GIFT OF Qihy Students of medicine Should Select the fiomceopatbic School "Che prize Gssay in the Medical Century Competition and the Bssays obtaining Second and Chird places* Copyright 1904 by The Medical Century Co. "By Homoeopathic medical education is im- plied the mental habit of thinking in Homoeopathic language, the sine qua non for successful practice." 4 'If any prospective medical student desires to practice tomorrow what he learns in the colleges today he must be trained and educated in a Homoe- opathic school." "Our colleges are under the supervision of the Intercollegiate Committee of our national organiza- tion, the American Institute of Homoeopathy, and in them is taught all that pertains, to the great field of medical learning and, in addition thereto, Homoe- opathic medicine. " WHY STUDENTS OF MEDICINE SHOULD SELECT THE HOMOEOPATHIC SCHOOL. BY THOMAS G. M^CONKEY, M. D., SAN FRANCISCO. CAL. Every year over 5,000 young men and women decide upon medicine as a career. Among these there must be many who are undecided which school to select, with which to become identified, and who will be grateful for any suggestions that may aid them in making a decision. This essay is written to present some of the reasons why the decision should be for the homoeo- pathic school. It seems also fitting to speak of the importance of taking the medical course at the col- lege avowedly teaching the homoeopathic system; for it is well known that there are many students who believe in the doctrine, yet take their medical course in one of the old school colleges. Mere ac- cessibility accounts for this in most cases, but this is of small moment when compared with the im- perative necessity of a homoeopathic medical educa- tion. By homoeopathic medical education is im- plied the mental habit of thinking in homoeopathic language, the sine qua nan for successful practice. The fact that some of the most illustrious members of the school have been graduates of old school col- leges does not militate against the foregoing. They became worthy disciples of Hahnemann in spite of their allopathic teaching rather than because of it. Fifty years ago there were but two homoeo- pathic colleges, and these with limited facilities and no prestige. Today there are twenty, each of a high standard, furnishing better facilities for obtaining a general medical education than the average old school college. There are probably few if any allopathic schools with superior re- sources and stronger faculties than have our ho- moeopathic colleges. The American Institute of Ho- moeopathy, which, since its organization in 1844, has exercised a singularly judicious control of homoeo- pathic interests, and itself has grown from a mem- bership of forty to more than two thousand, is 374417 supreme in authority, especially in the matter of medical education. It was the pioneer in the move- ment for a four years' medical course, and for a high educational standard in the entrance and graduation requirements. The statement that the standard and teaching is of a higher average order than in the 123 allopathic schools is well within the truth. These twenty colleges are well distributed from Boston to San Francisco, and are, therefore, easily accessible. In addition there are in the United States eighty- four general hospitals, sixty-one private hospitals, fifty-eight sanatoriums, fifty-six dispensaries, all avowedly homoeopathic, and sixty-six other institu- tions, State, municipal, etc., wherein homoeopathic treatment is employed. Many of these 325 institu- tions, especially the general hospitals, require resident physicians or internes who are naturally chosen from the graduating classes of the homoeopathic colleges. The motto of the new eductaion, "We learn things by doing them," is observed in a medical course by the opportunities for clinical practice by the student. The smaller classes, besides ensuring a much closer personal contact with the professors on the part of the student, increase not only the chances for individual preferment during the course, but for hospital and other appointments on graduation. While the commercial spirit is not compatible with the sacred and philanthropic character of the medi- cal calling, it is not only proper for the student to consider the bread and butter aspect of the ques- tion but his duty as well. If the field is al- ready overcrowded, he owes it to himself, as" well as to those in it, to choose some other calling. To the question : Is the medical profession overcrowded ? there can be but one answer. If we take the total of all schools there is a great surplusage of graduates every year. As a consequence, many are obliged to abandon the practice in spite of the great expendi- ture of time and money in fitting themselves for it. Many others with an income less, and more pre- carious than that of a skilled workman in almost any industry, eke out an unsatisfactory existence. This is especially true in the cities. But in spite of this recognized excess of physicians of all schools, there seems to be an actual dearth of homoeopathic physi- cians. It was of sufficient importance to be taken up by the American Institute of Homoeopathy at the Cleveland meeting in June, 1902. The following quotation from the Transactions is pertinent : "The demand for homoeopathic physicians throughout the United States far exceeds the supply. Thousands of small cities, towns and villages are un- able to secure the advantages afforded by the homoeopathic system of medical practice. Demands for graduates of this school of medicine are con- stantly reaching our twenty medical colleges. The demands for physicians come from every State in the Union. Especially is this true of the Southern and Southwestern States, into which thousands of people in quest of pleasure, health and business are going every year. The American Institute of Homoe- opathy, mindful of her obligation to the public, not only calls attention to this public need, but also to the fact that there are twenty medical colleges in the United States, thoroughly equipped effectively to teach all branches of medicine and the science and practice of Homoeopathy. These colleges earnestly solicit and will welcome young men and women of good, moral, physical and mental endowment, pos- sessing a high school education, or its equivalent, with an elementary knowledge of Latin. Those who come from districts having but few homoeopathic physicians will be especially welcome." In view of the general impression of the over- crowded condition of the medical profession, this appeal will come as a surprise to most people. But a little reflection will explain this seeming anomaly. There are in round numbers 125,000 practicing phy- sicians in the United States, according to Folk's Register. Estimating the population at 80,000,000, this gives one physician to 640 people. Of this 125,- ooo about 15,000 are of the homoeopathic school, or one to 5,333 people. In some communities where Homoeopathy has been adequately represented it is not unusual to find fifty per cent, of the population patrons of Homoeopathy. And what is very signifi- cant there will be a larger proportion of the edu- cated, travelled and moneyed classes among these. This is a matter of observation only, but it is prob- ably a conservative statement of the case. In 1901 there were 230 graduates from the homoeopathic colleges. This number is not ade- quate to make up the loss by death and retirement from various causes among the 15,000 practitioners. Recalling the fact that there are thousands of com- munities in the country, especially in the South and West, that is virgin soil, as far as Homoeopathy is concerned, the official appeal quoted should not occasion surprise. Let no one suppose that this ap- peal was prompted by any feeling that Homoeopathy is on the decline. It has an aggravating way of disappointing its enemies in this respect. During its century of existence it has been the unwilling but imperturbed patient of learned doctors, pronounc- ing audibly the gravest prognoses, times without number ; and yet never before has its influence been so potent or the attitude of its enemies so respectful. What is to be feared is a partial acceptance of the doctrine resulting from a superficial study and a desire to engraft it on old school therapeutics. There is a hygienic use of medicine and a palliative use of medicine that is perfectly compatible with the homoeopathic curative use of medicine. But so-call- ed "rational therapeutics" and homoeopathic thera- peutics are not compatible. He who attempts to combine them betrays at once his unacquaintance with the spirit of the homoeopathic doctrine. An authority in the school in materia medica and therapeutics has said: "The college must take the lead in presenting Homoeopathy, like any other natural science, as a series of independent doctrines, as a philosophy. I deem it more important that the student should be thoroughly grounded in the under- lying principles than in acquiring a stock of key- note symptoms, important and essential as this is." It will be interesting and profitable to critically examine some of these underlying principles enunci- ated by Hahnemann in the light of our present knowl- edge. First a few words concerning Hahne- mann and his medical environment. He was a regu- larly educated physician of great learning and very uncommon general culture and literary attainments. Sir John Forbes, one of his old school critics, said of him in 1846, three years after Hahnemann's death ; when the opposition to Homoeopathy was most bitter: "No candid observer of his actions, or candid reader of his writings, can hesitate for a moment to admit that he was a very extraordinary man, one whose name will descend to posterity as the exclu- sive founder of an original system of medicine, as ingenious as many that preceded it, and destined, probably, to be the remote, if not the immediate, cause of more important fundamental changes in the practice of the healing art than have resulted from any promulgated since the days of Galen him- self. He was undoubtedly a man of genius and a scholar, a man of indefatigable industry and daunt- less energy/' Hufeland, the Nestor of orthodox medicine in Ger- many, spoke of him in 1801 as "one of the most dis- tinguished physicians in Germany." Jean Paul Richter, a contemporary, speaks thus : "Hahnemann, that rare combination of philosophy and learning, whose system must eventually bring about the ruin of the ordinary receipt-crammed heads, but is still little accepted by practitioners, and rather shunned than investigated." Hahnemann by general consent had attained a po- sition in the profession which entitled him to criticise prevailing methods. While realizing that prevailing methods in general did more harm than good, he was impressed with the fact that there were certain reme- dies used in certain diseases with such results as left no room for doubt that in these cases at least real cures were effected. This he observed in the use of mercury in syphilis and Peruvian bark in malaria, or "marsh fever," as it was then called. Hahnemann, like Bacon and Boyle and Sydenham before him, realized the immense importance of increasing the number of these "specifics." A casual observation in Cullen's Materia Medica, which he was translat- ing, gave him the clue to his discovery as the falling apple did to Newton. From this observation it oc- curred to him that provings of drugs upon healthy persons might furnish a knowledge of their specific properties ; and that the administration of drugs in cases presenting symptoms similar to those the drug produces in the healthy subject might be the law of the application of specifics. His hopes of rendering the medical art more simple and certain were raised, and he set himself with "his dauntless energy and indefatigable industry" to collect from the writings of ancient and modern medical authors all the in- stances bearing upon the subject, and to verify by instituting experiments first upon himself and then upon other healthy persons whom he could per- suade to join him in these self-sacrificing labors. The further he advanced in such investigations and inquiries the more he became satisfied of the exten- sive application of his therapeutic law. From 1790 to 1805, fifteen years of the prime of his life, were devoted to constant, exhausting labors of this nature, "for when we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life any neglect to make ourselves master of it is a crime." Actuated by that noble sentiment, sure of the truth of the great principle he had discovered with all the in- cidental testimony of history to support it with the positive results of a long experience to confirm it, he presented his views and the results of his labors to the profession in an essay of wonderful logical power, of the utmost moderation in expres- sion, full of almost tender persuasion, and of the noblest enthusiasm. The treatment of Hahnemann by his colleagues for attempting to give certainty and precision to therapeutics forms a melancholy chapter in the his- tory of medicine, but it does not stand alone. Harvey was denounced as a quack and even held to be demented because he demonstrated the circulation of the blood. His book announcing his discovery was unable to pass censorship in England, and, therefore, appeared in a foreign country. Syden- ham also was calumniated for efforts to improve the medical art. Hahnemann's teaching was even more revolutionary than either Harvey's or Syden- ham's, for its success meant the annihilation of all the cherished methods of traditional medicine. He begged his colleagues to investigate it, and if it were found better than the old method to use it for the good of mankind and to give God the glory. Instead, they called him an impostor and attacked his. character and his motives. Time has shown that Hahnemann was right in his condemnation of the practices in vogue in his time, for they have all been abandoned or are in pro- cess of abandonment. Up till the year 1840, seldom did an anti-homoeopathic work appear which did not violently reproach Homoeopathy for its rejection of blood-letting. But let an old school authority bear witness to the influence of Hahnemann in reforming medicine. In 1899 there appeared a pamphlet under the imprint of the American Medical Association which was sent broadcast over the country with the evident purpose of dealing the "solar plexus" blow to Homoeopathy. It attacks the personal honesty of Hahnemann and his followers, but surprising as it may appear this sentence occurs : "Homoeopathy has done a noble work ; it has served its purpose well. Look back a hundred years to the time of its birth, and contrast the methods of practice then in vogue with those which are in favor today, and tell me whether a stupendous revolution has not been wrought, and largely through the instrumentality of Samuel Hahnemann." Evidently the value of the pamphlet as an anti-homoeopathic document with such a sweeping concession lies in the implied in- ference that Homoeopathy as a medical system is a "has been." Dr. William Osier, who wrote the article on "Med- icine" in the New York Sun's series on the TQth century's progress in great subjects, says : "The century has witnessed a revolution in the treatment of disease and the growth of a new school of medi- cine. The old schools, regular and homoeopathic, put their trust in drugs, to give which was the alpha and omega of their practice. For every v nip- torn there was a score of medicines vile, nauseous compounds in one case ; bland, harmless dilutions in the other. The new school has a firm faith in a few good, well-tried drugs; little or none in the great mass of medicine still in general "use." In the same article he attributes "above all to the valuable lesson of Homoeopathy, the progress in the battle against polypharmacy or the use of a large number of drugs (of the action of which we know little, yet we put them into bodies of the action of which we know less)." Hahnemann in 1797 wrote: "Is it well to mix various drugs in a single prescription, to admin- ister baths, clysters, bleeding, blistering, fomentations and inunctions all at once or in rapid succession, if we* wish to raise therapeutics to perfection, effect cures, and know with certainty in every case what the remedy has done in order to employ it in similar cases with still greater or at least with equal sue- cess ? How can we complain of the intricacy of our art when we ourselves render it obscure and intri- cate? I, too, at one time suffered from this in- firmity; the schools had infected me. This miasma clung to me, before it came to a crisis, more obsti- nately than the miasma of any other mental malady." This miasma has clung to medicine also more obstinately than some of the other mental maladies, for, as Dr. Osier says, that battle "has not been fought to a finish." The following from an editorial on Mono- and Polypharmacy in the Phila- delphia Medical Journal of January 10, 1903, is a hopeful sign of the present trend: "Many modern physicians have fallen into the habit of prescribing a single drug and depending