Dr. James W. T. Smith, physician to Belfast Hospital, sums up his survey of modern Old-School practice thus:

"Our knowledge of therapeutics has not advanced in equal proportion with other branches of medical science. It is the department in which we know least. The modes of action of many medicines are a labyrinth to which we have no clue. Another hindrance to progress is this: When a medicine has been ascertained to have a decided effect in a particular class of affections, there is a tendency to vaunt its usefulness in diseases over which it has no influence at all. The bromide of potassium is a good instance, that excellent, but much abused drug having been recommended in nearly half the ills which flesh is heir to." (British Medical Journal, August, 1884, p. 222.)

Dr. Samuel Wilkes, F.R.S., physician to Guy's Hospital, as though enlarging upon the statements of his confrére, answers his own query as to what success has attended his long professional work in this wise:

"It is curious to look over one's note-book ;-worry in business, bromide of potassium; loss on the stock exchange, bromide of potassium; quarrel with the cook, bromide of potassium; loss of pet dog, bromide of potassium; irritable stepmother or daughter, bromide of potassium. In such cases it is most difficult to discover the efficacy of medicines. I might say, in speaking of true and wellestablished remedies, our knowledge is empirical, their mode of action unknown. I maintain that our method is unscientific if the remedy is persevered in after being found valueless. Hypertrophy of the spleen treated thirty years ago as now, with mercury, quinine and iodides, has not been cured in a single case, so far as I am aware." (The Practitioner, January, 1893, vol. i., p. 1.)

Ziemssen's Encyclopædia was heralded throughout the profession as a thesaurus of great value. Yet even this did not relieve the rudderless uncertainty in which the Old School placed its practitioners. The London Lancet said: "It verges on the impracticable." (April 13, 1878.)

Dr. J. R. Black, going still further, said:

"The wealth of description leads me to think such a masterly grasp of disease must be able to give us something new and better as to its cure-the great goal of our work. Keen disappointment first, then a thought akin to contempt at such barren and imprac

ticable learning arise in the mind." (Cinn. Lancet and Clinic, August 24, 1878.)

A very severe arraignment comes from Dr. N. L. North, Brooklyn, N. Y., who says:

"A general name, as 'malarial fever' or 'typhoid malarial fever,' will do for all the diseases arising from decomposing vegetable or animal matter, and 'pneumonia' for all forms of the inflammatory affections of the lungs and bronchial passages, will be quite enough to satisfy the patient and his friends, and then how easy the routine: note the temperature, and, finding it above normal, prescribe quinine indefinitely but persistently. Perhaps the patient may complain of a bursting headache, or there may be a complete delirium—what matter. The temperature is high, rush the quinine. Finally a reactive dose is reached and the powers of nature yield, and the patient either dies in collapse or gradually rallies from the penetrating effects of the disease or medicine, or both." (No. 7, Medical Record, 1882, vol. xxii., p. 432.)

Another excellent authority sums up as follows:

"The great object of modern investigators seems to be the finding of some medicament which will either relieve pain or cause sleep." (R. Armory, M.D., Boston M. and S. Journal, vol. xciii., p. 331.) And this is true, as evidenced by their industry with coal-tar derivatives, whose therapeutic use is a more or less successful effort to avoid the injury and peril of morphine and chloral.

It is historically certain, therefore, that there has been no advance in Old School practice from within itself, if we take its own word for it. The London Lancet, in its "Annus Medicus," 1893, is still harping upon morphine in dysentery, methyl chloride in neuralgia, subcutaneous injections of morphine in occipital headache, etc., with no more tone of certainty than was had a century ago.

The average practitioner is plainly at sea, and the pharmacist, quick to take advantage of the situation, makes the remedies and foists them upon him as factories furnish the mechanic with material ready made. Science is no longer a necessity.

But while we recognize, in common with Old School authorities themselves, that their therapeutics as a system is without guide or compass, and in reaching out empirically for means that may be useful in the treatment of the sick has borrowed from our school many of the most Homœopathically indicated remedies, yet one cannot but feel that in the general science of medicine it has done much valuable work.

Having devoted itself to the collateral branches it has brought to bear the keenest methods of research and developed an array of facts that have greatly added to our sum of knowledge, but it is in vain that chemistry and the microscope yield their triumphs unless the sick profit thereby.

In the practice of surgery, in the light of modern developments, its achievements have been colossal; and, even in the much-abused field of therapeutics, the mere staying of its hand from former destructive methods has made its practice approach the benign.

The new science of bacteriology, which it has developed, has been of inestimable service in the field of preventive medicine and sanitation, and the world owes it much in that its studies and practice have led to the diminution of many epidemic diseases.

In so far as these branches go, there is nothing inimical to the Homœopathic law or practice. We cordially join hands with the Old School in all that tends to the extinction or prevention of disease. Let it but acknowledge the plain truth in therapeutics, that 66 Likes are cured by likes," and all differences will be swept away. The Old School is essentially a school of palliatives—a school of relief for to-day. Homoeopathy, per contra, is a system of cure; and this very fact, where cure is not possible, or might be long delayed, justifies the use of palliatives, for which we are indebted very greatly to the Old School. That, however, a radical change has transpired in latest years in this practice cannot be controverted, and one naturally inquires what has wrought the change from old to modern methods?

