>&> IliVN 3NI3IC-3W jo Aavaan IVNOIIVN iNDIOlW JO ABVtail 1VNOI1V > 2 O /£* \ ■ • • PRINCIPLES HOKEOPATHY. IN A SERIES OF LECTURES. by y B. F. JOSLIN, M. D. v-ifoz'jr NEW-YORK: »->K*k WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. 1850. <*£>^ WBK \2Sb ENTERED According to Act of Congress, in the year 1830, by WILLIAM RADDE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. H. Ludwtg it Co., Printer*, 63 Ve.«jr 81 CONTENTS. LECTURE I. Obstacles to homoeopathic investigation and belief. LECTURE II. Evidences of the power of small doses and attenuated medicines, including a theory of potentization. LECTURE III The use of chemical and mechanical means and large doses, in connexion with homoeopathic practice. LECTURE IV. The law of cure. LECTURE V. Pure Homceopathy. LECTURE I. OBSTACLES TO HOMOEOPATHIC INVESTIGATION AND BELIEF. Educated physicians who embrace Homoeopa- thy in the present early stage of the reformation, are under the necessity of sacrificing not only their preconceived opinions, but a portion of that respect which they previously enjoyed in the profession and the community. In order to make these sacrifices, they must generally be men pos- sessed of sound minds and actuated by pure and lofty motives — men who prefer facts to hypo- theses, and the interests of truth and humanity to their own temporary advancement. Though the Homoeopathic physician, before he can be re- cognised as such, is required to possess as thorough knowledge of every branch of medical science as the most respectable portion of his Alloeopathic brethren, and although he has actually gone through a regular course of Alloeopathic study, under Alloeopathic professors, and has been by Alloeopathic boards of examiners, declared duly qualified to practise medicine, lie is now proscribed 6 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. for the knowledge which he has superadded. However highly the Homoeopathic physician may be respected for his probity, his learning, and the general strength and soundness of his intellect, yet as a Homoeopathist he is regarded by the mass of the community as a kind of monomaniac, and is viewed with suspicion and jealousy, if not con- tempt, by a majority of those to whom the public look up as the leaders of medical fashion, and the expounders of medical doctrine. Under such circumstances, it is not to be expected that the ranks of Homoeopathy are to be filled from among the timid, the ambitious, the avaricious, the de- votees to medical fashion, or the aspirants to med- ical honour. The converts to the new doctrine are not to be sought among undergraduates still dependent on the patronage of professors, nor among newly- fledged licentiates still fortified against new truth by undue reverence for the dogmas of the schools, and inexperienced in their practical fallacy at the bed-side of the patient. This must be the general rule. If any have been exceptions, they are worthy of peculiar honour, as men whose intel- lectual powers and moral qualities have been such as to elevate them above the unfavourable influen- ces by which they were surrounded. There is another class with whose countenance and presence our fraternity can rarely hope to be honoured. They are those who have arrived at OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 7 that age which thinks and acts from habit, and re- coils from a new and laborious investigation, and a total revolution of their theories and practice. Upon the more aged specimens of this class I look with mingled feelings of respect, sympathy and regret. They have sincerely aimed to do their duty and promote the welfare of man under the best lights formerly accessible. That they were born a few years too early for this glorious and beneficent reformation, is their misfortune, not their fault. It is now too late even for their friends and the friends of truth to desire their conversion, which might involve personal sacrifi- ces transcending the amount of public good achiev- ed by their future labours. Such individuals, however, are not numerous in our laborious and self-sacrificing profession, in which an unavoidable neglect of regimen, occasioned by imperative and unreasonable calls, induces disease, and cuts off a great majority of our fellow labourers in the midst of their useful career. There is another class of unbelievers which, from the nature of the case, must embrace some of the foregoing class. It consists of those who are regarded as eminent in the medical profession. They are rich in honours and emoluments. Their circumstances naturally give them a strong bias against innovation. They apprehend that a med- ical revolution would check their brilliant career, and from their towering elevation, suddenly de- 8 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. grade them to the leval of second-rate practitioners. Some among them may not only have attained wealth and popularity by practice, but honour- able and influential posts as teachers of medicine, and, what is still more unfavourable to conversion —should their love of truth be less active than their self-esteem and love of approbation—some of them may "have written a book," and stereotyp- ed their opinions. To this whole class, their ad- miring pupils direct our attention, and exultingly inquire, "Have any of the rulers or of the Phari- sees believed on him ?" Have the leading and most learned men of the profession been convert- ed by Hahnemann ? Then turning to his follow- ers, they exclaim with contempt, "But this people, who know not the law, are cursed." With many individuals, such a state of things is unfavourable to their reception of the new truth. Conversion requires either the absence of these circumstances, or else an intellectual and moral character capable of resisting their influence. There are other influences arising from the in- herent nature of the doctrine and of the evidence adduced in its support. These oppose its recep- tion in proportion to the defects in the mental character and in the previous training in observa- tion and induction. I shall allude only to the inductive character of Homoeopathy, and its analogy in this respect to the physical sciences as now cultivated, and to OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 9 Christianity as first promulgated. Since the time of Bacon, the inductive method, which founds science on facts instead of assumptions, has won the respect of the scientific world, and been adopt- ed as the paramount guide in physical investiga- tions. Since philosophers have agreed to exer- cise first the preceptive and then the reasoning powers,—first to collect facts, then and thence to frame theories—there has been a harmony in their co-operation, and a fruitful harvest resulting from their labours, both comparatively unknown to the persons and times of the sophists and school- men engaged in rearing specious structures on the basis of imagined data. In regard to method of cultivation and certainty of conclusions, the new system of medicine ap- proaches the most exact of those sciences which relate to inorganic nature. A class of facts ob- tained from healthy persons expresses the morbi- fic properties of each article of our Materia Medi- ca; another class of facts obtained from the sick expresses the therapeutic properties of the same agents; a comparison of the two classes establishes as a universal law, " Like are cured by like," " si- milia similibus curantur." Again, the facts of each individual case of disease determine the remedy to be selected in accordance with this law. Let not the student of inorganic nature presume that our alleged facts are shadowy and unreal, be- cause they frequently relate to what is immaterial 10 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. —to mere sensations. There is nothing of which our knowledge is more direct and certain, than our knowledge of our own sensations. There is no such thing as an imaginary pain, or any ima- ginary sensation, in the strict and elementary sense of the word. If a man believes that he has a certain pain, he has it; if he believes himself bi- lious, it may be a mistake. The reality of the sensation he knows; the hypothesis respecting his pathological condition he merely believes. The Homoeopathic physician generally asks for no clinical facts but those to which the patient could testify in a court of justice. If a man com- mences the statement of his present condition with " I believe," you are almost sure that he is about to state an hypothesis, not a fact. Of all the physical sciences, that of therapeutics has been slowest in adopting the inductive me- thod. Hahnemann was the first who made well- ascertained facts the essential basis of the whole therapeutic fabric; the first indeed to discover a law which renders all the phenomena of abnor- mal action available in practice. His is the only known law which makes every morbid phenome- non observable in the living body subservient to the restoration of health. It is this availableness of the facts which stimulates the true physician to examine so minutely the active and living physiognomy of disease, the symptoms. The medical profession is divided into two par- OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 11 ties which have not joined issue on the main point. One party asserts, as the result of obser- vation and experience, that the Homoeopathic agents are efficient. Does the other assert that they are not? No such thing. It merely asserts that they ought not to be efficient. The one rea- sons from observed facts, the other from the sup- posed nature of things. Here is no issue. What must be the opinion of an impartial jury, when all the witnesses on one side testify that the re- medies are efficient, whilst all on the other side testify that they have not tested their efficacy ? The obstacles to belief which I formerly enu- merated, operate on certain classes. But it is not selfishness, nor habit, nor blind and obstinate prejudice in its grosser form, which chiefly pre- vents the general adoption of the new method. In view of the seeming a priori improbabilities of Homoeopathy, and their own want of the know- ledge requisite to make any safe and satisfactory trials of the system on the sick—a circumstance which vitiates the testimony of those few who profess to have tried the system without success —the majority of physicians either resolve to reject it forever, or else procrastinate its trial from year to year, for want of leisure to attain the preliminary knowledge requisite for its prac- tical examination. In the mean time, they have more confidence in their own reason than in other people's observations, on a subject in re- 12 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION". lation to which there appear to be so many sources of illusion. Most of these difficulties might be obviated by a method of experimentation, different from that ordinarily pursued. I am confident that, should every physician make suitable trial of the Ho- moeopathic attenuations on himself when in his usual health, the rapid and general conversion of the profession would be inevitable. Let him carefully observe and minutely record the new symptoms experienced after each dose, and then after some days have elapsed, compare this list with the symptoms of the same remedy as record- ed in the Materia Medica, or in the first volume of Jahr's Manual, and he will probably observe such a coincidence as will induce him to pursue the investigation. If he makes a similar examin- ation of the same minute doses of other Homoeo- pathic remedies after suitable intervals, he will, after the trial of a few remedies, find the corres- pondence between his own and the printed records so striking, as to convince him of the truth of the latter. The effects will be more striking in proportion to the adaptation of the medicine to the particular susceptibilities of the individual. Hence some previous study or the advice of a scientific Homoeopathist, will be useful in mak- ing the selection. Experiments made in the above manner, prove not only the truth of our Materia Medica, but OBSTACLES" TO INVESTIGATION". 13 the power of the small doses and attenuations, that most obnoxious portion of the Homoeopathic creed. This doctrine, like other parts of Homoeo- pathy, is simply a matter of induction. It may, as I have illustrated, be proved by our own sen- sations. Hahnemann was led to it by pure ex- perience, and not by any speculative views. The disciples of Hahnemann have been anathematized for their confidence in facts. Similar treatment had been long since experi- enced by the disciples of One whom we may reverently call a physician, inasmuch as the record of his cures forms no inconsiderable por- tion of his history. Whilst one of his objects was the restoration of health—man's highest physical interest—another was to generate belief in truth, by means of facts cognizable by the senses. Christianity was presented to the world in the shape of facts. It was a grand exhibition of the inductive method of philosophy. Now we may also claim for Homoeopathy an inductive cha- racter, and for its believers a rational regard for the evidence of their senses. Gentlemen, in making this comparison, I ap- prehend from you no unfair criticism. The com- parison has no reference to the relative importance of the two subjects, and makes no irreverent use of sacred things. When Archbishop Whately, in order to confound the sceptics of his day, institutes a tacit but elaborate comparison be- 14 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. tween the life of Napoleon and that of Christ, and between the disbelievers of the two biogra- phies, or when the great Teacher himself com- pares the kingdom of heaven to "leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal," no intelligent and candid reader considers the more sacred subject degraded, or suspects any design to compare the two in regard to their im- portance, dignity or sanctity. A miraculous cure requires supernatural agency, and in this respect is unlike all others. But the spectator of this phenomenon, in order that he may be con- vinced of its reality, requires only the honest exercise of his perceptive and reflective powers. In this respect, a miracle agrees with every other phenomenon; it is addressed to man's natural powers. The case of second-hand evidence is similar. If any phenomenon is recorded by per- sons who observed, or any sensation by persons who experienced it, I may endeavour to weigh the characters and circumstances of the witnesses, and may admit or reject their testimony according to the evidence thus obtained. If the phenomenon is strange and wonderful, if it is even miraculous, I still use my natural powers in examining the testimony. In pursuing the inductive method, by which the physical sciences are built up, the philosopher no longer inquires what the facts should be, but what they are. He collects them by his own ob- OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 15 servations and experiments, or obtains them from competent and credible observers, and employs facts as the only proper basis of his generaliza- tions. If any facts, however new and strange, be reported by credible witnesses, he endeavours to place himself in a situation to observe them. If this be impracticable, he will not array his pre- conceived opinions against unexceptionable tes- timony. Such has been the course pursued by the dis- ciples of Bacon, and also by the disciples of a still greater Master. These appealed to facts as the basis of belief, and warned their brethren against the prevalent "philosophy," which was far from being inductive. The Greeks sought "after wisdom," after plausible hypotheses, and therefore rejected the facts, and the true wisdom. The sophists, the self-styled philosophers, held the same position as those medical scepties of our day who array a priori argument, barely plau- sible, against facts well attested. A flippant speaker or writer may make the Homoeopathic doctrine appear ridiculous to minds as superficial as his own; a thorough examination, by men really scientific and profound, will demonstrate its consistency with true reason. This greatest of all medical truths shrinks not from the ordeal of speculative investigation ; yet this was not its origin in the mind of its immortal discoverer, nor has this been the principal instrument in its pro- 16 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. pagation. It appeals to the test of experiment- to results susceptible of verification by every phy- sician and philosopher who is anxious to arrive at a correct estimate of a discovery, the most im- portant ever made in the whole range of the med- ical and physical sciences. After due study of the writings of Hahnemann and a strict trial of his method of practice, who has ever come to the conclusion that Hahnemann was an impostor or a visionary and Homoeopathy a cheat or a delusion? If any honest physician, after a careful trial, ever rejected the Homoeo- pathic practice, he must possess a feeble intellect. As the sceptical portion of the medical profession have not made this examination, their prejudices are entitled to some respect. How shall they be prevailed on to undertake the requisite reading, and those experiments which are still more es- sential? Many feel themselves fortified in their present position by the testimony of antiquity, or the countenance of their fellow practitioners. To such I would address this— Fable of the Ass and the Steamer.—An ass, hea- vily laden with a sack of letters directed to a distant town on the river, was met on his way by a fox, who apprized him, that ease and expedi- tion would both be promoted, by transferring his burden to a steamer which had just then stop- ped at the shore. "This is unreasonable, friend Reynard," re- OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 17 plied the patient beast; "for my method of trans- porting the mail has been in operation three thou- sand years, yours only fifty. It is impossible that the combined wisdom of so many generations should not exceed that of one." "Your reasoning," replied the fox, "can have no weight, unless there had been a race or races between steamboats and asses during the said three thousand years, and it had been decided that the ass always gained the race and was less fatigued. Now this trial of speed and strength must have been impossible before steamboats were invented." Whilst the mail-carrier of the old line was stag- gering under the weight of this argument and that of his letters, another ass overtook him, and having overheard the conversation, was enabled to bring timely aid to the confounded dispu- tant. "Master Reynard," quoth he, "you are not of an age and size rightly to decide such matters. Your facts and arguments may be unanswerable; but they should have no weight with any re- spectable ass. No respectable and learned ass should ever adopt the new method, until some other ass, still more respectable and more learned, shall have previously adopted it." "It puzzles my brain," replied the fox, "to apply this rule to any useful purpose. I pity your hopeless condition. The practices of the 18 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. respectable and learned asses could never be re- formed, if each must wait till some ass more learn- ed and respectable than himself should have set the example." Moral.—The idol of one man is antiquity; that of another is respectability. The former re- jects whatever was not in ages before him; the latter, whatever is not in the circle above him. The man who prefers caste to truth, and spurns useful discoveries not sanctioned by the head or the tail of some academy or fashionable clique, can only be pitied. But the man who venerates the shade of antiquity, and in matters even of science and art, is awed into ultra-conservatism by long-etablished opinion and usage, is entitled to some instruction. He does not consider, that the non-adoption of undiscovered facts and un- heard opinions is not equivalent to their rejection. There are many facts, and inferences from them, which former ages neither adopted nor rejected; and simply because they never so much as dreamed, either of the possibility of the facts or of the conclusions to which their future discovery would necessarily lead every sound and unpreju- diced mind. Example.—Homoeopathy is fifty years old. The physicians of former ages never rejected the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, for it was not known; and as the physicians who preceded Hah- nemann knew but few of the symptoms which OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 19 medicines excite in healthy persons, they had no means of determining whether medicines always relieve symptoms similar to those which they produce: they never tried this as a general law of cure. They never made any Homoeopathic attenuations, and consequently never dreamed of instituting any comparison between their effi- cacy and that of crude drugs. Homoeopathy was never rejected before the time of Hahnemann. Before stating, in favour of this system, any speculative views, I will acknowledge that my own conversion was not effected by them, but by the following experiments. I took the third atten- uation of a medicine, and, avoiding the study of its alleged symptoms as recorded in books, I made a record of all the new symptoms which I experienced. When this record was completed, I examined a printed list of symptoms, and was surprised to find a remarkable coincidence be- tween them and those which I had experienced. I at first thought it probably an accidental coinci- dence. I repeated the medicine, and again found a coincidence equally striking. Another medicine was then tried, with similar precautions and simi- lar results. There was a new set of symptoms, very different from the former, but generally corresponding with the printed symptoms of the medicine last taken. Thus the evidence accumu- lated, from week to week, until I became thor- oughly convinced that such a number of coinci- 20 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. dences could not, on the theory of probabilities, be accidental. There were thousands of chances to one against such a supposition. I knew that the attenuated medicines were efficient, and the Ho- moeopathic Materia Medica, so far as I had tested it, substantially true. The above mode of commencing and continuing the investigation, is that which I would recom- mend to all inquirers. The incredibility of the power of the small doses and of the attenuations, had been my greatest stumbling-block. This being removed by actual and direct experiment, I felt confidence in Hahnemann, and felt justified in making therapeutic experiments, to test his grand law of healing. The result was equally satisfactory, and gave me a firm confidence— which every year's practice has tended to strength- en—in the exact truth and inestimable value of the Homoeopathic law, and the superiority of the Homoeopathic method of practice over every other system and combination of systems. This direct examination of Homoeopathy is prevented by speculative objections. If Homoeo- pathy were assailed only by facts, it has a maga- zine of facts sufficient for repelling the assault. To many minds, the facts of the new school seem incredible, because unsupported—as they think —by analogous facts, and inexplicable on any known principles. Even to the most observant men, these difficulties beset the very threshold of OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 21 Homoeopathic inquiry, and deter them from enter- ing. Could such men be prevailed on to enter, their conversion would be secure. Not so with all. Some would be haunted with speculative difficul- ties, in spite of the testimony of their senses. A disproportionate activity of comparison would require analogies, and excessive causality would never be satisfied without scientific principles. Each case of medical scepticism requires its appro- priate curative; which must have some specific relation to the dominant faculties. The man who believes nothing but what he sees, will never be cured by thinking; and the man who believes nothing but what he spins out of his own brain, "as spiders spin cobwebs out of their bowels," will never be cured by observation. Reasoning corrects reasoning. We must cure sceptical minds as we do diseased bodies—homceopathically; and be all things to all men, in the hope of gaining some to the cause of truth. To the present day, after all the praise bestow- ed on the inductive method, there is much med- ical reasoning which is imbued with the spirit of the a priori and deductive philosophy of the sophists of ancient Greece. This kind of philosophy is a hobby extremely useful for riding over facts. Some Grecian genius invented her for that purpose. Since Bacon ex- posed her defects, she has been in little demand except in the old medical school—a school, how- 22 OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. ever, that can boast many true followers of Bacon, and wise observers of nature. A practical physician, of the Baconian stamp, once facetiously remarked, that he knew of " no- body that had so much leisure to study philos- ophy, as a sitting goose. She had nothing to do, but to sit and think." The old school is now engaged in this (in her opinion) dignified and sublime process of incuba- tion. She is taking precisely this method of hatch- ing truth, and unhatching error. With an obsti- nacy and perseverance worthy of a better cause, and with eyes closed to surrounding nature, she sits on the nest and thinks; she sits and broods over lifeless stones—mistaken for eggs —in the fond hope of a progeny, which shall one day march forth upon the earth, and drive the young Homoeopathic chickens back into the shell. Without stirring from her nest to examine the living creatures around her, this sedentary animal has, by the mere inherent power of reason, by long meditation, arrived at the conclusion, that those creatures are sheer phantoms. Without ex- periment, she has, by the mighty power of sitting without movement, and thinking with closed eyes, demonstrated that Hahnemann's egg will never hatch. Moved by compassion for her hope- less condition, and the disappointment in which her maternal solicitude must eventuate, in vain do we offer her a real egg, for actual trial. She OBSTACLES TO INVESTIGATION. 23 rejects the proffered treasure, and repulses the benevolent donor with hisses of contempt and indignation. What has she to do, but to sit and think ? If any one disturbs this calm and philo- sophical repose, and urges her to action and vision, what has she to do, but to hissf LECTURE II. EVIDENCES OF THE POWER OF SMALL DOSES AND ATTENUATED MEDICINES, including A THEORY OF POTENTIATION. The three grand theoretical problems of Ho- moeopathy, are: First, Why are diseases cured by similar irritants ? Secondly, Why by minute or infinitesimal doses ? Thirdly, Why best by me- dicine in an attenuated state ? Or in other words, On what principle are medicines potentized ? Of the first problem, I shall not now attempt to give the solution. It never presented any serious diffi- culty to my own mind, nor is it the principal stumbling-block to persons in general. I shall not stop to inquire, whether the known fact, that dis- eases are curable by agents which excite similar affections, is to be explained on the principle that two similar diseases cannot coexist, or on the principle that an impression on the vital forces * Read before the New-York Homoeopathic Society. The publication of this and of all the following lectures has been re- quested by the Societies before whom and at whose request they were respectively delivered. POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 25 excites them to reaction, or on the principle that the secondary effect of a medicine is the opposite of the primary ; nor shall I attempt to consider, whether some of these principles may not in some sense be compatible. One thing is evident; that is, that two vital actions in every respect similar, must involve the same parts, even to microscopic precision—the same tissues, the same fibres, the same particles. To employ a similar irritant is to meet the disease directly, in its very home, and either coincide with or oppose it, so far as the ultimate and practi- cal effect is concerned. If the similarity is perfect, there can be no new action set up entirely foreign to the disease. As a strict homoeopathic practice, then, does not tend to excite lateral movements, it must, as its ultimate effect, bring the system to a point either backward or forward of that to which the disease would have hurried it, but to a point—so to speak—on the same track. In other words, it must stay the disease or accelerate it, make it better or worse. This condition of action enables us and all men to compare the homoeopa- thic results with unaided nature, as well as with the antipathic part of the old school practice. When the question is one of quantity, there is less uncertainty than when the question of quality is complicated with it. If homoeopathic physicians generally made the disease worse, it would be a matter of notoriety. But if their agents have any 2 26 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. efficiency, they must make it either worse or better. Let this general defence against the anti- pathists suffice, until they detect a decided and permanent aggravation—a making of the disease really worse—as the usual ultimate effect of ho- moeopathic treatment. This we challenge them to detect. Instead of confining ourselves to the defensive, it would be easy to maintain higher ground, and challenge a comparison between results obtained by opposites; and those by similars. Cold water transiently allays the irritation of a burn, but leaves it permanently irritable. Cathartics move the bowels, but leave them afterwards incapable of moving themselves. A plausible common sense tells the physicking physician, that he is removing constipation; reason and experience should teach him that he is only stereotyping it. To relieve pain and nervous irritation, the community are perpetually drugged with opiates and other narcotics, which increase the sleeplessness and nervousness, and even the cough and pain, unless the drug is continually repeated. This last is the usual expedient. The blow has not weakened the disease; if it has not fatally stunned Nature, she may eventually effect a cure. If a patient would know the real effect which a medicine has produced, let him suspend its use. If the symptoms disappear whenever the medicine is taken, and reappear whenever it is omitted, the POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 27 medicine is doing absolutely nothing towards a cure. Homceopathia can safely appeal to this test; for she uses no mere palliatives. A single homoeo- pathic dose will—after a slight retrograde impulse —move the patient forward on the track of amendment, for hours, days or weeks, according to the nature of the disease, and bring him to a permanently advanced position, from which other doses will carry him forward to perfect and permanent health. But whilst Homceopathia never sacrifices the future to the present, she, on the other hand, never sacrifices the present to the future: she arrests the most violent and rapid diseases, more forcibly and speedily than any other system. To show the advantage of giving a medicine, which, at the first instant, coincides with the disease, instead of one which at the first instant opposes it, I have deemed it sufficient to ap- peal to the results, and to give a plain rule for testing the two modes of treatment