President's Address 
before the 
N. Y. Medico-Chirurgical Society 
1882 ANNUAL ADDRESS 
BEFORE THE 
NEW YORK 
Medico - Chirurgical Society 
THE PRESIDENT 
Dr. E. P. FOWLER 
Delivered November 14th, 1882 
REPRINTED FROM THE SOCIETY TRANSACTIONS 
NEW YORK 
1883 Press 9/ 
V * u x & R 0 p e r, 
27 Rose St.. N. \. CONTENTS 
pace 
I.—History and Object of the Society . . 5 
II.—Medical Education and the Right of 
* Personal Opinion ..... 7 
III. —HvriOLOGY II 
IV. —Cure and Recovery ...... 16 
V. —Homceopathy, does the term signify 
ANYTHING WHICH EXISTS? NATURE 
of Disease " 18 ADDRESS. 
Fellows and Associates of the New York Medico-Chirurgical 
Society: 
First of all, I will ask you to accept my thanks for the honor 
you conferred upon me in my appointment as the presiding offi- 
cer of this Society for the current year, and also for the uniform 
kindness and consideration which I have received in my official 
capacity. I know of no medical association in this country over 
which I would deem it a greater honor to preside, and if the 
amount and quality of labor which this Society has accomplished 
during its four years of existence be considered, and the pains 
taken to compare it with the fruits of the first four years of its 
English patronome, I think it would be accorded that there are 
reasonable grounds to anticipate a future for this Society as use- 
ful and as glorious as has already been won by its ancestor. 
I will give a brief resume of comparison : 
I. History and Objects of the Society. 
We have now thirty-one members ; of these, four were, by age, 
exempted from the obligation of presenting a thesis as one of the 
requisites for membership. One was elected an honorary mem- 
ber. Twenty-five members have contributed theses. 
These papers collectively would rank above the average of 
medical literature, and some of them exhibit marked ability. 
Altogether they would make a printed octavo volume of eight 
hundred and thirty-two pages, including numerous illustrations. 
The papers which have been presented to the Society, in ad- 
dition to the theses, number above seventy, and they would form 6 
two printed octavo volumes of over eight hundred pages each. 
Many of them are very original and valuable. Of these con- 
tributions, about twelve hundred pages have already been 
printed. 
To these must be added the verbal contributions made in the 
course of our discussions, and which have been preserved with 
most exceptional faithfulness in the minutes of transactions, by 
our scholarly secretary, whose able and conscientious labors I 
am sure we all appreciate. To recapitulate: 
During the first four years of this Society the written contri- 
butions would make two thousand four hundred large octavo 
pages of print: twelve hundred pages have already been printed ; 
to this must be added the verbal discussions. 
The Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, organized in 
1805, had at the end of its fourth year (1809) ninety-eight mem- 
bers, and at this date it issued its first volume of transactions, 
consisting of twenty-one papers, in a small paged octavo volume 
of two hundred and eighty-nine pages. The matter would make 
only about one hundred and. fifty of our pages. Among the 
contributors were Abernethy, Cooper, and Jenner. 
If, in the organization of this Society, the object had been only 
to increase by one the multitude of already existing societies, 
with no distinctive purpose, it would be impossible to offer any 
plausible apology for its existence. On the contrary, however, 
it was created with a clearly distinctive purpose. Scarcely any- 
thing was more palpable than the fact that we were in the tran- 
sition between two great epochs of human thought and action in 
their every department. The days of dogmatic control were 
virtually ended. No individual name amid scientific workers was 
any longer so potent that it could command more than a meager 
company of blind followers, and it was generally recognized that 
any one who encourages such following, in that degree vitiated 
his claim as a scientist. 
The question to-day is, not wnat a leader or co-worker thinks 
or believes : it is, what does he know, and how fully can he 
demonstrate that knowledge ? Mere theories have now just about 7 
as much market value as force, represented by the air that 
whistles around the house corner. 
The aim of this Society was to collect a body of workers, 
practically untrammelled by the theories or prejudices of the 
hour, who would be able and willing to investigate life in all its 
phases, both normal and abnormal, and who possessed the 
courage of their convictions, and that even yet greater courage 
which is required to ingenuously acknowledge one’s errors and to 
assist others in avoiding them. It was one of the interests of 
the Society to avoid and discountenance anything which should 
share the nature of a trades-union or any degeneration into a 
clique which might be used as a moral or social coercive power, 
or any approach to a waste of time, by allowing the entrance of 
personal matters. 
Thus far these interests appear to have been properly guarded. 
Another object was to realize a Society which would thoroughly 
examine proposed, as well as already received, ideas in medicine, 
sift the evidence on which they rest, and, when found, would 
kindly but fearlessly expose their vulnerable points. 
It desired to encourage a method of investigation in medicine 
which would reject, as not belonging to the nature of testimony, 
all assertions unsubstantiated by the most ample demonstration. 
It anticipated uncompromising war against all kinds of educa- 
tional shams and against all attempts, from any source, at ag- 
gressions upon freedom of individual opinion and expression. 
With these as the key-notes of our method, there are many ques- 
tions now before the medical world, and many more to follow 
which ought to receive from this Society such kind of considera- 
tion as would make its influence sensibly and generally acknowl- 
edged. In illustration, I may perhaps be permitted to mention 
two or three of them. 
II. Medical Edit cation, and the Right of Personal Opinion. 
First, the question of Medical Education: This is at present 
so much the subject of general consideration, that it may seem 
almost superfluous to speak of it. But the evil methods and 8 
imperfections, though recognized, are not righted, and the fact is 
notable, both to the profession and the laity, that as concerns 
medical degrees dispensed in the United States, it is much the 
same as the Frenchmen say it is with the badge of the Legion of 
Honor in France—through its liberal dispensation the conspicu- 
ous ones now are those who by some oversight have not had it 
pressed upon them. 
Nothing seems more certain than that if medical degrees con- 
tinue to be conferred upon the present conditions, it will not be 
a decade before Americans will be compelled to go outside their 
own country for any medical degree that will awaken other 
sentiment than shame, or at least diffidence to the possessor, and 
ridicule from the public. In saying this I do not, even in mind, 
cast the least aspersion upon the capabilities of the majority of 
our medical teachers, than whom there are none in the world 
naturally more competent. The fault is in our legislation. 
Among the educational mold and moth permitted and legalized 
by our learned and classic legislators, no institution which offered 
a thorough education could survive. Our schools undoubtedly 
do the best they can in the midst of their surroundings. I may 
err in my views upon this subject, and I am ready at any moment 
to throw them aside for better ones, but it seems to me that 
under no circumstances or form of government should educational 
institutions be vested with the right to award a bonus consisting 
of a legal vantage as an inducement to purchasers of their 
diplomas ; that is, they should not be allowed to confer degrees 
which convey legal rights when such privileges must necessarily 
assume, or are expressly with, the purpose of a direct money- 
making business. I can conceive no possible way by which 
various ultimate misuses of such power could be averted. It 
would come in the way of reducing the standard of educational 
requirements ; it would show itself by arbitrary and intolerant 
acts towards the public, and also in the many other ways with 
which we are already more or less familiar. 
