Perhaps it will tell against his authority with English readers, that Hahnemann avows his partiality to the use, under certain restrictions, of Mesmerism, or animal magnetism prescribing rules for its application in small "doses," and citing cases of its miraculous effect. But the worst of his sins against sense, as well as taste, is the vulgar and unseemly abuse which he is not slow nor sparing to heap upon the votaries of Esculapius that belong not to the sacred band of Homöopathists. If the phrase, intelligent physician, be used by him, Homöopathie, in brackets by its side, accounts for the unwonted courtesy; while every other member of the tribe is ignorant, incompetent, or even flagitious" with eyes, yet seeing not," and learning nothing from an experience, which is no better than a long gaze into a kaleidoscope, upon a thousand shapes of unknown things, without any law to determine their appearance. The opponents of Hahnemann have reasonably availed themselves of the arms against himself, which this unjustifiable petulance supplies. Dr. Heinroth, of Leipsic, who brings the heaviest metal to bear upon the bulwarks of the new system, derives one of his arguments from this source-if Homöopathie be the only method of cure, and if all former physicians were fools or knaves, how comes it that any disorder was ever cured in the "olden time?" The certainty of former cures demonstrates the futility of Hahnemann's pretensions. But, though a proper chastisement of Hahnemann's presumption, this, it is said, is no demolition of his doctrines. Though these may not reveal the only mode of healing, it is enough if they teach that which is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." The fundamental principle of Homöopathie (öμoox rálos) is expressed in its name. It is, according to Dr. Granville (who has slightly noticed it in his Journal), "the art of healing founded on resemblance;" or, more plainly, it seeks to establish, as an universal truth, the proposition, that every disease is curable by such medicines as would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those which characterize the given disease. —Similia similibus curentur, that is, let one nail drive out another "Tut! man, one fire burns out another's burning, Lines which plainly evince, that Shakspeare, who was so many things without suspecting it, was, among the rest, a Homöopathist! This straight and simple way to the recovery of health, no one, it appears, until the time of Hahnemann, followed, though he admits, that the great principle must have left, in every age, visible traces of its occasional development, though for thousands of years unrecognised. And, accordingly, when the attention of Hahnemann had once been roused by finding that Cinchona, or Peruvian bark, the common remedy for intermittent fever, produced in his own frame a number of aguish symptoms, he bad recourse to a wide circle of medical authorities in search of similar cases. We shall quote a few of the most remarkable of the cases adduced by him. The author of the fifth book, Eriony, describes an Athenian, attacked by the most violent cholera, as cured by drinking hellebore, which, according to the observations of Forestus, Ledelius, Reimann, and several others, produces of itself a kind of cholera. The English sweating sickness, which appeared for the first time in 1485, and was of so murderous a character, that ninety-nine out of one hundred afflicted with it died, could not be allayed until sudorifics were resorted to. And so Dr. Hahnemann proceeds through a long series of pages. Heinroth says, cures may have been effected, while specifics, seeming to comply with the rule similia similibus, were employed; but is the reason of these causes actually explained, as the new doctrine supposes, by the fact?-or is it not rather a petitio principii to assume it is so? Dr. Hahnemann observes, in support of his great principle-on the frozen_limb we lay some freezing mixture, or rub the part with snow. The sagacious cook, when his or her hand has been scalded, holds it near the fire; wisely despising the increased smart which this occasions, in the conviction that the pain and its cause will be removed by a few minutes of endurance. Others apply heated spirits of wine, or oil of turpentine, which work a cure in a few hours; whereas cooling salves might be used in vain for as many months, and cold water only aggravates the mischief. And here the culinary empiric has the support of mighty names. Fernelius ("Therap." lvi. c. 20), recommends to approximate the burnt part to the fire. John Hunter condemns the use of cold water, and likewise approves of exposure to the fire. Sydenham (to whom Dr. Parr assigned the palm of knowledge), and Benjamin Bell, declare for spirits of wine; and Rentish, Heister, and John Bell, applaud the use of turpentine oil. "Yes!" our author bursts out, at this part of his 66 Organon," "there were, from time to time, physicians who surmised the important truth, that medicines healed disease only through their fitness for exciting analogous symptoms." Boulduc believed the purgative property of rhubarb to be the cause of its efficacy in curing diarrhoea; that Detharding explains the power of senna in appeasing "colic pangs," upon the principle of its tendency to cause them in healthy subjects; that Betrholon affirms electricity to exert a control over the same