at every stage. In regard to another branch of the old school practice, the revulsive or alloeopathic—which excites sufferings dissimilar to the disease—Ho- moeopathia can appeal no less triumphantly to final results, in the most rapid and violent dis- eases, as well as in chronic. But the comparison of intermediate results, at different stages, is attended with more difficulty, 28 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. and is more likely to mislead the superficial observer, than in the case of the antipathic treat- ment. Here comes in the question of quality of disease, as well as quantity. The elements of the problem are heterogeneous, and often concealed. The disease, if apparently cured, is displaced by one or more dissimilar diseases, some acute, some chronic. An emetic cures a headache, and at the same time leaves a chronic inflammation of the stomach. A cathartic removes the contents of the bowels—which in ninety-nine cases in a hundred were doing no injury—whilst the cathartic leaves a chronic inflammation of the mucous lining and a paralytic weakness of the muscular coat of the intestines. These practices account for the ge- neral prevalence of dyspepsia. The multitudinous arms of this polypus are not more nourished by nostrums than by prescriptions called scien- tific. With these lateral impulses of the revulsive method, which throw the disease on some other track—and often on different tracks, some of them concealed in dark tunnels—the patient, if a man of intelligence and reflection, will often be led to doubt whether his apparent amendment is really of any advantage. An intelligent layman yesterday expressed to me his conviction, that "patients often find it as hard to get rid of the medicine as of the disease." When the new form of disease is chronic and latent, the patient often POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 29 submits, without complaint, to its future eruptions, as a new dispensation of Providence. Homoeopathy cures a disease without inflicting new ones, acute or chronic. But because the pa- tient feels no explosion of the disease, no lacera- tion of other parts by its fragments, he often doubts whether the medicine has acted. If the evil spirit has not torn him, he doubts whether it has been forcibly expelled. x The immediate morbid effects of a drug, people regard as the proper working of the medi- cine ; and common sense—which is often another name for shallow reasoning—teaches them that the more a medicine works, the more it will do. They say, "Doctor, your medicine has not operated." Experience has led people to expect some morbid effects from medicines. Morbid effects are regarded as the tests of energy, without con- sidering whether these have any curative ten- dency. If a man rides on a rough road, in a carriage without springs, he is very sensible of the motion, though his progress be only six miles an hour. Yet the jars contribute nothing to his progress. They are wasting the force destined to progression. On a smooth railroad, the passenger, seated in a closed car, gliding at the rate of twenty miles an hour, is scarcely sensible of any progress. To the great movements of the globe we inhabit, we are 30 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. utterly insensible. Whirled around by the diurnal motion, a thousand miles an hour, or several hundreds, according to our latitude, and shooting along the earth's orbit seventy thousand miles an hour, we suffer no jars, we feel no progress. The vulgar eye perceives none; ancient philosophy perceived none. Up to the time of Hahnemann, medical philoso- phy was equally blind to the curative effects of medicines. Its attention was directed solely to the jarring, the lateral movements. If the drug purged, or sweat, or vomited, or excited some other secretion or excretion, then, and then only, it operated. The real, the specific virtues, were overlooked. Rational medicine despised specifics, as the excrescences of science. With Hahnemann they constitute the whole structure. With him originated the first general law for the administra- tion of specifics. This is Homoeopathy. With his predecessors, every drug was pressed into the service of some evacuating group, or it was no- body and nothing. Even the arch-agent, mercury, was not permitted to enrol itself, without consent- ing to head a squad of silalogogues, i. e. spitting drugs. Yet this collateral effect is not curative. If mercury salivates in curing, it does not cure fy salivating. If it purges in curing, it does not cure by purging; neither does rhubarb nor jalap, nor any other cathartic, under ordinary circum- stances. We might as well estimate the power of POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 31 a steam-engine by the jarring of the boat, or that of a fire-engine by the leakage from a hose, as that of medicine by the evacuations. Every mo- tion is not progression; every accident is not proper action. What a destruction of vital power, what a waste of medicinal energy, by such medical en- gineering ! No wonder they are unable. to make small doses operate. I shall proceed to show why the followers of Hahnemann can make small doses operate. This exposition will include the doctrine of potentization. There are four reasons why Hahnemann's small doses operate. First, They act directly on the disordered parts. Secondly, They act in the right direction. Thirdly, Disease renders the parts pecu- liarly sensitive to the appropriate medicine. Fourthly, The power of the medicine is exalted by a peculiar mode of preparation. First: The Homoeopathic medicine acts directly on the part which requires to be influenced, and not on other parts. It acts near at hand, and not at a distance. This circumstance is always favour- able to strength of action, and gives small and near things more energy than great and remote ones. The moon has only the one twenty-eight millionth part as much matter as the sun, yet it has three times as much power to raise the tides of our ocean. The cohesion of one clean bullet pressed against another, will suspend it in spite of 32 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. the attraction of the whole earth. The one is in contact with the thing acted on, the other is at a- distance. This is precisely the relation which the Homoeopathic medicine sustains to the revul- sive. Revulsive operations are indirect, and often superficial. The machinery of the human body is vastly more complicated than any watch or chronometer, and those parts in which most of the vital processes are carried on, are inconceivably more minute and delicate than the machinery of any time-keeper. To make applications to the skin for an internal disease, is not direct treat- ment. You would not repair the wheels of a watch by scouring the case. But, says one, I go deeper and to the real inside. I purify the intes- tines. Very well! That is like scouring the brass cap that covers the machinery. It is still a very indirect and superficial expedient. The steam- boiler affords an illustration of the difference between external and internal operations. Some boilers are pervaded by flues. These are mere continuations of the outer surface, as the mucous surface of the intestines is a continuation of the skin. To clear a flue is not cleansing the boiler; so to clear the intestines is not a purification of the system; as the venders of quack cathartics persuade many of the community. It is time for the regular physicians to discountenance such charlatanry. The medical electricians think they reach the POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 33 real interior, and apply the force at the right point. It must be conceded, that they use a force which is pervading, and analogous to, if not identical with, the vital forces. But the appli- cation of it is necessarily gross and ignorant. They expect to drive a steam-engine by directing a current of steam indiscriminately through all parts of the machinery. Infinitely more pre- posterous! they expect that a combination of engines with an infinite number of pistons, in an infinite variety of positions—some moving too slowly, others too fast—will have its movements harmoniously regulated, by a great current of steam which shall sweep through the whole in one direction. I would warn the Homoeopathic physi- cian against listening to the delusive pretensions of medical electricity as now ignorantly practised, or invoking it as an auxiliary. This warning may be the more necessary, as he is more a vitalist than a materialist, and attributes great importance to imponderable agents. If animal electricity is intimately concerned in morbid actions, it must be in a way so complicated, that all such projects for its regulation are crude and futile. Homoeopathic medicines are the only true regu- lators of animal electricity and of the human organ- ism. The Homoeopathic physician is the true engineer of this complicated machinery. Its minutest and most important parts are invisible 2* 34 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. to him, and equally so to every other anatomist and pathologist, the most learned, and the most conceited. Not one of them, in his minutest dissections, has ever seen the real inside of nature, the real vital machinery, the elementary parts, much less the all-important—the elementary— vital actions. Both are meta-microscopic. I would not found systems of vital engineering, upon such superficial examinations, nor expect perfect success in any attempt to repair parts so inconceivably delicate, with instruments as coarse as crude drugs. The Homoeopathic physician can regulate the invisible machinery of this engine. His tools are delicate and appropriate, and he has learned the law which regulates their application to in- visible parts. The infinitely wise and benevolent Contriver has furnished the engine with indices- called symptoms—which point to the particular manipulations required for its regulation. To complete the manifestation of his goodness in regard to this, he has, in the course of his Provi- dence, and through the teachings of Hahnemann, instructed mankind in the use of these indices. To attempt a cure on theoretical principles, regard- less of the paramount authority of these indi- cations, is as unwise as to seek the hour of the day by attempting to determine by algebra the position of the wheels of a clock, instead of listening to its striking or looking at its hands. The remedy, selected in accordance with the unerring index' POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 35 acts upon the very parts which require to be influ- enced. This continuity, or proximity of the agent, would of itself render a small dose sufficient and a large dose unsafe. Had it been customary with the older surgeons to extract splinters from the fingers by pounding them with a hammer, and some one had ultimately hit upon the expedient of doing it with a needle, should we not have heard a great outcry against the innovation ? Says the old orthodox surgeon, " This small-dose system has no efficiency. I have been pounding here for two hours; and the splinter has barely started. My instrument is efficient, as you have evidence in the bruises. Do you think to dislodge the splinter with your insignificant homoeopathic needle point? It is contrary to the experience of three thousand years; it is contrary to all analogy. I would as soon think of harnessing a musqueto before my gig. I have deliberately adopted this maxim: to be- lieve nothing which is incredible except on evidence which is overwhelming." The surgeon of the new school replies: " Your instrument is ponderous and powerful, but not efficacious. Its force is worse than wasted on the living and distant parts. You might pound the patient to a jelly, before the splinter would come out. If you happen now and then to hit it, you are just as likely to drive it in. My instrument is small, but effective. The whole secret consists in applying 36 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. the force at the right point, and in the right direction." Allopathia applies her force at the wrong point; Antipathia, in the wrong direction; Ho- mceopathia applies hers at the right point and in the right direction. This right direction is the second reason why a small dose suffices. For the proof that the Homoeopathic direction is the right one, I rely mainly upon the testimony of expe- rience. When treating of the opposite laws of cure, I have shown that when we at first move the system a little, in nearly the same direc- tion, the ultimate results are incomparably better than when we attempt instantly to reverse its motion. There is no absurdity in this. Analogies are in its favour. Medicine is the small guiding force; nature the strong impelling power. Na- ture might impel to destruction, if medicine were not at the helm. The ship's course is not revers- ed by stopping the wind, or opposing it, but by using it. The pilot does not attempt to back his ship against the wind, but turns her about by moving a few moments, nearly in the same di- rection. Suppose it were necessary to bring back into port, a ship sailing directly away from it before a strong breeze : what would be thought of the captain who should keep the sails and the helm in their old position, and direct all hands to apply oars, and with all their feeble might, POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 37 paddle the ship back against the wind, stern fore- most? I should infer, first, that he had been educated in the antipathic school; and secondly, that he had never read, that "ships, though great, and driven by fierce winds, are yet turn- ed about by a very small helm." Thirdly, The efficacy of a small dose—and the danger of a large one—is increased by the peculiarly sensitive condition of disordered parts. Suffering with a morbid action similar to that producible by the medicine, they possess a pre- ternaturally acute sensibility to its influence. It is unnecessary to illustrate and confirm this principle by examples. They are obvious and numberless. The scalded hand is pained by a distant fire, the inflamed skin by slight percus- sion, and the inflamed eye by light. The agents, which now with feeble intensity can severely aggravate the irritation, could, if applied with greater intensity, have originated the inflamma- tion in the healthy parts. But the force which can barely aggravate the existing irritation, could not have irritated the parts when in their normal condition. That kind of irritant which, in the locality in which it acts and in the pheno- mena which it develops, resembles the cause of any disease, is found by experience to be its pro- per curative. The excitement which this, given in small doses, produces, is soon followed by 38 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. melioration of the disease, and ultimately by per- manent cure. The dose administered on such a principle should be exceedingly small, and the action of such a dose, given under such circum- stances, is not incredible. We sometimes hear of men—in sound health —going into the chamber of a patient, and swal- lowing a tumblerful of a solution which a Homoeo- pathic physician had left to be administrated in teaspoonful doses. This is a common-sense— that is to say—a shallow—argument against Ho- moeopathy, by very green philosophers. Sup- pose such a man should visit a patient whose eyes were inflamed, and exceedingly intolerant of light. He finds him in a dark chamber, which has sixty-four panes of glass; but the patient de- clares, that it irritates his eyes to uncover a single one of them. The visitor declares this to be in- credible and absurd; and proves to his own sa- tisfaction the truth of his own position, by raising every curtain, and finding that his own eyes are not injured by the- light. If the weak-minded and uninstructed should be gathered into a school of elementary science, the man who swal- lowed the sixty-four teaspoonfuls, should be plac- ed in the same class with the man who uncovered the sixty-four panes. I know not his residence, but hope he will make it known before such a charitable institution is established. The fourth reason why Hahnemann's small do- POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 39 ses are efficacious is, that the power of the medi- cine is developed or exalted by a peculiar mode of preparation. The three grand doctrines of Homoeopathy are: First, The law, Similia similibus curantur—Me- dicines relieve affections similar to those which they are capable of producing; Secondly, The doctrine of dose—Small doses are most safe and efficacious; Thirdly, The doctrine of potence— Medicines are peculiarly powerful after being subjected to sufficient friction or succussion with a suitable quantity of some inert substance. These doctrines have naturally grown out of each other in the above order. The primary action of the medicine coincides with the disease, and aggravates it. Hahnemann, observing these aggravations to be severe, protracted and dan- gerous, gradually reduced the dose to a safe point. The determination of this was purely a matter of experience. New experiments were essential, experiments in the use of medicines coinciding with diseases. Alloeopathic and An- tipathic experience, with medicines acting on sound organs to produce revulsion, or on diseased organs in direct opposition to the disease, could never determine the appropriate Homoeopathic dose. From a revolution in the therapeutic law, emanated a revolution in doses. From this re- volution in posology, emanated the grand disco- ver v of potenti zation or dynamization. By the 40 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. doctrine of potence, as discovered by Hahnemann, I mean no physical theory, but only a generali- zation of practical facts in relation to the reality of the increased power manifested by medicine after having been subjected to Hahnemann's pro- cesses. After stating the facts, I shall attempt to give a theory. When the one-hundredth part of a grain of an insoluble substance was to be administered, the most convenient method was, to mix one grain of it intimately with ninety-nine grains of an inert substance, like saccharum lactis, and subsequent- ly divide the mass into one hundred parts. Wa- ter, or alcohol—which in minute quantities is almost equally destitute of medicinal properties —served a similar -purpose in reducing the dose of liquids and soluble substances. The diffusion of one drop of medicine through ninety-nine of alcohol afforded a ready and exact method of ad- ministering the one hundredth part of the former. But it was soon discovered that no rule of three, no simple doctrine of proportion, embrac- ed the true theory of doses. The one-hundredth part of a grain thus prepared—instead of retaining only one-hundredth part of the power of the ori- ginal grain—had a pathogenetic or symptom-pro- ducing power, not many times more or less than the whole grain, and a disease-curing power greater even than the whole grain. I state the law thus indefinitely, because the ratios differ for POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 41 different medicines; and, from the nature of the subject, cannot be determined with great preci- sion for any. Fortunately for humanity, there is one power of a drug which may be more nearly approxi- mated by the doctrine of proportion, by the rule of three; and that is, the poisonous, the death- producing power. Much of the scepticism that prevails among physicians in regard to the efficacy of small do- ses, arises from confounding the totally different laws which regulate curative and poisonous effects. If—as has been usual in the old practice, in many cases of severe disease—remedies were administer- ed in doses which approached the extreme limits of safety, then to double such a dose might make the danger from its operation at least two-fold. Conversely, to reduce a poisonous dose by one half, might remove at least one half of the dan- ger; but it by no means follows, that another bisection would abstract one half of the salutary efficiency. In the case of specific medicines— and this is the only class which Homoeopathy recognises—the curative power diminishes much less rapidly than the dose, even in case of crude substances. Of this every old-school physician is aware, in regard to the alterative action of mercury. That power is nearly proportional to quantity, is a proposition which might be entertainc 1 by 42 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. the chemist or natural philosopher, by the mere physicien—the man engaged in considering phy- sical and chemical properties or the mutual actions of inorganic matter—but not by the physician, the man conversant with medical properties, with actions on living bodies. In the mechan- ical and chemical arts, one pound or one grain of any substance has only the one-hundredth part of the effect of one hundred. The doctrine of the proportionality of power to quantity seems on a partial view to be confirmed by an expe- rience almost universal. Hence the Hahneman- nic discovery of the amazing efficacy of infini- tesimal doses, has to contend with a general and deep-rooted prejudice, especially among those whose studies have been confined to the proper- ties of dead matter. The immense power of in- finitesimal doses is almost equally incredible to the physician, unless he has tried his medicines in the potentized form. The preparation of minute doses led to at- tenuations—that is, preparations containing little medicine in a given bulk. The first solution or trituration prepared by the process above describ- ed was called the first attenuation. The second was prepared from the first, as the first was from the crude article. The original purpose for which the trituration and shaking were employed, was to produce a uniform diffusion. On trying these POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 43 preparations as medicines, Hahnemann unexpect- edly discovered that they were peculiarly power- ful. Hence they were called potences or dynami- zations. Independently of all speculative rea- soning, the experience of Hahnemann and other Homoeopathic physicians has demonstrated, First: That a given weight of any drug in a dilute state, possesses a greater therapeutic power than the same weight of it in the crude or concentrated state. Secondly: That Hahnemann's method of diffusing a medicinal substance through a non- medicinal one, by successive steps or stages in re- gular progression, and with mechanical force, dev elopes more curative power than is developed in an equally dilute mixture or solution prepared in the ordinary way. Physicians of the old school have made obser- vations confirmatory of the former proposition, especially in relation to mineral waters. Prof. Dauben}', of the University of Oxford, alludes to the unquestionable efficacy of certain mineral wa- ters in England, in connection with the fact of their containing only one grain of iodine in ten gallons of the water. He adopts an extremely improbable and unscientific hypothesis, viz., that the iodine imparts its qualities to the other sub- stances with which it is associated. The truth that Hahnemann's processes are pe- culiarly efficient in the development of medi- cinal power, is established by the experience of 44 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. thousands of intelligent and scientific physicians, who have had a thorough and practical acquaint- ance with the old medicines and the old method of treating diseases. Believing that theoretical objections prevent many from testing Hahne- mann's potences, I shall attempt to give a THEORY OF POTENTIATION. My view, expressed in the most general terms, is, that Hahnemann's process developes the power of a drug by effecting a comminution, and in no other way. This is the whole secret of that in- credible power which experience proves his pre- parations to possess. Trituration and mixture with saccharum lactis promote this develop- ment, just so far as they promote comminution, and no farther. The successive steps of centi- grade dilution promote this, by subjecting every particle of the medicinal substance to the mechan- ical, tearing-asunder operation of the non-medi- cinal one. One man, by Hahnemann's process, can, in a single day, effect a greater comminu- tion of a substance, than could have been effected in a direct mixture and trituration, by the com- bined labour of the whole human race continually operating since the creation of Adam. The la- bour that built the pyramids is nothing in com- parison to that of preparing even the eighteenth potence by such a process, that is, by thorough- ly triturating one grain with a sextillion of grains. POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 45 By Hahnemann's process, the eighteenth tritura- tion is prepared by one man in eighteen hours, one hour being sufficient at each stage for a tho- rough trituration. The whole world could not divide a medicinal powder so minutely, either by triturating it with one mass of saccharum lactis, or by triturating it by itself. For in the first case, the labour would be enormous on account of the bulk. In the last case, the comminution would attain a limit, and the medicine would be left coarse compared with Hahnemann's. To triturate one grain of medicinal powder with ninety-nine grains of a hard inert powder, like saccharum lactis, effects not merely a wider separation of its original component masses, but a division of those masses, and a division more minute than would be practicable by any amount of trituration of the medicinal powder per se. In subjecting one grain of the resulting powder to a similar operation with ninety-nine grains of saccharum lactis, in order to obtain the second trituration, we render the groups of medicinal molecules still smaller than in the first tritura- tion. In forming still higher triturations, a re- duction in the size of the groups of medicinal mol- ecules must be effected by each successive ope- ration. The philosopher will not find it difficult to be- lieve, that this division of the medicine might 46 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. take place many thousands of times, without re- ducing it to the indivisible particles—the proper atoms—if such exist. As part of my theory of potentization, I shall propose a new THEORY OF TRITURATION AND SOLUTION, showing the limit of the subdivison effected by these processes, and the principles on which the limit may be indefinitely extended. If any coarse and dry substance is triturated by itself, it will continue to be permanently divided and subdivided to a certain, but limited extent. For beyond that, the blow would either leave the parts so near each other, that they would in- stantly reunite by the power of the cohesive for- ces and again become one solid body, or it would drive these newly separated parts against others or against each other, and effect their union by bringing them within the sphere of cohesion. If a flint stone were pulverized in a mortar, it would at length become so fine, that some of the finest of these invisible flint stones would, after any farther division, be soon reunited. All that would be necessary for their reunion and the res- toration of their previous hardness, would be, to bring the parts or their mutually attractive poles, as near to each other as they had been before their separation; for the strength of their cohe- sion depends on the degree of their proximity. POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 47 The approximation and union of some of these smaller than microscopic pebbles, would be pro- moted by the pressure of the pestle: the same blows that severed some, would unite others, so that the average size of the parts would remain unchanged. I have referred to poles, believing that the cohesion of all atoms and of all groups sufficient- ly small, depends on polarity and is a crystalli- zing force, and probably magnetism itself in its most elementary form. But similar principles apply to my theory of comminution, and similar language may be employed, whether we regard the cohesive force as residing on all sides of the groups, or only at certain poles. For if a group were surrounded by many others within its sphere of cohesion, some of their poles would be in a position favourable to union, and others be brought into that position by rotation, as would be the case with a multitude of small magnets thrown together promiscuously. In experiments with the solar microscope, many years since, I saw, and exhibited to the Senior Class of Union College, thousands of instances of rotation, attraction, and induction, in the crys- tals of camphor formed from the tincture placed on a small plate of mica and exposed to solar radiation. When the sky was very clear and the radiation intense, the phenomena became confused by the rapidity of the crystallization, 48 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. and it was necessary to dilute the saturated tinc- ture with about five times its bulk of alcohol, in order that these phenomena might be exhibited in all their distinctness and beauty. Thin clouds permitted the use of the undiluted tincture, and intermediate states of the sky required interme- diate degrees of dilution. A description of these interesting phenomena was given in the "Report of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, for the year 1836," pp. 207 to 209. I here refer to them as evidence of the polarity of minute groups. In resuming the consideration of pulverized flint, let us suppose the powder had attained such an extreme degree of fineness as can be gi- ven to it by a process which I shall describe, and let us suppose that it could be separated from other substances and subjected in mass to the blows of the pestle; the effect would be like that of pounding a quantity of clean leaden shot: we should stick them together in large masses. If we had a sufficient quantity of such a powder confined in a cylinder and pressed by a piston, we could probably unite it all into one flinty rock, perhaps defective in hardness at some points from want of the requisite position of the poles. I have taken an extreme case, in order to fa- cilitate the conception of the principle on which the limitation to comminution in the ordinary process of pulverization depends. The powder POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 49 of any substance, pounded or rubbed by itself in a mortar, would attain a limit of fineness, beyond which its subdivision could not be carried by the combined labour of all mankind operating in the same way through all ages. A sliding motion of the pestle enables us to go a little farther before we reach this limit, not only because it subjects small isolated masses more directly and efficiently to the dividing force, but because it allows fewer opportunities for the reuniting force of cohesion to come into play, by keeping the newly divided parts at a greater dis- tance from others already divided. But in this mode of operating, also, the limit will be as sure- ly reached as in pounding. For when a certain degree of fineness has been effected by this rub- bing process, the stratum of powder beneath the pestle will either be so thin as to elude its divid- ing action, or so thick that the number of parts which are pressed against each other by its strokes and reunited, will equal the number divided by the same strokes. At this stage, the commi- nution will cease; and the trituration, ever so skilfully conducted, and carried on forever, could not reduce the powder to any greater de- gree of fineness. Is there any way in which this