more likely than the other to turn all such knowledge to the beneficial account of his patient.

This is a brief exposition of the leading features of Homoeopathy. They would admit of being much more copiously enlarged upon, but the aim has been to make a few points so clear that it may not be doubtful what we are contending for. We should be glad to be fairly met with facts and arguments, but in the place of these we have ridicule and abuse. In time, perhaps, the tables will turn, and then, no doubt, Punch will find it much more easy to satirise the face contorted at the sight of the "black draught" about to be swallowed, or the barber's pole and bandage for bleeding, which he will very likely graphically illustrate as one of the last relics of barber-ism, than he has hitherto done any of the facts belonging to Homœopathy.

But surely any proposal, such as is explained in the foregoing pages, even if there be but a chance that it may be instrumental in diminishing the sufferings of our fellow men, deserves to be received with something more decorous than ridicule. "Those who reject it, or who cast it out of the way, as unworthy of enquiry, must do so on their own responsibility.' If they decline "to search all things that may present even the shadow of a chance of bringing them more nearly acquainted with the laws which the Creator has instituted for the government of the world, and especially with those upon which He has caused the preservation of health to depend, let them recognise that it will be vain for them, in any after hour of hopelessness, when it may be too late to avert their own premature death, or the death of a relative or friend, to rely on the hacknied consolation, that the calamity is to be regarded as a new instance of the inscrutable ways of Providence, and not as the penalty of having wilfully blinded themselves to any light beneficently set before them, the reception of which might have ensured their preservation."*

*"Truths and their reception," by M. B. Sampson, p. 97.

Rugby, October 22, 1853.

Edward Thomas, Printer, 3, Bridge Street Row, Chester.

Tracts on Homœopathy.-No. 2.

THE DEFENCE

OF

Η ΟΜΟΟΡΑΤΗ Υ.

BY WILLIAM SHARP, M.D., F. R. S.

Fourth Edition.

LONDON:

AYLOTT AND CO., 8, PATERNOSTER ROW; MANCHESTER : H. TURNER, 41, PICCADILLY.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

THE following remarks were originally published as a Reply to Dr. Routh's "Fallacies of Homœopathy." They were sent to Dr. Routh with a courteous letter from the author, when they were first written on the 11th of May, 1852. As they have not been answered, nor the receipt even of the author's letter acknowledged, Dr. Routh may be considered as disposed of. The Reply might therefore be allowed, so far as Dr. Routh is concerned, to go out of print, but for two reasons it is thought desirable that it should remain more permanently before the public; first, because the arguments and objections against Homœopathy here noticed are still very frequently advanced, and boasted of as unanswerable; and secondly, because the valuable statistical facts brought before us by Dr. Routh, with his slender and unimportant objections to their valid and significant testimony to the superior success of Homœopathic treatment, cannot be too frequently placed before the eyes of the British nation, or of mankind at large.

Rugby, November 17th, 1852.

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

SINCE the appearance of the above Preface I have received a letter from Dr. Routh, dated May 25th, 1853, in which he says be has "no recollection of having received" my letter and Reply; at the same time he states that "even to its second edition, the work was not unknown to" him.

In acknowledging to Dr. Routh the receipt of his letter, I observed that I could not know whether my letter and Reply reached him or not, but that they were undoubtedly sent; as however he owned himself familiar with the Reply to its second edition, I was happy to think that I had not done him much injustice in my Preface to the third.

Rugby, August 12th, 1853.