the established systems, (if any one system can be called established.) yet its study and application bid fair to operate an important revolution in medicine. The introduction of infinitely small doses, when compared at least with the quantities formerly prescribed, is gradually creeping in. The history of medicine affords abundant proofs of the acrimony, nay, the fury, with which every new doctrine has been impugned and insulted. The sanme annals will also show that tllis spirit of intolerance has always been in the ratio of the truths that these doctrines tended to bring into light. From the preceding observations, no one can accuse nme of having become a blind convert to HIomeopathy; but I can only hope that. its present vituperators will follow my example, and examine the matter calmly and dispassionately ere they proceed to pass a judgment that their vanity may lead them to consider a final sentence." America.-VALENTINE MoTT'r, justly the pride of American Surgery, imbued with the becoming liberality of an unprejudiced and noble mind, visited Ilahnemann during his first sojourn in Europe. Instead of denouncing this venerable philosopher as PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. 193 and to call the new system absurd, without further inquiry. The history of the profession presents many lamentable instances of the obstinacy with which errors have been clung to, and improvements resisted." V.-ALLOPATHISTS CONVERTED TO HIOMEROPATHIA. The renunciation of old and the adoption of new views, on the part of a few individuals alone, ought not and do not entitle their advocates to the confidence of the community. But, if scores on scores, hundreds on hundreds, and thousands on thousands, start forward with fixedness of purpose for resolute action, to maintain and defend the revealed evidences of a reform, jests, ridicule and satire will prove but puny obstacles to their advance; and, unless apparently equal forces are arrayed in antagonism, such reform will spread with irresistible influence throughout the world in proportion to the amount of testimony upon which it may be based, and to the sum of benefits it does and can confer. Hommcopathia professes to be such a reform, and, instead of being sustained and propagated by a few foolish or knavish zealots, it is publicly advocated by more than two thousand physicians, who have relinquished Allopathia to become its adhe-. rents. It numbers thousands and tens of thousands among its laymen, and, besides its extension in different parts of the world, includes a large portion of the entire population of Germany among the recipients of its practice. Of the two thousand physicians converted to Homoeopathia the following examples will afford an impression: F. F. Quin, M. D., in London, recently physician to Leopold, King of the Belgians, becoming distinguished by his scientific labours in Allopathic medicine, received the compliment of membership from numerous public institutions of the old method; subsequently he pursued the investigation of the doctrines of * 194 PROGRESS AND STATE OF II031W0PATIIIA. 1-ahnemann among the sick and dying, at the imminent risk of his life, and finally avowed his honest conviction as to the imrnutable truths of Hornmopathia. Count des Guidi, Doctor in medicine and sciences, Officer of the University of France, late professor of mathemiatics, memfiber of the Royal Academies of Naples, Turin, &c. This talented and learned gentlemoan produced a marked sensation among the medical men of France, by proclaiming himself a Homwopathist, after having acquired an enviable reputation through his investigations and labours for many years in Allopathia. The same spirit of inquiry that guided him then, has manifested itself since his connexion with Homonopathia in his numerous and masterly defences of his new faith. A. L. Jourdan, M. D., of Paris, member of the Ins:itute of France, and of many celebrated societies, has been long recognized as the associate of the prominent medical literati of' France. Jourdan some years since became a convert to lIomccopathia, anid established "1The Archives," &c. a journal of the new doctrine. Le Chevalier don Cosino (e ICoratiis, M. D., President of' the Academy of Medicine and Physician to the Military Hiospital; and, Quadri, M. D., Professor of the University and Physician to the Ophthalmic Hospital, both residents of Naples, have FLpblicly announced their abandonmnent of Allopathia, and are recognized as prominent Jromceopathists of Italy. Bigelius, M. D., physician to thle late Dukc Constantine of Russia, whose elevated reputation is well known in Europe, has been an acknowledged advocate of 1Jahnemann's doctrines for several years. He 'bawidoned Allopathia for Iloinwcopathia. Dr. Trenius, the distinguished Itussian botanist, and Counsellor of State, rejected the unccrtaitities of Allopathic revcries, and confessed his allegiance to the principle of sin-ifa siinilibus. PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIIA. 195 Dr. Stegemann, also Counsellor of State, at St. Petersburg, followed the example of his colleague, Dr Trenius, sustaining his belief in the midst of an extended circle of practice. G. L. Rau, M. D., Medical Counsellor, Physician to the Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, seceded from the ranks of the Allopathists and embraced Homowopathia in 1824. Hle has exhibited his faithful attachment to its principle in the recent publication of SRau's Organon.' For other distinguished Medical Converts besides Muhlenbein and Schuler, we refer the inquirer to the next section, which will contain the names and titles of men who, with few exceptions, were adherents of the old school before their adoption of Homosopathia. Beside the enumeration of once distinguished Allopatlhists who now rank among the partisans of HnIomoopathia, the literal confessions of some of those, whose judgment has been fully and soberly matured by many years, cannot be slightly disregarded by the enlightened enquirer. We will quote but two examples: Dr. Schidler, an eminent Allopathic physician of Stollberg, in Germany, after passing through an extensive practice for twentyfive years, rejected the old for the new method, with this explanation:-- " During a quarter of a century I had followed the banner of Allopathia. I had employed much time and money in studying its freqcuent transformations without finding a thread which could guide me in tle labyrinth of medicine, without power to unravel the mystery by which cures were effected." After dilating on their dificulties, he adds: " It is assuredly to our ignorance of the virtues of medicines, and of the proper mode of using them, that we must attribute, in a great measure, the ravages of disease." PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATIIIA. 