Private corporations may have proprietary interest and full 
control of institutions for education ; it is probably right and 9 
better that they should possess the power of issuing diplomas as 
certificates of general recommendation, and as special recom- 
mendation for a final examination; but when legal franchises 
depend upon the final decision respecting the efficacy of their 
teaching, this final act should most assuredly be placed beyond 
the possibility of the teacher’s influence, and the legal franchise 
should come directly from the State. The ultimate examining 
and certifying Body (in Germany the “ Staais-Examin ”), and 
the executive, the State, having no proprietary interest in the 
franchise to be granted, could have no incentive or bias other 
than towards the adoption and exaction of higher educational 
requirements as the only means through which the legal privilege 
could be obtained, and thus at one blow all schools of medical 
education which failed to supply candidates with the required 
amount of knowledge would become moribund. Schools under 
such circumstances would furnish a high grade of education, 
not necessarily as a matter of pride or honesty, but as one of 
dollars and cents, for however little regard the teachers might 
have for public welfare, or that of their pupils, their own welfare, 
the necessity of self-preservation, would insure from them the 
required degree of instruction ; for, failing in this, they would 
be forced to seek some other calling for which they might chance 
to be more suitably qualified. In brief, there would remain 
no practical obstruction to the complete self-enforcement, in 
schools for medical teaching, of the law of 11 the survival of the 
fittest 
The accomplishment of this project, or its equivalent, would, 
moreover, tend incidentally to correct many existing wrongs. It 
would help to rescue the timid ones from the teeth of the sinister 
variety of watch-dogs of the profession ; the moral obliques, who, 
by mischance, have found their way into a profession that, through 
their unfortunate nature, they can neither ennoble nor compre- 
hend, could no longer disseminate untruths in representing, as 
they now do, that those who differ with them in belief or practice 
are inferior in education, when, in fact, they, in many instances, 
sat together upon the same college benches, receiving their edu- 10 
cation and diplomas from the self-same school, and, perhaps, even 
at the very same moment, in each other’s presence. Some of these 
traducers of to-day are the very teachers who awarded the diplo- 
mas to those whom they would defame by denouncing them as 
professionally ignorant. 
One of two things must be granted : these professors must 
allow that the students whom they graduated were given their 
diplomas because they were duly educated, or they must ac- 
knowledge that their diplomas were, like some others we have 
heard of, sold for money without reference to education. 
When they state that one whom they have graduated, but who 
afterwards comes to believe and practise differently from them- 
selves, is ill-educated and below the requirements of their col- 
lege, they simply resort to the most effective way of proclaim- 
ing that they are vendors of bogus diplomas. 
After the adoption of some plan similar in effect to that 
I have suggested, the public could not be deceived concerning 
the relative professional education of medical practition- 
ers, however much their belief or practice might differ or be the 
object of denunciation. 
The evil we speak of does not confine itself merely to a senti- 
mental outrage ; it is a pecuniary injury. The Government has 
conferred privileges upon these corporations, endowing them, to 
a certain extent, with teaching facilities more or less exclusive 
in character, and advantage is taken of this, in a tyrannical en- 
deavor to coerce individual belief through outraging the most 
common legal rights of their equals—equal in law, and in every 
technical professional respect—by the enforcement of rules and 
regulations for the management of their schools, which are con- 
trary to common statute law and far below the average level of 
common enlightenment and justice. 
I would be very much gratified to listen to some more effective, 
practical plan to compel a high grade of both preparatory and 
professional education, and which would also incidentally suffice 
to protect the free exercise of individual opinion. 11 
III. Aetiology. 
Another instance of those subjects which demand renewed en- 
ergy of investigation is aetiology. 
To meet inquiry with words in place of reason, it may be suffi- 
cient to say that a malady is caused by congestion, or inflamma- 
tion by anaemia, or hyperaemia, and the like. The cause of bleed 
ing from the nose might be equally explained by saying that it 
was nasal hemorrhage or epistaxis. 
In a great proportion of medical literature, symptoms of disease 
are given as the cause, and if a demur is made, the reply some- 
times is, “Well, if it is not the cause, it is the ultimate fact.” 
Now, a fact which does not explain anything is not an ultimate 
fact,—if there is such a thing possible as an ultimate fact,—and 
should never be a satisfying one. 
We all agree, doubtless, that disease is an interference in some 
manner with the natural action, growth, and maturing of an or- 
ganism. This interference is not generated spontaneously—is 
not autogenous ; it must proceed from something, or from some 
conditions, outside the body which have either entered into it or 
affected it by external contact. If the foreign element has actu- 
ally penetrated the organism, it may or may not, according to 
circumstances, be able there to reproduce or multiply itself ; but 
if it does so, it is a generation strictly separate from the ordinary 
conditions constituting the individuality of the organism invaded. 
The study of pathology, therefore, in its ordinary sense, is not 
the study of the causes of disease ; it is the study of the phe- 
nomena which lead toward the cause. In the ordinary enumera- 
tions of the telluric and celestial causes of disease it is quite 
possible that a large fraction of the sum has hitherto been 
omitted. 
Ancient writers were superstitious, and in the main poor scien- 
tists ; nevertheless they were good observers. Many of their 
valuable observations, however, were set aside, and this only be- 
cause they were linked with absurd explanations; but their facts 
are as sturdy and sterling as those of our own day, and the later unfoldings of science are confirming and reinstating even some 
of their conjectures, which have long been regarded as supreme 
nonsense. 
The old belief, that the destiny of man was, in some mysteri- 
ous way, determined by the powers of the air, the earth, and the 
celestial bodies, has a foundation which science is daily making 
broader and clearer. 
That atmospheric conditions, storms, light, darkness, the con- 
dition of the earthy components, the influence of the bodies in 
space, and the like, should determine the welfare and the very 
existence of organic life, is now, of course, fully recognized by 
every intelligent observer. 
But is not the knowledge of those influences which may fur- 
nish or destroy the conditions for life, still in its early twi- 
light ? Are there not multiplying upon us glimpses of unexplored 
and unlimited fields? For example, has the atmospheric ocean, 
at the bottom of which we live, been subjected to anything more 
than the most superficial examination ? Common storms appear 
quite simple, and any newly-fledged scholar will glibly furnish you 
with their causes ; but among scientists, even for these there is as 
yet no generally received theory. 
Take also, as another instance, the observations in astronomy, 
by which we are taught that, within each twenty-four hours, there 
enter our atmosphere as many as eight millions of meteors, which 
are visible to the unassisted eye, and that those in addition, which 
the naked eye cannot perceive, are probably this number many 
times over. These little pigmy-like planets—it may be the bits 
of a broken-up or incomplete planet—are along their courses 
caught in our atmosphere, and by friction with it are burned up. 