upon it, in combination with various hygienic and dietetic regulations. Pre- scriptions of single drugs, unfortunately, unless combined with various diluents, are not imposing; but this is a matter too small, really, for considera- tion. A great advantage of monopharmacy if we can so term it is that the physician learns through his own experience (and this is practically the only way he can learn) to use drugs with accuracy and success." It will require many years* yet before the old school abandons polypharmacy, but that it will, eventually, seems certain. Hahnemann in the pre- face to his Materia Medica Pura said : "The day of the true knowledge of medicines and the healing art will dawn when physicians shall trust the cure of complete cases of disease to a simple medicinal substance and, when, regardless of traditional sys- tems, they will employ for the extinction and cure - of a case of disease whose symptoms they have in- vestigated one single medicinal substance whose positive effects they have ascertained which can show among these effects a group of symptoms very simi- lar to those presented by the case of disease." The dominant school has ignored this teaching of Hahne- mann arid sought to develop a science of thera- peutics along other lines, and with what results? Osier has already been quoted. Here is Goodhart in the annual address on medicine before the 1901 meet- ing of the British Medical Association : "Why do we give drugs? Often not because the disease demands them, but because the patient is not happy until he gets them ; too often he is not happy 8 % then. They are sometimes given to hide our ignor- ance, I fear, or to mark time while we watch and wait. They are sometimes given as a gambler on the Exchange speculates in futures, an enhanced reputa- tion being the windfall that is hoped to secure ; and then we often give drugs as an experiment in the hope that they may do good." Much more might be quoted from these and others very high in the coun- cils of the old school pointing to the futility of giv- ing drugs to cure disease and the chaos of "rational" therapeutics. It is not surprising that "one of the most striking characteristics of the modern treat- ment of disease is the return to what used to be call- ed the natural methods, diet, exercising, bathing and massage," as Dr. Oskr tells us. So skeptical are the followers of "rational" thera- peutics of the curative value of drugs that they regard the confidence of the homoeopathic school in drugs as a case of self-deception. They would at- tribute the favorable results to the vis medicatrix nature?, which the "bland and harmless dilutions" did not inhibit. Dr. Osier says : "Nobody has ever claimed that the mortality among homoeopathic practitioners was greater than among those of the regular school." Dr. Osier was evidently a little careless in his tenses when he wrote that sentence. He doubtless meant to say that "Nobody today claims," etc., instead of "has ever claimed," etc. Sir James Y. Simpson, in 1853, published a book of nearly 300 pages with the title "Homoeopathy ; Its Tenets and Tendencies." The final paragraph reads thus : "At the same time there remains behind a far more serious and solemn view of this discreditable medical charlatanry. For, in relation to the question of Homoeopathy and infinitesmal doses as actually applied in practice, no one conversant with disease can shut his eyes to the dangers of the system, in the way of omission if not of commission, dangers which were lately stated in the following forcible terms by Dr. Williams, a gentleman acknowledged on all hands to be standing in the foremost rank of the London physicians of the present day: 'You see' (says Dr. Williams) 'all sorts of quackery, with Ho- moeopathy foremost, rampant through the land, de- luding by its unaccountable infatuations, the power- ful, the learned, the rich, and, worse than all, the poor, in multitudes; and not only are riches placed at the command of the instruments of these fallacies, but what are far more precious, and this is far more terrible to contemplate the lives of our fellow creatures. In fact, there is at this moment through- out this country an awful system of trafficking or gambling with the issues of life and death, a perilous tampering with the elements of mortality; nay, a jeopardizing, not of the body only, but even of the soul. For who can say where victims are hurried out of the world by a delusion, and for want of proper treatment, who can say that some of such might not have been saved alive and given time for repentance as well as recovery? It is altogether an awful consideration, and I quite shudder when I look back at the number of melancholy cases which have come to my knowledge, where, at the eleventh hour, the regular practitioner has been called in when too late ; when the precious time, in which medicine might have availed, has been wasted with Ho- moeopathy ; and we could only shake our heads, and lift up our hands, and exclaim, Alas ! what folly ! and I fear we might add, what knavery, too !' '' This needs no comment. Its mere use in this essay is the most eloquent commentary that could be offered of the changed conditions which fifty years have brought about. Fifty years hence wlien Ho- moeopathy will be dominant it will excite surprise that Dr. Osier should not have known of the posi- tive value of Homoeopathy, at the beginning of the century, just as we are surprised that Sir James Y. Simpson should not even see a negative value in it. If Homoeopathy had been the "disreputable medical charlatanry" that Sir James declared it to be, can any one believe it would have survived through the cen- tury? Even if it had been a reaction against the prevalent methods of the time, would it not have ceased to exist when these had been reformed? There is only one adequate explanation for the con- tinued vigorous growth of Homoeopathy, and that was enunciated by Hahnemann himself in these words : "Homoeopathy is a simple art of healing, unvarying in its principles and its methods of apply- ing them. The principles upon which it is based, if thoroughly understood, will be found to .be perfect and unassailable." 10 Let us examine some of these principles as laid down by Hahnemann. "What life is can only be known empirically from its phenomena and mani- festations, but no conception of it can be formed by any metaphysical speculation a priori; what life is in its actual essential nature can never be ascer- tained or even guessed at by mortals." In spite of the enormous increase of our knowledge of organs, tissues, cells, nuclei and protoplasm since that was written, it still remains true. We know that every cell is from a cell, and every nucleus from a nucleus, and that protoplasm is the physical basis of life, but of the actual essential nature of that life we are still ignorant. 'To the explanation of human life, as also its two- fold conditions, health and disease, the principles by which we explain other phenomena are quite inap- plicable. The material substances of which the hu- man organism is composed no longer follow, in this vital combination, the laws to which material sub- stances in the inanimate condition are subject; they are regulated by the laws peculiar to vitality alone, they are themselves animated and vitalized." How prophetic of our present knowledge of the living cell ! And this was written in 1813, twenty-six years before Schwann proposed his cell theory of animal tissues. Today all physiology as well as all pa- thology is merely a study of cellular activities. "Now, as the condition of the organism and its health depend solely on the health of the life which animates it, in like manner it follows that the altered health, which we term disease, consists in a condition altered originally only in its vital sensi- bilities and functions, irrespective of all chemical or mechanical considerations; in short, it must consist in a dynamically altered condition, a changed mode of being, whereby a change in the properties of the material component parts of the body is afterward effected." Starting from purely material concep- tions, Hahnemann gradually arrived at dynamic views, though the general current ran in the con- trary direction at the time. "We must localize dis- eases," that is, look for their seat, ran the general current, and we owe much to it, for modern pa- thology had its beginning in this effort, the beginning of French positivism in medicine. Hahnemann re- II garded these morbid changes as the effects or re- sults of the disease. "Diseases must be considered as dynamic de- rangements of the vital character of our organism; they must therefore be cured by agents capable of causing dynamic change." vSir Andrew Clark, before the Clinical Society of London, said : "The structural change is not dis- ease ; it is not coextensive with disease, and even in those cases where the alliance appears the closest the statical or anatomical relation is but one of other effects of physiological forces, which, acting under unphysiological conditions, constitute by this new departure the essential and true disease. For disease in its primary condition and intimate nature is in strict language dynamic ; it precedes, underlies, evolves, determines, embraces, transcends and rules the anatomical state. * * - * But always behind the statical lies the dynamic condition. He could hardly have been more explicit in affirming Hahne- mann's teaching if that had been his purpose. The following from the London Lancet, of Feb- ruary 24, 1900, is pertinent also, as showing that Hahnemann's views at the beginning of the nine- teenth century are really the accepted doctrines of the medical profession at the beginning of the twentieth century. "That the physician has to study not disease, per se, but the diseased man, is a truth which took us some twenty-two centuries to learn, but which Aristotle knew some 350 years B. C. Until fifty or sixty years ago, disease was regarded as an entity distinct from the body, to be expelled from it by drugs, like a tapeworm, whereas we now regard it as a state affecting the entire man, body and mind, structure and function, so that it would be more correct to "say that he is the disease than that he has 'got' it, and as this state varies with the con- stitution, inherited tendencies, antecedents and sur- roundings of the man, it requires a corresponding variety of treatment. The wise physician adapts his treatment to each patient's peculiarities ; to one he may give a certain drug, to another with the same disease a different one," etc. This is distinctly homoeopathic in thought and lan- guage. Hahnemann deserves the credit of having insisted upon the strictest individualization, he 12 taught it systematically in his numerous works. "Totality of the symptoms" or individualization of the disease is one of the essential tenets of Ho- moeopathy. Today the real teachers in medicine are seeing disease as Hahnemann saw it. Vierordt, in his Medical Diagnosis, says: "The objective point of the physician's investigations at the bedside is therefore an individual diagnosis ; first, on purely scientific grounds, but still more important from the practical consideration that it must form the indis- pensable basis for individualizing the treatment. * * For example, it is positively asserted that the exciting cause of a lung disease is the tubercle bacillus, but this says nothing of the disease, tuber- culous phthisis, which is present. In order to dis- cover this the patient must be examined. * * * But nowadays it suffices for many, unfortunately, to find the bacilli in the sputum. * * * The indi- vidual diagnosis can never be made at the study table, but only and always at the bedside, and there by a sort of artistic construction of the complete pic- ture of the disease out of its collective phenomena, anatomical and functional." "We must individualize the case." And this also from the preface : "And then a study of the whole organism, the totality of the picture of the disease." The phraseology suggests that he had been reading Hahnemann. "Now because diseases are only dynamic derange- ments of our health and vital character they cannot be removed by man otherwise than by means of agents and powers, which are also capable of pro- ducing dynamical derangements of the human health ; that is to say, diseases are cured virtually and dynamically by medicines." Thus. Hahnemann clearly states the corollary to the dynamic theory of disease. If any Sir Andrew Clark has affirmed this it has not come under my notice. The nearest approach to it that I have seen is a paper by Dr. Baradat before the British Tuberculosis Congress, July, 1901, on the use of natural goat serum in the treatment of tuberculosis. "The use of natural serum has given me unexpected results. Natural serum seems to fulfill all the required conditions, for it is both dynamic and bactericidal. We find that a very small quantity produces an intense thera- peutic effect. There is here a quid divivum due 13 evidently to the intimate composition of natural serum. No one nowadays denies the dynamo- genetic action of serum it is a recognized fact. Whilst awaiting experiments destined to throw light on the obscure question of the mode of action of serums, we give preference to the theory pro- pounded by Metchnikoff, who looks upon them not as antitoxic, but as stimulating agents of phagocy- tosis; in other words, as stimulants, provokers of organic resistance." Serum therapy, or medication by curative or pro- tective serums, is a new art in the healing of disease of which much is hoped. Is it consistent with Ho- moeopathy? Dr. Baradat told us that it is dynamic in its action. Hahnemann told us that this is the only way diseases are cured. The word "dynamic" as applied to a remedy is very new in the literature of "rational therapeutics." These "anti-toxins" (a misnomer, suggested evidently by a materialistic conception of their action) are obtained from men or animals sick with a similar disease. That does not sound entirely inconsistent with Homoeopathy. It is surely more in accord with similia similibus than contraria contrariis. If then remedies may be curative in bacterial diseases, not because of any antiseptic or anti-toxic quality, but because of their dynamic action, the germ theory of disease so far from being subversive of Homoeopathy is actually confirmatory. Hahnemann anticipated the germ origin of at least one disease, for he says, literally: "On board ships in whose confined spaces, filled with mouldy, watery vapors, the cholera miasm, finds a favorable element for its multiplication, and grows into an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute invisible, living creatures, so in- imical to human life, of which the contagious mat- ter of the cholera most probably consists." Notwith- standing this conception of the exciting cause of the disease, after reading a description of the symptoms, he predicted the remedies for the various stages. These were used with such brilliant results that it forms one of the most gratifying incidents in the history of Homoeopathy. One effect was the re- pealing of the law prohibiting the practice of Ho- moeopathy in Austria. "As little as we mortals understand the economy 14 of healthy life, and as surely as it must ever be hid- den from us, so impossible it will ever be for us to understand the internal processes of disturbed life in diseases. The internal process of diseases is only manifested by those observable changes, complaints and symptoms through which alone life expresses its inner disturbances, so that in every case we must remain unable to determine which of the morbid symptoms are primary effects of the morbific agency, or which are to be considered as the reaction of vital force in its spontaneous curative efforts." This was written by Hahnemann in 1813. To antagonize symptoms has been, and is, the practice of the self- styled "rational" school of therapeutics. Happily for humanity they are beginning to understand that many of the morbid symptoms in disease "are to be considered as the reaction of vital force in its spon- taneous curative efforts." For example, we now know inflammation to be a conservative process, "the response of living tissue to injury." The four classical symptoms dolor, calor, rubor, tumor have a new reading today, and for this we are in- debted to many investigators, but especially to Metchnikoff. As Dr. Andrew Wilson conservative- ly puts it: "Inflammation is thus to be ranked, not so much as an unnatural process, but as one which has a true physiological significance, in that it be- gins at least, in an endeavor on the part of the leu- cocytes, to save us from the consequences of infec- tion." Enlightened physicians are beginning to see that fever is something that is not always to be an- tagonized. Bouchard,, of France, recently said: "There is a certain school of medicine that sees nothing in fever, but fever; with doctors of this class the thermometer is the source of all therapeu- tic indications ; they see improvement only in lower- ing the temperature. No clinical practitioner can ac- cept such a doctrine, and the