the exact character of the changes in the composition of the blood, in different diseases.

Thus they have deduced eight laws, the first of which is that "the simple fact of the development of a disease, almost always modifies in a notable manner the composition of the blood."

The remainder relatet o the changes of the blood, both chemical and mechanical, accidental and essential, in anæmia, inflammations, fevers and urinary diseases.

Andral sustains these conclusions with the weight of his unimpeachable authority.*

Again: pathology disproves, "that the totality of the symptoms constitutes disease." Necroscopy developes extensive alterations of the tissues after the occurrence of violent phenomena. Now if in a hundred cases after an unmistakeable and identical set of phenomena, we meet with the same alterations, it is perfectly legitimate to infer the dependence of the former upon the latter, in the relation of effects to their causes. The disease consists in these changes, and it would be as ridiculous to assume the identity of the phenomena, and the thing exhibited, as to pretend that cause and effect are the same.

But the homœopathist laughs at the idea of ascertaining during life, and combating these changes.

Take a case of pneumonia-how do the rival schools view and treat it? The scientific and skilful allœopathist, sees and considers symptoms, which mean anything, as much as his rival. Nay, the cough and fever, and full hard pulse, and pain in the chest, and dyspnoea, have to him more significancy than to the other, for they decipher to him in plain characters inflammation of the lungs, while to the other they are unmeaning phenomena, to be covered by those of a drug-disease. When we come to physical signs, (vastly the most important,) the allœopathist has the advantage. Not a single physical sign is regarded in homœopathy. Now by their aid, the regular physician may be said to know almost as certainly, as if there were a window in the patient's chest-the condition of the suffering organs-whether

*Andral on the Blood.

the disease is advancing or receding under his treatment, and what will be its termination.

Let the vender of sugar pills and powders, boast of the attention he pays to the most minute symptoms. What would it avail one who wished to have in his eye a correct image of another, to know merely the precise number of his hairs, teeth and wrinkles?

The homœopathist is that besotted being. The allœopathist gains a knowledge of the whole outline, the prominent features of a disease, rejecting with contempt useless appearances.

Having seen which of our two friends pursues the rational course to learn a disease, let us examine which of them treats it rationally.

If summoned during the early stages of pneumonia, the allœopathist practises venesection, and exhibits saline purges and antimony, both to diminish the volume of the blood, (become too great since its equilibrium was disturbed,) and the force of the heart's action, which tend to keep up and increase the existing congestion; and next he administers mercurials till the system is affected, because they have been proved to prevent the formation of fibrin, which abounds in inflammation.

On the other hand, the homœopathist, under the sanction of his motto, “si non juvat, ne noceat," does awful injury by doing nothing. He turns over the pages of Jahr's Manual, reads a collection of trashy pathogenetic effects, and selects the remedy which seems best to suit the disease. He puts two or three drops into a tumbler of water, and orders a tea-spoonful every two hours.

There are the methods side by side. Compare them. The allœopathist relieves nature staggering under a load too heavy to bear, the homoeopathist administers a remedy, which in full doses will, he believes, aggravate the complaint-and whichin the doses actually used, only a worthy candidate for Bedlam could conceive capable of producing the least effect.

It becomes a matter of interest to know how Jahr's Manual, on which homoeopathists so implicitly rely, was composed. Page 144 of the Organon tells us: "Any one, even of those

medicines whose virtues are considered weak, is now found to be most advantageously investigated, if from four to six minute saccharine globules, impregnated with the thirtieth dilution, be given to the experimenter, every morning fasting, and continued for several days." Now we merely hint, that imagination may have had a slight share in the origin of the manifold pathogenetic effects detailed in that veracious and inestimable book. It is remarkable that cinnabar and corrosive sublimate and muriate of baryta, and muriate of gold, have a much smaller space allotted to their effects, than sulphur and chalk, and cha

So much for homœopathic

momile and pulsatil, and flint-which are commonly classed among nearly inert substances. semeiology.

The next point on which Hahnemann lays stress, is that of the incompatibility of two similar diseases. Since, however, Satan is here divided against himself, we will leave this part of his kingdom to fall without discussion.