To more fully realize the magnitude of this one item of the 
activities about us, and its possible results as concerns living 
beings upon the earth’s surface, let us call to mind the fact that 
these meteoric bodies move through space at a speed of from ten 
to forty miles per second, and then place by the side of this fact 
the formula with which the generation of heat, by atmospheric 
pressure, is computed. 
12 13 
You will excuse me if I here repeat the law, with which you are 
all doubtless familiar, or at least have been, namely: a body, mov- 
ing through the atmosphere at the rate of one hundred and twenty- 
five feet per second, will raise the temperature of the air immediately 
in advance of it one degree Fahrenheit, and the temperature increases 
in proportion to the square of the velocity of the moving mass. 
It therefore remains, of course, but to ascertain the number of 
feet per second at which a body moves through the atmosphere : 
divide this sum by one hundred and twenty-five, square the 
quotient, and your result indicates the degrees of Fahrenheit 
which would be obtained. 
It thus will be found to result that a body, traversing the at- 
mosphere with a velocity of ten miles per second, would produce 
a temperature immediately in front of it above one hundred and 
seventy-eight thousand (178,000) degrees Fahrenheit; over six 
hundred thousand (600,000) degrees by a speed of twenty miles 
per second ; and, at a rate of forty miles per second, the heat pro- 
duced would considerably exceed two millions and a half degrees 
Fahrenheit—a heat, the intensity of which transcends all powers 
of human imagination, as the most intense artificial heat which 
we at present know how to produce does not—if I am right— 
exceed four thousand degrees Fahrenheit. 
The appalling rapidity with which these objects plunge towards 
the earth, and the generation of the incidental intense heat which 
serves to consume them before the second or two of time in 
which they could reach us, appear then to serve as a sure pro- 
tection, and as the only one against universal destruction of all 
life and- form upon the earth’s surface. The next link in this 
chain of thought brings a consideration as to what may be the 
effect of these titanic actions carried on at, or near, the surface 
of the atmospheric ocean. This region could hardly be else than 
the theatre of storms and convulsions, compared with which any 
of the so-called cyclones at its base, the surface of the earth, 
would be calms. 
The upper air must be more or less filled with the debris gases 
of burnt meteors ; and these conditions again must be subject to 14 
wide variations, depending upon whether the orbit of the earth 
is passing near or through a meteoric orbit, etc. It would be a 
question worthy of observation, also, how far and in what man- 
ner the varying state of the sun’s surface affects earthly organ- 
isms ; the same too as regards the moon, comets, and the various 
other bodies in space. We certainly know that these influences 
do affect non-vitalized maiter, and it would therefore be in the 
highest degree illogical to deny the probability of any effect upon 
the constitution of living organisms. We know that there is 
almost a perfect parallelism between the solar maculae and the 
magnetic aurora upon the earth, and that these magnetic dis- 
turbances will often cause the compass needle to exhibit a vari- 
ation of from ten to fifteen degrees within an hour’s space of time. 
The disturbances indicated by the dark spots on the solar sur- 
face seeiji to transmit their effects to the earth with about the 
same rapidity that light travels. 
Still, again, we are taught by the tides that the sun and moon 
exert upon the matter of the earth a force of most majestic 
proportions in thus heaping up vast bodies of water, and this 
force must act proportionately upon every atom of earth’s mat- 
ter, vitalized as well as non-vitalized. In what relation does the 
rhythmic action that pervades all inanimate nature stand to the 
disposition of periodicity which all disease, and indeed all 
physiological processes of life, so clearly exhibit ? May it not be 
that in this direction lies hidden the key to the mystery of annual, 
mensual, hebdominal, and other more minor periodicities in 
animal life, and in disease ? And is it not possible that all mani- 
festations of vitality consist of a series of rhythmic motion— 
that is, periodicities ? 
These are only bits of suggestions relating to the macro- 
cosmus—the great Immeasurable which surrounds us; but 
the microcosmic pendent is equally full of interest and im- 
portance. 
In this department the germ-study has now enlisted a small 
army of laborers, and the names of Davaine, Chauveau, Keber, 
Oertel, Klebs, Obermeier, Ross, Beale, and particularly those of 15 
Pasteur, Joubert, and Duclaux, have drawn about them a host 
of others, and the field promises momentous results. Researches 
thus far seem to coineide with the logic of Darwin’s views, and 
to turn the balance against the former supposition of spontaneous 
generation, even of germs ; and should the non-spontaneity view 
prove correct, it is easy to realize how great a step will have been 
taken towards measures for simplifying the prevention, at least, 
of those diseases which result from the introduction and multi- 
plication of these germs in the animal economy ; for to interrupt 
a line of descendants may be possible, but if spontaneous gener- 
ation lies within the problem, the task must be endless and hope- 
less, for the multiplication of beginnings might outnumber all 
possible resources. Is it possible that we shall become able to 
construct effective barriers against the germs of a large area of 
disease, or must it ever be that there can occur in any liv- 
ing organism a spontaneous generation of new living beings, 
whose lives demand the destruction of the body in which they 
generate ? 
The practical bearing of this matter, in its main, lies plainly 
before the eyes ; but, cropping out from the main question, there 
are many incidents filled with instructive and curious sugges- 
tions. 
The marvellous rapidity with which these germs multiply—the 
self-destruction resulting from this speedy reproduction—the 
slight causes which serve to accelerate growth and procreation, 
as well as to retard or stop the process, these can as well serve 
to stimulate practical activities as they do to fire the imagi- 
nation. 
Pasteur, Joubert, and Duclaux have ascertained, by experi- 
mental observations, that some of the germs which are repro- 
duced by the scission-process require only an average of six 
minutes for each individual to divide, giving two for one. Cal- 
culating upon this basis, it would require scarcely three hours for 
one individual to exhibit fifteen hundred millions of descendants. 
The number which would result from twenty-four hours’ time 
could hardly be conveyed by figures—it certainly would be far 16 
beyond the power of finite realization. That they do not increase 
to the exclusion of every living thing on the earth is from the 
fact that they so quickly exhaust their supply of surrounding 
nourishment, and die of starvation. 
To those who have interest in matter of dosage, there are also 
some curious facts connected with germ-culture. For the arti- 
ficial cultivation of the aspcrgillits nigre, M. Raulin has composed 
a liquid called the “ liquide Raulin.” In a gallon and a half of 
water are dissolved two and a half ounces of candied sugar, 
to which are added a few grains of a mixture of tartaric acid, 
nitrate and phosphate of ammonia, carbonate of potassa and 
magnesia, sulphate of ammonia, zinc and iron, and scilicate of 
potassa. 
