k.Ui • li E9lh 1846 flQyfiOBJPfcgtffriAer WBWKW TIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF M i:ioiw jo ixiin ivnoiivn )Ni3ioiw jo xavaan ivnoiivn iNoiaiw jo uoin iv t I /VIVS \.SX\ ^M MS • I jo aiviiii ivnoiivn iNoioaw jo Aavaan ivnoiivn jnoiojw jo Aavaan ivnoiiv . LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICIN y> - r jo Aavaan ivnoiivn iNDiaiw jo Aavaan ivnoiivn snoiqiw jo Aavaan ivnoiiv /V ]>* ' .» v.£ L LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICII i jo Aavaan ivnoiivn jnoicmw jo Aavaan ivnoiivn inoiqiw jo Aavaan ivnoiiv v jo Aavaan ivnoiivn jnoiqiw jo Aavaan ivnoiivn inoiqiw jo Aavaan ivnoiiv HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM, ADAPTED TO GENERAL COMPREHENSION. WITH A NOTICE OF PSORA AND DR. DURINGE'S OBJECTIONS. BY ALEXIS EUSTAPHIEVE. SECOND EDITION, WITH A SKETCH OF ISOPATHIA. . INSCRIBED T» V JOHN FORBES, M.D. F. R. S. fft<>n NEW-YORK : Printed and Published by D. Fanshaw, 575 BROADWAY. 1846. W3K 1344 To John Forbes, M. D., F. R. S. Sir, I beg leave to inscribe to you my second edition of " Ho- mcepathia Revealed," in testimony and. in payment of the debt of pleasure laid on me by your original and somewhat eccentric work on Homcepathy, Allopathy, and " Young Physick," which a valued friend commended to my perusal. That there may be a fair estimate, with a view to the general balance of the amount of obligation on either side, on mine already avowed, on yours yet to be acknowledged, I begin by declaring myself DEBTOR, 1. To your solemn denunciation of the too officious and often murderous assaults of Allopathia on the forces of Nature, neither carefully watched, nor allowed a sufficient time for their sanative action. 2. To your endorsing the doctrine that medicines have no other power to cure diseases that such as is exerted by Nature, strengthened by their timely assistance. 3. To yoUr corroborating the important fact, that the lists of mortality in countries enjoying an abundance of physicians, are comparatively the same, or somewhat larger, than in the regions wholly destitute of such blessing. 4. To your twenty articles of Agitanda, Exeogitan- DA, AGENDA, intended to form the new constitution of " Young Physic," which, to all intents and purposes, are so many thinly disguised counterparts of what Homcepathia is now doing, and what, on no mean scale, she has done already. 5. To your formal acknowledgment that Homcepathia, as a system, is almost as good, and certainly as well established as Allopathia herself; a concession which, from an opponent of your calibre, must satisfy her most enthusiastic friends. 11 LETTER TO DR. FOKBES. 6. To your admission of all her claims in full, mfeire from the fewness and fragility of weapons used against her hurtful only to the hand that wields them. Thus the attempted transfer of homoepathic cures, all in a lump, to the credit ol Ma- ture alone, provokes the'instant charge and proof of being en- tirely gratuitous; while the straw-catching belief that Homce- pathia, after she had cured a disease of sixteen years' duration, may still be an impostor, because, at the very moment that her first globule touched the tongue, nature may have taken the whole affair into her own hands, involves a series of questions which it may not be easy or pleasant to answer. For instance, how and whence did Nature get this sudden curing power, of which her wow-exercise of it proves her to have been deprived for sixteen years previous 1 Again, why should Nature be so nobly sensitive at the approach of Homcepathia, and yet never honor Allopathia with the like manifestation of feeling 1 Does not this indicate the real difference between the mistress emu- lous of a worthy rival, and the slave shrinking from the presence of her despotic oppressor'? Deny this difference, and what fol- lows % The hypothetical disqualification would apply equally to both systems, and lead to a direct inquiry how you would like a patient of yours, on presenting him your bill in the just pride and full consciousness of having relieved him from sixteen years' sufferings, to turn upon his heels after coolly telling you that he owes you nothing, Nature, at the first sight of your pill, having snatched him from your hands and finished her work of cure, with thanks to no one but herself?" In like manner, the assumption that persons in full health, while undergoing the trial of remedies, would be apt to fancy all kinds of ailments which Homcepathia sets down as symptoms, is instantly repell- ed by the fact that no fancy can fancy itself into topical diseases which form so great a part of these symptoms. Neither will imagination accept the charge of homoepathic cures, so wanton- ly forced upon it, since it is enlisted and works with all its might against them in incipient trials; it being a matter of no- toriety that nine patients out of ten, when first they turn to Homcepathia, do so from sheer desperation against their long- habitual confidence in the old school; against their own fixed' LETTER TO DR. FORBES. ill prepossession, fostered by the warnings of that school, and against the combined influence of all that can create mistrust and the uneasiness of apprehension. Poor, indeed, must be the armory where the wants of an offensive war are so ill supplied ; strong the truth that can thus paralyze the arm well-tried and skilled in combat; and most triumphant the vindication of that cause, to refute which nothing better has been found in the ample stores of professional learning and resources. And now I take my turn as Creditor, 1. By supplying you with a quantum sufficit of those facts which you deem so necessary to the making up of your mind, and the call for which is the dominant note of your book. 2. By showing you that Homcepathia cures promptly and effectually many diseases which are incurable, when left exclu- sively to Nature. 3. By satisfying you that the remedial power of infinite- simal doses is a demonstrable and demonstrated fact, before which, as you say yourself, " all declamations are vain," and worse than useless. 4. By suggesting to you, as I now do, that the easiest, the shortest, and the surest Way to verify this mysterious power, is to try it on yourself; and that, until you have done so, until you can oppose something better than your naked assertion to re- corded facts, nothing can palliate your hardihood in contradict- ing, as you do in reference to the Peruvian bark, the highest authority, that of the martyr of truth, for whom you profess so great a respect, and who, as you yourself admit, did not an- nounce the peculiar effects of that drug upon a healthy person until he had ascertained them by an actual experiment upon himself. Do you likewise ! and it will not require many days to place you in a condition to appease the mighty shade whose resentment you have so justly incurred. 5. By laying before you, in the very charcoal which you have so confidently selected for nullifying the preparatory process of Homcepathia, the most striking illustration that her trituration and much-derided shakings not only evolve the dynamic poten- cy of drugs, but, what you deny most strenuously, convert in- ert substances into active, as you may at any time convince iv LETTER TO DR. FORBES. yourself by repeating the charcoal experiment upon your own person. 6. By calling your attention to the mathematical fact that you cannot annihilate matter by any subdivisions you may as- sign to it in act or imagination; and that, however infinite may bej the comminutions of Homrepathia, they still fall short ot reality, of their extremes! point of attenuation. Multiply your seventy-six Os by as many figures as will make your proposed line of globules reach, not the sun, but the great Sirius himself, and still there will remain prepared in Nature's own laboratory a higher dilution, not,the less fearful and fatal to man, of the virus of hydrophobia, of which not the incomprehensibility, but the fact alone concerns us ; and such being the fact, " all decla- mations are vain " in its presence, and worse than useless, ac- cording to your own quotation. 7. By presenting you with a mirror, the only one within my knowledge, in which the entire form of Homcepathia, spiri- tual and corporeal, such as it is in reality, a unit of soul and body, is reflected and exhibited to your contemplation. Analyze all the parts, examine well each distinct feature, review the whole in connection, and if all this does not bring you to the point of making up your mind, I can only say I have given you the opportunity. What I have said thus far may give you an idea of my great vanity and presumption; and I own the appearances are in fa- vor of such conclusion. Appearances, however, are often de- ceitful, and are so on the present occasion. I am only one of those plain men who think that a simple, inoffensive truth may be uttered in one's own case as freely as in that of another. I am only confident quo ad hoc, and what reason I have to be so you will judge presently. I pause only to balance our accounts by crediting you with being a homcepath in embryo; and I proceed to address you as such to the end of the chapter. Be it then known to you, that since the publication of my little work in 1837, I have made my pilgrimage to the living fountain of Homcepathia—have gazed upon the countenance, listened to the voice, and pressed the hand of " the sublime old man," ere long to be enshrined by grateful posterity among the greatest benefactors of mankind. I did more. I laid my hum- LETTER TO DR. FORBES. V ble revelations before him, and was honored with his unqualified approbation. The doctrines and principles laid down in them as the constituent elements of Homcepathia, were pronounced true and genuine by him from whom she sprang, as did Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. The means, as therein explained, which attest her existence and modify her action, were in like manner acknowledged by him who first discovered, adjusted, and put them into practice. In short, he that conceived the bright original, and breathed his spirit into it, recognized its embodied image in the portrait. In such circumstances, I trust, you will not think it strange or unpardonable that I should speak, and think it even my duty to speak of my work as I would of another man's work, with the same sincerity and freedom. In truth, I feel that it is gone from me—that it belongs now to the public, not to be deprived of its property by my interposition. It is so far ahead of the author that he perforce must part with it, and be content to rest unnoticed in the rear. Other hands, more powerful than his, have placed it on the summit of authority, and there it must stand palpable to sight, a beacon by whose light the true and the false disciples may at once be contradistinguished and identified. The former will hail it with cordial welcome, the latter may be com- pelled to show cause Avhy they should not be numbered with those whom the great master-spirit had DISOWNED so formal- ly and on all occasions. A work of this character was never needed more than at the present hour, when a laxity on one side, and encroachments on the other, have placed the deity of health in that false, inverted position, against the danger of which the public cannot be too soon or too officiously warned. It is quite time to stop, if pos- sible, the immolation of victims on the altar, and in the name of the very power that was sent forth to save them; and the mar- tyr who felt the rack may well be permitted the poor consola- tion of showing where it lies, by way of caution to his fellow- creatures. I have reason to think that among the opponents of Homce- pathia, none is more aware than yourself, or less disposed to deny that the majority of the votaries of Allopathia, imbued, as heretofore, with a sense of her supposed dignity and scholastic vi ' LETTER TO DR. FORBES. superiority, still shun the tabooed dwelling of the new comer; and acting on mere reports and assumptions, condemn what they refuse to know, and think it a disgrace in a matter of life and death to be able to judge for themselves. What particular medicine more than another cures this or that disease, seems to be the utmost stretch of their inquiry; but why—by what per- manent, inherent quality this medicine performs the cure, is a question, which although the true one, is scarcely ever asked. The curative effects of a remedy in presence of disease, gleaned from the pages of pharmacopoeia, seems to be all they know, or care to know of its specific virtues ; whereas this knowledge, so vital to the healing art, can only be obtained from its primary aggressive action upon a person in full health; a fact, the dis- covery of which by Hahnneman, suffices of itself to gain for him the gratitude of ages. From this admitted fact, susceptible of proof so as to stare one in the face, they turn away with mar- vellous indifference; and while they are so active in distilling science, skill, rational medicine, and all kinds of imposing learn- ing from their lips, their real locomotive progress ceases just where it should go on. They certainly have learned the value of the stranger's pharmacy as far superior to their own, else they would scarcely make so free with it; but then what led to the discovery of medicines in substances not used as such, though not unknown by name, and on what principle those are and ought to be selected, they seem to consider beyond the sphere of their profession. Hence it is that they either do not know, or will not own, that at this very moment they are tread- ing in the steps of their opponents, and differ from them only in the want of precaution. While they continue to denounce poor Homcepathia as a sheer humbug, and while their unleashed war- dogs bark loud as ever at her passing shadow, they are actually doing homage to her fundamental creed, "the like cure the like," by administering her remedies, not only so far as each re- medy becomes strictly homoepathic when directed against a dis- ease the like of which it produces in a healthy person, but in the sense of full unqualified acceptance of such as are emphati- cally her own, and stand conspicuously on her list. Thus, in congestions to the head, scarlatinas, acute inflammatory fevers, LETTER TO DR. FORBES. Vll inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, croup, trachitis, peripneu- monia, and final consumptions, varying in kind, but alike in their fatal terminations, they give Belladonai, Aconite, quinine, iron, ipecacuanoz, senega, and tartar-emetic, all which respectively produce the like diseases in the normal state of the body, and in so high a degree as to cause death if persevered in, or not soon enough suspended. This is what they are doing now, and this is neither more nor less the veritable Homcepathia herself! ! A step farther this way and all would be right; but they refuse to take this step, and then what follows is a wanton abuse of means, a bare- faced disregard of the laws of inference, and an unnatural vio- lation of the cause by its effects. It is an advance, so far as there is less groping in the dark, less guesswork in the drug compounds, less latitude and fancy in prescriptions ; but it is an advance that stops just where it cuts the patient off from all the benefits of old uncertainty, arid from all chances of escape by means of blunders that were wont to counteract each other. Nature alone being invested with the power of cure, a reme- dy can do no more than, by a dynamic union, add so much of its strength to the disease as to insure his spoil of life, or so little as just to quicken his growth into maturity, and end the mon- ster before her vital forces are exhausted. Whether of this im- portant truth they have any suspicion, or studiously conceal it, they in either case evade the obvious conclusion, that comminu- tion of doses is not a matter of caprice, but the result of abso- lute necessity, inasmuch as the organ cannot be too tenderly used, which, in addition to the morbid action of disease already so enfeebling, has to sustain the like remedial action of a more than equal power. The consequence is, that they head the raging conflagration with nothing but combustibles to check it, and thus add fuel to the flame when they ought to have kindled the small counter fire, as certain to extinguish as it is sure to meet it. Persuaded that what they do not know is not worth knowing, and resolved to stand by each other, come what may, they rack the victim with their noxious drugs at pleasure, pour poison upon poison, and when death ensues, they make Homce- pathia their scape-goat, by proclaiming that in her hands the viii LETTER TO DR. FORBES. patient would have died without an effort on her part to save him ! The peril arising from this hateful practice is farther increas- ed by the corresponding course, the more criminal, as no plea of ignorance can be set up in its behalf, of the pseudo-homceipa- thists, who, unfortunately, are neither strangers to this city, nor so far as to be passed by without notice. These birds of a feather, forming a recreant clique by them- selves, cannot but remember that all their knowledge of Homce- pathia has been gathered from her lips; that their own shells were not yet formed when she broke hers; and fostered by the parent-hand soon in full plumage started into view; and that the chickens wise enough to teach the hen, must first be hatch- ed and fledged. Nevertheless they peck at their kind instruc- tress, cluck correction in her ears, and cry out what she ought to be, on the insulting claim to know her better than she does herself! ! ! Extravagance of presumption and the ingratitude of pupils can go no further ! In vain did the inspired genius whose glorious conception she is, protest against her character being degraded, her credit de- stroyed, her name desecrated, and her blessings converted into curses by a forced union with some unclean abortion of the su- perannuated alma mater. The clique compel her to endure the embraces of the hoary, decrepit slanderer. They fix the lancet in her hands, load her with the forbidden weapons, and fully ve- rify his worst fears and predictions. In vain did he, more anx- iously solicitous on this point than any other, insist upon the comminution of doses as inseparable from her very nature and existence. The clique increase them con amove, and under the cover of his very mantle spurn his gift, reject his doctrine, and cry down as a mere " Hahnnemanism " the most precious fruit of his protracted labors and painful self-experiments ! ! And yet, forsooth, in face of all this they profess their faith in Homcepa- thia !! Derision and hypocrisy never yet went so lovingly to- gether ! The only article of faith connected with Homcepathia, is " similis similibus curantur." It is her all in all, with which she cannot part herself without committing suicide. This, then if LETTER TO DR. FORBES. ix any thing, must be what they believe in. If so, upon what prin- ciple can they defend, and much less justify their practice, so subversive of their own belief, that the increased strength of a dose which is akin to the disease, must be the like increase of strength for the disease itself; and, superadded to its own, must make it irresistible 1 They have assigned yet no good reason, and likely never will. They may attempt to explain by saying, for it is all they can say, that it is the result of their own expe- rience ; but what is their own puny experience to that of one whose temple had been for more years than they have yet lived, crowded with the sick from the great nations of the earth, who had for half a century periled his body as a test of remedies an- nounced by him as such, and whose ability to state the truth was full as great as his desire and interest to seek and to reveal it1? Empiricism may plume itself upon its feats of cure, which only show that there are patients strong enough to survive them ; but the great shade of Hahnneman, and his tried, faith- ful disciples, have a claim to a more respectful explanation than such as would impugn the warranty of facts too much respected to be called in question. If the clique really have a pet—some pathia of their own—why do they keep it back 1 Why do they not come forth like men, place it on its own merits, and boldly vindicate its title to " a name and local habitation V If, on the other hand, they should set up the honest plea of total disbelief in Homcepathia, why do they wear her colors, and profess to be what they are not! Why should they make her, by this fraud, a mere by-word, a seeming humbug, the scape-goat of their own misdeeds 1 Why should the open frequency of their rebellion against her rule, furnish her enemies with a construc- tive proof that she and all her followers who thus betray their want of confidence in her, are arrant knaves, quacks and impos tors ? The clique may be all kinds of pathists at their own discretion ; but homcepathists they are none, and it is time that all should know it. A voice from the tomb, that will be heard throughout eternity, abjures them all as base, sinister counter- feits, foes in disguise, stabbing the priestess in whose temple they profess to worship. The sooner they are driven away from 2 X LETTER TO DR. FORBES. the sacred precincts the greater will be the benefit conferred upon the human race. Thus, by a sort of a tacit, gradual approximation of the adverse systems, the champions on both sides being false alike to their creeds, the two extremes have been brought at length to meet half way, and presently from this unhallowed contact, not yet openly acknowledged, sprang the new-fangled mischief, the'practice now in vogue, nought less than Homcepathia armed to the teeth with allopathic doses!