CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. UNCERTAINTY OF MEDICINE, 25 IMPORTANCE of the subject. Definiteness of results in chemistry. Only a CHAPTER II. SKILL IN MEDICINE, 50 SHOW in what medical skill consists, in view of the uncertainty of medicine skill. Taking limited views of disease. Directing attention too much to CHAPTER III. POPULAR ERRORS, . 63 FALSE estimate of the importance of positive medication. This error CHAPTER IV. QUACKERY, . 80 THE grand source of quackery the false reference of effects to causes. currency. Ridiculousness of quack advertisements. Certificates. Chiefly mode of guarding against imposition. Quackery as a monstrous business interest. Press and legislatures trammelled by it. Itinerant quack lec- turers. Lectures especially to the ladies. Animal magnetism. Para- prince of quacks." St. John Long. Perkins' tractors. Forms of Quackery many, but the materials from which they are formed PRINCIPLES of the system as promulgated by its founder. Bold con- BRIEF notice of the founder of Homœopathy. His exalted ideas of his 2. Minute division, with agitation and trituration, communicates a new power to medicines. Subdivision very minute, and extremely particular directions given by Hahneman for effecting it. Whether such a power is thus communicated to be decided by facts. "Observations" on which the opinion is founded. Character of them illustrated from Jahr's man- ual. Their extreme minuteness. Mode of collecting them. Based upon the ridiculous idea that all states of the body are to be referred to the remedy taken. Notices of some particular remedies in illustration. Alleged success of Homœopathy. Apparent success to be attributed to six causes. 1. Mental influence. 2. A strict regard to diet and regimen. 3. Operation of the vis medicatrix naturæ, or curative power of nature. 4. Comparisons made between the results of homeopathic practice and those of over-dosing physicians. 5. An occasional stealthy use of reme- dies in ordinary doses. 6. The facility with which people are deceived in regard to comparative results. Parallel case of a German clergyman. Empty boasts of homœopathists as to the character of their physicians. Points of resemblance and of difference between Thompsonism and SETTING of bones wholly mechanical. There cannot be an innate skill in this, any more than there can be in any other kind of mechanics. |