197 VI.-REPUTATION OF HOMCEOPATHISTS AND HOM(EOPATHIA. This important link in our chain of evidences, indicating the present rank of Homneopathia, and strengthened by the confirmation of authorities that are not Homceopathic, is respectfully and especially submitted to the consideration of those who either wilfully or ignorantly have circulated the silly report of "the downfall of Homceopathia in Europe." Dr. Quin, whom we have enumerated among the converted Allopathists, is distinguished as the first Homoopathic physician in England. Beside the compliment of being selected as attending physician to the king of Belgium, he commands an immense and lucrative practice amoiig the noble and intelligent of Great Britain. In the circle of his patients, the Marquis of Anglesea and the Marquis of Westminister represent the former, Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer the latter. The names and reputation of other eminent converts to the new doctrine, having just passed under review, their repetition here would be superfluous. PROFESSORS. The following Doctors of Medicine, who hold Professorships of medicine, chemistry, or philosophy, in different Universities on the continent, are recognized and respected as prominent advocates of IHomenopathia:1. Dr. J. W. Arnold, Professor in ordinary of the Theory and Practice of M'edicine in the University of Heidelberg. 2. Dr. Arnold, (brother of the above,) Prof. Extraordinary of the Theory and Practice of medicine in the University of Zurich. 3. J. A. Weber, formerly Professor Extraordinary, has been promoted to the rank of Professor Ordinary of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Freyburg. 198 PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATIIIA. 4. Edward Martin, holds the chair of Professor in Ordinary of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Jena. 5. Dr. Leopoldt, Professor in the University of Erlangen. 6. Prof. Roth, of the University of Munich. 7. Dr. Bigelius, late Professor of Midwifery in the University of St. Petersburg. 8. Dr. Chevalier de IIoratiis, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Naples. 9. Professor Palmieri, of the University of Rome. 10. Professor Tagliavini, of the University of Ascoli. 11. Professor Romano, of the University of Florence. 12. Professor Gottlieb W. Rau, (recently deceased,) of the University of Giessen. 13. Professor Quadri, of the University of Naples. 14. Dr. Count des Guidi, late Professor of Mathematics in the University of Turin. 15. M. Devergie, Honorary Professor of the Military Hospitals of Paris. 16. Professor Aug. Rapou, Jr., of Paris. 17. Dr. Gerber, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Berne. 18. Professor Ribes, of L'ecole de Medecine de Montpelier. 19. Professor Amoros, of L'ecole de Medecine de Montpelier. 20. Professor F. Perrussel, also of Montpelier. 21. Professor Hasse, Leipsic. 22. Professor Botto, of the University of Genoa. 23. Professor Sebastian Coll, formerly lecturer at Tovo, (Old Castile,) Spain, has become Professor of Ilomnoopathia at Valladolid. 24. Professor Fogel, of the University of Casan, in Russia. 25. Professor Quadranti, of the University of Naples. I PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATIIIA. 199 26. Professor Mabit, of Bordeaux. 27. Professor Alphons Noack, of Leipzig. 28. Professor Wahlenburg, of the University of Upsal, in Sweden. 29. Dr. Kirschleger, Professor of Botany, in Strasburg. 30. Dr. Reubel, Professor in the University of Munich. 31. I)r. E. L. Schubarth has been appointed Lecturer on Homceopathia, in the University of Berlin. 32. Dr. Lippich, Professor in the University of Padua. 33. The Demonstrator of Anatomy in the University of Vienna, Dr. Fleischmann, has been appointed Lecturer on Homceopathia, in that University. 34. Professor Breschet,* Surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, at Paris. 35. Professor Marjolin, Surgeon to the Hospital Beaujon, in Paris. 36. Professor Amussat, of Paris. " It is well to add, that Professor Jahn, of Saxe Meiningen, although opposed to HIomneopathia, still acknowledges the efficacy of small doses, that Homwopathia has taught him more just views of the importance and endeavors of the vis medicatrix nature, and of the true meaning and value of the HIippocratic medicine, while he concludes by advising every physician to test HIommopathia, rather than to abuse it." Professor Damerow, of Greifswalde acknowledges the Homeopathic law, as true and useful, and considers that Hahnemann's reform will constitute the basis of a far better system of medicine than we have ever yet been in possession of. * The conversion of the three Parisian Professors was communicated by Dr. Croserio of Paris; but as the laith of Breschet has been denied, and as we are desirous that oar statistics shall be unimpeachable, we prefer that he should not be accounted a Homnoopathist, unless information daily expected from Croserio, should confirm it. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 2 201 3. CounsellorRau, physician to the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt 4. " Schidler, of Berlin. 5. " Wolff, of Warsaw. 6. " Weber, of Hesse. 7. " Wolff, of Hofheimn, near Darmstadt. 8. " Elwert, of Hildesheim. 9. " Anton Schmidt, of Lucca. 10. " Hesse, of Wechselberg. 11. " Kopp, of Hanau. 12. " Siegl, of Bruchsala. 13. " Hennike. 14. " Eglau, of Kurst. 15. " Ruppius, of Altenberg. 16. " Schwartzenburg, of Mittweid. 17. " Schwartze, of Dresden. 18. " Stachelroth, of Prussia. 19. " Gsell, of St. Gall. 20. " Kramer, of Baden. 21. Kammerr, of Ulm, Wiirtemburg. 22. " Reubel, of Munich. 23. " Trinks, of Dresden. 24. " Necker, of Naples. 25. " Siegl, of Brussels. 26. " Miiller, of Berlin. 27. " Weigel, of Schmiedelberg. 28. " Libert, of Constantinople. 29. " B6nninghausen, of Munster. 30. " Wolf, of Dresden. 31. " Zeroni, of Baden. 32. " Brutzen, of Riga. 33. " Wich, of Carlsruhe. 34. " Neef, of Frankfort, 35. " Roth, of Munich, T PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMCEOPATHIA. 203 5. Dr. Necker, late physician to the Baron von Koller, Intendant General of the Austrian Army. 6. Dr. Smith, physician to the Duchess of Lucca. 