proportions called chemical equivalents, "which regulates and governs all chemical actions, is acknowledged to be the most important acquisition of the present century, and the most productive in its results."1 He ascribes the first discovery of it to Richter (a German), and the "extending and completing our knowledge" of it to Dalton (an Englishman).

The law of similia similibus curantur, which "regulates and governs" all medical actions, is of still greater importance to the well-being of man.

The physician who commits himself to its guidance will find it simple and intelligible, safe and merciful; and, moreover, that it secures a certainty of knowledge by requiring that only one remedy be given at a time; that it is not dependent upon any theory of disease, nor upon any hypothetical explanation of its mode of action, for its easy and successful application; that it is applicable to all cases of disease, and in all countries and climates, all ages and circumstances.

I am fond of illustrations. They possess a double recommendation; they explain an axiom and impress it upon the mind better than any mere definition or description, and they relieve a didactic or argumentative composition of its dulness. While, therefore, I must refer my readers to Essay IV, for many examples of the mode of applying the principle of Homœopathy in practice, I will find room here for a brief notice of two cases which have lately occurred to me. (1853.)

In Essay IX, the disease-producing powers of ipecacuanha, in minutely divided doses, are described; among the morbid effects thus produced are asthma and hæmorrhage. Miss W consulted me for a severe attack of spasmodic asthma, to which she was very liable; I advised a few doses of the second dilution of ipecacuanha, which gave her immediate relief, and in a little while permanently removed the attack. Miss S-, who had been long ill with disease in the chest with a large abscess in the posterior part of the left lung, was suddenly seized, while on a journey at a distance of seventy miles from me, with a copious spitting of blood. This information was sent to me by telegraph, and I immediately forwarded to her by railway some ipecacuanha. The following morning I received another telegraphic message, followed shortly after by

1 'Letters on Chemistry,' second series.

a letter from her mother, stating that the first dose had arrested the bleeding, and that my patient had not coughed once all night,-only once in the morning without expectoration, which previously had been copious, and that she had enjoyed some breakfast. There has been no return of the hæmorrhage, and under the influence of phosphorus this very severe case of disease has been going on favorably for above two months. The young lady can now walk a mile or more without fatigue.

1856. I am happy to be able to say that this patient still enjoys comfortable health.

Those who have experienced the comfort and benefit of such a guide as the principle of similia similibus curantur will not be easily induced to venture without it into the pathless wilderness of medical treatment. An additional example will impress more strongly on the mind, the distressing uncertainty with which the instructions for treatment are given by the teachers of the old school. The cure of dropsy is thus laid down by the first physician of France of the last age

"The cure may be begun by bloodletting in certain conditions; but in others it cannot be employed without danger. It gives relief in difficult breathing; but after it is practised the symptoms are aggravated and rendered more obstinate. It is not to be concealed, that some persons have been cured by repeated bloodlettings, or spontaneous hæmorrhages; but it is at the same time known that such a remedy, inopportunely employed, has in many instances hastened on the fatal event." 1

Every one familiar with the literature of his profession, will admit that this is a fair sample of the general result of his reading. How delightful to pass from this state of uncertainty, arising from conflicting human authorities, to the absolute and invariable direction of a natural guide!

That the physician of the old method has no principle to guide him is known and acknowledged; that the Homœopathic physician has such a principle is obvious; that this is a great advantage, must be above suspicion and beyond dispute.

3. The simplicity of the means.

"Look! what will serve is fit," says nature's poet; and

the nearer we approach to simplicity, in the means we use, the nearer we approach to nature's perfection. Physicians have been vigorously wielding the club of giant despair, while they ought to have been observing and endeavouring to imitate the operations of nature, in which mighty effects are continually being brought about by apparently insignificant but really efficacious means.

Among the many examples which surround us, I will mention only one. Little grains of sand are unlikely materials wherewith to roll back the incroachments of the mighty waters; but practically they are found to be more permanently effectual for this purpose than cliffs of solid earth. In like manner, little

grains of medicine, in the hands of the Homœopathist, however improbable it may appear beforehand and without experience, are found practically to be more efficacious in arresting the progress of disease than the complicated mixtures and poisonous doses of allopathy.

To borrow an expression which Dr. Chalmers often used in conversation, both these are instances of the "power of littles."

The sight of all the materials in the hands of the old physician and surgeon "is enough to make a man serious." These are lancets, cupping-glasses, and leeches; blisters, setons, issues, moxas, caustics and cauteries; emetics and purgatives, sudorifics and sialagogues, diuretics and expectorants, anodynes, tonics and stimulants, with all the "luxuriency of composition" of which Cullen so often speaks.

The whole course of medical treatment, as usually practised, is a rude and rough procedure, as far as possible removed from the delicacy required from us when we would try to regulate the exquisite machinery of the living body. It is the blacksmith undertaking with his pincers to repair a watch.

Homœopathy, it is well known, discards all these complex and formidable weapons, and prescribes a single remedy at a time, and that to be chosen according to an invariable rule, to be prepared with the greatest care, and given in the smallest dose.

That the means made use of by the physicians of the old treatment are complicated, unwieldy, and violent, is known and acknowledged; that the means used by the homœopathic

physicians are simple and easy of application, is obvious; that this is a great advantage, must be above suspicion and beyond dispute.

I recommend these three advantages to the serious consideration of my medical brethren.

II. THE ADVANTAGES TO THE PATIENT.

1. The banishment of nauseous drugs, and painful and debilitating applications.

I give here a description of the old chafing-dish and actual cautery, as the red hot iron was called, and which has been used for a long period. I witnessed, as I trust, the expiring embers of this fire in the Military Hospital in Paris, under the care of the Baron Larrey, as described in Essay I. In the next generation I hope it will be necessary to represent several other processes yet had recourse to, as well as to describe the calomel pill, the black draught, the steel mixture, the bark decoction, the opium bolus, and the bitter infusion, of which no description need be given to the present age.

Now, notwithstanding that some people cling to their torments, as the Prince did to his Falstaff, I cannot but think that, by the majority of patients, the banishment of all these painful operations and nauseous doses must be felt to be a great deliverance.

The avoiding of bloodletting, and the weakness caused by such loss of the vital fluid, is of itself a sufficient triumph for the new system; but when it is remembered that every painful and debilitating process, along with every disagreeable dose, is for ever abandoned, how great is the emancipation, how substantial the triumph!

It is now contended by some medical men, that during the last few years the character of diseases has become so altered that bleeding is no longer necessary. One of these practitioners urged this remark upon a patient of mine the other day, and added that Homœopathy had derived great advantage from this change in the character of diseases.

But let me ask any unprejudiced person which of these two suppositions is most likely to be true;-that, contemporaneously with the introduction of Homœopathy, the course of nature was suddenly altered, and the character of diseases changed, so as greatly to favour that system; or that from various considerations, and among them the success of Homœopathy, physicians have been induced to lay aside the lancet, and to try a milder treatment, and finding this succeed better than severe measures, they have invented the former supposition to save themselves from the acknowledgment of error.

It is true that diseases do, from time to time, alter a good deal in their type and character. We are indebted to Sydenham for impressively teaching us this fact. He says, "Nothing in my opinion strikes the mind that contemplates the whole and open domain of medicine with greater wonder than the well-known varied and inconsistent character of those diseases which we call epidemic. It is not so much that they reflect and depend upon different conditions of climate in one and the same year, as that they represent different and dissimilar constitutions of different and dissimilar years.' Suppose, then, it were admitted that the type of disease now

1 'Works of Sydenham,' vol. i, p. 32.