by editors appointed at their hands. If, therefore, its method and plan should fail to commend themselves to those for whom it has been framed, all that can be said is that the problem is proved insoluble at present; and that further work on our Materia Medica had best be adjourned until all are agreed of what kind it should be. As regards the execution, it is not for us to prejudge in any way the verdict that may be given. We can only say that we have, conscientiously and earnestly, endeavored to fulfil the injunctions given us; that we have worked mainly,— habitually, indeed - from original material, and have done our best to secure faithful translation and accurate transcription; and that we have throughout invited help and criticism from all quarters, in order to make our volumes with Hahnemann's, to which they are avowedly a supplement — the Materia Medica of Homœopathy.

For this, and nothing less, is what they claim to be. We have too long, authors and lecturers and students and practitioners, been working with second-hand material. That there must be manuals, epitomes, arrangements, analyses of our Materia Medica, we fully recognize. But we maintain that, to be trustworthy, they must be founded upon the rock of real provings and poisonings, as exhibited in the Cyclopædia; and should not be accounted genuine unless they are so based. No one, we further contend, should write upon Materia Medica in our Journals and Transactions without referring to such primary records as the authority for his statements. We maintain also that no student can properly learn the pathogenetic action of drugs, which lies at the foundation of homoeopathic therapeutics, save by reading again and again the narratives we have furnished; and that, accordingly, all teachers of Materia Medica should make the Cyclopædia their text-book, and all their pupils should possess and diligently peruse it. Lastly, as all practitioners should be students, to them also we commend the work; and when its index shall have been framed to serve as repertory, we hope they will use it as their book of reference also.

The inference is that every homoeopathic physician, in esse or in posse, should have the Cyclopædia in his library. The editors

could not thus urge its claims were they the authors of its pages, or had they any pecuniary interest in its sale. Being without such disqualification they can speak freely. They have simply presented the original genuine material we all need for carrying out the homœopathic law; and believing earnestly in that law, and unwilling that it should be swamped in the prevailing empiricism, they are anxious that their work should not be regarded as a luxury for the few, but should be possessed and utilized by all. We have been fed with peptonized food and clothed in 'shoddy,' till perhaps our digestive power has failed through disuse, and we hardly value true broadcloth when we see it. Only thus can the editors account for the difficulty found by the Treasurer of the American Institute in obtaining purchasers for the four hundred copies of each part subscribed for by that body. They can but trust that the Cyclopædia may itself in time excite a healthier taste; and that then a sound pathogenesy will lead to more intelligent, more satisfying, and more successful practice.

In conclusion, the Editors have only to renew their grateful thanks to the members of their Consultative Committees, and to the other gentlemen they have already named (to whose list Dr. Winthrop Talbot, of Boston, U.S.A., should now be added), for the efficient help afforded them in their task. R. H.

November, 1891.

J. P. D."

It is incredible to any thinker to whom homœopathy is dear not as a fad, not as a superstition or a dogma, not as a means of ministering to personal fame, or gain, or aggrandizement, but dear as a noble and dignified and beneficent branch of established science and proven truth, that there can be a homoeopathic practitioner in the United States who is willing to remain without a copy of the Cyclopædia on his book shelves, and without the exact knowledge to be obtained from it, and from it alone, as a part of his mental enjoyment. Trashy "repertories,” made up from utterly irresponsible hearsay, from the unsifted and unchallenged "sensations" chronicled by persons greedy for notoriety, or the victims of hysteria, find ready sale, find eager consultants among those on the accuracy of whose knowledge of the treatment of disease rest, many a time, the issues