limitation may be obviated, and the fineness of the powder in- definitely increased ? Yes: it may be done by successive mixtures with some other substance, 3 50 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. using thorough trituration after adding each por- tion. This method is of universal application; yet for the sake of convenience and precision, I shall assume particular substances and a particu- lar proportion. Suppose a flint powder to be rendered as fine as it is possible to make it by rubbing it per se; and suppose one grain of this to be triturated with ninety-nine grains of ordi- nary loaf-sugar, or of the harder—and therefore better—non-medicinal substance, sugar of milk. Suppose, by means of stirring with a spoon or spa- tula, the flint powder be intimately mixed with the pulverized sugar, so as to be uniformly dis- tributed through it, before the trituration is commenced: [This is not requisite in practice, but simplifies the investigation.] Then each of the microscopic flint stones is surrounded by ninety-nine times its weight of sugar, which keeps them at nearly five times their former distance from each other, as estimated from centre to centre. What is the consequence, if trituration be commenced under these circum- stances ? A new and far more minute division must result. The sugar serves two purposes, viz., first, to divide the flint; and secondly, to keep it divid- ed; it contributes both to effect and preserve the division. It serves the first of these purposes in more than one way. First, it aids division by mechanical collision, when driven against the POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 51 flint by the pestle. It in this way aids the frac- ture ; as the stroke of one body may often be made to break another though harder than itself Thus a quartz pebble can be crushed between two large pieces of marble, and a still smaller one between two large pieces of sugar of milk. The advantage given by magnitude, suggests that the sugar employed will be more effectual if selected in a state coarser than that of the harder powder which it is employed to commi- nute. In later stages it will necessarily have this advantage. Secondly, the sugar may aid the divi- sion by its affinity, its attraction for the flint. Thus whilst some of the pieces of hard sugar are act- ing as hammers and wedges, and tending to separate an intermediate piece of flint into two pieces, other pieces of sugar, situated in the line in which the fragments of flint when divided tend to move, may by their affinity draw the fragments in the direction in which the other pieces of sugar push them, and thus both kinds of force conspire to effect their separation. * Having hitherto considered the direct agency, I now proceed to the indirect; viz., the promo- tion of farther division by keeping separate the parts already divided. The sugar favours com- minution by keeping the pieces of flint at a dis- stance from each other, and thus preventing that reunion which would be continually taking place in the parts of the pure flint powder pressed against 52 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. each other by the pestle. The parts when once divided, are by the interposition of the sugar prevented from again coming within the sphere of mutual cohesion, until the subdivision has been carried to a much greater extent than would have been practicable in triturating the flint by itself. A limit will, however, be ultimately reached, even under these circumstances. As the subdi- vision continues, the mutual distance of the pieces of flint diminishes, and some portions are ultimately brought again within the sphere of cohesion, and made to unite by the same strokea of the pestle which divide others. When the number united by each stroke equals the number divided by the same, the fineness can no longer be increased by continuing the friction. The only way in which the fineness can be increased, is by another mixture. If a grain of this powder is mixed and triturated with ninety- nine grains of hard sugar, like that previously employed, a still more minute division of the flint is effected; but, for the same reasons as in the preceding case, we ultimately reach the limit, beyond which it is impossible to pass without a new mixture or dilution. By the continued re- petition of operations similar to those above de- scribed, an inconceivable degree of comminution may be effected. We may not be able to determine theoretically POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 53 the number of subdivisions which are practicable at each stage. But if subdivision did not affect the in- tensity of cohesion, and if the division were al- ready carried so far, that the magnitude of each piece was so small compared with the magnitude of its sphere of cohesion, as to produce no sen- sible influence in the estimate, then it would ap- pear from the theory above given, that the max- imum comminution at each stage would be in the ratio of one hundred to unity. So that flint, silex, gold, mercury, or any other substance prepared in this way with sugar or saccharum lactis—or some other suitable substance—would, at each succeeding stage of the process, be di- vided into parts, all of which would be one hundred times as numerous, and each of which would be the one hundredth part as large as the parts in the preceding stage. This increase in the number, however, supposes that every grain of the preceding one hundred is subjected to a similar operation. If, as before supposed, only one grain at each stage is taken from the hun- dred and subjected to this operation, then the parts of each trituration will be equally numer- ous, but increase in fineness at each stage in the ratio of one hundred to one; and a grain of the thirtieth trituration of gold would contain as many minute pieces as a grain of the third tri- turation. But I am convinced that the intensity of some 54 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. properties of substances is greatly increased by comminution. If the sphere of cohesion is thus increased, the maximum comminution will fall below the above estimate. I believe that in practice the comminution will fall below it, not only for the above reason, but also because the trituration, though continued sufficiently long to bring most of the parts to the minimum size, will be discontinued before every part is equally reduced. Hence microscopic observations are liable to lead to erroneous conclusions. Dr. Mayerhofer has seen scores of millions of pieces of metal in a single grain of the sugar with which it had been triturated to form the third trituration. The number varied with different metals. From the considerations which I have above stated, as well as from others, I am convinced that the number of invisible pieces far exceeded the num- ber of visible ones. Those only were seen which had escaped the full effect of the dividing forces. The minimum groups in the third trituration are not objects of microscopic vision. From the wide range of magnitude in the visible pieces, as well as from the appearance, on close inspection, of pieces at first invisible, Dr. M. justly concluded, that in the first trituration of precipitated gold, "the metal is divided into particles so small as to be invisible under a glass magnifying 14,000 times." He " examined the fourth trituration by POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 55 a power magnifying 90,000 times, and it was evident that the diminution of the particles pro- gressively increased; the smallest gold molecules appeared yellow, and the metallic lustre was not to be mistaken." The diminution here refers to the visible ones. As the conclusions which I have drawn in regard to the facility of reunion, the limit of comminution, and the intensity of properties, refer to those more numerous groups which are so small as to be invisible by the most powerful microscope, it would be impossible either to establish or refute them by microscopic observations. The above method of trituration has great ad- vantages for effecting a minute division of sub- stances. I have shown, that in order to triturate a substance to powder of a certain degree of fineness, it is necessary to mix it with a sufficient quantity of some other substance; and that the requisite quantity of this admixture increases with the fineness required. Such a degree of fineness can be specified, as would render the labour of comminuting a single grain impracticable, even if the requisite amount of material for the ad- mixture could be obtained. The labour of the whole human race operating through all ages since the creation of man, could not thoroughly triturate a single grain of one substance with a decillion grains of any other substance. Yet the same degree of fineness as would be effected by 56 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. such an operation may be effected by one man in thirty hours, and with scarcely three thousand grains of auxiliary material. If we suppose him to commence with one grain of the substance to be comminuted, and allot one hour to each of the thirty stages, the resulting powder would contain a portion of the original grain, in a state of fineness equal to that in which the whole grain would have existed in a decillion grains equally well triturated. The above theory is original; but this process of trituration is not. Most persons who have practised it, have not considered the only direct object of it to be comminution; and if any have, they have not explained, on physical principles, the mode in which it is effected, nor the limit which we encounter by the ordinary process, nor the peculiar advantages of this process in avoiding that limit. I shall not here state particularly the effect and ultimate object of the comminution effected by the above process. In my opinion it must deve- lope a species of magnetism, and the minutest pieces thus obtained must be intensely magnetic. As a branch of physical inquiry, this subject has especial interest at the present time, when the attention of philosophers is becoming more and more directed to molecular forces, and the pe- culiar properties of small masses. The recent experiments of Sir G. C. Haughton have afforded POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 57 new evidences of the identity of molecular mag- netism and cohesion, and new proofs that all bodies are magnetic when they are rendered suf- ficiently small. * What intensity of magnetism may not be expected in bodies as minute as those which can be suspended fifty or a hundred miles above the earth's surface, in air so rarefied as to be incapable of reflecting any sensible quantity of solar light! I believe this intensity to be far more than sufficient to compensate for the reduc- tion of the quantity of ponderable material, and to be adequate to the production of the most brilliant aurora borealis. In this case there is pro- bably a crystallization, a change from the fluid or aeriform state to that of minute solids, whose magnetism ultimately becomes latent after aggre- gation in larger masses. I believe it to be a general law of nature, that certain properties possessed by small groups of molecules, are masked or rendered latent by the proximity of a sufficient number of similar groups; and that, conversely, properties or powers are developed by the division of substances. It would seem that bodies rendered so incon- ceivably minute as they can be by the process of trituration above described, must possess a most intense magnetic state, although their circum- stances are evidently such as to preclude the ap- * Lond. and Edin. Phil, Jour., for June, 1847. 8* 58 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. plication of the ordinary tests. I shall presently refer to the only known mode of testing the power of such preparations—a mode which involves physiological and professional considerations. To those natural philosophers who are not dispos- ed to examine the subject in that manner, I would submit the above mechanical explanation of the comminuting process, trusting that some of them will consider the subject interesting as a branch of physical investigation. In investigating the principles of comminution, for the purpose of explaining the efficiency of Hahnemann's potences, I have, hitherto, not spe- cially adverted to the distinction between liquid and dry preparations. We find repeated solution with succussion, and repeated mixture with tri- turation, to develope similar powers, and have reason to believe the principles similar. As apart of the theory of potentization, I shall attempt to give a THEORY OF SOLUTION. It is generally believed, that the simple solu- tion of a medieine, effects the minutest division of it which is practicable, and that no dilution of any dissolved substance, can divide its parts into parts still smaller. In calling in question the correctness of this notion, I am aware of the strength of the prejudices to be encountered— prejudices both of the senses and intellect. For POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 59 deciding such a point, there is no adequate deli- cacy in human vision nor in the instruments of physical research; nor is the human mind so con- stituted, as to be capable of any adequate concep- tion of the minuteness of ultimate atoms, or of the infinite diversity of magnitude existing among infinitesimals. When a body is divided into parts so small as to elude microscopic vision and our most delicate tests, it is difficult to conceive of any farther division. Yet these parts may still be divided such an inconceivable number of times, that we may call the number infinite. The change thus produced in a medicine may be ap- preciated by means of those nerves on which it has a specific action, but not by means of any instrument less delicate. The unparalleled sensibility of these nervous electroscopes or pharmascopes, is exemplified in the powerful action of some Homoeopathic solu- tions, in which the chemist, with his compara- tively coarse—but in his own estimation most de- licate—tests, can detect no medicine, and in which he could detect none, were they concen- trated millions of millions of times. Yet millions of persons, including Homoeopathic physicians and their patients, have repeatedly experienced the efficiency of such attenuations. The number, competency, integrity and unanimity of the wit- nesses, are such as would secure the reception of their testimony on any other subject. 60 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. If we can sufficiently divest our own minds of the prejudices of the grosser senses, let us imagine a saturated aqueous solution of any salt, to consist of hard, solid masses of salt, suspended at equal distances in the water, which exceeds the salt in quantity. Each mass of salt consists of innumerable particles. It is impossible to make them smaller, either by the continued action of the affinity of the water, or by any mechanical force, whilst the quantity of water remains the same. If they were sundered, they would instantly reunite. For, any division of the solids into smaller solids, would diminish their mutual dis- tance, and consequently increase their mutual attraction; whilst the quantity of water which surrounds each mass is diminished in quantity, and hence has less attractive force to resist the reunion of the solids, than it had when they were in larger masses; and even then it was but just sufficient to keep them separate. Therefore any division would be followed by instantaneous re- union, both on account of an increase in the cohe- sive forces, and a diminution of affinity. Another piece of salt cannot be dissolved in the water, for the same reason that the pieces already in it cannot be divided; that is, the saline masses cannot be suspended within a given dis- tance. Heat expands the liquid and increases the solvent power, partly by weakening cohesion, POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 61 and partly by removing the solids to a greater distance from each other, so that new solids may be received. Either evaporation or cold reduces their distance and effects their reunion and pre- cipitation. Thus the hypothesis of a suspension in complex groups, each consisting of numerous particles, is in strict accordance with the known phenomena of solution. It is also analogous to the doctrines of modern chemistry in relation to the union of molecules in all compounds. Simple molecules unite to form compound ones; and in many instances it requires the union of many atoms of each constituent to form the smallest possible particle of a given compound. In the most attenuated solution, this compound, as it is not decomposed, must exist in groups which are large compared with atoms. For convenience, I use the language of the atomic theory: upon the truth of this, however, my hypothesis does not depend; any more than the truth that the great constituents of the universe are arranged in groups, depends upon the solution of the question whether the division of matter must ultimately attain a limit, or whether even the moon is or is not an atom. Astronomy presents facts analogous to those supposed in the above theory of solution. The worlds of the universe are separated by large interstices. Two nebulas may appear to our eyes 62 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. as homogeneous as a solution; and yet each is a group of solar and planetary groups, whose mu- tual distances are inconceivably great compared with that of the planets of each group, and yet inconceivably small compared with the distance of the nebulas. A nebula is a single body, in a truer sense than are two stars of different nebulas. The solar system is one thing in a stricter sense than are two planets of different systems. So I have referred to the groups in a solution as bodies, because widely separated as compared with their components. It is possible that there may be included in each group—as there are in a nebula —different orders of groups, which determine the points of easier division. We know that to be to a certain extent true in chemical compounds, as solution does not divide them in all parts indis- criminately, else it would destroy their peculiar chemical properties. I have hitherto considerel saturated solutions. Before proceeding to attenuation in any higher sense, I will—for those who may not consider the subject too dry, and who desire the most precise ideas—explain more fully some of the molecular actions above referred to. What is cohesion ? When are molecules united in one group? When is the group divided? In what sense is medicinal power at the surface ? Cohesion is attraction between bodies or parti- cles of the same kind at insensible distances. In POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 63 molecular action, I make no attempt to distinguish the cases in which polarity is manifest, as in crys- stals; for all cohesion may depend on the polarity and even the magnestism of molecules. If a group of atoms exists as a little solid body in a solution, and we are able, by adding more liquid to break it into two groups or bodies, in what sense are they two until they get beyond the sphere of cohesion ? If still in contact, they are one group. In the mechanics of infinitesimal bodies, we must use the term contact in a stricter sense. The contact of the infinitesimal solid parts of a solution, is such a degree of proximity as excludes the solvent liquid. The view which I take—and which is calculated to remove one of the greatest obstacles to the reception of Homoeopathic truth—is, that the ulti- mate particles of a dissolved medicine are not separately invested with the menstruum or solvent liquid, but united in hard and complex masses— masses which, in a saturated tincture or solution, are of great magnitude and little activity, when compared with those in Hahnemann's attenuations. The free medicinal agency resides exclusively at the surface of the group, the latent at the surface of each particle. I make no attempt to decide, whether the medicinal power is or is not a modi- fication of electricity or magnetism; or whether, like the former, it resides on the whole surface, or, like the latter, on certain parts. On either sup- 64 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. position, division will have a similar effect in in- creasing the extent of active surface. Electricity and magnetism are known to be in one sense identical, but to avoid circumlocution they are referred to as distinct. You will readily anticipate the application of the above principles to attenuations. When a drop of pure tincture is shaken with ninety-nine of alcohol, the newly added alcohol exerts its affinity as an antagonist to the cohesion of the solid medi- cinal groups, and effects their dismemberment to a greater extent than was possible in the primary solution. This process commences in- stantly, before the diffusion is complete. But to simplify the investigation, let us suppose the drop to be uniformly diffused before any disintegration of the groups commences. The groups would be at nearly five times their original distance, and each group would be surrounded by one hundred times as much alcohol as in the primary tincture. This state of things could not remain a moment; especially if the disruptive power of the affinity of this increased quantity of alcohol, were aided by a mechanical succussion, as strong as that to which the tincture had been subjected. For the equilibrium before existing between cohesion and affinity, will be disturbed by that increase of the latter which results from the increase of the liquid; and the suspended solids will each be sundered into numerous smaller solids. But it is not divided POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 65 into its smallest particles; nor could it be by the most violent succussion. The vibrations caused by jars, transiently increase the distance of some particles of each group and approximate them to the liquid, and thus give affinity a preponderance over cohesion. In this way succussion aids divi- sion. But to carry division by this means beyond a certain point, effects no permanent change; as the particles will instantly reunite by the pre- ponderance of cohesion over affinity. As subdivision is effected on a similar principle by successive dilutions, it is unnecessary to pur- sue this subject any farther. Division is effected and power developed on the same principle as in dry preparations. The affinity of the liquid enables us to dispense with part of the mechanical force: yet all that I have said in regard to the relative labour of comminuting by Hahnemann's method as compared with any former one, applies equally to liquid preparations. I have now demonstrated, that by Hahnemann's processes, substances, whether dry or dissolved, may by reduced to a state of fineness unattainable by any other method. WHAT EFFECT MAY SL'CH DIVISION PRODUCE IX THE PROPERTIES OF A SUBSTANCE? This is an inquiry interesting both to the physi- cian and the philosopher. The philosophers of future times will gratefully acknowledge their 66 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. obligations to Hahnemann, for opening this new field of investigation. It is the destiny of Homoeo'- pathia, not only to effect a glorious revolution in the art of healing, but to lead to new views of the constitution of matter. She is to become the hand- maid of physical science, as well as the mistress of practical medicine. Should the great thinkers and experimenters of the age, be once prevailed on to give to the alleged facts of Homoeopathy that serious consideration, and that practical examina- tion, which the testimony now existing in favour of its alleged facts, would induce them to give to any accredited physical science, and should they ponder upon the physical aspects of this new science, a vast amount of curious truth in regard to the laws of molecular action might soon be elicited. Most physicians have practically accorded some virtue to comminution. Else why do the pharma- copoeias direct a small quantity of opium and ipecac, to be triturated with a large quantity of sulphate of potash, a salt which they regard as inert, but valuable in Dover's powder, by its hardness, in effecting the comminution of the opium? They have not so distinctly acknow- ledged its value in the comminution of the ipecac, nor reflected on the mechanical importance of great mass in the disintegrating agent. But still, they are generally satisfied, that there is some pecu- liar charm in this pulvis ipecacuanhae compositus, POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 67 and that its effect is very different from that of its components, separately triturated and simultane- ously administered. The old Materia Medica furnishes a striking instance of latent power developed by comminution, in the instance of mercury. Quicksilver, or pure mercury, when in mass, is acknowledged by the old school to be an inert substance, and when swallowed by ounces, to produce, usually, no other than a mechanical effect. Yet this inert substance is the active ingredient of the pilulas hydrargyri, the blue pills. Latent mercurial power is here developed, by triturating the mercury with two or three times its weight of conserve of roses, or some mixture containing sugar, starch or mucilage. The mercurial globules are rendered invisibly small; and this minuteness is the secret of their activity. The same explanation applies to those few cases in which some mercurial effects have been detected after the use of large quantities of the pure metal in mass. It is easy to believe that a certain portion might become comminuted in the stomach or intes- tines ; especially since it has been discovered, that saline solutions, when placed in a bottle with mercury, divide it into globules. These are coarse compared with our potences, but vary in size with different salts, as hydrocholorate of ammonia, nitrate of potash, &c. Even on the supposition that oxidation could 68 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. take place in forming blue pill, the principal or only cause of the activity would be comminution; as is evident from the similarity of the different mercurial preparations, when given in small doses —the only case in which the proper specific effects can be eliminated and determined. Even the old- school physicians give blue pill, calomel and corro- sive sublimate, almost indiscriminately when they aim at proper mercurial effects, by means of small doses. If so active an agent as chlorine is not capable of masking or essentially changing the mercurial power, what could be expected of three or four per cent, of oxygen, except to favour the comminution ? In regard to exaltation of proper mercurial power—exclusive of caustic, cathartic and other extraneous properties—chlorine can act on no other principle. In the smaller doses and higher attenuations of the new school, the similarity of different mercurial preparations is still more manifest, even with that nice discrimi- nation of medicinal properties which is peculiar to Homoeopathy. The old school uses mercury- much oftener, but knows much less about its medical properties. Where is the evidence that the mercury of blue pill is oxidized t What chemist has detected the oxygen? If it existed, chemistry could separate and exhibit it, No one has pretended to do this. The pharmaceutists can urge nothing but presump- tions. Murray says, "There is every reason to POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 69 believe that an oxidation of the metal is effected, and that the medicinal efficacy of the preparation depends on this oxide. Quicksilver, in its metallic state, being inert with regard to the living system, the activity of the preparation itself is a presump- tion of this; but it is farther known, that by agita- tion writh atmospheric air, quicksilver affords a portion of a gray powder, soluble in muriatic acid, and which must therefore be an oxide, metallic quicksilver being insoluble in that acid." These are his reasons. They are founded on two false assumptions: the first, that the comminution of a substance can have no effect on its medicinal activ- ity ; the second, that comminution can have no effect on its solubility. At the same time he incon- sistently alleges, that it is sufficient to effect its oxidation, even when the parts are "divided by the interposition of any viscous matter." If com- minuted globules, when perfectly naked, cannot be dissolved in a powerful acid, what reason is there to suppose that when enveloped in a viscid substance, almost impermeable to air, they can readily combine with atmospheric oxygen ? One would suppose such an envelopment an awkward expedient for effecting their oxidation. The colour of blue pill affords no evidence of oxidation. Colour, in numberless other instances, depends on division and mode of aggregation, without any change of composition; as we see in substances chemically identical, such as snow 70 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. compared with water, and charcoal compared with diamond. Again, the discoloration of mercury is not proportional to the duration of exposure, but to the amount of friction, and commences almost instantaneously when the first attenuation is formed by a rapid machine. Such should not be the facts, if the discoloration depended on oxidation. That mercury will in certain cases produce ita specific effects without oxidation, is the opinion of the latest and most respectable writers on Materia Medica and Chemistry. Pereira relates that the vapour from several tons of mercury in the hold of a vessel, salivated two hundred men, and destroyed all the dogs, sheep and poultry on board, and even the mice. He says, in opposition to those who had supposed an oxidation, that he "believes with Buchner, Orfila and others, that metallic mercury, in the finely divided state in which it must exist as vapour, is itself poisonous."* Here is a distinct recognition of the power of pure mercury to produce the specific effects of blue pill. That these effects were poisonous, was owing to excessive dose. Hahnemann has taught us how to develope curative power by a still finer divi- sion, and to cure the most violent disease in a man, by a dose that would not injure a mouse. Pereira, in another passage, with some inconsist- ency refers to the occasional effects of masses * Pereira's Materia Medica, p. 585. POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 71 of mercury in the bowels as resulting from oxida- tion. The Homoeopathist, who knows how small a quantity will act, will find no difficulty in attributing them to partial comminution; espe- cially as there may be present some saline or other substances which conduce to the detachment of globules. Graham, one of the highest and latest authori- ties in chemistry, alludes to one kind of medicinal mercury which is demonstrably a pure metal, and to mercury triturated with fat, syrup, &c.—as in forming mercurial ointment and blue pill—as undoubtedly existing in a state of division merely, and not of oxidation. The passage is this: " The salts of the red oxide, are reduced to the metallic state by copper and more oxidizable metals, and by the proto-compounds of tin. The precipitated mercury often presents itself as a gray powder, in which the metallic globules are not perceived, and remains in this condition while humid. Mercury in this divided state possesses the medi- cinal qualities of the milder mercurials, and has often been mistaken for black oxide." * * * * "There can be no doubt that it is in this divided state, andwotf as the black oxide, that mercury is obtained by trituration with fat, turpentine, syrup, saliva, &c, in many pharmaceutical preparations."