7. Dr. Marenzeller, of Vienna, physician to Prince Metternich and his family. 8. Dr. Schonberg, late physician to the Baron von Koller. 9. Dr. Vorbrod, of Coburg, surgeon to the Duke of SaxeCoburg. 10. Dr. Stachelroth, physician to Count Berstel, commander in chief of the Prussian Forces of the Rhine. 11. Dr. Griesselich, surgeon to the Grand Duke of Baden. 12. Altmfiller, surgeon to the Duke of Hesse-Cassel. 13. Dr. Lfiber, of Koningsbruck, physician to the Count of Holberg and Hohenthal. 14. Dr. Horatiis, president of the Academy of Medicine (Allopathic) was selected physician to Francis I. the late King of Naples. 15. Dr. Stapf was called to attend the Dowager Queen of England; but the important position he holds in Germany compelled him to decline the honour. 16. Dr. Quin, late physician to the King of Belgium. 17. Dr. Backhausen, of Dusseldorf, physician to Princess Frederica of Prussia. 18. Dr. Weber, physician to the Duke of Solms and HohenLich. 19. -Dr. Reubel, physician to Count Wallenstein, Minister of Internal Affairs, Bavaria. 20. Dr. Anton Schmidt, physician to Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Lucca. 21. Dr. Hesse, physician to Count Schonberg. 22. Dr. Baudis, physician to Count Veczay. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 205 Le Moniteur, the official organ of the French government, thus refers to the distinction conferred on Dr. Mabit, in consequence of his successful Homeopathic treatment of cholera at Bordeaux, and also for having founded a Homceopathic hospital, the results of which were sufficiently striking to command the attention of the French sovereign:" Dr. MABIT has been created Knight of the legion of honour; a recompense rendered to his devotion and exertions on the appearance of the Asiatic cholera, as well as to his steadfast zeal and continued researches for the interests of humanity and progress of medicine." WILLIAM LEO-WOLF, M. D., an Allopathic physician, who has published a large volume, entitled " Remarks on the Abracadabra of the Ninteenth Century; or on Dr. Samuel Hahnemann's Homoeopathic Medicine;" composed in the most rabid and virulent temper, against Iahnemann and his system, admits thus much as to the condition of Ilomeopathia in Germany:" The last accounts from thence state, that the chamber of deputies of Baden have resolved, almost unanimously, to have a special chair of Homoeopathia in the Heidelberg University; the same, we are told, was resolved by the Bavarian government for the University of Munich." And again:" We are told also by men upon whose veracity we can rely, that new trials of Homoeopathia are contemplated in some other capitals of Germany, in consequence of the wishes expressed by many distinguished individuals in the armies and of official stations, who have said they were cured by Horneopathists, after they had been long and unsuccessfully treated by other physicians; perhaps, also, because Dr. Kopp, known as a learned and experienced practitioner, and author on legal and practical medicine, has seemingly joined the Homeopathic ranks." Dr. MILLINGEN, the Allopathic Surgeon already quoted, observes: 208 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 11. At VALLADOLID, in Spain, Professor Coll, of the Hospital of Tovo, has commenced a course of lectures on Homeiopathia. VIII.-HOMCEOPATHIC LITERATURE. The literature of Homceopathia has been as little known and has encountered as much misrepresentation, as any one of its departments. It can be scarcely credited, even among the friends of Homceopathia, except by its physicians, that about SEVEN HUNDRED volumes have been issued from the press, developing the peculiarities of the system, and many of them possessed of a scientific character that savans know well how to respect. Controlled by an earnest desire to confirm our statement of facts by personal observations and testimony, we have taken especial trouble to investigate this subject and thus feel personally enabled, after a direct inspection, to enumerate, as the result of our labours the existence of Six out of "seven hundred volumes that have enriched the Russian, Danish, Italian, German, French, and English languages. PERIODICALS. TWENTY periodicals of the system have been established in different parts of the world, the most prominent of which are deserving of present record. 1. Archiv fir die Homeopathische Heilkunst. This scientific periodical was founded at Leipsic in 1822, and issued three times a year, under the able editorial management of Ernst Stapf, M. D., Medical Counsellor to the Duke of Saxony, aided by the first Homoeopathists of Europe. It has now reached its nineteenth year, under the conjoint administration of Dr. Stapf and Gustavus William Gross, M. D., having a very extended circulation, and forming a most valuable treasury of the richest documents of Homeopathic medicine. PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. 209 2. Allgemeine Homoeopathische Zeitung. This journal, the twenty-first volume of which has reached us, is published weekly, also at Leipsic, by Doctors G. W. Gross, F. Hartmann and F. Rummel. This work, which has a more popular character than the Archiv, has been conducted by its editors with untiring zeal and signal ability. It has obtained great extension throughout Europe and still contributes very efficiently to the propagation of the new doctrine. 3. Bibliotheque Homenopathique. Charles G. Peschier, M. D., instituted this publication at Geneva, in Switzerland, in the year 1830. Although his time has been engrossed by a large and lucrative practice, he has advanced with unparalleled energy in the conduct of his journal, availing himself of the assistance of his Swiss and Italian brethren, and drawing freely from the valuable archives of the Homceopathic Society of Geneva. The eleventh annual volume has just been concluded, a noble monument of the dissemination of Homceopathia through France, Italy and Switzerland. 4. Archives de la Medecine Homceopathique, publiees par une societe de m6decins, sous la direction de M. Le Docteur Jourdan, Membre de l'Academie de Medecine. Paris, 1834. It is eight years since Jourdan put forth this periodical in the capital of France. It subsequently passed into the hands of Doctors Libert and Leon Simon, who continued the work until it reached its eighth volume; a work replete with learned and scientific articles, that these accomplished scholars contributed, most ably and diligently for the diffusion of Homceopathia in France. This publication was succeeded by another: 5. Journal de la Doctrine Hahnemanienne, publi6 par le Docteur Molin. The second volume of this periodical has been completed, and contains some very creditable articles from our first French Homweopathists. But its place is to be supplied by a work on a much more extensive scale, under the name of: 210 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMCEOPATHIA. 