but one glass of water this time, and opened my pocket case. I found my belladonna 3x vial empty. By some good chance which I shall never understand I found in one of my vest pockets a bottle of belladonna 200th dilution. Up to this time I had never prescribed so high a potency, and I only did so now because I had no lower with me, and I really did not expect to do anything that would be of material benefit to the child. So I placed a few drops of the water medicated with belladonna 200th into the little sufferer's mouth, and told the mother to repeat the dose as often as it cried. That dose, gentlemen, did the business. It immediately went to sleep, slept several hours and awoke-well! You may drop this article right now and pooh-pooh the above circumstance aside as a coincidence if you will, gentlemen; but thousands of experiences tell me NO! It was all in accordance with one of the most beneficent of God's laws. The babe made a perfect and rapid recovery, and the fortunes of your humble servant mended wonderfully on the strength of that cure.

The marvelous demonstration of power in the potentized drug just related could not but give me a mighty impulse in the right direction. But one swallow does not make a summer. I did not meet so typical a case again for a considerable time, and I relapst into my former slovenly habits of practise, now and then getting but a ray of the light which should have continuously been mine from the time of the above cure until now.

In 1877 I moved to California and practised in the mountains of Placer County for about twelve years. During that time I did well financially, but my experiences as a healer were not altogether satisfactory to myself. It required a great amount of nerve to look a two hundred pound miner in the face and hand him a one or two dram vial of tiny pellets for the cure of acute rheumatism or sciatica, etc. I need scarcely say that I dispensed plasters, liniments, polypharmacy, etc., wedging in a little homeopathy here and there. While I saw now and then demonstrations of the power of the potentized drug to heal, nothing remarkable occurred until I was called to attend a case of pneumonia. The patient was a boy of ten, the upper lobe of the left lung being the seat of the attack. I treated him as usual, alternating two or three homeo

pathic remedies. After about nine days I pronounced him convalescent and did not see him again for a week or more. I found him not picking up as he should have done. His appetite was good, but a little food caused a sense of repletion which prevented him eating more than an occasional morsel. At four o'clock p. m. would ensue high fever, lasting until eight p. m. During that time he would expectorate half a teacupful of pure pus. At eight o'clock the fever would subside, followed by a profuse perspiration. Physical examination revealed an abscess in upper lobe of left lung. Another symptom which I should have mentioned was that he passed urin with difficulty, cried with pain during its voidance, and it was heavily loaded with brick dust sediment.

Allow me to remark parenthetically that a homeopathic prescription should have not less than three prominent, peculiar and persistent symptoms to rest upon, like the legs of a stool. And it is not necessary to add that we cannot always get them, as in the case I first related. But in this last instance a noble trio is present. They are:

1.-Sense of repletion from eating but a morsel of food.

2.-Regular exacerbation of symptoms at four o'clock p. m., abating at eight o'clock p. m.

3. The urinary system as above related.

There were other concomitants, such as constipation, borborygmus, etc., all found under the remedy, lycopodium clavatum. The way was so plain in this case that the wayfaring man tho a fool did not need to err, and I recognized the drug indicated. I gave it to him in the sixth potency, a powder every three hours. The indications were so unmistakable that I really anticipated instantaneous relief. But after two days upon the above prescription I could notice no markt change, certainly nothing for the better. The symptoms remained the same. I stuck to my drug, but I saw that I must go higher. I had nothing higher than the 6x, and no chance of getting it from the pharmacy in less than two days. So I sat down and ran it up to the 15x, decimal scale. You will never know, friends, what the test of faith is until you have taken a drop of mother tincture, or a grain of crude substance, and run it by the centesimal scale to the thirtieth potency. I administered

the fifteenth potency of lycopodium to my little patient without a scintillation of faith. It had oozed out at my finger tips during the process of potentiation, but I administered it because I did not know what better to do. Saw him next day and there was markt improvement. All the symptoms were present, but lessened in degree. To make a long story short, the boy went on rapidly to complete recovery. As a matter of course this gave me another mighty impulse in the right direction, and I could not but recognize the fact that there was a law of cure, beautiful and inerrant as any other of Nature's laws. We are all aware that lycopodium in the crude is a comparativly inoccuous substance, and probably the only experience most of you have had with it is limited to dusting it into the flexures of babes suffering with intertrigo. Why what we call potentiation should liberate so mighty a curativ principle as is found in potentiated lycopodium, and thousands of other inert substances, is something beyond the realm of reason, and we are obliged to accept demonstrable truth, whether we can understand the modus operandi or not.