* * Elements of Chemistry, by Thomas Graham, F. R. S. L &. Ed. p. 448 72 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. The gray powder above alluded to, will run into liquid mercury when the water evaporates. The invisible globules require for their permanent preservation a coating less volatile, as oil. This is a proof that the oxidation of mercury does not readily take place, even in this state of minute division. This also teaches us the actual function of viscid substances, in the blue pill mass, and unguentum hydrargyri. It is, to divide, and keep divided. Hahnemann's process effects and preserves in the globules, a separation which is wider compared with their diameters, and a division inconceivably more minute, and consequently enhances—to an extent never before conceived of—their salutary energies. If physicians in all ages had given mercury in no form but that of undivided quicksilver, and in half-pound doses, they would at this day ridicule the man, who should pretend that he had seen powerful alterative effects from the occasional repetition of three or four grain doses of blue pill, each containing one grain of divided mercury. We can conceive with what sincere contempt, those old-school, half-pound prescribers would have viewed such pretensions, when put forth by a few individuals, and with what affected contempt, and half-concealed indignation, when the new doctrine and practice were rapidly over- spreading the civilized world. They would say, POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 73 "It is contrary to the experience of thousands of years, to all analogy, to all reason. Away with your transcendental, infinitesimal nonsense! It is well known that mercury acts only by its mechan- ical properties—its fluidity and weight. Half a pound will force its way through the bowels, will remove obstructions and purge off the vitiated secretions. You will never clear the system by your grain doses." To many a conservative champion of old drugs, we might say, This is your portrait, and no cari- cature. " Name changed, the fable speaks of thee." You ridicule the alleged power of Hahnemann's comminuted mercury, simply because you and your predecessors have never tried mercury in a state of more minute division than that in which it exists in blue pill, or in hydrargyrum cum creta. If you have developed latent power, by reducing it to globules of a certain degree of minuteness, why may not he have increased the power on the same principle, by rendering the globules still smaller ? What you have imperfectly done with mercury, he has done to an extent inconceivably greater, with all his medicines. Your most comminuted medicines are coarse compared with his. Some have gratuitously alleged, that Hahne- mann's doses may answer for Germany, but not the United States. It seems that, according to 4 74 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. some undiscovered facts, or for some unspeakable reason, the excitable Americans require large doses. Others have argued, that the small doses can have little effect in Germany; because a man in that country once swallowed a jackdmife, and Was not killed by it. As the allegation of the first party is on a par with the argument of the second, I leave them to settle their dispute, so far as it relates to medical geography. If I may be pardoned for treating the last par- ty's argument with all the seriousness with which it appears to have been offered, I would say: It has three fallacies. It confounds mechanical and vital effects, regarding them as varying in the same ratio; it confounds hurtful and curative effects, regarding them as varying in the same ratio; and it confounds the effects of fine powders with that of dense masses. We might say to the whole class of similar reasoners: The pebbles in a turkey's gizzard are infinitely less coarse, compared with your medi- cines, than yours are compared with ours. We find finely divided quartz, i. e., silicea, to be a powerful medicine. You deny it for no better reason, than that its coarser forms are insoluble and inert. You appreciate only the chemical composition, and neglect the mechanical condition. Your blind and headlong philosophy jumps to a conclusion over the wide gulf that separates the POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 75 massive integral from the inconceivably commi- nuted. That doses of Hahnemann's attenuated medi- cines possess inconceivably more power than equal quantities of crude substances, is demonstrable by experience. This truth can never be shaken by any theoretical objections, or any inability of its advocates to explain its reasonableness. If nature presented nothing analogous, this one fact would still stand unshaken. But there are REASONS WHY COMMINUTION SHOULD DEVELOPE THERAPEUTIC POWER. To break a body into fragments increases its' surface. This augments with every succeeding fracture. A pebble of a grain weight has an im- mense" surface when reduced to an impalpable powder, by simple friction in a mortar. But were it converted into some of the high, and inconceiv- ably fine, preparations, by Hahnemann's process, the stony surface alone, independently of the sugar, might exceed the surface of the globe we inhabit. The old-school physicians know nothing of the effect of such expansion; they can allege no ex- perience. They cannot deny that such expansion may develope valuable properties in silex and other apparently inert substances, and render ac- tive drugs infinitely Tnore medicinal, andinfimtely 76 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. less poisonous than in the crude state in which they administer them. Philosophy can allege no reason against this developement, exaltation or modification of pro- perties. Physical science presents many analogous phenomena.—A plate of mica is rendered electrical, by splitting it into thinner laminse. The free electricity of a body is confined to the surface. The interior contains none. A hollow prime con- ductor can receive and retain as much free electri- eity as a*solid one of the same superficial extent. The quantity of electricity which a given body can receive may be indefinitely increased. When a large solid ball is divided into smaller ones, much of what was interior becomes surface, and the same weight of matter can receive more elec- tricity. A magnetic bar has no apparent magnet- ism in the interior, and none at the middle of its surface; but when broken in the middle, it there becomes magnetic, instantly and spontaneously. A collection of small bars at some little distance ' from each other, is susceptible of being rendered more powerfully magnetic than one large bar of the same weight; in other words, small magnets can be made more powerful than a large one of the same size as the small magnets taken col- lectively. I would recommend these analogies, as "aids to reflection" for those closet speculators, who, averse to the labour of Homoeopathic experiment POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 77 and the light of direct observation, are sitting quietly in their shady rooms, pondering over the a priori improbability of naked facts, and, after the legitimate period, bringing forth the conclusion, that to make power out of littleness, is contrary to all reason and analogy. A bundle of rods has been regarded as an em- blem of associated strength. But mechanical notions might often mislead in physics and thera- peutics. In drawing off the electricity of a prime conductor, a single wire directed toward it at a certain distance, may have a hundred times as much power as a compact bundle of thick wires. The single point is put in a favourable state by in- duction ; but the neighbouring points, by counter- inductive influence, mutually tend to neutralize the action of each other. The electroscope shows a striking contrast between the power of a solitary point, and the comparative inefficiency of many. But when the wires of the fasciculus are widely separated, and presented simultaneously, they no longer occasion this mutual neutralization, and their combined efficiency will be found to have in- creased a thousand-fold or more, according to their number and mutual distance, The round numbers above employed are not to be understood as the result of any calculation. Instead of exaggerating, they are far within the limits of what could be realized. The above facts in relation to pointed conduct- 78 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. ors, and the neutral zone of a magnet, show that certain properties possessed by small groups of molecules are removed, maslced, or rendered latent, by the proximity of similar groups. They show that properties or powers are created or developed by the division of substances, or the sepa- ration of the parts of a mass, and again destroyed or rendered latent by the reunion of those parts. I believe this physical principle to be extremely comprehensive and important in its applications, and to afford a key to the explanation of that astonishing developement of power which takes place during the preparation of Hahnemann's attenuations. In the crude state of drugs, the medicinal power of any particle of the drug is weakened or annihilated, by the presence of many similar particles in its immediate vicinity; the particles at the surface being the only ones which are not thus surrounded, and consequently the only ones which possess activity. If a medicinal drug is by solution divided into molecules suffi- ciently small to be admisible into the smallest bloodvessels, and is in that state introduced into the blood, and glides along the inner coats of the vessels, making its specific electrical impression on the nerves, I believe it would be only the super- ficial parts of each molecule that would exert any action. The interior parts would be powerless, like the interior of an electrical ball or the middle of a magnetic bar. POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 79 This want of action would not be from want of contact. If absolute mathematical contact were requisite, no particle of matter could ever act on another. Neither nature nor art has ever brought two particles of matter into strict and absolute contact. That degree of proximity which produces repulsion, cohesion, affinity, or any other physical, chemical or vital action, that is not manifested at sensible distances, is called contact. When we bring the hand so near a body as to feel repulsion, we say it is in contact. This case affords man his primary- idea of contact. When two polished leaden balls are by mutual pressure made to cohere, we are sure there is contact, because we felt re- pulsion, both prior and subsequent to the co- herence. Yet there is no absolute contact in these cases. By a still stronger pressure, the hand may be brought still nearer the ball, the balls still nearer each other. All action is at some distance, though that distance is sometimes infinitesimal. The surface of a medicinal particle may act when within a certain distance of the nerve; the whole interior might be inert, though it were brought much nearer the nerve than the surface is when the surface acts. If this is so, it explains why division gives power; for it gives greater surface. If we re- duce the diameter to a thousandth part, we in- 80 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. crease the total surface a thousand-fold, if to a millionth a million-fold, &c. Of all artificial methods of minutely dividing matter, that of Hahnemann is the most efficient; and effects a comminution otherwise unattainable by art. Why then is it incredible that it should have developed powers never before dreamed of? Who can say that if ponderable matter were made sufficiently fine, it would not exhibit as astonish- ing powers as light, caloric or electricity ? Who can say that these imponderable agents do not derive their activity from that very circum- stance ? The higher attenuations are, in one sense, imponderable agents. Their medicinal part has no appreciable weight. Like light, caloric and elec- tricity, they possess great activity. Like them they can never accumulate in the system in ponderable, poisonous masses. Like heat and electricity, they escape as readily as they entered. They leave none of their material to clog or corrode the machinery. A man betrays great ignorance, who accuses an acknowledged Hahnemannian of charging the system with poisons or with leaving it charged with anything. He might as well suppose that a man lately arrived from a hot and distant country had, during his residence there, become more and more charged with heat, and had brought an excessive quantity of it with him; or that a me- POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 81 tallic conductor, by the frequent transmission of electricity, becomes thereby charged with light- ning ; or that a three days' speaker in Congress must sit down full of wind; or that a steam engine by long working becomes charged with steam, or an undershot wheel with water. These last agents are analogous to the com- minuted medicines, in regard to the non-lodge- ment of material. In another respect, the com- parison fails. The action is not mechanical, but vital; not a gross impulse, but a delicate influence; not proportional to mass, but to ac- tivity. It is the action of an imponderable agent on the imponderable elements of life. I believe, that the principle thus applied to the developement of medicinal power, presents no anomaly, but is applicable to other proper- ties, as well in the nascent as in the evanescent condition of bodies. Minute microscopic bodies in their nascent state, often exhibit properties which are masked by the presence of additional particles, when- ever the dimensions have increased to a certain extent. I have seen this beautifully exhibited in crystallizdble substances in solution. When one part of saturated tincture of camphor is mixed with five parts of alcohol, and the crys- tallization observed with a solar microscope, the smallest nascent crystals •which are visible are seen to approach each other by mutual at- 4* 82 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. traction, and to rotate on their axes, so as to unite by their mutually attractive poles. These com- pound groups then present similar phenomena, in their mutual approach, their rotation and union. I have witnessed similar phenomena in nitrate of silver and other crystals. Large crystals of the same substances exhibit no such attraction or polarity. Even ice, which in large masses has no magnetism, may exhibit magnetic properties when beginning to form minute crystals in the atmosphere. I have considered latent therapeutic power as set free by the division of substances in which it is inherent. I have incidentally alluded to another advan- tage which comminuted medicines possess, in the delicacy of the human organism. The invisible vessels and pores are, in all probability, incon- ceivably more numerous and minute than the visible ones. It may be in these narrow recesses of the system, that nature carries on her most important operations, and disease lays her foun- dations. To modify those operations, and over- turn those foundations, it may be important, that the medicine should enter straits impassable and chambers inaccessible, by any substances whose parts are as gross as those of ordinary powders and solutions. For this additional reason, the powders and solutions prepared by Hahnemann's method—which divides the medicine into parts POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 83 inconceivably smaller—may possess peculiar power. The comminution effected in ordinary medicines by solution in the mouth, the stomach and the blood, leaves them coarse in comparison with medicines which may be prepared by Hahne- mann's processes. There is still another advantage which small medicinal particles may have over large ones: viz., that when in contact with any riving part, the average distance of their whole surface, as well as substance, from the points of contact, is less than it would be if they were in one group. This advantage might be very great, if medicinal action, like other forces, varies in- versely as the square, or some higher power of the distance. The theory of potentization, as above given, consists of two parts: one relating to comminu- tion, as the result of certain processes; the other, to power as the result of comminution. I have shown: First, that Hahnemann's pro- cesses produce a comminution almost infinitely surpassing any which is practicable by any other method; Secondly, that comminution developea latent power. His discovery of a new law in the science of therapeutics, and his invention of a new process in the art of pharmacy, have led to unprece- dented results. The most insoluble bodies are dissolved, inert substances rendered medicinal, 84 POWER OF SMALL DOSES. and the most virulent poisons harmless; whilst drugs of intermediate activity have their salu- tary powers exalted, and their noxious effects obviated. I find in the Bridgewater treatise of Dr. Prout —than whom few have more profoundly studied the molecular constitution of bodies—the follow- ing passage, which is in accordance with some of the above views: "In this respect, therefore, the views we have advanced accord generally with those at present entertained; and the only point in which they differ, is in supposing that the self-repulsive mole- cule, as it exists in the gaseous form, does not represent the ultimate molecule, but is composed of many of them. With respect to the nature of the ultimate sub-molecules of those bodies which we consider at present as elements, as, for instance, of oxygen, they may naturally be supposed to possess the most intense properties or polarities. Indeed, such sub-molecules may be imagined to resemble in some degree the imponderable matters, heat, &c, not only by their extreme tenuity, but in other characters also; and this very intensity of property and character maybe reasonably con- sidered as one, if not the principal reason, why they are incapable of existing in a detached form. Lastly, are not these ultimate and refined forms of matter extensively employed in many of the POWER OF SMALL DOSES. 85 operations of nature, and particularly in many of the processes of organization ?" I will add, that in my opinion, the recent dis- • covery of active oxygen tends to show, that even the molecules of a gaseous substance may be more minutely divided, and that this comminution enhances its activity. By what other hypothesis, can we as satisfactorily explain the great avidity with which oxygen seizes upon combustible sub- stances, after its exposure to shocks of electricity ? LECTUKE III* THE USE OF CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS AND LARGE DOSES, IN CONNEXION WITH HOM030PATHIC PRACTICE. A physician who administers a chemical an- tidote in large doses, does not thereby repudiate the doctrine, that agents which are therapeutic, in the strict and proper sense, should be administered in small doses. The law which regulates the neutralization of a poison in the cavity of the stomach, is radically different from that which regulates the cure of the morbid phenomena which the poison has already produced. The first is a law of chemical action, the last is a law of vital action. Entirely different conditions are required to be fulfilled in the two cases. The neutralization of a poison requires energetic che- mical affinity between the poison and the antidote, or between some of their components. It also requires a certain relation between the mass of * the poison and that of the antidote—the ratio * Read before the American Institute of Homoeopathy. CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 87 varying with different substances. The same quantity of the antidote which would be re- quired to neutralize a given amount of any poi- son in an inanimate vessel, would be required to neutralize it in the cavity of the living stomach; no more, no less. A poisonous dose will always require a ponderable dose of the chemical anti- dote—in case of some substances, a quantity about equal to that of the poison, in others less, in others more. On the contrary, no known chemical relation, and no near approximation of weight, are ever required between the poison and the antidote employed to remove the disease which the poison has produced. The relation is the vital one expressed by the law similia similibus curantur. The quantity of the vital antidote which is indis- pensable, and even the quantity which is most advantageous, is in almost every case of poisoning through the stomach, exceedingly small as com- pared with the quantity of poison. The opinion that severe diseases require se- vere remedies, is a delusion originating in the misapplication of chemical, mechanical and toxi- cological ideas. The mass of the chemical equi- valent is never expressed by an extremely small fraction; neither is that of the mechanical equi- valent, in case of the velocities which ordinarily fall under our observation. To form a complete and pure compound, we weigh out the smallest 88 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. component in a quantity which is immem as compared with the smallest quantity which would act powerfully on the living body. To arrest a large moving ball by means of a momentum equal and opposite to its own, we must select a ball, which—in order that it may have the requisite momentum, (i. e. product of mass into velocity) with any velocity which we are capable of giving it—has an immense magnitude as compared with the smallest dose which would act powerfully on the living body. Again, in order that a drug may quickly destroy the life of a healthy man, i. e., in order that it may be a poison in the strict sense of the term, it must be given in a dose which is immense as compared with an efficient and judicious therapeutic dose; and this is no less true where the therapeutic ob- ject is to counteract a poison, than it is in most other cases of acute disease. The dose of medi- cine depends upon the nature and intensity of the morbid action, and not upon the quantity of poison that has produced it. The case is entirely different where the object is, not to remove the disease already induced by the poison, but, to prevent the poison from inducing the disease. This last is, in strictness, rather a hygienic than a therapeutic measure. It is more analogous to surgery than to medi- cine proper. Here the Homoeopathic physician suspends for a moment his functions as a thera- CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 89 peutis+ proper, and adopts mechanical or chemi- cal expedients, like a board of health, a surgeon, or on Alloeopathic physician. The object of medical police is mainly hy- gienic : it removes noxious filth in order to pre- vent disease. Its object may be either to prevent an apprehended endemic in a city in which it has not yet commenced, or to prevent it, when once commenced, from extending to individuals not as yet attacked, or, in reference to individuals already attacked, to obviate a repetition of the poisonous action, a repetition which is aggravating and prolonging their disease. In all these cases, even in the last, it is merely removing the influ- ence of morbific physical agents, but not any morbid vital action. Its object and function are preventive. So it is with some of the earlier operations of a Homoeopathic physician, called to a recent case of poisoning, where the poison is still chiefly in the cavity of the stomach. This cavity is practi- cally exterior to the body proper—the living organism. But into this organism a portion of its contents are every moment liable to enter. Among the earlier steps which he is bound to take, is the neutralization of the poison, or its removal from the stomach, or both. For ex- ample, if the patient has swallowed acetate of lead, the physician administers a large dose of sulphate of magnesia. He neutralizes a corro- 90 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. sive or poisonous acid by calcined magnesia; and against potash, soda or ammonia, he gives vinegar or other non-poisonous vegetable acids. In all this, his object is not to act on the living organism, not even on the stomach itself, but on the contents of the stomach; and it would be as absurd to restrict him to Homoeopathic principles in the choice of the agent and the dose, as it would be were he cleaning a crucible, or fumigating a house, or purifying a street However, from the facility with which substan- ces in the stomach may act on the organism, he is bound to avoid, as far as possible, the formation there of new hurtful compounds. Another part of the duty of the physician frequently is, to remove the poison from the stomach. In this case, his function is analo- gous to that of the surgeon, when he removes a bullet, a needle or any foreign body from the flesh. The surgical operation, as to its direct and immediate effect, may not be reme- dial ; it is oftener, on the contrary, a positive evil, a cause of present pain and hemorrhage. The secondary and remote effects of the first stage of the surgical operation are not reme- dial, but on the contrary, may be inflamma- tion of the parts which require to be divided before the foreign body can be reached. Yet we deem it right to inflict such evils, in order to prevent a greater evil. So the Homoeopa- CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 91 thic physician, whilst he denies that vomiting is a proper therapeutic operation, nevertheless considers it admissible as an antitoxical opera- tion. He would not hesitate to tickle the fauces, or to administer large quantities of tepid water, in order to excite in certain muscles that mor- bid action on which vomiting depends. He would thus excite a temporary disease in these muscles, for a merely mechanical purpose, viz., the expulsion of the poison. In other cases, he might produce this as an additional result, by the continued administration of a compara- tively harmless antidote : for example—to en- velope and partially neutralize, and also to re- move corrosive sublimate, he would give the white of eggs until he excited a sufficiently copious vomiting. The Homoeopathic physician, aware that emetic and cathartic drugs are often productive of immense mischief, will prefer the more harm- less measures above mentioned, in all" those cases in which he considers them equally effici- ent. But if cases occur in which the use of such means, or of the stomach pump, are not likely to remove the poison as promptly as active emetic and cathartic drugs, and delay was dangerous, he would not hesitate to employ these drugs. Like the surgeon, he would not hesitate to inflict the less injury, for the sake of preventing the greater. 92 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. Another part of the duty of the physician, is to correct the pathogenetic effects which the poison has already produced in the living forces or organ- ism. The treatment for this purpose should fre- quently be commenced simultaneously with that for the neutralization and removal of the poison, and should always be continued longer. Here, the physician is called to operate, not on brute matter, but on the living organism and the immaterial vital principle. On this account, we denominate the medicine employed, the vital antidote, in contra-distinction to the chemical antidote, which operates on the poison itself. The dose of the vital antidote may differ, according as we are treating for the primary pathogenetic action, or for the consecutive ef- fects. When a large quantity of poison has been taken, and ponderable quantities of it are still circulating with the blood, and continually acting on the organism, it may be proper in some cases to give large doses of the vital as well as of the chemical antidote. Until nearly all the poison has been removed or neutralized, and whilst it is making violent and continually repeated assaults on the vital power, the repe- tition of the morbific action is continually re- producing the disease, and rendering a repe- tition of the medicinal, action necessary. This repetition of the medicinal action can be secured CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 93 by the frequent repetition of small doses, but it may also be secured by repeating at longer in- tervals, doses which are large as compared with those which would be proper in the Ho- moeopathic treatment of ordinary diseases, how- ever violent. By the larger dose, circulating like the poison in the blood, we secure a con- tinuity of therapeutic impressions, correspond- ing to the continuity of the morbific impres- sions to be combatted. On this ground, I jus- tify the practice, so common in the Homoeopa- thic school, of giving coffee and some other vital antidotes, in large quantities, at the com- mencement of the treatment, in cases where poi- son has been recently taken. But this principle does not justify the admini- stration, either of large or frequently repeated doses in ordinary diseases, however violent. The action of a large quantity of poison, still entering, or just introduced, into the circulation, may be compared to that Avhich gravitation exerts on a falling body. The earth acts on the body every instant, and accelerates its descent, unless resist- ed every instant. On the other hand, ordinary diseases, originating in a primitive morbific im- pression, may be compared to the action of a' blow which rolls a ball along a smooth horizontal plane. By a single blow in the opposite direc- tion, the ball may be retarded, and no subse- 94 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. quent acceleration can take place without a new impression; and the ball may be stopped by re- peated and small blows given at long intervals. This simple illustration suffices for the object I had in view ; and with those who know, that in therapeutics, forces primarily parallel and in the same direction are virtually antagonistic. But were my object to enlighten an antipathist, in re- gard to the great Homoeopathic law, that one im- pression weakens the effect of a similar one, I might consider the force which is ultimately to act in arresting the ball, to be at each application of it first applied to a spring, and applied in the same direction in which the ball is moving. The reaction of the spring is in a direction opposite to the motion of the ball, and resists it. To represent the force as applied through such a medium, has another advantage; it illustrates the continued action of a single dose, and the reason why fre- quent repetitions are unnecessary in ordinary diseases. The spring, which here represents the reaction of the vital forces, exerts for a consider- able time its antagonistic action. [I have stated one case for the administration of large doses; another is that of apparent or ap- proximate death, from a poison or other sudden impression. I shall consider this in another place.] But suppose the poison once neutralized or evacuated, or both, what is our duty then? CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 95 What will be done by a true Homoeopathic phy- sician ? In other words, what will be done by any physician who understands the true princi- ples of the healing art ? He will endeavour to re- move, by appropriate Homoeopathic medicines, the morbid actions which the poison has excited in the living organism. In effecting this, he will not ordinarily resort to large doses, or even to crude drugs, in any dose; for he has learned that small doses and the