6. Annales de la Medecine Homceopathique. It is to be edited by Drs. Leon Simon, G. H. G. Jahr and Croserio, and will be issued during the present year. To those who are acquainted with the profound critical acumen of Simon, the celebrated Manual of Jaht, and the professional lore of the venerable Croserio, the names of these gentlemen are a sufficient guaranty of the high and important character this periodical promises to sustain in the Homoeopathic world. Beside the above prominent publications may be enumerated: 7. Revue critique et retrospective de la Matiere medicale specifique. This journal is conducted by a Medical Society in Paris. 8. The Dijon Journal de la Homceopathie, 2 vols. 9. A Homoeopathic Journal was established at Groningen, in Holland, by Drs. Bleckrode and Sch6nfield, in 1839. 10. The German Medico Chirugical Journal, formerly an Allopathic periodical, edited by Dr. P. A. Bott, declared itself in favor of Homceopathia, in 1839. 11. The Carlsruhe Hygea, edited by Dr. Griesselich, 16 vols. 12. The Berlin Homoeopathic Journal, edited by Dr. Vehsemeyer and Kurtz, 4 vols. 13. Thorer's Journal of Practical Homoeopathia, 4 vols. 14. Schweikert's Journal of Rational Medicine, 9 vols. 15. The Thuringian Hommopathic Journal, 3 vols. 16. Journal of the Homeopathic Materia Medica,by Drs. Hartmann and Noack, Leipsic, 3 vols. 17. Helbig's Heraclides, 6 vols. " It is well to add, that Dr. C. C. Schmidt, editor of the German and Foreign Medical Journal, acknowledged in 1839, that the literature of Homoeopathia had become so extensive, that it was incumbent upon the editors of every Medical Journal, to examine into the subject. He stated his inability to give the 212 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATIIfA. maligners to its annual results as detailed under the head of SStatistics." 3. BAVARIA.-Munich. A Hospital has been formed in this city, under the sanction of the government of Bavaria. Charles, Prince of Oettingen and Wallenstein, one of the ablest advocates of Homoeopathia in Europe, presented the subject of its institution to the Bavarian Chamber of Deputies, which unanimously voted an annual contribution of four thousand florins, towards its support. An extensive and suitable edifice has been granted, and " Homceopathia," as Counsellor Widnmann remarks, " has become a national concern in Bavaria." 4. FRANCE.-Paris. In consequence of the extension of Hommeopathia in France, an application was made to the French government for the establishment of a national Homoeopathic Hospital. The government referred the matter to the Royal Academy of Medicine, which, composed entirely of Allopathists, with the exception of Jourdan, most vehemently opposed and reported against its organization, and successfully for the present. A private hospital was subsequently formed, the dispensations of whose signal benefits, with the powerful influence that is daily accumulating, must, before long, accomplish the desired grant. Gaspari, Guizot, and Duchatel, members of the French ministry, are ardent Homceopathists, and will contribute their aid. 5. Bordeaux. The great eclat that attended the successful issue of Homceopathia against the ravages of cholera in this place, very naturally led to the establishment of a general Hospital. This institution is now open, under the able management of Dr. Mabit, who is assisted by several associates. The hospital contains a hundred and fifty beds, and several thousand patients have experienced its benefits since its organization. 6. AUSTRIA.-Vienna. This city contains the largest Homoeopathic Hospital in Europe, and its improving statistics must inspire the friends of the system with heartfelt joy. Das Spital * PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. 217 7. The Free J-Jomropathic Society, founded in 1836. 8. The North-German Hornceopathic Society, founded in 1835. 9. 'The Silesian lomceopathic Society, founded at Breslau, in 1838. 10.Thile Vienna Iommopathic Society, founded at Vienna, in 1838. 11. TPhe Littichher Hornwopathic Society, founded in Belgium. 12. TFhe Jena Honi-loopathic Society, founided in 1836. 13. The Naples llornweopathic Society, founded in 1830, by Dr. Iioratiiis, X.-PUBLIC TRIALS OF HOMCEOPATHIA IN HOSPITrALS. iMuch brave talk has arisen on all sides of Homwopathia, about the results of its adoption in public hospitals, by order of several gfovernnents, for the avowed purpose of testing its merits as a. system. 'Thie staunceh adherents of both systems have taken steps which1 Should have been avoided. The opponentis of the new mode, evidently feelinig that the honour of Hiippocrates reposed oni their prowess, have utniformnly striven to furnish their distant colleagues with the means of assertinig, that it had Euflfred a signal defeat; whilst the over-zealous followers of 11 abmeemnaun, spurred onl equally lby anl esprit ])ropre, have not faile-d to allirin a triumphant, success. lBoth parties have forgot ten, fonr time tine, that the contest mnii ht not enmd with themnjor b~e coinfiiied to their couintry--nor await, in troubled Iiu ility, the decisiloms of cotiit tepheinera-htmt that it may last to anlother at)b i e swd' by ohber peop'le and that its decision, mia tigre the. wvill of ptces- anid cabiinet m ittisters, delends alone ont the tispmssionate decrees of that catholic triburmal-calmn, sounid, jpilosinlhy!w Imose Iltittiat e arid irrevers'ble (Idicta are seldotmi prioitout d, till the wittmesses and noisy5 appellants have left iher halls forever. 