plaint yields, the symptoms are removed, and, by the blessing of GOD, the child is restored to perfect health; without either its stomach or bowels, its skin or liver, or any healthy organ having been disturbed or interfered with ;-that which was ailing has been cured, and that which was well has been let alone. This has happened in my own hands, and I am bound to testify what I have

seen.

It would be easy to give examples of more complicated cases, in which the indications under the common method are still more numerous, or still more contradictory. I cannot do more than allude to one of the latter description, but it is one in which the contradiction is so great as to give rise to the greatest perplexity, and the most painful anxiety. The case is an inflammatory disease of any kind, occurring in a debilitated constitution; a combination unhappily often met with. In this case, an antiphlogistic or reducing treatment is supposed to be called for by the inflammation; and tonic or strengthening measures are imperiously demanded by the patient's distressing weakness. In the treatment of such a case bleeding and brandy, or remedies as much opposed to each other as these are, not unfrequently find themselves in very close approximation.

On the contrary, by the new method, although a careful examination of the case, and a diligent study of the Materia Medica are required, there is but one indication to be attended to, and but one remedy to be given, and thus perplexity and inconsistency are banished.

In complicated chronic cases, when it is possible to discover the original or leading feature of the ailment, if a remedy be selected capable of meeting this primary condition, it not unfrequently happens that not only will this condition be greatly improved, but other accompanying symptoms, though appearing to have little connection with it, will be also removed. And thus a single remedy will sometimes suit a patient for several years, and relieve very various ailments during that time. This I have experienced in my own person, and witnessed in others.

The benefit to the patient, so often in vain longed for from the complicated prescriptions in common use, may be expected with greatly increased confidence from the employment of a single remedy. Dr. PARIS speaks of medical combinations, and declares that their object is to operate "cito, tuto, et jucunde,”—quickly, safely, and pleasantly;-thus quoting the language of ASCLEPIADES as applicable to them. With how much greater reason such language can be applied to homoeopathic treatment the foregoing observations may suffice to shew.

Cito. A medicine is much more likely to produce its peculiary effects quickly, when given alone, than when its action is neutralised or interfered with by being mixed with other drugs.

Tuto. The chances that a patient will be injured by a small dose of a single remedy, must be much fewer than by large doses of mixed medicines. He must be treated much more safely.

Jucundè. And as to the comparative pleasantness, I am willing to abide by the patient's decision.

By the use of a single medicine at a time, every injury is avoided, and every benefit is obtained, to the utmost of medical skill.

Such are some of the advantages which the law of Homoeopathy presents for our acceptance, in the simplicity of its mode of prescribing remedies for disease.

There is another consideration, of a profound and interesting character, to which I wish now to address myself, and to the investigation of which I earnestly hope my professional brethren will give their serious attention.

The subject presents itself in the terms by which the various articles of the Materia Medica are arranged and designated. It is expressed in one word,—the INTENTION of the treatment.

In the system of GALEN, which governed medicine for fifteen hundred years, all drugs were estimated as hot or cold, dry or moist, in regulated degrees; and were prescribed accordingly for diseases which were supposed to correspond to them by contraries; as a hot remedy for a cold disease, and a dry one for a moist. At present they are called emetics, cathartics, diaphoretics, narcotics, and so forth. These terms indicate the very essence of the usual practice; the light in which all remedies are viewed; the intention with which they are given.

Thus it appears that drugs are not considered as they are in themselves, but as they belong to one or other of these modes of action. When a patient is seen, the mental enquiry is, what are the indications which his ailments suggest? Ought he to be vomited, or purged, or refrigerated, or stimulated? The answer to these questions is supposed to direct to the classes of medicines which are to be administered, and they are given with corresponding intentions. In prescribing ipecacuanha, or tartar emetic, the physician intends to produce vomiting; in giving blue pill and colocynth, followed by senna and Epsom salts, he intends to purge; in applying a plaster of cantharides to the surface of the body, he intends to produce inflammation and blistering of the previously healthy skin. Far otherwise are the thoughts suggested by the law of Homoopathy. The patient is suffering in such a manner; the question suggested, when the examination of the case is concluded, is this, what drug produces in health a similar condition of disease? That drug must necessarily act upon the organs which are diseased; it will act upon them while under the excitement of disease in a very small dose,-too small to act upon any other organs which it has a

natural relation to, but which are still in a healthy condition; by the use of this drug the disease will be best arrested, the health will be best restored, and all that is well will be let alone.

Thus the immediate object proposed by the homœopathic practitioner is, not to produce vomiting, or purging, or perspiration, or any other evacuation, but simply to remove the disease from which the patient is suffering. Of course the ultimate object of the allopathic practitioner is to restore his patient to health, but it will be seen that that object is aimed at indirectly, through the medium of other prior intentions; these intentions being, not to produce health, but conditions which are themselves more or less departures from health. The sick man is to be cured by being made more sick; however numerous his symptoms may be when seen by his physician, he must have some additional ailments produced artificially, before he can expect to be relieved. This important difference between the two intentions must, I think, be intelligible and plain.