Many experiments have been made and recorded respecting 
the wonderful action produced upon the germs by the introduc- 
tion of almost infinitesimal quantities of various different sub- 
stances. Perhaps they are known to you all, and, if so, among 
others, the one made with the nitrate of silver must have attracted 
your attention. That the one hundred thousandth of a grain of 
this salt should destroy, and that almost instantaneously, all the 
germ life in the gallon and half of liquid seems wonderful ; but 
still more so the fact that the placing of the liquid in a silver 
vessel will be followed by the same result, although it is almost 
impossible for chemistry to demonstrate that the silver has im- 
parted to the solution any of its substance. 
IV. Cure and Recovery. 
Turning now in another direction, there is a subject towards 
which it would seem profitable to direct more earnest attention, 
and the dealing with it intelligently and radically would, perhaps, 
be in keeping with the general aims of this Society. 
The question is one which involves the life and health of every 
patient, and the reputation of every medical practitioner. I refer 
to an adoption of some means by which a clear distinction, 
capable of a reasonable degree of demonstration, can be made 
between cures and recoveries. 17 
There is probably very little doubt in the mind of any com- 
petent observer that a large number of recoveries are improperly 
claimed as cures, and although in such cases we may undeserv- 
edly gain a little temporary gratitude and praise, this is, never- 
theless, greatly outweighed by reproach and mortification meted 
out and experienced in that great number of cases where chance 
does not play in our favor; more than this, a self-deception in 
this matter is a trap which ensnares our own judgment and in- 
duces us to trust life to suppositious resources which have no real 
proven value or existence. 
One of the earliest lessons in science is to be deliberate and 
particular in receiving testimony; and so apparent or alleged 
results from drug administration should be accepted with the 
utmost caution ; the application is too closely allied to human 
life and happiness to justify the acceptance of testimony in this 
connection which is not substantiated by every possible test. 
As in mathematics, the process for solution, if true, should 
work with equal accuracy both ways. 
That at this point there exist obstacles beyond those encoun- 
tered in abstract mathematics, is certainly true, but the residuum 
of the solution need not be, as it often is at present, much in 
excess of the product solved. Were the problem not of complex 
elements, it would be fair to say that if a given disease or process 
is corrected or abridged by drugs, it would, without drugs, either 
always continue to exist, or be, to a certain extent, palpably pro- 
longed. 
In ascertaining just what is due to drugs and what is not, by 
the giving or withholding of them—that is, with the knowledge 
of the patient—can never be a fair mode of deciding with the 
human being as a subject; for, in human kind, there is a factor in 
the treatment of disordered processes which, perhaps, is quite as 
important as the scope of drugs; this is the physical result pro- 
duced upon the body by the mental conditions excited in the 
patient. 
A patient who, by taking remedies, is stimulated with the belief 
that he will thereby recover, is much more likely to do so than 18 
one depressed by the feeling that nothing is being done for him, 
and that his fate is to die unless nature should happen, in some 
accidental way, to rescue him. 
Therefore, in experimenting upon the result of drugs or no 
drugs, in order to free the test from this mental factor, the indi- 
viduals submitted to the experiments should, both sets, of course, 
be equally under the supposition that they are taking real drugs. 
A necessary preliminary step for the completeness of this investi- 
gation, however, would be to obtain a full, general history of dis- 
orders as presented with no interruption to their natural course. 
This descriptive history has been largely added to within the 
last ten or fifteen years ; but, on the other hand, we are very far 
from possessing a close knowledge of the actual extent of drug- 
action, excepting, perhaps, some of the grosser forms of toxi- 
coses. 
It is no uncommon thing—indeed it is of very frequent occur- 
rence—to chance upon clinical descriptions where the natural 
course of a disorder and the supposed drug-action are hopelessly 
confounded. How many remedies have been vaunted for sud- 
denly arresting pneumonia at about the fifth or seventh day of 
its course, enteric fever at its seventeenth or twenty-first day, of 
effecting a crisis in variola at about the eleventh day, and so on 
indefinitely. 
The extent to which drugs act as curatives, and the conditions 
to which their employment is adapted, furnish a subject worthy 
of a serious attention which it has not yet received. 
5. Homoeopathy: Does the term signify anything which really exists ? 
—Nature of Disease. 
Coupled with the inquiry as to the curative or corrective limit 
of drugs, I will ask permission to offer a proposition for your 
consideration as to how they act, and, consequently, how they are 
to be selected. 
This is a field in which the profession of every age has labored, 
and every century has produced its more or less complete theories 
and systems. 19 
Among those, however, who have thus contributed, Hahne- 
mann is the only one who claimed to have discovered a complete 
system, founded upon immutable laws—in fact, a principle as 
universal and invariable in therapeutics as the law of gravitation 
is in matter. . 
We will preface the proposition in hand with a brief analysis of 
Hahnemann’s system ; and, to do this, we will first examine his 
definition of disease. 
Hahnemann does not, as some have asserted, present the symp- 
toms of a disease as the disease itself. In Sections n and 12, of 
the “ Organon,” he says that what we call disease is the result of 
the morbidly disturbed vital force, and that the manifestations 
appreciable to our senses—that is, symptoms—represent the 
morbid disturbance of the vital force, or dynamis. 
This is the mode by which the real disease is projected upon 
our senses, and thus it follows, he says, that when this picture 
(symptoms), projected upon our senses, is entirely destroyed, it 
must, with equal certainty, be presumed that there is also restored 
the integrity of the vital force. Thus the supposed veritable 
location of disease is distinctly stated as being in the vital force, 
or dynamis, and not in the corporeal body. I quote Sections n 
and 12, and the statement is equally distinct in many other sec- 
tions : 
“Sec. 11. In sickness this spirit-like, self-acting {automatic) vital 
force, omnipresent in the organism, is alone primarily deranged 
by the dynamic influence of some morbific agency, inimical to 
life. Only this abnormally modified vital force can excite morbid 
sensations in the organism, and determine the abnormal functional 
activity which we call disease. 
“ This force, itself invisible, becomes perceptible only through its 
effects upon the organism, makes known, and has no other way of 
making known, its morbid disturbance to the observer and physician 
than by the manifestation of morbid feelings and functions—that is, 
by symptoms of disease in the visible material organism.” 
“Sec. 12. Diseases are produced only by the morbidly disturbed 
vital force [7], hence the manifestations of disease, discernible by our 20 
senses, at the same time represent every internal change (i. e., the en- 
tire morbid disturbance of the dynamis), and expose to view, so to 
speak, the whole disease. It follows that, after the cure of such mani- 
festations of disease, and of all discoverable aberrations from healthy 
vital functions, their disappearance must necessarily, and with equal 
certai?ity, be presm?ied to result in, and to determine the restoration of 
the integrity of vital force, and the return of health to the entire 
organism.” 