—An enemy more dangerous and destructive to health than this hideous, misbegotten her- maphrodite, has never yet been pressed into the service of the medical profession! ' THE AUTHOR. INVOCATION. Hail, Fountain Nymph ! Hail to thy cup of health, Bought cheaply with an Empire's treasur'd wealth! No Poet's dream, no Fiction's pleasing guile, Lurk in thy form, or light a doubtful smile; Thy breath is life : and they themselves must blame, Who grudge thee welcome, and scarce know thy name. 'Tis but to ask—and all thy flowing stores, More precious than Golconda's mines, are ours. All hail! most noble, fair, rich-gifted maid, So young, so wise : we now invoke thy aid! Genius and Fame, to whom thy birth we owe, Impress'd their signets on thy infant brow; Who then shall stay thee in thy bright career ? Come, take thy crown! Thou hast but to appear..... ORIGIN OF HOMCEPATHIA, AND GROUNDS OF BELIEF. The fair health-bearer delights not in the darkness of concealment, and, so far from seeking disguise, entreats to be revealed. Of her renowned sire, the long-persecut- ed but never discomfited Hahnemann, it is less easy to decide whether he is now most adored and glorified, or most hated and feared ; than to predict his future station in the eyes of posterity, as one of the brightest luminaries that ever shed light upon the medical world. For his surprising early proficiency in the study of medicine, which, without any patronage or collateral support, pro- cured him several honorable and responsible appoint- ments, and installed him as, " Doctor of Physic," in a lucrative practice, before he had reached his 25th year; as well as for his total renunciation of that practice, with the profession itself, on the ground that his conscience was not satisfied with either, the reader is respectfully referred to the " Encyclopaedia Americana," where an epitome of his life is given with sufficient impartiality and cor- rectness. It is enough, that his subsequent studies, and particularly that of chemistry, by a fortuitous detection 16 homcepathia revealed. of the true principle upon which the Peruvian bark pro- duces an ague, similar to the one against which it is the acknowledged specific, led him to a series of experiments and discoveries, which finally terminated in the creation of a system entirely new, and so much to his mind as to have removed all his former scruples and objections. Such is the origin of Homcepathia ! This new system, or rather the system-destroying sys- tem, besides the weight of character imparted to it by its no longer slighted author, has been since espoused by so many eminent physicians, well known for their talents, works, and extensive practice; and its progress, in con- sequence, has been so extraordinary, that it is scarcely wise or possible to treat it now with the passing notice of a sneer, or refuse its pressing claims to the consideration of the public most interested in its promises of health. It is time that this science, for such it undoubtedly is, should be fairly, and in the clearest manner, exhibited to the eyes of all, in order that full justice may be done to its merits; and that no lingering regret may come hereafter for a gift thrown away on the misconception of its value; one too, which Hahnemann proclaims em- phatically as " the precious gift of Divinity."* It is under this solemn impression that the public are now presented with " Homcepathia Revealed ;" a hum- ble attempt to embody the whole system in a form more concise, and popularly intelligible, than is known yet to have been done : a work—a full-length miniature scan- ned at a glance—possessed of the advantage of stand- ing on its own exclusive ground, nowise connected with the profession, and removed from all suspicion of being influenced by private speculation, party spirit, local in- * " Homoepathic treatment of chronic diseases," page 3. French translation, by J. L. Jourdan, Member of the Royal Academy. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 17 terests, or time-serving discussions. It is likewise believ- ed, that the best mode of communicating knowledge is the one by which it was acquired ; and, that, therefore, an amateur student may impart the fruits of his acquisi- tion to the uninformed majority, more acceptably than a learned professor habitually writing for the learned minority. So far as faith in Homcepathia is concerned, the au- thor's position is that of a sincere believer, anxious, and deeming it his solemn duty to share what he considers a great blessing with his fellow-creatures. It was his happy lot, and there are few to whom it could have been otherwise, to have, some years since, attracted the notice, and to have preserved up to this time the favorable opinion of Admiral Mordvinow, a no- bleman generally so styled, by reason of the preference he gives to this over all his other titles. This is the ve- nerable Mecaenas, who, at the age which brings decrepi- tude to the less favored of mankind, seems to ward off all bodily decay by the active vigor of his mind. A pa- triot and philanthropist almost from his cradle ; his sword and life at the command of his country; his pen at the service of science and useful literature, and his purse ever open to the support of liberal public and private institutions ; confidential adviser and correspondent of crowned heads ; president of the- national council of state; by rank and weight of character the head of the Russian nobility ; the object of reverence to his compa- triots—he is the last of the great men who upheld and adorned the splendid reign of Catharine II. and the first that has had discernment and courage enough, when the Asiatic cholera invaded the southern provinces of the empire, to entrust himself, his family, and his numerous peasantry, to the care and treatment of Homcepathia! How well this confidence has been repaid will appear 3 IS HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. from the following, among other documents published by him for the interests of humanity, and for the pecu- niary benefit of " the Free Economical Society " at St. Petersburg.«, No. I. Extract from a letter of Madam Lvoff, to her father, Admiral Mordvinow, dated in the government of Saratow, August 6th, 1831. " The dreadful cholera broke out last month in our own village and its vicinity with the greatest fury. My husband was the first person attacked; but, thanks to Homcepathia, was cured in a few days. From a desire to relieve the sufferings. of humanity, he visited all the places in the neighborhood wherever the disease raged the most; administered the remedies; instructed the priests and the elders in the use of them ; and was whole weeks thus employed, while I remained at home occupied with the preparation of Homoepathic powders. Four hundred cholera patients, saved and restored to perfect health, was the gratifying reward of his zeal and the triumphant result of Homoepathic doses liberally distributed to all who applied for them. We are all now so well convinced of the miraculous power of this system, that we cannot sufficiently deplore the ignorance that cannot, and still more, the obstinate prejudice that will not invoke its aid, and thereby rescue relatives and friends from certain death. The Asiatic cholera, preced- ed by terror, ushered in by danger, and followed by deso- lation, comes now, remains, and departs a harmless thing. Its cure is in reality easier than that of a fever. Multiplied experiments, and consequent confidence in Homoepathic treatment, have divested it of all its apal- ling attributes, by subjugating it entirely to the skill of man. We had fifty patients in our own village, and not one of them died. On the estate of my sister-in-law, there were likewise a good many cases, but no deaths. homcepathia revealed. 19 There is also an abundance of reason to believe, that the fatal termination of the disease, wherever it occurred, was occasioned altogether by neglect, want of necessary precaution, or deviation from the rules of regimen pre- scribed by Homcepathia. All the sick who took medi- cine, in strict conformity to the rules, were saved, al- though some of them were already in a state of collapse, which apparently precluded all hope. In this last stage there were not a few with their teeth clenched so fast that it was necessary to force them open for the purpose of introducing the medicine; and yet, on the very day following they were relieved and convalescent! My good husband, from the constant intercourse with jhe sick, took the infection several times, but in every in- stance was restored by a few Homoepathic globules. In short, we consider ourselves perfectly safe from this dreaded scourge, whatever may be its potency and viru- lence. The repeated numerous trials have more than satisfied us, that in the presence of Homcepathia, with its five remedies only," (camphor, veratrum album, cupri- cum metallicum, carbo vegatabilis, and metallum album,) " the Asiatic cholera is not a mortal disease, and still less so when encountered at the commencement." No. 2. Results of homoepathic treatment of the Asiatic Cholera in 1830 and 1831, reported to Admiral Mordvinow from various places, by 'public and private committees, and the proprietors themselves. Sick. Cured. Died. " In several villages and hamlets in the government of Saratow,....... On the estate of Mr. LvofT, do. do. Estate of Mr. Povalichin, do. do. Do. do. Stalipin, do. do. Do. do. Bitiutsky, do. do. Do. Baron Bode, do. do. In the government-city of Saratow, . In the gymnasium of the same city, . 625 564 61 50 50 38 36 2 13 12 1 19 16 3 188 177 11 39 36 3 20 20 20 homcepathia revealed. Sick. Cured. Died. In a village within the possessions of the Don Cozacks, 59 53 6 In two settlements on the Caucasus line, . . . 85 67 15 Two estates of Mr. Tulinew and Poltoratzky, govern- ment of Tambow,.......92 87 5 Estate of Poltoratzky, government of Twer, . . 45 44 1 1273 1162 108 " N. B. Not a single death has occurred where Ho- moepathic treatment was resorted to in the incipient symptoms of the cholera. It was also remarked, that all the patients cured by Homcepathia, regained, in a very short time, their former health and strength ; while those who survived other treatments were left in a state of weakness which lasted for several months, and but too often terminated in another disease which proved fatal." These documents, with the Admiral's original work, " Glance at Homcepathia," and'his translation of Hart- laub's celebrated exposition of the same, have been for- warded to the author by the Admiral himself, three years ago, with a long autograph letter, amply explana- tive and convincingly instructive. With such vouchers before him, how can the author refuse his belief in Ho- mcepathia? But even this authority he can now dis- pense with, having been since convinced by the irresist- ible evidence of his own senses. There have occurred in this very city, and within his own personal knowledge, cases of Homoepathic cure, in serious chronic, and par- ticularly consumptive maladies, which would have made a convert of him in spite of the strongest resolution to the contrary. Let but the public spirit of inquiry go forth in good earnest, and he hesitates not to predict that there will be many converts besides himself, among those even who are desirous and predetermined not to be converted. Indeed, his task, if he do no more than give impulse to this spirit, will have been performed quite well enough to secure him against all disappointment on the score of ambition. Homcepathia revealed. 2i He will now state, as briefly and correctly as he can, first, the doctrines of Homcepathia; secondly, the princi- ples, as deduced from those doctrines; and lastly, the means of action, viz. the minute doses employed for the re- storation of health. Any deficiency or mistake, should he not be able to avoid them, will be easily made up and corrected by more experienced professional Homcepa- thists, without diminishing, in the least, his satisfaction of having presented to the public an object, not of mere curiosity, but of vital importance, exactly as he sees it; and although not a few of his positions are not to be found any where in the same form and terms, being, in truth, set down for the very purpose of supplying this omission; he is fully confident that, laying apart some minor inaccuracies, already referred to the proper source of correction, he has advanced nothing which is not warranted by a general comprehensive view of the whole, or not in accordance with the spirit of Homce- pathia, diffused throughout the " Organon," and thence drawn and concentrated into one prominent unit, more easily recognised, and admitting of a more satisfactory definition. DOCTKINES. Death is no disease, but the natural end of a natural beginning—the pre-ordained condition of life, placed from the first, far and for ever, beyond the ken anc^ cog- nizance of man. The same may be said of all those irre- mediable defects, mal-conformations, or deformities, pre- ceding the birth, which are only deviations from the or- dinary form of existence, but no obstacles Jo it, and, consequently, no diseases. Inasmuch, then, as the primi- tive law of life and death is an abstraction resting on its own immutable, ever-enduring foundation, inaccessible to the will or skill of man ; by so much the phenomenon of disease, having no such distinct foundation, must be, and can only take place, within the reach of humanity, where, like any other accident, it may be avoided or prevented, and, on the pledge of either, may also be re- moved. There can be, therefore, no such thing in reality as an incurable disease, as long as the affected organ is not destroyed, or the reparative force of nature crushed by supervening violence. Thus, then, the true art of healing—such as Homcepathia aspires to—the art of con- ducting a living being safe,.and without the agency of ma- lady, to the closing scene of old age—is not only attainable, but consonant to the designs of Providence, which grants i no favors for the purpose of thwarting them, and which, in entrusting the gift of life to its possessor, must have endowed him at the same time with powers quite ade- quate, if he knows how to use them, to preserve the trust until the end of its appointed term. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 23 Among the adequate powers granted by Providence to preserve this trust, there is none so obvious, efficient and easy of adoption as temperance in its general sense ; and no system in medicine can prosper that has not this special virtue for its principal basis, or does not ad- here to it with as much tenacity and firmness as is inse- parable from the very means of action employed by Ho- mcepathia, most safe and certain of success in their ex- alted state of unity and comminution, but in the same proportion liable to be interrupted by the least obtrusion of an uncalled-for medicinal agent, and therefore admit- ting of no deviation in the rigid observance of a whole- some, nourishing, but simple diet, free from all ingredi- ents of a higher quality than that of mere nutrition. All theories, leading to no useful practical issues—all attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to discover the undiscoverable, to unveil the ever-forbidden mystery of "vitality"—the hidden, invisible, immaterial primitive cause of health as well as disease, which, even if known, would in no degree facilitate the efforts and the obvious task of a physician, cannot be too soon renounced as pernicious chimeras, engendered only to perplex the genius of medicine, by interposing their deceitful glare and bewildering shadows between his eagle eye and the sun of true science. Equally forbidden and useless is the waste of time and labor in the pursuit of materiality where it does not exist__in the vain attempts to trace in the out-breakings of a disease its unsubstantial form, and the impenetra- ble secret of its action, without regarding the all-import- ant fact that vitality alone, when deranged, gives rise to the disease, and necessarily imparts to it its own impal- pable nature, imaged in the mirror of the mind, but ne- ver to be reached by the senses : and it follows, of course, that the remedy, to effect a successful cure, must 24 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. be alike impalpable (dynamic) as far as human art and means are capable of subjecting it to the process of sublimation. The physician's study must be solely and wholly con- fined to what he is permitted to know—the actual pre- sence of a disease indicated by unerring symptoms, and the choice of suitable remedies directed by a positive previous knowledge of their properties and effects. In the art of healing, that is in the application of re- medies, nothing must be left to conjecture, supposition, or mere .influence of opinion, but every thing must be done on the authority of facts experimentally proved and fixed upon an immoveable basis. Nature can scarcely minister to herself, without great risk and imminent danger; because the greater and the more successful are her struggles with the disease im- mediately pressing upon her, the more she is in the si- tuation of a besieged general, who, by drawing his forces to one particular point of defence, leaves the rest of the fortress exposed to fresh and more vigorous at- tacks, the more dangerous as they come from a quarter the least suspected. An exception seems to present it- self in acute diseases, where there is generally a crisis and cessation; but this appears to be the mere result of that extreme activity in the disease itself, which some- times brings it to maturity soon enough to give nature time to recover, and to resume the seat from which she was so forcibly displaced. Although nature, when left to herself, in presence of a long-lived disease, cannot repel her enemy with impu- nity, yet, when assisted in the right way, she alone is always the real conqueror; the remedies being only her auxiliaries—the conservators, not the constituent drops, of the mysterious fountain of life. The notion that medicines possess in themselves a HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 25 positive healing or curative virtue, powerful enough to exterminate disease, is the popular error of ages, as fatal to the progress of medical science as the fruitless, presumptuous search after vitality, " vis mediatrix," or by whatever name the inscrutable principle of life may have been designated ; and the mischief it has already caused can never be fully atoned even by its complete abjuration in favor of the no longer eludible truth, that to dislodge disease is the only way to overcome it; that there is no such thing as healing, except in surgical cases ; and that what is called cure is nothing rnore than expulsion. Whenever two analogous or simple diseases happen to meet together in the same body, they will, if their force be equal, either disappear by neutralizing each other, or terminate in a third new one produced by their combination ; and, if unequal, the weaker will be absorbed by the stronger. No local malady is admitted into the creed of Homce- pathia ; because all apparently local morbid indications, excepting always surgical cases of external