THE DANGER TO HOMEOPATHY.

BY H. C. ALLEN, M.D., CHICAGO, ILL.

Is there not a marked similarity between the political history of our country and the history of Homœopathy? On July 4, 1776, the founders of this nation, in congress assembled, signed the immortal Declaration of Independence, which says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And yet when the Declaration was adopted as a reason for the founding of a nation, and as a protest against oppression, thousands of men and women in the colonies were held as vassals-deprived of their "unalienable rights"-and the signers of the proclamation were cognizant of the fact. They believed in liberty, truth and justice and "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind;" but it was not politic, evidently, to reduce their principles to practice, for it required nearly a century of agitation and the eloquence of a Beecher, Phillips, Garrison and others, with the sacrifice of countless lives and treasure, ere this compromise with injustice-to use no harsher term -was stricken from our national escutcheon by the official act of the martyr president. The compromise of truth with error, of right with wrong, of law with anarchy or empiricism, is never wise or safe, no matter how expedient it may be deemed at the time.

This illustration from the political history of our country finds its parallel in the medical history of our school. Our materia medica is the corner-stone of our science, and upon its correct teaching depends the success or failure of the individual practitioner; and if the individual err in the application of remedial agents, failure, more or less pronounced, must be the inevitable result, and our system of therapeutics necessarily receives the blow. If similia be a law of nature, if it be a medical truth the practical application of which has been abundantly verified by clinical experiments at

the bedside, its pristine purity cannot be improved by an alloy of error or an admixture of empirical methods. Right is never improved by the mingling of wrong. In the introduction to Jahr's Manual, in 1838, Dr. Hering, with almost prophetic foresight, sounded a note of warning:

There is a quarter from which Homœopathy may suffer injury, by which its reputation may be lowered and its usefulness abridged. I refer to the futility of combining the practice of the Old and the New School, which some physicians have indiscreetly adopted. We readily allow that no medical man can be expected to pass instanter from one mode of treatment to another; an affair of such moment should be done gradually, yet with the resolute purpose, as quickly as possible to lay aside the old method of treatment. No practitioner, and more especially no novitiate, should arrogantly affirm that what he cannot homoeopathically cure, can be cured by no other person in that way. The history of Homœopathy has abundantly shown, during the last twenty-five years, that whoever attempts to unite the two modes of treatment must ever remain a very moderate Homœopathist; and as it regards the advancement and perfection of the science, the whole of this class have contributed nothing that is worth recording. I sincerely hope that this charge may not at some future day be brought against American physicians.

Dunham makes a similar charge, enters a similar protest, against a mixing of Homoeopathic and empirical practice when he says:

Some excellent men in our School are led away from the simplicity and purity of practice recommended by Hahnemann, in a vain attempt to utilize the grand achievements of our Allopathic brethren in pathology.

Fortunately, this is a world of law. Nothing occurs by chance. The movements of the planetary bodies, as well as the action of the similar remedy, are controlled by law, and every law of nature is beautiful in its simplicity. The highest success in the healing of the sick can only be attained by the firmest adherence to, or the strictest compliance with, the simplicity of law, for in this simplicity lies its strength. The Spanish philosophers were amazed at the ease and simplicity with which Columbus solved the problem of standing the egg on end, and the same is true of the simplicity of some of our greatest inventions. Drummond says: "It is probably the very simplicity of the law regarding it which has made men stumble, for nothing is so invisible to most men as transparency.'

It is just here that we make our mistakes in teaching and studying materia medica. We have been taught it is a difficult study; that it is impossible to master it; and instead of adopting the sim

ple, easily explainable rules of Hahnemann, we have gone in quest of some will-o'-the-wisp-some pet theory of some author-in an attempt to utilize pathology. To the genius of him who rescued the science of medicine from the chaos of empiricism are we indebted for the simple rules for the proving of remedies on the healthy, the recording of their effects and the selecting of the similimum after the record is made. It was the genius of this master of observation who formulated rules for the practical application of the law in the cure of the sick. These rules are found in the Organon, the only medical work contemporaneous with Hahnemann ever opened to-day except for antiquarian research. They are as fresh, as true, as clear and explicit in their beautiful simplicity as the day they were written, and here they will stand forever, a monument to the genius of their author.

