bears the closest resemblance to the effects of the toxic agent, that drug, whatever it is, is the true similimum to the abnormal condition. It may be objected, this is only another way, and a round-about one, of expressing similia similibus. My main object in these remarks is, to induce you to believe with me, that without discarding our convenient and venerable formula, we may hope for the time when we may find a more scientific expression, based upon a higher law, the outcome of extended knowledge, of a kind similar to what I have endeavoured to suggest to you. I am so convinced of the necessity for our future investigations, travelling in this direction, that looking to the future of homoeopathy, I see no hopeful prospect for it, or indeed for any progress in medicine at all, if this field bearing precious fruit lies ignored and uncultivated.

A few words now on a subject bristling with difficulties -the question of doses. The chief difficulty of aiming at scientific accuracy depends upon the ever varying conditions of age, temperament of patient, nature of disease, upon its acuteness or chronicity, the properties of the drug, and other vital conditions which belong to living organisms.

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The dose I suggest should be regulated by the nature of the tissue, and also by the rapidity or slowness of metamorphosis, still more by the greater or lesser excitability of the tissue, in relation to electro-motor force. example, suppose phosphorus to be the remedy equally appropriate to disease of bone, and also to disease of brain, molecular vibrations and cell life are carried on with relative slowness in bone, and it has a low degree of excitability; a low dilution would seem to be proper for disease of bone tissue. In the nerve tissue of the brain we have exactly an opposite state of things. A medium or high dilution of phosphorus seems here most suitable.

This example I merely glance at to indicate the principle I wish to enforce, namely, that whenever it can be applied in practice, we have a more satisfactory guide than any formula like Dr. Drysdale's, which describes a true specific," a remedy which cures by the absorption of its whole physiological into its therapeutic action." Accepting this as a truth, others have defined the curative dose to be that which falls short of its physiological action; but as the physiological action of any drug is not

a fixed, but an ever varying quantity, such a rule is practically useless. Dr. Sharp throws a new light upon the subject; is it more helpful? He tells us he has by experiments on himself, arrived at the following induction, that the law, similia similibus curantur, remains true when limited to large doses; and the law, contraria contrariis curantur is true when limited to the action of small doses." He thinks he has proved that the small dose reverses the action of the large, and he suggests the idea that the best antidote for a virulent poison, especially snake poison, may be very small doses of itself. These inductions are so startling, and so contrary to all preconceptions, that they require more numerous, and careful experiments to be made, free from the sources of fallacy to which Dr. Sharp's experiments are open, that we must, I fear, hesitate to accept them until proved more convincingly, however attractive and interesting. Did time permit, I think it could be shown that the phenomena Dr. Sharp adduces are to be explained by the recognised fact that drugs have primary and secondary actions.

The subject of dynamization I must discuss as shortly as possible. If minute subdivision, by multiplying the surfaces of contact between the drug and the organ, to be acted upon, is the only explanation of its dynamic power, then the greater the subdivision the greater ought to be the increment of power; but such is not found to be the case. I, therefore, contend that we need some other explanation, which I hold is this, that during the process of attenuation, the forces which before were potentially latent, become dynamically energetic, not because any new force or property is added, and certainly not owing to the absurd notion that the spirit of the drug is liberated from matter, but that molecular changes occur, analogous to those which take place in other kinds of matter, the result of recognised physical laws. All the arguments against the theory of dynamization have been chiefly and properly directed against the metaphysical theory, but none that I have read attempt to refute the facts which the physicists furnish us with, and it is with these I submit that the theory is in harmony, and by these, reasoning from analogy, the doctrine of dynamization can be proved true. A bar of steel is rendered magnetic by certain mechanical vibrations of its molecules; it

can be demagnetized by other kinds of vibrations. By alloying mercury with a millionth of its weight of sodium, a force of not less than 50,000 times that of gravity is generated by a galvanic current. The difference between albumen and animal fibrine is less owing to diversity of composition than to a change in the arrangement of the ultimate particles. I contend, therefore, that there is no reason for supposing that drugs form an exception to other kinds of matter, or that they are not governed by the same laws. Such considerations as these, I think, go a great way in establishing the reasonableness of the theory of dynamization, require no idea of spirit or essence apart from matter, may be accepted equally by the vitalist or the materialist, do no violence to scientific inductions, but do afford a satisfactory explanation of the action of fractional and infinitesimal doses, when brought into contact with diseased conditions of the living organism, and I hazard the conjecture that different potencies of medicines are more curative than others, in proportion as their rates of vibration are, so to speak, in harmony with the rates of vibration in the diseased organ.

In conclusion, I beg to thank you for the patient hearing you have given to these necessarily hurried remarks, which I hope you will value for just what they are worth, and discuss them if, in your opinion, they are worth discussing.