violence, are only symptoms of a cause acting internally, and to be treated as such. Remove the cause, and the symp- toms disappear at once. This, too, is the reason why Homcepathia forbids the use of local remedies—unne- cessary, because they do not reach the source of mis- chief; treacherous, because under a semblance of relief they destroy those visible signs of disease which are the best guides to a correct judgment of its nature, state and progress; and dangerous—the most dangerous when they seem most successful—because the cure they are supposed to have effected is nothing better than a forcible deposit, within the centre of the animal system, of all those seeds of future diseases, which nature was 4 26 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. engaged, and, but for this ill-judged interference, would have, with proper aid, succeeded in throwing out. Ex- ternal use of sulphur, for the diseases of the skin, has laid many a victim in the premature grave ; yet there is scarcely any thing that will cure those same diseases with more expedition and safety than this very sub- stance internally given. Bleeding, blistering, purging, and vomiting, as remedies, are likewise prohibited ; be- cause they partake of the character of local applica- tions, and either prostrate nature when she has most need of all her strength, or distract her active vigilance by multiplied and misplaced irritations, or else divert her conservative forces by lateral attacks from the post of danger, and thus enable the enemy to enter the breach unmolested. As in a well-going clock, where the mechanism is in perfect order, the least change, produced by an unguard- ed touch, is a change for the worse; and as disease, in all cases, is nothing else than a disturbance, more or less, of the internal mechanism, that is, the healthy (normal) condition of the body—it follows, of course, that medicine, introduced into a healthy body, being not an article of food, but a potential substance, must al- ways be the immediate cause of such disturbance; and that consequently its operation, while it lasts, is a posi- tive disease artificially produced, and, in this alone, dif- fering from the natural, that it is a poison within our control, while the latter obtrudes itself without our leave and knowledge. Natural or primary diseases, although often obstinate and fatal, and although their causes are beyond our knowledge and control, are, nevertheless, since so many escape them, less certain, uniform, and regular in their approach or aggression, than the artificial or secondary, produced by medicine, invariable in its effect, and, for HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 21 this very reason, subjected to our command, so that it may be protracted or shortened, as we may choose to continue or suspend its action : hence it is both our ad- vantage and duty to encounter the natural uncontrollable by the artificial controllable, and not to withdraw the lat- ter until it has matured or absorbed the other, and thus afforded a respite to nature sufficient to enable her to expel the invader. In order that the natural disease may be matured or absorbed by the artificial, and thus expelled altogether, the latter must be of proportionate strength,* and cor- responding in sympathy, for which purpose there must be a previous thorough conviction of the specific virtue of the medicine selected for the occasion. As it would be an obvious error to argue in favor of any change in the above-mentioned well regulated clock, on the ground that a change is necessary in its deranged state; so all conclusions, as to the genuine invariable quality of any particular medicine, would be equally unsafe and erroneous, if predicated only on its secon- dary benignant influence in the presence of another pri- mary disease—conclusions which, in spite of their anti- quity, are not more sound than would be an attempt to define the element of fire exclusively from the comfort it affords : it is evident, therefore, that the real specific virtue of a medicine must be tried, judged, and identi- fied by its effects a priori, not a posteriori—by its ag- gressive, (pathogenie,) not relieving (therapeutic) force ; in the same way as the true nature of fire is recognised by its destructive, not soothing power; not as a slave in * It must be somewhat stronger, otherwise it acts only as a preven- tive ; thus, the vaccine prevents, not cures, the small-pox, because the latter is the stronger of the two. 28 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. our service, but as the master, in the full possession and free exercise of his independent powers. A previous thorough knowledge of remedial forces, in their primary state of aggression, as they affect a healthy body, not as they relieve its sufferings, is clearly unat- tainable under the ordinary compound practice ; be- cause, in a mixed dose it is impossible, in case of suc- cess, to ascertain which of the medicines in particular has produced that success, or what are the respective aggressive as well as curative virtues of each, of more than one, or of all of them in combination ; and be- cause such practice presupposes a distinct individual action of each ingredient in the mixture, contrary to the established fact that chemical union, unavoidable in this instance, of various substances, whether analogous or dissimilar, always produces a new substance entirely different from every such substance in its state of sepa- ration : yet as this knowledge is absolutely indispensable, forming as it does the very foundation of safe practice, there exists a manifest necessity for resorting to the only means by which such knowledge can be obtained— means so simple and obvious as to excite no less regret than astonishment at their having been so long overlook- ed—the administering of never more than one remedy at a time, the contrary course being no better than the throw- ing of a full-charged bomb into the stomach, in hopes of a chance that some of the ingredients may hit the dis- ease, no matter how they may shatter the whole frame in the explosion. The essential aggressive remedial forces being ascer- tained, and the agents for producing artificial diseases being thus secured, it becomes the paramount duty, not only to find out and to estimate with precision the rela- tive character of the artificial to the natural diseases which they have to combat, but to fix also on the best HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 29 and safest of the only three modes by which such agents can be introduced, and which are, Allopathia, (mixed or remote suffering,) the present universally adopted practice ; Enantiopathia or Antipathia, (contra suf- fering,) connected with the preceding; and Homcepa- thia, (similar suffering,) a new comer, standing alone, but in opposition to both. Allopathia, with its arbi- trary uncertain mixed doses, promises nothing better than some chance-creation of a disease, independent in itself, an additional unwelcome intruder, who will either take and hold more tenaciously the place of the one al- ready on the premises, or commence and carry on de- predations in another quarter on his own account, until there are no more spoils left for either. Enantiopathia, whose doses are likewise mixed, may produce some- thing like a palliation, but no more, unless it be the dan- ger ever lurking in the rear of contending forces—vic- tory on either side leaving deep traces behind. If fire overcomes water, the conflagration rages with redoubled force; if water proves the victor, there is ruin in the in- undation. Homcepathia administers the pure unalloyed medicine by itself, whose aggressive force produces a disease in all respects like the one to be removed; and it would be difficult to disprove that she is on the right path ; for whoever has seen forests and prairies on fire, knows well that not only one fire is best extinguished by another,* but, what is of the first consequence in the practice of medicine, this extinction of each other, di- vested of all posthumous mischief, is effected in less time than could be achieved by the overwhelming masses of a Niagara : nor can the safety of this aston- ishing operation be sufficiently appreciated without con- * The common expression, " the sun puts out the fire," implies a fact strictly Homoepathic. 30 homcepathia revealed. trasting it with the peril averted—the peril of the anta- gonist-force acting with the same instantaneous rapidity, too fearfully disproportionate to be invoked against a local evil: and this is precisely what takes place, more or less, both in Allopathia and Enantiopathia, where, it is ten to one, as has been said already, the friend will prove a more troublesome and pertinacious guest than the foe he was invited to assist in driving away. It is evident, therefore, that to command and secure the ser- vices of this friend, with as much advantage as expedi- tion—to put it out of his power to do harm, and compel him to do good—is the enviable privilege of Homoepathia ; and the most that her adversaries can do is to afford a temporary alleviation, which is usually followed by the reaction and increased irritation of the original disease. It being conceded, that in a. healthy body mercury pro- duces a syphilis ; sulphur cutaneous diseases; cinchona an ague ; ipecacuanna vomiting ; rhubarb a diarrhoea; vaccination a small-pox; and it being a well-known fact that the syphilis is removed by mercury; cutaneous dis- eases by sulphur; the ague by cinchona; vomiting by ipecacuanna; and the small-pox prevented by vaccina- tion ; not to mention other similar cases ; one cannot but wonder how the pregnant truth—that all such least un- certain cures are in the strictest sense Homoepathic— could have so long escaped the notice of physicians, who came quite within its reach when they classed the remedies themselves under the head of specifics, and who actually lay their fingers upon it every time they prescribe ipecacuanna, for instance, as a tonic in small and as a vomitive in large doses ! If, therefore, this truth is now disinterred from the lumber of useless learning; if it be no longer questionable that all reme- dies produce diseases in the healthy, and cure such as HOMCEPATHIA revealed, 31 are analogous to them in the morbid state of the body; and that every remedy is a specific against a disease whose symptoms correspond with its own; if, by ex- tending the specific principle to the entire materia medica, every part of the noble fabric has been strengthened, so as to consolidate the whole, the merit of the achieve- ment is due to Homcepathia ; and by this alone, had she done nothing more, she has acquired a just and last- ing claim to universal respect and the gratitude of mankind. As true quackery consists either in the attempt to im- pose a remedy or remedies, destitute of the virtues as- cribed to them, or in the higher and still more absurd pretensions to cure all kinds of maladies by one secret specific ; so every system in medicine which has a spe- cific basis for its foundation, a general uniformly preferred rule of action, a pre-conceived notion, a pre-established prin- ciple to which the treatment of diseases must be accom- modated—and there is scarcely one of them, from the Sangradian to the Brunonian, that does not in some mea- sure partake of this character—must be more or less a modification of quackery, with this only difference against the patient, that it is almost irresponsible, endowed with impunity, and empowered to dispose of human life at pleasure. Homcepathia, therefore, if a system at all, is the only one untainted with quackery, inasmuch as it has no other basis to stand upon but the destruction of quackery, privileged as well as tolerated, by her rejection of all specific systems whatsoever. The organism of life, as far as its phenomena pre- sent themselves to our observation—such for example as the growth of grass quickened by the scythe, of hair by the razor, or of young shoots by the pruning knife, is unquestionably endowed with that spring-like elasticity which recoils upon itself from the blow, and with in- 32 homcepathia revealed. creasing vigor returns to repair the injury done ; and it is here that we find an additional reason, and a satisfac- tory explanation of the fact, that natural or primary dis- eases are removed by such only artificial or secondary as are the nearest assimilated in their character and symptoms : for here the slighest touch (any blow would be too much) bearing directly on the part already af- fected, provokes it into action, and excites its recoiling as well as repelling energy to a point, at which both diseases, or rather two in one, the natural being matured or absorbed by the artificial, give way and disappear, as soon as the stimulating cause in the form of medicine is withdrawn ; and it is quite clear that this result can- not be produced either by the Allopathic or Antipathic processes, because in either the touch would be a blow, and the blow itself would fall on some other part of the spring, where, if too light, it would not be felt, if strong enough, or too strong, would only press too much in the wrong place, and weaken the whole, so as to frustrate all efforts to effect a cure; and if now and then have appeared some favorable exceptions, they were owing either to the reaction of the vital spring in spite of re- medies, or to the unsuspected, chance-directed applica- tion of specific Homoepathic principles. Thus, then, the all-important fact, " the like cure the like," espied but not pursued by several eminent physicians, and prac- tised, without being known, by the ignorant peasant, whenever he rubs the frost-bitten- part with snow, holds the burnt finger to the fire, or thaws frozen provisions in cold water, is at length triumphantly established by Ho- mcepathia ; and full well has she won the right to wear on her shield the motto of " similia similibus curantur." PRINCIPLES. The foregoing doctrines, comprising, as it is believed, the whole theory of Homoepathia, naturally resolve themselves into certain fixed principles, considered as axioms, which serve as guides and rules in practice, and which may be summed up as follows : Human skill fails in the presence of death, not be- cause this skill is powerless against diseases but be- cause death is no disease. Constitutional deformities admit of no cure, not as diseases, but as simple deviations from the ordinary course of nature, not incompatible with health. To keep off death until the natural termination of old age is the requisite perfection of the healing art. No disease is incurable as long as the organ affected is not destroyed, and there is no prostration of vital powers. The power of curing all diseases that are really such, is not only attainable, but implied in the very gift of life. Medicine, the curing power, can only be sustained by Temperance, the health-preserving power. The best of curative systems is that which, from its very nature, stands on the exclusive basis of tempe- rance, and of necessity can have no other. The principle of vitality is forbidden to our know-. ledge, and useless if known. Vitality is the source of that elastic, recoiling and re- 5 34 HOMCEPATHIA revealed. acting power, with which the animal organism is so per- ceptibly endowed. Vitality, whenever deranged, becomes the source of disease. Disease, the effect of deranged vitality, partakes of the impalpable nature of the cause. The impalpable can only be cured by the impalpable. Disease, as it reveals itself by its symptoms, is the sole legitimate object of the physician's study. Absolute certainty, as regards the nature and effects of remedies, is the only principle on which they are to be administered. Nature, unassisted, is incapable of self-cure otherwise than at the risk of exposure to new maladies, where dis- eases do not die of themselves. Nature, assisted, is the sole agent that effects the cure. Nature requires no other aid than what is necessary to give her time to profit by the reaction of that mysterious, elastic organism of life, over which she presides alone. Medicines have no healing or curative power in them- selves, being mere auxiliaries in the cause of health. There is no such thing as local malady, disconnected from surgical cases. Cure is merely an expulsion of disease. Two or more similar diseases cannot co-exist in the same body, one being destroyed by the other, or a third one produced by a combination of both. The stronger of the co-existent diseases, whether it be artificial or natural, will absorb the weaker. The cause alone, remote or immediate, as far as it can be traced, not the symptoms, is the true object of medical treatment. Disease is a disturbance of the healthy functions of the body. Every medicine disturbs the ordinary healthy func- tions, and consequently produces a disease. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 35 Poison is the cause, and disease the form, of this dis- turbance ; consequently every medicine is a poison or no medicine at all. Artificial diseases, caused by medicine, must be of requisite strength, and always analogous to the natural, which are to be removed. Natural diseases are less certain and uniform in their aggression and operation than the artificial, and thence advantageously controlled by the latter. Aggressive, not curative quality, is the only index of a remedial power. The true index of a remedial power can only be ob- tained from the use of one medicine at a time. All true remedies are specifics. Every remedy is specific against a disease which re- sembles the one produced by itself. Mixed or compound doses are absolutely inadmissible. Bleeding, blistering, purging and vomiting, as reme- dies, are worse than useless, and not to be employed. Disease, when at its height or crisis, is brought to full maturity by its own over-action, while passive nature has strength enough to withstand the shock. Disease cannot survive its own maturity, and for that reason is made to reach this point, by slight aggravation and absorption, before it has destroyed the organism of life. Timely acceleration of disease to maturity is the true and the only mode of effecting a cure. The timely acceleration can be performed in no other way, than by an union and co-operation of the artificial disease with the natural. All remedies produce diseases in the healthy and cure them in the morbid state of the body. All diseases, without exception, are cured, that is, expelled on the great principle, involving all others, " the like cure the like," or similia similibus curantur. • THE MEANS OF ACTION, OR DOSES. The artificial or secondary disease produced by me- dicine, being always such as to bear directly upon the organ affected by the natural or primary disease which is to be removed ; and the sensibility of this particular organ being consequently more excitable than that of any other, it was soon found that scarcely any touch could be applied here with sufficient delicacy and cau- tion : and hence the origin and explanation of those mi- nute Homoepathic doses, which, necessarily regulated by imperceptible augmentations of morbid ascendancy on one hand, and the requisite corresponding diminu- tions of pressure on the other, have been gradually atte- nuated almost beyond the reach of human calculation. The tyrant, defying all open attacks, has been made to yield to that soft, insinuating, sympathetic force, opera- tive in proportion to its sublimation, which penetrates in an instant to his strongest hold, lulls him asleep, and at the physician's command, delivers him up a fettered, harmless captive. That the decillionth part of a grain, be the medicine what it may, should have the power to expel a formida- ble disease, is certainly an operation at once wonderful and incomprehensible ; yet, that it is actually perform- ed, no better guarantee can be produced than Homce- pathia herself, who, as has been shown already, wastes t HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 37 no time upon mysteries—watches and studies facts alone, and does nothing at hazard. Moreover, as the fundamental principles and doctrines on which she has built her edifice, can be in nowise impaired by any im- perfection imputed to her doses, which are only her working tools ; and as both policy and convenience would dictate to her the employment of large ordinary doses, as the best possible mode of shutting up the prin- cipal armory from which her opponents draw