Here is the key-note:

Organon, 153.-In this search for a Homeopathic specific remedy-that is to say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the natural disease with the lists of symptoms of known medicines, in order to find among these an artificial morbific agent corresponding, by similarity, to the disease to be cured-the more striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar (characteristic) signs and symptoms of the case of disease are chiefly and almost solely to be kept in view; for it is more particularly these that very similar ones in the list of symptoms of the selected medicine must correspond to in order to constitute it the most suitable for effecting the cure. The more general and undefined symptoms-loss of appetite, headache, debility, restless sleep, discomfort and so forth-demand but little attention when of that vague and indefinite character, if they cannot be more accurately described, as symptoms of such a general nature are observed in almost every disease and from almost every drug.

It is these striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar symptoms, generally found in a proving in this order:

First. In the mental symptoms, the sensations.

Second. In the localities or tissues.

Third.-The nervous system.

These characteristics once mastered, a practical knowledge of the genius of a remedy is obtained, which will serve as a guide in everyday work at the bedside.

THE REASON WHY.

BY WILSON A. SMITH, M.D., MORGAN PARK, CHICAGO, ILL.

In these days, when surgeons are made faster than patients can be created for them to carve on, I trust it will not be the means of having me read out of the American Institute of Homœopathy if I make a plea in favor of the materia medica. I am as proud of our surgeons as any one can possibly be, but I am not ashamed to state that I have still greater respect and admiration for the physician who, taking the symptoms of some poor unfortunate, and following the plans of one Samuel Hahnemann, deceased, cure him and thus keep from the surgeon's knife a case which never had any right to be referred to one. Every new graduate, nowadays, saves every dollar he can, and invests it in an elegant operating case, thoroughly aseptic, of course, and, before his diploma is fully dry from the signatures of his professors, rents an office, hangs out his shingle, and sits down to wait and sigh for the coming of some unfortunate man or woman, who has a pain in his or her abdomen, in order that he may perform abdominal hysterectomy or remove the vermiform appendix, and with one single incision of his scalpel carve his name high up on the round of American operators.

You, no doubt, have been practicing long enough to have made the discovery that about every man and woman in this country has an abdomen, and that it is not due to a lack of abdomens that there are not more operations performed, but on account of the lack of consents thereto. I have even gotten so far along in the line of fads that I have been debating the question whether or no I ought not to have appendiciotomy, or whatever they call it, performed upon me. I would then belong to the upper ten. The select society here in Colorado would see that I was wined and dined; that I was present at every social gathering held in this city during the meeting of the Institute, and I would have the best time, socially, imaginable. I know what I lack, and the abdominal surgeon does, too; but I have another failing, and that is the nerve to be cut open even

if it would admit me to the society of New York's four hundred and a seat at Ward McAllister's right hand at some swell dinner.

You are also aware that this appendix is not a new normal growth, but that it has been in the anatomical construction of man ever since Adam and Eve fooled around the apple tree in the Garden of Eden. It does not appear strange, then, if it is stated as a fact that about so many persons have actually had appendicitis, and that a fair proportion have recovered without an operation. It is needless, probably, to mention that the womb is a normal arrangement placed in the human economy for a specific purpose, and that it also has been there as long as the appendix, and that there have been a few cases where there has been some sort of abnormal condition, and after the exhibition of the proper remedy the woman has actually gotten well. There is nothing hair-raising about these two statements, but I do not want you to go to sleep on account of these plain facts which I state. I think it occasionally does one good to look the truth square in the face.

Now, I do not wish to appear as being opposed to investigations, nor to anything in the way of new methods or new operations which will do good, or that will be of benefit to the human family, but I am decidedly against the profession showing its lamb-like qualities by jumping over every fence the bell-wether does, and commence picking in a pasture from which we may be ignominiously driven by some common cur. I think we ought to investigate thoroughly, and then take up just what is proved beneficial and nothing more. The death-rate is high enough in all these operations, and we ought to hesitate before we heedlessly and needlessly order some poor unfortunate to pass through the toils of abdominal work.

Of course, you know that the sexual organs of the woman stand in the same relation to her animal economy that the sexual organs of the man do to his. After all the ovaries have been removed to cure these reflexes we hear so much about, all the abdomens cut open and all the appendixes cut off, will these operators do like Alexauder the Great, and, sitting down, sigh for other worlds to conquer? Not a bit of it, for their next step will be to remove the sexual organs of man and stop all reflex irritation, and upon the ruins wrought erect a race of eunuchs who will be incapable of having any reflexes. About that time the millennium will be at hand, and