peculiar preparations of the Homoeopathic school, are in general vastly su- perior in their efficiency as well as in their safety. Does any sceptical bystander ridicule the pro- posed means as evidently inadequate to the end, on account of the disparity between the mass of the medicine and that of the human body; or is the physician himself disturbed by a similar a priori doubt, when about to administer an incon- ceivably small quantity of matter to remove ac- tive inflammation, violent spasms or agonizing pains ? Is he tempted to doubt whether it is not contrary to all the analogies of nature, to suppose that so minute and ethereal an agent, can act efficiently on a hundred and fifty pounds of mat- ter, or on any one ounce of it? The answer is at hand. In the case of light, caloric or electricity, whatever physical theory we adopt in relation to their nature, there is a material agent, which in imponderable doses is 96 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. capable of powerful action on the same gross and weighty human body. Whether we adopt the hypothesis of the emission of particles, or that of the undulations of an elastic medium, in either case, the agent is material,, and so comminuted or rare, that it would be impossible to weigh, with the most delicate balance, a decillion of grains of the emitted particles, or a mass of the elastic fluid as large as the terraqueous globe. These particles or this fluid must, in the case of heat and electricity, penetrate with great freedom the pores of iron and gold, and in the case of light, the pores of glass and diamond. To reject the teachings of Homoeopathic expe- rience on such a speculative ground, as the pre- sumed impossibility that minute doses of an at- tenuated medicine can act on such great and gross bodies as ours, would be like the reasoning and conduct of a man, who should say to his friend, You need not fear to keep your bare hand al- most in contact with a bushel of intensely ignited coal, nor to gaze at the meridian sun in a clear sky, with your inflamed eyes. In either case, the size and weight of your body will perfectly secure you; for I have ascertained that the weight of the matter that would enter your system in a whole day, is less than that of the highest atten- uation which the most visionary Homoeopathist ever administered in the pores of a grain of dry sugar of milk. CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 97 Now the physical facts stated by this theorist are perfectly true; but his practical conclusions are utterly false; as every child knows, from sheer experience. Such conclusions would only be worthy of a closet philosopher, who had lived since his infancy in a cell destitute of windows and fire, and lighted with the faint flame of an inaccessible lamp. In like manner, our closet speculator, with perfectly just ideas in regard to the weight of electricity, having learned (what is indeed the fact) that a thunderbolt is much lighter than the smallest dose of Homoeopathic medicine ever em- ployed, might very consistently venture to re- ceive through his body, the shock of the most powerful electrical battery, or stand during every thunder-storm, with an unfinished lightning-rod resting on his head. Imagine the rod to be com- plete except at the lower part, where it terminates in the room five feet above the floor, and is eked out by the erect body of our consistent Al- loeopathic philosopher. If it is obviously preposterous to deny the power of light, caloric and electricity, in defiance of experience, how can it be reasonable to deny the power of the Homoeopathic doses and prepa- rations, in defiance of experience ? The medicinal portion of these preparations, differs from crude matter, in some degree of approach towards these imponderable agents, in respect to their rarity 98 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. and the minuteness of their parts. The molecules of the imponderable agents must be inconceivably minute; and on this minute division their activity probably depends. But our belief in the fact of their activity is founded on experience. The teachings of this experience in regard to them, no sane man rejects. With such analogies to remove the a priori improbability of the activity of minute portions of matter in a minutely divided state, why should a sane man reject the abundant proofs which experience furnishes, that the Ho- moeopathic preparations possess great activity, and are capable of controlling violent dis- eases, and antidoting virulent poisons ? The a priori improbability being removed, we are left at liberty, nay, we are compelled, to admit the testimony of experience in regard to the power of Homoeopathic doses and preparations, just as unhesitatingly as we do the same testimony in relation to the above mentioned transcendently active agents of nature. Why then should we generally administer large doses, if experience has proved that small ones are more safe and generally more efficient ? I will anticipate one objection which may be raised against this doctrine, in its application to cases of poisoning. It may be said, you have removed the poison from the stomach and intes- tines, but not from the blood. Do you expect to antidote and combat, by your infinitesimal doses, CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 99 the poison which may be circulating in the vas- cular system? To this I have three answers. First: The chemical antidote, previously admin- istered, is also soluble and susceptible of being received into the blood. It is circulating in the blood-vessels as truly as the poison; and if it has been administered in the requisite quantities, it is there meeting the poison in the interior of all the organs, and there exerting the requisite chemical power. Secondly: I have supposed the vital antidote to have been given in large or in fre- quently-repeated doses, for a few minutes or hours, whilst any considerable quantity of the poison remained in the blood. This will not be for a long time, as nature effectually strives to eliminate these foreign substances. Thirdly: The chemical and the vital antidotes to a poison are rarely identical, and ordinarily very dissimilar. Consequently, if we give the chemical antidote in ever so large quantities beyond what is ne- cessary to neutralize the poison, we thereby do nothing towards enabling us to dispense with the vital antidote; and on the other hand, if we give the vital antidote in ever so large doses beyond what is necessary to correct the morbid affections of the living organism, we thereby do nothing at all either towards neutralizing or removing the poison which is circulating in the blood-vessels, any more than we should if it were still in the stomach or intestines. The chemical and vital 100 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. antidotes cannot perform functions which are vi- carious to each other. Experience has demonstrated, that in almost every case, especially where there is not a con- tinual repetition of the morbific action, the vital antidotes act best in exceedingly small doses. One exception is admissible; that is, where the excitability is nearly or entirely suspended in a sudden manner; as in cases of apparent death from lightning, when the nervous energy has been suddenly exhausted by this external cause, or in cases of drowning, strangulation, or other cases of sudden asphyxia of an external or me- chanical origin. It is the property of true med- icines to act on life, but not on a dead body. In many of these cases of incipient or apparent death, the first object to be attained is a mechan- ical one, (like vomiting to remove a poison,) and our first object is to employ means which will ex- cite certain muscular actions. In asphyxia from the above causes, life will often be restored, pro- vided we can only restore the mechanical actions of respiration. These will be followed by the chemical actions producing the arterialization of the blood, and the chemical actions will be follow- ed by that degree of vitality which will reproduce the mechanical actions, and thus restore the whole function, which will then be carried on spontaneously. Now in this series, the primary mechanical actions must be artificially excited, CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 101 and the physician is operating in the capacity of a mechanic. He for a moment lays aside his peculiar and more transcendental prerogative, as an engineer for regulating the vital forces by the appropriate delicate agencies, in order to give the engine a start by a coarser lever. Now this may often be done by inflating the lungs, by recipro- cating movements of the ribs, by electricity, frictions and stimulating applications. It is no disparagement to Homoeopathic therapeutics, that it cannot, like electricity, produce muscular action in a dead body. Yet these mechanical actions may be essential to resuscitation, after which the Homoeopathic medicines are the most efficient agents for restoring the patient to health. A similar reason for large doses may exist in cer- tain cases of insensibility, or of partial death from some kinds of poison. But does this justify the resort to large doses in cases of apparently approaching or incipient death from ordinary disease ? It does not. For in this case, the vital powers are weakened by a previous and often a remote morbific impression. If an Alloeopathic dose be given, it may either accelerate or retard the death a few minutes or a few hours, but it will in either case render the death more certain. If a large Homoeopathic dose be given, it will render the death both more speedy and more sure. I am willing to have such practices judged with exclusive reference to 102 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. the good of the patient, and to waive all consi- derations of policy and of regard to the reputation of our glorious and beneficent system. But I will say, that to resort to any other than proper Homoeopathic treatment, merely because a case is deperate, is to give the false impression that large doses and crude drugs are more efficacious than the small doses and the potentized prepara- tions of Homceopathia. If they were so, they should have been given earlier, and not when, at best, they can but tantalize with a hope to be presently extinguished in despair and death. As to large doses in general, they are indeed capable of producing effects which small doses or- dinarily will not. For example, they can excite violent purging, vomiting, sweating, and other morbidly excessive excretions. But these effects are worse than useless. The most common apo- logy is the expulsion of bad or excessive bile and other vitiated secretions, which the physician imagines in the stomach and bowels. The patient is especially warned that these will accumulate if there is the least constipation. To be convinced of the utter falsity of this doctrine, he has only to try the experiment under Homoeopathic treat- ment. It may require a little time to remove by Homoeopathic treatment the constipated habit; but during this time, the patient observes that his excretions are vastly more natural in charac- ter, and vastly freer from any excess of bile or CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 103 vitiated matter, than when he took cathartics and emetics. Every Homoeopathic physician knows, that when the constipation has continued for many days, the stools are usually of a healthy character. He generally allows constipation to continue from four to seven days after accouche- ment, and finds the stools to have a better cha- racter, and the patient a better recovery, than when the evacuation takes place in two or three days, whether spontaneously or by a cathartic. In cases of small pox, I have known the consti- pation continue fifteen and twenty-two days, and be followed by perfect stools and a good recovery. The convalescence commenced before the evacua- tions, and was not caused by them. I have known no injury from such a course in any in- stance. The effects of overloading the stomach, even with undigestible food, can in almost every in- stance be best obviated by Homoeopathic treat- ment with small doses. Large doses of ordinary domestic coffee, which, in a single dose, has a less permanent action than most other drugs, is sometimes resorted to in such cases. I have not found it necessary, but cases may arise which will justify its use. As to hard substances accidentally swallowed, or taken with the food, such as small coin and buttons, and huge quantities of cherry stones, 104 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. emetics and cathartics are admissible, as in cases of poisoning. But the Homoeopathic physician will in such cases prefer tepid water, and other evacuants which are but slightly medicinal. Another inquiry of some importance in rela- tion to the boundaries of the Homoeopathic art, i. e., of medicine proper, is that which relates to the appropriate limitation of surgery. Time does not now allow me to give this a full examination. I shall, as in the case of the preceding topics, con- tent myself with a few hints. Surgery has its uses and abuses. There will always be cases requiring mechanical treatment. For example, fractures and dislocations can nei- ther be prevented nor cured by Homoeopathic treatment; though after the replacement of the parts, it is a useful auxiliary; indeed, as to the removal of the disease proper, it is our sole re- liance. The wounds of large arteries present a similar case. Another class of cases, are surgical in their existing state, but they might have been pre- vented by appropriate Homoeopathic treatment. For example, large urinary calculi, and the last stage of aneurisms of some large arteries. There is another classs of cases, which do not belong properly to surgery in any stage; but which the Alloeopathic school has generally treat- ed, either wholly or in part, by external or me- chanical means—means which belong to and CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. 105 characterize the province of surgery. To this class belong most cases of ophthalmia, schirrus, cancer, and a great variety of ulcers. Though the surgeon has not always neglected constitu- tional treatment, it has generally been the ex- tremely defective treatment of the Alloeopathic school. The results of this have been often so unsatisfactory, that he has relied much on sur- gery proper, and employed various external and mechanical means, including the use of the knife. How many useless incisions, excisions and mu- tilations are there not chargeable to a defective system of medical treatment ? Homceopathia, in its present state, could ob- viate by far the greater part of surgery; and it is destined to obviate nearly the whole. Homceo- pathia will do far more than supply its place. Dr. Mott, my respected instructor in surgery, was in the habit of saying, " There is more glory in saving a limb than in amputating it." This honour will be especially awarded to Hahne- mann and the Homoeopathic physicians. Ho- mceopathia will in time put an end to most mu- tilations for disease, whether they be the remov- al of limbs, of breasts, of tonsils, or of uvulae. Not only the destruction of useful parts, but the frequent abbreviation of life itself by their re- moval, is chargeable to rejection of the beneficent system founded by Hahnemann. Statistics show that the average duration of life among those af- 5* 106 CHEMICAL AND MECHANICAL MEANS. fected with schirrus and cancer, is shortened by operations; that those on whom excision is prac- tised, die sooner than those who submit to no operation. Most local diseases, so called, are really general; most surgical diseases, so called, are really medical. When the medical profes- sion shall have generally appreciated these truths and adopted the Homoeopathic art of healing, the average duration of human life will be greatly increased. LECTURE IV.* THE LAW OF CURE. The scientific institution which I have the honour to address, adopts as its creed the law similia similibus curantur. The general adoption of this universal principle in therapeutics is des- tined to effect a total revolution in medical prac- tice, and to increase, by many years, the aver- age duration of human life. I shall not attempt to exhibit the immense mass of direct experi- mental evidence by which Homoeopathy is esta- blished, and by which it has gained a high rank among the sciences of observation; but shall con- fine myself to some general considerations in fa- vour of the Homoeopathic method of determining the remedy, and against the practicability of ar- riving at a reliable, still less a general, law of therapeutics by any of the ordinary methods. Let us consider whether Homoeopathy, and it alone, does not fulfil all the conditions which reason requires in such an investigation. * Read before the American Institute of Homoeopathy. 108 THE LAW OF CURE. If there is any general law of cure, that law must express some relation between the medicine and the disease. In order that it may be a law of cure in any practical sense, it must ex- hibit such a relation between the disease and its remedy, that an examination of the former shall enable us to select the latter. Now no- thing can be known to man except by means of some phenomena cognizable by his senses; these phenomena represent its properties. The power of producing these phenomena, is what we call the property or properties of any thing, or entity. It is the property of any particular disease to exhibit, during its continuance, certain phe- nomena not observable during health. Whether these changes are in function or structure, they are called symptoms. There can be no general rule of cure, unless it comprises symptoms as one of its elements. The changes observed post mortem can never alone suffice ; because a dead man can never be cured. It is only through the medium of his antecedent symptoms, that we can make any use of his case in curing any other; and then only so far as the symp- toms of the two cases correspond. An exact correspondence throughout the entire course will rarely occur. For other reasons, any rule of cure founded on post mortem observations will be slow in its development, and partial THE LAW OF CURE. 109 and fallible in its most perfected state. Because: first, but a small proportion of patients die; se- condly, but a small proportion of cadavera can be thoroughly examined; thirdly, in the eases in which there is a description of all the post mortem appearances, there is seldom an equally minute and comprehensive description of the symptoms: such a case is like one blade of a pair of scissors; it wants the corresponding part in order to be available in practice. Fourthly, no man can always determine, to what particular stage or symptoms of the case any particular organic change is traceable; still less, how much is due to one and how much to another; fifthly, and finally, in the prevalent drugging system, who can calculate how many grains of the pathological treasure, which the anatomist eagerly collects in various parts of the body, has been deposited there by the disease, and how many by poisonous drugs ? to say nothing of the conflicting relative claims of the drugs among themselves; they have all been vigorously working at the same parts of the body, one on one day, another on the next, and often many at the same instant; and when their work is completed, some of them may dis- pute the title to an inflammation here, others to that of a mortification there. Stop, says one doctor; you are all wrong; the disease has been 110 THE LAW OF CURE. at work here, and claims the totality of the results. I have mentioned several obstacles which pre- vent man from deriving any general rule of cure from post mortem phenomena. If such a rule is at- tainable, it must be founded chiefly and essen- tially on the ante mortem phenomena, that is, the symptoms. During the existence of any malady, its symp- tom are its only sensible representatives. In symptoms we include not only sensations and appearances in a vast number of minute divi- sions of the body, but the various circumstances under which these sensations, &c. are observed to occur, and the various modes in which they are simultaneously grouped. When a symptom is observed to occur under certain circumstances and not under others, this obvious relation be- tween the symptom and its cause, is itself a symp- tom. The synchronism of two symptoms is it- self a symptom. As no body in nature can be represented by a single property, so no disease can be represented by a single symptom. Now any law of cure must express some rela- tion between the properties of a disease and the medical character of a drug; that is, the charac- ter of its action on the living body. This cha- racter cannot be represented by a single effect, but by a group of effects. As a group of symp- toms is the only representative of a malady, and THE LAW OF CURE. HI a group of effects on the living body the only representative of the medical character of a drug, there can be no law of cure unless it expresses some definite relation (either mediate or imme- diate) between these two classes of groups. It remains for us to determine what class of medical effects must be selected as one of the ele- ments of the therapeutic rule. One plan is to select the curative effects : a certain drug has re- moved a certain disease or group of symptoms; therefore it will remove it in future. This empi- rical method, when practised by the laity, is con- sidered as an element of quackery, but when practised by regular physicians is dignified with the title of practice founded on medical expe- rience, and is much vaunted at the present day. Has it not been the favourite method of the most observant Alloeopathic practitioners, whenever their experience had become sufficient to teach them the practical fallacies of the self-styled ra- tional system in which they had been indoctrina- ted? But this is only the first stage of their progress. They soon find that their own expe- rience conflicts with those they find recorded, and the latter with each other. If that medical scep- ticism which follows this discovery should not induce them to quit the profession, their preser- vation is owing to a new idea which is fortunate- ly hatched at the same moment when the old one expires. This young progeny of the ashes of the 112 THE LAW OF CURE. former theory, is innocent of all positive crime, and is known as the expectant theory, or con- fidence in nature and bread pills. Such is the deplorable tendency of empirical therapeutics. It must always remain defective, even in its partial applications, and can never establish any general law. The true test of a genuine law, is its establishing some definite re- lation between phenomena not hitherto observed. Such for example is the law of gravitation, by which the astronomer can predict what motions would take place in a group of heavenly bodies, under any supposed conditions of mass, distance, and previous movement in each at a given in- stant. The system of Ptolemy had no such astronomical law: empirical medicine has no law. It can never enable us to pass from the known to the unknown. A true law has, essen- tially in its very nature, this element of progres- sion. Such is the prerogative of the Homoeopa- thic law in medicine. It establishes a relation not only between proved drugs and known diseases, but between all the unexplored medical wealth of nature and all the future medical wants of humanity. The specificers of Germany, like the Alloeopa- thic school, attempted to found a materia medica on clinical experience. But how have they veri- fied the practicability of their notions ? Where and what is their materia medica? Who will THE LAW OF CURE. 113 have the temerity to compare it with Hahne- mann's ? It is one thing to discover now and then a specific, and quite another thing to establish a law for the discovery and administration of all specifics. Many an ignorant individual has done the former; but a hundred generations of physicians were engaged in these uncertain, dan- gerous and comparatively fruitless experiments, before it pleased Providence to raise up a man capable of effecting the latter. Those who reject this Homoeopathic law en- deavour to establish a materia medica and select their remedies, either, 1st, by the method of pure clinical experience ; or 2dly, by the physiolo- gical method; or 3dly, by various mixtures or combinations of both. The first method is em- piricism ; the second, rationalism; the third eclecticism. Let us present medical rationalism in its most cautious, philosophical and defensible form. We will suppose the rationalist to appreciate the importance of a minute and comprehensive observation of the case, and to be aware of the several successive steps by which strict logic re- quires him to proceed in the search of the re- medy by the physiological method. First, he observes a certain group of symptoms. This is every thing in the disease which is appre- ciable by the senses. Thus far he is on the safe and solid ground of observation. Secondly, 114 THE LAW OF CURE. from this position he plunges abruptly into the mire of speculation, or cautiously wades into it over places where there appears to be more or less foothold of reliable induction. But, sooner or later, he must be deeply immersed in hypo- theses, before he arrives at those properties of the malady which are in immediate contact with the properties of the medicine. A certain group of symptoms does, in his opinion, denote certain occult morbid actions in the living body. I call them occult, because if they were obvious to the • senses, they would not be matters of inference but of observation, and would themselves be symptoms. Thirdly, when the rationalizing or physiological physician, by various reasonings and conjectures more or less plausible, has as- certained, as nearly as he can, the occult actions of the disease, the next step in the problem is to determine what occult actions a remedy must produce, in order to remove those of the dis- ease. I say occult, for the real battle between the medicine and the malady must be fought in this obscure and transcendental region, beyond the pale of observation. For various reasons, more or less plausible, the rationalist concludes that certain occult properties of a disease require certain occult properties in the remedy; for ex- ample, that the remedy must be a tonic, a re- laxant, an antispasmodic, a refrigerant, a puri- fier of the blood, or an alterative. THE LAW OF CURE. 115 The fourth step in the problem, is to pass from the occult to the obvious properties of the re- medy; that is, to determine what obvious ac- tions a remedy must evince, in order that it may excite the requisite occult actions. For example, he may conclude, that the medicine should be a cathartic, a diaphoretic or an emetic, or that it should produce some other evacuation, or that its action should be attended with some other obvious and definite phenomenon or group of phenomena, which in his opinion wall evince the requisite internal actions. Now this fourth step is liable to all the unsoundness of the two pre- ceding steps. In a majority of cases, there will be fallacy and error in each of the three ; that is, in passing from the obvious to the occult proper- ties of the malady, from the occult properties of the malady to the occult properties of the medi- cine, and from the occult properties of the med- icine to its obvious properties. The fifth and last step of the problem, is to de- termine what medicine will produce those ob- vious actions which the theorist has inferred to be requisite. He has now waded to the opposite shore, and again arrived at the solid ground of observation. He started with observing the ob- vious phenomena of the disease; he ends by a partial proving of drugs, or by selecting those which experience has already shown to produce 116 THE LAW OF CURE. those obvious actions which he considers requi- site in the case to be treated. Though the observations of the first and fifth steps of the problem were ever so unexception- able, the theoretical errors of the three interme- diate steps may render them entirely useless. But these errors of the theory tend to vitiate the observations themselves : they tend to make the observation of symptoms partial, and the prov- ing of drugs partial. The rationalist notes those symptoms of the disease which he can use in his theory, and slurs over the remaining and greater portion as useless. If the sufferer describes with minuteness the character, locality and conditions of the pains, the physician regards it as imper- tinent loquacity. In like manner, in the prov- ings of a drug, there are but a few of its obvious effects of which the rationalist can avail himself; hence he is satisfied with ascertaining those few. Of what use to him are its thousand other symptoms ? Some form, combination or mixture of the cli- nical and the physiological methods is adopted by all physicians, except the Homceopathists. In the hour allotted to this discourse, it would be impossible to examine the combinations and mix- tures ; nor it is necessary : the errors of the fun- damental systems must attach to all that are founded upon them. One physician professes to be governed mainly by the clinical experience of THE LAW OF CURE. 117 the profession, another by physiological princi- ples, another by both. All three ask, why do you call us Alloeopathists ? In answering this question, we must make a distinction between the rule by which the med- icine is selected, and the principle on which it acts. No matter on what principle the drug is selected, if its actions are unlike those of the dis- ease, the practice is Alloeopathic. This term is derived (not from alios pathos, another affection, but) from alloios pathos, a dissimilar affection. Every affection which is not of the same nature with the disease (that is, isopathic) must be an- other, that is, a different, affection; and these different affections must either be dissimilar or similar. The last are named Homoeopathic. This last term (derived from homoios pathos, similar affection) is applicable to that practice in which the group of symptoms producible by the medi- cine is similar to that presented by the disease. If the group is dissimilar, the practice is Alloeo- pathic, whatever may be the rule by which the drug is selected. Now as those who select their medicines and doses by the imperfect light of clinical experience or pathological theories, ge- nerally excite sufferings unlike the disease, their practice is mainly Alloeopathic. But as Homoeopathy is founded both on ex- perience and reason, why is it not a combination of empiricism and rationalism ? I answer, em- 118 THE LAW OF CURE. piricism is the practising under the guidance of experience, without a law; the Homoeopathist practises under the guidance of a law established by experience. Rationalism is a system built up by reasoning upon subjects which are beyond the scope of human reason. Such is every system which is based upon the occult properties of dis- eases and the occult properties of drugs, and reasons upon the relation between these two class- es of properties. Homoeopathy is based upon the obvious properties of diseases and the obvious properties of drugs, and ascertains, by observa- tion alone, the curative relation between these two classes of properties. It is reasonable to re- quire such a foundation, and to erect the super- structure with such caution. Therefore this sys- tem is eminently rational. But because it is ra- tional, because its reasoning is strictly inductive and founded on facts