of life and death. Nothing that the most unscrupulous enemy of homoeopathy could bring in accusation against the practitioner of homœopathy could so cast contempt on our cause in the eyes of the thoughtful and the impartial as the fact that with our materia medica as our sole dependence in the therepeutic warfare against disease, we are willing to acquire our acquaintance with our materia medica from confused, irresponsible, frequently unreliable sources, and neglect and ignore the opportunity to learn authoritatively what the drugs in our armamentarium have accomplished and are capable of accomplishing. Homoopathy means one thing and one thing only, if we may trust the derivation of the word and the teaching of Samuel Hahnemann; it means the administration of a given drug for the relief of symptoms similar to those which the drug is known to be capable of producing in the healthy organism. The first step in the practice of homoeopathy is thus obviously shown to be the certainty what effects any given drug is known to be capable of producing. How known? Not by hearsay; not by a single unsupported assertion, however picturesque and voluble; not by queer, jolter-headed argument of the post hoc ergo propter hoc sort; for what impossible thing in this world or the celestial world or the nether world has not been "known" and cannot at any hour's notice be proven and refuted and proven again by puerile means like these? but by evidence based on tested facts; capable of being demonstrated at any time and by any scientific experimenter; in a word, known as other facts of science must be known before they can be accepted as facts by responsible and reasoning men. Many such facts concerning our materia medica are accessible to those who possess and are willing to give themselves to the study of the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy. There they can see on what basis rests the claim of drugs to make sick, and inferentially to make well. There they can find "reason for the faith that is in them," of a sort to meet withal the challenge that may be addressed to them. There they can lay a foundation on which to build their working knowledge of therapeutics. There they can at least partly escape from the twilight of dream and fancy and fantasy into the daylight of tested truth.

We trust, for the credit of our profession, that there will not be, a year hence, one student, graduate, or undergraduate, in the homœopathic fraternity in whose library and in whose memory the Cylopædia of Drug Pathogenesy does not abide, a trusted counsellor, an honored guest.

A PLEA FOR JUSTICE goes forth from the Middletown (N. Y.) Homœopathic Hospital for the Insane, which is of interest to homopathists everywhere. Homoeopathic institutions, wherever situated, find eternal vigilance to be the price not only of liberty but of mere existence; since homœopathy has always to reckon not only with its open adversaries, but with the everwatchful, Jesuitical enmity which turns to its own purpose every turn of chance or circumstance. The Middletown Asylum is one of the proudest testimonials to the beneficent usefulness of homoeopathic treatment and to the public appreciation of homœopathy's power. Since, in 1870, the asylum started by private enterprise came under the aegis of state recognition, its career of nearly a quarter of a century has been one of untarnished honor and unbroken success. Its establishment was for the purpose of furnishing to the insane poor the homeopathic treatment desired for them by their friends. This purpose now seems seriously threatened by the enforcement, so far as the Asylum is concerned, of the new districting law, the story of whose operation is best told in the words of the trustees of the Asylum:

It seems clear that the intent of the founders and of the law is unequivocally for the establishment, the maintenance and the continuance of a homoeopathic hospital where homœopathic treatment shall be administered to those who want the homoeopathic form of medication; and this institution is unquestionably designed for the accommodation of all insane persons, residing anywhere in the State of New York, whose friends may wish to have them, while thus afflicted, treated according to the tenets of homoeopathy. We are, therefore, of the opinion that those who believe in homoeopathy, and who,

when suffering with other diseases, employ, voluntarily, the means of cure known as the homoeopathic, are justly entitled to precedence and preference over all others in entering the State Homœopathic Hospital for treatment.

If, after all these have been accommodated, there is room for more insane patients, then those who have no preferences, or no prejudices in the matter of treatment, might be received. But it seems a hardship not contemplated by the founders of the institution, nor by the law, to compel allopathic patients to swallow homœopathic medicines, and at the same time to exclude from our wards those who really and earnestly desire the homœopathic method of treatment.

The law of 1890, chapter 126, provides for districting the State, and the board appointed for that purpose assigned to the Homœopathic Hospital, at Middleton, seven of the sixty counties. which constituted its original district. All pauper patients residing in these seven alloted counties must accept homœopathic treatment, nolens volens, unless their friends are able and willing to pay the cost of transportation to a State hospital in another district. Pauper patients outside the district can not come here unless they pay their own way, even if they desire homoeopathic treatment. The friends of pauper patients are not likely to be able to incur the expense of travelling from one district to another.

Again, since our wards are overcrowded with old-school patients from the Middletown district, we are unable to appropriately accommodate patients who prefer homœopathic treatment and who reside in any of the fifty-three counties of the State outside of this district.

We submit to the Legislature the fact that this is an unwarranted encroachment upon the liberties of the people, and upon the right of medical freedom which every citizen should enjoy as unrestrictedly as he may now enjoy civil, political and religious freedom.

In order to maintain homoeopathic treatment for those who desired it in the State Homoeopathic Hospital at Middletown, as they are pledged to do, the trustees of this institution last winter drew up a bill, which sought to obtain for homœopathists