bodily affections in sickness which it causes in health; and thus Thoury expressly says, that the pulse, which is quickened by positive electricity, has a diseased activity lessened by the same; that Von Storck suggests the possibility of thornapples proving a cure for madness, because, when administered to persons of sane mind, it produces symptoms of insanity; and that, still more explicitly, Stahl, a Danish military surgeon, has declared his convictions, when he says that the old rule of healing by contraries is altogether erroneous; but that, on the other hand, distempers may be remedied by means which would generate like symptoms (similia similibus). So near were men to the attainment of the great truth! Secure, as he imagines, of the truth of his principle, supported by facts like these, Hahnemann sees little use in attempting a scientific explanation of the manner in which it operates; but, such as it is, we shall endeavour to condense it into a few propositions. Every sickness (if not belonging to the province of surgery) is a mere disturbance of the vital powers, cognoscible by evident symptoms; and must, by the adhibition of proper medicines, be converted into a similar, but more energetic, artificial sickness, which will displace the former natural affection; and yielding, in its turn, to the vital power, will leave the bodily functions restored to their original integrity. For the human frame is more susceptible of medicinal power than it is of natural infection-being subject to the operation of the former at all times, and under nearly all circumstances but liable to the latter only when a predisposition exists in the organization. Hence the artificial sickness, as absolute and unconditional, will conquer the natural, as conditional, and of a subordinate energy. But, further, this artificially-excited sickness must be similar to the natural, which it is intended to remove. Look to the process of nature herself in the case of two natural dissimilar diseases, that encounter each other in the human frame, and this will prove that even she cannot work unhomöopathically. For 1, either the two dissimilar diseases are of like force, or the elder is the stronger of the two, in which case the new infection will be promptly repelled, but the old remain unweakened. Thus, according to Larrey, the Levantine plague does not attack those who are infected with scurvy, or afflicted by leprous spots. Or, 2, the new dissimilar disorder is the more powerful. Then will the prior malady be for a time suspended, until the new have expired or be healed, when it will return to the charge, not a whit impaired in vigour by its temporary banishment. So Tulpius observed, that two children, subject to epileptic convulsions, were cured for a time, while affected with scurf-pate (tinea), but, with the disappearance of the scurf-pate, back came the epilepsy. Madness, supervening to pulmonary consumption, removes it with all its symptoms, but, let the madness depart, and the consumptive symptoms fatally return. Or, 3, the new disease concludes an alliance with the old, and both, upon the best mutual understanding, carry on their offensive warfare against the constitution. This complication of natural maladies is fortunately rare. During a period of epidemic sickness, when small-pox and measles were raging together, Russel saw only one case out of three hundred, in which these two dissimilar diseases simultaneously attacked the same person. Rainey observed a like incident twice in his practice, and Maurice also only twice. Zencker relates a case of cow-pox, which ran its natural course side by side, with measles and the purples; and James saw the progress of cow-pox undisturbed by a venereal disorder under mercurial treatment. The complication is much more frequent, when the supervening disorder is caused by a mistaken (allopathic) course of medicine. But the result is very different when two similar diseases meet; i. e. when to a prior disorder, one of like kind, but greater, is added. Then man may learn a lesson from nature. For, in this event, the one neither keeps off the other, remaining itself unchanged (as in case 1, of the dissimilar diseases); nor (as in case 2), does one relieve the other, only long enough for it to take breath and return; nor (as in case 3) does a double and complex malady ensue. On the contrary, two such diseases, similar in their symptoms, though different in their origin, annihilate each other. Thus every one knows, that violent inflammation of the eyes, even to blindness, is caused by small-pox, and lo! by inoculation for the small-pox, a chronic inflammation of the eyes was perfectly cured, as is reported by Dezoteaux and Leroy. Deafness and difficulty in breathing have been removed in the same way, according to Closs. The fever attendant upon cow-pox cured an intermittent fever in two persons, as observed by Hardedge the younger, in confirmation of John Hunter's remark, that two fevers cannot co-exist in the same frame. In this train of argument, with its accompanying illustrations, it might not be hard to detect flaws; but Dr. Heinroth is rash in asserting, that, if his logic fail, the author of the new doctrine must be altogether wrong. Many a judge has arrived at a sound conclusion, in whose reasons there would be found as little logic as law. It is upon the foregoing propositions, true or false, that