Every one familiar with the literature of his profession will admit that this is a fair sample of the general result of his reading. How delightful to pass from this state of uncertainty, arising from conflicting human authorities, to the absolute and invariable direction of a natural guide!

That the physician of the old method has no principle to guide him is known and acknowledged; that the homœopathic physician has such a principle is obvious that this is a great advantage, must ere long, if truth is to prevail, be acknowledged also.

3. The simplicity of the means.

"Look! what will serve is fit," says nature's poet; and the nearer we approach to simplicity, in the means we use, the nearer we approach to nature's perfection. Physicians have been vigorously wielding the club of giant despair, while they ought to have been observing and endeavouring to imitate the operations of nature, in which mighty effects are continually being brought about by apparently insignificant but really efficacious

means.

Among the many examples which surround us, let me mention one. Little grains of sand are unlikely materials wherewith to roll back the encroachments of the mighty waters; but practically they are found to be more permanently effectual for this purpose than cliffs of solid earth. In like manner, small doses of medicine, however improbable it may appear beforehand, and without experience, are found practically to be more efficacious in arresting the progress of disease than the complicated mixtures and poisonous doses of former methods.

To borrow an an expression which Dr. Thomas Chalmers often used in conversation, both these are instances of the "power of littles."

The sight of all the materials in the hands of the old physician and surgeon "is enough to make a man serious," These are lancets, cupping-glasses, and leeches; blisters, setons, issues, moxas, caustics and

cauteries; emetics and purgatives, sudorifics and sialagogues, diuretics and expectorants, anodynes, tonics, and stimulants, with all the "luxuriancy of composition," of which Cullen so often speaks.

The whole course of medical treatment, as usually practised, is a rude and rough procedure, as far as possible removed from the delicacy required from us when we would try to regulate the exquisite machinery of the living body. It is the blacksmith undertaking with his pincers to repair a watch.

The new method, it is well known, discards all these complex and formidable weapons, and prescribes a single remedy at a time, and that to be chosen according to an invariable rule, to be prepared with the greatest care, and given in the smallest dose.

That the means made use of by the physicians following the old treatment are complicated, unwieldy, and violent, is known and acknowledged; that the means used by the physicians adopting the new treatment are simple and easy of application, is obvious that this is a great advantage, must be

true.

I recommend these three advantages to the serious consideration of my medical brethren.1

1 Since this was written, great changes have been brought about in the practice of the best educated physicians of England. Complicated prescriptions and violent measures have been laid aside; often only a single medicine is given at a time; and the main objects of attention seem to be good nursing, and change of air. Moreover, some of the best remedies of the new system have been introduced, without acknowledgment, into the old practice.

But the principle which should guide the use of these new remedies is still rejected; and as long as this rejection is persisted in, the good effects of these excellent medicines will be casual and uncertain.

So that the old method still remains empirical, and is as liable as ever to rapid transitions from one extreme to its opposite; and, were homœopathy out of the way, there would be no security against a return to the severe treatment of former times.

(1874)

II. THE ADVANTAGES TO THE PATIENT.

1. The banishment of nauseous drugs, and painful and debilitating applications.

A representation is here given of the old chafingdish and actual cautery, as the red hot iron was called, and which has been used for a long period. I witnessed, it is to be hoped, the expiring embers of this fire in the military hospital in Paris, under the care of the Baron Larrey, as described in Essay I. In the next generation I trust it will be necessary to represent several other processes yet had recourse to, as well as to describe the calomel pill, the black draught, the steel mixture, the bark decoction, the opium bolus, and the bitter infusion, of which no description need be given to the present age.

Now, notwithstanding that some people cling to their torments, as the Prince did to his Falstaff, I cannot but think that, by the majority of patients, the banishment of all these painful operations and nauseous doses must be felt to be a great deliverance.

The avoiding of bloodletting, and the weakness

caused by such loss of the vital fluid, is of itself a sufficient triumph for the new system; but when it is remembered that every painful and debilitating process, along with every disagreeable dose, is for ever abandoned, how great is the emancipation, how substantial the triumph!

It is now contended by some medical men, that during the last few years the character of diseases has become so altered that bleeding is no longer necessary. One of these practitioners urged this remark upon a patient of mine the other day, and added that homoeopathy had derived great advantage from this change in the character of diseases.

But let me ask any unprejudiced person which of these two suppositions is most likely to be true ;—that, contemporaneously with the introduction of homœopathy, the course of nature was suddenly altered, and the character of diseases changed, so as greatly to favour that system; or that from various considerations, and among them the success of the new method, physicians have been induced to lay aside the lancet, and to try a milder treatment, and finding this succeed better than severe measures, they have invented the former supposition to save themselves from the acknowledgment of error.

It is true that diseases do, from time to time, undergo changes in their type and character. We are indebted to Sydenham for impressively teaching us this fact. He says, "Nothing in my opinion strikes the mind that contemplates the whole domain of medicine with greater wonder than the well-known varied and inconsistent character of those diseases which we call epidemic. It is not so much that they reflect and depend upon different conditions of climate in one and the same year, as that they represent different and dissimilar constitutions of different and dissimilar years. Suppose, then, it were admitted that the type of disease now prevalent is of an asthenic character,—a

1 'Works of Sydenham,' vol. I. p. 32.

"1

character of depression and debility, rather than of excitement; allopathy substitutes tonics for bleeding and antiphlogistics; the new treatment is as much opposed to this practice as to the other; it rejects "tonics" as much as it rejects "antiphlogistics," and has better success without them than the old treatment has with them.

Notwithstanding, however, the amelioration which has taken place in the severity of the usual practice since the introduction of homoeopathy, and which is a tacit admission of its superior success, the difference between the two in respect to this comparative severity and mildness is still very great. A few instances will make this sufficiently apparent.

In apoplexy, locked-jaw, and other similar cases, where the power of swallowing is lost, and large doses of medicine cannot possibly be given, and where consequently the allopathic physician, if he does not bleed and blister, is able to do scarcely anything; the homœopathist is at no loss how to proceed, his drop or globule placed within the lips has still power to act, as I have witnessed, to the complete restoration of the patient.

In cases of acute inflammation, in delicate persons, where the local disease seems to call for depletion and lowering treatment, and the constitution at the same time urgently requires to be strengthened, the practitioner on the old plan is placed between Scylla and Charybdis, his efforts to relieve the inflammation, in proportion to their activity, increase the general weakness; while the homoeopathist meets with nothing to perplex him, and can do good without doing harm.

Again, the suffering spared to children is immense, and must call forth the grateful feelings of all parents. Their beautiful bodies, uninjured by previous dosing, are susceptible of all the actions of the new remedies, and capable of deriving all the benefits which such actions can impart.

That patients treated after the old method are still