Upon this theory is constructed the theory of dynamic remedies, 
or, what is termed “ high potencies ”—for it is set forth as an irresist- 
ibly logical conclusion—supported, as claimed, by actual practical 
evidence, that the disease being an immateriality situated in an 
immateriality, i. e., in the vital force (dynamis)—the remedy also 
must be reduced to a practically immaterial form, otherwise it 
cannot penetrate the same immaterial region, and therefore can- 
not enter into relations with the disease. This idea is empha- 
sized in various places, but I will quote only one example : 
“Sec. 16. Our vital force, that spirit-like dynamis, cannot be 
reached nor affected except by a spirit-like (dynamic) process, result- 
ing from the hurtful influences of hostile agencies from the outer 
world acting upon the healthy organism, and disturbing the harmoni- 
ous process of life. Neither ca?i the physician free the vital force 
from any of these morbid disturbances, i. e., diseases, except, likewise, 
by spirit-like (dynamic, virtual) alterative powers of the appropriate 
remedies acting upon our spirit-like vital force, which perceives this 
remedial power through the omnipresent susceptibility of the nerves of 
the organism. Tims, healing re?ncdies can, and actually do, restore 
health and vital harmony only by virtue of their dynamic action upon 
the vital force, after those changes in the health of the patient (totality 
of symptoms'), perceivable by our senses, have represented the disease 
to the attentively observing physician as completely as possible for the 
purpose of its cure.” 
The author then proceeds to arrange all disease under two 
heads : one class he denominates natural or dynamic diseases, and, 
the other, artificial or drug diseases. Both kinds of diseases 
equally find their location in the vital force {dynamis). 21 
As the foundation of his therapeutical structure, he claims it to 
have been conclusively demonstrated that the diseases styled 
“natural” are not cured, or rarely so, by nature ; that the vital 
force is not able to eject them; that they are not self-limiting: 
whereas those diseases, classed as “drug diseases” are self- 
limiting, or that the vital force can easily overcome them, and 
that they are naturally of short duration. 
It is held by him as demonstrated, also, that drug disease is 
much more powerful than natural disease, and by this reason 
capable of forcibly displacing natural disease. 
The proper direction taken by this force depends upon the 
equally-proven fact (claimed) that for some unknown reason any 
certain natural disease has an affinity for a definite region of the 
vital force, and also that any drug, being similar in its nature 
(as shown by the symptoms it produces) to the natural disease, 
it too has an affinity for the same region, and the cure is per- 
formed through the superior natural strength of the drug imper- 
sonality which drives out the natural disease, as there is not 
room for both, and then the drug disease either ends spontane- 
ously, or is easily driven out by the more than usually roused 
vital force. 
It is upon this ground that Hahnemann bases the law for select- 
ing medicinal agents which have the greatest possible similarity 
to the manifestation of the natural disease to bd cured. 
This embraces the essentials of Hahnemann’s theory of dis- 
ease and the mechanism or modality of its cure. 
That I have fairly represented the anatomy of this part of 
Hahnemann’s “Organon,” I think no one, who is well acquainted 
with it, will dispute. 
I will nevertheless substantiate it by the following quotations : 
“ Sec. 26. This is based upon that homoeopathic law of nature 
which, hitherto unacknowledged, though not unrecognized, had ever 
been the foundation of every real cure. In the living organism a 
weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished by a stronger 
one, if the latter (deviating in kind) is very similar in its manifesta- 
tion to the former.” 22 
In a foot-note he illustrates the idea by the disappearance of 
the brilliant planet Jupiter through the greater brilliancy of the 
sun. The illustration, if continued to its completion, is not a 
very happy one, for if the light of Jupiter represents the dynamic 
disease, and the sunlight the more powerful drug disease, the 
latter, in fulfilment of the promise, should not merely hide the 
dynamic disease (Jupiter), but should destroy it, so that when the 
powerful drug disease (sunlight) subsided, Jupiter would not 
reappear in all its former glory, or in any degree, whatever; this 
would be no cure ; it would be, at most, but a miserable tempo- 
rary concealment. 
“Sec. 27. Therefore, the healing pozuer of medicines rests zipon 
their faculty ofproducing symptoms similar to the disease, and superior 
to it in strength, so that each individual case of disease is most cer- 
tainly,, fundamentally, and rapidly extinguished a?id cancelled by a 
drug which is more potent than the disease, and capable of producing, 
in the body, symptoms most similar to and completely resembling the 
totality of those of the disease.” 
“Sec. 29. We have seen that every disease (not subject to surgery 
alone) is based upon some particular morbid derangement in the feel- 
ings and functions of the vital force; and thzis, in the process of a 
homoeopathic cure, by administering a medicinal potency chosen ex- 
actly in accordance with the similitude of symptoms, a somewhat 
stronger, similar,' artificial morbid affection is iznplanted upon the 
vital power deranged by a natural disease ; this artificial affectioti is 
substituted (as it were) for the weaker, similar, natural disease 
{morbidexcitation), against which the instinctive vitalforce, now only 
excited to stronger effort by the drug affection, needs only to direct its 
increased energy ; but, owing to its brief duration, it will soon be over- 
come by the vital force, which, liberated first from the natural disease, 
and, finally, frozn the substituted artificial (drug) affection, now 
again finds itself enabled to continue the life of the organism in 
health. This very probable process is based upon the following 
propositions : 
“ Sec. 30. Natural diseases are cured and overcome by proper 
medicines, because the health of the human body seems to be more 23 
readily affected by drugs (also because it is in our power to regulate 
their dose) than by natural morbific agencies 
“Sec. 34. The great r intensity of artificial diseases produced by 
drugs does not constitute the only condition of their ability to cure 
natural diseases. In order to perform a cure, it is necessary that 
drugs should possess the power of producing in the human body an 
artificial disease, most similar to that which is to be cured, for it 
is, by virtue of its similitude, combined with greater intensity. that the 
drug disease is substituted for the natural disease, thus depriving the 
latter of its power to affect the vital force. This is true, to such an 
extent, that even nature herself is unable to cure a?i older disease 
through the accession of a new, dissimilar affection, ei'en of great in- 
tensity ; nor can the physician perform a cure by means of d> ugs 
incapable of producing in the organism a diseased condition similar 
to that which is to be cured ” 
“Sec. 148. A medicine possessing the power and inclination to pro- 
duce similar symptoms, or an artificial disease most similar to the 
natural disease to be cured, exerts its dynamic mfluence upon the 
morbidly-disturbed vital force; and if it is administered in well- 
proportioned doses, it will affect those parts of the organism where 
the natural disease is located, and will excite in them an artificial 
disease ; this, by virtue of its great similitude and increased intensity, 
will now occupy the place hitherto held by the natural morbid process. 
Thereupon the instinctive and automatic vital power is liberatedfrom 
the natural disease, and is occupied alone with the stronger and similar 
drug disease. But owing to the minuteness of the dose, this drug 
affection is sufficiently tractable to allow itself to be overcome by the 
increased energy of the vital force, and will, therefore, soon vanish, 
leaving the body free from disease and permanently healthy." 