distinctly observable by fi- nite man, it is not rationalism. Right reason is normal, rationalism a monstrosity. Hahnemann and his disciples are the only medical philosophers who have been true to the inductive method, in the reasonings which they have employed in establishing a therapeutic law. They have proved, by abundant experience, that a medicine will remove a group of symptoms similar to the group which it is capable of pro- ducing. The law is founded on the observations, and on nothing else. Any metaphysical, me- THE LAW OF CURE. 119 chanical or physiological considerations which I may urge in opposition to the old school or in favour of the new, are not to be considered as any part of the foundation of the Homoeopathic system. After this distinct disclaimer, I feel at liberty to introduce some general reasonings in relation to the two rival methods. I design them not as proofs, but as inducements to experimen- tal investigation. They would be unnecessary, were not the Alloeopathic community enveloped in a mass of prejudices, which prevents them making those experiments which, if prosecuted with the childlike simplicity of a truehearted in- ductive philosopher, are alone sufficient to pro- duce conversion. No medicine can cure any disease, unless it acts upon all the diseased parts, either directly or indirectly. Now the more nearly the symp- toms of a drug resemble those of the disease, the more near is its virtual approach to the dis- ease, both as respects its different seats, and its relative intensity in each. The number of parts susceptible of receiving the pathogenetic and curative actions of drugs vastly transcends the number recognised in ana- tomy. This is evident from the almost infinite diversity of the symptoms pruducible and curable by drugs. Millions of fibres and molecules sus- tain millions of relations to medicinal agents. How then is finite man ever to resolve the prob- 120 THE LAW OF CURE. lem of cure with such multitudinous elements? By any of the ordinary methods it is utterly im- possible. The pathologist, (whether he be a pro- fessed specifier or an ordinary Alloeopathist,) makes but a feeble beginning, if he demonstrates that a drug tends specially to act on any one ap- paratus, on certain component organs of that apparatus, or even on certain tissues of an organ. There is practically an infinity of component parts in each tissue of each organ ; and these in- finitesimal parts may be simultaneously suffering some indeterminate elementary morbid affection. The affection in each element may be different from that in every other ; the aggregate affection composing the disease of that tissue of that one organ. How complicated then is the disease of the whole organ! Still more complicated is the disease of the whole body, even in a disease which is called local. The mutual sympathies are numberless. The number of results due to their different com- binations defies all human powers of comprehen- sion. Shall one member suffer and the whole body not suffer with it ? It is impossible. Every ma- lady affects, in some manner and some degree, every organ, every tissue, every molecule. But no medicine can effect a perfect cure, un- less its action is exerted on every diseased part, and on every part just in the proportion in which THE LAW OF CURE. 121 it is disordered. There must also be a quali- tative as well as quantitative difference be- tween the actions on different parts. If there are millions of varieties of morbid action si- multaneously existing in different parts, an equal number of curative actions must be established. Such are the objects to be ultimately attained, either by direct contact, or through the mutual influences of different parts or functions. In view of such a complication, how general, how coarse, how insufficient appear the ordinary methods of treatment; such as opening the pores of the skin or the ducts of the liver, drawing off blood from the veins, or clearing out the alimentary canal! Equally general, coarse and insufficient, are the electrical and the hydriatic (absurdly de- nominated the hydropathic) methods—the ex- ternal application of a mass of water, and the internal application of electricity. The latter agent is refined, but the currents of it (whether applied to the limbs, the viscera, or the nerv- ous trunks,) are gross. Neither the hydriatic nor the electrical method is susceptible of any law adapting it to all the diversities of morbid action. Attenuated medicines, administered according to the law of similitude, are the true regula- tors of animal electricity and the human or- ganism. The totality of any disease is the 6 122 THE LAW OF CURE. totality of its morbid actions. There can be no complete exponents of these, except the morbid phenomena. Any true, complete and comprehensive law of medicine must recognise all the morbid phenomena, and define some relation between them and the curative agents. These relations may be either direct or inter- mediate. The employment of the latter entails all the errors of rationalism. Let us then con- sider the direct relations. There are three relations which the symp- toms of a drug can sustain to those of a disease, namely, identity, similarity, and dissimilarity. The last includes opposition. Therefore Anti- pathy is a branch of Allceopathy. Let us con- sider it a moment. As a rule it is impracti- cable. There is no disease which has any con- siderable proportion of its symptoms opposite to those of any drug. Hence if this is the condition of cure, no malady is curable by medicine. Passing from opposition to other forms of dissimilarity, we find none which can form the basis of a general therapeutic law. To form an estimate of pure Allceopathy, we must sepa- rate from it every homoeopathic ingredient. In such an extreme case, is there any conceiv- able basis of curative action? If between none of the symptoms of the drug and those of the disease, there is either the relation of THE LAW OF CURE. 123 identity, similarity or opposition, we must infer that the special action of the drug is on different functions, different organs and different tissues from those on which the disease spe- cially acts, and that the two actions differ in nature as well as location. Is it not next to demonstrable, that such a destitution of all intimate relation, must imply the want of all curative agency? To speak figuratively, there is no handle by which the drug can grasp the disease. The degrees of conceivable relationship be- tween the action of drugs and that of a disease may be represented by an immense circle. Identity is the central point. On this point stands Isopathy. Immediately around it are arranged the most perfect degrees of similarity. This is the province of perfect Homoeopathy. Contiguous to this is the annulus or ring of similarities less perfect, but still great. This is the theatre of that homoeopathic practice, which, though not perfect, may be denominated good. Encircling this is a ring of similarities and dissimilarities, the region of alloeopathic Homoeopath}^. If in our survey we proceed a step farther outward, we cross the line of nomi- nal Homoeopathy, the circular line that sepa- rates alloeopathic Homoeopathy from homoeopa- thic Allceopathy. This last is an annulus of similarities so defective as to merit the epithet 124 THE LAW OF CURE. of dissimilarities. The old school practitioner, without any particular design, often travels in this region, and sometimes into the interior rings, still nearer the disease, and thus effects its mitigation or cure. Passing still farther out- ward, we come to the annular region of great dissimilarity, the domains of Alloeopathy as pure as practicable; and beyond that, at the circumference of the great circle, we may imagine the region of perfect dissimilarity, and of Allceo- pathy as pure as is conceivable. We have be- fore seen that here is no relation which can be the basis of curative action. Let us pass abruptly from the circumference to the centre. Is identity the requisite point? Is Isopathy the true principle of cure ? In con- sidering this system, it is of the utmost im- portance to be continually impressed with the fact, that identity is but a single mathematical point; it has no dimensions. The slightest con- ceivable departure from it is similarity. Pro- fessed and attempted Isopathy is in a position of unstable equilibrium, like a rod balanced on a point at its lower extremity. In spite of all attempts to preserve its erect and central posi- tion, it is continually tottering into the homoeo- pathic region. We must not confound apparent with proper Isopathy. I believe the latter to have no existence as a curative system. If certain products of a, disease have, when taken THE LAW OF CURE. 125 into the stomach, cured a disease produced by the inoculation of a virus identical in kind, it is not because the second action is identical with, but only similar to, the disease in its existing stage. AYe can never be sure, that successive impressions of the same toxic agent are identical in their nature, unless it is administered in the same mode and under the same circumstances. The slightest removal from identity is similarity. From mere observation it is as impossible to test identity of action, as it is to test the contact of two contiguous mathematical points. Hence Isopathy can have no foundation in experience. I think it has none in reason. An addition of the same action is an augmentation of the action; and if a temporary increase of the malady tends to mitigate it, why should not one that was ori- ginally severe have a greater tendency to a spontaneous cure than one originally slight? In a loose and popular sense, the homoeo- pathic remedy does aggravate the disease. Still farther, I concede, that in homoeopathic books, there are thousands of instances, where the dis- ease is said to be at first aggravated by the remedy. Still further, I hardly see how such expressions are to be avoided without great inconvenience. This is not the only case where, to avoid circumlocution, men use unphilosoph- ical expressions. Astronomers, as well as others, 126 THE LAW OF CURE. still speak of the rising and setting of the sun. Yet he must be a superficial critic, who would infer that modern astronomers, and other intelligent persons who use these expressions, are ignorant of the motion of the horizon. Medi- cinal aggravations present a similar case. I am aware that an uncandid or superficial op- ponent of our system might, in reference to this point, charge us with inconsistency; but this consideration shall not deter me from stating the truth. I deem this the more important, because most of the theoretic difficulties which physicians find in Hahnemann's law of cure, and the arguments which they employ against it most successfully with the public, would be annihilated by a correct distinction between certain things which are now often confound- ed. If a patient has swallowed ten grains of arsenic, we would not attempt to cure him by administering another grain. We would not administer any thing to produce either the tenth, or the ten millionth, or even the decil- lionth part of the same effect produced by the ten grains. I acknowledge myself unable to understand, how a mere increase of any disease, in a strict sense of the terms, can tend to the cure of that disease. If experience proved it, I would believe it. Now all who have faithfully tried our remedies know that they are effectual. It THE LAW OF CURE. 127 did not require one year, out of the seven which I have practised homoeopathically, to make me sure that remedies employed accord- ing to Hahnemann's law cured diseases, and much more effectually than those which I had for sixteen years used as an alloeopathic physi- cian. Again I acknowledge, that in the pro- gress of the homoeopathic cures, I have often seen, from the minutest doses, what are called medicinal aggravations. How do I reconcile these facts ? The answer is partly anticipated in what has been said above; and what I am about to state has a bearing on the same topic. I must institute a comparison between the alloeopathic and homoeopathic practice, and trace the former through its different stages of ap- proximation to the latter. Similarity is the characteristic of Homoeopathy, dissimilarity that of Allceopathy. These characteristics differ not in kind, but in degree. Moderate similarity and moderate dissimilarity are contiguous, and practically identical. The boundary between the better forms of Allceopathy and the most im- perfect forms of Homoeopathy cannot be de- finitely determined; they are practically iden- tical. In the circle by which I have, for con- venience of nomenclature, represented the differ- ent modifications of the mixed systems by different annuli, they in strictness run into each 128 THE LAW OF CURE. other by insensible shadings, from the small central circle of perfect similarity to the circum- ference of total dissimilarity. Perhaps I cannot better express my view of the nature of homoeopathic action, than by calling it an exquisitely refined counter-irrita- tion or revulsion. These terms have been de- graded by their application to processes which are coarse and external, and possess no specific relations to those infinite diversities of disease which result from the different infinitesimal localities, and the different kinds and combina- tions of the elementary morbid actions. The adaptation of Homoeopathy to all of these, is one of its grand characteristics. The coarser processes of the old school, may serve to give us some faint idea of the refined processes of the new. If a physician attempts to combat an irritation in the pleura by a counter-irritant applied to the feet, the effect is slight compared with that produced by the application of it to the surface of the chest. For an inflammation of the eye, he finds a slight artificial inflammation on the temple more effectual than one on the chest; and in general, the nearer he approaches the diseased locality, the more beneficial does he find the counter- irritation, provided it is not so strong as to spread to the seat of the disease, and thus become isopathic. This last evil he sometimes THE LAW OF CURE. 129 encounters in diseases of the brain, the pleura and other organs, and shrinks from the appli- cation of his external stimulants, until the in- ternal inflammation is farther reduced. Now if instead of a strong irritant an inch from the disease, we could apply a sufficiently gentle one at the distance of a millionth of an inch, is it not reasonable to conclude that it might be both safe and effectual ? The homoeopathic action being inconceivably near the disease, both in the location, nature and function of the affected parts, this diversion restores the latter to their normal action, and enables them to retain it; and the new mor- bid action, which is manifested by similar symptoms, soon spontaneously subsides into a normal action, that is, health. But if the homoeopathic dose is too great, the effect is like that of an epispastic on the scalp, when the surface of the brain is highly inflamed; that is, the excessive homoeopathic dose operates partly by counter-irritation, and partly by contiguous sympathy; the latter effect tending to frustrate the former. When a me- dicine which is homoeopathic in a small dose, is administered in a large dose, its direct action, instead of being confined to a point near the disease, is in a circle which on one side over- laps the point of identity, and on the other spreads into the region of dissimilarity. Hence, 6* 130 THE LAW OF CURE. on one side, it tends to aggravate and protract the original disease, and on the other, to de- velope a multitude of new alloeopathic affections, which contribute more towards prostrating the vital forces than towards diminishing the origi- nal malady. I will endeavor to give a hydro dynamical illustration of homoeopathic action. Suppose a complicated hydraulic engine, so constructed as to throw out millions of jets of fluid from different orifices and in different directions: Let this engine represent the human body. Let the equality of the jets represent that balance of the vital phenomena which denotes health. Let any inequality of the jets repre- sent the phenomena of disease. The engine has millions of internal passages, compartments, valves, and other contrivances, through the medium of which the relative flow from differ- ent orifices is regulated; and any variation at one place affects more or less the internal po- sition of the machinery and flow of fluid at all other places; although this sympathy is more intimate between some parts than be- tween others. Let the streams represent vital actions and phenomena, whether of health or disease; the portions concealed within the en- gine being the inscrutable vital actions, and those jetting out being the phenomena or symptoms. These jets represent all the symp- THE LAW OF CURE. 131 toms, subjective as well as objective; that is, sensations as well as appearances. Any jet which does not belong to the proper working of the engine, is a morbid phenomenon—a symptom. Any change in a previously exist- ing regular jet is a symptom. The engine is so constituted, that the application of any agent which causes a new stream to flow from an ori- fice extremely near that of an existing stream, shall cause the latter to diminish; and if a sufficient number of new streams are thus caused to flow from orifices respectively contiguous to those of morbidly accelerated streams, all the latter will be rendered normal; and when the curative agent has spent its force, that is, when the new streams have ceased, the normal action of the engine will continue. This is health. Now the engineer, not having such an ac- quaintance with the structure of the minutest parts of the engine and their mutual influences, as to enable him to determine, a priori, the total influence wrhich any agent will have on its operation, how can he regulate it ? He has the requisite agents in sufficient variety to cause streams in every possible direction. Many of these agents have been applied to this engine, and to others of the same construction, and large volumes have been filled with a list of the particular jets which these agents produce or accelerate. He consults these volumes, if 132 THE LAW OF CURE. he has not previously stored his mind with their contents. He finds an agent which is known to be capable of producing the requisite regulating streams. He applies this agent to the engine which is acting irregularly. The first effect is an apparent aggravation of the existing irregularity: for the new jets are re- spectively so nearly in conjunction with the previously excessive jets, as to appear, except on the closest inspection, to be identified with them, and render them still more excessive. This state of things represents medicinal ag- gravation. This near approximation or conti- guity of the artificial to the abnormal streams, represents the similarity referred to in the fun- damental law of homoeopathic therapeutics. Here let me notice an erroneous view which many take of our practice. They imagine that a treatment guided by the symptoms, must be aimed at the symptoms; that it may hit and extinguish these, but leave the disease un- touched; that we are contending with the shadows of things and overlooking the substance, or, to borrow the figure from the engine just described, that we are merely annihilating the jets at their exit, instead of acting on the inter- nal and primitive currents. Now the external jets are the guides, but the internal and primi- tive currents are the real subjects, and their regulation the objects, of our operations. We THE LAW OF CURE. 133 are not combating symptoms, but are guided by symptoms in combating disease. If the general and a priori considerations, which I have stated in favour of the homoeo- pathic law, shall induce any to test it by actual experiment, my object will have been gained. Their conversion will be secured. It is to this trial that Homoeopathy appeals. Every phy- sician who has fairly, fully, and practically examined Homoeopathy, has adopted it. An opinion prevails to some extent in the community, that Homoeopathy has been actu- ally examined by many alloeopathic physicians, and found by them to be untrue in principle and inefficacious in practice. Those who state that they have made an examination with such results, have no adequate conception of what is implied in their statement. It is implied, that they have repeatedly taken and adminis- tered a variety of our potentized medicines, in small doses, and always without any effect, either in producing or removing symptoms; secondly, that they have taken doses, in num- ber and magnitude sufficient to produce nume- rous symptoms, and that these symptoms dif- fered entirely from those recorded by Hahne- mann and his disciples; thirdly, that many drugs, each of which was known by them to be capable of producing many symptoms, have been separately given by these physicians to 134 THE LAW OF CURE. many patients, each of whose cases was speci- ally characterized by many symptoms pro- ducible by the drug administered, and yet this drug given in sufficiently small doses and at sufficient intervals, neither cured nor benefited the patient. I deny that any such trials have ever been made with such results. Not one of the three classes of experiments, as above in- dicated, has ever been made by any man who is still a professed alloeopathic physician. The first class of experiments above indicated, would, if honestly and judiciously made, verify the efficiency of the smallest doses ever adminis- tered by Hahnemann; the second class would verify his materia medica; and the third class, his law of cure; a law which, by its univer- sality and importance, gives to Hahnemann the same rank in medicine that Newton has in astronomy. This is the only general law for the admin- istration of specifics which any one has ever even pretended to have discovered. To men who haA'e practically verified it, to the mem- bers of the American Institute of Homoeopathy no theoretical defence of it is needed. They have a conviction which can neither be shaken by any theoretical assault, nor confirmed by any theoretical defence. To others who have honoured us with their presence this evening, we commend the exam- THE LAW OF CURE. 135 ination of the new medical doctrine, in the spirit of that inductive philosophy by which the scientific men of Philadelphia have been distinguished, and in that spirit of philanthropy in which this city was founded. Standing here on ground consecrated by a Penn and a Frank- lin, and their numerous successors who have devoted themselves to the cause of science and humanity, we urge the claims of a system, in- ferior to none of the physical sciences, in the strictness of the investigations on which it is founded, and the extent of the benefits it is destined to confer on mankind. LECTURE V. PURE HOKEOPATH Y.* Any morbid action is cured by a similar action, if cured at all. The exceptions are apparent, not real. First: There may be poisons which threat- en morbid action, which is prevented by their removal or neutralization. This is no cure of disease, and no exception to the law. If dis- ease has been induced, it is cured according to the law. Secondly: There may be apparent death from sudden violence, after which che- mical or physical agents may put the material organism in such a chemical or physical state as to be susceptible of a certain degree of vital ac- tion, after which its morbid character is removed by homoeopathic means. Indeed, the action of these strong stimulants which effect the partial restoration, is, so far as they act vitally, analo- gous to that of the lightning, blow or other vio- lence by which animation had been suspended. Finally, many cases of disease have a tendency * Read before the Central-New York Homoeopathic Society. PURE HOMCEOPATHY. 137 to a spontaneous termination in health. The pa- tient may be greatly reduced ; but the vital for- ces are ultimately triumphant, either without medicine, or in opposition to false and hurtful medication: in the last case, they achieve a double victory, against the combined forces of disease and drugs. In either case, it is merely a recovery, not a cure : the law is not violated. We believe in the universality of the thera- peutic law, similia similibus curantur. A belief in its universality makes one of the fundamental distinctions between the pure homceopathist and the homoeopathic eclectic. We have now considered the cure by similars, as a law of nature. We are next to consider it as an imperative rule or law in medicine consi- dered as an art.—Similia similibus curentur, as well as curantur. This is one mode of expressing the second ar- ticle of belief, prefixed to the constitution of this society, in whose doctrines I concur, and by whom I am invited to deliver this public address. We believe that pure and exclusive Homoeo- pathy, which is the system of curing by similars, is superior not only to every other system, but to any number of them combined, either with each other, or with Homoeopathy itself: consequently, that a physician consults the best good of his pa- tients, by strictly avoiding the practice of all other methods in connection with the homceopa- 138 PURE H0MC30PATHY. thic, either simultaneously or successively, either in the same or different cases of disease. Hence we consider the homoeopathic law in- violable as a rule Of art. This is not necessarily implied in its universal- ity as a law of nature ; hence their separate state- ment is no tautology. If the cures of nature are always by similars, it does not follow that man ought always to attempt a cure by the same method. Because substances accidentally intro- duced into the system, or administered in the blind routine of empiricism, or in accordance with the fallacious hypotheses of physiological medi- cine, might happen, in some instances, to be so adapted to the case, that nature could avail her- self of their instrumentality in effecting a cure by means of her homoeopathic law, and yet man, if instructed merely in the law, but ignorant of the pathogenetic properties of drugs, would be in- competent to apply the law to practice. But our school is not in this crippled state. It has two legs, the law and the materia medica. The last exhibits thousands of properties in hun- dreds of drugs ; the first renders these properties available. The system furnished with either of these branches alone, would have stood one-leg- ged and impotent, a mere scientific curiosity ; but furnished with the two, which give reciprocal aid, it walks forth in might and majesty, to the PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 139 achievement of practical results unparalleled in medical history. This superiority of pure homoeopathic practice will continually increase, by the introduction of new medicines into our materia medica, and ad- ditional provings of all those which it now em- braces. But a practice based exclusively on our law and our materia medica, in its present state of developement, will result in more cures and fewer deaths, than a practice which has this basis in some emergencies, and a different basis in others. Even an occasional departure from a pure homoeopathic practice, is prejudicial to the interests of the patient; and in proportion as a physician thus relaxes his hold on the only safe guides, he is an inefficient and unsafe practi- tioner. It is not to be expected, that all who inscribe on their banner the similia law of cure, will be as competent as Hahnemann to appreciate its uni- versality and exclusiveness, or as strict in con- forming their practice to their doctrines. Some are noviciates; and in an abrupt rotation are in danger of so great a shock, as to demand, with some reason, the privilege of turning on a radius. But some who are so dull as to be ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth, employ a radius of such enormous length, as to preclude all expectation of their coming into the right direction this side of the grave. Others, 140 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. after a moderate deflection from the alloeopathic line, cease to turn ; they fly off in a tangent, in which, for life, they pursue their course, in a di- rection midway between truth and falsehood. Others manage to oscillate on a double track of both; without that discrimination which per- ceives their incompatible tendencies. The prac- tice of some of these veterans in nominal Ho- moeopathy, is continually appealed to by the alloeopathists, as proof of our virtual acknow- ledgment of the insufficiency of the whole sys- tem. They say A and B are known to stand high in the homoeopathic school; yet in severe cases, they bleed and blister and prescribe eme- tics and cathartics; and, as alteratives, use pretty good doses of calomel and hydriodate of potash. Such is not the system contained in the ar- ticles of faith of this society, and practised by its members. Such is not the system with which the be- nevolent Hahnemann hoped to bless his fel- low-men, in all nations of the earth, and for all ages to come. Such is not the system, for the revelation of which to him, he expressed such devout gratitude to the Author of all good. Such is not the system to which he devoted nearly half a century of his valuable life. The third distinction between pure Homoeo- pathy and homoeopathic eclecticism, is phar- PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 141 maceutic and posological—it relates to the pre- paration and dose of medicine. We believe in the great therapeutic power and value of those preparations denominated potentized medicines. Our confidence in the superiority of these pre- parations—as compared with crude or slightly diluted drugs—is immutably founded on our ex- perience of their efficacy. It is not based on any theory. But having arrived at the con- clusion by reliable induction, we are at liberty to theorize in regard to the reasons why these preparations manifest such superior efficacy. I believe one reason of the superior efficacy of these preparations to be, the superior inten- sity of their power of acting homoeopathically, i. e., like the disease; and the other, the in- ferior intensity of their power of acting allceo- pathically, i. e., unlike the disease. In conti- nuing the synthetic method one step farther, in assigning my reasons for these reasons, I will express my conviction, that that portion of the power, which the drug possesses, of act- ing like the disease, is increased by the phy- sical changes which the drug undergoes at each step of the Hahnemannean process of dilution; and that that portion of the power which it possesses, of acting unlike the disease, is, at each state of the same process, diminished by the diminution of the quantity of the original 142 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. drug, contained in a given portion of the pre- paration. I will first investigate the last proposition, relating to the qualitative influence of quanti- tative variations. It is rare that the action of a remedy is perfectly similar to the disease which it is em- ployed to combat; but if the dose be sufficient- ly small, its force will be expended where there is the greatest susceptibility to its action; viz., on the morbid actions similar to its own. Thus, whilst the morbid actions are mitigated or nearly destroyed, the normal or healthy actions are left undisturbed. Such a dose has but a slight power to generate new maladies; for its action requires special susceptibility, and this special susceptibility to its action is a part of the existing