218 PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOMCEOPATIIA. It is easy to make assertions on medical experience, which, though not founded upon real testimony, thousands will believe, merely because they have been asserted! but it is also very difficult, often impossible, to demonstrate, at once, the fallacy of such illegitimate assertions. This is, perhaps, more true of medicine than of theology, though the history of both these sciences is full, to overflowing, of devious heresies and marvellous relations, which have seldom, if ever, quite died away, in the age which gave them birth, And it certainly will not hasten the slow advances of Truth, to get angry at the perverse habits of the race, to believe mere words, or to attempt, by wholesale counter assertions, to mark out the path which she is destined to occupy. Enough of this old-fashioned folly has been committed, as we have said, on both sides of the present contest in medicine: and perhaps no department of the conflict has been more fruitful, in these respects, than the reports, debates, and conclusions, which have grown out of the hospital trials of the new mode within the last ten years. So far as we have been able to learn, one party has gained as much as the other; neither has been victor nor vanquished: -and, of course, both have been loud in their claims for the palm of victory. With respect to the public at large, we have no doubt of the new party having gained by each of these quasi tests of their theory. There have been six public and formal trials of the Homoeopathic practice, undertaken by order of the continental governments, viz:1. At Vienna, in 1828, conducted by Dr. Maronzeller. 2. At Tulzyn, (Russia,) in 1827. 3. At St. Petersburgh, in 1829-30, conducted by Dr. Hermann. 4. At Munich, (Bavaria,) in 1830-1, by Dr. Attomyr. 220 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. against the system of Hahnemann, and great pains were taken in these countries, by aid of non-professional reviews, and common newspapers, to deal a death-blow at it, with this javelin forged by Andral, though he never made any use of it himself. It certainly was no test of the method. The symptoms were not recorded; the drugs were not selected by comparing such records with the materia medica; and the doses of the drugs adopted were not repeated scientifically, if at all. The operator applied dubious Allopathic names to the maladies, and prescribed, against such names, drugs, Homoeopathical only, to determinate sufferings, between which and these fanciful names, M. Andral supposed some essential relationship to exist. This test consisted in applying IIomceopathic preparations upon Allopathic principles-than which no proceeding can possibly be more absurd-and we by no means wonder at M. Apdral having observed a profound silence as to his general conclusions. We are not quite certain, whether Andral undertook these experiments by order of the minister of public health, or merely with his consent. As it regards the influence of Andral's experiments upon the state of the system in France, it can not for a moment be pretended, that they retarded its progress in any sensible degree. The number of converts among physicians and savans is certainly on the increase. There are several provincial Homwoopathic Societies, and one general association, for all France, called " Gallician." At Bordeaux, there is a flourishing Hospital, under the charge of Dr. Mabit, who received the decoration of the legion of honour, as before stated, on account of his alledged brilliant success in the Homoeopathic treatment of cholera, in that city. In a letter, quite recently received from the celebrated Dr. Peschier, we are informed that, at the great medical school of 222 PROGRESS AND STATE OF tHOM(EOPATHIA. States, Naples and Sicily, in proportion to the number of medical men, than elsewhere, out of Saxony, in the world. At Palermo, there appears to have been a much more general adoption of the new mode, than in any other single city in Europe. It is to be regretted that the foregoing trials were not undertaken with a very specific object, instead of the too general one of ascertaining the truth of Hahnemann's mode as a system assumed to be complete in all its parts. Had the commission in each case been directed to ascertain for example, whether the principle of Homaeopathia " similia similibus curantur" be true, in the first instance, and, if.found to be true, next to ascertain as nearly as possible, the minimum dose of each drug with reference to the due execution of this law, we are persuaded that actual results would have been obtained. This was the process in Hahnemann's own course, and has uniformly been that of every conversion from the old methods to Homoeopathia. No medical man of sound education, can, we think, attempt the dilutions, till upon trial with very small Allopathic doses, he is quite satisfied of the truth of the main law of the new plan. It is far from being a just or necessary conclusion that if the 3Cth dilution fail in a given instance, the lower dilutions will also fail; and if these fail in the same case, neither is it necessary that the still cruder preparations, as the powders or tinctures of the shops should also fail. The trials should have been ordered for some tangible, specific purpose, to ascertain the truth of some one or two important propositions. The comparison of the bills of mortality among an equal number of sick, treated by divers methods, is a most poor and lame way to get at conclusions touching principles of the healing art. Supposing the climate, season of the year, local advantages, &c., to be as nearly the same as possible, in a trial between the two modes of treatment, the diversities in regard to diseases treated, would certainly forestall any just conclusions. But 228 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. That a correct comparative estimate may be made of the value of Homoopathic treatment in Hospitals, we have quoted from Dr. Vehsemeyer the result of seven years' treatment in one of the Prussian Hospitals of the Allopathic or old school, which may be found in Rust's Magazine. The deaths were at the rate of 11 per cent., or 1 out of 8! HOSPITAL OF THE SISTERS OF CHARITY, IN VIENNA. During the years 1832-3 were treated 266 patients, 23 died. "6 it "91833-4 " 316 " 33 " " " " 1834-5 " 474 " 31 " " " " 1835-6 " 316 " 33 " " " " 1836-7 " 772 " 53 " " " " 1838 " 573 " 33 " " " " 1839 " 683 " 31 " " " " 1840-1 " 910 " 63 " 4310 300 Deaths at the rate of about 7 per cent., or 1 out of 14. Deaths in the Allopathic Hospitals as quoted from Dr. Vehsemeyer were at the rate of about 11 per cent., or 1 out of 8! HOSPITAL OF GUNS, IN HUNGARY. Report of Dr. Bless at the conclusion of the year 1840. Of 617 patients received into the Hospital, 26 haveedied. The mortality therefore is to be estimated at 4-1- per cent., or I out of every 23 -. MUNICH HOSPITAL, BAVARIA. Report of Dr. Reisig of treatment in this Hospital for 1840. Of 683 received, 31 died. Deaths 4- per cent., or I out of 22. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 229 SUMMARY. In the four above enumerated Homceopathic Hospitals the average mortality is, 5o,- per cent., or 1 out of 19-T' While in the Allopathic Hospitals the fatality is, 11 per cent., or 1 out of every 8! XII.--CONCLUSION. In the face of such developments, as the opinions of eminent Allopathic physicians, the accidental concurrent testimony of celebrated practitioners, the conversion of Allopathists to the new doctrine, the growth of its literature, and the records of the results of treatment-to denounce Hahnemann as a charlatan, to assail his disciples as visionaries or knaves, and to scoff at Hommeopathia as a humbug, is it not puerile, undignified, and presumptuous? The promptings of personal malevolence may guide some, trembling pecuniary interests may exasperate others, and unbending bigotry may, in a few instances, frown off the semblance of recognition; but the number of these, fortunately, has been too limited to arrest the onward and ceaseless advances of the new mode. T'he intelligence of the community has been awakened to the investigation and knowledge of its peculiarities, so that the charge of its being an obscure and contemned German mysticism, is no longer tenable; and we fear that our Allopathic opponents, beside receiving censure for neglecting the noble and philanthropic duty of searching for, and accepting, all that is true, and of discarding all that is false in medical testimony, may find that such neglect will be freely and dispassionately canvassed, and not only that their ridicule, derisions, and denunciations of Homweopathia may, by intelligent laymen, be attributed to ignorance of this system, concerning which they 230 PROGRESS AND STATE OF IIOM(EOPATHIA. so confidently speak, but that it is not unlikely that doubts may grow out of this refusal to investigate, as to their own serious information of the older methods. We are at liberty to confess that these demonstrations of Homoeopathic history, beside commanding our respect, have produced an ineffaceable confirmation of our progressive belief; and, so far as our individual testimony may influence others, we are ready to state, that our convictions of the truth of the Homceopathic law have been additionally strengthened by personal intercourse with Hahnemann-travelling over the European ground of its occupation-learning the reputation of its adherents -inspecting its archives-perusing the essential pages of the principal works of its literature; and, finally, we would humbly affirm, that we have made full and impartial trials of the system in practice during the last twelve years, and, whether it was applied to sleeping or unconscious infancy, ripened manhood, or the tottering decrepitude of age-whether aimed at the imminent dangers of acute sickness, or the insidious devastations of chronic maladies, that the general results invariably and irresistibly converged to one conclusion-the confirmation of the principle, similia similibus curantur, as one of the immutable laws of nature. On one point we desire to be distinctly understood.-Although we are satisfied that the Homweopathic principle of cure is perfectly correct, and that the system predicated on this principle is preferable to any other system of medicine, for promptness and certainty of effect, we are not to be included among those who foolishly believe that Homoeopathia, as a whole, like Minerva suddenly leaping into existence from the head of Jove in faultless perfection, has emanated from Hahnemann a perfect system; but, on the contrary, that some of its subordinate propositions are assailable as faults, if not absurdities. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 231 Almost every real reform has been retarded by its friendszealous enthusiasts, who refine all peculiarities into transcendental excellences; who clog simple essential doctrines with cumbrous and foreign trappings, tending to deter the sincere lover of truth from their investigation. Hommopathia, too palpably, has these obstacles to contend with in its present condition; but the vigorous promise of its early and maturing manhood, offers every encouragement for its ultimate distinction and utility; the more prominently, because of the talent and philanthropy that have recently embarked in its support and defence. These reflections lead us at once to a matter of grave and serious moment, to which we call the attention of those who are opposed to us in opinion. The Allopathic systems of medicine are now three thousand years old; they have been enriched by the brilliant hypothesis of myrihds of able thinkers and writers; they have had hospitals and dispensaries in limitless numbers; countless millions on their beds of disease have been the subjects of the various and often contradictory modes; and yet, with all the advantages of centuries of experience, and with all the important aids of the new and valuable sciences closely allied to the healing art, these old methods still fluctuate between the dreamers and ingenious conceptionists of this, as of all former ages-making very little, if indeed any progress toward the general goal-an exact and satisfactory system. In the statistic reports of the hospitals and infirmaries still under Allopathic government, no striking amendment in. the proportion of cures can be detected; and if the undeniable improvements in surgery be taken into the examination of the subject, it is fairly questionable whether any balance will be found in favour of modern Allopathia against any of the older times. The justice of these observations is supported by the fact, 232 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. that medical men of this, and of all former ages, are constantly shifting from one Allopathic mode to another, and the older they become, the less and less confidence they express in any and all methods. The further important fact too, that many Allopathists have forsaken their old books and masters entirely, and adopted the Homwoopathic rules of practice, is in our judgment a serious confirmation of this view of the subject. And scarcely less important is the painful truth that thousands, and tens of thousands, who have essayed in vain, the skill of the first professors of Allopathic medicine, have finally abandoned this presumed science in utter helplessness, and hopelessness, to seek for possible relief in the dernier