The last remaining point in Hahnemannism is the size of the doses. We need only briefly advert to it, before a society composed of thinking practical men, who are already as well acquainted with it as they wish to be. It is the point to which homœopathists in this country, feel ashamed to acknowledge their full adhesion, and they squirm and wriggle like a salted leech when it is pressed home upon them. Nevertheless, we have quoted Hahnemann's own words, which he repeats and amplifies to complete stultification, in his work on Chronic Diseases.

1

Mathematicians have gone into erudite calculations of the number of Caspian Seas requisite to make the thirtieth dilution. It is certain that notwithstanding the strictest regard to the prescribed regimen, which excludes tea, coffee, acids, salt meat, and many more edibles and potables, the patient neutralizes his medicine a hundred times a day. Does he drink a glass of water? Unless it is distilled, he swallows a quantity of saline matters sufficient to overwhelm the medicine.

And if he inhale the ethereal potence, in a room which has ever contained a bottle of cologne, what becomes of the simple unity

of the homoeopathic dose? Half the fragrant odours of the perfumer enter his nasal organ with it, and sadly disturb its salutary operation on his spiritual economy.

Hahnemann exultingly points to the deadly potency of a drop of concentrated prussic acid, in proof of the activity of as much of the thirtieth dilution of clam shells. It would not surprise us to hear him affirm, that the electricity in a cat's back can cure disease, because men have been killed by lightning. We should like, if we had time, to answer and explode his vaccine, and small pox, and typhus fever illustrations, but the fear of exhausting your patience, warns us to draw our remarks to a close.

And in concluding this lengthy, and somewhat rambling essay, which would have been shorter and more consecutive had leisure during the past week permitted, the writer cannot omit a word or two respecting his personal experience and observation.

It is known to some of the gentlemen of the Society, that we commenced our professional studies under the auspices of a votary of the new science. Ignorant of the first principles of the rational healing art, struck with the plausibility of the theory, (for it has plausibility) and unversed in any save homœopathic practice, it is not surprising that, with the confidence of partial knowledge, we zealously maintained our preceptor's dogmas. A course of medical lectures and clinical observation, soon shook the pillars of our faith, which presently toppled down headlong under the conviction induced by a series of experiments, and a perusal of standard works; so that after a year and a half spent in assiduous cultivation of homoeopathy, in researches among allœopathists for illustrative and corroborative facts, as we fondly hoped not without success, we abandoned it as an intangible chimera, a shadow of a shade, and have remained till to-day its undisguised contemner, its uncompromising foe. Having been behind the scenes, we can speak positively of American homœopathy.

And we charge American homœopathists with recreancy to Hahnemannic infinitesimalism.

Indeed, Germany is the sole country on the globe where that octrine could flourish vigorously. A country where thought on

political subjects can have no vent, because of the surveillance of the censorship, and because of an organized all-pervading system of espionage, almost demanding the secrets of men's hearts, is just fitted to foster metaphysical vagaries of the wildest order, rivalling in their fantastic gambols the poetic flights of Grecian and Roman mythology. Kant, and Hegal, and Fichte and the rest of the German metaphysicians, are no more transcendental than Hahnemann. What in their line can surpass the doctrine, that as the soul is the active principle in the body, so the matter of medicines merely encloses a spiritual essence; and as the soul must be freed from its gross corporeity to exhibit its full perfections, so the matter of medicines must be divided infinitesimally to allow their spiritual essence to work best on the human spirit?

Who of the ignorant bu thard-to-be-cheated crowd, that adulate homœopathy and its founder, would swallow so gossamer an idea as that?

It will not go down with our Yankees, nor can the practitioners themselves believe it. Accordingly, instead of the thirtieth dilution, they prescribe the first dilution and trituration, or even the mother-tincture * Instead of repeating the doze every four, eight, twelve hours, or forty or one hundred days, they give it every hour or two. Instead of being satisfied with a single remedy suitably selected, they administer several successively, marked one, two, three, four, &c., a combination which in Hahnemann's view would be as abominable as Theriac.

We charge them, moreover, with violating public confidence, and betraying their want of faith in their system, by frequently falling back on allœopathy, sometimes openly, oftenest fur

*We saw lately some homœopathic pills, quite as large as any noticed in Wood and Bache. It has been discovered that the minute globules are very provocative of ridicule, and hence the substitution of pills of respectable size