CHAPTER I.

Amidst the improvement which has of late years been introduced into almost every branch of human knowledge, it is not a little surprising to find the most important of all, the knowledge of the art of healing diseases, if not remaining stationary, yet at least making none of that progress to perfection which might have been anticipated. While the severer Philosophy of more modern days has been so indefatigably and so laudably engaged in sifting the grain from the chaff, and in most instances has rejected much that was worthless,

while experiment has eyerywhere else begun to assume the place of conjecture, and little been permitted to remain which did not rest on a firmer basis than hypothesis or assertion,in the science of medicine, either the dogmas of schools still retain their authority, and where most caution in admitting any thing not rigorously and repeatedly proved was necessary, there least seems to have been used-or else *" medical men plagued themselves with wandering among theories and idle schemes," grasping to-day without enquiry what was to be rejected to-morrow without reason. The kindred art of surgery indeed has made large and quick strides to perfection, so large as to leave little probably to be discovered by posterity, or desired by patients. The art of the physician meanwhile, the knowledge, that is of the properties of medicines, and the power they possess of healing diseases in the human body, seems to have remained almost unaffected by research. A few new medicines have been discovered, and some obtained by the aid of chemistry in a concentrated form; but little, comparatively with any other branch of human knowledge,

*This is no assertion of mine, but quoted from the Medical Gazette. If it be true, it is no doubt very fair of the author to confess it; but it does not give one a very exalted idea of the "Baconian principles," &c. of the science.

has been effected by the combined skill and perseverance which have been applied to the subject: disease baffles medical skill now as it did formerly, and pain remains unrelieved: and disease without remedy, and pain without relief are tolerable evidences that medical science has not reached perfection; and if so, the greater the talents which have been employed to improve it, the greater the probability that the path followed must have been a mistaken one, and that the principles adopted without previous investigation are erroneous.

However this may be denied by those on whom education and interest have combined to impose the belief that human intellects are incapable of admitting any more knowledge on the subject of medicine than has been already revealed to the members of the College of Physicians, there is one circumstance which ought not to be lost upon the profession, strongly corroborative as it is of what has been asserted. Let them but reflect on the infinite number and vast sale of quack medicines in this much-physicked country. Nothing is more painful than to read the advertisement of them. Every impudent and hungry knave who wishes to make money in the readiest manner possible, without the trouble of labouring for it, provided only that his assurance is greater that his conscience, has nothing to fear; it is but to put a flaming name to some bottle or box of deadly mixtures, and he is provided for for life. What is it to these merciless empirics if crowds die beneath their bottles? One remedy is coined and compounded as fast as another is exploded, and, big with fate, the sweltered venom is dispersed abroad to the four winds, carrying with it one only hope for the poor sufferer whom desperation drives to shut his eyes and swallow it, that if it does not cure it will kill.

In this system, what do the really amiable and benevolent, and scientific medical practitioners read, but that their art is in many instances unavailing. It is easy to attribute it to folly and ignorance, and to reprobate the extreme stupidity

which can encourage ́such a portentous and prodigious mischief. If the art of healing had improved as it ought to have done, men would soon have had the wit to find it out; if it approached any thing like certainty in its results, if people could get cured of their complaints completely, and surely, and easily, by the honourable and honest members of the profession, they would never defile their fingers even with the outside of those dark atrocities quack remedies. It is sheer despair mere catching at straws. If ever the day shall dawn when the art of healing becomes what it ought to be, an art whose results are not dubious, that day will witness the expiring struggles of the worst Hydra that ever devastated a country. The uncertainty of cure is the parent of all these desperate expedients.

Amidst that uncertainty, however, there are a few instances wherein medicine is eminently successful. A few diseases which invariably appear attended with the same symptoms, are completely in the power of the medical attendant, who, employing the medicines which experience has taught him to be proper, triumphs over the disorder with ease and certainty. There is no doubting, no guessing, no hesitation, no compounding of drugs: the symptoms are declared, and the remedy is known at once. These cases are, as I mentioned, those only in which the symptoms are invariable: these remedies are called Specifics.

It does seem somewhat singular that the attention of the profession has been so little directed to these invaluable remedies. In almost every other branch of human knowledge the registration of facts has only led to the deduction and establishment of the laws by which those phenomena are regulated. Why should the phenomena of healing be the only exception? Why has it not been sought when and under what limitations medicines have the power of removing maladies? If nature acts invariably by certain fixed laws, why are not the laws of specificity discovered, as well as those of gravitation or of

motion? Is it not quite natural to expect that there are constant and fixed laws referring to the one as well as to the other? For more than two thousand years, however, the same system has been silently acquiesced in, nor was it until lately that any one thought of investigating a subject so full of importance to mankind.

Some years ago, however, the attention of a native of Meissen, in Saxony, who had been educated for the medical profession, was attracted to it, and led by some striking phenomena which appeared on his first essay with Cinchona, he determined to institute a series of experiments for the purpose of determining, if possible, first, whether there was in fact such a thing as a law of specificity, and secondly, if such turned out to be the case, to apply that law to the curative properties of all other medicines, so as to establish the case in which every other individual medicinal substance became a specific. It will be, at once, evident that the first step in such an extensive enquiry must be to determine with accuracy the peculiar properties of each individual medicament, those by which each was distinguished from every other; and, as the knowledge of the medical world on this subject was very defective, extending no farther than to some general properties which belonged to several in common, he determined first of all to discover, by actual experiment on himself, all the properties of those substances which acted as specifics, and next to continue those experiments carefully on other therapeutic agents.

It cannot be doubted that his sufferings during the course of this investigation, continued as it was for many years, must have been very great. Whatever they were, he bore them with a fortitude and perseverance which are more worthy of imitation than likely to find imitators, until, having with the greatest accuracy noted down every symptom which each medicament was capable of producing, he found himself in possession of a copious index, not merely to all the symptoms

which the various medicines he tried could produce in the human organism, but to nearly all those which morbific agents are capable of producing as well; that is to say, he had produced by some medicine or other symptoms corresponding to almost all those of natural maladies. He had been in the beginning struck with the singular resemblance between the symptoms caused by some specifics and the diseases which those specifics cured. He found that Peruvian bark excited a species of ague very similar to that which it cured; that mercury caused symptoms so like syphilitic ones as to be at times indistinguishable from them, &c. And suspecting that this similarity was the very principle by means of which the cure was affected, he had no sooner obtained a competent knowledge of the properties of different medicaments than he proceeded to apply that principle to the healing of diseases. The success of the experiment is said to have been complete. Had he been, indeed, what some have not blushed to call him, a Charlatan, he might have lived unassailed and died wealthy; but his noble nature spurned such contemptible inducements. with a splendid liberality which, we are proud to say, is by no means rare in the annals of medicine, he gave to the world at once the whole theory and practice of his art, and laid open every secret which it had cost him so many arduous hours of labour and years of suffering to discover. Let it not be forgötten when the name of Hahnemann is mentioned; neither let his reward be forgotten: obloquy, reproach, insult, and persecution. With no other object than to relieve suffering human nature, with no other means than patient study, with no other wish than to establish and extend the truth, above selfishness and beyond fear, he published all he had discovered; his requital, for a long time, was such treatment as he would have deserved if he had wasted his hours in devising means for increasing suffering, if he had lavished his talents in crushing truth, or occupied himself in disguising with hard names the errors of a system which had nothing but antiquity