of one who shall certainly pursue a different method seems more reasonable than simply to follow him by one who acts on the same principles, and by the same rules, and, in the vast majority of cases, with the same means. Where, for instance, would be the absurdity of a physician who had treated by the usual means, but without success, a case of inflammation or pneumonia, acquiescing in the proposal of a homeopathist to try Aconite or Phosphorus in appropriate doses, and continuing with him to watch the result? If he apply to one of his own school, he may be nearly sure that no method will be tried with which he is not familiar: is it not more reasonable to have recourse to methods altogether different? And vice versa―to a great extent, though, unquestionably, the adoption of a fixed principle increases the difficulty of acquiescence in a change of method which might seem inconsistent with it; but our very limited acquaintance with the actual instances of the operation of the law allows a wide margin for cases in which it may be supposed to operate where the analogy has not been demonstrated by experiment, though implied in the successful result of empirical treatment. If the older school would but learn the language, and become familiar with the ideas of the modern, such instances of co-operation might, I am persuaded, be attended with benefit to the patient, without any compromise of principle on the part of the physician: the question of dignity and consistency is not to be thought of: truth is the sole ground of dignity, the sole element of consistency; the wisest physician and the best man is the one who confers most honour by his intercourse, and whose conduct is most regulated by undeviating principle. Intercourse such as this seems to be the only adequate source of mutual instruction and improvement. But it may be objected that in order to secure it, men must lay aside not only their prejudices, but also their jealousies and selfishness; and that to expect this is merely Utopian. There is weight in the objection, but not such as to neutralize the duty. It cannot be doubted that an earnest pursuit of truth requires the abnegation of self, and that the faithful discharge of the duties of a strictly religious profession forbids the indulgence of emulation, wrath, strife, and all uncharitableness, and implies therefore, an attainment in virtue of no ordinary degree. But the standard of duty must not be lowered in order to meet the imperfections of men; their aim should rather be continually elevated, and stimulated by the warning that the indulgence of such passions impedes of necessity their own advancement, and closes their minds to the treasures of wisdom. And the fact appears indisputable that these and kindred passions rather than any essential obscurity have hindered the progress of truth in every department, for there is no department in which their unhallowed influence may not be exerted. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light"-but if otherwise, if there be any obliquity of vision, any want of adjustment in the complicated organs which concentrate the rays of truth, from whatever quarter emanating —then, although the amount of light be absolutely oppressive to the weakened and perverted organs, the body as a whole, as one undivided being, shall remain full of darkness, every corner obscured by the countless motes that dance incessantly in the bright but conflicting beams. But things cannot last long in their present state: our misty contests must have an end: the prayer of Ajax will be heard: light will be given for the battle; so shall we more correctly recognize our opponents, and the mightiest in truth shall prevail. The future prospects of homœopathy appear to me encouraging. The advance of this method has been already very rapid, and if it have been too rapid, it is well to receive a temporary check. But if the law on which it is built be indeed a law of nature, which has been openly announced and widely acknowledged, it cannot fail to derive corroboration from every year's experience, and therefore this essential element will be gradually adopted, until perhaps it will be admitted as universally and as tacitly as gravitation or circulation. But I see no reason to suppose that the infinitesimal doses will be adopted to an equal extent, for this reason, that, hitherto, exclusiveness on this point has been rather in inverse proportion to the progress of the homœopathic school generally. Each individual brings with him his own peculiarities, and acts with confidence on his own experience. What I anticipate, therefore, is a very wide acceptance of the law of cure, and a much diminished but not always infinitesimal use of medicine. And, if I err not, this great object will be advanced much better by steady, reserved, individual practice, than by struggling hospitals, overgrown dispensaries, ill-supplied colleges, and inconsistent charters. By the cultivation of every right principle, intellectual and moralby avoiding all sectarianism in act or feeling-by readily appreciating good, wherever found, and by strongly rebuking evil, however near-by the ardent pursuit of professional knowledge, -by the strict observance of professional morality-and by a scrupulous regard to the niceties of professional courtesy-we may hope to purchase to ourselves a good position, and to put to silence those whose opposition is founded in ignorance or conducted with injustice. And if this law of Nature shall come to be universally acknowledged in its simplicity and grandeur, while the application of it shall be left to the judgment and conscience of each man without challenge or censure, then