their wea- pons of offence against her, it is to be presumed that nothing short of conviction could have induced her to adopt and persevere in the opposite course ; and this is really the case. Experience has soon taught her, that, although large ordinary doses produce, in a healthy body, their charac- teristic diseases, fully developed and identified ; yet that they do not only fail, when brought to act in their secondary curative capacity against similar diseases pre-occupying the ground to be contested ; but that the failure, paradoxical as it may seem, is owing entirely to their being both too strong and too weak—too strong, when they press too much upon the affected organ, and aggravate the disease beyond the point required; and too weak, when the irritation thus produced communi- cates itself too soon to the other parts of the organism, whereby the whole is ejected by the alimentary canal or otherwise, before it had time to perform its office as to the disease present, whatever mischief it may have done in other respects ; and this is a sufficient solution of the apparent difficulty—much derided and insisted upon by the adverse party—of reconciling the extreme lightness with the signal potency of Homoepathic doses. There can be no doubt that this difficulty was se- rious, and must have appeared at one time insurmount- able ; but Homcepathia, or rather he whose child and 38 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. representative she is, and who must be understood whenever her name is mentioned, overcame it by one of those inspirations which belong to genius alone. She be- thought herself of trituration in solids, and agitation in fluids, and the wonder was done! The remedial es- sence, thus disengaged from gross and inert matter- subtle, quick, elastic, tenacious, and almost allied to vi- tality, sprung at once to the seat of disease, breathed gently but effectually upon the wound, fastened upon the wounder, and held him passive, spell-bound, till the concentrated reacting energy of the organism has struck him in its turn, and hurled him from the citadel of health ! Such is the untangible, or, as it is technically termed, dynamic power of these minute doses ! It seems not only infinitely ductile, but indestructible ; since the point at which it ceases to act has not yet been reached, although two celebrated Homoepathists, Hartman of Germany, and Korsakoef of Russia, have pushed the process of attenuation to the utmost stretch of human calculation. The foregoing exposition may well seem fanciful, since any attempt to obtain what is inexplicable must needs wear that aspect; yet it is certain, that this mys- terious power is reflected in many images which nature daily presents to our contemplation. The spider's ex- quisite and almost endless fibre, compressed within the globule of a grain, yet strong enough to hold up his own weight, with all his weaving stores, and the suspended prey besides ; the stroke of the serpent's fang that de- stroys life ; the drop of Prussic acid, that prostrates an elephant; the scarcely visible speck of morbid matter on the lancet's point, that conveys disease and death it- self into our veins; the pestilential miasm, that viewless sweeps along, and strews the earth with the unmourned unburied dead; the first perceptible ray of the sun HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 39 that strikes the earth with the crushing velocity of one hundred million miles in eight minutes, and yet is so at- tenuated as to be scarcely felt; the steam that is rarified even to freezing, yet still rising in strength ; the galvanic spark that melts platina, and gives the shock to a thou- sand beings at once; the electric flash that splits the rocks; the magnetic spell that controls the obedient needle; the baleful light that blasts the stout but care- less sleeper beneath the Equatorial moon; the torpedo, that at a touch, paralizes the arm of the hardy fisher- man ; the boundless diffusion of odor ; the fainting pro- duced by the presence of a flower; the smell by which one detects the unseen object of his antipathy ; the scent by which the dog traces his absent and far-distant mas- ter ; the instinctive sight, that, from a distant, unfamiliar region, guides the carrier-pigeon straight to his home; the strange but exact presension of winds, rains, and all atmospheric changes, which distinguishes several ani- mals, and occasionally man himself; the unknown, but well authenticated influence upon the nerves of stone and metal amulets worn about the body; the sudden, unperceived, but often certain blow of death, that comes from terror, grief, and even joy itself; and, lastly, the marvel of animal magnetism vouched for by the most respectable medical authorities: are so many manifes- tations, exemplifications, and evidences of the active, penetrating element of imponderous Homoepathic doses,. But the most striking illustration, on account of its close analogy and distinctness, is the well known ducti- lity of gold, one grain of which, as seems to have been demonstrated by Reaumer, can be expanded into a leaf, impervious to light and water, yet large enough to cover a house ! The leaf being a solid body, re- duced to its minutest particles by trituration, will thus be found, with the aid of a microscope, to be actu- 40 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. ally and palpably present in the highest Homoepa- thic dose of this metal. Moreover, who doubts, that not atoms, but organized living beings, can be dis- covered in each millionth part of a drop of water ? Who disputes the mathematical position that an entity can never pass into non-entity ; that a something cannot be re- duced to nothing, and that matter, at the extremist point of divisibility, still leaves some remnant behind ? Who, because unable to realize, will deny the possibility so indispensable to the perfection of the laws of equilibri- um, of balancing a huge rock so that the additional weight of a single fly will overturn it ? Belief, then, is not always credulity, nor scepticism a mark of wisdom. The most active imagination would try in vain to mea- sure that minimum portion of a drop which first insinuates itself into the heart of a solid mass to be decomposed by water ; yet, that such is the commencement of the work of decomposition, no rational philosophy will per- mit itself to question. It would be scarcely less difficult to fix the size or weight of a spark struck from the flint; yet, of what mighty mischief is it the source and cause, we have the painful confirmation in cities laid in ashes, and millions of lives suddenly and prematurely de- stroyed. It is a self-evident truth, that constituents cannot im- part to their integer any quality not possessed originally in themselves. If atoms, therefore, exert so much power in combination, which, by the by, is all we know of them besides the name, by what crooked ways of a logic, erected upon our own ignorance, can we conduct the mind to the gratuitous conclusion that thev are power- less when separated from each other ? Should not sound reasoning lead us rather to the opposite conclusion, that power is inherent in them, and that, in proportion as it retrogrades towards the primitive state of unity, it be- HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 41 comes certainly less ponderous, overwhelming, and irre- sistible—but for this very reason, more elastic, insinu- ating, and operative, even as the primary fibres, when detached from the main artificial or natural body, gain in fineness what they lose in bulk, or as the keen point of a small sword penetrates far deeper than the axe, and by its very lightness becomes more effective ? If this be not so, what is there in a slight touch, or a mo- mentary breath, that conveys the plague from one per- son to another? What is it but a transitive impalpa- ble atom, evolved from the infectious stuff in a high state of fermentation, diffusion, and exhalation? That such is really the case, and that the principle adopted in this instance is the true one, acted upon and thereby sanctioned by Nature, the following, as presented by herself, is a conclusive evidence : The genuine virus of Hydrophobia, which, according to Dr. Marochetti,* is concentrated in one or more pus- tules under the tongue, of the size of a pin's head, has not yet, as far as is known, been extracted, and added to the materia medica, and consequently has never yet been detected, seen or exposed to practical investiga- tion ; and to identify it, as has been done, with the sa- liva of a rabid animal, is to take refuge in a desperate conjecture. What then is this saliva, the well known medium of infection ? It is the constant, distinguishing sign, more or less obtrusive, of the convulsive agitation of the nerves, and, of course, most fearful and unsightly, when the nerves are acted upon with concentrated viru- lence by the most potent of diseases. That it is to a cer- * Vide the " Letter on Hydrophobia," published in the Courier and Enquirer of August 6th, 1836, where Dr. Marochetti's account of the Ukranian method of treating Hydrophobia is given in detail. 6 42 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. tain degree impregnated with poison there can be no question ; but that there is any particular affinity or re- ciprocal attraction in the case, is, to say the least, very doubtful. To no pre-eminence of malignity in itself, but solely to its proximity and immediate connection with the chief instrument of execution, the tooth, it is obvi- ously indebted for the equivocal distinction of being the chosen favorite vehicle of the fell destroyer. Its capacity to receive and to propagate the virus may increase with the emission of its own quantity, rising with the excited action of the glands; but whatever it thus contains can only be a portion of that extreme dilution which has reached every part of the frame, and probably render- ed all other secretions, if infused into a wound, equally fatal. In short, the saliva, is truly, distinctly, in every respect, and in the strictest sense, a Homoepathic pre- paration elaborated in the pharmacy of nature! Divide it as you please, and into as many parts as possible, it will give but so many Homoepathic doses in a state of comminution to which Homcepathia herself is compara- tively a stranger. How infinite must needs be their at- tenuation, the most resolute effort of conjecture is baffled by the astounding fact, that even of the minute portion conveyed by the tooth, much is lost by the friction be- fore reaching the wound, although the virus, so incon- ceivably diluted when it first entered the system, was itself an atom, emanating through a series of the like intermediate atoms and dilutions, from that original source, which is itself a mystery not yet solved and not likely to be so. Well! To unbelievers, who form the great majority of the multitude, the idea of such attenu- ation will probably be quite acceptable as a subject of merriment and derision; if so, are they willing and ready to prove their sincerity ? Will they dare the test ? Will the bravest ot them bare his arm to the lancet homcEpathta revealed. 43 dipped in this infinite dilution ? No. They know better. They know that the least absorption of the least portion that can sustain itself on the invisible point, will raise a burning lava in their veins, extinguished but with life. Their stoutest, lion-hearted men will shrink with terror from the perilous trial. Illustrations, however, are no longer needed. These minute doses are now questioned only by the uninform- ed, or such as are loth to lose so favorite a point of at- tack. Their potency has been fully acknowledged by all those who have tried them, even when there was no predisposition to be convinced. Dr. Duringe, one of the ablest argumentative opponents of Homcepathia, not only admits this potency in its full extent, and cites cases in which he has proved it himself, but he affirms farther, that there are few men strong enough to bear one whole grain, or even half a grain of a Homoepathic dose. "Un malade ne doit prendre ni plus ni moins que la dose prescrite, et il faut remarquer qu'il n'existe que tres peu d'individus assez robustes pour supporter la dose d'un grain, ou meme d\me demi-grain."* * Vide page 73. L'Homcepathy, nouveau system en medicine, sea advantages et ses dangers, par le Dr. Duringe, membre de l'Universite de Goettung, & cet.—For cases and proofs, vide ibidem, pages 78, 99, 113 and 134. Dr. Duringe goes still farther, and actually challenges the unbeliev- ers to try the Hydrophobic virus in the manner proposed ; so that, next to Hahnemann himself, and Admiral Mordvinow, Homoepathy is in- debted to this very professed, but at times liberal opponent, for some of the most convincing illustrations presented now to the reader, of the po- tency of Homoepathic doses. If, notwithstanding all these authorities, a seeing and believing proof, one nearer at hand should still be insisted upon, it is furnished in a re- cent experiment made upon himself by Dr. Elliot, the distinguished oculist of this city, who rejected all belief in minute Homoepathic doses Common charcoal, for the very reason that it is a well known 44 'homcepathia revealed. It would be unjust to omit here other essential advan- tages which Homcepathia derives from her doses, and which cannot be realized by any other known system whatever. First, the extreme smallness of the dose per- mits its being so completely disguised, and made pala- table, that the most feeble, delicate and irritated stomach retains it, while the most wayward child, and even the infant at the breast, wall swallow it with avidity; se- condly, the strength of the dose, in chronic diseases,* being always in the inverse ratio of the strength of the disease, the greater the danger to be encountered, the less chance is there of doing harm by any error in the choice of medicine, which, in such case, has no effect at all; thirdly, the wrong medicine being always recogniz- ed by its want of effect, and not by its injury, it may be changed with perfect safety to the patient until the right one is found and the relief obtained; and, fourthly, all harmless substance, taken with impunity at discretion, was selected for the trial, and given him in pills of the 4th degree of comminution, that is, each pill containing one X millionth part of a grain of charcoal, three of them to be taken every day, and the whole in the course of six !! Great indeed was his astonishment, when in spite of his resolu- tion to go on, he found himself compelled to stop on the fourth day; for by this time the overpowering effect of what he had already taken was quite sufficient, and painfully so, to convince him of the extreme danger of advancing farther. In short, he was perfectly satisfied, and so would be any one who is not a wilful rebel against the paramount principle, that condemnation should follow, not precede the trial. It is to be hoped that this experiment, stated with the Doctor's permission, will, in this city at least, set at rest the question of Homoepathic doses. * In violent acute diseases, where prompt action is indispensable, the dose may be of any allowable strength, for then it is never given at once, but only in minute portions or spoonfulls, until the desired effect is produced, when it is immediately stopped, all danger of aggravation averted, and the patient, with undiminished precaution, conducted to a state of convalescence, which is always the state of health under Ho- moepathic ministration. homcepathia revealed. 45 irritating, tormenting, external applications or auxiliary remedies being dispensed with, the patient is relieved of all those extraneous sufferings, which, in addition to the pains of disease, are generally inflicted by the system now in vogue and general practice : so that to the main salutary efficacy of these doses must be superadded the extreme facility in administering them—the absolute impos- sibility of doing harm by mistake-;—the auspicious certainty of applying at last the proper remedy, and a total exemp- tion of the patient from all accessory trouble, personal inconvenience and needless.torture. This is not all. The strict exclusion of all medicinal substances capable of interrupting the effects of doses so extremely delicate, such particularly as alcohol in all its modifications, required by Homoepathic treatment, and cheerfully submitted to by the patient in his natural anxiety for health, brings on insensibly a change of habit for the better, which, once acquired, is apt to be retained forever after, as has often been the case with habitual drunkards and tobacco consumers ; so that Homcepathia goes hand in hand with temperance, and is a host with- in herself, having the power to achieve more in this good cause in one month than can be done by a tempe- rance society in a whole year, or by all the societies to- gether in a given period of time. Surely a system, pos- sessed of such accumulated and highly important ad- vantages over all others, deserves at least to be well un- derstood before it is rejected ! As to the precise manner in which these diminutive atomic doses operate upon the animal system, Homoepa- thists themselves do not even pretend to be acquainted with it. They see the effect, and they require no more. With the worthy author* of the "Glance at Homoe- * Mordvinow. 46 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. pathia." I consider the operation in question as that of "Inoculation;" but inoculation, however familiar in name, is itself a mystery, and this is all that will ever be known of it by the wisest of men. We must needs be content with our ignorance in this respect, as we are with our excellent old planet—the limits of both being impassable. NOTE Omitted accidentally in the first edition. In one of the hospitals of the Ukraine, some eighteen years since, the precise date has escaped my recollection, there were no less than twenty persons exposed at one time and from the same cause to Hydro- phobia ; and of these, the choiee of treatment being left to their option, six, bitten last, escaped the infection, three died under the care of the hospital surgeon, and the rest recovered in the hands of a reputed pea- sant leech ; that is, the fearful malady, incurable when once manifested, in one instance broke out in spite of all the usual surgical precautions, and in the other was prevented by the genista and pustule method practised by the peasantry, as described by Marocheti. The accident which led to this took place on a fine summer day, when a large isolat- ed hall, containing several bed-ridden patients, was thrown open for the benefit of fresh air, and a rabid wolf, rushing in, bit twenty of them before he could be despatched, in various parts of the body, protected only by a single sheet covering suitable to the season. All idea of a fresh supply of virulent matter being precluded by the rapid succession of bites, the astounding fact is thus established, that the invisible fatal atom on a tooth's point was sufficient to inoculate fourteen persons, and, although it had each time to pass through coarse linen, was not wiped off and dislodged till the fifteenth application! !! What comment on the stultified perverseness that presumes to scoff at Homoepathic dilu- tions, so infinitely surpassed by the process of Nature '. The above was communicated to me in 1828, while on my visit to the Ukraine, by the Surgeon himself, one of my own two brothers. THE AUTHOR. PSORA. Psora, although intimately connected with Homce- pathia, and directly emanating from it, is, nevertheless, a subsequent discovery of Hahnemann's, distinct in it- self. He had observed, for some time, that chronic dis- eases in particular often resisted the salutary effect of well approved, and, in every respect, well chosen Ho- moepathic medicines, which in ordinary circumstances, where similar diseases were in their primary state, in- dependent of other causes, acted with their uniform success, and with all the certainty of specifics. To a mind so daring, indefatigable, and exhaustless in re- sources, this obstacle, which would have sunk any other into utter despair, was but an additional spur to action ; and accordingly, after years of intense study, his sus- picion was directed to the probable existence of some remote original cause, itself invisible, but producing from time to time, whenever roused into action, various chronic diseases, which, though