NOTE.-Since this paper was read the following remarks appear in an American contemporary:-" Morbid forces vibrate in a certain organ or tissue of the body; an atomized drug whose forces are similar, and whose similarity has been already proved on healthy persons, begets a series of similar waves in the part diseased. Of independent origin, they continually interfere with the waves of disease-force in the cells of the tissue, in the nerves of the organ, and in the whole sympathising body. Where disease was active, now come the lines of rest-there is comfort, where a little while ago was excruciating pain; there is quiet sleep in lieu of wakefulness and tossing; there is a sane brain instead of delirium; a soft pulse in place of the fevered circulation; the diseased action has been cured, neutralised by the similar, the homoeopathic action of the specific counterpart of that diseased action, embodied in the drug; and we have furnished a new demonstration of the well proved law of cure— ' likes are cured by likes.'

"Indeed, so absolute is the demonstration of this principle in all departments of dynamics, so well understood is it by all scientists, that to deny it in medicine, to decry, ignore, or neglect a system of cure, a science of therapeutics based upon it; or, worse than this, to persecute or denounce such a system, seems like sheer infatuation."

ON MALIGNANT GROWTHS.

By EDWARD T. BLAKE, M.D.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,-For addressing you this day I have selected a subject that commands our attention even for other reasons than that it will ever possess for suffering humanity an interest as profound as it is painful.

The various names connected with this subject are used in so very vague a way, that I must begin by a definition of terms. For the excellent reason that there is no absolute anatomical definition, I shall use the term "malignant" in a purely clinical sense, not as interchangeable with cancer, but as including those morbid products, lupus, sarcoma, myxoma, recurrent fibroid, singularly inflexible to treatment, prone to recur, and ready, under certain peculiar conditions of the constitution, to take on action markedly malignant in the fullest sense of that

term.

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By "cancer or carcinoma " I shall always mean the actual malignant product, and, following the analogy of tubercle, I shall call the cancerous diathesis or tendency to carcinoma "carcinosis;" the diseased condition itself "carcinisation," by that I mean the actual developed presence of the malignant growth.

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The nomenclature of malignant disease is indeed, like that of disorders of the skin, capable of advantageous simplification. Such names as colloid" or "gelatinous," fasciculate," "cystic" and "alveolar," denoting merely adventitious conditions frequently developed in one part only of any foreign growth, should be discarded, or at the least only retained for such special uses as minute clinical description. The term "osteoid " should not be used for tumours, which commence in bony tissues, (though osteoid tumours do usually arise in bone,) but for tumours which show a tendency to general ossification, and that early in their history.

2ndly. Names involving a theoretic supposition as to contents, e.g., " atheroma," "melleceris," and "steatoma," are objectionable.

3rdly. The amount of blood or of pigment is too acci

dental and fluctuating to be made a criterion of differentiation; therefore, such words as "cerebriform," "hæmatoid," "melanotic," "fungus hæmatodes," "villous," medullary sarcoma," should only be employed to qualify a form or express the condition of a cancer not as primary designations.

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The basis of classification of cancerous tumours must, for reasons that we shall presently see, be always clinical. When, thanks to the microscope, it was shown that there is a law of malignancy, namely, that the more widely divergent from the normal cells of the part, the greater the degree of malignancy of a growth, high hopes were raised that now a morphological and strictly accurate method of arrangement might be obtained. Alas! it was found that these rebellious disorders would not submit to the rules imposed upon them.

Some highly heterologous tumours, e.g., certain cases of scirrhus, were characterised by slow growth and tendency to self-cure, whilst instances of eminently homologous growth, as recurrent fibroid, myxoma, lymphadenoid sarcoma, enchondroma, and other histioid growths, exhibited a far higher degree of malignancy. It is now known that malignancy bears a distinct proportion to the mobility of elements: instance, infantile ocular glioma: and is greatly influenced by such extraneous conditions as position, involving exposure to foreign agencies; and such internal conditions as warmth, moisture, vascularity, free lymphatic connections, occasional exalted functional activity, &c., &c.

A physiological basis of classification is too simple, for by it we could reduce all cancers to one kind, showing that the soft forms are produced merely by predominance of the cellular element; the hard, by excess of fibrous stroma; osteoid by ossification of the stroma; colloid and cystic by liquefaction of the cellular interspaces, and

so on.

Histology would have the opposite drawback of being too elaborate. The variety of cells is so infinite that we should have a classification far too complex for clinical purposes.

It is striking and suggestive that physicians who have attempted pathological classification have always introduced the clinical element. Rokitansky, in 1855, gave six kinds of cancer; Paget, in 1853, was not content with