Again I buckled into homeopathic materia medica, determined to be a homeopath, in deed as well as in name. I used my repertories and studied my cases as closely as possible, now and then making center shots that elevated me to the clouds. But because I could not all the time apply the law and get ideal results, I began to fall off in my enthusiasm and soon was in the old ruts of alternation and polypharmacy. And so I went on at this living and dying rate, dissatisfied with my art, my heart aching for patients that I knew were curable if I could but find their remedy, until the year of 1888. It was about midnight in the month of February that I was summoned to the bedside of a lady, fifty years of age, large and fleshy. She had been an invalid for many years. She had been given drugs galore, and the stomach had become utterly intolerant of any further drugging. Her med ical attendant had said that she could live but a few hours at longest. I was convinced that his prognosis was not far from the truth. Her condition was as follows:

1. She was sitting bolt upright in the center of the bed. She could not lie back in the least degree on account of extreme

dyspnea. Nor could she lean forward at all, because of enormous gaseous distension of the bowels and stomach.

2. Heart beating like a trip hammer, so that it perceptibly jarred the bed. Spitting great quantities of frothy blood.

3. Enormous eructations of gas, aggravated by the least morsel of food or drink. These eructations gave no relief to the sense of fullness and pressure.

4. Her clothing and even the bedclothes were drencht with a colliquativ sweat that was cold as death.

5. Extreme thirst for cold water, taking frequent small sips.

Not

There were other symptoms that I cannot stop to detail. Neither was there time for an extended examination. She was supposed to be dying and what I did must be done quickly. I took in the above data, called for two glasses of water and alternated nux vomica 3x and arsenicum album 3x every five minutes. Getting no relief from these after a thoro trial I floundered about among a number of other drugs for a couple of hours. a symptom of change for the better. I was up against it. It really seemed to me that I was commanded to stand still and see the glory of God. And thus I stood for a number of minutes, hands in my breeches pockets, powerless. All at once, like a flash of lightning, I saw the remedy. I seized my hat, called for a lantern and umbrella, and started for my office on a run. I snatched Herring's condenst materia medica from the shelf, and turning to cinchona officinalis, I found the case perfectly covered by that remedy. I immediately returned to my patient with a vial of the thirtieth of the drug just mentioned. No change had occurred during my few minutes absence, and I hastened to place a single minim of cinchona officinalis 30x upon her tongue. That was not much of a thing to do, was it? But the result! I would to God that every physician upon earth could have seen it. About three minutes after taking that most potent drop, she threw her hands above her head and cried out, "My God! what have you given me?" fell back upon her pillow and immediately began to snore. Of course, everybody in the room was alarmed and sprang forward to help her to a sitting posture. But I stopt them, commanded them all to leave the room but the nurse, assuring them that the storm was over, everything was

all right, and she would recover if not awakened from this sleep. She slept several hours, and in two weeks was walking in her garden. Not many months later she died from organic lesions of the heart.

Such miraculous demonstrations of medicinal power are not common in the practise of the best prescribers; but they do occur with sufficient frequency in the experience of him who is working by the law to keep him in a state of expectancy, and we are very likely to find that for which we seek. There are many reasons why we cannot always attain to all that is desirable in the line of cure; but I stoutly maintain that the man who recognizes the existence of a law of cure and is governed in his prescribing thereby, will be rewarded with a uniformity of success that he never knew before, and will see results that are absolutely impossible under any other method. This assertion I can substantiate by any reasonable amount of evidence, and if this too lengthy paper be received in the spirit in which it is written, I shall be too glad to do all I can to convince my brethren of any and all schools that God has given His children a law of cure for the ills of the body. This is the burden of my cry. I do not care a rap of the gavel for the name, homeopathy. Neither do I contend for high potency. If a man hew close to the line, prescribe the drug indicated by the symptoms, or the one capable of causing the symptoms found in a given case, he will learn very soon to dread said drug in the crude, and will be only too glad to climb the potency ladder.

So in this discussion I would be glad if we could drop the name of my own or any other school, and let us stick to the text: Is there a law of cure? I will close by stating, as intimated in my note in the last number of this journal, that since the bedside experience last related I have never doubted for a moment that there is a beautiful law of cure, and I endeavor to apply it in all cases coming into my hands. The past thirteen years of my professional life have been infinitly more satisfactory than those preceding them. I am not only willing but very anxious to help anyone into a knowledge of this truth; for I really think that the millenium in mediIcin will have dawned when the medical world shall have recognized the fact that there is a law of cure. S. E. CHAPMAN.

Napa, California.