seemingly distinct, are, in reality, its own extended modifications, exhibited un- der different forms and aspects. The suspicion being once excited, the trail was soon found and followed up with tenacious sagacity, until the labyrinth of the yet hidden mysteries of nature was still farther explored, and the perseverance of search rewarded by the discov- ery of three individual principles, in a certain sense per- manent, some of which are present in most, if not all constitutions—sometimes insinuating themselves from 48 HOMCEPATHIA revealed. without, and sometimes internally transmitted from ge- neration to generation, and often dormant, quiescent, and in the absence of particular excitement, undetected, and not even suspected during the whole term of life. These are Sycosis, Syphilis, and Psora. The last is the only one now under consideration ; for, besides being especially denounced as the representative of the other two, its paramount importance is attested by Hahne- mann himself, who imputes to it eight-tenths of all the obstinate chronic diseases with which poor humanity is afflicted. He has detected its secret operation in many instances, and traced it back to the primitive ages. He explains it to be the itch principle, gives it the technical name of Psora, and proves its identity with the ancient leprosy, which, although less apparent in our days, has never yet ceased to exist. He maintains that not only the pervading presence of this morbific element is to be feared and suspected, where remedies fail of effect, but that the very progress of civilization, furnishing whole communities with better means for its apparent subjuga- tion, has placed the succeeding generations more and more at its mercy. As long as nature can drive this enemy to the outer walls, and keep there his bannered forces, so long the struggle may be continued with com- parative safety to the seat of life ; but the moment any additional, well-intentioned, but mistaken influence com- pels these forces to re-enter, the struggle, which appears suspended, is in reality given up in favor of the invader; and the seeming cessation is nothing else than the inter- val afforded him to plot new and more serious ao-^res- sions, to concoct and concentrate his multifarious poi- sons, and to diffuse them, now that there is no outlet to the surface, through all the interior paths and inmost re- cesses of the human frame. Thus the lacerated skin of the ancients, covered with HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 49 disgusting foulness, and irritated to torture, was a pro- tection to the vital power within ; while with us, the clean exterior, kept free of unsightly eruptions by im- proved artificial means, is a shelter for the malignant, deep-seated Polypus, whose arms, when extruded and lopped of their extremities, turn to self-reproduction, and set at nought all the power and resources of the healing art. The outward suffering of old was the price of inward security ; our apparent security, the pledge of internal disorder. Leprosy was then a polluting harpy, preying on all the visible decencies of social and private life ; now it is the ravenous Promethean vul- ture, chained to the heart, and feeding upon the entrails. Such is the doctrine of Psora ; and, that it is not without foundation, may be inferred from the success with which this miasm has been combatted by suitable remedies denominated anti-psoric, and forming a part of the same discovery, which otherwise would have been useless. It may be well supposed that Hahnemann was not likely to content himself with the abstract honor of solving a mystery, or of illustrating some theoretic point leading to no practical benefit. He drew forth an occult evil, not for the purpose of exhibiting it as a specimen of his skill and penetration, but in order to lay it bare to the paralizing touch of medicine, and he rested not until this object also was fully attained. The annunciation of this discovery was a signal for new attacks, more than ever fierce and determined; and Psora became the rallying point of all the inveterate en- emies, great and small, of Homcepathia. Dr. Duringe, otherwise a fair adversary, who has already been quoted, assails this new doctrine with unqualified denunciations and gratuitous assertions, with ridicule, and at the same time with bitterness, which impair all his former profes- sions and indications of liberality, justice and modera- 7 so HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. tion. He has persuaded himself this is the weakest and most vulnerable part of his great antagonist, and, with no charitable spirit, is determined to probe to the utmost the wound which he thinks he has inflicted. In his ima- gination he bestrides the noble sire of Homcepathia, all bridled and tamed to his purpose, and plies his spurs without mercy or a moment's relaxation. He forgets, however, that there is a trunk to sweep down, and a foot to crush even the mighty lion, seeking to plant him- self on the back of an elephant! How far the present aspirant has escaped the trunk and the foot in his fancied elevation, may be judged from what follows—not as a deviation from the primal resolution to adhere strictly to the office of interpreter, and avoid all discussion where facts should speak for themselves; but as an exception authorized and de- manded by the double call of justice, first to allow a witness, the professed opponent, who has already been summoned in favor of the cause, to give the rest of his testimony against it; and secondly, not to suffer objec- tions to derive any fictitious force, not possessed in themselves, from the previous comparatively liberal ad- missions and confessions. Moreover, the antagonist se- lected on the present occasion, is not only too respecta- ble, when compared with others, not to be entitled to an answer, which, as far as is known here, has not yet been given; but his arguments embrace every objection that can be plausibly urged against Homcepathia; and, therefore, a satisfactory reply to them is all that is ne- cessary to save her all farther trouble of defence, and to dispose at once of all her enemies and malignant de- tractors. DR. DURINGE'S OBJECTIONS. As far as it can be extracted and compressed into a few words, the unfavorable part of the deliberate judg- ment of Dr. Duringe, pronounced in a tone of decision, and asserted to be the result of personal experience and practice, is that Homcepathia, although fully entitled to be engrafted on the old stock as anew branch, never can, and never will realize her lofty pretensions, inasmuch as she falls short of Allopathia in effective power and fertility of resources ; degrades the dignity of intellect and science ; is wavering and fallible, unsatisfactory and unsafe ; limited in her operations ; based upon false assumptions ; supported by a denial of correct principles ; depending on contradictory caprices, and faithless to herself. Consequently, so far from being the true exclusive system, capable of uprooting and replacing all others, Homcepathia, overloaded as she is by the paternal hand, has no strength to sustain herself alone, and must soon pass away, like the phantom of Psora, with which she has been so unfortunately associated. ■ For the sake of conveniency, the arguments in sup- port of this judgment will be considered and answered in subdivisions ; and the author has to renew his former declaration, that, although for the reasons just mention- ed, he has allowed himself, in this only instance, to de- viate into a line of defence, "he does not hold himself responsible" for the temper of the weapons which Ho- 52 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. moepathia has placed in his hands, and left him no choice but to use them. ARGUMENT. Homcepathia falls short of Allopathia in effective power and fertility of resources; because the latter makes use of more decisive means, and, instead of being, like Ho- mcepathia, restricted to one mode of proceeding, ranges at large; employs without hesitation all known kinds of treatment, internally or externally, as may seem most eligible ; and has remedies at command to multiply the chances of cure, not only by their abundance, but, what is of the highest importance, by their infinite variety of combination. COMMENT. No one will dispute that Allopathia sticks at nothing, and has a summary process, her own par excellence,' of disposing of her patients ; but the question is not what kills, but what saves ; and the last, being the better pow- er, and the only one in requisition, reverses the decision in favor of Homcepathia, to which it belongs also par excellence. As to the comparative fertility of resources, the numerical part of which is greatly against Allo- pathia, the question again is not which has the most, but which employs the most—which is the^m on the road of certitude, which is the last on the path of discovery: a question of preference easily decided. The boasted advantage of various other modes of treat- ment, and of all those high-sounding expedients, which classified under the different heads of astringents, emol- lients, diaphoretics, and the like, form so cabalistical and imposing a nomenclature, might well be envied as insur- ing the pre-eminence claimed, were it really an advan- tage, and were it not that Homcepathia rejects it, not be- HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 53 cause she cannot reach it, but because she has found it, by repeated experience, to be a positive evil; and be- cause, preferring what is sure to what is doubtful, she contents herself with the choice of a method on which alone she can always rely for success. She has no need of palliatives, and accepts of none for the best possible reason, that she deals only in curatives—opium itself in her hands being compelled to cure, while the only ser- vices it performs for the old school are alleviation or death. The learned Doctor, more than once, in the course of his work, alludes with unqualified approbation to that unique elevated prerogative of Homcepathia, by which " she can do no harm :" therefore, as he admits at the same time and defends, to their full extent, the aggressive as well as curative potency of Homcepathic doses, tried and proved by his own practice, and depending altoge- ther on the use of one medicine at a time, not weakened or diverted by any accessory whatever; and as he ac- knowledges, moreover, the benefit of discoveries contri- buted by her to the general stock of medicine, to be such as ought to have contented her with the honor thus acquired, it is quite clear that he is the best possible witness against himself, and that the whole of the argu- ment, with the position it was intended to support, is completely and triumphantly refuted by himself. ARGUMENT. Homcepathia degrades the dignity of intellect and sci- ence; because she checks the higher aspirations of the mind, brings it down to the earth, when it fains to soar on the track of the mysterious spirit of Eternity, and plants it by the sick bed, to watch like the humble nurse, or to note like the plodding clerk, symptoms after symp- toms, always symptoms, and nothing but symptoms ; so 54 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. that a mere matter-of-fact proceeding is substituted for profound study, the rationale of medicine—that which requires the interposing and guiding agency of reason- subjected to the contracted dominion of the senses, and the noble science itself, divested of all its conceptive, imaginative, and speculative attributes, is reduced to a mere mechanical occupation. comment. If there be any point in pathology higher on the scale of professional study than these same toujours perdris symptoms, the discovery has yet to be made and point- ed out for the benefit of the uninformed. What is it that the sick require of a physician ? Is it a learned and elo- quent discourse on the nature of diseases in general, or is it the experienced eye that detects the special disease, and the no less experienced hand that applies the right remedy ? When the ship is ready for sea, it is not the astronomer, but the practical seaman that is wanted for a commander, and if both should be united in one person, so much the better; but, of the two apart, we listen to the first, and sail with the second. The child of genius and inspiration, Homcepathia, cannot, if she would, descend to a lower region, and in- hale a grosser atmosphere than what were assigned to her at her birth ; and the true dignity of science, identi- fied with herself, cannot be more effectually vindicated than by her refusing to recognise as such the dreaming alchymy, that, in the illusive search of the elixir of im- mortality, in the fruitless attempt to discover forbidden secrets, useless if discovered, has for so many centuries diverted a mass of human intelligence from the pursuit .of truth, wasted a world of mental labor, and produced that very retrograde, rather than that progressive state of medical science which it is her main object to advance, HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 55 and against the errors of which, so prejudicial to public health, her greatest efforts are particularly directed. So far from dispensing with the mind, Homcepathia taxes it with an intensity of application sufficient to have induc- ed her adversaries to accuse her of imposing upon the observer of her symptoms " a by no means sinecure of- fice," of requiring in general too much, and of being withal so dynamic and spiritualized in all her operations, •that the space of a whole life is not sufficient to produce a Homcepathist in the true sense, and that " whole ages must elapse" before her demands and prescriptions in this respect can be properly understood and reduced to practice! To comprehend the whole constructive force of this strangely inconsistent accusation, it is only necessary to know that it is drawn from the repeated assertions of the once more self-refuting witness, the learned Doctor himself! ! ! ARGUMENT. Homcepathia is wavering and fallible ; because hesita- tion is the unavoidable result of a confused crowd of symptoms, jostling and crossing each other in every di- rection, and of the extreme consequent perplexity in forming them into the requisite distinct images of disease and remedy, of a sufficient resemblance to indicate the proper treatment; and because one failure being the earnest of another, Homcepathia having failed before, particularly in chronic maladies, is pretty sure to fail again, notwithstanding that her new pretensions to infal- libility, are, like the former, urged with zeal and assur- ance, well calculated to impose and mislead. 56 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. COMMENT. In starting the objection to a confused crowd of symp- toms, with which it seems Allopathia does not allow her- self to be much incommoded, the erudite professor has added another item in refutation of his charge,* of intel- lectual degradation; the difficulty, however, is frankly acknowledged, with the reservation that it is not insu- perable. As to infallibility, it is no where assumed, and exists only in his own gratuitous inference. His reason-* ing, to be just, ought to be reversed ; and then the right conclusion will be, that the avowal of a failure, and subsequent precautions, are the best possible guaranty against its recurrence. The works of man, like himself, must necessarily be imperfect; and where so much has been done by one individual yet living, the wonder is, not that there should be failures, but that these failures should be so few as to become mere exceptions to the general rule—exceptions which, so far as infallibility it- self is only relative or comparative, tend rather to esta- blish than to disprove it. The simple truth is, that the learned professor, in op- position to his own memory and discretion, has per- mitted, in this instance, his overweening zeal to blind him to the peculiar advantages of Homcepathia, pos- sessed by her alone, which are sufficient at all times to guard her against the danger of wavering, and failing in consequence. With her phalanx of 200 specifics, so well trained, that if they sometimes miss the enemy, they never hit the friend; with power to raise antidotes at will, alert in need, and scrupulous in executing her com- mands ; no error in the choice of medicine can check her course, or scare her from her duty. Her vigilance detects it; her substitutes replace it; her patient feels it not; so that, what in other hands works out such fear- ful peril, performs in hers the office of a faithful guide. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 57 Thus, step by step, inverting the progress of the hazard, she reaches the true point of action, where decision, promptitude, and security, attest her finished task, while her adversaries rejoice yet in the dream of her wavering and fallibility. Suppose, by way of illustration, that two persons, at- tacked with a sudden violent headache, have sent, one for a Homoepathic, and the other for an Allopathic phy- sician, and that both these gentlemen, on their arrival, mistaking alike the serious nature of the malady, have administered their remedies accordingly. The Homoe- pathist, who well knows the effect he intended, waits for its appearance, as in duty bound. It comes not, or it comes in a different aspect. His suspicions are imme- diately excited. New symptoms are anxiously watched, and he discovers that the supposed slight affection is the congestion of blood to the head, indicating the morbific agency, similar to that of opium. At once the medicine already administered is driven out or suspended by its antidote—a minute dose of opium is given instead ; and the relief is almost magic, the cure is certain, and the patient is saved ! Not so with the Allopathist. His work may be easier, quicker, and perchance more sure ; but not quite within the spirit of the contract. Proceeding on the soothing principle, he has already begun with 20 or 30 drops of laudanum, and his beginning is the end. The malady, being itself of the kind produced by an overdose of lau- danum, is of course aggravated and accelerated beyond what the organism can bear. Thus 20 or 30 drops more, harmless or alleviating in other circumstances, act here exactly as if they were superadded to what was already taken in a quantity sufficient to destroy. The consequence, too, is exactly the same. The patient 8 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. sleeps, and wakes no more !* Such is the difference between the two treatments, or rather systems, which respectively influence them! How many victims have been dispatched in the like summary manner can never be known, for the dead tell no tales; something, however, of this secret of the grave may be guessed by the well authenticated fact, that the average mortality among a rude people, unac- quainted with the luxury of regular physic, is not greater than that of civilized communities, in the full enjoyment of this blessing ; and that, in truth, it is much less, since it is sufficient to balance the number of deaths in in- fancy, which, owing to the discomforts and privations of savage life, is supposed to be as 2 to 1, when com- pared with the deaths at the same tender age, in a state of civilization. ARGUMENT. 'Homospathia is unsatisfactory and unsafe ; because, do- ing too little being at times as dangerous as doing too much, no physician who cares for his patient or for his own reputation, would be rash enough to resort to her feeble and dilatory aid in acute pressing diseases, such as apoplexy, et cet. COMMENT. This multum in parvo objection would be the most se- rious of all, if it were well founded—if it did not wholly rest upon that which renders it impossible—a contin- gency which is yet to take place. The fear of harm is no proof of it; and though it may induce one man to abstain from a certain attempt, it is no rule for the like forbearance in qthers. As well the verdict of guilty may * A case like this occurred within the author's own knowledge. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 59 be pronounced upon a criminal whose parents have not yet been called into existence !! The attempt ought to have precedence at all events ; and since the Doctor has not only declined it for himself, but will neither suffer it to be made, nor see it when made by others, his objec- tion is too suspiciously prophetic to be taken on credit, where deeds alone pass current. Among the prominent rules, systematically laid down and generally adopted in the practice of Homcepathia, the very first is, " that the more acute or rapid the dis- ease, the sooner can its issue be decided ; and that in acute diseases, such as apoplexy, et cet. 10 or 15 mi- nutes are sufficient for the purpose. Now, a rule which limits the time, necessarily implies the corresponding means of action ; otherwise one of the Doctor's best prescriptions must be presumed to nullify its own use and application ! ! If he did not know this rule, or drew no inference from it, he must give up his claim either to his intimacy with Homcepathia, or to the acuteness and sound morality of his logic. He may, however, dismiss now all his apprehensions, since a short inquiry will sa- tisfy him, that in these very extremes which so greatly excited his fears for Homcepathia, she has been fairly tried, and her metal has been found pure sterling. Apo- plexy, and its numerous train of cousins-german, have been mastered by her quite quick enough, if there be any expedition in doing it within 15 minutes ! ! She did more—she cured, radically cured the patient. The work, where it could be done, was done so well, that no spectre of a departed disease came back in the form of relapse, to snatch the reprieved victim from her hands—a visitation to which Allopathia is but too often exposed, all her spells not being potent enough to lay the troublesome ghost in the Red Sea! ! The learned professor is too much of a gentleman to 60 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. give the downright lie to such reports of cures as rest exclusively on Homoepathic authority; yet there is "a lurking devil in his eye "—a sneer on his lip, which in dicates, as plain as plain can be, that he does not, or pretends not to believe one word of such reports. Be it so ! Will he then question the truth of the official records of St. Petersburg ? He will not—he cannot; for well he knows that no falsehood is daring enough to soil their pages on the state of public health. Well, then, he has but to look that way, and he will find there more than eleven cures to one death—more than eleven patients out of twelve saved from that dreadful scourge, the Asiatic Cholera, which fills no small space on the list of acute and pressing diseases, calling for instant aid, and at the same time defying the utmost efforts of hu- man skill and science ! Let him compare this mighty ] achievement with the puny feats of Allopathia against the same formidable enemy—and that nothing may be wanting, let him recall to mind his own triumphant de- fence of the potency of Homoepathic doses : and he not only will have no farther misgivings about the power which he stigmatises as unsatisfactory and unsafe, but to this power—to Homoepathia alone, will he apply here- after, even in that most terrific of all inflictions, Hy- drophobia! argument. Homoepathia is limited in her operations; because expe- rience has demonstrated that, although some individuals are particularly accessible to her influence, there are many others who are proof against it, and yet easily yield to that of Allopathia; consequently, what does not reach all, and acts not upon all alike, is and must be limited in its operations. HOMCEPATHIA revealed. 61 COMMENT. All this is perfectly true, but not exclusively so. Mer- cury, which is used by both systems, is not the less a specific power, general in its application and effect, be- cause the Doctor has met with some constitutions in no degree affected by it—a fact well known to many besides himself. The term limited is therefore one of comparison only; and in this sense it is much more likely to be the property of Allopathia than of her youthful rival, whose influence must naturally be more extensive, in conse- quence of its mildness and insinuating quality, backed by the assurance that it cannot he felt without being sa- lutary—an assurance which is too often reversed by the other. ARGUMENT. Homcepathia is based upon false assumptions; because, among other things, she takes for granted that the pro- perty of every medicine is morbific per se, whereas the Doctor has cured more than one person with a few drops of pure spring water, necessarily divested of such property. COMMENT. As the learned Doctor does not say what those "other things" are, but confines himself to the pure spring water alone, which in the city of New-York, for in- stance, would no doubt be a restorative worth all the drugs in the shops of apothecaries—the exception is too partial to make out the general case of false assumption, and might as well have been omitted. Pure water is cer- tainly a preserver of health—so is good and wholesome bread ; but they are not medicines. Food is the means, not the machinery of life. One can no more be cured of I 62 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. famine and thirst by bread and water, than a steam-boat of stoppage by fuel, or a gristmill of draught by a fresh stream. Cure is that which puts in order the machinery itself when deranged ; not that which sets and keeps it in motion. While nature continues the sole undisturbed mistress of her mansion, presiding over the interior ar- rangements, and disposing of her stores to the best ad- vantage at her own will and discretion, the agent that supplies the daily wants of her household is her pur- veyor, and no more : but, when she is rudely assailed, struck down, and threatened with ejection, that which replaces her on her lawful seat, reinstates her in her do- main, expels and prostrates the usurper of her rights, is something more than a mere help—it is a power strong- er than the usurper himself, and consequently able, if so circumstanced, to do her the like injury to an extent still greater. It is a power that from its very nature must be salutary or morbific, that is, curative or aggressive, accord- ing as it comes an invited friend or an intruding enemy ; and cannot exist at all except in this relative or recipro- cal state of action. It is the true power of medicine, and medicine is this true power. Convert food itself into medicine, and it becomes in- stantly this same double acting power, alias poison. If the pure spring water administered by the Doctor really effected the cure he mentions, it was medicinal, and would have been found so upon a trial. What is there more innoxious, more in ordinary use, or more conducive to our daily enjoyments than the salt which seasons and renders both wholesome and palatable our daily repasts ? Well! take one grain of this very salt, subject it to the Homoepathic process, reduce it to pills, so that each will contain one X millionth part of the grain—then invite the learned Doctor, w^hile in full health, to swallow three of these pills in twenty-four hours, for four or five HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 63 days successively. Will he do it? Be assured he knows too well, and has proved too much, not to decline the invitation. He needs no experiment like that of char- coal, mentioned in a preceding note, to satisfy himself that he would thereby fall into the hands of troublesome companions, who might, perchance, lay him up on the fifth day in a manner not very agreeable to himself or to his neglected patients. Of all men, therefore, the learn- ed Doctor has the least reason to dispute the morbific or. aggressive property of every medicine, acknowledged as such; and it is quite evident that the doctrine which is proof against his own weapons, is too strong to be bat- tered down by any other. ARGUMENT. Homcepathia is supported by a denial of correct princi- ples ; because, in denying the power of nature to minis- ter to herself, and in substituting for the prompt aid of bleeding the tardier one of medicine, which, if success- ful, produces the same effect in the end, she makes war upon the principles universally acknowledged—estab- lished by the daily experience of ages, and, with regard to bleeding, indicated from time to time by spontaneous effusions, the purport of which cannot be misunderstood for a moment. COMMENT. ■■*>. This again is a principle, which, whether true or not, is isolated, and too abstract to impair the general useful- ness and soundness of a system. Nature, as long as she is so well served by Homcepathia, cannot be seriously incommoded or offended by any attempt, on the part of the latter, to diminish the nominal credit of her resour- ces. Besides, what Hahnemann maintains, is not that 64 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. nature cannot cure herself, for he expressly alludes to her crisis-operating power, but that she cannot do so without self-exposure in other respects to imminent dan- ger, and this will scarcely be denied by any reflecting pathologist. In constituting her the sole agent of cure, and by strietly limiting all his remedies to the office of auxiliaries, Hahnemann has in truth paid her a greater compliment than Allopathia, which often undertakes to control her, and not always to her advantage. The difference between him and his antagonists is, after all, the difference of terms; for, what they call the cure of nature, he denominates a revolution, that is, a maturity of disease—a point which it is his main object and chief aim to attain by artificial means where others fail, and which, once being gained, the disease is no more, and nature is herself again ! With respect to the sameness of effect produced by bleeding and corresponding medicines, it is a fallacy on the very face of it. Bleeding allays the inflammation —aconite or wolfsbane does the same. So far the effect may be the same; but, as regards health, it is fearfully unlike. There, poor nature is weakened into submission, and made to propitiate the tyrant at the expense of her future safety; here, the tyrant himself is encountered hand to hand, subdued, and compelled to leave nature in the full possession of her forces. In one case the fer- mentation is stopped, and the contents are saved ; in the other, the contents are spilled to check the fermen- tation, and the more there is drawn off, the more will rise to the issue to be drawn off again, until little or no- thing is left within. This last is the true process by which the precious fluid is wasted, vitality impaired, the extremities completely drained, and the dissolution of the sufferer commences at the moment that the in- flammation ceases. If this be not a daily occurrence__ HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 65 if the sick do not generally die of exhaustion* subse- quent to, and consequent on, the paroxysm—then the present prevailing practice is most grossly belied, and king Sangrado, unless he is kind enough to begin with himself, may reign and bleed until there is not a single subject left for the favorite exercise of his insatiate lancet! The true difference between the act of bleeding and * That such is really the case, is fully acknowledged by the Allopa- thists themselves, and against themselves, whenever they decline, as they do sometimes, to bleed an old subject, where they would have tapped and re-tapped a young one without stopping to calculate the cost. Ask them the reason, and you will be informed, that they are full of apprehensions, lest the feebleness of age should sink under the ope- ration, so easily sustained by the strength of youth and manhood. What is this but a plain confession, that the best chance of life is not in the hope of surviving such operation, but in the act of avoiding it alto- gether? The remedy, too bad and dangerous to be adopted in one case, must be equally so in all; for, the sword that kills one, and only wounds another, is not the less an instrument of destruction in itself. But why call forth hope where assurance can so easily replace it? Why use at all what is so much better not used, and multiply the dif- ficulties to be overcome, when there is a way to diminish and remove them at the outset ? The erudite gentlemen will reply again, that a robust constitution is more susceptible of serious inflammation, and, that, having no other means to reduce it, they resort to bleeding, as the least of the two evils. The reply is too true. They have, indeed, no other means—but Homoepathia has: and, what is still more conclusive of her superiority, it is not possible to deprive her of such means, or even to participate in them, without coming over to her standard. Allopathia may certainly use them; but if she.does it otherwise than under the auspices and instructions of Homoepathia, the substitute will prove more fatal than the lancet itself. The truth is, that there is not the same steady light, the same unerring clue to guide the Allopathist through the dark labyrinth of uncertainties; and it must have been the full consciousness of this perplexity that induced one of the same school, the late distinguished professor of medicine Dr. Gregory, to exclaim, in the bitterness of his disappointment and in the presence of his scholars, that "ninety-nine out of a hundred of medica facts are medical lies, and all medical doctrines stark, stanng nonsense. 66 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. the substituted dose—Homoepathic dose of course, for none else will answer the purpose—is that the first takes away from the source of life what it cannot replenish: while the last restores and preserves it in all its purity— which is the precise difference between the two systems. As to the indications by spontaneous effusion, bleeding at the nose, etc. etc. they are most wofully misunder- stood, notwithstanding the Doctor's authoritative asser- tion to the contrary. They show an irregular accumula- tion, or unusual flow of blood in some parts, to the de- triment of others, and this is all; the idea of having too much blood being as preposterous as that of a vessel con- taining more water than its capacity will admit. A su- perabundance of the means of life is a doctrine well worthy of ignorance or a disordered imagination ! Re- store the equality of circulation, and the patient is cured at once ! This is what Homcepathia does without bleed- ing. This is the way in which she removes apoplexy with so little danger of relapse. This is the way in which she has cured, in a few days, the most acute pleurisy that ever occurred in this city, contrary to the predictions of speedy death, with which Allopathia con- soled herself, for being repulsed in her attempts to open the sluices of life. To aid nature by crippling her—to heal by reducing the chances of recovery—to purify the fountain of health by desiccation, or by cutting off its main supplies—to give life by taking it away—in short, to bleed—is a bar- barous piece of absurdity, no less destructive in itself than disgraceful to the present state of science and gene- ral civilization. Sound reason and sober reflection view it as a monster privileged to kill; and a case of internal disease, where bleeding is indispensable as a remedy, exists only in the conventional but despotic rules of an unfeeling, remorseless school, that, according to the Doc- HOMCEPATHTA REVEALED. 67 tors own implied confessions, will not yield a single fibre of her cobweb precedents to the pleading voice and pressing claims of humanity. ARGUMENT. Homcepathia is depending on contradictory caprices; because her despotic master lays down rules and doc- trines which he afterwards revokes at pleasure, unsays and undoes his sayings and doings, and is, in short, not the same Hahnemann in 1828 that he was in 1810. COMMENT. This is the unkindest cut of all, not only at Homce- pathia, but at every science under heaven, since none could advance a step without those posterior successive improvements, which are made here a matter of re- proach ; an outcry against a noble structure of gigantic dimensions, the splendid monument of the genius and toil of one man, because not so superhumanly faultless as not to require, after eighteen years' standing, some repair in detail; and detail alone, partakes, to say the least, of the burning ambition of the youth of Ephesus; and Hahnemann may well be proud of the distinction of being reviled for what others would have been ex- tolled to the skies—for the zeal, devotion, and frankness with''which he effected and announced his subsequent discoveries and ameliorations. And what is the amount and importance of these sup- posed contradictory caprices ? Why, the most prominent, by which one may judge of all the rest, is the original prescription to administer unmixed but otherwise ordi- nary Allopathic doses in experiments upon persons in health, which prescription is now extended, and, indeed, transferred to minute Homcepathic doses, it being sub- 68 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. sequently ascertained that the effect of both is alike sa- tisfactory, and that inert substances, such as charcoal, salt, silex, et cet. cannot be given at all as medicines, unless previously subjected to the Homoepathic process! This is all, and has as much to do with the general me- rits and strength of the system, as a longer or shorter mane with the vigor of an Eclipse starting for the race ! Let it be, however, rightly interpreted, and it will be- come the most striking and conclusive of all proofs, that an edifice, in which, after a lapse of years, there was found so little to alter on the score of beauty, sym- metry, and solidity, can have no other foundation than that of immutable, perpetual, immortal truth ! ARGUMENT. Homcepathia is faithless to herself; because, since her ill-chosen connection with Psora, she has called to her aid the counteracting anti-psoric medicines, resorted to the trick of mystification, and thus became false to her own professions, which had so disdainfully rejected the one and the other. COMMENT. The all-sufficient reason why the anti-psoric remedy is not, and should not be Homcepathically in unison with the apparent or approximate disease which is to be cured, is that it is not given for this disease at all, but directed exclusively against the source whence it is sup- posed to have originated. The medicine, with regard to this source, being never otherwise than strictly Homoe- pathic, the great pervading principle, «the like cure the like," is preserved throughout with scrupulous fide- lity ; and the learned Doctor ought to have known better than to make a mistake so liable to the suspicion of being HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 69 intentional. Nor can Psora itself, although a latent source of diseases, be justly confounded with any imaginary objects of medical alchymy; since it is a palpable mor- bific matter, too well known and authenticated to pass for a mere trick of mystification. If European experi- ments are doubted* there is no want of them here, in this very city, where, among other cases, there has oc- curred one of an ague, technically intermittent marsh fever, so obstinate that it baffled and effectually resisted both Allopathia and Homoepathia; and the two great specifics, cinchona and arsenic, produced no other result than that of aggravation. The ruddy health of the pa- tient, previously to the disease, precluded all suspicion of Psora, and after most careful inquiries not the least trace of it could be detected. Nevertheless, as there was no other resource left, the case was treated as that of Psora, and sulphur, one of the anti-psoric remedies, was given in Homoepathic proportions. The astonish- •ment of those who were in the secret was great indeed, when, in a few days after the first dose, the ague was completely subdued, and disappeared to return no more ! The disease in this instance was not the produce of Psora, but it roused this latent principle into action, strong enough to obtain the mastery : as otherwise, if the disease had retained its own preponderance, it would have required a dose of specific medicine for itself, after the anti-psoric one had been continued long enough to produce the effect intended. ARGUMENT. Consequently, so far from being the true exclusive system, capable of uprooting and replacing all others, Homcepathia, overloaded as she is by the paternal hand, has no strength to sustain herself alone, and must soon pass away, like the 70 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. vision of Psora, with which it has been so unfortunately as- sociated. COMMENT. Whether Homoepathia is destined soon to pass away, or last till the world's end, time alone can decide; and if the phantom of Psora