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But what of the prophet, whose star of empire thus startled the be-wigged doctors of one hundred years ago?

From 1790 to 1796 Hahnemann made many and arduous ascents of the mountain of knowledge, and finally brought down from those altitudinous heights the incontrovertible law, "Similia similibus curantur," which subsequent history has proven to be the "open sesame" to the rugged secrets of nature as found in the human economy, and which is the cornerstone of our arch that has withstood the brunt of battle and the jarring vibrations of the rhythmical tread of armored battalions for the past century.

To you, fellow disciples of this modern medical Moses, the name of Hahnemann must always be an inspiration.

Of his personality I need not speak at length. He was a cool, conservative, conscientious chemist; a prominent, progressive, practical physician; a serious, searching, scientific student; an indefatigable, invincible, independent investigator. Medical literature of the current century teems with tributes to his individuality; to his rugged perseverance, in the face of the most bigoted opposition from the established school of medicine; to his herculean efforts to cleanse the Augean stables of the accumulated débris of scholastic prejudice, festered in its putrid fermentation by the big-wigs of the day. I would but be "carrying coal to Newcastle if I were to yield to the temptation and relate, even in brief, historical facts with which you are all perfectly familiar. A less able man than Hahnemann would have given up in despair; a less conscientious man would have yielded to the terribly vindictive attacks made upon him from all sides. Put yourself in his place. Would you or I have had the necessary fortitude to assume the unenviable position of "one man against all the world"?

It is almost impossible at this time, when the jagged edges of vindictive criticism have been very materially dulled by the persistent application of the file of sober second thought, to fully comprehend what must have been the environment of that one man. See the keen lancet of that day, dripping with the sanguinary evidence of the antiphlogistic touch. Yea, verily! "Blood did tell" in those days.

Be it

Note the bulky and decidedly drastic purgatives, which were then a sine qua non, and the equally potent emetics. remembered that, at that time, the conceptions of the phenomena presented by the healthy and the sick were forced into systems, deduced from scanty observations by individual authors, and altered from time to time to suit the views of the period. Upon the authority of Stoll, most illnesses resulted from gastric impurities; mostly bile. A rival prophet, Kampf, the forerunner,

no doubt, of the microbe and bacilli apostle of this later day, gravely promulgated the doctrine that "infarctus" was the generic cognomen of the reigning pathological "devil of the deep sea." The name "infarctus," not unlike many very much. more modern scientific bug-a-boos, was applied specifically to "an unnatural condition of the portal veins and larger blood vessels, in which they are plugged up and distended in various places by variously degenerated and coagulated blood," and, pro tempore, to "infarctus was accredited all the ills that could not otherwise be accounted for. So hydra-headed a monster as “infarctus" must needs be attacked from all quarters. What more natural than that the therapeutic eye should discover another avenue by which the satanic "infarctus" could mayhap be assailed. Consequently "infarctus" was actively assailed by clysters, and when we remember that upon current authority it was gravely promulgated that "two or three clysters can be taken daily without detriment to health," and again, "this may be continued for years, as many persons require as many as five thousand clysters before they entirely get rid of the infarctus," it can easily be imagined that every active practitioner of that day included in his saddle-bag armamentarium a goodly quantity of "rough on infarctus," a fact at once evident.

We turn another leaf in the chronicle of fact, and, by the light of the Hahnemannian star, readily decipher John Brown. This sage earnestly promulgated the doctrine that health depends upon just the right amount of irritation, and, vice versa, disease is due either to a greater or less amount of irritation than the normal. Therefore therapeutics, according to John Brown, consisted simply in establishing the golden mean coincident with health either by bleeding, emetics, cathartics, or cold applications where reduction was necessary, or, in the asthenic condition, by the application of heat, the use of stimulants, wines, etc.

The medical atmosphere then, as now, was rife with theories, schemes, and sure cures; and medical opinion then was, as is allopathic medical opinion to-day, beating up and down, to and fro, as dead leaves move before the autumn wind. Upon this scene, filled with the discordand trumpet blasts of these would-be leaders, there suddenly came a clear, ringing note, individual in quality, and with a gradual cresendo that to-day echoes and reechoes through the civilized world.

Thus was homœopathy born. To this single clarion tone the century has added, one by one, the various instruments that go to make up the grand orchestra, while the halt, the lame, and the blind throughout the world form a grand chorus, whose song of gratitude is one of the most loyal tributes to the genius of Samuel Hahnemann.

To you, ladies and gentlemen, I need not answer the first query of my text, "What is Homœopathy?" To you, as to me, it is the embodiment of truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth; but to the great masses, and to the members of the allopathic profession, it usually means small doses.

This leads me to reiterate what has often been seen said before, that we owe it to ourselves, to our law of cure, and certainly to the memory of Hahnemann, to educate the masses, and impress upon them the salient features of our system.