audacity of the asser- tions of the school in question has given rise to a re- action in the opposite direction, in Germany as well as in France. Thus we now see the current of med- ical opinion take a new course. It is now urged that fever may do some good; that it should be treated with respect a theory that has long been unheard of in the medical world. We may say, therefore, 15 that it indicates the gravity of the disease, but does not cause it. Elevation of the temperature an- nounces, but does not constitute the danger." Friedlander goes farther and suggests the em- ployment of artificial fever as a therapeutic measure on the ground that it represents a natural process, which serves the purpose of immunizing and elimi- nating pathological materials, like bacterial prod- ucts, etc. He was able to show an increase of the leucocytes up to 25 per cent, after intense heat in- fluences in moist media, like hot 'baths, steam baths, etc. If then such important disease processes as fever and inflammation are to be considered as a "reaction of vital force in its spontaneous curative efforts" Hahnemann's teaching, that prescribing for single symptoms on the principle of contraries, is "contrary to nature" receives striking confirmation. Homoeopathy has been willfully, or ignorantly, represented as ignoring causes. In the American Medical Association pamphlet already quoted from, this inference, "Hence, you see, it is not necessary to remove causes, nor even to know their nature," pretends to be a logical one from a study of Hahne- mann's writings. On the other hand, read para- graph 7 of the Organon: "In a disease presenting no manifest exciting or maintaining cause (causa occasionalis) for removal, [in a note on this Hahnemann says: "As a matter of course every sensible physician will remove such causes at first, after which the illness will generally subside of its own accord."] nothing is to be discerned but symptoms. These alone (with due regard to the possible existence of some miasm, and to accessory circumstances) must constitute the medium through which the disease demands and points out its cura- tive agent. Hence the totality of these symptoms, this outwardly reflected image of the inner nature of the disease, i. e., of the suffering vital force, must be the chief or only means of the disease to make known the remedy necessary for its cure, the only means of determining the selection of the appro- priate remedial agent." We are not surprised to find misrepresentation in a controversial pamphlet, but the historian certain- ly should be guiltless in this respect. When Ros- well Park, in his History of Medicine, says that 16 Hahnemann "denied disease, admitting only symp- toms," he either willfully misrepresents or betrays an inexcusable lack of acquaintance with his sub- ject. When it was no longer possible to deny the truth of Harvey's discovery his enemies declared that it was not original with him. Park says of Hahnemann: "Similia similibus curantur was not original with him." The American Medical Asso- ciation pamphlet says on the same subject : "Let me prove to you by quotations garnered by the late Prof. A. B. Palmer and myself that the so-called 'law of similars' was common property hundreds of years before Hahnemann was born." This laborious gath- ering of two learned professors, resulted in finding quotations from four medical and three non-med- ical men, viz. : Hippocrates, Paracelsus, Valentine, Stahl, Theophrastus, Shakespeare and George Chapman. Had they but consulted Hahnemann's introduction to the Organon they would have rich "garnering," for he there quotes seven medical men, including Hippocrates and Stahl, "who had pre- sentiments that medicines, by their power of pro- ducing analogous morbid symptoms, would cure analogous morbid conditions." If they had then turned to the note on these quotations they would have found something singularly pertinent from Hahnemann himself. Here it is: "The following quotations from authors, having a presentiment of Homoeopathy, are not brought forward for the purpose of proving the stability of this doctrine, sufficiently firm in itself, but they are introduced to escape the accusation of having ignored these pre- sentiments for the sake of the credit of securing the priority of the idea." After setting up this man. of garnered straw he is knocked down (in the before-mentioned pamphlet) in this fashion : "It cannot in reason be maintain- ed that Hahnemann had never read of the doctrine of similars, for he was a man of great literary attain- ments, and for many years had earned his living by literary work. I think there are few men in the world today as well versed in the history of medi- cine as Hahnemann was. It was not ignorance then which led him to claim the doctrine of simi- lars as his own invention; it was dishonesty. It is not ignorance on the part of Homoeopaths of today 17 which leads them to claim the doctrine of similars as the discovery of Etahnemann and the peculiar and exclusive property of their sect ; it is dis- honesty." Yes, Hahnemann was so well "versed in the history of medicine" that he anticipated just such an accusation and left a reply so consummate- ly happy as to make his unversed accusers ridiculous. There is evidence in almost any old school Materia Medica, especially Ringer's, that a sort of crude Homoeopathy is gradually replacing "scientific" therapeutics. Either these are arrived at as the re- sult of observation and research, or taken directly from homoeopathic sources. But in either case they carefully refrain from any reference to the law of similars. Perhaps the chief reason why therapeutics has made so little progress in the old school during the century compared with the other medical sciences is that it has been a mere appendage of pathology. It is true an enormous amount of work has been done in the study of the physiological action of drugs, but how pitifully inadequate the practical fruits of all this vast labor! It would be interesting to know which had contributed more to this paucity of re- sults the absence of any law of the application of this knowledge to the cure of disease, or the fact that it has been obtained for the most part by gross experiments on the lower animals, and therefore is not always applicable to the human organism? The fact that they have been "toiling so long and found so little" argues the want of a true science of thera- peutics. They have one law, contraria contrariis, and its application by Brunton in the use of Amyl nitrite in the condition known as angina pectoris is a brilliant example of prompt palliative treatment by drugs. Here is a patient with intolerable anguish and pain in the region of the heart, face ashy gray and betraying terror, pulse small and contracted and surface covered with coM perspiration. A few drops of Amyl nitrite applied to the nostrils and al- most immediately his face begins to flush ; he warms up, he breathes freely and the intolerable anguish is gone. This palliative use of a drug has the same relation to Homoeopathy as the use of chloroform or ether as general anaesthetics. 18 The accepted definition of a homoeopathic physi- cian is "one who adds to his knowledge of medicine a special knowledge of homoeopathic therapeutics and observes the law of similia. All that pertains to the great field of medical learning is his by tradi- tion, by inheritance, by right." He does not need to resort to palliative measures so often as one who knows nothing of the law of similars, but he may avail himself of every real aid that promotes the comfort or cure of his patient. The end and ob- ject of the medical art is to cure disease. Thera- peutics of all the collateral medical sciences which has most to do with the cure of disease has made little or no progress among those who reject Hahne- mann's teaching. It is anything but scientific. Therapeutics is the strong side of Homoeopathy. It is the explanation of its vigorous existence as a sep- arate school. Is not the conclusion irresistible that in the one school they have not yet got hold of the right clue, of the true philosophy of the science? Hahnemann arrived at the doctrine of similia simili- bus curentur .by the "exact" methods of the latter two-thirds of the nineteenth century, though his environment was of the speculative spirit of the eighteenth century, which overlapped the first third of the nineteenth. His was the experimental method. He put the question to nature. He says : "The true physician should know [regarding the action of drugs], first, what is the pure action of each by it- self on the healthy human body? secondly, what do observations of their action in various simple or complicated maladies teach us?" Read also this quotation from the preface to the Materia Medica Pura : "If a work on Materia Medica can reveal the precise qualities of medicines it must be one from which all mere assumption and empty speculation about the reputed qualities of drugs are excluded, and which only records what medicines express concerning their true mode of action in the symp- toms they produce in the human body." Is not this in thorough accord with the exact methods in science today? It has been said that "the study of physiology and pathology within the past half cen- tury has done more to emancipate medicine from routine and the thralldom of authority than the work of all the physicians from the days of Hip- 19 pocrates to jenner." Homoeopathy has stood this crucial test. Some of the new discoveries seemed at first subversive of the doctrine, but when finally relegated to their proper domain were found to be consistent with and in some cases confirmatory. The germ origin of certain diseases when discov- ered seemed to imply a revolution in methods of treatment, but after twenty-five years it is found that the best bactericides for bacteria invading the body are dynamically acting medicines. Bacteria being of the vegetable world were here long before man, and man would not have survived if the special function of protection against these minute enemies had not been evolved; for protection from enemies is as important for the survival of the species as nutrition or reproduction. Indeed "experiment has demonstrated that there resides within the tissues and fluids of the body the property of destroying disease-producing micro-organisms in . large or small numbers." In vigorous health it is most man- ifest, while the effects of malnutrition, fatigue, de- bauch, disease, and, in short, all influences that materially disturb the equilibrium of physiological function are to diminish or destroy it entirely. We have already seen that inflammation and fever which are disturbances of the physiological equilibrium are conservative or curative exaltations of physiological function. May not the dynamically acting remedy applied in accordance with the law of similars serve as the awakener of this latent protective and cura- tive function? In venturing this it is not with the idea of giving an adequate "explanation" of the law, but rather to refute the implied imputation that it is not rational. The common platform upon which all sincere ad- herents of Homoeopathy stand is that the most prac- tical guide to aid in the selection of most, perhaps all medicines in the cure of disease is the rule, similia similibus curentur. This is accepted, not as the re- sult of any speculative reasoning, but as an em- pirical fact. Several plausible explanations of the modus operandi of the law of similars have been suggested, and one by Hahnemann himself, but he says he puts "a slight value upon an attempt at ex- planation." No one has ever explained the modus 20 operandi of the law of gravitation, but that does not affect our belief in the law. In trying to present the essential principles upon which the doctrine of Homoeopathy rests, the found- er has been quoted, for no one since has stated the case so clearly or convincingly. There is such an embarrassment of riches in quotable matter in Hahnemann's writings, pertinent for study at this beginning of the 2Oth century, that these somewhat random selections are but meagre examples of a wealth of up-to-date medical philosophy. Study Hahnemann's works. Begin with the Lesser Writings and see how the doctrine unfolds itself. The dogmatic and epigrammatic sentences of the Organon, each "like a ponderous block of stone, hewn and sculptured by the skill of an artisan, seeming to have been lifted with Titan power to fill its place and purpose in the structure," will be in- vested with new meaning. There is nothing in contemporary medical literature that will repay study so well. There is nothing in modern writers commensurate with his master's grasp of the phil- osophy of the art of medicine. Let no one think that its failure to be universally accepted argues against its truthfulness. Another great German philoso- pher has said: /Truth can bide its time, for it has a long life before it. Whatever is genuine and seri- ously meant is always slow to make its way, and certainly attains its end almost miraculously; for on .its first appearance, it, as -a rule, meets with a cool, if not ungracious reception, and this for exactly the same reason that when it is fully recognized, and passed on to posterity, the immense majority of men take it on credit, in order to avoid compromising themselves, whereas the number of genuine appre- ciates remains nearly as small as it was at first. Truth depends upon no one's favor or disfavor, nor does it ask any one's leave; it stands upon its own feet, and has time for its ally; its power is irresist- ible ; its life indestructible. 21 WHY STUDENTS OF MEDICINE SHOULD SELECT THE HOMEOPATHIC SCHOOL. BY DR. V. E. BALDWIN, AMBOY, IND. "It is a pleasure," said Lord Bacon, "to stand upon the shore and see a ship tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be com- manded, and where the air is clear and serene) and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below." Truth Supreme. Truth is eternal and unchanging, the immut- able relationship of things which preserves their unity. It cannot be despised, and if ignored the penalty of ignorance, indolence and impudence is to pay. It demands the submission of the ambitious man and wins the reverence of the student. The right relationship of facts, events and truths is the chief concern of men today. The greatest thing in * the world is to know the truth, the bravest thing in the world is to live it. The world is progressive. It is ever approaching a correct understanding of this unchanging relationship. In every branch of learning new truths are being revealed, new laws discovered, and he who would win the crown which truth awards must adjust himself to the eternal verities. Men are made free by truth., There are many, however, who, admitting their woeful confusion, are so conservative, so satisfied with present knowl- edge, that they will not investigate. They cannot grow. There are some so bigoted, so stubborn, that in spite of reason and regardless of evidence they pursue a wanton course in old and beaten paths. There are others so radical, so irreverent, believing all is false, that they ignore the good that is. They are not only poor authority and bad advisers, but world retarders. ' The truth seeker is liberal ; he has a reverent conservatism, is judicious in accepting 22 new things ; he proves all things, holds fast to that which is good, presses forward. It is taken for granted that this is the attitude of the prospective student, especially the student of medicine. Principles rather than policy, conviction rather than tradition or environment, should decide the course of the prospective physician. His first aim should be to know the truth, ivhat is true re- garding health, what is true about disease, what is true about curative medicine. History of Medicine. Confidence is an essential factor of enthusiasm. Law is an essential factor of science. Science is the key to progress. Strange as it may appear, every branch of art and science has made more rapid progress during the past few centuries than medicine. Medical men had not been liberal, had worked in the dark, had failed to grasp the relationship of the things they dealt with ; they could not advance. For a thousand years little or no progress was made toward systematizing a science of therapeutics. Men were growing faith- less and skeptical as to the possibilities of a science of therapeutics. Dr. Charles Williams says in his "Principles of Medicine" (allopathic) : "Compare the state of medicine with that of anatomy, physi- ology, and chemistry, how minute, how precise, how connected, how definite are these, yet how loose, how indefinite, how uncertain, how unconnected is the practice of our art." Brown-Sequard, the great pathologist and physiologist of France, said in 1866: "We find very little known as regards. the real and ultimate action of remedies. This is much to be lamented." The late editor of the Dublin Med- ical Journal (allopathic) remarks in an editorial: " Assuredly, the uncertain and unsatisfactory art which we call medical science is no science at all, but a mere jumble of inconsistent opinions, of con- clusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn, of facts misunderstood, of comparisons without analogy, of hypotheses without reason and of theories not only useless but dangerous." Meanwhile the natural sciences have made rapid strides toward organization. In these branches laws had been discovered, their truth proved and main- \ 23 tained, and around them all other related facts have taken their place naturally and inevitably. In physics, Archimedes, by accident, it seemed, had observed and demonstrated the law of specific gravity. In mechanics the law which is its basic principle "the less force equals the greater by mov- ing through more space at the same time" had been discovered by Galileo. Newton's law that "all bodies attract each other directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance" became the foundation for astronomy. Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood and thence revolutioniz- ed physiology. Dalton placed chemistry along with the exact sciences when he proved that "elementary and simple bodies combine with each other to form compound bodies in definite and fixed proportions." Many others might be enumerated as the laws of friction, electricity, the elasticity of steam, and the discovery of the magnetic needle; all of these have been means to enable modern inventors to provide for us the comforts of this twentieth century. Be- cause of the discovery of these laws along scientific lines of study there can be unanimity of opinion and assurance of progress. Until the last century medicine had no such fully demonstrated laws. Its confused state, as well as the unsatisfactory results in practice at the close of the previous century, was an excuse for the more in- telligent and conscientious to shift about for a more definite and assuring means of healing the sick. Time and again the more philosophical of the pro- fession had glimpses of the guiding law. But none were astute enough to formulate and promulgate the doctrine. A Law in Medicine. It was not until 1796 that a definite law of thera- peutics was ever asserted. Six years previously, while Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was translating Cullen's work on allopathic materia medica, he suddenly conceived the mystical idea of the law of Similia Similibus Curentur. Here it was that he read "cinchona bark when taken in large doses would produce on the healthy symptoms similar to ague." Yet it was recommended for the cure of ague. He paused in his work and marvelled at this coinci- 24 dence. "Can it be possible that this is the reason why cinchona bark cures ague," he asked himself. He would experiment upon himself ; he would know the truth. Lo, and behold, his surmises were veri- fied, he developed a typical chill, and symptoms of an intermittent fever. He made a decoction of the bark and prescribed it to the sick complaining of similar symptoms, and to his delight the coincidence became a verified fact in his experience. He might have shouted, as did Archimedes, when he plunged into his bath and noted that he had displaced an amount of water equal to his own bulk, "T have found it! I have found it!" The law of therapeutics seemed very clear to him then. On making subsequent provings of other drugs upon the healthy, and prescribing them in like manner for the sick with similar phenomena, he was invariably successful. Two Schools in Medicine. Since the announcement of the observation Hahnemann made, there have been two medical schools; the one allopathic, supporting the ancient notion of prescribing for the sick on the basis of results obtained by experiments; the other homoeo- pathic, resting its therapeutics upon the law of "similars." Teachings in Common. Before going farther into the discussion of the tenets of each school let us eliminate the subject matter upon which all agree, and because of which there would be no grounds whatever for distinct and separate institutions. All the natural sciences, so far as they are applicable to the study of medicine, have or should have equal prominence in the course of study. Physics and chemistry are the same in both; botany and zoology, biology and physiology, as important to the one as to the other, are taught in both. Anatomy and surgery are subjects upon which there is little ground for contention. We use the same text-books in histology and psychology, and apply nearly the same rules in hygiene and dietetics. Where the Schools Diverge. On two subjects only do we diverge, and yet these subjects stand for all that makes any medical college 25 necessary. They are first, etiology and pathology, the cause and nature of disease ; and second, thera- peutics, the science of cure. Here we divide. On these two foundation stones we must erect systems of medicine. It is hard to separate these subjects, as a science of cure is almost wholly determined by understanding the cause and nature of disease. This statement is verified by the fact that in the past allopathic therapeutic methods have been changed from time to time to adjust themselves to the new theories of pathologists as to the nature of disease. On the basis that disease is due to some morbid matter existing in the body, it calls for purges, diuretics and sudorifics ; or, if there were any inequalities of circulation these call for blisters and bleeding; toxins in the blood call for chemical antidotes; bacterial infection calls for antiseptics, the therapeutic agent always changing with new ex- planations of morbid processes. There being no fixed etiology and pathology there could be no en- during therapeutics. There could be no fixed etiology, because there was no fixed point of view. The "pathologist," being at the same time a chemist, a physiologist, anatomist or histologist, would invariably interpret the morbid changes from different points of vision. Since there was no universal law for disease phenomena, the chemist would detect chemical irregularities, in the tissue ; the physiologist, disor- dered function; the anatomist, deformities, and the histologist, cell degeneracy. Consequently there could be no uniformity of opinion, and the existing predominant influence determined the drift of thera- peutical empiricism. Homoeopathic Standpoint. While it may not be possible to give a complete analysis of morbid changes, however, there are im- portant points upon which Homoeopaths agree. First. Any natural phenomena, per se, cannot at the same time be cause and effect. It goes without saying that matter cannot exist without cause. Matter of itself is inert; it cannot move ; it cannot grow ; it cannot think ; eve,n organiz- ed bodies cannot exist for any length of time without an immaterial element to hold their parts in com- 26 bination. The earth, the sun, the universe, all mani- fest an omnipotent influence operative over all, through all and in all. All matter is impregnated with a vital element. Man has "the breath of life," his body is the tem- ple of a living soul. There are no accidents in nature, man exists because of the influx of life. Without the spark which vivifies the tissue even his finely organized and complicated body would crum- ble into dust. Call it vital force, simple substance, dynamic power, or what you will, yet back of these bodies, back of organic and inorganic forms, back of earth, the sun and the universe itself is the modify- ing influence of an immaterial force. Rational be- ings cannot leave it out of account. It must play a part in any pathological or therapeutic discussion. Yet to the allopathic prescriber this is so much non- sense. He sees nothing in man but a complicated, though systematic arrangement of tissue elements. From his standpoint the body is the beginning, the end, the sum total of man's existence. That which he cannot see, feel or hear is of little consequence as far as therapeutics is concerned. Second. Disease is dynamic disorder. The homoeopathic physician acknowledges the im- material element of man's existence as playing an important part in his emotions, sensations and func- tions. He sees deeper than the body, he perceives the hand of law working in his tissues. To him dis- ease means more than degenerated flesh and blood. It means disordered vital economy. To him health is an index of good government, or a proper adjust- ment of vital forces within the body. Disease stands for bad government or a disordered vital economy. Let me illustrate this point by analogy. A state is founded on its constitution, a constitution on the will of the people. The will of the people is deter- mined by their intelligence, intelligence is a meas- ure of the perception of right relation, and morals is the measure of its practice. If the intelligence is great and the morals good, so long the state will endure. Let these degenerate and the state will crumble to dust. Enemies may harass and storms threaten, but if the people be patriotic, wise and pure, the state is secure. The greatest enemies to any state are the enemies within. Social and politi- 27 cal decay will ultimate in riot and ruin, disorder will prevail and disolution threaten. What can be done to restore the state ? Three ways suggest themeslves in such conditions: (i) Coercion, (2) compromise, (3) regeneration and education. To coerce the state is sure to meet with resistance or ultimately destroy it; to compromise is always temporary and partial; to regenerate requires wis- dom and time. So it is with the sick man. To try to compel his organism to function only meets with resistance and complication. How often the invalid is drugged with concoctions which disarrange his digestion, disturb his circulation and paralyze his senses in the endeavor to coerce the parts into a state of order, forgetting the disordered life prin- ciple and disregarding the profound struggle which nature is making to restore normal function. Nor can permanent order be restored by compromise. We palliate symptoms for awhile, but event- ually they will recur and most generally in an ag- gravated form. We are driven to admit, theoretic- ally at least, that the only rational method that prom- ises to be safe, speedy and permanent would be to restore order at the center of government. To treat the patient, not his parts ; the tenant, not his house. In this analogy is illustrated the contention be- tween allopathy and Homoeopathy. The one mag- nifies the material, the other the immaterial phase of man's existence ; the one suppresses, the other regen- erates. . The allopath says the body is the man, therefore, disease is a pathological lesion, which, when locally repaired, will functionate normally, for- getting the immaterial factors without which there could be no man, either in a state of health or dis- ease. He plasters with poultices to draw out some morbid matter; he washes with antiseptics to de- stroy the microbes; he irritates with caustics to en- force a healing process; paralyzes the part with anodynes to relieve the pain, too often ignorant of effects and indifferent to consequences. Perhaps after all the swelling does not subside, the sore does not heal and the pain recurs. He sees nothing but the lesion and this absolutely refuses to be restored. He has called to his aid all the local adjuvants which experience from previous generations has suggested. 28 He has fed his patients with the most nutritious diet. He has tried emetics, purgatives, sedatives and stim- ulants, yet the disease not only persists but spreads. The whole vital economy is aroused; now it is a struggle for existence. Can disease exist without a cause , can a car- buncle, an ulcer be both cause and effect ? Can taint- ed blood and palsied nerves be the beginning and the ending of disorder simultaneously? Impossible! There is something prior to ulcer, blood and nerve. It is the man himself. The patient is sick, not his skin, his blood, his nerves ; the disorders in these are simply indices of the nature of the disordered man, hints to tell us he is sick, just as the staggering gait, the bloated face, the irrelevant talk tell us a man is drunk. His tissues are not intoxicated, the man has lost co-ordination and the sense of adjust- ment ; his vital processes are in confusion, he is readily diagnosed a drunkard. How foolish it would be to advise the tying of hands to abolish stealing, the ligating of lips to suppress swearing, forgetting the while that the man is a sinner and these are but his symptoms. His inner life is wrong, he needs regeneration and readjustment of its principles to correct his faults. Just so truly the sick man is suffering from perversion and disorder of the vital forces. These must sooner or later be readjusted if he may enjoy ease and comfort. Then, and not till then, will all his morbid conditions and symp- toms disappear safely, speedily and permanently. There must be a definite relation between the ulti- mates of disease, as they appear in the body, and the cause of disease as a condition of disordered vital force. Without that cause there could be no lesion. Give that cause, and there must eventually appear a given lesion. Remove the cause, if such be possi- ble, and the lesion must disappear in all curable cases. Objections to Allopathy. Allopathy uses physiological means to correct a dynamic disorder. Therefore, it is often incom- petent to eradicate the cause. Local applications do not remove it, and do not restore a healthy state. For example, an eczematous eruption of the skin is a pathological lesion which represents an internal 29 disorder ; it exists because of such disorder. One of Nature's methods to restore order is through erup- tions; the eruption is no accident but a natural sequence. The economy is protecting itself by eliminating that which is an enemy to health. That this constitutional trouble manifests itself in a par- ticular kind of eruption is evident to everyone who observes. The allopath undertakes to cure this erup- tion, and applies some astringent salve, which, per- haps, dries it up or "drives it in." At any rate it disappears. By this act he has opposed Nature's process. Nature's physician seems to say, "Through the skin is the safest and freest avenue of drainage ; an eruption here need not jeopardize the life of the patient." Allopathy says, "This discharge must be stopped." So without inquiry into vital causes he attempts to prevent what Nature is doing for the patient's welfare. If he succeeds it may only follow to his chagrin perhaps he calls it a rare coinci- dence that the disease breaks out afresh in some other part, it may be some vital point. The patient is taken with desperate pain, again palliative medicine disregards Nature's danger signal from within, and with anodynes it muffles the cry for help without relieving the cause of the dis- tress. It is only temporary, it cannot be permanent. The physician is unable to affect the immaterial plane with heroic closes, or at least a combination of drugs, for if they do no harm they must be as- similated or eliminated, and at best can only minister to the body on the physical plane. Allopathy has no law in therapeutics. The only basis upon which it offers its prescriptions is the ex- perience of other men in other cases. Granted that cases are cured upon this basis, which is readily ad- mitted, there are serious objections to allopathic methods. First. Its prescriptions include, with rare excep- tions, two or more active ingredients, not all of which can be specifically indicated in any given case. Any drug when taken into the body and assimilated must spend its force some way somewhere, else why should it be prescribed at all? Two or more drugs must inevitably react in as many different ways, else there would be no apparent necessity for more than one. Now, if the disease is a local lesion, and these 30 drugs are spending their force in different directions, it stands to reason that all of them cannot affect the diseased part. No doctor can prescribe two or more drugs wisely unless he is able to explain two proposi- tions : a. As to how these drugs, when taken together, will react upon one another, chemically, physiologic- ally and dynamically. b. In what direction and with what final effect will these drugs spend their forces upon the human economy. Unless these principles are understood the physi- cian who prescribes must confess his ignorance of grounds for making his prescription. It is folly to say that drugs not specifically indicated will do no harm. This alone is a confession of weakness. And, if they are to be of no benefit why disturb the sys- tem with the disposing of them, which alone would require the expenditure of valuable energy. Scien- tific (?) medicine prescribed for an epileptic : If. Iodide of potash, Syrup of tolu, aa giij . Syrup of Ipecac, %iss. Fluid ext. Veratrum viride, . .3i. Morph. sulf., grs. iij. MX. Sig. One drachm to be taken three times daily. Also Bromide of sodium was to be taken in in- creasing doses until it produced bromism ; also some blue mass to alter the secretions, and for the bowels a pill, now and then, composed of Aloes, extract of Hyoscyamus, extract of Ntix vomica and extract of Ipecac. Ten separate function-deranging agents to cure an epileptic. Can any chemist explain the reac- tion of these drugs on one another, not to mention their action in the human economy. Hahnemann said: "The business of the physician is to heal the sick, speedily, gently and permanently." Does it stand to reason that this method would be gentle? Is it even safe ? Upon what principle in therapeutics has "the disease been cured?" Second. Experience is not a safe therapeutic guide. a. The recurrence of cases of exactly similar type is highly improbable. 