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Be

The title of this paper is sufficiently comprehensive to admit of similes on every point of homeopathic philosophy, but it is not our intention to reach the ultimate possibilities of the caption, but rather to touch the subject in high places, as it were.

We have often seen a lad "skip" a flat stone on the surface of smooth water, which left expanding circlets behind it, they finally merging into an undulating path, which in turn extended its wavelets to the adjacent fluid until the whole surface vibrated with a wavy tremulous motion.

If the ideas contained in this paper, "shied" at the broad expanse of its subject and projected on the ocean of thought, create a shimmering line of thought, corruscating with "similar" notions, the purpose of this paper will have been accomplished and we shall be happy.

The teachings in Hahnemann's Organon are so radically different from the traditions and practices that we have accepted as true for so many years, that when coming across them for the first time one naturally shrinks from their immediate acceptance, because they are not at once self-evident. Moreover the Law of Similia is to all appearances a flat contradiction, but the experience of a hundred years has demonstrated that it is no such thing, and, therefore, if it has the appearance of being a contradiction and is a real truth, it is necessarily a paradox. And so it is, of the most pronounced type. Since paradoxes are merely truths in disguise, it becomes the duty of the advocate of their principles to demonstrate them and to remove the masks which hide their beauties from the inquirer.

Being ready to admit that we have a paradox to put into practical application, we naturally seek to examine its most salient points, and in so doing at once come across these three, which we will consider, i. e., “Drug Action, primary and secondary," "Like Cures Like," and "Potentiation."

In the "wild and woolly West," or in that part of creation so consid

ered by the more ancient East, homeopathy is yet in comparative infancyat about that period of existence which would correspond to the teething period of a growing babe. Being yet in swaddling garments, and having to be vouched for, it is often necessary to leave the high standard of finished and technical language in which the more highly educated would find pleasure and receive understanding, for simpler and plainer speech-to put the pabulum of homeopathic truth in such homely form that the minds of the laity can assimilate it.

To this end it is often necessary to construct figures of speech containing a central idea that corresponds to the fact under discussion, and which is familiar enough to the listener to enable him to appreciate its application and be instructed. Even in teaching medical students the intricacies of the Organon we have found that this means of instruction has produced the deepest impression and left the clearest understanding of the subject matter.

Unlike the student of to-day, who attends medical college with a teacher to explain the intricacies of the homeopathic philosophy, we studied it alone, and many and long were the hours of reflection on, and ruminating of, the various paragraphs before their meaning became clear and their application apparent. Our school was individual reflection, in secluded silence mostly, but often in the loudest uproar. But, whether in the stillness of a night in the country; in the seclusion of a shady spot on the river's bank practicing the art that keeps the White House bereft of a master much of the time, or amid the clamor of a ball game, our teachers were the events constantly transpiring around us, which without language of words became explanatory expressions of problems that awaited solution to us.

Whether the conclusions arrived at were correct or not, we will leave for your decision, as some of them are here given in the particular form in which they were born, and clothed in the thought raiment which at that time invested them. But whatever your decision may be, they dispelled much of the mist of uncertainty which intervened between us and a clear understanding of the difficulties presented.

DRUG ACTION-PRIMARY AND SECONDARY.

The whole superstructure of medicine must necessarily rest upon drug action, in its widest sense of application, and it must be conceded that the giving of medicine, to become a science, must be done according to fixed principles. The belief that medicine will finally become an exact science must needs include the proposition that drugs produce certain specific and definite effects. Then, what is drug action? Hahnemann characterizes it in classic language; we roughly say, it is their (drugs) sick-making power. Experiment determines the fact that drugs cure sick people, and they must do so, therefore, by virtue of their sick-making property. The deduction follows, as the day the night, that no drug will make a sick man well, that will not make a well man sick. Experience further determines that drugs have two effects-primary and secondary. How, then, can the same drug cure in two different ways? Because it has two different actions, i. e., a