The word homœopathy comes from two Greek words, meaning "like affections," and is under the guidance of the law "Similia similibus curantur." Prescribing according to this law constitutes homoeopathy. The size of the dose has nothing to do with it. Homœopathy has to deal only with therapeutic measures, and in all other branches of medical art and science we work in full accord with all other medical schools. This law of cure has made homoeopathy the science of therapeutics, and has elevated medicine, from its position of experiment and jugglery, to the high plane of accurate deductions and positive knowledge. And this brings me to the consideration of "What Homœopathy Has Accomplished."

In 1825 there was but one homoeopathic physician in this country, Dr. Gram, who located in New York city; he stood alone, with few friends, and without patients. To-day, sixtyseven years later, there are in this country alone seventeen thousand physicians worshipping at the shrine of homœopathy, and their clientele, which are among the most intelligent and influential in every community, are numbered by the millions. Homœopathy has revolutionized medical thought; it has rusted the dripping lancet of fifty years ago, and relegated it to the dusty shelves of the curio collector; it has throttled the polypharmaceutical prescription of a generation ago, and established the one-remedy-plan of prescribing; it has proved the value of trituration, by converting drugs, which in their crude state are inert, into active and valuable remedies; it has raised the standard of medical education, for it was the homoeopathic colleges which first made a longer course of study obligatory to obtain a diploma; it has modified the dosage of the old school. In literature it has developed a Ringer and a Bartholow, both of whom virtually advocate, while they deny the truth of, our law of cure.

And, more than all, it saves human life, which, under any other known system of medicine, must have been sacrificed.

I have statistics to prove this statement. In the city of Norwich there are twenty-four old-school physicians in active practice. There are three homoeopathic physicians, all of whom I know to

be treating the diseases upon which these estimates are made. The proportion of allopaths to homoeopaths is eight to one. My records were taken for the six months, July to December, 1891, inclusive, from the Bureau of Vital Statistics, as filed with the registrar of the town:

Total loss: Old School, sixty-five; Homœopaths, one.

We will multiply our loss by eight, to make the proportion even, and we have a death rate of eight to their sixty-five, or a loss on their part of eight to our one.

A canvass of the city has shown that the homoeopaths treat one-third of the population, and, calculated upon that basis, the allopathic loss would be much greater; but to be entirely fair to them I have based these proportions upon the relative proportion of physicians. I do not claim that these proportions will always hold; but I do claim that in all curable diseases homoopathy saves from two to eight times as many lives as allopathy.

Who can estimate the value of a human life, or who will attempt to compute the value of the thousands of lives homoopathy saves each year. Upon the people generally homoeopathy has accomplished much, in giving them greater intelligence in medication, positive opinions upon curative measures, and general insistence upon the adoption of less nauseous compounds; and from the people has come the pressure that has forced the old school to prescribe less heroic doses.

How truly prophetic, in the light of the present day, are these words of Hahnemann, written nearly a century ago, "Our art requires no political lever, nor worldly decoration, to become something. It grows gradually, at first unrecognized, surrounded, as it is, by all manner of weeds which luxuriate around it, from an insignificant acorn to a sapling. Soon its summit will overtop the rank weeds. Patience! It is striking deep its roots into the earth, it is increasing in strength imperceptibly, but all the more surely, and will, in its own time, grow into an oak of God, which, no longer to be shaken by storms, spreads

out its branches into all regions, that suffering humanity may be healed under its beneficent shade."

The death of homoeopathy has been announced a thousand times by the old-school journals. A homoeopathic physician wrote, in 1834, "The grave of homoeopathy has been dug for more than twenty years by more than thirty thousand allopathic doctors. They are all standing around the grave, and are waiting for the cortège which shall commit the long-looked-for corpse to their eager hands, that they may bury it as soon as possible and show it the last honors. Its funeral sermon was prepared. But see! The grave still stands open, and the corpse does not arrive."

We of to-day have beheld a shadowy line of would-be mourners slowly filing past the empty grave, their faces but illy concealing their chagrin and disappointment at not receiving the long-wished-for cadaver; and while the unwilling minions slowly and regretfully filled the unoccupied tomb, and the solemn notes of the long rehearsed funeral march by the band sobbed and echoed the thought, "It might have been," an ethereal figure, angelic in beauty and purity, gently floated in the midst of this funeral cortège, and, pointing with a shadowy hand to the same evening star of hope that so puzzled their forefathers of a century ago, unpinned the sable curtains of night and revealed to them a message, written in eternal fire upon the scroll of heavenly blue "Similia similibus curantur.'

ABDOMINAL SURGERY IN THE MASSACHUSETTS HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITAL.

BY HORACE PACKARD, M.D., BOSTON.

The surgery of the peritoneal cavity has reached its present prominence mainly through the perfect technique of antisepticism.

The boldness with which the abdominal organs have been operated upon in the last few years, is something almost startling. Expertness and celerity on the part of the operator are, without doubt, important elements of success. In general hospitals, the greatest obstacle to the best results is the fact that abdominal cases must be more or less mixed with cases of general surgery, many of which are of a septic nature. It is obvious that an operating-room which is liable to be used daily for foul cases of abscess, fistulæ, ulcerating cancers, etc., must be totally unfit, even with the most scrupulous care, for the conducting of those critical operations, in which the total exclusion of septic matter is the most important element in the future well-being of the patient.