Having thus established the nature and locus of disease, 
Hahnemann proceeds to demonstrate, as he terms it, the only 
possible method by which it can be exterminated, and this, he 
finds, can only be accomplished by dispossession (see Sec. 26), 
and the dispossession can be executed by only two different sets 
of agents. One agent is a “ natural disease,” of such kind as to 
act homoeopathically : this, he says (Sec. 34), ; the other, 24 
a drug disease. Except by means of these two, he makes the 
repeated and unqualified statement that no instance of cure has 
ever existed or can exist—that the law is immutable and invari- 
able. In Section 50 he excepts a few miasmatic diseases as 
curative auxiliaries. I will rest the matter upon his own words. 
In Section 25 he says : '"But now actual experience, the only in- 
fallible oracle of medical art, teaches in every carefully-conducted ex- 
periment that that drug, proved in its effect upon healthy persons, to 
produce the greatest number of symptoms similar to those found in a 
case of disease to be cured, and when administered in properly poten- 
tiated and diminished doses, will rapidly, thoroughly, and perma- 
nently cancel and turn into health the totality of symptoms of this 
diseased condition ; that is the entire present case of disease. 
“ Experience also teaches that all drugs will unexception ally 
cure diseases, the symptoms of which are as similar as possible to those 
of the drugs, and leave none uncured.” 
Again, in Section 34 : '■'‘This is true, to such an extent, that even 
nature herself is unable to cure an older disease through the accession 
of a new, dissimilar affection, even of great intensity; nor can the 
physician perform a cure by means of drugs incapable of producing in 
the organism a diseased condition similar to that which is to be 
cured." 
And Section 35 : “ The most powerful drugs, if not homoeopathic, 
will be unable to cure any disease whatever." 
Section 45, referring to drug agents, says : “ On the contrary, 
two diseases, though different in kind, but very similar in regard to 
their manifestation of suffering and symptoms, will a ho ays extinguish 
each other whenever they meet in the organism ; the stronger disease 
will overcome the weaker one, for reasons not difficult to divine; the 
superadded stronger morbific potency, on account of its similitude of 
effect, takes possession chiefly of the same parts in the organism hitherto 
affected by the weaker, morbific agency; this is thereby deprived of its 
power of action, and is consequently extinguished. In other words, as 
soon as the vital force, disturbed by the morbific potency hitherto act- 
ing upon it, is more powerfully affected by the new and most similar 
(but stronger, dynamic) morbific potency, the latter continues alone to 25 
affect the vital force; and, in this manner, the former similar but 
weaker agency, being a mere dynamic power without substance, must 
consequently cease to exist, and hence cease to exert its ?norbific influ- 
ence upon the vital force.” 
And in Section 48 he says : “All of these examples prove that 
neither the efforts of nature nor of the physician have ever been able 
to extinguish or cure a disease by means of a dissimilar morbific 
potency, however powerful; but they prove that, according to eternal 
and irrevocable laws of nature, which were hitherto misinterpreted, 
cures are made to result alone from a morbific potency, which 
is similar in symptoms and somewhat superior in strength.” 
In Section 22 he says : “Drugs become curative remedies, capable 
of obliterating disease only through their power of creating certain 
disturbances and symptoms—that is, by producing a certain artificial 
diseased condition, they cancel and exterminate the symptoms already 
present, i. e., the natural diseased condition which it is intended to 
cure.” 
See Section 61, reading as follows : “No physician ever effected 
a permanent cure of an i?iveterate disease, unless so?ne drug of pre- 
dominant homoeopathic effect had been by chance embodied in his 
prescription.” 
Here Hahnemann seems to introduce a doctrine which one of 
our Fellows has recently developed to its logical sequence ; 
namely, that in the administration of a combined number of 
drugs, the predominant homoeopathic one will proceed to effect the 
cure, and, as the transient character of a drug disease—homceo- 
pathically chosen and dynamically prepared—is made by Hahne- 
mann to depend upon its minuteness of dose (see Sec. 68), why 
should not the dozen or hundred minute dissimilar drug diseases, 
produced by the many non-homoeopathic elements in the pre- 
scription, be as readily disposed of by the dynamis as the one 
similar disease ? This, however, though Hahnemannian, is not 
chiefly relevant to our subject. 
In Section 52 the author of the “Organon ” says that, when 
two dissimilar diseases meet in the human organism, they are 
never cured, but always aggravated. But Section 37 seems some- 26 
what an offset to it, for in that he says the disease will remain 
uncured unless it be too harshly treated with the dissimilar drugs ; 
which is virtually admitting that dissimilars do—at least some- 
times—cure, only that, to do so, they must act with undesirable 
violence ; it must be kept in mind, however, that we are occupied 
with a law—the law of cure—and not with preferences in treat- 
ment and pharmacy. 
Section 54 settles the question again the other way, and in a 
way preclusive of all further discussion. It reads : 
“Sec. 54. As above intimated (43-49), the course pursued by 
homoeopathy must be the only correct one; because, of the three 
ways in which it is possible to apply medicines in diseases, it is the 
only direct one leading to a gentle, certain, and permanent cure, with- 
out subsequent ill effects or debility. The true homoeopathic method 
of cure is the only correct, the only direct, and the only possible means 
to be employed by human skill, as surely as it is possible to drain but 
one straight line between two given points.” 
From the foregoing it seems most clearly palpable that the 
theory of homoeopathic cure is based upon the assumption that 
disease is an abstract entity, actually occupying a given locality, 
as one may occupy a room in a house, and can only be cured or 
excluded by some other more crowding entity, but so nearly 
like in constitution, character, and habits, that it finds the same 
quarters—and no others—adapted to the necessities of its ex- 
istence. 
It seems hardly possible that any one, previously unbiased, can 
make a thorough analysis of Hahnemann’s “ Organon,” in its en- 
tirety, without a conviction that he held disease as being entirely 
independent of and different from the ordinary processes charac- 
terizing vitalized matter. He apparently looked upon disease, 
not as a variation of a natural process; he treats of it rather as 
holding a relation to the human body much like that which genii 
were once supposed to sustain towards inanimate objects. This 
is an outline sketch of Hahnemann’s system of homoeopathy. 
The “ Organon ” explicitly teaches that to cure one disease, it is 
necessary to produce another. 27 
The term “homoeopathy” was constructed by Hahnemann, and 
it etymologically expresses his theory : he was an expert linguist, 
and would not have coined a term which etymologically misrep- 
resented the idea he wished to express. 
One disease can be cured only through displacement by another 
disease : this is the substructure of homoeopathy. 
Hahnemann proceeds to claim that homoeopathy differs from 
all other medical systems in that they have no substantiation be- 
yond theory; whereas homoeopathy is a science established by 
induction-a science a posteriori: and, upon this ground alone, 
are we asked to accept it. (See Sections 25, 26.) 