31 b. The action of a drug on one patient might be wholly unlike its action on another, just as ordinary food stuff agreeable to one might be obnoxious to another. It is for this reason that science has drawn such widely different conclusions on therapeutic meas- ures when depending on experience. What one doc- tor uses successfully another fails with; what one doctor recommends, another claims is dangerous. Their experiences differ, because no two patients or their sicknesses are identical. Under such condi- tions, what is the inexperienced to do? Can it be that Dr. Kent's old allopathic preceptor spoke the truth when he said to him: "Doctor, you will lose scores of cases before you will learn what not to do." Third. Allopathic physicians do not agree in their prescriptions. They have no means of actually determining what is the indicated remedy in any case they treat; they declare there can be no law. Osier, one of the great- est of allopathic practitioners and authors, says repeatedly in his text that the expectant methods are all that can be depended upon. He even refuses to suggest indicated remedies in his treatise on prac- tice (allopathic). Outside of Opium, Calomel, Qui- nine, Potasium iodide, salts and Arsenic, the domi- nant school depends largely upon the recommended preparations of pharmaceutical houses for its reme- dies. Dr. S. E. Chapman, of California, took a very careful record of the symptoms of a patient with a detailed history of the case. He sent this statement, enclosing a two dollar bill, to ten allopathic physi- cians of national repute, and asked for a prescription. At the same time he sent the statement to ten Ho- moeopaths of equal repute in different parts of the United States. Eight of the allopaths answered, and sent as many separate prescriptions, including a score or more of distinct drugs. No two agreed; one refused to prescribe without seeing the patient ; one did not reply. The Homoeopaths gave a unani- mous decision in favor of a single remedy. Repeat- ed tests of this kind have resulted similarly. In the light of such variety of conclusions on the same set of symptoms, is it justifiable to speak of allo- pathic practice as scientific medicine? Prof. H. C. Wood, in the preface of his "Treatise 32 on Therapeutics" (allopathic), sums up the condi- tion as follows : "Experience is said to be the mother of wisdom. Verily she has been in medicine rather a blind leader of the blind, and the history of medi- cal progress is the history of a man groping in the darkness, finding seeming gems of truth, one after another, only in a few minutes to cast each back into a heap of forgotten baubles that in their day had also been mistaken for verities. Narrowing our gaze to the regular profession to a few decades, what do we see? Experience teaching that not to bleed a man for pneumonia is to consign him to an unopened grave, and experience teaching that to bleed a man suffering with pneumonia is to consign him to a grave never opened by nature. Looking at the revo- lutions of the past, listening to the therapeutic babel of the present, is it a wonder that men should take refuge in nihilism, and like the lotus eaters dream that all alike is folly, that rest and quiet and calm are the only human fruitions ?" The Tenets of Homoeopathy. Is it any wonder that in times like these men of philosophical turn of mind should long for and search for a key that might solve the problem of the rela- tionship of drugs to the phenomena of disease? It has been said that searching minds and living truths cannot always abide apart. Ever since the time of Aristotle it was conceded that such a relationship existed, and frequently the truth was all but reveal- ed. It happened by the merest chance to be disclosed in tact to that master mind, that patron saint of an accurate therapeutics, Samuel Hahnemann. Al- though from the first it seemed very clear, yet it re- mained for him to demonstrate to the world : i. That disease was the product of disordered vital force; 2. that drugs when given to the healthy could produce certain definite pathogenetic variations from the normal ; 3. that these results were relatively the same for all men, at all times, in all places ; and, 4. finally, that those drugs will cure such natural morbid symp- toms in the sick as they have been shown to produce artificially in the healthy. On this framework Homoeopathy has founded her Materia Medica and practical therapeutics. It re- mains for us to establish these tenets as sound and 33 practical in order to demonstrate the advantages of Homoeopathy over allopathy. Comparing the Materia Medica of the Two Schools. It is taken for granted that the first point is estab- lished. Let us compare allopathic Materia Medica with that of Homoeopathy. Homoeopathic provings have been made upon healthy human beings ; a given drug carefully selected, purified and prepared is taken in rep-eated doses by a given number of healthy persons. Careful notes are taken by both the subject and his observers of all the signs and symp- toms which vary from the normal. Those signs and symptoms which are common to all are set down as of greatest significance. Those that are experienced by a small per cent, of the provers are indicated as of less significance, and so on down the scale. All the signs and symptoms are recorded in a degree of prominence in which they are manifested. In this way all our drugs are proved. Besides these, but of minor importance, might be mentioned the symp- toms noted in poison cases which result more or less seriously, and finally, and of the least importance, is the clinical experience of observant practitioners. This constitutes the drug pathogenesis and materia medica of symptoms, so that Homoeopaths know rela- tively what to expect from any given drug, how it spends itself in a human organism, and how it per- verts the sensorium. Allopathic Materia Medica is made up from three sources : a. Clinical experience, or the result of the action of drugs on the sick. b. The action of drugs upon healthy animals. c. The pathological changes produced by drugs as shown by vivisection and post mortems. The objections to such methods are apparent to thoughtful observers. Such Materia Medica would not only be unreliable but impracticable. It could not be constant in the first place. The effect of a drug up- on one person in sickness might be different from that upon another. The causes of diseases being various, the nature of disease being modified by family his- tory, and individual idiosyncrasies, and physical environment, the action of any drug must be uncer- tain and confusing. Again, animals cannot talk ; ex- 34 periments upon them must therefore be unsatisfact- ory and unreliable. The nice discriminations, which are most important, of modified sensations and emo- tions, cannot be elicited from them. Perhaps, too, they are not susceptible to the same influences which men are susceptible to and in the same manner and "degree. Finally, suppose the physician could know, which he cannot, the remedy indicated by the pa- thological state of the diseased organ, how could he make such knowledge practicable at the bedside ? If the doctor must make a microscopical slide of the patient's liver, kidney or spleen to determine the remedy he needs then he might as well engage the undertaker and be done with it. This part of Materia Medica reminds us of the practice of the nurseryman who pulled out the grafts to see whether they had started to grow. Such a Materia Medica based on such observations is not only full of false conclusions and theoretical statements but is very unscientific and impracticable. The homoeopathic Materia Medica is true for all men in all places and in all ages. The experiments on scores of healthy people at one time must give a record that will be constant for all men in all times. The factors are constant, the result must be constant. Given a healthy person and a pure drug, we will get a given pathogenesis. According to allopathic Materia Medica the factors are inconstant. A vari- able disease in man and a pure drug must give a variable result. This accounts for the confusion in "regular" medicine. Drug phenomena equal disease phenomena. Here as in all the natural sciences, law directs, experience confirms. Hahnemann observed the striking simili- tude between the signs and symptoms produced by the action of Cinchona on the healthy, and the cura- tive action when applied to ague and intermittent fever. His subsequent experience verified his con- clusion that the law of similars was true. He first grasped the relationship between drug action and disease signs and set it down as law. Law is not matter, it simply confirms a fixed relationship of matter. When Newton observed that the apple fell when separated from the branch, he was able to as- sert in a general proposition, which time anr! ex- perience has confirmed, the law of gravitation. Such 35 a statement of the relationship of bodies is law, until experience can controvert it. There is only one way to demonstrate a law and that is by the practical test. Will it work ? To Hahnemann's mind the law was true, because when he applied it, it removed the complaints. It is not a question of logic so much as common sense. It is not a question of probability . but of certainty ; it must either be true all the time or false all the time. If called upon to define electricity, magnetism or gravitation you would make a dismal failure. Scientific men have given up the idea of reaching an explanation from a material standpoint. However, that does not hinder them from applying these forces according to the laws discovered. No one now refuses to ride in street cars because they do not understand the action of the motor. The cars run and that is sufficient. In the same light should the law of "similia" be tested. In all the literature against Homoeopathy no one has succeeded in proving that it does not work. The small coterie of men surrounding Hahne- mann in the beginning of the century has now in- creased to thousands. They are to be found in every nation. They have come, the best of the early men at least, from allopathic ranks. Every year the number increases, and why? Because Ho- moeopathy cures. The men who put it to an honest test are its converts, there are no backsliders from the homoeopathic camp. There are many, indeed, who are incompetent to apply its rigid precepts, and from ignorance or indolence stumble along, sometimes falling out entirely, but never because of the failure of the law. Wherever it has been faithfully applied human suffering has been alleviated. The provings of Hahnemann made a hundred years ago are true today, always will be true. Allo- pathic Materia Medica has changed again and again ; the text-books of yesterday are obsolete today; the text-books of today will be altered tomorrow. As Prof. H, C. Wood remarked: "What has clinical therapeutics established permanently, indisputably? Scarcely anything beyond the primary fact that quinine will arrest an intermittent, that salts will purge, that opium will quiet pain and lull to sleep." But the Materia Medica of Hahnemann and the early masters is the masterpiece of homoeopathic practice 36 forever. When allopathy is forgotten and its patrons pointed out as curiosities of medical history ; when its books are laid upon the shelves, dust covered and moth eaten, the provings of Hahnemann will still remain the permanent guide and authority for ho- moeopathic practice. If any prospective medical stu- dent desires to practice tomorrow what he learns in the colleges today he must be trained and educated in a homoeopathic school. Homoeopathy Is Scientific. Homoeopathy is the only system in which pre- vision is possible. One of the tests of the universali- ty of a law is the ability to predict results by its ap- plication. Given a certain definite set of symptoms it should be possible to determine a definite remedial agent. If this cannot be accomplished by any thera- peutic system it is unworthy the name of being scientific ; it does not merit the patronage and favor of a science-loving public. When Asia was being swept with cholera and allopathy was losing over two-thirds of its patients, Hahnemann secured a d* 5 - scription of a typical case, and after comparing the symptoms with those of the proved drugs, publicly declared that in the first stage Camphor would re- lieve, and in the later stages the remedies were Cuprum and Veratrum album. When the plague struck Europe, by these simple remedies Homoeop- athy was able to save three-fourths of the cases, while allopathy was still losing two-thirds. It was on the result of the law of similars as applied to cholera that hundreds of unprejudiced and thought- ful doctors of the old way were compelled to loosen their moorings and investigate the tenets of Ho- moeopathy. To investigate was to be converted. Hereby hangs the most interesting chapters in the life story of Jahr, Hering, Lippe, Holcombe, Dun- ham and others. Homoeopathy is to be preferred to allopathy be- cause it engenders confidence and enthusiasm. The successful mechanic must know how to use his tools, when to use them, and where to use them. If he knows these things the building of a house becomes an intensely interesting piece of work. If the sur- geon knows his anatomy and is skillful with his in- struments an operation is a delightful task. The 37 chemist who understands the relationship of ele- ments is fascinated with his experiments, and the doctor who knows the action of all his remedies, and the exact diseased state in which they are applicable, finds pleasure and profit in his practice. The Ho- moeopath knows the drug action of every remedy that he uses. According to the law of similars he knows, then, in what diseased states they are appli- cable. He has reason to be confident. Someone has said, "He that knows and knows that he knows is wise, follow him." A man cannot be scientific and at the same time be ignorant, prejudiced or indolent. The medical stu- dent must answer these questions for himself : First. Is the law of similars true ; if not, why not ? Second. Has any substitute been offered for it ? The Homoeopathic Principle Tested. Homoeopathy asserts that it is true. For a hun- dred years it has been subject to investigation; the pioneers of Homoeopathy were allopaths who had in- vestigated it. Out of the committee of five appoint- ed by the leading British Medical Society^ to investi- gate and expose it two were converted and the other three never reported. Constantine Hering, who became the patron saint of Homoeopathy in this country, was similarly ap- pointed by a Berlin Medical Society to investigate it and to controvert it. His conversion resulted. Our late Dr. P. P. Wells is another who enjoyed a similar fate. It has been so thoroughly tried and tested that to deny that the law exists is foolish; one might as well say that the earth does not move nor the apple fall. The fact that ninety per cent, of the graduates of her colleges spend the remainder of their days in its practice, while only thirty-three and one-third per cent, of the old school graduates stay in that pro- fession, would indicate that it was true. Almost every consistent and energetic homoeopathic practi- tioner is making a good income, and what is better he delights in his work. Truth is never narrow ; one truth is but a stepping stone to another. Standing upon the vantage ground of truth all related facts are re- vealed, error is dethroned and faith is supreme. The Homoeopath is not a skeptic, he is not working in the dark, but obedient to. law he loves it, and because he loves it he obeys it. 38 The Discouragements of Allopathic Treatment. Allopathy has neither been able to demonstrate the fallibility of the law nor to formulate a substitute, therefore its practice is not only empirical but law- less. Is it any wonder that the more thoughtful be- come disheartened, disgusted and some of them dis- honest ? Disheartened, because like ships adrift they have no rudder ; disgusted, because they cannot cure their patients ; dishonest, because they have lost their faith in drugs and dare not retreat. For this reason allopathy in these later days, fail- ing in medicine, is magnifying surgery. Nearly every serious case is subjected to an operation. So common has this become, and when surgery is not indicated, especially in chronic diseases, that even among students this expression is common fun "The operation was a success but the patient died." Even in therapeutic surgery there is confusion; what one commends another condemns. The patient is subject entirely to the caprice of his doctor, who proceeds to adopt a course