primary and a secondary effect; and the old school doctor prescribes on the indications of the former-when they prescribe on indications-while the new school prescribes on the indications of the latter. But some will say, while I know what you say, I do not understand what you mean; I cannot fathom that thought at once; please illustrate. Well, my friend, Hahnemann in Paragraph 63 of the Organon, states that "every drug alters the harmony of the vital force more or less and produces a certain change in the state of health of the body for a longer or shorter space of time. This is called primary effect. Although a product of drug action and vital force, it is probably due chiefly to the action of the drug. Our vital force by means of its energy endeavors to oppose this effect. The resulting conservative reaction is an automatic activity of the vital force, and is called after-effect or counter-effect." If possible, the inquirer after light on this subject, or the student reading this passage, is more mystified than before, because of the complexity as well as the newness of the idea, together with the addition of this new element, the vital force. As it is not necessary, or even expedient, at this point, to attempt an explanation regarding the vital force, we usually say to them that the human body is subject to the same laws as any other body, and that one learns very early in his scientific career that "wherever in nature there is an action, there is a consequent reaction." For instance, if you hitch your thoroughbred trotter to your road cart, get behind him with a whip and lash him severely until he gets to the top of his speed, and repeat the castigation as soon as he begins to lag, you will travel a greater distance with him in the same length of time by so doing than by any other means. But if you keep up this treatment it will soon be discovered that he will not respond so readily to the stimulus of the whip, and other and more drastic means have to be adopted, until all the spirit in him has been worked out; you have brought him to a condition corresponding to the secondary effect of drugs. Administered in crude form, they set up an intense action, but it soon runs its race and then comes the day of reckoning-the penalty being an actionless constitution. The sensitiveness to drug action has been killed, like the spirit of the horse, by the drug-whip. And as the muscular power of an organism may be exhausted permanently by over-exertion, so may the reactivity of the vital force be destroyed by the constant repetition of crude medicinal agents. But, you say, I am not yet clear on this point. There is too much "vital force" in your explanation for my understanding. it clearer in some other way? Well, yes, as nearly as can be done by omitting one of the essential elements of the proposition. However, if you will take an ordinary convex lens and get it "in focus," you will see the object under the glass very clearly, more so than without it, while if you move the glass away, the object will gradually disappear entirely, until at length it will reappear, but will be inverted and not so distinct. The object in focus. in correct position is the primary action of the glass, and the object in focus appearing to be inverted is the secondary action of the glass. The primary effect of a drug being a given one, the secondary effect is just the opposite.

Can you not make

Now, those curing the sick by the aid of the primary effect of medicines, do so, as a rule, according to the law of contraries, while those curing by the secondary effect of drugs, do so, almost invariably, according to the law of similars. "Oh, I see," says the inquirer, "Similia similibus curantur, the hair of the dog is good for the bite." Not so fast, my friend, with your translation. It is not the hair of the same dog, but that of a similar dog, if you wish to paraphrase correctly. But how can you possibly say that a drug producing a given effect can cure effects similar to those of the drug? It is the very acme of paradoxes to make such a claim; and it is more than that, it is absurd. Now, my friend, you have seen equally absurd and contradictory things, and I will show you from your own experience that this proposition is as practical as any other apparent contradiction which you have seen demonstrated. This brings us naturally to our second point.

LIKE CURES LIKE.

You have seen water made to boil by pouring ice-water over the vessel containing it (in the culinary paradox). You have heard silence ensue after the introduction of a humming "A" tuning-fork into an "A" tube, and heard it resume its song on being withdrawn. You have had the burning which follows a swallow of Bourbon vanish on taking a swallow of seltzer water; both of them are irritants, but the one allays the irritation produced by the other. Now, the present application of this fact is this: Whatever life is, and whatever health is, they are modified by the action of drugs. If life is a mode of harmonious motion, and the specific effect of drugs is a mode of harmonious motion (if health is harmony and disease is discord), then as silence results from the meeting of similar sound waves, so harmony is restored to the discordant organism by the meeting of its specific activities with similar specific activities of drugs precaution.

And, on the other hand, do you not know that if you strike an "A" chord on the piano, every other "A" string in the instrument will vibrate in unison with it? This fact still further explains how likes are influenced by likes, the former case corresponding to what we term the primary, and the latter to the secondary effect of the drug. Thus, as the harp-strings, tuned to a certain key, are set singing in unison by similar chords sounded by the musicians' hand, so are human life-vibrations harmonized by similar chords of action when adapted to them by the skilled physician.

At this point I wish to add another illustration of the influence of likes upon each other producing, to say the least, startling results. If you will look at a piece of paper or goods of a yellowish tint of about the same degree of color as that of an oil lamp or gas flame it will appear to be white or a piece of violet or lavender ribbon looked at in the lavender light of an arc electric light at first glance looks white showing again that likes powerfully influence each other.

The question is often asked, What is the difference between the old and the new schools? My reply is, the same difference as between the By that I do not intend to say all the difference in the world, but that they are diametrically opposite. The difference might

north and south poles.