Now, the only material in the “ Organon” which is put forward 
as inductive facts is to be found in Sections 36 to 46 inclusive. 
These facts number just thirty-seven—twenty-one to establish as 
an immutable law that dissimilar diseases do not cure each other, 
and sixteen to establish the law that similar diseases do cure each 
other. These thirty-seven citations are simply references ; there 
is not one pretended description among them. 
With one exception, they are second or third-handed, and some 
of them are derived from very questionable authority. With 
these, as the sole inductive material, follow Sections 47, 48, read- 
ing as follows: 
“Sec. 47. The preceding examples contain the most distinct and 
convincing argument in regard to the kind of artificial, morbific 
potency (medicine) to be chosen by the physician, in order to accomplish 
rapid and permanent cures, according to the process observed in the 
course of nature.” 
“ Sec. 48. All of these examples prove that neither the efforts of 
nature, nor of the physician, have ever been able to extinguish or cure 
a disease by means of a dissimilar morbific potency, however power- 
ful ; but they prove that, according to eternal and irrevocable 
laws of nature, which were hitherto misinterpreted, cures are 
made to result alone from a morbific potency, which is similar in 
symptoms and somewhat superior in strength.” 
When this inductive science comes to the relations between 
dynamis and corporeal matter, it becomes lost and announces a 28 
preclusion of all further knowledge in that direction with the re- 
mark (see foot-note to Sec. 12): “It is useless for the physician to 
knoiv how the vital force brings about or creates the 7norbid mani- 
festations of the organism, and', THEREFORE, it will ever remain 
obscure.” 
Such kinds of proclamations are sufficiently refuted and 
disposed of by every advancing step which science has ever 
taken. 
Every unfolding of the human mind proclaims that there is 
nothing in the universe concealed from man ; but that all things 
lie open before him, and he is capable of beholding them in 
proportion as he develops his faculties which God gave him 
to use. 
To jump at a conclusion or theory, unsubstantiated, and by the 
author avowedly unsusceptible of substantiation, may serve in 
some departments of mental exercise, but it certainly is the an- 
tithesis of science, and therefore we must, as workers in science, 
hold the “dynamis” speculation in reserve until it, at least, makes 
a pretension to offer some kind of a solution ; meanwhile it is 
proper, I presume, to continue examination, in order to ascertain 
if there is any simpler and comprehensible solution in any other 
direction. And for this, is it necessary that one go outside the 
limits of physiological acts to explain any process whatever con- 
nected with vital physics—is it possible to find any explanation 
elsewhere ? 
If noxious substances (non-parasitical) received by a vital 
organism from the surrounding elements find their ultimate 
habitation in the “dynamis,” the “ vital force,” the spiritual, and 
not the corporeal nature, then the same ought, in all prob- 
ability, to be true of the roast-beef which goes into the stomach 
along with the noxious element, or the drug; for combinations 
with injuriously-acting substances, malaria, drugs, or what not, 
must be accomplished—indeed, can only be brought about, so far 
as we are able to judge, by our present knowledge—through ma- 
terial physiological processes. So that viewed abstractly, the 
process for receiving poisons (non-parasitical)—be they “mala- 29 
rial ” or drug—is identical with that of nutrition: the only 
difference seems to be that the one regards chiefly molecular life ; 
the other, molecular life as it relates to somatic life. 
Pathology is now regarded as strictly a part of physiology ; a 
pathological condition must always be a result of physiological 
action, though unsuitable to the particular welfare of that special 
organism, as a whole, in which it occurs: but so far as its action 
extends it is admitted, and taught by the pathologists of the 
present day, as a physiological struggle for survival, and it seems 
among the possibilities that Hahnemann may have mistaken the 
struggle for survival, as expressed by symptoms, for a something 
foreign to the nature of the body, the same as it is among the 
possibilities that he mistook the curative action of a similar as 
consisting of the creation of another disease similar in manifesta- 
tion, but, as he expressly says, Section 26, “ without being of the 
same species,” and having an independent power to expel the more 
puny inmate of the habitation he is sent to visit. 
If the substitution of a new disease is required to expel an ex- 
isting one, it is very perplexing to explain or comprehend how 
the chain can be broken, and why there should not be equal 
necessity for an endless succession of similar diseases—to tumble 
a disease off at one end, a new one must ever be crowded in at 
the other, and each one must be more energetic than the pre- 
ceding. 
Sections 51 and 68 embrace essentially all the explanation 
which Hahnemann offers concerning the final disappearance of the 
drug disease, after it has driven out the so-called natural disease ; 
but as he has nowhere attempted to solve the problem why this 
drug disease, being sufficiently powerful to drive out the natural 
disease, against which it is employed to do battle, should, at the 
same time, be really so much weaker in its resistance to the 
dynamis, I also will abstain from any conjecture, and, in pursu- 
ance of a convenient and respectably old fashion, will at once 
eliminate it from the domain of science, concluding that it is— 
borrowing a sentence from Section 14—in some way, “quite in 
accordance with the infinite goodness of divine wisdom.” 30 
It is for all this, however, none the less a severe tax upon 
reason. 
The adaptation of similars (not similar disease) to the processes 
of nature is one that has attracted more or less attention since 
the origin of medicine, and medical literature of all ages is filled 
with illustrations of it. 
But this, according to the term and in accordance with the re- 
peated vehement avowal of the author of the term “ homoeopathy,” 
is not homoeopathy, but the exact reverse of it. Homoeopathy, 
he is careful to emphasize, is the introduction of a new disease. 
Hahnemann was no believer in cures by nature, other than 
when nature, by rare chance, introduced a new, similar disease 
for the purpose ; he was no believer in reparative similars, only in 
similar diseases. 
His attitude towards nature alternated between contempt and 
hostility, and his condemnation of nature as a curative agent is 
frequent and vehement. It is especially conspicuous in his in- 
troduction to the “ Organon,” where he repeatedly asserts that 
nature seldom, if ever, makes a cure, even a bungling one. 
I quote the following : 
“ The crude efforts of nature in acute, and more particularly in 
chronic diseases, are extremely imperfect, and in themselves a disease" 
(P- 33> “ Organon”). 
“ What man of sense would undertake to imitate nature in her 
endeavors of coming to the rescue? These efforts are, in fact, the 
disease itself ” (p. 34, “Organon”). 
He terms it a “crude, unreasonable automatic vital energy" (p. 
29, “Organon”). 
The dynamis, or vital-force theory of Hahnemann was one 
which had come to him by regular descent. The idea had, in 
some form, been inculcated from Paracelsus down. Descartes 
promulgated virtually the same doctrine, and located the soul in 
the pineal gland. 
Van Helmont had a supreme archeus and a sub-archeus for 
each different organ. 
Stahl held that anima presided over and specially directed nu- 31 
trition and all the movements of the physical organism. Fernel, 
two hundred years prior to Hahnemann, was one of the few who 
took an opposite stand ; he said : “ The remote cause of disease is 
in the humors, the disease itself in the solids ; the symptoms are in the 
functions; therefore, it is necessary to seek for disease in the solids, 
and not in the humors or functions.” 