of treatment recommended by the profession much as our grandmothers pre- scribed catnip or peppermint tea according to the dictates of the most influential neighbor. Homoeopathy In Practice. Homoeopathy has won its most unmistakable rights to the favor of science by its results in prac- tice. Here only can we estimate the great difference between the schools. Statistics talk ; if you were go- ing to invest your money in land you would inquire into the productivity of the soil. If you were going to invest in loans you would demand the best securi- ty. In every business enterprise you would count the cost and estimate the gain. So, too, the prospect- ive doctor must ask of the schools three questions: First. By which system have I the assurance of the least mortality ? Second. In which school are my opportunities and possibilities the larger and nobler. Third. Which do I want, science based on law and fact, or only .the consensus of current opinion? Since statistics are open to all they will tell their own story. Allopaths never care to refer to them, they are too embarrassing, there is too much to ex- plain. A man prominent in the profession recently 39 remarked that "with all their increase of remedial agents in the last fifty years, the allopaths have not been able to reduce the mortality in pneumonia in a single per cent." Another doctor bewailed the lamentable increase of heart failures since the introduction of coal-tar products for acute disease. The late Dr. Rush, of Chicago, speaking on this point said: "Instead of modern medicine limiting disease it has been instru- mental in complicating and increasing it." On the other hand, the mortality under homoeopathic treat- ment decreases with the increase of the knowledge of the Materia Medica and the laws of similars. In every instance where records have been kept the mortality is less under Homoeopathy than under allopathy. The comparative statistics of Homoeop- athy and allopathy in hospital practice covering a period of five years compiled by Dr. Joseph Buchner, of New York, shows the death rate of the two schools to be as follows : Disease. All. Horn. Ratio. Erysipelas, 23 % 8 % 28 I Diarrhoea, 21.2 " 9 " 23 Fevers, 5.3 " 1.2 " 4 Typhus, 16 " 13.3 " i Pleurisy, 15.6 " 11.3 " 2 Inflammation of bowels, 41 " 6.1 " 7 Pneumonia, 29.4 " 6.3 " 4 Dysentery, 26.8 " 7.1 " 3 Heart affections, 51.7 " 15.5 " 3 Apoplexy, 48.3 " 28.5 " 1.5 Consumption, 48.5 " 38.5 " i 1 /,, This is typical of all hospital records. A comparison in the orphan asylums in New York covering a period of twelve years showed the allopathic death-rate to be one in every forty-one cases, and the homoeopathic death-rate to be one in every one hundred and forty-six cases, or a ratio of three to one. Figures from the report on the epi- demic of yellow fever in the United States in 1878 showed an average mortality for the allopaths of eighteen and six-tenths per cent., and the Homoeo- paths six and six-tenths per cent., or a ratio of three to one. In the Irish famine of 1847 three classes of 40 hospitals were instituted with the following results: Allopathic treatment, death-rate, thirteen per cent. No treatment, simply cleanliness and good diet, ten per cent. Homoeopathic treatment, death-rate, two per cent. Here, according to Kidd, the old school treatment proves it to be worse than none by three per cent. In the light of such statistics, and many more of similar significance, is it a wonder that the Chicago Inter-Ocean has said editorially: "They who have not tried Homoeopathy have not half tried to get well." This evidence should have some weight with the prospective student of medicine. More than this, Homoeopathy is rapidly becoming the leading prac- tice in many of our cities. In fifty years fourteen thousand students have graduated from the twenty homoeopathic colleges in the United States. Ten million patients are under homoeopathic care, and millions more await homoeopathic physicians. To- day the demand is in excess of the supply. Thou- sands of towns and cities are yet without a ho- moeopathic practitioner where handsome patronage is available. With the least mortality the demand is the greatest. With field the broadest the opportunity is the largest. Every allopathic medical journal will tell the stu- dent that the field of medicine is full. State societies are urging everywhere more astringent regulations to check the product. A mighty army of allopaths is jostling elbow against elbow in the mad race for a living, while thousands of inviting fields await the coming of the scientific and successful physician, he who prescribes by law and system. Homoeopathy cures, it is an accurate and precise form of practice, it appeals to reason, intelligence and the finer senses of man when studied and understood, and it offers quicker relief, speedier cure, and more permanent benefit to suffering mankind than any system of medication which has ever been devised. Its slogan is "Truth," its history "Progress." He who enters its profession will not have made a mistake. WHY STUDENTS OF MEDICINE SHOULD SELECT THE HOMEOPATHIC SCHOOL. BY "QUE DITES VOUS."* Among the beautiful works of art that adorn our national capital is a splendid monument in granite and bronze upon which may be found this inscrip- tion : CHRISTIAN FREDERICK SAMUEL HAHNEMANN, DOCTOR IN MEDICINE. HOFRATH LEADER IN THE GREAT MEDICAL REFORMATION OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND FOUNDER OF THE HOMEOPATHIC SCHOOL. This monument was dedicated June 21, 1900, in the city of Washington, D. C, by the American Insti- tute of Homoeopathy, the oldest national medical so- ciety in America. One of the foremost periodicals of the school thus speaks of it: "It stands for what we, as Homoeopathists, believe is true and best in medical science; it stands for honesty, for liberality, for tolerance ; it stands for scientific medicine ; it stands for Homoeopathy." Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, the "Leader in the Great Medical Reformation of the Nineteenth Century," was a German physician, a scholar, a philosopher, and a master of ten lan- guages. He was versed in all branches of science independent of as well as connected with medicine, and he ranked as one of the profound scholars of his day. In proof of this we quote the following from no less an authority than Sir John Forbes, physician-in-or- dinary to the Queen : "No careful observer of his actions, or candid reader of his writings, can hesi- *Pursuant to the writer's desire to remain in- cognito, unless first place was attained. 42 tate for a moment to admit that he was a very ex- traordinary man, one whose name will descend to posterity as the exclusive excogitator and founder of an original system of medicine ; the remote, if not the immediate, cause of more important fundamental changes in the practice of the healing art than have resulted from any since the days of Galen himself. He was undoubtedly a man of genius and a scholar ; a man of indefatigable industry and dauntless energy." John Syre Bristowe, M. D., in an address before the British Medical Association, speaks of Hahne- mann as follows : "That he had learning and ability and the power of reasoning is abundantly clear. He saw through the prevalent therapeutic absurdities and impostures of the day ; he laughed to scorn the complicated and loathsome nostrums, which even at that time disgraced the pharmacopoeias ; and he ex- posed with no little skill and success the emptiness and worthlessness of most of the therapeutical sys- tems which then and theretofore prevailed." Valen- tine Mott, the pride of American surgery, visited Hahnemann, and this is his testimony : "Hahne- mann is one of the most accomplished and scientific physicians of the present age." Hufeland referred to him as "one of the most distinguished German physicians," and Jean Paul Richter denominated him "a prodigy of learning." Many other instances might be quoted to show that Hahnemann was the peer of any of his time in medical learning; moreover, he was a philosopher, one who was not only a thinker himself, but who also taught others how to think and how to investi- gate. Such was the Founder of Homoeopathy, the Leader of the Great Medical Reformation of the Nineteenth Century. Medical Science in Hahnemann's Student Days. The state of medical science at the beginning of the century just past, especially in the field of thera- peutics, was in a chaotic and unsatisfactory state. The writers of that time were universal in their con- demnatory verdicts and showed that a rational and scientific therapeutics did not then exist. The fol- lowing are a few of the opinions enunciated by the medical fathers of the period : Bichat, the illustrious 43 physiologist, makes this humiliating confession : "The Materia Medica is naught but a conglomera- tion of erroneous ideas." Sir Astley Cooper de- clares: "The art of medicine is founded on con- jecture and improved by murder." Cullen, whose Materia Medica was translated by Hahnemann, says: "Our Materia Medicas are fi!led with innu- merable false deductions." Girtanner, a very great authority of the eighteenth century, writes : "Our Materia Medica is nothing but an industrious col- lection of the delusive observations that physicians have made in all ages." Dr. Kruger Hanson, a no mean authority, says: "Medicine, as is now practic- ed, is a pestilence to mankind ; it has carried off a greater number of victims than all the murderous wars have ever done." A Pew Recent Opinions. Dr. Claude Bernard, the great French physiolo- gist, candidly confesses "Scientific medicine does not exist." Oliver Wendell Holmes showed his distrust of prevailing medicine by saying: "If all the drugs were cast into the sea it would be so much the bet- ter for men, and so much the worse for the fish." Dr. Quain, editor of the Dictionary of Medicine, in an address to the British Medical Association in 1873, says: "Alas! our means of curing disease do not make equally rapid progress. This is not as some assert, because disease cannot be cured; it is simply because our knowledge of remedies is defi- cient." Thus therapeutic impotency is admitted by the fair-minded leaders of the dominant school and by the professors in its own medical colleges. All this would seem to be an acknowledgment that this school is powerless to cure disease. The Reformation. Hahnemann himself was impressed thoroughly with the inefficiency of medicine in disease ; dis- gusted with his results he abandoned practice and devoted himself to earning a livelihood by trans- lating books from other languages into German. It was while translating Cullen's Materia Medica from the English that he was struck with the unsatisfactory explanation given by Cullen of the cure of ague with Cinchona bark. The happy idea occurred to him to test the effect of the baric 44 on the healthy human body. His own words are as follows : "For sake of experiment I took for several days four drachms of good Cinchona bark twice a day ; my feet, finger tips, etc., first grew cold. I became exhausted and s'eepy; then my heart began to pal- pitate, my pulse became hard and rapid. I had an intolerable anxiety, trembling, prostration in all my limbs; then throbbing of the head, flushing of the cheeks, thirst, and, in short, all the ordinary symp- toms of intermittent fever appeared one after an- other, but without febrile rigor. In a word, even the special characteristic symptoms of intermittent fever, dullness of the senses, a kind of stiffness of all the joints, and in particular the disagreeable numb sensation, apparently located in the periosteal covering of all the bones of the body, made their ap- pearance. The paroxysms lasted two or three hours each time and returned when I repeated the dose, otherwise not." As the fall of the apple conveyed to the profound and sagacious philosopher Newton the idea of the law of gravitation, so the physiological effects of Cinchona bark conveyed to the mind of the philo- sophical Hahnemann the general law of cure by which diseases are to be encountered. The law of gravitation had existed before New- ton, the law of cure had existed before Hahnemann, even the older writers, Hippocrates, Paracelsus, Galen and Stoerck, were at times close upon it, but it remained for Hahnemann to demonstrate it, which he proceeded at once to do, and after six years of experiment spent in testing medicines upon the healthy human body to determine their exact ef- fects, years also devoted to observing the result of these experiments at the bedside, he published to the world in an old school medical magazine the law of similia similibus curentur "Let Likes Be Treated By Likes," the universal law which is ap- plicable to the treatment of disease. This "law of similars," as it is familiarly called, is in harmony with all nature. Likes beget likes, likes are drawn unto likes, a smile begets a smile, a frown begets a frown. Like sounds produce har- mony, unlike sounds produce discord ; and harmony, not discord, brings sweet temper, appetite and good 45 digestion. Sunlight brings good cheer, darkness brings despondency, and so throughout the realm of nature the law of likes is ever uppermost. The enunciation of this law was brought about after long years of patient toil and research by its founder; it is not a mere passing fad, a laboratory deduction heralded today, doubted tomorrow and discarded after a wondrous nine-day life. Its cham- pion was not one to court an evanescent fame by rushing blindly into print. He was sure of his ground and he spent six years of toil and privation in prosecuting his researches. Sphinx, pyramid and obelisk will become worn away by the desert sands ; amphitheatre, parthenon and temple will melt in the glowing heat of the sun; feudal castles, moss-cov- ered and ivy-grown, erected to commemorate knight- ly deeds of chivalry, will crumble to dust; even Homoeopathy itself may lose its name, but the immutable law of cure, similia similibus curentur, resting on the rock of truth, will last forever. What Is Homoeopathy ? Homoeopathy may therefore be defined as the science of therapeutics based on nature's law for healing. It is the science of the selection of a remedy that causes, in the healthy, effects similar to those for which it is employed in disease. The methodical testing of drugs on the healthy was first done by Hahnemann ; he saw at once the fallacy of obtaining a knowledge of drug action by testing upon animals, knowing that the effects of medicines vary accord- ing to the animal experimented upon. Thus it is known that rabbits will eat Belladonna leaves, pigs will eat of Ntix vomica freely, hogs and horses will eat Aconite, all of which substances are poisonous to man. We know, too, that drugs affect different animals differently, thus Ipecac is an emetic to man and dogs, but not to rabbits. Conium will poison the horse, but not the ox. Hence the necessity of testing drugs on the healthy human body to deter- mine their rightful actions. This testing must be done singly, for to obtain the pure action of a drug it must be administered singly and alone, unmixed with any other substance. If tested singly surely it must be given singly. If given singly there is not the necessity for so large a dose, and this has led to the small doses of the system, for it is reasonable to suppose and experience verifies the supposition that a single drug acts better when uninterfered with by any other substance, and so polypharmacy is no part of Homoeopathy. Again, it has been found that the dose repetition is not needed so frequently. There- fore to recapitulate the fundamental features of Homoeopathy we say: First. Disease is manifested by its symptoms all the symptoms or, by what we term the totality of the symptoms of a given case. Second. Knowledge of drug action must be ob- tained by experimentation upon the healthy human body, and this has been largely done for us by the early workers in the school. Third. The curative relation between these two sets of phenomena is by virtue of the "law of similars" or similia similibus curentur. Fourth. The selected remedy should be adminis- tered singly, uncombined with any other; hence the doctrine of the single remedy. Fifth. It should be given in the smallest doses that will cure; hence the minimum dose. Sixth. As enough is sufficient the dose should not be unnecessarily repeated. All these topics are capable of a wide expansion and homoeopathic physicians are familiar with all their phases. Homoeopathy therefore is a general fact, a principle or law of nature ; it is a practical fact ; it stands upon its comparative merits ; it is simple and intelligible; it gains by comparison; it is a medical treatment for all time and applicable to all forms of disease, new as well as old. It is a practical guide, a guide to the choice of medicine, not of the dose. It aims to eradicate or permanently cure disease. It economizes the vital forces. It is gentle and agree- able. It administers one remedy at a time. It is applicable to acute as well as to chronic diseases. It is ever prepa'red to meet any new form of sick- ness, and by it a physician is enabled to treat dis- eases that he never saw or heard described. It car- ries out in detail what all medicine does in general It is the only system that includes the three great divisions of therapeutics, namely, preventive medi- cine, palliative medicine and curative medicine. 