resource of pills, panaceas and other temptations of quackery. Homceopathia, on the other hand, has acquired the respect of many eminent members of the Allopathic profession; has attained a sufficient importance to elicit the antipathy and hostility of others; and, in the opinion of its friends, as also in the statistic reports of its trials, maintains a vast superiority over the old methods, and that too, in its comparative infancy of fifty, instead of an establishment of three thousand years. If then this young and vigorous system be already acknowledged as a formidable rival to the old, and, without claiming the superior advantages alleged in its favour by its friends, it be supposed as merely equal to Allopathia, what may not be expected from Homceopathia when its application in practice shall have been combined fully with the courses of instruction in the schools of medicioe-when it shall have found its proper rank and influence as a necessary part of a physician's educationwhen it shall be taught in connection with the elementary acquisitions of anatomy, physiology, pathology and the culture of all the collateral sciences, all of which are essential to the intrinsic value and stability of the system. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMI0EOPATHIA. 235 275.-Planchon, in Journal de M(~decine, S. 42, tom. xix.Eph. Seliger, in Misc. Nat. Cur. obs. 238, Dec. II. ann. 1.Fothergill, Memoirs of Medical Society of London, pp. 310, 314, vol. I.-Costa, in Journal de Mdd. Februar. tom. XXX.Stoerck, lib. de Strain. Hyosc. Acon. S. 36, 39, 47, 55, Vienna, 1762.-J. B. Van Helmont, Jus duum, v. 22.-J. Stedman, in Philosoph. Transactions, p. 194, vols. VII. XL.-J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien. S. 84, 85, vol. III, Goettingen, 1752.Targ. Tozzetti, claz. di alcuni riaggi, S. 279, vol. VI.-J. Faber, bei Schenk, lib. VII. p. 152. Wendt, in Hufeland's Jourual, p. 390, No. 5.-Kiernander, Utkast til Medicinal Lagfar. S. 267, 1776.-C. M. Blow, in Kon. Vetensk. Acad. Handl. S. 52, 1774.-.H. Sloane, in Philosophical Transactions, No. 457.Wepfer, hist. Cicutae aquat. S. 230, Basil, 1716.-Bernigau, in Hufeland's Journal, p. 905, V.-Vicat. Materia Medica, p. 185, vol. I.--Greding, in Ludwigii Advers. Med. p. 86, vol. I.-Navier in Recueil period. d' obs. deM ed. tom. IV.-Schenkbecker, von der Kinkina, Schierling, 311ilsenkraut, &c. p. 162, Riga, 1769.Mayer Abramnson, in Hufeland's Journal, XIX. vol. 2, p. 60.Hecker, in Hufeland's Journal, d. pr. Artzneik. 1. p. 354. De Cicut. aquat. p. 320, Basil, 1716. Opium.-Schweickert, in Hufeland's Journal, VIII. 3.Hufel. Journal, X. iv.-Vicat, plantes venedneuses de la Suisse, p. 226.-F. C. Grimm. Acta Nat. Cur. Ill. obs. 19.-Saltzburg, Med. Chirurg. Journal, 1805, III. p. 110. 1 J. Lind, Versuch fiber die Krankheiten denen die Europaer in heissen Klimaten unterworfen sind. Riga und Leipzig, 1773.-Alston, in Edinburgh Versuchen, v. p. i. art. 12.-DI)e la Guerene, in Romers Annalen der Artzneimittellehre, I. ii. p. 6.-De la Croix, Journal de Med. XXXIX.-Rademacher, in Hufel. Journal, p. 587, IV. 3.-Sauvages, Nosol. method. I. S. 847.-Crumpe, Natnr und Eigensch. des op.--Pyl, Aufsitze, Samnil. I. S. 95.-C. 236 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMCEOPATHIA. L. Hoffman, Von Scharbock, Lustenseuche, &c. Muinster, p. 295,1787. Wirtheuson, Opii vires fibras cordis debilitare, &c., Mfinster, 1775.-Sydenham, Opera, p. 654.-Marcus, in Magazin ftr Therapie, I. i. p. 7.-De Meza, Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn. iii. p. 202.-Struve's Triumph der Heilkunst, iii.-Stutz, in Hufeland's Journal, VIII. 3.-Hufeland in Hufeland's Journal, XII. 1.-De Haen, Ratio Medendi V. p. 126.-Tralles, Opii usus et abusus, sect. ii. p. 260.-Lentilius, Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. iii. ann. 1, app. p. 131.-Wedel, in Opiologia, p. 120.Anfangsgr(inde der Wundartzneikunde, V. 328.-Chronische Krankheiten, ii. p. 220, Berlin, 1816.-Bohn, de officio Medici. -Fr. Hoffman, Medicin. rat. system, t. IV. p. ii. 297. Stramonium.-C. Cruger, in Misc. Nat. Cur. Dec. iii. ann. 2, obs. 88.-Boerhaave, Impetum faciens, p. 282, Leyden, 1745. -Kellner, in Bresl. Samml., 172.-Veckoskrift fir Lackare, IV. p. 40, et seq.-Sidren, Diss. de Stramonii usu in malis convulsivis.Upsala, 1793.-Ibid. Diss. Morborum casus, spec. i. Upsal, 1785.-Schmaltz, Chirurg. und Medic. Vorfalle, p. 178, Leipzig, 1784.-Costa, in P. Schenck, lib. I. obs. 139.-Organon of Hommeopathic Medicine, by Samuel Hahnemann. Philadelphia, 1836, pp. 65, 66.-Ibid, pp. 55, 56, 57.-Ibid. pp. 58, 59, 60, 61.-Ibid, 51, 52.-Reine Artzneimittellehre, (Materia Medica) von Samuel Hahnemann, vol. IV. pp. 29-66, Dresden und Leipzig, 1830.-Ibid, vol. IV. pp. 264, 313. Idem, vol. II. pp. 41-117. IV.-OPINIONS OF EMINENT ALLOPATHISTS OF THE PRESENT AGE. Hufeland's Medical Journal, Berlin, 1796.- Hufeland, die Lehre von den Heilungs-objecten und ihrer Erkentniss, oder die Jatrognomik, Berlin, 1829.-Aus Einem Schreiben an den D. Gross, Berlin, March 18,1821.-Archiv fur die Homoeopathische Heilkunst, Dritt. Heft. vol. 10, pp. 149, 150, Leipzig, 1838. 238 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMCEOPATIIIA. 1833.-Du traitement Homceopathique du Cholera, par F. F. Quin, M. D., Medecin ordinaire de sa Majeste Leopold, Roi de Belges, Membre de l'Institut. Royal de Londres, de la Socie6t Royale de M6decine d'Edinbourg, de l'Academie de M6decine, de l'Institut. Royale de Naples. Paris et Londres, 1832.Revue du Nord, No. 1, 1835.-Bib. Homceop. pp. 248, 251, vol. V. 1835.-Pharmacopoeia Honceopathica, F. F. Quin, M. D., Londini, 1834.-Archives de la Medecine Hommopathique, sous la direction de M. Le Docteur Jourdan, Member de l'Academie Royale de Medecine. vol. I. Paris, 1834. Cosmo Maria de Horatiis, Saggio di clinica, &c., Neapol. 1828. Coup d'eil Historique sur L'Homceopathie, Geneve, 1833 -Bib. Horn. vol. I. No. I. p. 25, 1833.-Observations of F.F. Quin, M. D., before the " Gallican Society," Paris, 1836.-Bib. Hom. vol. VI. p. 24, 1836. Preface to the British Edition of Hahnemann's Organon, by Samuel Stratten, M. D., Dublin, 1833.-Allgem. H. Zeitung, vol. I. p. 57, Leipzig, 1832.-M. S. Medecin. Conversationsblatt, v. Hohnbaum und Jahn, p. 72, No. 9, Jarez, 1832. (Botaniacher Trinius u.'s. w.)-Allgem. H. Zeitung, p. 59, vol. I.-Idem, vol. I. Organon der Specifischen Heilkunst von G. L. Rau, M. D., (Counsellor to the Grand Duke of Hesse, and member of many learned societies) Leipzig, 1838, Vorrede.