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inside and out, and thought himself near death.' The captain was restored to health in the course of one month.

And, as far as Mr. Lee is concerned, all these benefits have been conferred on society from no other motive than that of pure benevolence. He is not only not paid, but he actually pays for the cures which he makes, having given away in the course of one year not less than a hogshead of brandy and salt to his patients. Neither can Mr. Vallance be accused of being influenced by the desire of lucre to any immoderate extent, if we may venture to form an opinion on the subject from the following notice at the end of his treatise: As I receive a great many letters requesting advice in particular cases, I beg to state that I cannot undertake to answer any, except a remittance of one shilling be made, with a penny post-ticket to pay the postage.'

The pretensions of Homoeopathy are of a more lofty character than those of brandy and salt. The homoeopathist claims the discovery of a law of nature before unknown; the establishment of a new science; the invention of a new method of curing diseases so efficient and certain, that hereafter none ought to be held to be incurable; and he denounces the absurdity and mischief of the healing art, as it is commonly practised, in language not less vehement than that of Paracelsus, when he publicly burned the works of Galen and Avicenna as being those of quacks and impostors, exclaiming to the crowd who were assembled to witness the ceremony,-You will all follow my new system, you professors of Paris, Montpellier, Cologne, and Vienna; you that dwell on the Rhine and the Danube; you that inhabit the isles of the sea; and ye also, Italians, Dalmatians, Athenians, Arabians, and Jews, ye will all follow my doctrines; for I am the monarch of medicine!"

Dr. Hahnemann, the founder of the homoeopathic system, having been educated as a physician, was engaged in medical practice, first in a small town of Saxony, and afterwards in Dresden.* This pursuit, however, was by no means suitable to his genius. We are informed that, having acquired more reputation than profit, he was compelled to eke out his professional gains by the translation of foreign works. But his ill-success was not to con

tinue for ever.

'All at once,' we quote the words of Mr. Erneste George de Brennow, the translator of the Organon,' a new idea illuminates his mind, a new career is opened to him, in which nature and experience are to be his guides. Obstacles and difficulties without number retard his solitary progress in the hitherto untrodden track; but his never-failing courage surmounts them all. The most astounding phenomena are presented

Curie's Principles of Homeopathy,' pp. 15, 16.

to

to his contemplation; he mounts from one certainty to another, penetrates the night of mists, and is at last rewarded for his toil by the sight of the star of truth shining brilliantly over his head and sending forth its rays for the benefit of suffering human nature.'

It was not, however, until after the lapse of some years that Hahnemann deemed it expedient to communicate his discovery to the world. Having done so, in the expectation of better fortune than he had met with at Dresden, he changed his residence to Leipsic.

Únder his new method of practice Hahnemann became the dispenser of his own medicines, thus combining the offices of physician and apothecary. This, and probably some other circuinstances, roused the jealousy of the regular practitioners. An absurd, and we may say a most unjustifiable, persecution followed, which ended in a decree against him in the Saxon Courts of Law. But what was intended for his ruin laid the foundation of his fortune. It made him and his doctrine known, and excited the sympathy of the Duke of Anhalt Cöthen,* who first offered him an asylum at his court, and then made him one of his councillors. From thence he removed some years afterwards to Paris.

Now the hitherto unknown law of nature, the grand secret which the star of truth' revealed to Hahnemann after he had 'penetrated the night of mists,' is so simple that it has been stated by him in three words — Similia similibus curantur.' Plain however as this announcement may be, we suspect that some among our readers may not at once perceive in what manner the aforesaid law of nature is applicable to the healing art, and to such obtuser intellects the following explanation may be satisfactory. A disease is to be cured by exhibiting a medicine which has the power of producing in the patient a disease of the same nature with that from which he desires to be relieved. Two similar diseases cannot co-exist in the same system, nor in the same organ. The artificial drives out the original disease, and, having done its business, evaporates and leaves the patient restored to health.

It must be owned that there is in this doctrine something which is rather startling to the uninitiated. We had never before even dreamed that we could produce a given disease at our pleasure. Besides, if the doctrine were true, bark ought to produce the ague, and sulphur the itch; mineral acids should be the cause of profuse perspirations; and jalap (as it is given to relieve certain viscera) should occasion their oppression. Nor are these difficulties got rid of by the (so-called) facts which Hahnemann

* Curie, p. 20.

offers

offers in illustration of his principle; such as that* belladonna produces the exact symptoms of hydrophobia; that Thomas de Mayence, Münch, Buchholz, and Neimicke cured that terrible disorder by the administration of this poison; and that Rademacher cured a fever with delirium and stertorous breathing in a single night by giving the patient wine. Indeed, it seems to us remarkable that Hahnemann should not have provided himself with some better examples in favour of the doctrine which he would inculcate than those which he has presented to us, believing, as we do, that there is no opinion as to the nature and treatment of diseases, however absurd, for which some kind of authority may not be found by any one who will condescend for that purpose to grope among the rubbish of medical literature.

However, it is not so much our wish to criticise the works of the homoeopathic writers, as to furnish such an analysis and exposition of their doctrines as may render them in some degree intelligible to our readers, very few of whom have, we suspect, been at the pains of looking into these matters for themselves.