Hahnemann grounds his division of the healing art into three branches. First, stands the homeopathic, the "only proper" method, imitating nature in her most scientific mood then the allopathic or heteropathic, hitherto the commonest method, which hopes to cure disease by exciting some dissimilar affection lastly, the antipathic or enan tiopathic (the palliative), which meets a disorder in the teeth, opposes contrary to contrary, gives for a season a seeming relief, but ends by making matters worse. It is a proof of Hahnemann's celebrity, that he has made these learned appellations current over great part of the continent. There, the dispensers of health and longevity are now known as Homöopaths or Allopaths. Out of the main theorem of Homöopathie, proceed two corollaries, which have excited as much discussion as the great principle itself. The first is, that disease is nothing but an aggravation of symptoms; and that, therefore, in the treatment of disease, the physician's sole business is to extinguish the symptoms, since this will necessarily infer the extinction of their cause. It is true, that cessante causa tollitur effectus, but the reverse of this adage is held by Hahnemann to be equally true. He and his disciples, though skilled in the facts of pathology, reject the customary names, whether popular or scientific; they profess to know nothing about All furious kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, but only about component pains and debilities, out of which these, and all other varieties of sickness, are made up. A genuine Homöopath does not ask you whether you have a fever, or a cold, or a fit of gout, or of rheumatism; but he makes curious in quiries as to the state of your skin, your head, your joints, or your principal toe. Nay, he does not understand what you mean by a head-ache, or ear-ache, or stomachache, but he must learn in what part of the head, in which of the ears, in what corner of the stomach uneasiness prevails, and whether it be a throbbing pain, or a boring pain, a gnawing, a pricking, a rending, or a griping pain. For, since by symptoms alone, his practice is guided, he must have at least full cognizance of these; pursuing them through all the categories, of how, when, where, and with a degree of inquisitive minuteness that defies competition of common mediciners. quantity of the mineral, vegetable, or animal substance to be tested, and strictly observing a course of diet which will not perplex or counteract the operation of such substances, they must note down, under a series of heads, given in the "Arzneimittellehre" of Hahnemann, the various sensations that ensue. Objections have been raised to this process, amongst others, that it must prove nearly impossible to light upon proper pharmacometers, because very few have sound constitutions, and even the healthy are frequently endowed with strange peculiarities of constitution-(so that, for instance, one man can imbibe, without suffering from it, a quantity of laudanum sufficient to consign five others to the grave)—Dr. Hahnemann affirms, that he himself, and the rest of his pharmacometers, are in thorough condition, and quite free from troublesome idiosynerasies; and a most curious book is the " Arzneimittellehre," or doctrine of medicaments, produced by the experience of his patriotic band, and already extended to eight volumes octavo. Dr. Kitchiner, of gastronomic fame, commends his book of cookery by the assurance that has eaten through every recipe therein given; but what is this to the exertions of Hahnemann and his disciples! These have really been pains-taking discoverers. All their knowledge is the fruit of the tortured heads and emperilled intestines; and not a little extraordinary, both in extent and minuteness, are the results of their researches. Under every title of their materia medica the list of symptoms is prodigious: nux vomica alone yields more than one thousand two hundred; calearea carbonica (obtained from oyster-shells) gives one thousand and ninety; and the succus sepia no less than one thousand two hundred and forty-two. The second corollary, from the great homöopathic principle, is attained through something like the following process of ratiocination. Since, in the treatment of a disease, medicines calculated to produce similar effects, are alone to be used, these medicines will have to work upon an organization already pre-disposed to be affected by them; and the power of medicine being at any rate more energetic than that of natural sickness, a very small quantity of medicine must be adequate to act upon an organization thus prepared. The slightest aggravation of the disease by medical means will constitute an artificial malady powerful enough to control and suppress the natural one; and the more slight this artificial malady, the more easily will it in its turn give way to the vital principle. The necessity of small doses is thus plausibly deduced; but the practical shape which this conclusion takes, is the most startling part of the whole Hahnemannic system. Proceeding step by step in his reductions, Dr. Hahnemann has at length brought down his doses to an exiguity unheard of, and seemingly incredible. The millionth part of a grain of many substances is an ordinary dose; but the reduction proceeds to the billionth, trillionth, nay, to the decillionth, portion of a grain! In the preparation of