Homoeopathy, in its Hahnemannian sense, is the last strong- 
hold of that theory which, for centuries, held sway in philosophy, 
and which is, under varying names, known as the vitalistic theory. 
As applied to the mysteries of vital processes, and to psychology, 
it possesses a wonderful fascination, through the apparent tangi- 
bility which it gives them ; it converts to substantives all the verbs 
of natural processes, and the spiritual theory of vitalists thus be- 
comes materialism in its very essentiality. 
From Paracelsus down to Stahl and Hahnemann, the theory 
of vital force, archeus, anima, dynamis, etc., had a continuous line 
of advocates, each one modifying the idea in accordance with his 
mental idiosyncrasy, and, of them all, perhaps no one was more 
conspicuous and definite in expression than Hahnemann. He, 
to a greater extent than any other comparatively modern author 
in medicine, made abstract entities of disease and the vital 
force. 
The immediate source of Hahnemann’s theory is easily dis- 
cernible. Stahl died but twenty-one years before Hahnemann’s 
birth, and his theory of anima, even to Hahnemann’s adult age, 
and especially during his impressionable period of life, retained 
a powerful hold upon the medical world, and Hahnemann evi- 
dently received his bent in philosophy from Stahl. 
Stahl mixed metaphysical speculation with facts. Hahnemann 
did the same. Hahnemann partook so largely of the age that was 
behind him, that he was profoundly erudite, and so little of the 
age that was to come after him, that he was not scientific. 
I assume that no one, with a liberal present-day education in 
vital science, holds that any of the processes which characterize 
vitalized matter are other than physiological actions inheient to 
'he organism in which they occur ; and whether the processes are 32 
calculated to maintain the integrity of that body as a whole, or 
apply to only parts of it, does not alter the principle. 
Conservative or reparative processes cannot be brought within 
the narrow limits of applying solely to the uses of an organism 
as a whole. 
These processes may be adapted and restricted to parts, and, 
in the fulfilment of this purpose, the organism, as a whole, may 
eventually suffer destruction—as we see exemplified in cardiac 
hypertrophy, where the muscle is developed to a degree that 
destroys life in order to compensate for obstruction, or for 
valvular insufficiency. 
I assume that the members of this Society coincide with the 
scientific world generally, that all modalities of force are strictly 
correlates; that we agree, if a disease ever comes to a cure, even 
without purposed intervention, it must be as the result of some 
modality of force, and, in accordance with the generally-accepted 
view that all force is correlated, it must follow that any two mo- 
dalities of force which accomplish the same ultimate must be 
parallel and not opposite, and the only possible corollary is, that 
drugs only cure when they exert a force which is parallel, and 
not opposite and antagonistic, to the force which nature to that 
purpose exhibits. 
In other words, a similar to curative symptoms will assist to 
cure ; a similar to destructive symptoms will help to destroy. 
I assume that Tyndall expresses our sentiments when he says 
that any term conveying a theory is unsuited to a science vocab- 
ulary ; and I think that I have this evening adduced sufficient 
testimony to prove that the term “ homoeopathy ” does convey a 
theory, and that its inventor intended it to do so, instead of con- 
structing it as a convenient working-hypothesis or term. If it 
were used with the last-named purpose, it would still be open to 
the objection that it must compel a commencement of reasoning 
from a standpoint radically opposed to general operations in 
nature, and that its rules would permit only such work as would 
be unavoidably faulty in construction and misleading in ten 
dency. 33 
With the foregoing I respectfully, but in deep earnest, submit 
to you : 
ist. That in justice to its originator, the term “ homoeopathy ,r 
cannot be used in any other sense than that which he explicitly 
indicated ; and no one has a right to demand or expect that the 
general profession or the public shall attach to it any other than 
the correct, etymological meaning which its learned author him- 
self did. 
2d. That the term “ homoeopathy ” does not, in any degree, con- 
tain the idea of a system for the selection of medicines; it simply 
contains the theorem that an existing disease must be cured by 
the introduction of another disease. The selection of the remedy 
is a corollary, and comes under another head. 
3d. '1'hat any doctrine teaching that diseases and the actions of 
drugs or poisons are abstract entities or non-entities, belongs to 
the mythology or fairy tales of medical history, far away from the 
known facts of physiology. 
4th. That the theory, contained in the term, is not to any appre- 
ciable extent entertained at the present day; that it does misrep- 
resent the mass of those who allow it to be used to distinguish 
their belief or practice, and that a proper regard for a correct ap- 
preciation of their intelligence by the public, and of honesty in 
themselves, demands that the term be put away in the garret, as 
worn-out medical furniture, which has no fitting space in the 
edifice of real science. 
5th. I submit to you whether it would not more nearly accord 
with the results of recent physiological research to consider dis- 
ease as consisting of natural physiological processes, which give 
discomfort, and are destructive because they are unsuited to the 
habits of the organism in which they occur; in other words, dis- 
ease is unadapted physiological action. 
Joined with what 1 have said, I wish to pay unreserved tribute 
to Hahnemann’s great learning and labor, and to express the 
fullest appreciation of all those real contributions which he made 
to science. 
I would not do aught to the man, who reposes voiceless in his 34 
■grave, which I would consider unjust or unkind were our positions 
reversed. I only propose such changes as I feel sure Hahne- 
mann himself would desire, if he were now in the body and sur- 
rounded with all the changes which have been wrought by the 
most eventful hundred years that science has ever traversed. 
I will not venture further encroachment upon your time and, 
perhaps, your patience. 
For four years we have labored together, and we have been 
exceptionally blessed that our number has not been diminished by 
the hand of death ; but the time is not far when this little band, 
gathered here to-night, will each render his mortal portion to be 
strewn in the earth with the illustrious ones who founded the 
society of which this is the namesake. 
Loving friends may cherish our memories for a while, and 
granite blocks may be placed to show coming generations where 
our bodies lie crumbling, but the acts of affection will van- 
ish along with the disappearance of those who have known us, 
and the granite mass will, so sure as time, be crumbled and pow- 
dered into dust as indistinguishable as will be that of our bodies. 
Our labors in this Society, however, like other inscribed deeds 
of mankind, will survive the solid granite, and will endure until 
man has lost the art of transmitting his knowledge, or until the 
world has become a worn-out waste, awaiting nature’s renewal. 
This immortality of our deeds results not from our desire or 
will. Once written, by us, upon the scroll of time, and it is be- 
yond possible recall. Its reading may be satisfactory to us, or it 
may not: by our works alone can we predetermine its nature 
and quality. 
I trust that our labors, as individuals and as a society, will be 
given to truth, unfettered by passing prejudices, and that by this 
our imperishability may bear a seal forever worthy of imitation.