be the criterion to judge of the future by the present, her friends need not despair of her longevity, since this phantom has been shown to be any thing but " an airy nothing," and since her elements of durability, her constituent parts, and her very foun- dation, are all merged in the great principle " similia similibus curantur "—one which, if false, is no principle at all—if true, admits of no modification, no substitu- tion, no amalgamation ! Does the learned Doctor deny this principle ? So far from this, he claims it in favor of Allopathia, and considers it too great an honor to allow Hahnemann to enjoy it, unshared by others. What is, the strangest thing of all, this honor is actually disputed upon the authority of Hahnemann himself, who has taken great pains to collect and publish, in his " Orga- non," upwards of two hundred examples of eminent physicians, ancient and modern, wherein this principle was espied, put occasionally into practice, and by some few, particularly Stahl of Denmark, actually declared as the sole true basis of the healing art! And who is he that has had the candor to announce all this ? Here is his portrait by the learned Doctor himself! " In judging Hahnemann impartially, as the founder and chief of a new doctrine and system, however one may blame his faults and errors, a due homage must be rendered to the vast capacity and genius of which he has given such brilliant proofs. No other man has push- ed farther the study of chemistry, and the practical ob- HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 71 servation of therapeutic phenomena. Bold in his de- signs, circumspect in their execution, he never turns for an instant from the object he has in view, and in certain cases has penetrated deeper into the mystery of organic nature than has yet fallen to the lot of man. There will always remain for him a distinguished place in the his- tory of science, and the immortal glory of having re- vealed, on one hand, the specific virtues of a great num- ber of medicines, and, on the other, the particular sen- sibility of the human organism to their specific action." Vide page 13. Now, a truly great man, having so many laurels of his own, is as unlikely to usurp them from others as to deal in " humbug" doctrines and systems ; and, accordingly, Hahnemann declares, with perfect simplicity, that all those examples were but transient and incidental glimps- es of the truth, and that he was the first to seize it en- tire, and to lay it down as the solid and permanent foundation of a new temple of science. This is all he claims ; and who will dispute the claim ? Who will say that in this sense he is not the founder of a new system ? Certainly not the Doctor, who has already volunteered the affirmative, and thus once more furnished evidence against himself. The real state of the case, as regards this gentleman, is, that while inclination and perhaps interest often lead him to the side of prejudice and hos- tility, good sense and innate candor as often bring him back to that of justice ; and it is not surprising, there- fore, that he demolishes with a few words his whole work of opposition, when, in addition to what he con- cedes to Hahnemann, he admits distinctly and unequi- vocally, that Homoepathia is entitled to a prominent rank in the department of medical science ; that with all persons of susceptible constitutions she succeeds to admiration ; and that, with respect to women and children, she is their best protec- 72 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. tress, and does for them what Allopathia may as well con- fess to be beyond her power ! Thus, with ample concessions to the genius of Hah- nemann ; with such strength of admissions in favor of Homcepathia ; with such weakness of objections against her; and, lastly, with the full acknowledgment of a principle, whose immutability must impart itself to its superstructure, it is impossible not to come to the con- clusion, that, according to the learned Doctor himself, Homcepathia, and she alone, if there be such a thing as an exclusive system, is entitled to that distinction, being the true, and therefore the only one capable of uprooting and replacing all others. CONCLUSION. How far the foregoing general deductions in favor of Homcepathia are supported by faith and facts, which, in certain proportions, are equally necessary to the forma- tion and existence of a system, a glance at both will easily satisfy those who are at all times disposed to be liberal in the use of their memory, reasoning faculties, and powers of examination. Any attempt to overcome predetermined incredulity would, of course, be worse than useless ; since, were it possible to cure blindness, deafness, or any other defect that happens to be inten- tional, convalescence would be the state of pain and re- sentment, not that of pleasure and gratitude. In science, as in religion, the value of a particular creed is indicated, no less by the nature of difficulties it had to overcome, than by the constancy and fidelity of its adherents ; but, above all, it is depressed or elevated in the scale of public estimation, by the weight of moral and intellectual worth exhibited in its support. In applying this test to Homcepathia, it is only neces- sary to point to her astonishing progress—a progress, to which, since the date of Christianity, there has been no parallel in history. Like Christianity she came forth, not as a fragment to be modified, or incorporated with the edifices already known—not as a leaf to be suspended to an aged tree, or a branch to be added to an ancient forest—but as an original, independent power, striking at the root of pre-existing institutions, and admitting of no alternative but their total subversion. She came to 10 74 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. break the altars and overturn the temples raised by the toil, cherished by the affections, fostered by the care, sustained by the zeal, and consecrated by the homage of generations ! She came to mortify the pride' of learn- ing, by announcing its ways to be the ways of dark- ness ! She came to bid the most powerful passion of the human breast, the love of lucre, to resign its spoils, and give up the certain gains of a profitable traffic,* almost without equivalent or consideration ! She came to do all this, alone, poor, unsupported, her very breath enkind- ling strife and deadly opposition ; yet still her march is onward, and her foot has already crossed the Atlantic wave! She has succeeded where an army of giants would have failed,"and where it was a miracle not to be * By a calculation made for the State of New-York, it appears that drugs administered according to the Homoepathic process of attenuation, could be supplied for the whole population at the rate of three hundred dollars a year ! Can it be, then, a matter of surprise, that an innovation threatening so serious a reduction in the long-enjoyed profits of a pow- erful set of men, should be resisted by them to the last extremity ? Is it not, on the contrary, quite natural, that pharmacopolists, like other men deeply interested in the trade by which they live, should exert their utmost energy, and use all their influence with physicians, with whom they are necessarily more or less connected, to avert a visitation so ominous to their worldly prosperity ? In this they do but follow the first of laws—the law of self-preservation, and it would be unjust to cast any reproach on them; but it is absolutely necessary to be inform- ed of the true source of opposition to Homcepathia, in order to do full justice to her merits. The wonder is that she should have been able to make the first step, and not that she should advance as she now does, with a pace which may be retarded for a while, but which it is no longer within the power of any combination of men to arrest. A greater wonder still is, the fact, that even among the men so deeply interested in oppos- ing her, there is now in this very city more than one convert to her doc- trines, and consequently more than one honorable exception to the sel- fishness of human nature. No higher proof can be adduced in favor of her just pretensions, HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 75 crushed ! Star after star, of the first magnitude, have spontaneously quitted their stations in the old firmament, and passed within her orbit. New stars are constantly rising to take their places in the splendid galaxy of ta- lent that marks her path of triumph. Whence is this prodigy? Is there any mystery in it? No. The whole is the achievement of simple truth. Truth alone is permanent. This is a position which no one will venture to controvert; and, conse- quently, what is not permanent in science as well as ethics, must be and is necessarily false. In adopting this standard of reasoning, it may be argued that Ho- mcepathia, although till now unchanged in her course and aspect, has not yet existed long enough to establish her claim to stability : Be it so ! Uncertainty still lingers on her traces, but then it is already distanced by hope, expectation, and confidence in the future. Allopathia has unquestionably the advantage of cer- tainty, but it is the unenviable certainty of proof that her gorgeous plumage falls off at the slightest touch of scru- tiny ; that her pompous pretensions to superiority are founded on nothing better than toleration and acquies- cence on the part of the uninitiated ; that her contradic- tions, oscillations, mutations, and practical errors, ad- mitted by the most experienced of her own teachers, are infallible tokens of unwilling, but conscious impos- ture ; that she is not an entity existing and acting by it- self, but only an offspring or modification of the many which have preceded it—a sample of those plausible chimeras, which, in the forms of systems, had sprung up at stated periods, like mushrooms, in rapid succes- sion—falsified and replaced one another, and each in its turn vanished in the chaos of oblivion; and that, conse- quently, being one thing to-day and another to-morrow, she must be at different times false to herself, false to 76 homcepathia Revealed. humanity, and false in her promises, enterprises, rela- tions and operations. The most zealous defender of Allopathia will not dare to impeach the self-evident principle that so many con- flicting systems cannot all be true ; and that, if not all false, one of them only can be true, for truth is a unit by itself. It follows then, of course, that Allopathia can never be this unit, since she is a part or a compound of those same conflicting systems which would have been more fiercely opposed, had they, in the same degree, menaced the interests of an important branch of indus- try, dependent on the present practice of medicine. Thus the main point of inquiry must be what this only one true system is ; and to ascertain this, it is only neces- sary to define that to be a true system, which is the most successful in attaining the great object of all such systems, by the most suitable means ; and then to explain the object and the means, so that the question, who is right and who is wrong, may be decided at once, to the satisfaction of the sincere and impartial examiner. The great object of the healing art is, not merely, as appears upon the face of it, to heal diseases, but, as has been shown elsewhere, to conduct a living being safe through the natural period of life, in a manner best adapt- ed to prevent as well as to cure diseases with the least possible annoyance to the invalid. The means by which all this is accomplished are indi- viduality in the treatment of diseases, removal of morbid causes instead of their effects, simplicity of proceed: ;; economy of the forces of nature, conveniency and comfort of the sick, guaranty from harm, certainty of cure, celerity of operation, and speedy convalescence. By these in suc- cession, shall the two systems be tried. Individuality in the treatment of diseases. Allopathia, either from a desire to save trouble, or from HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 77 an immoderate love of the parade of learning, or what is most probable, from both these motives, has divided all diseases, according to their resemblances, into sepa- rate groups, and classified them under different heads, as febrile, inflammatory, eruptive, cerebral, nervous, gastric, intestinal, profluent, refluent, constitutional, and local, and, of course, treats each group or class, as if it were one lump, with the remedies particularly appropriated to it, pretty much in the same manner as some empiric would dose all black men with one kind of drugs, all white men with another, all red men with another yet, and so on, deviating so far only from the practice of the ignor- ant rustic, that this last marks all his sheep black, white, and parti-colored, with the same unchanging hue of the red ochre ! ! Now, as no two things in nature are strictly and,abso- lutely alike, not even two drops of water ; and as this difference is more especially obvious and striking in the human species, Homoepathia, neither scared by toil, nor tempted by the glare of erudition, rejects all such gene- ralities, classifications, and specifications ; and, consid- ering every disease as partaking of the idiocracy of the person affected, studies each case separately by itself, and makes its peculiarity, that is, individuality, the abso- lute rule in the choice of medicine and the mode of treatment. On which side preponderate common sense and reason may be decided without the aid of an oracle. Removal of morbid causes, instead of their effects. Tolle causam, is a precept, on which there is no difference of opinion. Remove the cause, has been the constant cry of Allopathia; and, if it turns out, as it often does, all cry and no wool, the merit of the hoax is fairly monopolized by herself! By a singular fatality, she seems to be impressed with a conviction, that a pre- personal acquaintance with the cause is the indis- VlOUS 78 [homcepathia revealed. pensable condition of its removal; and, accordingly, spares neither pains nor importunities to obtain an intro- duction to this mysterious something, which, rudely enough, but not the less perseveringly, rejects the intend- ed honor, eludes pursuit, refuses to shake hands even through a grating, and never for an instant lays aside the dark veil that conceals its unexplored countenance. The consequence is, that she either becomes the dupe of her own imagination, by mistaking something else for the something sought for, or, at all events, loses so much time that the intended removal is often postponed until the removal of the patient himself! Not so with Homcepathia ! The cry of the other is with her the period of action. Knowing well that she can never see the cause face to face, she cares nothing about it, contents herself with examining its visible tra- ces, and proceeds at once to the business. If on entering the premises she perceives some smoke in a corner, she pours out water upon it, without waiting to see the fire; or, if there be indications of noxious vermin harbored in accessible holes, she does not stop to ascertain whether it be mice, rats, weasels, or the like—and still less does she wait to catch a glimpse of whatever it may be—but straight ignites the charcoal, shuts up the room, and ends at once the mischief and the cause. Simplicity of proceeding. Here probably lies the very pith of the offence committed by Homcepathia in the eyes of such of the profession as form unfavorable exceptions to the liberal character by which it is ge- nerally distinguished ; for, be it observed once for all, that war is made here upon the system and not on the pro- fessors, whose personal respectability is proverbial. In sober truth, however, one can scarcely blame even those who form such exceptions, when it is scarcely possible not to infer, that their prosperity is not likely to be pro- homcepathia revealed. 79 moted by that of Homcepathia. Without the least fear of masonic penalties, she has divulged the secrets of the craft—demolished all its imposing emblems, and swept away all its drapery of mystification, with such want of tenderness and consideration, as to expose it to the peril of nullification, by enabling every man to be his own phy- sician. The worst is, that for this unscrupulous simpli- fication there is no remedy, unless it be to enlist under her banners. The public, however, is a gainer by the process, and has much less reason to complain than to be thankful. ■Economy of the forces of nature is emphatically the terra incognita of the Allopathists, where, if they should visit it in their dreams, they would find havoc and devastation enough to startle the most hardened of them, on being told that it is all their own handy-work, not the less cruel and inexpiable because they were not aware of it themselves. Under this head it is sufficient to say, that Homce- pathia never bleeds, and Allopathia almost always begins, and often ends with bleeding. There is something in this fatal operation—nay, in the word itself that acts upon the faculties of an Allopathist like some potent spell, from which he can no more free himself, than a bird from the fascination of the serpent's glare. It is the ma- lignant ignis fatuus that plays constantly before his eyes, and draws him on towards some treacherous bog-hole— treacherous so far only as it sucks in all that comes within its reach, except himself—the greedy elves being trappers of too shrewd a cast not to preserve, as long as need be, the decoy for the sake of the prey. In no other way can this phenomenon be explained, unless it springs from the more ignoble motives which induce the ignorant or lazy surgeon to begin always with the first letter of the alphabet, as it stands in A-mputa- 80 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. ' ■••, tion,* because, when the limb is off, he knows how to proceed, and has the advantage of being relieved from all the care, embarrassment, and responsibility to which an attempt to cure would necessarily have subjected him! If bleeding be the veritable sovereign remedy, as is asserted, in cases of inflammation, in what manner does it act, and upon what known principles are its vaunted effects produced ? If it be true, that inflammation is al- layed by it, and removed without injury to the consti- tution, what is inflammation itself? Mysteries, like cer- tain bugbears, as you approach them, grow less in size, and disappear; and so, the curtain shall be drawn aside..... Look at yon noble stream, that fanned by the refresh- ing breeze speeds onward, like some gallant courser, in the pride of freedom, health and strength! How gay and bright, yet how measured and self-controlled—at all times full, but never overflowing ! There is velocity to keep it pure, and hidden springs just rich enough to compensate its daily tribute to the thirsty sun. Look there!—A crushing weight of noxious filth, torn from the flank of an impending cliff, is hurled and lodged within its breast, where, part seen, and part buried, it lies too firm to be removed by outer force. Observe, how quick to the first recoil succeeds the accelerated move- ment—the simultaneous rush of waters to displace the nuisance, and wash its traces from the spot! The effort has failed! A second recoil takes place; the eddies multiply their fast-receding circles; the deposit of filthy * This was actually the prevailing practice in the British navy and army some thirty years since, as stated on the authority of Mr. Che- valier, an eminent surgeon of London, who wrote a valuable work upon the subject, HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 81 sediment commences ; the motion is more and more re- tarded ; the accumulated matter swells and breaks into masses—the current stops, stagnation follows, corrup- tion spreads, and the stream, late so buoyant, becomes a dead pool! Look on with a thinking eye, and you will recognise in the stream the blood that flows in our veins ; in the precipitated missive the stroke of disease ; in the encumbered spot the seat of inflammation ; in the accu- mulation of matter the gathering ulcer, and in all the subsequent changes the exact, progressive, and rapid transition from life to death ! Inflammation, then, is that vitiated deposit, which the blood, checked and deranged in its course, and thence dete- riorated in its quality, leaves on the spot struck by disease, after the first rush and unsuccessful efforts to repair the injury inflicted by the blow.