and the customs of the time having outgrown them; nevertheless, they hold on with the tenacity of grim death. Systems of philosophy, of religion, of theology, of jurisprudence, of medicine, obey the same law. They become bred in the bone, as it were, and are a part of the warp and woof of the body politic, the family and national way of thinking and doing, and are sought to be made perpetual; and when it happens that a few individuals, or a good minority, see the absurdity of the old, seek to adopt a new or an improved way in laws or methods, the warfare at once begins. The conservatives hold fast to the traditions of their fathers; the radicals cut loose from theirs; and it requires a wise statesman, jurist, leader, pope, or bishop, the medical philosopher, or the moderator in the ecclesiastic convocation, to compose their differences, or to prevent an actual conflict. Many people know that the present system of education, so beneficent once, has in many particulars outgrown its usefulness; that many of our religious doctrines are lingering beyond their time and are inconsistent with improved knowledge-yea, stronger, are an offence to common-sense; that the system of criminal jurisprudence is based on a hypothesis wholly untenable, i. e., free will, or inconsistent with the present development of mental pathology, or criminology; and that many of the doctrines of medical philosophy, and the methods of treating diseases, or the primitive conceptions of the nature of disease, are false in the light of to-day, although they were the best that could be formulated in the light of the knowledge of their day. It is wise, perhaps, that man will hold on to the old with tenacity, lest the evils of a premature change would be greater than those they leave. People have to undergo a course of preparation before they can safely lay aside the old and accept the new. This is certainly true in the science and art of Medicine, as its progress shows. We have now to give some account of a movement in Germany, toward the close of the eighteenth century, to introduce a reform in the method of medical practice, of so radical a nature as to be quite revolutionary. That it met with virulent antagonism was altogether natural, since it radically interfered with fixed methods and vested interests. We refer to the advent of Hahnemann and Homœopathy. It is more than a century since that movement began, long enough ago it would seem for passions and prejudices to subside and to enable the historian to treat the subject in a spirit of judicial fairness. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of the school or sect of Homœopathy, was born at Meissen, in Cur-Saxony, Germany, in 1755. His parents were highly respectable folk with a large family and narrow means, and could give this son but a meagre education. He was taught to read at home, and then sent to the Stadtschule, a school corresponding to our district school. When about sixteen years old he was sent to the Furstenschule, an institution corresponding to our high school. Hahnemann possessed an ardent thirst for knowledge and made the most of these opportunities for its acquisition. His character was amiable and lovable, for which reason he made warm friends of both preceptor and pupils wherever he went. It is hardly necessary to follow the young man through the vicissitudes of fortune, after he left the parental roof. It was like that of other young men who have had ambitions to follow. It will suffice to say that at the age of twenty-four Hahnemann took his degree in medicine at the College of Erlangen; and at the age of thirty he found himself practising medicine at Dresden. At this time he had acquired an acquaintance with the classics and the principal languages of Europe. Chemistry was a favorite pastime with him, and ere long he produced a new salt of mercury, soluble mercury, mercurius solubilis Hahnemanni, as it is known to-day, to the pharmacists. This preparation has been found so useful in the treatment of so many affections that its discovery alone would have perpetuated his name. Hahnemann possessed an inquiring turn of mind, thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit. He had no doubt read Bacon's "Novum Organum," the works of Sydenham, Haller, and Cullen's "First Lines" and "Materia Medica"; and when he fell upon a specific for quartan ague, |