disease. Now an excessive dose of the same drug, 'has an excessively wide range of operation. Requiring but little susceptibility, it acts vio- lently where little or no modification of action was required. Thus it generates and spreads through the system a new disease, so unlike that which previously existed, as to exert but little direct antagonistic agency; whilst indi- rectly, it conspires with the disease in pros- trating the patient, by its inroads into those provinces which had not been invaded. When a physician applies himself diligently PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 143 to the comparison of the properties of a disease, with the properties of the drug which presents the maximum similitude, according to the ma- teria medica in its present state, he usually finds many of the observed properties of the disease not represented in the known properties of the drug, and many of the known properties of the drug, not represented in the observed properties of the disease. If this disease and this drug were both perfectly known in all their properties, the dissimilarity between the two might be found to be greater, or it might be found to be less, than now appears. One result may be as probable as the other. As a perfect proving of the drug would disclose many new symptoms foreign to the disease, it is probable, on an average, that as great a proportion of its ac- tual effects are dissimilar respectively to the phe- nomena of the disease, as of its effects already discovered. The similarity which we seek, is but proxi- mately attainable. How then can we avoid the alloeopathic action of our homoeopathic drugs ? I answer, by small doses. With large doses, the alloeopathic action is inevitable. One example may suffice for illustration. Most crude drugs irritate the bowels, and tend to act as cathartics, in poisonous doses. Hence such doses are unfit even for determining the proper pathogenetic character of a drug. The charac- 144 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. teristic actions of each drug, and the characteristic susceptibilities of each prover, are but feebly and imperfectly developed during the violence of the common action on the common susceptibility. The law of continuity must hold in doses progressively smaller. For convenience, we may select the doses of the alloeopathic school, as next in order to poisons. What a multitude of cathartics, which would never have been re- cognised as such, but for the pernicious doses in which they were employed. In this way, they have detected in scores of drugs a com- mon action, for which the Creator never design- ed their employment in the true .art of heal- ing; whilst they have, by the same use of large doses, been prevented from discovering the innumerable specific properties with which the same Infinitely Wise and All-Bountiful Being has enriched the wide storehouse of nature, unlocked, after the lapse of ages, for the benefit of suffering humanity in the infinite ages to come. Now the same principle applies to doses still smaller than those of the alloeopathic school. The law of continuity still holds. It is not reasonable to suppose that this confused and generic action of large doses, abruptly changes to a distinct and specific action, when the dose is reduced to one certain point. The crude homoeopathic practice is, in this respect, PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 145 intermediate between the alloeopathic and the Hahnemannian. The first and the second tritu- ration, and the extemporaneous dilution of the mother tincture, retain, to a certain extent, the same confused and generic mode of action. Thus, the large-dose practice produces many actions dissimilar to the disease; and it is alloe- opathic practice in proportion to the pro- duct of the number, intensity and alloeopathici- ty, of these dissimilar symptoms. This alloeo- pathic product diminishes with the dose; and it is the infinitesimal dose alone that reduces it to zero. I maintain, that in progressively reducing the dose of a drug, its alloeopathic action vanishes earlier than its homoeopathic. Of this proposi- tion, medical experience proves the truth; the higher mathematics would aid in illustrating its rationale. First, as to experience. Physicians are fami- liar with many of the deleterious effects of drugs, even in cases where they are the similia. Who has not witnessed a multitude of severe and lasting diseases engendered by mercury; how it poisons and corrodes the very bones of the patient, for years after its administration? What homoeo- pathic physician does not know, that in the same diseases, the same remedy in sufficiently minute doses, retains all its curative power, with- out any of its Alloeopathic, poisonous action ?i 146 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. In conceiving the rationale, aid would be given by what mathematicians call fluxions, or the cal- culus. In this higher mathematics, they call one variable quantity a function of another, when they are so related that any variation in the one causes a variation in the other. Two quantities may be different functions of a third quantity, i. e., may, by their variations, cause it to vary according to different laws. Now the intensities of the homoeopathic and alloeopathic actions of a drug, are both functions of the dose; but they are different functions ; they both diminish with the dose, but unequally ; the alloeopathic action diminishes with a vastly greater rapidity, and ultimately disappears, whilst the homoeopathic action remains, not only sensible, but amply sufficient for all curative purposes. If we consider the variations in the reverse order, commencing with the doses of Hahne- mann and ending with those of the old school, we find a progressive developement of the actions heterogeneous to the disease: consequently, the practice becomes more and more alloeopathic, as we pass through the lower potencies to the crude drugs. Some desire to form an unnatural alliance be- tween the new law and the old doses. Others would make a compromise in regard to dose; and whilst they adopt the law of similitude, use a drop or two of a crude drug slightly and extempora- PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 147 neously diluted. Still the alliance is unnatural. This practice is eclectic. Let no physician consider himself justified in assuming the homoeopathic name, on the ground of a nominal adherence to the fundamental ho- moeopathic principle. The selection of a similar remedy, and the employment of it in a dose which excites much alloeopathic disease, is only a fulfilling of the dead letter of the laAv, and a transgression of its living and life-giving spirit. The pretended reformer of Hahnemannism, with his red or yellow tincture, and his first tri- turation, has made a discovery similar to that of a clumsy surgeon, who, discarding delicate in- struments and a definite direction of force to special localities, endeavours to dislodge the mi- nutest splinters from the flesh by the blows of a broad-faced hammer. Such operators in medicine and surgery irri- tate and bruise a vast extent of sound flesh. Under the head of qualitative therapeutic in- fluence of quantitative variations in the drug, I have considered the negative advantage gained by employing the minute quantities of drugs contained in extremely dilute medicines and con- sequently in the Hahnemannian preparations. I have shown that we thus avoid, in a great mea- sure, those drug actions which sustain no intimate curative relations to the disease, but which, by 148 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. sapping the vital force, render it a more easy prey to the disease previously raging. Under the head of qualitative therapeutic in- fluence of physical variations in the constitution of the drug, I have next to allude to the positive advantage possessed by these Hahnemannian preparations ; viz., an augmented power of act- ing like the disease, and consequently of curing it. To this point, my present allusions will be ex- tremely brief, as I have already stated my views in a former lecture. * In the theory of tritura- tion and solution there given I have, by mechan- ical and chemical reasoning based on the princi- ples of cohesion and affinity, demonstrated, that the process of Hahnemann secures an unparallel- ed degree of minuteness in the particles of the drug. The theory is believed to be an addition to physical science. Philosophy was not aware, that simple solution left the dissolved substance in large groups or pieces composed of innumer- able cohering particles, (i. e., large compared with atoms,) nor that these could be successively and indefinitely reduced by the method of Hah- nemann, and by no other; and that similar principles apply to trituration, and that the advantages are similar. Neither were Hahne- mann or his disciples, although they alleged * Lect. II. PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 149 some degree of comminution, aware of the re- sults above stated, still less of the principles on which they were obtained. Hahnemann, with- out knowing it, invented a process of immense interest in physical science. The knowledge of this will give Homoeopathy rank in physical science. In that part of my theory of potentization above referred to, it is proved, that Hahnemann's process effects unparalleled comminution; in an- other part I have shown that comminution deve- lopes latent power. Latent medicinal power is in the interior of a group ; at the surface only is it free and active. By division the interior becomes surface; the latent becomes active. I have confirmed and illustrated this by the electrical and magnetic states of bodies, and by crystalli- zation ; and in relation to medical properties, by certain preparations of the old pharmacy which faintly approach those of our school—such as blue pill and Dover's powder. But however reasonable it may be to admit peculiar power in the Hahnemannian prepara- tions, the evidence on which we mainly rely, is that of experience. Every competent observer who has tried them, must admit, that a por- tion of one of these preparations has more power than a quantity of the original drug equal to that contained in the preparation; whether the drug be soluble or insoluble. To admit this, is 150 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. to admit the existence of some kind of potentiza- tion or dynamization, in these preparations. If any one chooses to refer it to the superior penetrativeness resulting from comminution, he still admits potentization. One who has seen any effect from these prepa- rations, and still regards them merely as small doses, whose action is merely proportional to the contained quantity of the original drug, will find it impossible to explain how they can manifest any sensible action, when we are receiving larger quantities of the same and other medicinal sub- stances, with our food. For example, every homoeopathic physician knows that some men, who, like others, are ha- bitually taking common salt \v ith their food, oc- casionally require a homoeopathic dose of it as a medicine ; and that under these circumstances, a billionth or decillionth of a grain will produce very manifest effects, although the patient has taken ten grains with his food in the same hour. It is absurd to suppose the effect to be owing to a mere increase in the quantity of salt swallowed ; for this increase is not a millionth part as great as that to which he is continually liable by the ac- cidental variations in the saltness of his food. The crudest homoeopathist, with his first tri- turation of salt, would encounter the same diffi- culty, and be chargeable with the same inconsis- tency, unless he acknowledges potentization. PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 151 His hundredth of a grain is still vastly inferior to the accidental variations. The homoeopathist must either be consistent, or else render himself ridiculous. If he rejects potentization, he must reject small doses. The pure homoeopathist admits both. He does more. He acknowledges their great therapeutic power and value. His experience has convinced him of their practical superiority. In any medicine so prepared as to admit of ad- ministration in the minutest doses, the process for reducing the dose has necessarily effected such a physical change in the drug, as to augment its curative power, to an extent incredible to all who have not experienced or observed its effects in medical practice. In those medicines denominated higher po- tences, the minuteness of the parts into which the drug is divided, and the corresponding augmenta- tion of therapeutic power, transcend, in an in- conceivable degree, any comminution or potenti- zation previously known in mechanical or medi- cal art. Our practice is attacked in opposite directions. Some pronounce our medicines dilute, and there- fore inert; others pronounce them concentrated, and therefore poisonous. Both are false in their conclusions. The first draw a false inference from true premises; the last draw a legitimate infer- ence from false premises. 152 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. Concentrated or slightly diluted medicines, are poisonous; and no less so for being sold at the homoeopathic pharmacies, and called by the ho- moeopathic name, or administered by a nominal homoeopathic physician. It is painful to see family boxes filled with crude tinctures. The only consolation is, that these domestic prescribers will seldom hit the dis- eased spot. If a ruffian aims a blow at an in- flamed eye, it is very fortunate if he only hits the sound cheek. I hope the misguided laymen who use the tinctures, will frequently be as successful in missing the mark. This is their only security. What shall we say of the educated practitioner ? He ought to be competent to aim with nicer pre- cision. K he does possess this directive faculty, he must avoid brute force, or else his very skill may be the destruction of his patient. Therefore, I neither wonder nor regret, that crude-drug practitioners so frequently lose their confidence in nominal Homoeopathy, and digress into the acknowledged paths of alloeopathic routine. Pure Homoeopathy avoids alloeopathic drugs, and alloeopathic operations. Let us briefly consider some of those, which are generally regarded as most essential. They are evacuations. Having perceived that moisture of the skin and movement of the bowels frequently attend a crisis or mitigation of the malady, both professional PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 153 and non-professional observers have erroneously concluded, that the amendment was the conse- quence, instead of being, as it actually is, the cause of the evacuation. When a homoeopathic remedy produces these discharges, and simultaneously other signs of amendment, the real and internal amendment actu- ally precedes the discharge. It is the improve- ment of health that unlocks the secretions, it is not the excretion that improves health. The al- loeopathic bystander exclaims, I told you, doc- tor, that he would be better as soon as his bowels had moved. What gives plausibility to the popular view is, that the amendment is often more apparent after the evacuation. The struggles by which nature sets up this new action, are such as to mask, in some measure, that real increase of her power which enables her to effect the revolution. The feverish heat that precedes the sweat, and the in- testinal irritation that precedes the alvine dis- charge, cover up and conceal much of the real improvement which has been already effected. This circumstance often makes the apparent amendment more abrupt than the real. To attribute the curative agency to the evacua- tion, is like attributing the rising of the sun to the dawn that precedes it. A patient may be better soon after the constipation of fever has yielded to a homoepathic remedy; and in our 154 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. latitude, the sun will rise soon after day-break ; and the antecedent phenomenon is usually as much the cause of the succeeding phenomenon in one case as in the other. One of the most important effects of cathartics and emetics is supposed to be the removal of bile. Biliousness is the popular and perpetual epidemic of the present era. Thousands, who are in per- fect health, imagine that it is hazardous to remain long without exciting an artificial diarrhoea or cholera morbus; and because the pure homoeo- pathic physician never aims to excite such dis- eases, they consider his system ex^-emely defect- ive. They exclaim, how is it possible for us to get rid of the bile ? Now, we believe that diseases rarely originate in excess of bile ; and that when it is superabun- dant, our methods of removing it are preferable to any other. The old school removes an enor- mous quantity from certain cavities in which it had no previous existence. Both the excess and the vitiated quality are the results of their own in- terference. But suppose an excess in the bloodvessels, the liver, or its appendages: our school has the means of acting more directly on all these parts, and can secure the secretion and hepatic excretion, with- out any direct or undue irritation of the digestive organs. The ulterior excretion from these, is PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 155 sufficiently provided for in the naturally irritating quality of the bile itself. With the prevalent practice, of attempting to regulate the most interior, molecular and capil- lary portions of the human body by exclusively meddling with its great thoroughfare, who can wonder at the prevalence of dyspepsia, nervous diseases, and impurity of blood ? If the inhab- itants of a city had no method of cleansing their houses and arranging their furniture, except that of scraping and washing their streets; we should expect that their exertions, if unremitted, would leave the houses in a filthy and disorderly con- dition, and the streets terribly worn. The only other evacuation which we have time to consider, is bloodletting. How are the gorged vessels of an inflamed part to be relieved of their superfluous fluid? I answer, by causing them to evacuate them- selves by the contractile power of their own walls, and through their own canals; in both respects precisely as they do in health. We need no lancets nor leeches to make new holes of exit; no suction of pumps, leeches or glasses to supply motive power. The expedients of the cupper, leecher, and phlebotomist, are coarse, clumsy, prodigal, and in- sufficient. A delicate derangement of nervous in- fluence, he endeavours to correct by an operation 156 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. coarse and mechanical. He evacuates a tube by piercing its side, when its contents might have been expelled at the open end. I call this a clumsy proceeding. Again, he unnecessarily wastes a valuable liquid. This is prodigality. To be prodigal of blood, is to be prodigal of life. The blood of man is eminently his life. In it are formed, retained and conveyed to all parts, the first elements of his organization. The bleeder may imagine, that in a few days the vessels will be refilled. But with what are they refilled? I answer, with water, not with blood. The organized, the vital part, the red globules, are slow in their reproduction. The blood may soon regain its volume, by the addition of serum; but it may require weeks, months, or years, to recover its richness. Let the pale, exsanguinated countenances of the victims testify. Let testimony be given by the dropsical bodies into whose cavities a thin and watery blood has poured its serum. This is no unusual result of frequent blood- letting. The vessel is not too leaky; its contents are too thin, and freely permeate pores never designed for their copious trans-. mission. Bloodletting is as unnecessary for moderating the circulation towards a part or the general circulation, as it is for the local stagnation. If the inflammation is attended with fever, PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 157 or if there is fever without inflammation, the homoeopathic remedies have the same superi- ority. An excessive action in the heart and arteries is owing to an irregular distribution of nervous influence, and nervous influence is to be regulated by homoeopathic medicine. If medicine, without evacuation, cures pleurisy in one day, there is no evidence of excess of blood on the next day; and as no blood has been abstracted, there could have been no excess on the day of the disease. We can. arrive at the same conclusion in another way. On the day immediately preceding that of the attack, the pulse may be perfectly normal; on feeling it, no physician would suspect any excess of blood; it is reasonable to infer that there is no appreciable excess on the day of attack; whatever may be the volume, hardness or rapidity of the pulse. The process of sangui- fication is not so hasty. A current of cold air may develope a pleuri- tis, and convert a small and soft pulse into a full and hard one, in twelve hours; and two doses of the 30th dilution of aconite may restore the pulse to its natural condition, and cure the disease, in the twelve hours succeeding. How is it possible that the pabulum of life was superabundant, or its abstraction necessary or useful? But eclecticism inquires: is there not some 158 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. immediate advantage in combining the two methods ? Would not a severe case be rendered more safe by employing venesection as well as medicine? In reply, we affirm that there is no advantage. There is positive harm. Such a course not only endangers the future health, but the present cure. The homoeopathic eclectic admits the superiority of the homoeopathic me- thod over the alloeopathic, but imagines that the debilitating process would lay a good founda- tion. It is a foundation like that of the statue of the prophet's vision: feet of clay to support a metallic colossus. This internal, interstitial mutilation weakens the very powers which support the whole fabric of medication. The organization, thus suddenly and surgically de- prived of so much of the animating fluid, is no longer able to institute the same curative reaction, which would have ensued upon the action of the appropriate remedy, when the vascular system retained its integrity, and the symptoms their primary character. No one must infer, that homoeopathic medi- cine is not competent to obviate the effects of bloodletting, as well as of any other morbific agent. Where haemorrhage is the cause of disease, we have cinchona and other efficient remedies. We are considering a case to which these remedies are not primarily appropriate. Suppose that previously to the venesection, PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 159 the symptoms clearly and strongly indicate acon- itum. What reason have we to expect them to indicate the same remedy with equal dis- tinctness and force, if at all, subsequently to the depletion ? Reason and experience equally contradict the supposition. The remedy which would have cured is now comparatively im- potent. Nature was struggling with the disease. The violence of the circulation, was proof of her power. The power was misdirected, and needed guidance; not prostration. The kind of guid- ance needed, is indicated by the direction of her movements. If we inflict a stunning blow, her energies and indices are both impaired. The symptoms were designed to guide us in giving a new and proper direction to the vital forces. If the alloeopathic blow mutilates the symptoms by impairing the vital forces, it di- minishes the probability of our selecting the most appropriate aid, and at the same time weakens nature's power to profit by that as- sistance. Is there any sufficient apology for an im- pure practice? One man alleges, that though in all cases of disease he can find a simile in some drug, yet in many cases, he is unable to find the 160 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. similimum, and that without this last, any- attempted homoeopathic practice is a nullity. If he means by similimum, that which ex- actly corresponds with the disease, if he would enhance similarity till it becomes merged in identity, the similarity is annihilated, and with it is annihilated all curative power. Such a drug could only increase and protract the malady. Again, suppose him to mean by similimum, the drug which bears the strictest conceivable analogy to the disease. Is that the only reli- able remedy ? the only remedy which renders our practice superior to the alloeopathic? No: the experience of half a century has decided m the negative. If the symptoms were examined with sufficient strictness, it would be found, that such a remedy has rarely if ever been administered. Yet from the infancy of our materia medica, up to its present comparative maturity, such homoeopathic practice, defective as it is, compared with ideal perfection, has clearly demonstrated its decided superiority over the practice of every rival school. That which cures must be curative—all specu- lation to the contrary notwithstanding. Lastly, if by similimum is understood the drug which is more similar to the disease than any other in the whole range of existing substances, there are the same objections to its exclusive PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 161 claims to utility. It is doubtful whether such a medicine has often been employed. The three hundred articles of our materia medica form but a small portion of the products of the laboratories of nature and of man: and the imperfect provings of those few are but a limited part of that materia medica which existed in the mind of God, when he animated all nature with medicinal properties, adapted to the prospective and indefinitely diversified maladies, both mental and physical, to which man was liable. The materials of the three kingdoms of nature, with Homoeopathy as the guiding principle in their employment, consti- tute, as it were, a collective " tree of life, whose leaves' are for the healing of the nations." Of such a boundless materia medica, a gra- cious Providence has been pleased to develope a certain portion, through the instrumentality of Hahnemann and his disciples. Although this portion is meagre, compared with that which shall hereafter be developed by the same method of Hahnemann, yet is it incom- parably richer than the materia which had been accumulated, by the collective wisdom and industry of all preceding generations. It is the duty and privilege of homoeopathic physicians, acting in the capacity of provers, to explore the inexhaustible storehouse of untried materials. In this way, the world will ulti- 162 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. mately acquire, for every shade of disease, a remedy extremely similar. This, in one sense, may be called a similimum. But in the mean time, it is the duty of the same class of persons, acting in the capacity of physicians, to search for and select as their practical similimum and most reliable remedy for each shade of disease, .that one of the already proved drugs, which is more similar than any other proved drugs. Such a medicine is the most similar in the existing state of science. If it is also sufficiently similar, it will remove the whole disease; if not, it will remove a certain portion; and the remaining symptoms are then to be observed, and the materia medica searched for the rem- edy which will annihilate either the totality or the greatest portion of the residual symptoms. A similar operation is to be repeated for every residuum, till the whole disease is eliminated. This is analogous to the algebraic process for eliminating several unknown quantities, by several equations. The pseudo-homoeopathic physician, who, not finding a curative for the disease by one ope- ration, rejects the most approximate remedy, abandons the homoeopathic method, and relies on old-school hypotheses, chance-results and large doses, perpetrates a folly similar to that of the pseudo-mathematician, who engaged in PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 163 a problem susceptible of solution by a number of equations equal to the number of unknown quantities, but not by a single equation; pro- nounces algebra all moonshine for such an emer- gency, and determines on a tentative process, i. e., guessing and trying. What if the mathematician should say, I am no bigot nor exclusive; I am eclectic; I be- lieve in some calculation and some guessing? The medical eclectic has the same liberal faith. He professes to do all he can for his patients. It is said he will not sacrifice their lives to theory; that where homoeopathic principles and doses are inadequate, he will resort to the alloeopathic drugs and doses; that in severe and dangerous cases, he will try any system, or any dose without system, in short, any thing that presents a chance of saving human life. He considers the pure practice sufficient for chronic and slight affections, but not for those which are severe, rapid, and dangerous. All this appears very plausible to the popu- lar mind, uninstructed in the defects of the old methods and the excellencies of the new. But it must be evident, even to such, on a little reflection, that if there are better methods than the homoeopathic, they should be resorted to in the earliest stages of disease, before it becomes so unmanageable. The prevention of 164 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. danger is better than the bare chance of its removal. Let every one select from the be- ginning, and retain to the end, that practice which he considers most safe and efficient. The pure homoeopathist claims for himself an equally sincere regard for the good of his pa- tients. If he adheres to his system in all cases, it is for saving his patients, not for saving any theory. When the case becomes alarming, he considers his chance of curing not enhanced by the increase of blind force. His only confidence is in force judiciously directed; and for its di- rection he selects the most reliable guide. Suppose that a surgeon, in performing a de- licate operation, should, from his unsteadiness of hand or a deficiency in his knowledge of anatomy, at first fail to hit the requisite point in the flesh with the point of his instrument; or, from the effusion of blood, not discover whether he has hit it or not. What shall he do ? Shall he put forth all his physical might, and violently plunge the instrument to the greatest possible depth, and in every possible direction ? Shall he substitute an axe for his deli- cate and appropriate instrument, and random strokes for those directed by anatomical science ? In a frantic hurry, shall he slash up and down, to the right and left? This is the picture of a physician who does PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 165 every thing in his power. If a small dose does not immediately cure, he immediately resorts to a repetition or change of remedy, or augmen- tation of dose. He never studies the effect of his remedy sufficiently to determine whether a slight apparent progress of the disease may not be a medicinal aggravation, which temporarily obscures the fact of his having already hit the right point. He has indeed no belief in aggra- vations from small doses. If he knew this to be the properly-selected remedy, and this ag- gravation to be its action, it would be his duty to wait a due time for the healthy reaction. Instead of this, he repeats the same medicine and dose, and thus plunges deeper in the same place, or takes a different drug in the same dose, and thus pierces to the same depth on one side. If this fails, he frantically seizes and administers a large dose, and thus ensures an incision of grand dimensions, vast in breadth as well as depth. This is Allceopathy under the mask of Homoeopathy. Failing in this operation, he throws off the mask, and appears in the char- acter of a professed alloeopathic physician, quo ad hoc. He means to resume the mask on all fitting occasions; but in such emergencies as the present, the world must know that he will leave no stone unturned. He resorts to alloeopathic principles, methods and doses. If he had previously followed the law of 166 PURE HOMOEOPATHY. Hahnemann, he will now be guided by patho- logical hypotheses, or select a drug which either he or some other physician or nostrum-monger, or other man or woman, has formerly admin- istered in a case which was supposed to be analogous, and which, by some means or other, recovered. This is plunging his instrument blindly in every direction. He also employs an instrument more coarse and wide-cutting, as well as blows more widely distributed. He finds the primarily- triturated grain and red drop of nominal ho- moeopathy, insufficient for all the revulsive operations on which he is now to rely. Against such abuse of Homoeopathy, it is one of the most important and sacred duties of her genuine friends to remonstrate. I rejoice that such a remonstrance has been virtually uttered by this society, in the articles of belief prefixed to its constitution, and that this audience and this community enjoy the blessings of a purer system. The good seed of pure Homoeopathy, imported to this Western continent by Hering, and planted in Central New-York by Bayard and his suc- cessors, has here found a congenial soil, and a propitious sky. The tree of health has here sent down its roots, elevated its trunk, shot forth ite branches, and expanded its life-giving foliage. PURE HOMOEOPATHY. 