AN INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY. BY WILLIAM SHARP, M.D. F.R.S. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, ETC. ETC. "I claim that liberty, which I willingly yield to others, the permission, namely, in subjects GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, 5, PATERNOSTER ROW; MDCCCLVI. 151. 0.154. PREFACE. IT is at once a privilege and an honour to be engaged in the study and interpretation of nature. Nevertheless, to follow truth, even in natural knowledge, with a cautious but unflinching step, and to own it with a modest but undaunted sincerity, is to undertake an enterprise of difficulty and hazard. The earnest student in the department of medicine must experience this difficulty and run this hazard. In the discharge of his duty, he is in the search of truth for the benefit of those who are suffering from disease. He is anxious to become acquainted with what others have learned before him, and have it in their power to teach; he is also anxious to look with his own eyes upon the page of Nature's book which lies open to his view. The aspirations of the medical student not only embrace an acquaintance with the discoveries and experience of his predecessors; they extend beyond, so that, if possible, he may "add his mite to the treasury of physic." 1 These aspirations are not only justified but encouraged when it is ascertained that the science of medicine, notwithstanding the discoveries and experience of preceding ages, is still unsettled and uncertain; its theoretical teaching only speculations, and its practical precepts only contradictions. It is 1 Sydenham. |