should HAHNEMANN, only a few pages previously, have denounced so strongly the external application of drugs? We believe that he did so simply because of the evil effects which he had seen follow such a method of administration among allopathic practitioners. But when a truly homœopathic remedy is applied to the external manifestation of disease, in small doses, these evil effects do not follow. Often enough have we seen ulcers and eruptions, similar to those produced by mercury, rapidly cured and the health of the patient completely restored by an ointment containing 1 to 4 grains of unguentum hydrargyrii nitratis to the ounce of cerate; aye, and that too after mercury in the 3rd and 6th dilution given internally had failed to afford any relief, either generally or locally. The treatment was homœopathic; the therapeutic method homœopathy. If such treatment is not homœopathic, what is it? It is not allopathic the tissues diseased are the same as those the drug influences in health. It is not antipathic-the mode in which the drug influences the tissues of a healthy person is similar to that in which they are affected in the disease!

This then is the doctrine to confess a faith in which is, in consequence of the ignorance and narrow-mindedness which prevails among those who occupy the high places of medicine, so prejudicial to the professional advancement of medical men. Its value, its power to direct the cure of disease is however felt over an ever widening area. Unfortunately social considerations, the possibilities of being denied posts of honour and emolument prevent this value, this power being openly acknowledged. When the race is between self interest on the one hand and a desire to uphold the truth on the other, "the odds" as the betting man would say, are largely on the former outstripping the latter. Hence it has come to pass that the man who nowadays has the greatest amount of professional success, is he who

prescribes homoeopathically, while he rarely allows an opportunity to pass by him of decouncing homœopathy as humbug!

Therefore is it, that it is important, increasingly important that those who have the courage of their opinions, those who have confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth should openly confess that to be true which experience has taught them is true.

To confess that homoeopathy is true is, we hold, the duty of all who know that it is so; not only of men of long experience in the practice of homoeopathic therapeutics, but also of such as have seen and studied sufficiently to have become convinced that it is true, true at any rate within the range of their, so far, limited experience.

While confessing that homoeopathy is true, it is equally incumbent upon us to confess that the law of homoeopathy has, like every other natural law, its limits. This has been oftentimes demonstrated, but never better or more satisfactorily than by Dr. SHARP, of Rugby, in his essay on The Limits of the Law (Essays on Medicine, Leath & Ross). Cases, and more especially parts of cases, do arise where we may with advantage to the patient administer a palliative, where, indeed, all that can be done to afford relief is to be found in some empirical measure. If our profession is that of the physician, desiring solely the benefit of his patient, we shall not merely confess that homeopathy is true, and carry that confession into daily practice, but we shall equally acknowledge that it is not applicable to every phase of disease and injury that may come within our range, and equally shall we act accordingly. The exceptions we know are few, but they are occasionally of importance, and their existence must be admitted and provided for. With the Hahnemannian it is otherwise. He is bound by his

self-imposed fetters never to prescribe for a patient under any circumstances, on any other principles than those laid down in the Organon of HAHNEMANN. The agony of gall stones, the acute suffering of renal calculus, the tortures of cancer, and all the misery arising from extensive and irremediable organic changes within the body, must be met by medicines prescribed on precisely the same principle as that which will direct us in the endeavour to cure a functional disturbance !

Not only is he cramped practically, but his scientific researches are limited. What Hahnemann has said is with him true for all time! To deviate one hair's-breadth from the dogmatic assertions of the Organon, from statements, that is, of which no proof is given, to sustain which no evidence is offered, is with the Hahnemannian little. short of criminal! Hence he cannot endeavour to enlarge the scientific scope of homœopathy, he cannot enquire whether it has a wider range than Hahnemann allowed that it had. "Fidelity to the master" prevents any such investigation.

The distinction, then, between a physician practising homœopathy and the Hahnemannian is considerable, whether their respective positions be regarded from a practical or a scientific standpoint. The former has on suitable occasions admitted that so far as his experience has gone, what he understands by homœopathy is true, presents the best method known at the present day of selecting a medicine as a curative agent, and he prescribes in harmony with the principle of similars, uses comparatively small doses, and gives single medicines. But should his knowledge of pathology convince him that a given case can only be relieved by an antipathic palliative, the whole field of empiricism is as open to him as it is to any one. He is a physician, using that method

of treatment which he believes to be best for the individual case before him.

If he has had much experience of homoeopathy, if that experience has been carefully thought over, if his Materia Medica has been diligently studied, and his knowledge of disease is considerable, the occasions, when he will feel it to be to the advantage of his patient to divert from homœopathy will be only few in number and very brief in duration. Save in a few well-defined cases, the frequency with which a physician who knows that homoeopathy is true, resorts to some empirical-be it allopathic or antipathic-palliative or expedient will, we believe, without exception, be found to be in inverse proportion to his knowledge of the Materia Medica and of pathology.

To confess a faith in homœopathy, then, is not necessarily to admit that the Hahnemannic method of putting homeopathy into practice is infallibly true; it, for example, compels no man to avow with Hahnemann that "it holds good, and will continue to hold good as a homœopathic therapeutic maxim, not to be refuted by any experience in the world, that the very best dose of the properly selected remedy is always the very smallest one in one of the high dynamizations (30) as well for chronic as for acute diseases." No, when once it is admitted that drugs to cure disease may best be selected to do so, in proportion as their action on the healthy is like that prescribed by the disease it is desired to cure, homœopathy is confessed to be true. The duty of the physician who is prepared to acknowledge so much, is then clearly to ascertain how far this doctrine is true, and in what way it may be put into practice. And farther it becomes his duty to acknowledge in the sight of his profession that he has arrived at this conclusion. It is so in order that he may induce others to make the enquiries that he has made, that others may possess the power over

disease that he has acquired. If it is considered discreditable to use a secret remedy, to keep from the knowledge of one's profession a means of relieving a single form of disease, how much more disgraceful is it to withhold from our medical brethren the knowledge of a principle capable of directing them in the prescription of many scores of medicines. With those who confess homeopathy, it is the. importance of a principle, of a doctrine that they desire to make known, and to press upon the attention of their fellow practitioners. While those, who, from whatever motive, are content to advocate the use of certain medicines in certain cases, who keep back all information regarding the principle which led to their selection, who, in point of fact prevent, to their own advantage, the scientific development of therapeutics, are in very deed guilty of a far higher professional misdemeanour than he who retains. within his own ken the virtues of some one medicinal agent. On the other hand, those who refuse to allow the slightest departure from the ipsissima verba of Hahnemann, who affect to regard any attempt to criticise his opinions and assertions as presumption, are, by so doing, retarding the fullest development of the greatest of truths ever discovered in medicine.

ON THE ACTION AND USES OF ALCOHOL.

BY ALFRED C. POPE, M.D.

To the physician or the philanthropist, to the student of physical science or the political economist, there is no substance in common use, either as a remedial agent in disease, or an article of diet, which presents so wide and interesting a field for investigation as does alcohol. The evidences of its power for good and for evil are daily under our notice. There is, perhaps, no physician of experience who has not frequently seen the apparently dying snatched, as it were, from the very jaws of death by a timely dose of alcohol. On the other hand, who has not witnessed the dire effects