Treatment of Boils.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-If used in the incipient stage, germicidal soap (P. D. & Co.) will abort the beginning boil almost invariably. For this purpose I have used many remedies, such as iodin, carbolic acid, ichthyol, etc., but have seen nothing give such brilliant results as the germicidal soap. A strong lather is well rubbed over the boil 2 or 3 times only and the work is done.

In those cases where there is a multiplicity of boils, plicity of boils, one crop succeeding another, as is often seen on the back of the neck, inner side of thighs and buttocks, shave the affected region and wash well 3 times a day with the germicidal soap, and you will very quickly put an end to the process.

Some patients may need constitutional treatment. Tonics and alteratives like arsenic, iron and cod liver oil are often indicated. I have used the sulfid of calcium, but have never been able to see any good come from its use. I believe the phosphate of soda, in 20 to 30 grain doses, 3 times a day, exerts a beneficial influence in some cases. Another remedy of value is the hyposulfite of soda. It should be given in water, in doses of 10 to 20 grains, 3 times a day. L. C. ALLEN, M.D.

Hoschton, Ga.

Answer to Dr. Binnie Concerning Homeopathy.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-As a "devotee to homeopathy," I would say to Dr. Binnie that because he acknowledges his own methods (?) to be unscientific and therefore indefensible, is no reason for attacking other methods of which he knows nothing, as he does in your April number, page 160, where he says: "pure homeopathy never influenced cure in the least.'

In his "Treatise on Therapeutics," the great allopath, Trousseau, says: "When Hahnemann uttered the principle 'similia similibus curantur' he proved his position by facts taken from the practise of the most enlightened physicians." He also says: "The use of arsenic in very small doses produces a homeopathic, that is a substitutive, action, which is of great use in hastening the cure of chronic ulcers, phagedenic dartres, and most chronic affections of the skin."

Trousseau also says: "Solutions of nitrate of silver at first applied to the pharynx and mucous lining of the mouth,

past into every day use in the treatment of inflammations of the mucous membrane of the nose, eyes, urethra, vagina and even of the intestins. It was soon perceived that the primary effect of this and similar agents was analogous to that produced by inflammation, and it was easy to understand that inflammation artificially induced in tissues already the seat of inflammation led to a cure of the original inflammatory attack. When this view was once acquired, there flowed from it the great therapeutical principle of substitution, which at present reigns supreme in medical practise." He shows in the first quotation that substitutiv and homeopathic are synonymous terms. And this is exactly what Hahnemann, before him, had described homeopathy to be, in these words: "In order to perform a cure it is necessary that drugs should possess the power of producing in the human body an artificial disease, most similar to that to be cured; for it is by virtue of its similitude combined with greater intensity, that the drug disease is substituted for the natural disease."

The homeopath recognizes that law reigns in the therapeutic world as well as elsewhere thruout the universe. What chemist of the present day doubts the law of atomic proportion? What astronomer doubts Kepler's laws? Why should any one not be able to convince himself of the truth of the law of similars? Medicin put into the human body in a state of health will produce effects analogous to some morbid condition called disease. Hahnemann observed this fact as Newton observed the falling apple, and by the inductiv method of reasoning the law of similars was establisht.

Dr. Binnie also says: "The facts are, we have no specifics in medicin and never will have, in the true sense." Specifics for diseases, regarded as entities, we have not. Nature knows no classification of diseases according to books. In every morbid condition nature presents a certain well defined set of symptoms, and when these are analogous to those produced by some drug in the healthy body, we have a specific in that drug for that set of morbid symptoms. Hahnemann says: "The most infallible remedies can be no less than specifics; i. e., medicins homogeneous in their action with the morbific irritation. The use of these specifics, however, had been prohibited and condemned, as ex

tremely injurious by the old school; because observation had taught that such remedies in the customary large doses had proved to be dangerous on account of the highly increast receptivity in disease for homogeneous irritation."

In his "History of Medicin," Dr. Renouard, a prominent French allopath, says: "What can we answer these homeopaths when they say to us: 'The most efficacious means possessed by the healing art, viz., specifics, which according to common consent produce the mildest, promptest, and most durable cures, are proscribed by your official medicin as much as possible. It excludes them from its theory, if not from its practise. We, on the contrary, come to teach you a means to discover and a method to employ these admirable instruments of cure.' What have we to respond to such an argument as this? Nothing, positivly nothing serious and logical."