mercury, one grain of pure running quicksilver is reduced by trituration to the millionth degree; a single grain of the powder thus obtained, is then dissolved in ninety-nine drops of diluted spirits of wine; one drop of this solution is again shaken together, with ninetynine drops of the vinous spirit, and another repetition of the process of trituration having reduced the mixture to the billionth degree, a few sugar pellets, of the size of poppy-seeds, are moistened with the liquid, whereof two or three constitute a dose! A more agreeable mode of physicking was certainly never devised; nor one more sure to relieve the specific drug, suitable for a given case, from the admixture of heterogeneous elements. [Hahnemann affirms that neither sugar, milk, nor spirits of wine, after the process of commixture with the substances employed by him, have of themselves any medicinal qualities]. But the deglutition of even these minute particles of matter is not esteemed always necessary: in the use of the loadstone, it is by touch alone that the medicinal effect is sought to be produced. In more than one instance, Dr. Hahnemann prescribes merely to smell the phial in which the pellets are enclosed; nay, by some hints that he drops here and there, he seems to believe that certain drugs may be taken, as adepts read music, at sight! Though we should abstract from this doctrine of infinite doses the last noticed excess of its extravagance, there would remain still enough in all conscience, to dilate the eyes of the greediest lovers of the wonderful. It is against this part of his system, accordingly, that Dr. Hahnemann's opponents have directed the thickest shafts of their ridicule, as well as of their more serious arguments. An ingenious adversary suggests, that if the decillionth part of a grain have any efficacy, an ounce of medicine thrown into the Lake of Geneva, would be sufficient to physic all the Calvinists of Switzerland. To this it has been thought worth while gravely to reply. First, that there is no real analogy between the terms of this fanciful proportion; and secondly, that the body of liquid in the Lake of Geneva could not, even by one of its own storms, be shaken into such perfect commixture with the medicinal ingredient as the conditions of a Homöopathic prescription require. But let us hear what the great Homöopath has to say for himself. How can small doses of so much attenuated substances still possess a mighty healing power? Now in the first place it is foolish to doubt the possibility of that which in reality takes place, and which the daily experience of hundreds will confirm as fact; "since" our author pursues," that which actually happens must at least be possible." More of this startling assertion hereafter. But secondly, the sceptics do not consider all the rubbing and shaking bestowed upon the homöopathic preparations. Not only an alteration, but a wonderful development of power in medicinal substances, Hahnemann affirms to be produced by these means, and he claims this discovery as one of the greatest ever made. Marvellous indeed are the effects of friction! The clown who lights his pipe with flint and steel, little thinks of the surprising power which his operation has developed in the colliding materials, yet a microscope, or even the naked eye, will show him particles of steel melted by the stroke so that a heat of 3000 deg. of Fahrenheit has been evolved in the process of the collision. And mere rubbing will draw out the latent coloric; as Count Rumford found that chambers could be heated by the simple motion of metal plates, rubbed rapidly together. Horn, bone, ivory, and some other substances, though inodorous when left alone, emit a strong smell when subjected to friction. Other changes in the properties of matter, more directly to his own purpose, are pointed out by our author. Magnesia, marble, and other calcarious substances, after undergoing trituration, become perfectly soluble, though they will not thoroughly combine with either water or spirits of wine before it. Hahnemann announces himself as the first observer of these chemical facts; but still more emphatically as the first who has detected that great increase of power in medicines, through rubbing or shaking. This increase is so vast, that a drop of drosera, or sun-dew, attenuated to the 30th degree, but shaken at each reduction, twenty times, when given to a child ill of the hooping cough, causes imminent danger, whereas if the shaking be repeated only twice, a single sugar-pellet moistened with this liquid in the 30th deg. of attenuation, works a rapid cure! Accordingly, it is upon the augmented force of the medicines, however reduced in bulk, which results from his mode of preparing them, that Hahnemann seems inclined to rest his explanation of the efficacy of infinitesimal doses. But though this may be a very scientific mode of reasoning, we confess a predilection for facts; and we can neither ourselves give credence to, nor expect our readers to give credence to, this singular part of the homöopathic theory, except in so far as facts can be adduced to support it. We therefore demand the only illustration which it is capable of receiving-cases of well-authenticated cures, performed by means of the homöopathic drugs. From the medical journal of the party-the "Archiv für die hom. Heilkunst,"- -a vast number of extraordinary cases might be cited; but we prefer for obvious reasons, to state a few cases which fell under our own observation; or were reported to us, not merely by professional men, but by persons of the highest station and intelligence in Austria and Saxony, the circle within which Homöopathie is most prevalent. In the Bohemian town of Senftenberg, that cruel disorder, the bloody flux, was raging with great violence and most fatal effects. The ordinary arts of medicine were tried in vain to arrest its progress. In sheer despair, the homöopathic prescriptions were adopted, and with immediate and uniform success. A jager, or huntsman, belonging to the Baron of Senftenberg, lay at the point of extreme unction with fever and inflammation of the throat. As a last resort, a few of the homöopathic pellets were administered; the dying man was out of his bed next morning, and on the second day, when according to all established principles, he should have been quietly stretched in his coffin, he was handling his gun in the forests. A decided sceptic witnessed this case, and became from that moment as decided a believer in Homöopathie. A Bohemian gentleman was afflicted with one of the worst forms of lepra, aggravated by the most complicated ailments of the stomach. His physician declared him incurable; and we know the same disorder to have been pronounced incurable, and to have remained uncured in England also. In a few months, however, the complaint, the lepra, disappeared, and the patient arrived at the real apex of human felicity-the unconsciousness of possessing a stomach. One of the many sons of a well known London baronet came abroad moribundus. His constitution seemed exhausted by the effects of a brain fever. He had tried many physicians, many waters, and many medicines to no purpose. He owed his recovery to Homöopathie, and expresses the greatest gratitude to our informant, who advised him to make the experiment. The director of the theatre at Prague had four children sick of the croup. One died: two were cured secundem artem, after a long interval of suspense and anxiety; the fourth, when taken ill, was allowed to be treated homöopathically, and recovered in a day. When Field-Marshal Prince Schwarzenburg applied for advice to Dr. Mahrenzeller, then practising at Prague, this physician referred him to one hundred cures, performed in this capital, as the best testimonial to the merits of the system. Mahrenzeller is now at Vienna, and continues to prescribe infinitesimal doses with the happiest results. In cases of rheum, fever, and inflammation of every kind, his success is said to be marvellous. It might be thought trifling to swell the list of our personal observations with cures of head-ache, sore throat, tooth-ache, ear-ache, bruises, and other minor accidents, and ailments, although these are not really trifles; if, as a recent writer has asserted, every ache and pain, however slight, contributes something to the abbreviation of human life. And all these cures were effected by a few sugar pellets, tinctured with a liquid, which contained perhaps the decillionth of a grain of medicine! Should Homöopathie be, as, in spite of all this, it well may be, altogether false, it would still be desirable to impress with a notion of its truth those who are given to the mischievous practice of self-dosing. Here, it seems, would be no fear of adding to the victims of domestic pharmacy. The portability of the medicines is another advantage. Adieu to the endless train of phials, pots, pill-boxes, and powders! The very name of medicine-chest must cease to be. There lies before us, as we write, a small morocco case, about the size of a pocket Bible, within the compact dimensions of which are contained eighty-four little bottles of homöopathic pellets-enough to physic the crew of a first-rate on a voyage round the world. Such facts as we have above narratedand the number might be considerably increased even from our own personal knowledge-are much insisted upon in support of the efficacy of the small doses. The number and the notoriety of the cures thus performed are, indeed, the main stumbling-block to the antagonists of Homöopathie. Any thing like an equal list of well-established instances of failure would be the best possible answer to Hahnemann's whole system. We have found nothing of the sort in any of the replies to the "Organon," which we have perused. The case of Prince Schwarzenburg is the only example of failuret brought forward; and great stress is laid upon this by the Allopaths. That eminent person, after consulting Mahrenzeller, proceeded to take advice from the mighty Hahnemann himself, at Leipsic. There he was lodged in the same apartments in which he had captured the King of Saxony in 1813; and there, as our guide assured us, he died upon the same day of the year on which the royal prisoner had surrendered to him. Professor Sachs intimates his suspicion, that Hahnemann himself gives larger doses † Another case of failure is talked of, but as a mere jest, in the social circle. A lady, attended by a in spite of his prescriptions. Amazed at this inconHomöopathic physician, had the indiscretion to die, gruity, the physician requested and obtained leave to examine the corpse; when, lo! in the insidious cavity of a decayed tooth, were found the unswallowed pellets, which must have wrought a cure had they reached their proper destination, |