shall the offence of homœopathy have ceased; and then, The winds quiescent, and the tempest laid, And from the clear altitudes of uncontroverted truth shall the men of another generation look back with astonishment upon the storms which have agitated, and the clouds which have obscured the base of the mountain on whose summit it is their happier lot to stand. But never, if they be just, will they treat with scorn the memory of those who struggled through the mist; least of all will they forget to honour the man whose finger pointed the way, whose voice encouraged and whose admonitions warned them. If lengthened time and multiplied industry shall have made their footing more secure and their heaven more cloudless than his, they will not the less highly estimate the courage which pressed up the slippery path, guided only by the "light within his own clear breast," and while they rejoice in mutual support, they will learn increasingly to reverence the dauntless self-reliance which quailed before no difficulty and gathered only strength from solitude and desertion. The difficulties and defects are neither few nor small, but they seem to me confined to the practice; in the theory as taught by Hahnemann and unobscured by explanatory com ments, I perceive neither the one nor the other: the theory: appears to me plain and irresistible as an axiom, and its development complete. The difficulties consist principally in the choice of the medicine, the determination of the dose, and the intervals of administration: the defects in a want of order and classification in the materia medica, and of any means of associating or grouping the symptoms recorded, and of appropriating. them to the individuals in whom they appeared; and in the want of a marked analogy between the recondite effects of medicines and the recondite symptoms of the disease, or what may be understood as the pathology of the medicine and the patho-. logy of the disease. All these it remains for the future adherents of the system to rectify and supply: the task of a mere narrator is fulfilled when he has pointed them out to notice. And now, on closing our review, let us for a moment consider in what respect the last named school differs from others, and what is the honor which we claim for its founder? These questions are shortly answered. The school differs from all others in being built upon a law of cure, not on a pathological hypothesis, as all forms of the dogmatic, or on a therapeutical method, as every branch of the empiric and methodic, or on a medicinal power or process, as those schools which concentrate their energies on the varied employment of a single process or substance or class of substances, in which may be included the hydropathic, and to a certain extent perhaps the mesmeric and gymnastic. The homeopathic school rejects none of these; whatever can be adduced as an authentic source of healing is welcomed by that school as enriching its resources; but it considers that the operation of every process, strictly speaking of a directly curative character, is reducible to one law, and the discovery and enunciation of that law is the merit claimed for its founder. Not as though this had never been mentioned before his time, but never till then had it been asserted as a universal law, nor ever till then had those deductions been drawn from it which were necessary to render it an effective guide to practice and a sure foundation for future progress. The merit of having done this we claim for SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. 367 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. BY JAMES LAWRIE, M.D., L.R.C.S.E. THE object of the following paper is not controversial; it is a contribution of facts, not arguments: yet, as "facts are stubborn things," and the only basis of all true argument, it is hoped that a simple statement of a few of the leading facts which I met with in my first experience of homoeopathy may produce all the good effects of an equal amount of argument, without any admixture of the acrimony and personality, and other attendant evils of excited feeling, to which party reasonings too often lead, and to which the cause of homoeopathy versus allopathy has been already, in full measure, exposed. Practical truths can only be tested by experiment. I have been a medical practitioner in Edinburgh for the last 24 years the greater proportion of which time was devoted to allopathy; and, without assuming a boastful tone, I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I was as successful in the treatment of disease as my brethren in the profession: nor were my services less appreciated by the public, both in the number and respectability of the families whom I attended. Nevertheless, many things conspired during my practice to make me dissatisfied with the system of therapeutics on which I had been taught to depend in the selection of remedies for disease. I do not mean to insinuate that the allopathic system was always necessarily or unavoidably a failure, but it was at best vague and dubious; and I see now, what then I had not discovered, that its remedies were successful just in proportion as they chanced to be accordant with a fundamental law of specifics, unknown to its theories-the homœopathic. My experience of both systems makes me feel convinced that any medical practitioner who enters into a patient and candid examination of the subject experimentally, will be as irresistibly impelled to the same conclusion. When I first heard of homoœopathy, I treated it, in common with many others, with the most profound contempt. Its theory of infinitesimal doses seemed Utopian, beyond the limits of pos |