It is true that certain effects are sometimes produced by the small dose of the homoeopathist which resemble, in some degree, the effects of the common medicines;—for instance when aconite is given in a case of inflammatory fever with a dry skin; at the moment when relief is experienced by the removal of the fever, there may be perspiration; but the resemblance is apparent only; the medicine was not given as a diaphoretic, with the intention to produce perspiration, neither did its doing so relieve the fever; these two events happened in the opposite order; the fever was first checked, and then, through returning health, the previously dry skin became moist. In the same manner, in a case of constipation from torpor of the bowels, opium is given, and the natural action is by and bye restored;-not because opium is a purgative, for, as every one knows, it is classed at the head of medicines of an opposite character, but because it removed the torpor, by which means nature was in a condition to proceed as in a healthy state.

The contrast of the two methods is exhibited, though with some confusion, by Dr. PARIS himself in the following paragraph;

"Dr. BLACKALL presents us with a case, on the authority of Mr. JOHNSON of Exeter, in which well-fermented bread occasioned, in the space of a few hours, an effect so powerfully diuretic, as to have cured the sailors on board the Asia East Indiaman, who had been attacked with dropsy in consequence of the use of damaged rice; so that diuretics in some cases cure by evacuating, while in others, as in the instance above cited, they evacuate by curing.'

Here then is another characteristic difference between the two systems of medical treatment ;—the usual method attempts to cure by evacuating; the new mode will evacuate if there be any thing requiring evacuation, by first curing.

The reason now appears why homoeopathists do not call the

remedies they use by the names commonly attached to them, as cathartics, sudorifics, &c. The impropriety would be as great as it is to call good wholesome "well-fermented" bread a diuretic, as is done by Dr. PARIS in the paragraph above quoted. Such an appellation is a libel on the staff of life. What the bread did, was just what the unsound rice could not do, it nourished the body; acting, not as a medicine, but as wholesome food, the thing needed. The evacuation of the dropsical effusion was the consequence of the restored health and strength of the different organs of the body. What the homoeopathic remedy, given alone, does is to restore the diseased organ, if it be capable of restoration to health; any evacuations which may follow, being the consequence of that restoration. This is a refined and scientific proceeding, as far removed as possible from the rude violence of large doses of poisonous drugs, given in combination, and "fighting together in the dark."

The considerations advanced in this Essay afford conclusive prima facie evidence of the great superiority of the method of giving a single medicine at a time. The only question which can now be raised is a question of fact. Does the plan succeed at the bed-side of the patient? To answer this enquiry I would gladly produce cases from allopathic sources, and this for a double reason; no disposition could be felt to question the authority; and the infinitesimal dose, which does not form part of the subjeet, would not complicate the evidence. But a sufficient number of such cases cannot be met with, so nearly universal is the practice of combination. A few reports, scattered through the journals, may be found of ipecacuanha having been given successfully in hæmorrhage; of copper in some spasmodic affections, as chorea; of nux vomica in spinal disease; of creosote in derangements of the stomach; of arsenic in some diseases of the skin; but these

and they are not sufficient to prove the affirmative to the answer. So far as they go, they support the statement that one remedy at a time is sufficient to cure; they also constitute evidence in favour of the law of Homoeopathy, as may be seen from the examples I have given ;-they may at least be considered sufficient to lead intelligent observers in the right direction.

I am constrained therefore to refer to the numerous works already published by homoeopathists, and which contain overwhelming evidence to prove the sufficiency of a single remedy.

I am also bound to give my own personal testimony to the same effect. For example, I have seen, of acute cases, congestion of the brain removed by belladonna; croup cured by aconite; mumps by mercury; pheumonia by phosphorus; and of chronic cases, dyspepsia removed by pulsatilla; tabes mesenterica by sulphur; disease of the bladder by nux vomica; spinal distortion by carbonate of lime; and so on. In other cases, a single remedy is sufficient for a portion of the treatment, or for the symptoms in a certain stage, or during a certain period of the disease; to be followed by another medicine, also given singly, when that stage has passed away, or when the symptoms are changed.

The experiment is not insuperably difficult; let others try it, as I have done. To my own mind, to say that one medicine at a time is practically sufficient, and answers better than any combination, is to state a plain fact; and I cannot conclude otherwise than by expressing an earnest hope that the method will, ere long, be universally adopted. We shall not, till then, be able to carry out the good advice given us of old by ST. BASIL, "The physician should attack the disease and not the patient."

Rugby, October 2nd, 1854.

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