-A Practical View of Homceopathia, or an Address to British Practitioners, &c. by Stephen Simpson, M. D., late resident Practitioner at LRome London, 1836. Preface. Schfiler's Confessions.-Archives de la Medecine, &c., vol. I. 1834.-American Journal of Homoeopathia, p. 38, vol. I. Edited by Gray and Hull, N. Y. 1835.. G. A. H. Mihlenbein, M. D., Letter addressed to the Editor from Brunswick, Oct. 1, 1839. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATIIIA. 239 VI--REPUTATION OF HOM(EOPATHISTS AND HOM&EOPATHIA. Editor of the Examiner's personal observations, and conversations held with Hahlinemann, Siemon, Quin, Cameron, and others, during his sojourn in Europe, in 1836-7.-Revue du Nord, vol. I. 1822.-Bibliotheque Hommopathique, pp. 248,251, vol. V., 1835.-Allgemeine Homoeopathische Zeitung, vol. I. 1832.-Letter from P. F. Curie, M. D., to the Editor, dated London, Oct. 30, 1839.-Allg. H. Zeitung, vol. 1, pp. 57, 58, 59, Prof. Quadri, Wahlenberg, &c. 1832.-Idem. p. 40.-Idein. p. 48.-C. C. Wahrhold's Volksblitter vol. I. p. 352, 1835.Letter from G. L. Rau, M. D., to the Editor, from Giessen, dated Aug. 21, 1839.-Die Hommopathie besprochen bei den Standen, des Grosshertzogthums IHessen, nebst Vorwort und Nachtrag, von F. Wolff, Hofrath, &c., Darmstadt, 1839. p. 14.-Lettre A. M. M. les Membres de la Societe Royale de Medecine, par M. le Comnte S. Des Guidi,'Paris, 1835.-Bib. Hom. p. 188, vol. 5.--Hygea, Zeitschrift fir Ileilkunst. u. s. w. von D. D. Kramer, Wich, Werber, Arnold, Grieselich, Karlsruhe, 1834.-Lettre au Conseiller, S. Hahnemann sur le traitement Hommopathique du Cholera, par le Docteur J. Mabit, Mddecin de l'h6pital Saint Andr6, Professeur de l'ecole secondaire de Mddecine, Bordeaux, imprim. de J. Peletingeus, 1833. Encyclopedia Americana, vol. VI. p. 410.-Article, "Homceopathy," Philadelphia, 1831.-Societ6 Hommeopathique Gallicane, Session Parisienne, Sept. 1835.-Testimony of F. F. Quin, M. D., Bib. Hom, pp. 23, 25, vol. VI. 1836.-Die dynamischen Heilmethoden. Ein therapeutischer Versuch von Eduard Martin, M. D., und Professor der Medizin, Carlsruhe, 1838. Allgemeine H11. Zeitung, vol. 1. p. 56, 59, 1832.-Idem, vol. 3, pp. 174, 175, 1834, Idem. pp. 81, 82, vol. 12, 1837. 240 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. Verhandlungen vom Junis, des Jahrs 1837, von der Gesellschaft der Aerzte des nordisch Homoeopatischen Vereins in Auszige dem Central-vereine zu Frankfort vorgetragen.-Letter from Dr. Rfickert to the editor, dated Konigsbruck, August, 1839. Die Versammlung des Homeopathischen Central-Vereins, August, 1838, Dresden. Hinblick auf die Geschichte der Homceopathie, von Dr. Fr. Rummel, in Magdeburg, 1840.-Archiv. ffir die Hom. Heilkunst, vol. 18. pp. 105, 168, Leipzig, 1840.-Eiuleit. Vortrag des Dr. Reisig Zur 6ffentlichen Jahresversammlung des Central Vereins ffir 1840.-Die H1omceopathie im Jahre 1840, von Dr. Alb. Vehsemeyer, Berlin, 1840.-Thorer's Beitrage, Vol. IV. p. 92, Leipzig.-Statistics collected in Europe, by Dr. A. P. Biegler, during the year 1841.-Notes by J. C. Peters. COLLATERAL TESTIMONY-NOT HOMEOPATHIC. Le Moniteur (the official organ of the French government) February 1st, 1836. Remarks on the Abracadabra of the nineteenth century, or on Dr. Samuel Hahnemann's Homomopathic medicine, by William Leo-Wolf, M. D. Journal de M6decine pratique de Bordeaux, Mars, 1835, page 166. Curiosities of Medical Experience, by J. G. Millingen, M. D., Surgeon to the Forces, &c. VII.-PROFESSORSHIPS OF HOMCEOPATHIA. Die Homueopathie besprochen bei den Sthnden des Grosshertzogthums Hessen, v. s. w. von F. Wolff, Hofrath, &c., Darmstadt, 1839; Allgemeine H. Zeitung; Bibliotheque Homcepathique; Hygea, Zeitschrift, &c.; Wahrhold's Volksblhtter; Revue du Nord; Lettre, A. M. M. les membres de la Societ6 PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOMCEOPATHIA. 241 Royale de Medecine, par Comte S. Des Guidi; Rau's letter; Mabit's letter and others, as quoted for the previous article. Vortrag des Dr. Reisig.-Dr. Vehsemeyer's Homceopathie in Jahre 1840, Berlin.-State of Hommopathia in Spain, by Manual Roland, of Madrid, 1840.-Journal de la doctrine Hahnemannienne, par le Docteur Molin, Vol. II, pp. 408. 20, Paris, 1840. Hom. Exam., p. 339, Vol. II. New York, 1841.-Hom. Exam., p. 25, Vol. I. 1840.-Allgem. Horn. Zeitung, Vol. XVI. p. 35, Leipzig.-Statistics collected by Dr. A. P. Biegler in Europe, during 1841. VIII.-HOM(EOPATHIC LITERATURE. The Periodicals below enumerated, contain notices and reviews of nearly all the Homoeopathic works published. Medico-Chirurgical Review, by James Johnson, M. D., London. Foreign Quarterly Review, London. Hufeland's Journal, Berlin. Annual Catalogues of the Leipzig Fair. Brera's Anthologia, Venice. Archiv. fur die Homoeopathische Heilkunst, vols. 1-19, Leipzig. Bibliothbque Homoeopathique, vols. 1-11, Geneva. Hygea, vols. 1-16, Carlsruhe. Annalen der Homoeopathischen Klinik von Drs. Hartlaub, und Dr. Trinks, vols. 1-4, Leipzig. Bibliothek fur die Homceopath. Medizin, u. s. w. von Dr. Caspari, vols. 1-3, Leipzig. Zeitung der Hommeopath. Heilkunst, von. Dr. Schweikert, vols. 1-5, Leipzig. Archives de la M6decine Homocopathique, par Jourdan, Simon et Libert, 1st and 2d series, vols. 1-8, Paris. Journal de la Medecine Homceopathique, par Leon Simon et Curie, Paris. American Journal of HIomceopathia, vol. 1, Gray & Hull, New York. American Journal of Honmeopathy, (2d series) by an association of physicians, Philadelphia. Einleitender Vortrag des Dr. Reisig zur 6ffentlichen Jahresversammlung des Central, Vereins fur 1840. Die Homcopathie im Jahre 1840, von Dr. Vehsemeyer, pp. 3-7, Ber., 1840. PROGRESS AND STATE OF HOM(EOPATHIA. 243 pp. 21-57, 2d h. vol. 16. Idem. pp. 29-36, vol. 16, drittes Heft, 1837. Bibliotheque, Horn. pp. 320, 323, vol. 2, 1833. Archives de la Med. Homiopathique, vol. 1, p. 240, Paris, 1834. C. C. Wahrhold's Volksblhtter, pp. 405, 409, vol. 2, 1837. Geschichte der Horn. Heilanstalt zu Leipzig, von Ed. Seidel, Grimma, 1840. Die Homoeopathie im Jahre 1840, von Dr. Alb. Vehsemeyer, Berlin, 1840. Allgem. Hom. Zeitung, vol. 21, pp. 1-50, Leipzig, 1841. Hygea, Zeitschrift fir Heilkunst, Redigirt von Dr. L. Griesselich, vol. 8, pp. 289, 330, 1838. Idem, vol. 9, pp. 520-5, 1839. Idem, vol. 12, pp. 225-38, 1840. Idem, vol. 14, pp. 351-361, Carlsruhe, 1841. Archiv ffir die Horn. Heilkunst, vol. 19, p. 120, Leipzig, 1841. Dr. Reisig, Die Hom. im Jahre 1840, von Dr. Vehsemeyer, Berlin, 1840. THE END. A,.. --.,