47 While curative medicine is its specialty, preventive medicine always and palliative medicine only when no harm may be inflicted by the agencies is employ- ed. Homoeopathy's principles will stand the test of scientific inquiry, her methods will bear the critical investigations in fact, these are invited. What Homoeopathy Is Not. Homoeopathy is not an irregular practice; it is founded upon a law. Twenty physicians were once called upon to prescribe for a case of illness. The same symptoms were detailed to each. Ten were homoeopathic physicians, and all prescribed the same remedy. Eight of the ten allopaths prescribed forty-two different medicines, in which no two pre- scriptions were alike. The other two did not re- spond to the invitation, preferring not to exhibit their therapeutic "regularity." Homoeopathy is not unscientific practice. It is not opposed to pathology; it regards pathology, but not as a basis for treatment ; it recognizes that a sys- tem of medicine founded on the shifting sands of pa- thology cannot be scientific. It is not the "little pills." Homoeopathy was a working system long before lit- tle pills were invented; they are simply convenient vehicles for the pleasant administration of medi- cines. It is .not quackery; quackery is secret and Homoeopathy is open to the world and courts the fullest investigation of physician, student and pa- tron. It is willing to stand upon its merits, and it always gains by comparison. It is not a treatment according to fashion, now anodynes, now germi- cides, now serums, now blue glass, now creosote, now sulphuretted hydrogen, now anti-toxines. The popular panacea of today, speeding to oblivion sup- ported only by the ephemeral theories of pathology, is no part of it. Its progress consists in a develop- ment of its Materia Medica and a better understand- ing of disease. It is not a faith cure ; Homoeopathy, it is acknowledged, is eminently successful in chil- dren's diseases, and in childhood the faith element is small; also, it is successful in the treatment of animals, and here faith is wanting. While faith and hope in all cases of illness conduce to recovery, and are therefore most desirable, they are no more essen- tial to homoeopathic practice than they are to any other medical system. It is not an uncertainty ; those who have tried it at the bedside know this bet- ter than those whose knowledge is obtained from its antagonists. It is not an infinitesimal dose; this is a popular misconception fostered diligently and per- haps ignorantly by the opponents of our system. Similia similibus curentur says nothing of the dose. A homoeopathic cure may be, and is, often wrought with the massive doses of allopathy. Experience, however, shows that small doses act better and with less shock to the system. It is not magic, though cures made by it would almost seem to border there- on, nor is it mysterious, nor a popular delusion, nor mesmerism, nor mental healing. By Homoeopathy it is not meant, for example, as our opponents assert to ridicule us, that if a man be poisoned he must take more poison; that to remove a sliver from the finger another must be introduced; that to. cure a burn one must thrust the burnt part into the fire; that to drink on if one has drunk too much; nor to strike the place that was struck; nor to swallow a tape worm to remove one. These in- terpretations of Homoeopathy and of our law were written with the finger of ignorance upon the ragged page of prejudice, and we stoop not to notice them further. What Is a Homoeopathic Physician ? The definition adopted by our national organiza- tion is as follows : "A homoeopathic physician is one who adds to his knowledge of medicine a special knowledge of homoeopathic therapeutics and ob- serves the law of similia. All that pertains to the great field of medical learning is his, by tradition, by inheritance, by right." Thus a homoeopathic physician possesses everything that is possessed by allopathic physicians, and in addition thereto the science of therapeutics. Who would be a physician lacking this accomplishment? Says a writer in one of our principal periodicals: "We of the homoeopathic profession are the col- leagues of the old school whether they will or no; we study the same books ; read the same periodicals ; discuss the same questions from the same view- points in our medical conventions and at our fire- sides; their bacteria are our bacteria; their germi- 49 cides are our germicides; their protozoa are our protozoa ; their toxines are our toxines ; their pallia- tives are our palliatives, and their surgery is our surgery. Only in therapeutics do we differ." Here Homoeopathy particularizes while allopathy general- izes. For instance, a number of children are ill with a common disease; the allopathic doctor will give them all the same remedy, while the Homoeopath pre- scribes according to individualities; he recognizes the fact that no two different temperaments can be sick in exactly the same way; that, for instance, while pneumonia is pneumonia, it affects different individuals differently. Nothing in Homoeopathy is routine or haphazard. Homoeopathy Enables Us to Prevent the Development of Disease. All homoeopathic physicians are familiar with the power of remedies in preventing the full develop- ment of disease ; it was found long ago that cholera could be prevented; that very many acute diseases, such as colds in the head or the starting of a sore throat, can be prevented at the onset. That these would go on to a full development and require many days in their cure without the proper homoeopathic treatment is also well known. The Duration of Disease Is Shortened Under Homoeopathy. In nearly all text-books on the practice of medi- cine one will find a regular course of duration of most acute diseases set down, a course which a typical case of the malady is supposed to run; thus typhoid fever has a usual course of four weeks and then comes the period that is termed "convales- cence," and this is oftentimes longer than the dis- ease itself. Whooping cough is one of the diseases to which is assigned a usual run ; also, mumps, scar- let fever, etc. The course of these diseases is much shorter under homoeopathic treatment, which mani- fold statistics prove; this means a saving of work- ing days for the bread-earner and a lessening of anxiety in the household. Under Homoeopathy the duration of acute diseases is reduced from one-half to one-third that occupied by any other medical treatment. There is little or no time wasted in con- valescence. Our remedies go straight to the dis- eased part ; do not disturb other organs or functions, 50 and when the diseased part is well the patient is well. Under allopathic treatment the idea is to entice the disease to healthy parts in the hope that these healthy parts will succeed in throwing it off ; if this is ac- complished, there are a lot of tired organs and tissues to rest and regain their power, and this is what is meant by "convalescence" or the getting- well- period. There are people whose vocation necessitates a daily appearance ; for instance, opera singers and theatrical performers; these have long ago learned the saving of time and engagements by the use of Homoeopathy. The Economical Side of Homoeopathy/ There are those who fancy that homoeopathic phy- sicians are higher priced than those of the other schools. It is a universally accepted fact that the best is always the cheapest in the end, especially in commercial fields, and this idea should certainly pre- vail in the field of medicine. The homoeopathic phy- sician Has a right to charge more, for the reason that he dispenses his own medicines, but it is found that his charges are fully fifty per cent, less than the com- bined charges of the old school physician and the druggist. Druggist's bills are proverbially high and long ; on the other hand, homoeopathic medicines are comparatively inexpensive. This question of the cost is well shown in homoeo- pathic institutions throughout the country, where the cost of medicines is not one-half that of the hos- pitals and institutions of the other school. As an example of this, take the case of the Protestant Half- Orphan Asylum in New York. It was under allo- pathic control for seven years, and the cost of the medicines was two hundred and forty dollars. It was then under homoeopathic control for ten years, and thirty-five dollars only was expended for drugs, and this is the usual proportion in the institutions of each school. Homoeopathy has a great advantage over allopathy financially, in that many families can treat themselves for the simple ailments, and with perfect safety. For, as has been shown, many diseases may be prevented or their course greatly shortened by the timely administration of the proper remedy, and the prescribing of which is no secret art or special diffi- culty. Though medicine is hemmed in by absurd laws to protect the people, who, by the way, have never asked this protection (it was the doctors themselves that wanted it), there is as yet no law to prevent a person doctoring himself, and this can certainly be done more safely by the homoeopathic method. Another thing that Homoeopathy does is to eradi- cate the tendency to disease, and thus professional visits are reduced in number to the benefit of the purse. Fewer visits are as a rule required in Homoeo- pathy, for the giving of strong doses, as is practiced by the other school, necessitates frequent visits in order to watch the action of the drug. What Homoeopathy Has Done. It has abolished bleeding, and bleeding was the accepted treatment of all diseases for a number of years after the introduction of Homoeopathy. A book was written on the subject as late as 1835, and the operation was in full sway in 1848. In 1860 physicians bled for scarlet fever, and in 1876 for pneumonia, but today it is not done even in apoplexy, the last disease in which it was given up. It has abolished leeches. In 1856 about 800,000 leeches were imported into New York, and one com- mercial house was almost wholly devoted to that traffic. Today the song of the leech is heard no more in the land. It has reduced the death rate in cholera from fifty per cent, to fifteen; yellow fever from eighteen per cent, to six per cent. ; peritonitis from thirty-two to seven per cent., and erysipelas from eight to one per cent. It has robbed pneumonia of its terrors and reduced its death rate from twenty-four to six per cent. Scarlet fever has no frightful mortality under its beneficent treatment, and the scarlet flag of warning is seldom changed into the black flag of death. It has robbed the sick room of the dangefs of poisonous drugs, and hence drug habits under homoeopathic treatment are unknown. Diphtheria is far more amenable to homoeopathic methods; even the claimed improvement by antitoxine, which pos- sibly is a crude form of Homoeopathy, does not ap- proach our results. It has instituted investigations never before scientifically and accurately under- taken which have been of incalculable benefit to hu- 52 inanity. It has widened the field of application of drugs to disease by these investigations to an al- most undreamed of extent. It has not only reduced the mortality of our most virulent diseases, but it has cut down the death rate in our institutions in a marvellous manner. In Cook County, 111., Hospital, the great Chicago hospital where allopaths, eclectics and Homoeopaths have rep- resentation, the ratio of mortality is decidedly in favor of Homoeopathy ; next best is the eclectic sys- tem, and least favorable the allopathic, which lost twice as many as the homoeopathic, and thirty per cent, more than the eclectics, and their patients spend twice as many days in the hospitals as ours. In Melbourne, Australia, the death rate of typhoid fever in an epidemic a few years ago was thirty to fifteen cent. in*the allopathic hospital and nine per cent, in the homoeopathic hospital. The mortality in the three leading hospitals of New York city the first year the large homoeopathic hospital was organized was as follows : Bellevue Hospital, 12^2 per cent. ; Charity Ffospital 8^2 per cent. ; Homoeopathic Hos- pital, 6 per cent. Statistics might be quoted to an almost endless extent showing that the mortality under ho- moeopathic treatment is five to fifty per cent, less than under any other system of medicine. Those who are interested in this question will find further data in the little work by Dr. T. L. Bradford, of Philadelphia, recently published, entitled "The Logic of Figures," from which much of the foregoing is taken. The Growth of Homoeopathy. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a scholar, a delight- ful poet and doubtless a good physician, but when he turned his hand to prophecy he made a dismal failure. He prophesized the death of Homoeopathy in a prophetic article written in 1848. At the threshold of the twentieth century there are more institutions, hospitals, public and private, in the United States than there were practicing physicians of Homoeopathy in 1848. Professor Holmes lived to realize his prophetic failure. In 1875 there was established in the University of Michigan a homoeopathic department. Michigan 53 was the first of our States not only to recognize the claims of the new school, but also that the taxpayers who supported State medicine, many of whom, and especially of the better and thinking class, should not contribute alone to-the education of physicians of a school in which they had no faith. About that time there was much bitterness shown our school, not by the people nor the authorities, but by the physicians of the dominant school. A physician who was practicing in a town of Southwestern Missouri, and a graduate of the old school department of that university, wrote a letter to the "Detroit Review" bemoaning the disgrace of admitting Homoeopathy to the university. He stated in his communication that Homoeopathy was dead in his part of the country ; that there was 'only one homoeopathic physician within a radius of one hun- dred miles from his town, and that he was on his last legs. He said that he felt like turning his diploma with the face toward the wall because of the. in- dignity thus brought upon his Alma Mater. Today the number of homoeopathic physicians within a radius of one hundred miles from this town has in- creased over three thousand two hundred per cent., and it is far from being a populous community. Ever since Homoeopathy was promulgated it has been declared either dead or dying, but somehow or other, like Banquo's -ghost, it will not down. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century the growth of Homoeopathy has been com- mensurate with that of any previous period. Let us compare briefly the status of the school in 1880 and in 1900: In 1880 there was one national homoeopathic body ; in 1900, ten. In 1880 there were twenty-three State societies; in 1900, thirty-four. In 1880 there were ninety-nine local societies and homoeopathic clubs ; in 1900, one hundred and fifty. In 1880 there were eleven homoeopathic colleges; in 1900, twenty-two. In 1880 there were sixteen homoeopathic jour- nals ; in 1900, thirty- three. In 1880 there were thirty-eight general homoeo- pathic hospitals ; in 1900, seventy-six. 54 In 1880 there were thirty dispensaries; in 1900, sixty-three. In addition to this there are about two hundred and fifty private hospitals and sanitariums devoted to the treatment of patients by the homoeopathic method. Thus it is seen that there has been a doub- ling of these figures all along the line in the past twenty years. The Persecutions of Homoeopathy. . Every reform must be baptized in the waters of tribulation before it will be received by the public. As Homoeopathy was the only innovation that ever invaded the medical field it was not to be expected that it should escape the fate of all advanced ideas. "It is not in Jerusalem alone that the prophets are stoned." The abolition of polypharmacy and the revenues from prescriptions first incited the drug- gists to revolt against the system, and they expended their wrath upon the founder. In later years the success of its practitioners over those of the domi- nant school excited the bitterest jealousy, and many unkind words have been spoken on each side even while both are honestly endeavoring to achieve the physical regeneration of man. New truths have al- ways been persecuted: When Peruvian bark was introduced it was denominated a deadly sin to take it; anaesthesia met with similar opposition; Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was considered a mad man ; when the stethoscope was introduced it was condemned, a physician of that period saying in ridicule thereof, "My ear is not fine enough to hear the grass grow;" when per- cussion of the chest was suggested as a means of diagnosis it was likened unto rapping on the outside of a bottle of wine to determine its quality ; Galileo uttered a blasphemy when he said, "E pur si muove ;" Olympic laughter greeted the steamboat ; a "Coo" was on the track of the locomotive ; the dis- covery of vaccination by Jenner was received with ridicule and contempt; Daguerre was dubbed a lunatic for discovering photography ; even, the hum- ble potato upon its introduction into Scotland was violently denounced as unholy because not referred to in the Bible. Homceopathists have been called magicians of the school of Zoroaster, more skillful 55 charmers than Circe or Medea, more dexterous than Cagliostro or Houdin. Homoeopathy has been no exception to the fate of great reforms. Arguments Against Homoeopathy. The arguments against Homoeopathy from the earliest time have been chiefly furnished by those who have never investigated it, or whose knowledge of it has been derived from the writers of previous denunciations. These so-called arguments have been bitter, and such terms as "homoeopathic quackery," "renegades," "absurdity," "delusion," "assassin," "monstrosity," "odious system," "disgusting practice," "loathsome remedies," "fraud," "humbug," etc., gives evidence of their kind. Vituperation is even still used by the professors in some of the allopathic colleges. We could refer to one who always speaks of Homoe- opathy as "pseudo-medicine." These are the weapons of those whose prejudice prevents their try- ing the system, and by the way it takes no small amount of mental acumen to try the system intelli- gently. It is not learned in a day. Like all the true sciences it is exact, but difficult. Those who claim to practice both ways are those who are in business "for revenue only," and their knowledge of Homoe- opathy is often as crude as is their knowledge of medicine in general. They are the "Docs" of the profession. The following from the Philadelphia Medical Journal of as late a date as March, 1900, shows that the "arguments" against Homoeopathy continue: "The downright scoundrels, the out-and-out nos- trum traders, the sectarians, are treated by us as the prairie wolf and tramp dogs, the solitary elephants, the forest cats, etc., are treated by their brethren. We expel them, and they are known as enemies for- ever. Of course they continue to use the education stolen from the profession, and their knowledge of civilized life, to commit depredations on their former masters." This is in accord with regular ethics. This is from an editorial; is it a wonder that the editor was soon removed from his position? A recent writer against Homoeopathy gave seven lines from one of our chief works, Hahnemann's Organon, a book of 300 pages, to furnish his read- 56 ers with an "example of its style." Could one judge of the style of the Bible by selecting the first seven lines of the Gospel of Matthew as a sample. Is Homoeopathy Sectarian Medicine ? Sectarians we are in the same sense that a man may be a Christian and yet a protestant, an Ameri- can citizen and. yet a republican, a physician and yet a Homoeopath. Sectarianism is the offspring of originality and the guardian of progress. We are accused of trading on a name as if sec- tarianism was fanaticism. The apostle Paul was accused of belonging to the hated sect of Nazarenes. Josephus styled the Christians a sect. We are coolly asked to abandon the name, as England asked the early colonists to abandon their ideas of freedom. "True sectarianism," says Helmuth, "is compatible with the highest degree of learning ; whilst it is firm for the preservation of rights, it has the greatest toleration for the opinions of others. In fact, I might say throughout the world, in theology and in medicine, sectarianism is the authorized expression of doctrine, the definite intellectual expression of belief. I hold that if sectarianism had been a bar to its progress medicine today would be an incon- gruous mass of poorly ascertained facts; for, from the time that the sons of Hippocrates founded the dogmatists to the period when the allopathic school forced the Homoeopaths to become sectarian, the his- tory of medicine is the history of sects, all having more or less influence upon the progress of medical science; nay, more, the majority of the illustrious leaders whose names have descended to our times as acknowledged fathers in medicine were sectarians." No Homoeopathic Representation. It has been said that we have no representation in the armies and navies of the world, nor in na- tional medical service, nor in railway or steamship employment, nor in life insurance companies as ex- aminers, nor in city, county, or State institutions. Furthermore it has been declared that the homoeo- pathic school is not recognized by scientific societies at home or abroad, and that it has made no advance- ment in scientific knowledge since its foundation. All these statements are false. In the late war with Spain nine of our surgeons were in service, three 57 with the rank of major. Many homoeopathic phy- sicians and surgeons are connected with railway medical service, with insurance companies as ex- aminers. Many United States pension examiners are Homoeopaths. There are eight homoeopathic hospitals for the insane under State control and their records are emphatically in favor of our system. Three State universities have homoeopathic depart- ments, Two city universities and one other have ho- moeopathic schools conected with them. As to our scientific investigations, that we have made them, no further evidence is necessary than to point to the in- stances wherein the old school has appropriated our remedies and the uses of them as derived from our investigations in corpore sano. Inroads of the Dominant School in Homoeopathic Drug Employment. The use of Aconite by the old school is compara- tively recent, but the drug was used by Hahnemann three-quarters of a century ago for the same indica- tions that it furnishes today. Hahnemann, one hun- dred years ago, suggested Belladonna for the same uses to which it has been applied during the past two decades. Phillips, a few years ago, in a work on Materia Medica, speaks of Rhus in paralysis; we have used it since 1816. He gave Bryonia anew to the world. We knew it and used it in 1816. Cu- prum is a new remedy of the old school ; we used it in 1805; tne same is true of Pulsatilla, Camphor, Ledum, Thuja, Cannabis, Euphrasia and many others. The use of Castor old, Magnesia sul- phurica and Podophyllum in dysentery; Mercurius cyanatus in diphtheria ; Gelsemium in colds ; Hama- melis in haemorrhoids; Phosphorus in pneumonia and fatty degeneration ; Lycopodium in uric acid de- posits in the urine ; Apis mellifica, or the poison of the honey bee, in rheumatism, are among the allo- pathic "finds" of the last twenty years. For these affections Homoeopaths have used the same remedies for over fifty years, and in many instances a hun- dred years. The poison of the rattlesnake is just now proving a great remedy in cases of the bubonic plague in India, our own Crotalus, seventy-five years old ! This is the very genius of Homoeopathy. Bacteriological Therapeutics. The late Rudolf Virchow, one of the greatest medical men whom science has produced, announc- ed a short time before his death that modern bac- teriological therapeutics rested on a homoeopathic basis. The same may perhaps be said of antitoxine ; of the Pasteur treatment for hydrophobia ; of vacci- nation or the treatment of tuberculosis by tuberculin or neuclein. While these methods have not been generally approved by homoeopathic physicians be- cause irregular in their genesis, it is a source of satisfaction that the very acme of old school scien- tific research verifies our principles. We cannot, however, close our eyes to the fact that many bac- teriological practices are steeped with commercial in- terests. The pharmaceutical laboratories do as much, if not more, to further the use of these various sub- stances than physicians themselves, yet it would seem that even the latter are not guiltless. "Behring has patented his diphtheria antitoxine serum on the continent ; Koch for years has made a princely royalty out of his lymph ; little Denmark has boomed her butter trade through tuberculin." Neu- clein comes high, and the profession would seem to be on the search always for some revenue produc- ing serum, or some "gusher" of a toxin well. Achievements of Hahnemann. No better summary of the achievements of Hahne- mann exist than the following written by the late Dr. Selden H. Talcott, superintendent of the Mid- dletown State Hospital, New York : "i. He portrayed the true nature of disease and described it as a disturbance of vital force. "2. He enunciated the law of similars embodied in the doctrine, 'similia similibus curentur,' a law on which scientific medicine is inevitably based. "3. He inaugurated the plan of proving drugs up- on the healthy before using them as medicines for the sick. "4. He discarded polypharmacy as unscientific. "5. He adopted the plan of using the single renv edy for the safe and speedy cure of disease. "6. He made war against bleeding, blistering", purging, administering emetics and all forms of un- necessary depletion. 59 "7- He defined medicine in a manner comprehen- sive enough for all time. In his Lesser Writings he states : 'A knowledge of disease, a knowledge of remedies and a knowledge of their employment (that is for the cure of disease) constitutes medicine. That definition has not yet been improved upon. "8. He reduced the size of the dose until all dan- ger of aggravation from the drug was removed. He proved the possibility of successful treatment by the administration of medicines in minute quantities, and when the fact was determined there was a gradual abandonment of the 'kill or cure' doses of the ancients." The Advantages of Homoeopathy. The advantages of Homoeopathy to the physician may be thus summed up : 1. The emancipation of his mind from doubt and confusion. 2. The provision of a guide. 3. The simplicity of the means. The advantages to the patient may also be thus summed up : 1. The banishment of nauseous drugs, painful and debilitating measures. 2. Greatly increased efficacy and success. 3. Deliverance from medicinal diseases and other destructive consequences of former methods of treatment requiring months and years to eradicate. We quote the following from a prominent writer on Homoeopathy: "Homoeopathy fills no insane asylums with drug wrecks ; she populates no alms- houses with mercurial sufferers ; she inhabits no dens with morphine fiends; she infests no human frames with the awful disasters of the hundreds of drugs that might be named ; she vagarizes no brain with the fanciful visions and vicious tremens of cocaine and alcohol. She comes to save, not to de- stroy. She comes to cure, not to palliate." What further advantages could appeal' more forcibly to a patient than these? Our Homoeopathic Medical Colleges. Our institutions of learning are the pride of Homoeopathy in this country. Our colleges are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Balti- more, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, Detroit, 60 Minneapolis, Chicago, Iowa City, St. Louis, Louis- ville, Kansas City, Denver and San Francisco. It is one of our proud boasts that our school has ever been in the lead of medical education. The first college to establish a three years' compulsory course in medicine was a homoeopathic college, and it ante- dated this feature of old school instruction by twelve years. A four years' course is now compul- sory in all our colleges, and the sessions have been lengthened to eight and nine months in many of them with a minimum requirement of seven months. Three of our colleges are connected with State uni- versities, three are connected with other universi- ties. Our laboratory facilities are equal, and in many instances superior to those of the majority of the old school teaching institutions. Our clinical facilities are represented in large hospitals connect- ed with all of our colleges. There is an esprit de corps among our students not found elsewhere, and the classes being smaller than old school institu- tions students are brought into closer relationship with faculties and with patients. Our teaching of the elementary branches of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physiological chem- istry, hygiene and sanitary science is in the most capable hands. It is said of us that we pay little at- tention to the subjects of bacteriology, pathology and diagnosis. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our teaching in these branches is all that is taught in. any medical institution of the country, and far beyond this; our bacteriological studies extend beyond the mere study of the subject; we make this important topic pay a rich tribute to our knowledge of drug action in the treatment of disease. Pathology, while it does not form a foundation for our thera- peutics, is studied in its ever-changing features and helps to further our understanding of disease and thus pays tribute to the common aim of our system, namely, to cure disease. Diagnosis is not studied with us to merely distinguish one affection from an- other, but as a means of remedy selection ; we make diagnosis of value to the patient, not merely a satis- faction to the physician, and so throughout the vast field of medical learning. In most of our col- leges women are admitted on equal terms with men, and in New York we have a college alone for wo- 61 men. There is no college in the homoeopathic school that a student would make a mistake in attend- ing; though few, they are of high excellence and standing. Our colleges are under the super- vision of the Intercollegiate Committee of our na- tional organization, the American Institute of Homoeopathy, and in them is taught all that pertains to the great field of medical learning and in addi- tion thereto homoeopathic medicine. The Literature of Our School. The literature of the homoeopathic school is a growing and efficient one. Our chief work has been done in the field of the study of drug action and the fitting of the same to disease. In every field where the application of the remedy would lend aid to the cure we have a fine literature; in all the specialties, in surgery, in the practice of medicine in all 1 its vari- ous branches, we need not go out of our school for learned, complete and up-to-date works. In the fix- ed branches of ' chemistry, anatomy and physiology we rely upon the standard works on these subjects from whatever hands they come. We have our own works on diagnosis, urinalysis, electricity and kin- dred topics. . Our periodical literature is a praise- worthy one and gives the "abstract and brief chron- icles" of the progress of general medicine, as well as that of our own system. Our research literature is an imperishable record of true medical progress. Our societies publish transactions, our colleges is- sue bulletins and journals, our hospitals publish re- ports and statistics. In short, all the field is occu- pied, and well occupied. Our libraries contain not only the works of our own school, but the best there is in medicine in other schools. Therefore, Choose the Homoeopathic System. To recapitulate and to conclude: We maintain that students of medicine should select the homoeo- pathic system for the following reasons : First. It offers all that old school medicine can offer in the medical field, and more, since it adds thereto a knowledge of homoeopathic medicine, Materia Medica and therapeutics. Second. It is a scientific system ; its practitioners are possessed of knowledge not possessed by any other one system ; its colleges and teaching facilities, 62 laboratories, hospitals, libraries, journals all insti- tutions of the school are surpassed by none in the great medical field. Third. It offers a profession that is not over- crowded, fields that are virgin, opportunities that are waiting, fame and fortune to be won. List of Homoeopathic Colleges. Boston Universit}' School of Medicine Boston, Mass. Chicago Homoeopathic Medical College ....... Chicago, 111. Cleveland Homoeopathic Medical College Cleveland, Ohio. Denver Homoeopathic Medical College Denver, Col. Detroit Homoeopathic Medical College Detroit, Mich. Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital ...'... Chicago, 111. Hahnemann Medical College of the Pacific .... San Francisco, Cal. Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital Philadelphia, Pa. Hering Medical College and Hospital Chicago, 111. Homoeopathic Aledical College of Missouri St. Louis, Mo. Kansas City Hahnemann Medical College Kansas City, Mo. Now York Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital, New York, N. Y. Xew York Medical College and Hospital for Women . New York, N. Y. Pulte Medical College Cincinnati, Ohio. Southern Homoeopathic Medical College Baltimore, Md. Southwestern Homoeopathic Medical College Louisville, Ky. University of Iowa Homoeopathic Medical College . . Iowa City, Iowa. University of Michigan Homoeopathic Medical College, Ann Arbor, Mich. University of Minnesota College of Homoeopathy . . . Minneapolis, Minn. Syracuso, N. Y PAT. Ml 21. 1 901 .374417 \ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY