THE PHILOSOPHY OF HO M CEO PATH Y. A NEW EXPOSITION OF A GREAT TRUTH. BY WILLIAM HI. HOLCOMHE, M.D., OF NEW ORLEANS. New York: jS77- DR. HOLCOMBE’S LITERARY WORKS. OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. ($1.25.) New edition, with a fine steel portrait of the author. “A beautiful and touching book.”—Philadelphia Presbyterian. THE SEXES, HERE AND HEREAFTER. ($1.50.) “A work of sustained elegance of style; unexceptionably pure and refined.”—Lippincott's Magazine. IN BOTH WORLDS. ($1.75.) “There is, doubtless, more spiritual truth in this romance than in all the novels which have ever been written.”—N. C. In- dependent. THE OTHER LIFE. ($1.50.) “Few American writers have exhibited more exuberance of genius, nor in matter of style a higher degree of perfection, than the author of this volume.”—New Orleans Times, SOUTHERN VOICES. ($1.50.) “As the production of spiritualized sentiment, cultured, refined, devout, and artistic, these poems have uncommon merits.”— Golden Age. The above volumes have gone through many editions in this country, and three of them have been reprinted in England. Will be sent, post paid, on receipt of price. Address, J. B. LIPPINCOTT k CO., Publishers, 717 Market Street, Philadelphia. THE PHILOSOPHY UK HOMCEOPATHY. Who has not heard of Homoeopathy? From the little German city of Leipsic, in which it originated, this great medical doctrine with its novel practice has diffused itself in a vast rippling circle over the civilized world. It has been by turns the sub- ject of ridicule, contempt, persecution, inquiry, wonder, faith, and love. Were it to perish in a moment, the mark it has already made would con- stitute one of the most wonderful pages in the history of human opinion. As it is the child of nature and the sure medicine of the future, it is proper and becoming for its friends to press its in- vestigation upon every intelligent mind. Its real merit may be partially measured by the strength of the obstacles it has overcome. Every thing truly great has passed to its final triumph through long and strenuous opposition. Homoe- opathy was persecuted from its birth. Hahnemann, its founder, was driven from his country by a com- bination of the apothecaries. Physicians who ac- cepted its doctrines were denounced, insulted, and ostracized by their professional brethren. There is no baser record of bigotry in the pages of eccle- siastical history than that which is to be found in The Philosophy the conduct of “ regular” medicine toward homoe- opathy. Every thing in the beginning was antago- nistic ; the doctors ridiculed it; the people dis- trusted it ; appearances were greatly against it. It was assailed by professional jokes and by doggerel poetry. The novelty of its principle, the small- ness of its dose, the apparent extravagance of its claims, the dogmatism of its founder, the eccen- tricities of its early adherents, and the exactions of its practice, all conspired to retard its reception. The only real enemies of homoeopathy are the allopathic doctor, the apothecary, the undertaker, and the homoeopathic quack. This last is far more dangerous to the integrity of the new school than his allopathic brother-fraud is to the old system, because it is supposed by the public that when they have tried him they have tried homoeopathy, and the system is condemned in the individual. The homoeopathic quack is a cunning, adroit, un- scrupulous fellow. His stock in trade is a box and book, an electrical machine, a large amount of “brass,” and a limitless capacity for lying. lie boasts of an immense business in order to get one. He has always some new remedy “ just from Paris,” or some new machine from German}-. He affects electricity, magnetism, surgery, and sometimes makes a specialty of eye-diseases and cancer. He has no education, but exhibits a little diploma, which was obtained by purchase, without his at- tending a single lecture, from some obscure and disreputable college. He blunders in the homoe- opathic practice ; makes a thousand mistakes, which his patients of course can not detect ; fails to cure chronic or difficult cases, makes mild ones severe of Homeopathy. 3 and short ones long, and, ignorant of the real re- sources of our art, experiments with every new thing. It is astonishing what “a run” such a pre- tender can get, when well introduced by some of his respectable victims. He is always exposed and repudiated at last, but not until he has given homoeopathy a bad name and a poor record. In spite of false friends and open enemies, homoeopathy lives and grows. Having truth for its basis, its vitality is indestructible. Persecuted from one place, it springs up in another. Ex- tinguished here, it ignites there. Inquirers become converts, and converts, missionaries. What it has already become, is only a prophecy of what it will be. Time has falsified the predictions of its ene- mies, but has not softened their bitterness. The London Lancet lately declared that the system of Hahnemann, which began in delusion, had perish- ed in fraud ! With the evidences of youth, power, progress, before their eyes, they unblushingly declare that homoeopathy is declining, dying, or dead. Homoeopathy dead ! Our esteemed friend, Dr. John F. Gray, of New York, still living, was the first American physician converted to the New School. Fifty years ago, he stood the only Ameri- can physician on this vast continent representing the new truth. What has he lived to see ? In the United States alone there are five thousand physicians, most of them graduates of the Old School, who practice the homoeopathic system. There are eight colleges to teach, eight scientific journals to disseminate, and many dispensaries and hospitals to verify its doctrines. The Philosophy 4 The witnesses to the spread and influence of homoeopathy are numerous. We will call a few of them to the stand. Witness the conceded fact, that it is not the practice of the ignorant and the incapable, or of the fantastic and hypochondriacal, but that it ab- sorbs and holds the lion’s share, in proportion to numbers, of the strong-minded, intelligent, and travelled portion of society, which recognizes and treats homoeopathic physicians as honorable and enlightened men and benefactors to humanity. Witness the great effort made by hundreds of the most distinguished and aristocratic men in England to have homoeopathy introduced into the army and navy of their country. Witness the official recognition of homoeopathy by the State of New York in the recent law, direct- ing that applicants for licenses to practice in that State shall be examined upon homoeopathy as well as upon allopathy by the State Commissioners. Witness the splendid banquet given by the City Council of Boston to the members of the American Institute of Homoeopathy, on the very spot where, eighteen years before, Oliver Wen- dell Holmes had predicted the speedy and utter extinction of the infinitesimal heresy. Witness the great fair in Boston, given while the Massachusetts Allopathic Association was expel- ling the homoeopathic members from its body ; a fair which it took three of the largest halls in the city to hold, and which realized eighty thousand dollars for a homoeopathic hospital. Witness how the New York Ophthalmic Hos- pital, one of the largest and best-endowed eye and of Homoeopathy. 5 ear hospitals in America, passed entirely from allo- pathic to homoeopathic hands. Witness the people of Michigan insisting, through their Legislature, that homoeopathy should be taught to the students in the Medical Depart- ment of their Slate University. Witness the Legislature of New York appropri- ating three hundred thousand dollars to the estab lishinent of a homoeopathic insane asylum. Witness how the Common Council of St. Louis compelled the allopathic professors to admit homoeopathic students to the hospital clinics on an equal footing with their own. Witness the decision of the New York Judiciary, fining an allopathic physician for calling a homoe- opath a quack, declaring quackery to consist in conduct and not in creed, and assuring the protec- tion of the law to honest and capable men when assailed by the malignant partisans of another school. Witness the utter defeat which the allopathic faculty have sustained in several of the States, where they endeavored to get control of the edu- cational and licensing systems, with a view to the oppression of those whom they are pleased to term “irregular” practitioners. Witness the indignant remonstrances of the peo- ple at the removal of a commissioner of pensions from office by his allopathic superior, on the sole ground that he was a homoeopathist; remon- strances so wide-spread and influential that they induced the Government of the United States to declare that no distinctions should be made on account of differences of medical opinion. 6 The Philosophy Witness how a life insurance company has been founded and prosperously conducted on the basis that human life is safer and longer under the homoeopathic system than any other. Does any rational man suppose that all of this organized progress, this hold upon the confidence and respect of a most intelligent public, is based upon nothing? Can such an imposing and dura- ble superstructure be reared upon sugar pills, water medicine, faith, imagination, diet, delusion, etc., etc.? In this practical age, men do not con- tinue for fifty years to give their confidence, their love, iheir support, their money, their lives, to imaginary objects. If homoeopathy had been the fraud or the delusion it has been said to be, it would long ago have perished and passed away under the terrible cross-fire of its enemies. It is not dead, nor dying, nor even sick ; but has been decreed by Divine Providence to be perpetual. It has gained its high position by its merits and its conquests, and it will retain it by its continued beneficent progress. See what it has already accomplished ! It has discovered a new law of nature, which has introduced light, order, beauty, and efficiency into the theory and the practice of medicine. It has given a new and vast impetus to the study of the true action of drugs, by experimentation with them on the healthy system. It has thus organized, we might almost say created, a new “ Materia Medica ”—a glorious mon- ument of learning, industry, and self-sacrifice. It has rendered pathology the highest service by making that great branch of medical science truly practical. of Homoeopathy. 7 It has saved thousands of cases from surgical operations, and has introduced new comfort and safety into the lying-in room of woman. It has been a blessing to children and to mothers incalculable. It has cured thousands of cases of chronic dis- ease beyond the reach of allopathic art, and has treated all acute affections with admirable suc- cess. It has been found as useful in the diseases of ani- mals as of men, and many veterinary institutions have been established for its practice It has shortened the average duration of disease, diminished the expense of treatment, economized the vital resources of the patient, and delivered its friends from the frequently baneful and long- lasting effects of large doses of medicine. It has gradually and silently modified the theory and practice of allopathy, until some of the best text books of that school are saturated with homoe- opathic ideas. It has met all the great epidemics, and ever proved itself superior to the Old School. When people say that the medicines are too weak to trust in severe cases, they do not remember, or do not know, that the great triumphs of homoeopathy have always been effected in the most malignant class of diseases, such as cholera, scarlet-fever, yellow- fever, croup, erysipelas, dysentery, diphtheria, etc., etc. The fearful epidemics of cholera in 184S-9, etc., gave the most astonishing impetus to homoe- opathy ; and its special superiority in yellow-fever has, more than any thing else, established it on a permanent basis in the Southern States. 8 The Philosophy The homoeopathic law of cure—“ similia simili- bus curantur”—“ like cures like”—is the vivifying principle of scientific medicine, the grand thought which is to revolutionize the medical world. It is worth studying, for it is the open door for the heal- ing and the physical regeneration of mankind. I think I can explain what homoeopathy is ; what it really professes to be and to do ; its essential nature and necessary limitations—without a par- ticle of theorizing, in a plain, practical, and con- vincing manner. In the first place, homoeopathy is not a new and perfect science of medicine. It is no new gospel, no new revelation to the medical world. It is not science, but a part of it ; it is not medicine, but a grand reform in one of its departments. It has no new anatomy or physiology, or chemistry or pathol- ogy. It has no new surgery or obstetrics, although it has made great improvements in the treatment of surgical and obstetrical cases. It does not re- ject the accumulated experience of ages, but is its last-born and healthiest child. It is not “the grave of scientific medicine,” but its cradle. It holds fast to all that is good and useful in the storehouses of the past. Secondly, there are many measures (not medi- cines) valuable or indispensable in the treatment of disease. For instance, hygiene is a most im- portant branch of medicine, relating to the scientific regulation of temperature, light, air, water, food, exercise, habits, and the various influences which modify our mental and moral life. There, too, is the vast realm of hydropathy, a therapeutic world in itself, involving the operation of hot, tepid, and of Homoeopathy. 9 cold water, of ice, steam, vapor, local and general bathing, packing, etc., etc. Electricity also, gal- vanism, magnetism, mesmerism, kinesipathy, and chrono-thermalism, are no doubt very valuable in some forms of disease. All those are not homoe- opathy. They neither exclude it nor are excluded by it. They constitute a collateral department of the healing art, in the most friendly alliance with the homoeopathic administration of drugs. Thirdly, homoeopathy does not interfere with the use of mechanical measures, nor with the use of drugs for mechanical purposes. Vomiting may expel a poison from the stomach, a gall-stone from the biliary-ducts, or a false membrane from the windpipe. Ergot to arrest hemorrhage, belladonna to dilate the pupils,chloroform to relax the muscles, sulphur to kill the itch insect, vermifuges to de- stroy and expel worms, and in certain cases astrin- gents, diluents, emollients, and protectives (such as collodion) are examples of drugs being used to bring about certain mechanical ends, all admis- sible in the strictest homceopathic practice. In- jections, and even purgatives, to overcome great intestinal torpor, are simply mechanical agents. Fourthly, there are certain chemical means of cure, operating according to the laws of inorganic or or ganic chemistry. The antidotes for many poisons aro- used on this principle, and, of course, in the doses found necessary by experiment—a certain quantity of antidote being required to neutralize a certain quantity of poison : quinine as an antidote to the malarial poison no doubt acts in this manner. Acids or alkalies for excess of alkalinity or acidity in the gastro-intestinal or urinary secretions ; vege- The Philosophy 10 table acids for scurvy ; alkalies to dissolve inspis- sated mucus in some bronchial affections; cer- tain remedies which modify the chemical state of the blood (iron for instance) ; phosphate of lime when deficient in the bones ; chlorine, charcoal, lime, carbolic acid, etc., to arrest or prevent pu- tridity; all are examples of chemical therapeu- tics. This is not homoeopathy, neither is it allo- pathy ; it is vital chemistry, operating by laws of its own, and equally free to the advocates of any system of medicine. Having thus briefly surveyed those departments of practice in which homoeopathy, as such, does not profess to operate, we can approach more under- to the far greater and more important field in which it gives us a great natural law of cure. The only dispute between the two schools is about the vital or dynamic action of drugs and their application in the cure of disease. What is a medicine ? Do you know that every medicine, weak or strong, is a poison which would make a well man sick ? The simple dose of rhubarb, which overcomes constipation, would give a mor- bid diarrhoea to a case not constipated. The opium which is given to make a man with deli- rium tremens sleep refreshingly, would congest the brain of a healthy person, and perhaps destroy life. Think the matter over thoroughly, and you will find that evety drug is essentially a poison, and that cures are effected by the skilful use of its poisonous or disease-producing properties. Fix the fact in your own mind and teach it to others, that drugs have, of themselves, no healing, mollifying, or life-giving power, but, on the con- of J/oma’ofiathy, trary, that they irritate, benumb, or derange all the vital functions. They produce artificial diseases, and the artificial disease so produced is the real medium or agent of the cure. Now, you can see the fundamental difference be- tween the two systems of medicine. They both use drugs or poisons to produce artificial, morbid states, and the only question is, where shall they be produced, and to what extent? The allopath, in accordance with his theories of disease and its cure, employs the poisonous properties of drugs to produce certain physiological perturbations, vomiting, purging, sweating, increased or dimin- ished secretions, narcosis, depletion, stimulation, etc., etc., which he believes will effect his object. His general idea is to produce a state opposite to that already existing. The homceopath repudiates all this theory and practice, and affirms that dis- eases are cured by those drugs in very small doses, which produce similar diseases when administered in strong doses to the healthy man. Both parties use the same remedies, but on op- posite principles, and of course in antipodal doses. One gives mercury to purge ; the other gives mer- cury in small doses to cure a bilious diarrhoea, for the very reason that in a large dose it produces one. The situation, extent, and character of the artificial disease produced by the chosen drug, are the only mooted points. A slight, similar, morbid impression in the diseased spot is the simple and beautiful law of homoeopathy. The allopath, hav- ing no therapeutic law, nothing but his crude and often contradictory theories of disease to guide him, produces very strong morbid impressions, 11 The Philosophy 12 sometimes similar and sometimes dissimilar ; sometimes in the diseased organ, sometimes in distant organs ; often in both. Sometimes one of his medicines produces one set of these symptoms, while another produces the other. Sometimes a second medicine is required to undo what he had effected by the first. He pulls down, and then builds up again. Now he blows hot, now cold, and so on. In fact, his philosophy is a labyrinth, and his practice a chaos. A natural disease is best cured by producing a similar artificial disease in the same parts and tissues, which can only be done by drugs which produce similar sy'mptoms. This is the funda- mental idea of homoeopathy', its true basis, its corner-stone, its only essential element. All other questions of large or small doses, of pellets or tinctures, of dynamizations, of what Hahnemann said, of what this or that disciple said or did, of imagination, or diet, or nature, or imposture, etc. —all these questions, and many' other such, have no logical bearing on the question, and are alto- gether collateral and impertinent. No matter what solution they receive, homoeopathy remains intact, vital, indestructible, and sure to be the medicine of the future, unless you overturn this grand pedestal, this great natural and vital law on which it has been erected. We naturally propose to ourselves an explana- tion of every thing we see. We love to understand causes. Alas ! how seldom are we gratified ! Life and all its phenomena is a world of mystery' about whose causes we know nothing. The apple falls to the ground, but we can not discover the cause of Homoeopathy. 13 of the gravitation. The needle trembles to the pole, but we can not tell why iron is magnetic. We can assign no adequate reason for any one of the thousand wonders of chemical affinity. That “ like cures like” is as fixed a fact as any thing in physics. IV/iy or how it cures may never be fully known. There are, however, some curious phe- nomena in physical science which are at least re- markably suggestive. Two rays of light, similar to, but not identical with, each other, produce darkness when they come together. Two similar waves of sound, or atmospheric undulation, pro- duce silence. Two similar but not identical waves of water are both brought to a standstill. The same law may operate in the nervous system of man, in his blood, and in the infinitesimal chemi- cal changes which occur every moment in the microscopic tissues of his body ; so that one set of movements or changes started by the morbid cause may be neutralized by the similar set of movements or changes inaugurated by the homoeo- pathic drug. The truth of the homoeopathic law has been partially recognized by the allopathic school from the time of Hippocrates to the present. I will quote three instances of it from distinguished mod- ern sources : “ When Hahnemann promulgated his therapeu- tic formula, ‘ similia similibus curantur,’ he sup- ported his assertions by citations from the practice of the most illustrious physicians. There is every proof that local inflammations are frequently cured by the direct application of irritants which cause a similar inflammation, the artificial irritation sub- The Philosophy 14 stituting itself for the primitive one.”—Trousseau et Pidoux, Traitd de Therapeutique, Tome I, p. 470. “ Upon this ground we are disposed to suggest the use of strychnine in tetanus ; not that we have become followers of Hahnemann, but that it is a simple and undeniable fact that disorders are oc- casionally removed by remedies which have the power of producing similar affections.”—Dr. Sy- monds, Cyclopcedia- of Practical Medicine, Vol. 4, p. 375- “ The same medicine may produce opposite ef- fects in health and disease. Thus, cayenne pepper, which produces in the healthy fauces, redness and burning pain, acts as a sedative in the sore-throat of scarlet fever. A concentrated solution of acetate of lead acts as an irritant, while the same solu- tion, very much diluted, will act as a sedative.”— Geo. B. IVood’s Therapeutics, Vol. 1, p. 32. This teaching admits the homoeopathic law, and, pushed to fts logical issue, leads to all the truths and blessings of homoeopathy. Arsenic, concen- trated, will inflame the stomach; diluted, will cure gastritis. Colocynth, concentrated, will gripe and purge ; diluted, will relieve the same symptoms. Cantharides, concentrated, will produce strangury; diluted, will cure it. Belladonna, concentrated, will congest the brain ; diluted, will relieve a brain already congested ; and so on through the whole materia medica. The principle being fully ad- mitted, there is nothing to be done but to study the action of drugs on the healthy man, and to apply them to similar cases in very small doses, and homoeopathy is the result. The most obvious illustration of homoeopathy is of Homoeopathy. found in the common treatment of those local diseases which are within reach of our hands and instruments. The use of caustic or irritant eye- washes to inllamed eyes, of nitrate of silver to sore throats or to ulcerated surfaces anywhere, and the application of blisters, caustics, iodine, etc., to ulcers, erysipelas, and other cutaneous affections, are examples in point. Whatever be the explanation, the fact is, that a similar artificial disease has been induced in the diseased tissues and a cure has resulted. Hy an easy and natural step we now pass from this point to another, which is the most important in the whole exposition. Homeopathic medicine is hut an extension to the invisible interior of the body of the therapeutic principle which the Old School finds so efficient in the treatment of local diseases within our reach. There is no reason why inflammation of the brain, liver, stomach, heart, lungs, spinal cord, bones, or any deep-seated organ or tissue, should not be as readily modified and cured by direct irritants, as similar morbid states in the capillary system of the eye, the throat, or the skin. If the allopathists could have cauterized the brain, lungs, liver, etc., they would have done so long ago, and, reasoning from analogy, with every prospect of success. This artificial irritation the homoeopath is able to throw upon every organ, tissue, and nerve of the body, where he pleases, and to the exact degree that he pleases. How can that be done ? Every drug has specific affinities for certain organs and tissues of the human system. This is a most wonderful and inexplicable fact ; and by studying these affinities, we can produce artificial 16 The Philosophy diseases in any given point of the body. What nitrate of silver is to the throat or eye, belladonna is to the brain, cantharides to the kidney, arsenic to the stomach, tartar emetic to the lungs, calomel to the liver, nux vomica to the spinal cord, etc., etc. The only way to get at these invaluable facts is, as before stated, to experiment upon healthy men with medicinal agents, and to collect, com- pare, and analyze the symptoms so produced. This is the source of the homoeopathic materia medica, a vast monument of industry, learning, and self- sacrifice, and of more practical use to mankind than all the brilliant discoveries of the age. Understanding what homoeopathy is, we can easily see the necessary and natural limitations it encounters. A homoeopath can not always prac- tise homoeopathy, and he should therefore be ac- quainted with every system of medicine. Why can he jiot always practise homoeopathy? Because homoeopathy only professes to cure those morbid states which we can imitate on the healthy body. When we have discovered drugs which produce distinctly the symptoms of cancer, tubercle, hydro- phobia, Bright’s disease, aneurism, epilepsy, ossifi- cation of the heart, etc., we can treat them homce- opathically with success, but not before. We can greatly alleviate the symptoms of all incurable diseases, the fevers, the spasms, pains, diarrhoeas, dropsies, etc. ; but we can not treat them homoe- opathically throughout, because we have not per- fected our materia medica so as to operate accord- ing to our own law. From this it appears that homoeopathy is not a separate system of medicine, complete in itself, of Homoeopathy. but a reform in one department only, therapeutics —a reform covering three fourths of the entire held of practice, and effected by the discovery of a fixed law of cure, and the construction of a new materia medica. Seeing what homceopathy is, we can now frame a clear definition of the homoeopathic physician : one who uses the surgical, obstetrical, mechanical, and chemical measures of the Old School ; who, in the vital or dynamic sphere, is guided by the homoeopathic law ; and who, beyond its natural and necessary limitations, is an empiric and eclec- tic in the most liberal and enlightened sense of those words. lie floats the free Hag of science, with his beloved homoeopathy in the central field, and room for every good thing in the borders. He is a physician in the highest and noblest sense of the word. “Oh ! the principle may be all right,” chuckles the unbeliever, “but the dose!—what about the dose ?” The small dose, the apparently inadequate means to effect the end in view, is certainly the greatest ob- stacle to the spread of homoeopathy. The story of Johnny Smith eating up all the sugar pellets in his mother’s box, without injury to himself, is the standard argument of the allopaths against the New School ; and as it still has some weight with the public who have not tried homoeopathy, it is worth while to explain it. Homoeopathic remedies, acting on the very part diseased, which is rendered far more sensitive by disease, have to be used in ex- ceedingly small doses ; doses too small to produce the least effect upon the healthy system. Utterly 18 The Philosophy powerless on the healthy, they are exceedingly active in neutralizing the morbid elements in the sick. The principle of homoeopathy is independent of the dose. He who gives an ounce of epsom salts in a case of diarrhoea, prescribes homoeopathically just as truly as if he gave the same substance in the hundred millionth of a grain. The best dose can only be adjusted by observation and experi- ment. Doses too small to be reached by our ordinary methods of analysis, and entirely harm- less to the healthy system, have certainly been found most curative in disease. In this case, as in many others, speaking allegorically, “ the still, small voice” is far more potent than the whirl- wind or the fire. Several general truths may be mentioned as tend- ing to make the small dose of homoeopathy more credible or plausible to those who demand some- thing more than the simple trial of it in disease. All the great operations of nature, those of heat, light, chemical action, etc., and those also of the human frame, especially the wonderful modifica- tions of the nerve-fluid and the physio-chemical changes of nutrition, are carried on by microsco- pic, atomic, and infinitesimal movements entirely transcending our imagination. Our medicines, vastly attenuated by trituration and succussion, present an immeasurably greater surface for action, becoming thereby more subtle, penetrating, and permeating, so that they effect a more perfect contact with the deepest recesses of the vital tissues, where the atomic, microscopic, and infinitesimal operations of nature are taking place. The crude substances of allopathy never of Homoeopathy. get into these secret recesses of vitality, any more than a steamship can get from the sea into the lit- tle meadow-streams or mountain-rills. There are many natural agencies, malaria, efflu- via, etc., which can not be seen, felt, weighed, or analyzed by man, which yet produce the most powerful morbid impressions on the system ; so gradually and insensibly, too, that man at the time is wholly unconscious of their action. It is not unreasonable to suppose that homoeopathic drugs may act in a similar manner—nothing being felt by the patient during the gradual removal of the disease. The modern discoveries in physical science help us not only to realize the existence and power of infinitesimal atoms of medicine, but they give us some intimation of how they act. It is conceded that all the operations of nature, the beginnings of life, take place on an infinitesimal scale. Light causes the chemical changes in the ultimate cells which determine the organization of plants. Now, the wave-length of each ray of light is many mil- lionths of an inch, and thousands of millions of vibrations of that wave of light occur in a single second. Each individual vibration of that infini- tesimal wave contributes its share to the grand re- sult, the growth and forms of the vegetable king- dom. Not one vibration could be changed or lost without affecting the first steps of organization, and thereby modifying the whole final issue. From this fact we easily pass to the corresponding idea, that the homoeopathic atom may start or excite in the diseased ultimate molecule infinitesimal changes of nutrition, which shall quietly and im- 20 The Philosophy of Homoeopathy. perceptibly effect organic movements of which we see only the beneficent result. The greatest enemy to homoeopathy is the sensu- alistic spirit of the age ; not only that spirit which believes in nothing but matter, but that still grosser spirit which does not believe in matter itself, un- less it can be demonstrated to the very feeble senses of man. Whatever transcends the range of the senses is regarded by that class of minds as something unreal, intangible, visionary, or spirit- ual. The antidote to this narrow state of thought is the spirit of free inquiry without prejudice, the habit and love of experiment, and the study of the natural sciences. These will familiarize the pub- lic mind with the wonderful revelations made by the microscope, the spectroscope, and all the beau- tiful instruments which detect, measure, and an- alyze the invisible and imponderable forces of na- ture. In proportion as this is done, will homoe- opathy become conceivable and credible to the popular thought, and the curative power or force of the homoeopathic globule will rank with the most ethereal and potent energies which are secretly at work in all natural phenomena. Such, my friendly reader, is Homoeopathy. Dis- card your prejudices ; think and act for yourself ; study it; try it. THE HOMOEOPATHIC MUTUAL Insurance Company OF NEW YORK CITY Issues Policies of all approved forms, and insures Homoeopaths at REDUCED RATES. During the last three years, its Interest Receipts have more than sufficed to pay its losses by death ; and the rate of mortality has been less than three fourths of one per cent of the total amount of insurance in fcrce. Its mortuary experience from Inly 18, 1868, to December 31, 1876— No. of No. of Policies issued. Deaths. To Homoeopaths, . . 7,126 71 To Non-Homoeopaths, 2,0809 65 proves the soundness of its principle. SEND FOR RATKS AND PUBLICATIONS.