We have already noticed the changes incident to the abatement of former destructive measures, the advantages accruing from enterprising pharmacy, and the general advance in hygiene and sanitation following the discovery of bacteriology, but, in the science of therapeutics proper, we cannot but note the remarkable progress of Homœopathic principles. In support of this statement, we again quote from their own authorities. For example, as evidence that instruction in the lecture room has turned a complete somersault, and can at last teach something, but knows not why, permit me to quote from a lecture delivered at Bellevue Hospital, by Professor Smith:

"I shall make certain statements, based on clinical facts, for which I shall not attempt to give any explanation. One of the most important which can be administered with great benefit in

frequently repeated doses is Ipecac. You are aware that a teaspoonful of syrup of Ipecac. is likely to produce emesis; but it is also a fact, regarding which I was at first skeptical, that a single drop of the wine of Ipecac. will often arrest obstinate vomiting. Another extraordinary statement, which at first seemed to me fabulous, and may seem so to you, but which you will find based on clinical facts : Put a grain of Tartar emetic into one quart of water; teaspoonful doses of this solution every half hour will prove effective for relief of wheezing and cough accompanying a slight bronchitis in children."

This Professor urges Chamomilla in minim doses as a sedative for nervous and sleepless children; Digitalis in cardiac affections; Aconite in fevers; Gelsemium in facial neuralgia, giving thirteen cases in all, in seven of which he asserts the law of similia, while the remaining six are as clearly under that law as the others. (N. M. J., 1883, vol. xxxvii., p. 146 et seq.)

Does it seem possible that a teacher of the practice of medicine is as ignorant of its principles as he would have us believe, or is it a moral obliquity which prevents him from admitting that the practice he recommends is simple Homœopathy?

Dr. Strang, then President of the British Medical Association, referring to Homœopathy, says:

"The science of therapeutics is, in fact, in course of being revolutionized by this means; and it is quite certain that no positive science of therapeutics, capable of withstanding the shocks of mere changes in opinion and alteration of fashion, can possibly be enacted in any other way. We have no hesitation in saying, that a thorough study of drug effects would suffice to raise the domain of therapeutics from an empirical to a scientific basis." (Brit. M. J., August, 1882, p. 28.)

Charles Murchison, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., says:

"It is to the strong advocacy of the Homoeopathists that we are indebted for the common use of more than one excellent remedy; and Homœopathy must, also, be to some extent credited for directing attention to the affinities or predilections of certain drugs for particular tissues or parts of the body-a subject where careful investigation may be expected to lead to great results." (Brit. M. J., 1872, vol. i., p. 62.)

Dr. John Morris, of Baltimore, Md., makes frank avowal:

"We have for years past been gradually lessening the doses of

medicine. A lesson has been furnished us by Homœopathy. The experiment of giving small doses can be safely tried in nearly all cases of disease which we are called to treat." (M. and S. Rep., Phil., 1878, vol. xxxix., p. 199.)

Thos. J. Mays, M.D., Upper Lehigh, Pa., cites eight cases-of which one suffices for all. A case of pleurisy in a patient of 55, cured with Byronia administered in small doses every half hour.

"It is well attested," he says, "by all those who have made physiological experiments, or who have used it therapeutically, that Bryonia has a marked specific action on the serous membranes of the body, notably so on the pleural surfaces. Phillips says, 'that it will cause fatal pleurisy with fibrinous effusion,' and of its therapeutic value it fully equals any that exists." (New York Medical Journal, 1879, vol. xxix., p. 265).

Another instance I fear of moral obliquity.

Dr. S. W. Wetmore, formerly professor in the Medical Department of the University of Wooster, addressing the Buffalo Medical Association, assumes a much more manly attitude as he says:

"After more than twenty-five years of earnest pupilage in the various departments of our science, I feel that I have but a smattering of each, but this I do know, that there is certainly something in Homœopathy. As philosophical practitioners we all treat heart disease homoeopathically every day without giving a thought of Homœopathic law. He who ignores a doctrine without giving it investigation, is unworthy of the name of a teacher. It is true I have been culpable of that which I criticise, but then I was blind, now I see, and have the moral courage to say peccavi. I positively knew nothing of that which I condemned; the measure and cause of my intolerance is the case of nineteen-twentieths of the physicians of our school throughout the globe to-day. He must needs be blind in more than one eye who cannot see that its superstructure is something more than imagination, faith, sugar pills and delusion.” (Quoted from Dr. J. C. Burgher's Presidential Address, TRANSACTIONS, 1878, p. 1049 and 1950).

But this is abundantly sufficient to show to what a remarkable extent the principles of Homœopathy have pervaded Old-School practice, and that the only genuine progress made in therapeutics during the last half century has been in the more general adoption of Homœopathic principles. Homœopathy has accomplished grand