* * While these sheets were in the press, the fifth volume, containing the 37th and 38th numbers of the " Archives et Journal de la Medi- cine Homoepathique," published in Paris, has reached the author's hands, and realized his ideas by a confirmation so strong, and at the same time so extraordinary, as to appear to have been extorted by some special act of Providence from the lips of the unbelievers themselves. The learned Allopathic physician, Ferdinand Jahn of Meiningen, in a communication occupying 298-302 pages of the above journal, per- forms the following act of justice to Homoepathia, and of duty to his fellow-creatures. " Dr. Ralterbrunner, the friend too soon lost to me, was enabled, by means of a microscope, to detect the following process and results of an inflammation artificially produced. " As soon as a wound is inflicted, an accelerated motion and intumescence of blood take place in the vessels nearest to the wound, and thence extend themselves, more or less, in va- rious directions. In some spots, in the immediate vicinity, the blood, dis- turbed in its course, appears to start out from its usual channels: in some it hurries on in irregular masses, and in others again it attaches itself to the Parenchyma, (the spongy flesh serving as a filter to the blood,) and there forms small sanguineous islets, while the Parenchyma itself be- comes much inflated." This state of derangement, more or less aggrava- 82 homcepathia revealed. The candid and intelligent reader, if he is satisfied , With the illustration and the definition preceding, will be convinced at once, that the event of life or death, in ted by the depth and extent of the wound, is called, by Raltenbrunner, morbid inflammation. He was shortly convinced, that, in order to re- store every thing to its former healthy condition, another change per- fectly similar to the first was indispensable ; for, on farther observation, he soon perceived that nature was already at work to effect such change, which he, accordingly, denominated curative inflammation. " This se- cond inflammatory phenomenon, which appears much later, and u the exact resemblance of the original, encircles the seat of disease, constant- ly approaches the centre, and gradually covers and extinguishes all the indications of the morbid inflammation." The above, furnished by a professed opponent, or, at least, no friend of Homcepathia, ought to settle the question of bleeding for ever. It is shown there, as clear as day, that a diminution of blood would have de- prived nature of her only means of relief, and thus prevented the cure ; and this is precisely what takes place in all inflammatory cases Allopa- thically treated. Take that of Scarlatina as an example. The patient is bled as a matter of course. The loss of blood is the loss of its strength, of its activity, and of its purity. The force necessary to repair the injury is taken away from it, and vitiated deposit is the immediate consequence. The lancet is succeeded by the cups, leeches, and Spanish flies, and thus aggravations are superadded to aggravations. The deposited mat- ter goes on increasing in quantity and pruriency, and soon degenerates into corroding ulcers. Finally caustics are applied, and irritation is at its height. The ulcers, partially burned, spread, multiply, become pu- trescent, close the passage of the throat, and the patient is laid on his last bed ! Then comes the mighty consolation, that all was done that could be done by the skill of man, but that the disease was too malig- nant, too potent to be overcome by human means. Cruel sophistry! The reverse of all this is the fact. All that was done by the skill of man was done to destroy, and the disease became malignant and potent because it was not checked in time, but, on the contrary, in every possi- ble way was made irresistible. Here, too, the author speaks from his personal knowledge. Give that same case to HomcEpathia, and the scene of misery is changed in an instant! She brings her aid, not as the mistress but as homcepathia revealed. 83 the presence of a highly inflammatory, dangerous dis- ease, depends entirely on the invigoration or reduction of the conservative power of the blood itself; and that the manner in which this power is affected by the practice of Homcepathia and Allopathia, is the best pos- sible criterion of their respective merits. CONVENIENCY AND COMFORT OF THE INVALID are totally incompatible with the Allopathic treatment, where the wanton spilling of blood, besides its first or immediate effects, so injurious to the constitution, leads to all those secondary medical inflictions, not the least of which is fasting and hunger, imposed upon the pa- tient when he can least bear them, and is most in need of food. It is sufficient, therefore, to say here, that Ho- mcepathia, by the single act of abjuring all kinds of blood- spilling, is enabled to spare the patient all subsequent torture, and never for a moment subjects him to the ad- ditional privation of a wholesome and nourishing diet. Guarantee from harm, and certainty of cure, have already been explained in the safety and efficacy of minute Homoepathic doses, whose power of action expires the moment it ceases to be salutary, and whose effects are never felt, except as a sure pledge of success. The idea of the negative mischief attributed to Homcepa- the pupil of nature. She preserves the blood, increases its activity, re- stores its purity, equalizes its deranged circulation, and thus enables it to overcome obstruction, and to effect a cure in the only way in which it can ever be effected-by its own recovered energies. If the followers, as well as the leaders of the present dominant school are not acquainted with the spepial control which Homcepathia exercises over scarlet fe- ver-theirwantof information is shameful and unpardonable; if they are and will not profit by their knowledge, their deliberate guilt is greater than the power of fiction to increase it, or the range of moral justice to punish it as it deserves. 84 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. thia in not doing enough, or in not being quick enough, is an absurdity full worthy of the motives and general charac- ter of her better informed opponents. In the first instance, any evil from this source, if it did exist at all, would never equal the twentieth part of the evil caused by Al- lopathic overdoings and misdoings; and, in the second, such a result is an impossibility, because in critical dis- eases requiring an instant aid, Homcepathia, to say the least, is as well prepared as Allopathia, and, in all others, her aid comes always in support of that ability of nature, which, down to this period, has already been found adequate to the preservation of existence. Celerity of operation.—Were it possible to enu- merate here the many instances where a single dose has performed a seeming miracle of resurrection, it would astonish the most obdurate of skeptics, and convince all who are open to conviction, that where Allopathia talks, halts, walks; and runs, Homcepathia acts, walks, runs, and gallops ; and that where the former alleviates and weakens a disease in five weeks or days, the latter arrests and cures it in two : this being the general proportion of suc- cess between them, of the truth of which any one may satisfy himself by a proper reference to Homoepathic physicians, who will furnish him with an abundance of croups,* scarlatinas, cerebral fevers, et cet. effectually cured at the point of time at which Allopathia begins only to hope, and look with some confidence to a suc- cessful issue. Speedy convalescence, although the last in order, is of the first importance, when it is considered that it * A croup, already forming, was completely cured in twenty-four hours, in the author's own family, by a single Homoepathic dose given in spoonfulls. HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 85 is in the state of exhaustion that life is most frequently the price of a short respite. Allopathia spills blood with the wantonness of a boy who spills water, and, like him, although she profits less by the lesson, she soon finds that what is sport to one is death to another, and that it is much easier to empty a bucket than to fill it up again through a small valve, yielding but a few drops at a time. The secondary state of weakness, wherein the patient is kept quiet, soothed, nursed, and just preserved from starvation ; and the third or last one of convalescence, wherein he is drugged with tonics, and subjected to the long, slow and tedious operation of distilling fresh blood by the process of cookery, and pumping it into his veins, are the exclusive creation of Allopathic enterprise and resources. Nature and Homcepathia know nothing of either. With them the crisis of disease is the signal of restored health, and the space of convalescence is anni- hilated. But it is time to conclude. The reflecting reader must now be in possession of all the data upon which to form his final judgment as to the respective claims of the old and the new systems. He can be at no loss to decide which of them is the true, the only one, when he can no longer doubt, that, with the exception of slight or fanci- ful diseases, in all cases of recovery under the Allopa- thic treatment, the patient lives in spite of it, and not by its special favor ; and that, where a poor fellow has to swim for his life, nature will keep his head above water, Homoepathia will place corks under his arms, and Allo- pathia will fasten a mill-stone to his neck ; so that with the first he may be generally safe, with the second he is sure to reach the shore, and with the last he must inevi- tably go down unless he is lucky enough to have a life or two in reserve—a blessing, which, it seems, is often granted by the benignant all-foreseeing Providence. ISOPATHIA. Usefully and extensively employed in the service of Homcepathia, and dependent upon her in the preparation of means, although differing in the use of them, is her own legitimate offspring " Isopathia, who, whenever she acts for herself, instead of curing the like with the like," opposes the same to the same, and is accordingly contra- distinguished by a name which means selfsame suffering. By simply reversing the entry and location of a disease, she turns its own destructive power against it, and stings with his own sting the scorpion to death. The new comer is yet in her infancy. How far her latent powers are capable of expansion and general ap- plication ; how far miasms and poisons, primary or arti- ficial, idiopathic or remedial, may all be mastered by her skill; and how far the internal process against the external, and vice versa, may in all cases prove alike efficacious; is a matter of speculative inquiry of the highest importance, but in nowise relevant to the present subject, and must be left to future investigations. There is a floating idea, that every disease, being a miasm or a poison, deposits its own virus, however impalpable may be its form, in some part of the body; and that consequently to every disease there is an antidote sup- plied by itself, lodged in the human organism, and re- HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 87 quiring only to be traced out and properly identified. lnere is also a dream that this mystery of self-cure, and the consequent millenium of the reign of health, without physicians, is the predestined grand achieve- ment of Isopathia; but as this would make her prema- turely a greater scarecrow than Homcepathia herself to all the parties interested, the patients only excepted, it may be as well to exhibit her solely in her known and familiar sphere of action, limited as yet to such miasms and poisons, as, without our knowledge and control, en- ter the body from without, and in their developed mor- bid form become tangible enough for remedial purposes. It is to the concentration of not a few remedies within this contracted sphere, that one may look, without idealizing or dreaming, for the great secret, the true anti- dote to Hydrophobia. The preparation, found here, of the virus as far as it is attainable, called Hydrophobine, and used with such success in those convulsive mala- dies, which, like Hydrophobia itself, act so exclusively and fearfully upon the nerves, is the very treasure so long sought-for; or all analogies are false, and no de- pendence can be placed on reasonings from like effects to the like causes. Homcepathia teaches, that an incurable disease exists only as a demonstration of our ignorance of the reme- dy, inasmuch as in the merciful dispensation of Provi- dence inflictions go hand in hand with the means of re- lief, the discovery of which is left to our own impulses of self-preservation. If so, and it can scarcely be other- wise, consistently with divine justice, the most dread- ful of diseases will sooner or later, even now, prove curable like any other. The poison of Hydrophobia is so potent, that, once roused into action, there is an end to all hopes of resistance. The whole material and im- material world, as far as accessible to man,-offers as yet 88 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. no force potent and subtle enough to encounter it with any advantage. Prussic acid itself, and the serpent's mortal poison, much relied on and procured for this pur- pose, are absolutely powerless in its presence. Itself, therefore, is the only antagonist that can enter the lists with it, and by self-execution free the victim from its deadly grasp. The foul fiend must be checkmated by himself, and Isopathia is to play the game, uncertain and hazardous, but more, much more than any of the nume- rous foregone attempts, supported by inductive promises and forerunning pledges of success. It is a well-known undisputed fact, recorded in the medical archives of Europe, and confirmed, in more than one instance, by professional practice in this very city, that syphilis, the itch, the small-pox, scrofula, and, so far as reports may be relied on, the plague, the cancer, and scarlet fever, have been cured by their own morbid matter homoepathicaHy prepared, and internally adminis- tered ; and, what enhances the importance of these cures, they were performed with no less certainty, but with far greater rapidity than by any other indicated specifics, usually and successfully employed. Now, Hydrophobia in its state of development is precisely in the category of the above-enumerated diseases. Its entrance from without, and its subsequent ravages in the interior, are recognized by the same tokens. Its effect and operation, constituting the disease itself, are precisely the same as those of the other misasms and poisons, except that they are infinitely more virulent and always fatal. It is scarcely possible, therefore, to resist the rational and na-. tural inference, that it may also be cured in the same manner. The only question then is, has it been tried ? No one can doubt for a moment that Homoepathists, if any one of them had made the trial and found it suc- cessful, would have reported it as extensively as possi- \ HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 89 ble, from the combined motives of interest and duty, as well as from inclination. Still less can it be supposed, that, if the trial so made had failed, they would have been permitted to be silent. Their implacable opponents, from whose knowledge it would have been impossible to conceal it, not content with simply making it known through all their channels of communication, would have converted it into a general triumph over Homce- pathia, and set ten thousand triple throats of Cerberus to rend the air with her defeat and signal ruin; for, it is not the least of her hardships, that, while her detractors are exalted to the third heaven for not destroying all, she is condemned for not saving all; as if she were, at one and the same time a lying impostor, indebted only to chance and nature for her cures, and a merciless spirit, having full power over death, yet refusing to exercise it. The absence of all trace and record of such a trial, as far as is known here, is a strong presumptive proof that it has never yet been made; and the next question is, why has it not been made ? If homoepathists had any chance of it, they lost it probably by resorting in the first instance to belladona, stramonium, hyoasimus, and laehesis [the serpent's poi- son] Homoepathic specifics of the greatest potency, but not sufficient to subdue Hydrophobia in its full rage. The only satisfactory answer, then, that can be given on this point, is, that the practitioners of the old school, forming as yet the most numerous medical body every where, such cases as occurred fell into their hands, and they would not part with them. They have no objection to the practice of Homcepathia in their own way, when not called upon to avow it; but any thing like an open concession in her favor, ever so remote, although it may save the life of a fellow-creature, is of course incompa- tible with the monopolising, unyielding, pitiless, and all- 12 90 HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. jgfe exacting spirit of the school. There may be as muclT harshness as injustice in saying that they had rather all the patients should perish in their hands, and perish they must, than give up one of them to a detested rival for a chance of cure ; but pedagogues are proverbially obstinate and unfeeling, and there certainly is no want of room for the painful suspicion that the proffered aid on this occasion is more feared than desired. Isopathic treatment in cases of Hydrophobia has been more than once suggested and recommended through the public press, and could not be unknown to all who had such cases at their disposal; and yet not one of the whole number has been found humane and liberal enough to let another do, or try to do, what he well knew he could not do himself. Victims fall, one by one, as heretofore, beneath the scythe of the relentless mower; yet the relieving power, ready at a nod to tempt the res- cue, stands full in sight, inactive, motionless, for it re- ceives no sign ! A slender cord, suspended from a dizzy precipice, from which there is no descent, hangs over the abyss below, and mocks the desperate clutches of a fellow-being struggling there for life. They cannot save him, for their station is on the top, but they can lengthen the cord : Alas ! The cord is not of their own making, and thrown by a stranger's hand—they cut it off, and turn about declaring that it was not strong enough !! How knew they it was not, and whence their right to act on such conclusion? It might break in the pull, but still there was a chance that it might not—a chance that none " of woman born " should have refused ! It was a chance, the rejection of which is nothing less, in the sight of God and man, than a felonious homicide, ag- gravated by the very impunity of its commission. In the ancient venerable temple of Esculapius no antidote to Hydrophobia is yet to be found, for that HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED. 91 which is only preventive, not curative, is no antidote at all. To pretend to the contrary, even if the god himself were to do so, is to be guilty of a gross and conscious imposture. The physician, therefore, if he be honest, will suffer no motives, in a case so desperate, to prevail on him to violate so far all his duties at once, as to de- cline any remedy offered for trial, however he may dis- trust its efficacy and contemn its source. No matter how slight the chance, how far placed beyond the sphere of his regular functions, useless and hopeless in this in- stance, he will not spurn it on mere previous conclusions derived from his own doubts and prepossessions. Physicians of this description, who are still believed to form a great portion of the liberal profession, to what- ever creed, school, or system they may respectively be- long, are earnestly invited and entreated to lay aside their differences, and unite, one and all, in the benign resolve to suffer no new case of Hydrophobia to run its course without giving it the chance of Isopathic aid so- liciting their notice. The powerful aid of the press is also invoked to make it known as far as possible, that it may not be missed for want of information. It is the cause of humanity. The trial is worth making, must be made, and will be made, if this appeal be not in vain. FINIS. 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