as efficacious as the old one, it ought to be preferred on account of its gentleness and pleasantness; how much more if it succeed better. The action of the medicines, in point of fact, is found to be such as to supersede the necessity for the severe measures and nauseous doses hitherto had recourse to. The medicines are tasteless, or nearly so, themselves, and they do not need the aid of such formidable adjuncts as bleeding, and blistering, and setons, and issues, and cauterizations, and moxas. Already, indeed, the beneficial influence of homoeopathy in this respect, upon general practice, has been greatly felt, In the year 1827, I attended the military hospital in Paris, which was in charge of Baron Larrey, senior surgeon to the army of Napoleon. At every morning's visit, he had, among his numerous attendants, two "internes," or, as they are called at the London hospitals, dressers, accoutred in this manner: one carried a small chafingdish, with fire in it, and the other, a box containing a number of actual cauteries (irons like small pokers),' and a pair of bellows. As we passed from bed to bed, one or more of the suffering occupants were sure to be ordered the cautery, when one of the irons was immediately placed in the chafing-dish, the bellows were applied, and as soon as the intrument was brilliantly red hot, the Baron would take it in his hand, and deliberately draw two or three lines on the flesh of the patients, very like the broad arrow with which most of us are familiar, made by the Ordnance surveyors on our houses and pavements during their late labours in all parts of the country. Now, surely, to see banished for ever, not only such painful methods as this, but everything which approaches to it, must be a consummation to be wished for.

21. Homœopathy administers one medicine at a time. This is another great improvement. How was it possible attain to satisfactory knowledge of the powers and properties of any drug, so long as several were com

1 See a representation of these in Essay XI.

bined together, when given to a patient? In the days of Sydenham, the father of English medicine, sixty or eighty medicines were mixed together in the favourite. prescriptions; this number has been greatly reduced since the time of Sydenham, but, so long as two medicines are given together, it is impossible to ascertain with accuracy the effects of either.

22. The homœopathic physician learns the properties of drugs by experiments upon himself, not upon his patients. That the contrary has been the plan hitherto adopted is known to all. How many poor people have been deterred from availing themselves of the aid of our hospitals, lest they should have " experiences" tried upon them!

It is evident that the properties of medical substances must be ascertained by some kind of experiment; the question in dispute is this, is it best to try these experiments upon sick persons, or upon healthy ones? Shall the physician get his knowledge by experimenting upon his patients, or upon himself? The practitioners of the old school pursue the former method; those of the new one the latter.

Now it is certain that the only way of learning the real effects of drugs upon man's health is to administer them experimentally to healthy persons. None have thought of this method, so far as appears, except the illustrious Haller and Hahnemann;-none have attempted to carry it out except Hahnemann and his disciples.

23. Homœopathy is applicable to acute, as well as to chronic diseases. When the discovery was first announced to the world by Hahnemann, he did not carry its application further than to chronic diseases,-to ailments continuing for a long time. And the impression is still general that such treatment may possibly avail where there is abundance of time, but what is to be done in cases of emergency? Acute disease with immediate danger,-how can you trust to homœopathy then? The answer to this grave question, which manifold experience gives, -as indeed may be partly

gathered from the statistics of cholera and other acute diseases given in the preceding pages,-is this, that it is able to grapple with the most dangerous and sudden attacks of disease more successfully than any other known method of treatment.

24. Homœopathy is prepared for any new form of disease far better than the old method. This fact was very strikingly exhibited on the appearance of Asiatic cholera in Europe. The various colleges of physicians were quite at a loss to know how to deal with the formidable stranger; and when called upon, in their respective countries, to issue advice and directions, nothing could be more painful than the visible inconsistencies and unsatisfactoriness of their multiform recommendations.

On the other hand, the homoeopathic practitioners, whether in Russia or in Austria, in France or in England, found the true remedies without co-operation and without difficulty, and they proved wonderfully successful. Hahnemann himself published a tract pointing out the proper treatment, from a description he had read of the disease before he had seen a case.

This point was with Sydenham a great source of perplexity. "This at least," says he, "I am convinced of; viz., that epidemic diseases differ from one another like north and south, and that the remedy which would cure a patient at the beginnning of a year will kill him, perhaps, at the close. Again, that when once, by good fortune, I have hit upon the true and proper line of practice that this or that fever requires, I can (with the assistance of the Almighty), by taking my aim in the same direction, generally succeed in my results.

This lasts until the first form of epidemic becomes extinct, and until a fresh one sets in. Then I am again in a quandary, and am puzzled to think how I can give relief. It is more than I can do to avoid risking the lives of one or two of the first who apply to me as patients."1 This is the confession

1 Works of Sydenham, vol. i, p. 33. Edition.

Sydenham Society's

of a man entitled, for his truthfulness and genius, to the highest admiration. The difficulty, though not perhaps always so frankly acknowledged, has been always felt until now ;-it is not a difficulty in homœopathy.

25. Homœopathy carries into detail what all medicine is in the general. Medicines are not food, but poisons; not materials which of themselves can preserve or produce health. They are all naturally inimical to the human body; but, when the body is in a state of disease, they are found, as a matter of experience, sometimes to assist in restoring it to health.

Medicine in the general is poison to the healthy frame of man, and a remedy to that frame when sick; this is admitted by all, and this is homœopathy in the general; why not then have homoeopathy in detail? Why not first ascertain what symptoms each poison produces, when taken in health? and why not give it as a remedy for similar symptoms in natural disease? Medical men have been experimenting in the treatment of diseases for many centuries, why not try this experiment? Our opponents admit, in general, what they ridicule, and oppose, when carried out, in particulars.

26. Finally, homoeopathy relates only to the administration of remedies, and detracts nothing from the value of the collateral branches of the science of medicine. It leaves anatomy, physiology, chemistry, &c., unaffected. The homeopathic physician ought to be as accomplished in these, and other departments of knowledge, as his fellow practitioner of the old school; and he is more likely than the other to turn all such knowledge to the beneficial account of his patient.

It may, perhaps, be objected that this Essay deals more in assertion than in proof; if so, it is replied that the proofs will be found in the Essays which follow. It was necessary to ascertain first what homeopathy

professes to be, and to give an exhibition in outline of its leading features. Some of these features might have been sketched with more elaborate detail, but it is hoped they have been delineated so plainly that the points contended for by homœopathists cannot remain doubtful.

The proofs upon which these statements rest have been thoughtfully and carefully examined, and will be found in the subsequent Essays distinctly explained. Opponents should meet them with facts and arguments, not with ridicule and abuse, for certainly any proposal, such as is explained in the foregoing pages, even if there be but a chance that it may be instrumental in diminishing the sufferings of our fellow men, deserves to be received with something more decorous than ridicule. "Those who reject it, or who cast it out of the way as unworthy of inquiry, must do so on their own responsibility." If they decline "to search all things that may present even the shadow of a chance of bringing them more nearly acquainted with laws which the Creator has instituted for the government of the world, and especially with those upon which He has caused the preservation of health to depend, let them recognize that it will be vain for them, in any after hour of hopelessness, when it may be too late to avert their own premature death, or the death of a relative or friend, to rely on the hackneyed consolation, that the calamity is to be regarded as a new instance of the inscrutable ways of Providence, and not as the penalty of having wilfully blinded themselves to any light beneficently set before them, the reception of which might have ensured their preservation.'

"1

1 Truths and their reception,' by M. B. Sampson, p. 97. London, 1849.