167 Its cultivators are cheered by the firm assurance, that, watered by the dews of the same Heaven whose sunshine first gave it animation, it will receive effectual and everlasting support from the infinite Essence and Source of all goodness and wisdom. APPENDIX. The author has considered it proper to publish in this place the following letter, which serves to illustrate a portion of Lecture I., relating to the qualifications and claims of homoeopathic physi- cians, and the nature of the opposition which they are obliged to encounter. The great success of the homoeopathic treat- ment in the cholera of 1849, by attenuated medi- cines, is now extensively known. When the epidemic had disappeared, the Board of Health of the City of New York, through its Sanatary Committee, made a Report, in which reasons were assigned for refusing to establish a homoeo- pathic cholera hospital, for which a petition had been presented by hundreds of our respectable citizens. Some of the reasons were assigned by the Sa- natary Committee, others by their Medical Coun- sel, composed of several physicians of high rank. The parts referred to in the letter, are quoted in the words of the authors. It will be seen that (to use the language of a distinguished writer) " though the Board, even while thus deciding, profess not to be competent to decide, they seem to consider themselves com- petent to sneer." The Medical Counsel, in their report to the Sanatary Committee, say, that 8 170 APPENDIX. uBj intelligent and well educated physicians generally, Homoeopathy is looked upon as a spe- cies of empiricism. It is neither practised by them, nor countenanced by them. Concurring entirely with their professional brethren on this subject, the undersigned conceive that the public authorities of our city would not consult either their own dignity or the public good, by lending the sanction of their name or influence to Ho- moeopathy or any other irregular mode of prac- tice." The Committee say, that " In adopting this report, the Sanatary Com- mittee do not wish to be considered as expressing any opinion either in favour or against what is commonly denominated Homoeopathy. This they viewed as a subject entirely beyond their province." After some other remarks, they end by saying, "Taking this view of the subject, the commit- tee felt it to be their duty to have nothing to do with medicine, except as they found it embo- died in what is understood and known both by the public, as well as physicians, as the regular profession. While in this way they paid all suitable respect to so honourable a profession as that of medicine, the committee felt that they did no injustice to those who suppose themselves in advance of the age, and profess themselves gifted with superior knowledge and wisdom." APPENDIX. 171 LETTER. To the Sanatary Committee of the Board of Health of the City of New- York : Gentlemen:—In the report of your proceed- ings recently published, you assign reasons for not establishing a homoeopathic Cholera Hospital. Notwithstanding the equivocal compliment which you bestow on the homosopathists, as " those who suppose themselves in advance of the age, and profess themselves gifted with superior know- ledge and wisdom," I shall assume that you in- tended " no injustice" toward either of the two great medical parties into which the community, as well as the regular profession, is divided. The regular medical profession includes all those who have pursued the course of medical studies prescribed by the laws of the State, and complied with all the professional requirements of the medical colleges and medical societies which the State has established. The diplomas held by the homoeopathic physicians of New-York, af- ford proof that they have passed these ordeals. As such are the only tests of professional re- gularity recognised under this or any civilized government, I cannot presume that you "sup- pose" yourselves so far "in advance of the age, and profess" yourselves " gifted with" such " su- perior knowledge and wisdom," as to impose, in- 172 APPENDIX. tentionally, a new test, not recognised by those laws from which you derive all your authority. How is it, then, that you refused to place one of the cholera hospitals under the care of regular homoeopathic physicians, on the ground that " the committee felt it to be their duty to have nothing to do with medicine, except as they found it embodied in what is understood and known, both by the public as well as physicians, as the regular profession ?" Is it possible that you were deceived by a mere name, which some physicians have assumed for themselves, and persuaded their friends to appropriate to them ? Regularity, in its proper sense, is an excellent thing : so are Ca- tholicism and democracy: but I doubt whether you have all resolved to have nothing to do with religion, except as you find it embodied in the Catholic church, or with politics, except as you find it embodied in the democratic party. You must mean, either that the homoeopathic physicians constitute no part of the regular pro- fession, or else that they constitute only a minm- ity. The first position I have shown to be unten- able. In considering the second, I assume that minorities have rights, on which no agents of government can properly trample. During a pes- tilence, the homoeopathic citizens of New-York can justly claim, that a due proportion of what they have contributed to the funds of the city, be appropriated to the use of a homoeopathic hospi- APPENDIX. 173 tal. They have a right to dictate what provision shall be made for the treatment of the indigent and stranger of their own medical faith, so far as this can be conceded without infringing the rights of others. In regard to this last point, you were not requested to refrain from establishing as many alloeopathic hospitals as you deemed expedient, nor to compel any patient to enter the homoeo- pathic. The statement of the main objection which your medical counsel urged against Homoeopathy may be ambiguous ; but it is susceptible of only two constructions: one is that " it is neither practised" " nor countenanced by" a majority of " intelligent and well educated physicians." This proves no more than the equally notorious fact, that it is neither practised nor countenanced by the majority of stupid and uneducated physicians. Allaeopathy has more great men and more small ones; for the same reason that white sheep have more wool than black ones. The only other meaning of which the statement of the " counsel" is susceptible, is, that Homoeo- pathy " is neither practised" "nor countenanced by" any intelligent and well educated physicians. Is this the assertion of the medical counsel, a ma- jority (i. c. two) of whose members are medical professors, who are annually recommending ho- moeopathic medical students as qualified to re- ceive the degree of doctor of medicine ? From 174 APPENDIX. these and similar alloeopathic professors, the ho- moeopathic physicians now practising have receiv- ed their credentials. When a professor affirms that his own certificate is false, to which of his statements shall we give credence ? The case reminds us of the problem which exercised the sophists. When a man says, I lie, does he lie or does he speak the truth ? Neither the committee nor their counsel have attempted to refute the statistics by which the pe- tition was sustained, nor to deny that Homoeopa- thy affords the best method of curing the sick, how- ever much the " public authorities" might, by re- jecting it, "consult their own dignity," and thus, indirectly, " the public good." Of their objec- tions, I am not able to perceive any which are not substantially included in those which I have answered. If there is an appearance of mystifica- tion or muddiness in the whole train of their rea- soning, I have too much respect for them to attri- bute it to anything else than the unavoidable dif- ficulties attending the defence of a weak cause. B. F. JOSLIN, M. D. New-York, Nov. 17, 1849. INDEX. A. Active oxygen, probable cause of its activity, - 85 Activity at the Surface, - - - - - 78 Age, prejudices of, ----- - 6 Aggravations, the nature of homoeopathic, - 125,131 Alloeopathic action of homoeopathic drugs, how to avoid the,.........143 Alloeopathic Homoeopathy, ----- 123 Alloeopathic operations examined, - - - - 152 Alloeopathists, who entitled to this name, and why, 117 Allceopathy, pure, ------ 122, 124 Annuli representing degrees of similarity, - - 123 Antidotes, chemical and vital, ... 86,92 Antidoting, examples of the chemical kind of, - 89 Apparent cures by revulsion, .... 27 Attenuation, why it effects disintegration, - - 64 Auxiliary material, its use in trituration, - - 50 Auxiliary studies pursued by Homceopathists, - 5 B. Belief, obstacles to, ------ 5 Bile and biliousness, erroneous views and practice in relation to, ------- 154 176 INDEX. Blind force directed by chance, 164 Bloodletting as an auxiliary,.....159 Bloodletting, the practice of it examined, - - 155 Blue pill, why efficient, ----- 67 C. Cathartics, examination of their supposed utility, - 153 Chance results, the method of, - - - 162 Chemical and mechanical means, lecture on, - - 86 Chemical and vital antidotes compared, - - 86 Christianity was introduced by means of facts, - 13 Circle representing different systems and their sha- dings, ........123 Colour of blue pill no evidence of oxydation, - 69 Comminution, or fineness, can be indefinitely increa- sed, - -......49, 64 Comminution limited in ordinary solution, - - 60 Comminution limited in ordinary trituration, - 49 Common sense is often a name for shallow reasoning, 29 Complication of parts and of affections, an obstacle to the application of any method except the Homoeo- pathic, -------- 119 Constipation, unfounded apprehensions from, - 102 Contact, in what senses employed, - - 63, 79 Contents,........3 Conversion, the mode in which the author's was ef- fected, -------- 19 Cosmic groups recognised in astronomy, - - 61 Curative effects, the basis of empiricism, - - 111 Cure by means of similars, as a law of art, - - 137 Cure by means of similars, as a law of nature, 136, 138 Cure by successive steps, ----- 162 Cure in some cases spontaneous, - 136 Cures insufficient as a basis of a law of cure, - 111 Curiosities of medical geography, 73 INDEX. 177 D. Death, apparent, - - - - - - 136 Death, the phenomena after it are insufficient as a ba- sis of a law of cure, ----- 108 Degrees of relationship between the action of drugs and that of the disease,.....123 Delicacy of the human organism, - 82 Delicacy of imponderable agents whose power is ac- knowledged, -------96 Direct action of Homoeopathic medicines, - - 31 Direct examination of Homoeopathy, - - 12, 19 Direction of Homoeopathic force, - 36 Discharges, fallacy in regard to, - - - - 153 Dissimilarity as a principle of cure, - 122 Dissolved substances, how invested with the solvent, 63 Dissolved substances, some of them are coarse com- pared with others, ----- 59, 63, 65 Dissolved substances, why more powerful, - - 78 Division, how it affects the properties of a substance, 65 Division, how it gives power, ... 79 Doctrines of Homoeopathy, order and method of their establishment, -------39 Doing everything in one's power, blindly, - - 163 Dose, effect of a large one when death is near, - 101 Dose, qualitative influence of variations in, - 142 Dover's powder, why efficient, ... 66 E. Electrical conductors, effects of their combination and division, --.....77 Electrical therapeutics, defects of, - - - 33 Elimination by successive operations, ... 162 Evacuations, fallacy in regard to, - - - 153 Evidences of the power of small doses, lecture on the, 24 Examination of Homoeopathy, what it implies, - 133 8* 178 INDEX. Exceptions to the Homoeopathic law, apparent, - 136 Experience cannot be alleged against Homoeopathy, 18, 73,75 F. Fable illustrating the authority of the past and the present, ------- 16 Fluxions applicable to the variations of alloeopathic and homoeopathic action, - - - - 146 G. Gaseous molecules, their divisibility, 84 Grand doctrines of Homoeopathy, three, - - 39 Grand theoretical problems of Homoeopathy, three, - 24 Groups in solutions of chemical compounds, - 61 Groups in all solutions,.....60; 63 Groups, the mutual influence of their proximity, - 78 Guiding function of medicine, 36 H. Hahnemann an inventor as well as discoverer, - 83 Hahnemann's repetition of mixture and trituration, its utility,.......52,55 Hahnemann's repetition of solution, its utility, - 64 Heat, why it augments the solvent power, - - 60 Homceopathia, her influence on physical as well as medical science, ------ 66 Homoeopathic Allceopathy,.....123 Homoeopathic law inviolable,.....138 Homoeopathy, general considerations in its favour, 119 Homoeopathy, its etymology, - - - - - 117 Homoeopathy, why it is neither rationalism nor em- piricism, - - - - - - - -118 Hydro-dynamic illustration of homoeopathic action, 130 INDEX. 179 I. Imponderables, as heat, &c, their relation to attenu- ated medicines, -------80 Imponderables, the probable reason why they are so active, --------80 Incubation of the old school, - 22 Inductive character of Homoeopathy, ... 8 Inductive method, ------ 15 Investigation, obstacles to, ----- 5 Isopathy, real and apparent, ... - 124 J. Jarring does not conduce to progression, - - 29 K. Knife swallowed with impunity, no proof that a pow- der is powerless, ------ 74 L. Large doses compared to a hammer, small ones to a needle, --------35 Large doses, when and why admissible, - - 86 Lateral impulses of the revulsive method, 28 Law of cure, Hahnemann's, the only one which is general and reliable, - - - - - -107 Law of cure impossible without referring to symp- toms, --------- 108 Law of cure, one essential characteristic of a, - 108 Law of cure, lecture on the, ----- 107 Law of nature in regard to the concealment and de- velopment of properti°s,.....57 Limit of subdivision by ordinary solution, - - 58 Limit of subdivision by ordinary trituration, - - 46 Lower potencies more alloeopathic, - - - 146 M. Mao-netism of minutely divided matter, , 56 180 INDEX. Magnets, effect of dividing them, ... 76 Masking of properties by proximity of groups, - 78 Materia Medica, the homoeopathic, - - 138, 161 Mechanical and chemical means, lecture on, - - 86 Mechanical means in cases of poisoning, 90 Medical electricity, its fallacies, 33 Medical philosophy was blind to specific and curative properties, -------- 30 Mercury in a metallic state, facts showing its effects, 70 Mercury in blue pill not oxydized, 68 Methods of the three alloeopathic schools, - - 113 Microscopic observations, erroneous inferences from, 54 Microscopic phenomena of crystalization, - - 81 Mineral waters show the influence of dilution, - 43 Mixture, advantage of successive steps in, - 49, 52 Morbific effects are the popular measure of power, - 29 Murray's reasoning in regard to mercury, fallacious, 69 N. Nascent condition of bodies, as in crystalization, - 81 Nervous tests, their transcendant delicacy, - - 59 O. Objection founded on the grossness of the human body as compared with the medicinal agent, how answered, ..----.-95 Objection in relation to poison in the blood, how an- swered, -----...99 Obstacles to homoeopathic investigation and belief, lecture on, ----,...5 Obstacles to the application of any method except the homoeopathic, - - - - - - 119 Occult properties, how they must be used by cautious rationalists, - - - - - - -114 Opposite objections to Homo?opathv, - 151 INDEX. 181 Opposites increase the disease, 26 Opposition as a principle of cure, - - - 36, 122 Order in which the grand doctrines of Homoeopathy have originated, -------39 Ought not to be, versus are, - - - - 11 P. Palliatives, ultimate aggravation from, 26 Pharmaceutists, examination of their presumptions in regard to mercury, ------ 68 Philosophy of the old school illustrated by an alle- gory, ........22 Physical analogies, showing power developed by di- vision, .....---76 Physician who does everything in his power, right or wrong, -------- 164 Physiological medicine, the unsoundness of some of its essential steps, - - - - - -114 Pilulae hydrargyri, why efficient, - - - - 67 Pointed conductors show the development of power by division and isolation, ----- 77 Poisonous qualities of concentrated drugs, - - 152 Poisons, the principles and modes of antidoting, - 86 Poisons, their neutralization, - - - 86, 89, 92 Poisons, their removal,......90 Poisons, what is to be done after their neutralization or removal, ------.95 Ponderable doses, when requisite, ... 87 Potentization, how originally discovered, - - 40 Potentization, proof of in natrum muriaticum, - 150 Potentization, theory of,.....44 Pound prescribers versus grain prescribers, - - 72 Power of small doses of attenuated medicines, lec- ture on the, -------24 Prejudices of age, ------ 6 182 INDEX. Prejudices of fashion, .----- 17, 18 Prejudices of natural philosophers and chemists, - 42, 87 Prejudices of medical rank, ----- 7 Prejudices of the senses and intellect, - 58 Prejudices of youth, ------ 6 Preventive function of chemical and mechanical an- tidotes, --------88 Principle of cure, essential property of any general, 108 Principle of refined and delicate revulsion, - - 128 Principle of therapeutics, the, - 107 Principles of comminution in attenuations, 64 Principles of development of curative power, - 75 Principles of dose, - - - - 75, 86, 142 Principles of dose and repetition of vital antidotes, - 92 Principles of homoeopathic toxicology, 86 Principles of physical science applicable to potentiza- tion, .........76 Principles of pure Homoeopathy, - 136 Principles of solution, ------ 58 Principles of trituration, ----- 46 Principles on which the limit of subdivision may be indefinitely extended, ------ 46 Principles on which suspended animation is to be treated, -- ------ ioo Principles relating to the relative intensity of alloeo- pathic and homoeopathic action, - 141 Properties of the drug not represented in those of the disease, and vice versa, - - - - - 142 Proving of medicines on persons in health, as a means of conversion, ------- 19 Phycological idiosyncrasies, - - - - - 21 Public hygiene compared to toxicology, - - 89 Pulvis ipecacuanha? compositus, why efficient, 66 Pure Homoeopathy, lecture on, - 136 Purging is not curative, ... 30 INDEX. 183 Q. Qualifications of Homoeopathic physicians, - - 5 Qualitative influence of quantitative variations in medicines, -------- 142 Qualitative influence of physical variations, - 65, 148 R. Range of action as influenced by dose, - - - 142 Rationalism in medicine illustrated, - - - 113 Rationalism of the old school, - - - - 113 Reasons why Hahnemann's small doses operate, - 31 Reasons why minute division should develope cura- tive power, --------75 Relations between antidotes and poisons, - - 86 Relations between the drug and the disease, - - 122 Reputation, sacrifice of, 5 Revulsives generate new diseases, - - - - 28 Rings representing degrees of similarity, - - 123 Roughness of road is not conducive to progress, - 29 Rule of three insufficient in posology, - - 40, 146 Rule of three better adapted to toxicology, - - 41 Rule of three well adapted to physics and chemistry, 42 S. Sensations are not imaginary, ----- io Sensitiveness to remedies exists in diseased parts, 37, 152 Severe diseases, why thought to require severe reme- dies, .........87 Shaking, its utility, and the limits of its use, - 65 Shallow reasoning of the tumbler-emptyers, - - 38 Similars and opposites compared as to results, - 26 Similia similibus curantur, ----- 136 Similia similibus curenter, - - - - - 137 Simple proportion insufficient in Homoeopathy, - 40, 146 Similimum, the alleged necessity of it examined, - 160 184 INDEX. Sitting, thinking and hissing, ... - 22 Small doses compared to a needle, 35 Small doses, how originally arrived at, 39 Stomach and its contents, difference between acting on them,.....---90 Solution, new theory of, ----- 58 Sophists, ancient and modern, ----- 15 Specific properties, why the old school failed to dis- cover them,.......144 Specifics despised by rationalism, - 30 Steps by which rationalism must attempt to arrive at the remedy,.......113 Surface of bodies increased by division, - - 75 Surface of groups active, ----- 78 Surgery, its uses and abuses, - 104 Surgery, its reputed cases classified with reference to medical treatment, ------ 104 Surgery with a hammer, ----- 35 Surgery with random strokes, - . - - 164 Suspended animation, principles on which it is to be treated, -----... 100 Symptoms are the obvious properties of disease, 108, 113 Symptoms the guides, not the objects of treatment, 132 Symptoms, their comprehensiveness and their groups, 110 Systems of medicine, their different bases, - - 111 T. Test of the curative agency of a medicine, - - 26 Test of the Materia Medica and of the power of small doses,.......12, 19 Testimony of antiquity illustrated, 16 Theory of potentization, - 44 Theory of solution, ------ 58 Theory of trituration, ------ 46 Toxicological hygiene, ------ 88 INDEX. 185 Trituration, thoroughness of, by Hahnemann's me- thod, and by no other, - - 44, 46, 50, 52, 55 U. Undergraduates, prejudices of, ... - 6 V. Venesection as an auxiliary, - 158 Venesection, why unnecessary and hurtful, - 155 Viscid substances, their function in the manufacture of blue pill,.....72 Vital and chemical antidotes, the cases for their use distinguished, - - - - - 86 Vital antidote, definition and dose of, 92 W. Witnesses, the difference between the homoeopathic and the alloeopathic, - . - - - - 11 Working of a medicine, the popular notion of the, - 29 THE END. WILLIAM RADDE, 322 Broadway, New-York, Respectfully informs the Homoeopathic Physicians, and the friends of the System, that he is the sole Agent for the Leipzig Central Homoeopathic Pharmacy, and that he has always on hand a good assortment of the best Homoeopathic Medicines, in com- plete sets or by single vials, in Tinctures, Dilutions, and Triturations ; also Pocket Cases of Medicines ; Physicians'1 and Family Medicine Chests to Laurie's Domestic (GO Remedies)—EPPS' (58 Remedies)—HERING'S (82 Remedies).—Small Pocket cases at $3, with Family Guide and 27 Remedies.—Cases containing 415 Vials with Tinctures and Triturations, for Physicians.—Cases with 240 Vials of Tinctures and Tri- turations to Jahr's New Manual.—POCKET CASES with 60 Vials of Tinctures and Triturations.—Cases from 200 to 400 Vials with low and high dilutions of Medicated Pellets.—Cases from 50 to 80 Vials of low and high dilutions, &c, &c. Homoeopathic Chocolate, Refined Sugar of Milk, pure Globules, &.C. Arnica Tincture, the best spe- cific remedy for bruises, sprains, wounds, &C. Arnica Plaster, for Cor&s, Src. Urtica Urens,for Burns; Homasopathic Tooth-Powder ; as well as Books, Pamphlets, and Standard works on the System, in the English, French, and German languages. HOMOEOPATHIC BOOKS. JAHR'S NEW MANUAL OF HOMOEOPATHIC PRACTICE, Edited, with anno- tations by A. Gerald Hull, M. D., from the last Paris edition. This is the fourth American edition of a very celebrated work, writen in French, by the eminent Honi. 4 vols. 1846. $6. HAHNEMANN, Dr. S. The Chronic Diseases, their specific nature and Homao- patltie Treatment. Translated and edited by Charles J. Hempel, M D., with a Preface by Constantine Hering, M. D., Philadelphia. 8vo. 6 volumes. Bound. 1845. $7. BCENNINGHAUSEN'S Essay on the Homoeopathic Treatment of Intermittent Fevers. Translated and edited by Charles Julius Hempel, M. D. 1845. 38 cts. A TREATISE on the use of Arnica for Contusions, Wounds, Strains, &c. 19 cts. HOMCEOPATHIC COOKERY, second edition. Designed chiefly for the use of such persons as are under homceopathic treatment. 50 cts. RUECKERT'S THERAPEUTICS; or Successful Homceopathic Cures, collected from the best Honiceopalhic periodicals. By Chs. J. Hempel, M. D. One large 8vo. vol. $3. THE HOMCEOPATHIC EXAMINER. By Drs. Gray and Hempel. 2 vols. New Series. 184.) and 1847. Bound in two volumes, $6. JOSLIN, B. F., M. D. Causes and Homoeopathic Treatment on Cholera. 50 cts. HUMPHREY'S, F., M. D. The Cholera and its Homoeopathic treatment. 38 cts. Just published: MARCY, E. E., M. D. The Homoeopathic Theory and Practice of Medicine. 1850. Bound $2. 00. JAHR, BUCHNER and GRUNER'S New Homceopathic Pharmacopoea and Poso- logy. Translated by C. J. Hempel, M. D. $2 00. JAHR'S Diseases of the Skin: or alphabetical Repertory of the Skin Symptoms and external alterations of Substance. With Pathologicnl Remaiks on the Diseases of' the Skin. By Dr. A.G. Jahr. Edited by C. J. Hempel, M. D. Price $1. JOSLINT, B. F., M. D. Principles of Homoeopathin. In a series of Lectures. 75 cts ADVERTISEMENT. WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY, NEW-YORK, HAS CONSTANTLY ON HAND TIKI I ©TON ©Aft® W^KCC® ON THE HOMCEOPATHIC SYSTEM, IN THE ENGLISH, FRENCH AND GERMAN LANGUAGES. ADVERTISEMENT. HOMCEOPATHIC TREATMENT OF DIARRHEA, DYSENTERY, CHOLERA MORBUS AND CHOLERA; INCLUDING REPERTORIES FOR THESE DISEASES. By BENJAMIN F. JOSLIN, M. D. SECOND EDITION. NEW-YOPJv: WM. RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. 1840. CONTENTS. Of Homoeopathic Treatment of Cholera. Introduction. CHAP. I.—Nature and Pathology of the Cholera. Characteristics of the Disease. Physiology of Respiration. Application to the Pathology of Cholera. CHAP. II.—^Etiology, especially of the Predisposing or occasional Causes. Preliminary etiological remarks. Atmospheric heat. Becoming chilled by cold air, or bathing. The Night season. Depressing passions, fatigue, fasting, and alcohol. Abstinence from animal food. Oppression of the digestive organs with food. Crowded or insufficiently Ventilated Rooms. Neglect of personal Cleanliness. Ungeneralized facts. Recapitulation. CHAP. III.—Doctrine of Infection. Error of the prevalent doctrine. Indefiniteness of the problem. Influence of Dilution. Influence of Dose. Influence of susceptibility. Routes and modes in vhich the Cholera travelr. 2 CONTENTS OF HOMCEOPATHIC CHAP. IV.—Hygiene and Prophylaxis. Articles hurtful to persons taking Homoeopathic medicines. Rules of regimen. CHAP. V.—History of Treatment, Or Statistical proofs of the success of Homoeopathy in Cholera. CHAP. VI.—Early Treatment, Including that of the Premonitory Symptoms, and of the disease at its onset, with rules for the general manage- ment. Treatment of Premonitory Symptoms. Treatment at the Commencement of Cholera. Rules for the general management of a Cholera patient. CHAP. VII.—Symptoms and Treatment of the Va- rieties of the Cholera. Law of cure, and repetition and magnitude of doses. Symptoms of the 1st variety, Cholera Diarrhceica. Treatment of Cholera Diarrhceica. Symptoms of the 2d variety, Cholera Gastrica. Treatment of Cholera Gastrica. Symptoms of the 3d variety, Cholera Spasmodica. Treatment of Cholera Spasmodica. Symptoms of the 4th variety, Cholera Sicca. Treatment of Cholera Sicca. Symptoms of the 5th variety, Cholera Acuta. Treatment of Cholera Acuta. Symptoms of the 6th variety, Cholera Gastro-Enterica. Treatment of Cholera Gastro-Enterica. Symptoms of the 7th variety, Cholera Inflammatoria. Treatment of Cholera Inflammatoria. TREATMENT OF CHOLERA. 3 CHAP. VIII.—Symptoms and Treatment of the Stages of the Cholera. First Stage, stage of Invasion. Second Stage, stage of full Development. Third Stage, stage of Collapse. Fourth Stage, stage of Reaction. CHAP. IX.—Cholera Repertory, for Symptoms and Groups, with the values of the medicines distinguished. Explanation of the use of the Repertory. Mental Symptoms, remedies for. Head, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Eyes, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Face, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Tongue, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Nausea and Thirst, remedies for. Vomiting, remedies for. Pains at the Stomach, remedies for. Abdomen, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Diarrhoea, remedies for. Urine, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Voice, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Chest, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Superior Extremities, remedies, &c. Inferior Extremities, remedies, &c. Skin, remedies for symptoms relating to the. Perspiration and pulse, remedies relating to. General and miscellaneous symptoms, remedies for. CHAP. X.—Gastric and Intestinal Repertory ; Aux- iliary to the Cholera Repertory, and adapted to Vomit- ing, Diarrhoea, Cholera Infantum and Dysentery. Explanation of the use of the Repertory. Vomiting in general. Character of the vomiting. 4 CONTENTS, d'C. Its causes or conditions. Its concomitants. Sensations (pains, &c.) at the Stomach and Epigastrium. Diarrhoea in general. Colour of the Faeces. Odour of the Faeces. Their Composition and Consistence. Causes of Diarrhoea. Concomitants of Diarrhoea. Groups of Diarrhoeic Symptoms. Cholera Infantum. Dysentery. KF Cases containing the DIARRHOEA AND CHO- LERA MEDICINES, of the proper attenuations, are put up by the Publisher, (Wm. Radde,) to accompany the book on Cholera. Price of each case with 30 Phials, including the book, $3 50 Price of Joslin on Cholera,.....50 Price of Joslin on Principles of Homoeopathy, . 75 For sale by WILLIAM RADDE, 322 Broadway, New-York. 1 • V IRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY 5" Ms S ^3 tlViail IVNOIIVN 1NI3I01W JO AHVeBIT IVNOIIVN 3NI3I03W JO ilVI ll»llll 1VNOI1YN 9NI3 IQ3W JO A■V»■ II IVNOIIVN 3 N I 3 I d 3 W J O A « V * \ /W I I M/ [ \^\ i A «V a g I 1 IVNOIIVN 3NI3I03W JO AIVIII1 IVNOIIVN 3NI3IQ3W JO A a V a RARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY W> *Cj&9^ i (wm>\ ! ^Wy^K ^ X^Ssk E rCW~ * J^L. l NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NLM D327bm5 M T'4i ■v 9 MU|fUJ9| no bHHt jyiftltiinii ftmlfil villi's |>vj 111 B ihrIE m mi