Gould's Dictionary of Medicin defines Regular: "According to rule, custom, or normal procedure." Very good. But below a few lines he defines Regular Physician: One of the school of scientific medicin who adheres to no clique, sect, 'pathy' or 'ism.'" Well, then, what do they adhere to? And what rule, custom, or procedure can they be guided by, if, as Dr. Binnie says, "they cannot agree on any one thing?" How can there be any science where there is no agreement? The so-called regular school of medicin is not regular in anything, not even in its irregularities; and this is as true today as when the great Bichat said: "To what errors have not mankind been led in the employment and denomination of medicins?

The same identical remedies have been employed under different names, according to the manner in which they were supposed to act. So true it is that the mind of man gropes in the dark when guided only by the wildness of opinions. Hence the vagueness and uncertainty our science presents to day-an incoherent assemblage of incoherent opinions; it is of all the physiological sciences that which best shows the caprice of the human mind. What do I say? It is not a science for a methodical mind; it is a shapeless assemblage of inaccurate ideas, of observations often pueril, of deceptiv remedies and formulas as fantastically conceived as they are tediously arranged."

So far as therapeutics is concerned, old

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In his

school medicin is negation and palliation. When cures are made by medicins, they are made according to the law of similars, the only law of cure so far as drugs are concerned. Opinions as to the cause of disease, from the time of Hippocrates with his blood, bile and phlegm," down to the "humoral," "chemical," "cellular," and "germ" theories of pathology, your therapeutics have changed according to the prevalence of these theories. Old remedies have been discarded and others have become new according to the ceaseless change of theory, and this your school calls progress-science (sic) even. Dictionary-preface to third editionGould says: "In the science (sic) of medicin what was true yesterday may be only half true today, and may even be wholly untrue tomorrow." Thus you chase the will-o'-the-wisp and announce to the credulous world that your school is the scientific one of the age. Is this honesty or ignorance? Homeopathy is based on no theory, but like every inductiv science, on two series of phenomena and a law of relationship. On one side are the symptoms the drug has produced in the healthy human body. On the other side those of the sick person, and the law of relationship is that of similars. We are not discarding old remedies, and grasping at the new, according to changing theories as to the cause of disease. We are not, as your Prof. H. C. Wood says of his school, "finding seeming gems of truth one after another only in a few minutes to cast each back to the vast heap of forgotten baubles that in their day had also been mistaken for verities." With us, what a remedy did a hundred years ago it will do to-day, and can do to-morrow, if selected according to the law of similars. Truth is eternal and does not change. In the course of a debate in the Academy of Medicin, Paris, Dr. Marchal de Calvi said: "In medicin, there is not nor has there been for some time, either principle, faith, or law. We build a tower of Babel, or rather we are not so far advanced, for we build nothing; we are in a vast plain where a multitude of people pass backwards and forwards; some carry bricks, others pebbles, others grains of sand; but no one dreams of the cement. The foundations of the edifice are not yet laid; and as to the general plan of the work, it is not even sketcht. In other words, medical literature swarms with facts, of which the most

part are periodically produced with most tiresome monotony. These are called observations, and clinical facts. A number of laborers consider and reconsider particular questions of pathology or therapeutics. This is called original labor. The mass of such labor and facts is enormous; no reader can wade thru thembut no one has any general doctrin. The most general doctrin that exists, is the doctrin of homeopathy. This is strange and lamentable; a disgrace to medicin, but such is the fact." Hahnemann said: "Put homeopathy to the test and publish its failures to the world." So I say to Dr. Binnie: study homeopathy, practise it, and publish its failures-not yours.

Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-I was much interested in reading Dr. Hoover's communication on rheumatism in the May number, page 188, and as a homeopath I heartily endorse every word. There are from twelve to fifteen thousand homeopathic practitioners in this country who are using these same remedies for these same identical conditions every day in their practise. Nearly one hundred years ago Samuel Hahnemann, or his immediate successors, "proved" these same remedies upon healthy people and developt the identical symptoms which Dr. Hoover enumerates as indications." These same indications have been given in every homeopathic text book from that day until this, and for nearly a century have stood the test of clinical experience, proving veritable "specifics" when given in strict accordance with indications.

แ

Dr. Hoover's article is as fine an exposition of pure homeopathic therapeuticssmall dose and all-as I have seen for some time; so why not acknowledge the same and give homeopathy its due credit? The Doctor has satisfied himself that, at least in the matter of rheumatism, "similia similibus curantur" is absolutely true. He must be pretty near the kingdom. Why not apply the same principle in treating all diseases?

The entire homeopathic profession would unite with me in predicting that the result would be surprisingly satisfactory to both physician and patient.

H. A. WATTS, M.D.
Portsmouth, N. H.