Having thus satisfied himself of the truth of the maxim revealed to him by the star of truth,' similia similibus curantur— and that it applies not only to physical, but also to moral ailments(in proof of which last assertion Dr. Curie-p. 79-quotes the authority of Eloisa :

'O let me join

Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine')Hahnemann commenced another investigation into the nature and origin of diseases. He classes them under the heads of acute diseases,' which may be solitary or epidemic; medical diseases; and chronic diseases. It is with respect to the latter that he has made the most notable discoveries. Every one of them may be traced to a chronic miasm, the worst of which seems to be the itch-this vulgar ailment being the real source of scrofula, rickets, and epilepsy. But the most laborious part of Hahnemann's undertakings was a series of experiments which he instituted for the purpose of ascertaining the uses and operation of medicines. Here he acted on this very just and proper principle, that, if any one were to be poisoned in the course of these researches, it should be himself, his family, and his friends,§ Franz, Hornburg, and Stapf, with their eyes open, and not his unsuspecting patients. These experiments, as we are told, were continued during a period of twenty years; and some notion may

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be formed of the extent to which Hahnemann and his friends must have laboured in the cause of their suffering fellow-creatures when we have stated the following facts. The homoeopathic pharmacopoeia is through their means enriched with 200 articles, the properties of 150 of which have been elaborately investigated. The object was to determine what symptoms in the healthy person each of these medicines might produce, with a view to ascertain in what diseases it would afford the means of cure. It was found that aconite produces 500 symptoms; arnica upwards of 600; arsenic and sulphur each upwards of 1000; pulsatilla, 1100; and nux vomica as many as 1300, and so on: the whole, as Dr. Curie* observes, forming a vast arsenal, within which the homœopathic physician is at liberty to select the weapons to be used in his contest with disease.'

It makes one shudder to reflect on the sufferings of Dr. Hahnemann, his family, and his friends Franz, Hornburg, and Stapf, during those twenty years of probation. They must have experienced the symptoms of every existing disease one hundred times over. The variety of the symptoms, moreover, must have been not less perplexing to their intellects than distressing to their feelings. The lycopodium cures, and therefore, according to the Star of Truth,' must cause, attacks of teasing pain in the top of the head, in the forehead, temples, eyes, and nose; headache in the exterior of the head during the night; piercing and scraping pain; suppuration of the eyes; disagreeable impressions produced by organ-music; warts in the nose; ulcerated nostrils; repugnance for brown bread; risings of fat; canine appetite; dry, snoring cough; nocturnal pain in the elbows; cramps; a turning-back of the toes in walking; itching; old ulcers of the legs; painful pluckings of the limbs; thoughts preventing sleep; a capricious and irritable temper; morose, uneasy state of mind; a tendency to seek quarrels !' &c. &c. &c. Again, muriate of soda, or common culinary salt, cures (and therefore produces) "jolting in the head; incapability of thinking; splitting, teasing, and lancinating headach; plucking pains in the forehead; shutting of the eyes in the morning; whirlings in the stomach; noises in the left side of the belly; pain like that caused by a dislocation of the hip; inconvenience from eating bread; irritability, disposing to anger; sadness; great propensity to be frightened; leanness; a tendency to twist the loins,' &c. &c.

We shall not distress our readers by any further description of what these self-devoted individuals must have endured. But it is satisfactory to know that they did not suffer * Curie, Practice, &c., p. 41. 293.

† Ibid.

p.

Ibid. P. 302.

in vain that they surmounted all the obstacles which lay before them-and that the world has now the opportunity of profiting by their fortitude and perseverance.

But in the course of these investigations Hahnemann made another discovery, at least equal in value to any of those which he had made before. Hitherto it had been supposed that the effects of any medicinal substance taken into the system bear some proportion to the quantity taken; that if two mercurial pills taken daily would make the gums sore, four would make them very sore; if ten grains of ipecacuanha would make you sick, twenty would make you very sick; if eight drops of solution of arsenic, taken three times daily, would put an end to an ague, twenty might put an end to the patient. There might be some exceptions to this rule, but it was believed that they were very rare. But Hahnemann discovered that all this is a mistake:-that, in order to obtain the full and proper effect of a medicine, the dose of it must be diminished to the millionth, the billionth, and even to the decillionth of a grain. We cannot illustrate this matter better than by referring to the powerful effects which we have already described as produced by common culinary salt. But these effects arise only when it comes in a minute dose from the hands of a homœopathist. We all of us swallow it in greater or less quantity daily —and some of us in very large quantity-without experiencing any one of them.

But here we meet with a very great difficulty as to the method by which this extreme degree of dilution of medicinal agents is to be determined; nor does the most diligent examination of the homœopathic writings enable us to get over it. Let us suppose a medicine to be in a liquid form, which is of course divisible with much less labour than that which is solid. In order that a single drop should represent the millionth part of a grain, the solution must be in the proportion of one grain to upwards of thirteen gallons of the solvent, which is either water or alcohol. But a billion is a million of millions; and the dose of a billionth of a grain would require one million times that quantity of the solvent, or about 217,000 hogsheads! Then, as to the smaller fractions, there may be some difference of opinion as to what they mean. Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, however, on the authority of Mr. Locke, defines a trillion to be a million of millions of millions-that is, a million of billions. As Mr. Locke invented the word, he had a right to give his own definition of it; and this being admitted, as a trillion is the third power of a million, so a decillion must be the tenth power of a million-a number represented by sixty places of figures, and defying all human conception!

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