pitted. Several patches are on the backs of the hands. It was not the most favorable case for the Finsen treatment, because the small rounded surfaces of the fingers made it impossible to treat a surface much larger than a split pea many times, so that it was a tedious one to handle by this method. Then too the patient was going to school and could not give the required time. However she was treated with and without the use of erythrosin from 20 minutes to one hour to a spot. The use of the erythrosin undoubtedly was of much assistancein shortening the treatments, though the reactions sometimes were more severe than desired. To be brief, 50 treatments were given, after which she had complete relief for two months in the latter part of the summer. Then in October there was a slight relapse, requiring two treatments more. Since then (two months) there has been no return. The nails are perfectly smooth and there is no roughness or eruption on the skin. I have reason to believe that she is cured. She has always been in perfect health aside from this trouble.

I might report several other cases treated by this method, but my paper is already too long, and I shall reserve them for another paper, and report another case, illustrating other methods of treatment.

Case 6.-Man 55 years of age, referred by Dr. O. LeSeure. He has had chronic eczema about the anus and nates for two years. For the last few months the itching has been well nigh intolerable, driving him out of bed at night and preventing sleep. The patch covered an area of about 24 square inches, was dull red, infiltrated, hard, scaly. The use of a favorite antipruritic which Joseph uses a great deal in Berlin, gave some relief, but not entire. This remedy will usually relieve the worst cases of itching and dehydrate the skin, often making cures, so I give the formula here, as it is not generally used in this country. Take of Liquor carbonis detergens 5.0 to 20.0; Amyli and Zinci oxyd. aa 20; Glycerini 30.0; Aq. destill. ad 100; M. S. Shake and apply frequently.

After a few days of this treatment he was given the X-Ray from a soft Gundelach, heavy anode tube, 12 amp. current in primary from Scheidel coil and mercury-jet interrupter, 4 inch spark gap, tube 6 to 8 inches from patient, seance 10 to 15 minutes, and repeated 3 times a week for 4 weeks, then twice a week. In all 17 treatments were given, after which he was discharged cured and there has been no return in 4 months. Prompt and permanent relief from the itching followed the first application of the ray.

This same case was otherwise healthy except a palmar eczema on both hands, which had persisted for several months. The skin was

much thickened and scaly, with here and there a furrow or crack extending through the corneal layer.

The indications for treatment in these cases is to first macerate and soften the dry, thickened horn layer. This can be accomplished with water, as the dry horn layer absorbs it readily, or by various chemicals, such as salicylic acid, soda, borax, ammon. carb., Muriatic or acetic acids. The water should be applied in such a manner as to steam it. This is accomplished by the use of impermeable dressings over the fomentations, the heat of the body being retained sufficiently to accomplish this purpose. After softening in this way salicylic acid and vasogen 10 per cent, was applied twice daily and covered with oil muslin. Three times a week he was given the High Frequency current. After 4 weeks of this treatment the improvement was considerable. The salicylic ac. peels the skin off evenly and diffusely, so that the deeper layers can be treated to better advantage. For the next three weeks 2 per cent of ichthyol was combined with the ointment to reduce the prickle layer, and in four weeks he was cured. There has been no relapse in 4 months.

This illustrates the management of some of the more difficult cases of this trying disease, but of course is not meant to be a complete discourse on the pathology and treatment. There is no disease which is treated so illogically by the average practitioner as eczema, and if this paper has stimulated thought and study in this direction it has accomplished its purpose.

ADVANCED BIOLOGY, WITH RELATION TO HOMEOPATHIC

PRINCIPLES.

By 1. W. Heysinger, M. A., M. D., Author of the Scientific Basis of Medicine; Solar Energy, Its Source and Mode; The Light of China, The Tao Teh King; etc., etc.

The majestic figure of Hahnemann must not be projected against the modern practice of medicine, as a background, if one would seek to understand and realize the tremendous significance of his teachings, and the momentous importance of the revolution which his teachings and practice precipitated.

The science and art of medicine of his day (when he, appalled and disgusted, abandoned the field of practice in which, though a young man, he was already a distinguished disciple), was dominated by a hoary antiquity of tyranny, and permeated with crude hypotheses and false theories, was constructed with its ingenuity directed to incongruous compounds contrived to bring together, into one olla podrida of drugs, everything which could apparently bear upon the case, in the vain hope that these mutually hostile elements would for

bear from internescine strife, and agree that all should work separately but in harmony, when the very elements of harmony were not appreciated or understood, and their individual powers were not comprehended.

Medicine, in that day, was, in fact, almost precisely in the state in which it now is in the remote interior districts of China, and far behind that which prevailed among the red men of America when discovered by Columbus. But it had a dogmatism and a despotism which we only can appreciate, when we still see its malevolence carried down by tradition from those bad old days, and only modified and tempered in our own by its impotence.

But even in these old evil days of medicine, his enemies, like Arabs, followed him while they cursed him, and plundered him when they reached him.

No old school doctor who reads or thinks is proud of those PreHahnemannian days; medical practice, to-day, is far further removed from the practice of those times than it is from all the teachings and practice of Hahnemann.

It is, indeed, a misnomer to speak of the "old school" practice, for it is far more recent than the established practice of Homeopathy, which latter has not varied in principle or application from the beginning, and doubtless never will. The means, the mechanism, the arms and armor, may be enlarged and improved, but the living principle, "the man behind the gun," will still load, and sight, and fire, and the enemy of health, and of human welfare, will still totter and fall before him.

We cannot compare the teachings and demonstrations of Hahnemann with modern medicine, simply because Hahnemann has reconstructed all medicine, of every name and school. Every principle of Hahnemann is now, in substance at least, an incorporated part of the regular old school practice in its most advanced form, and as taught and practised by its most advanced teachers and clinicians.

So recently as 1902 Dr. Loomis published, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, a paper warning the profession against the danger of following the methods and manufactures of the "compound drug purveyors," which "beasts of Ephesus" we too are compelled to face and fight, especially in the hands of our younger colleagues. Dr. Loomis lays down a set of aphorisms, which the Professor of Therapeutics, at Jefferson Medical College, reproduces in the Therapeutic Gazette, as "sound therapeutic aphorisms."

They are nine in number, and every thinking and reading Homeopathic physician,-I hope there are no others, -will at once recog

nize that every one is sound Homeopathic teaching and practice, and could have been written by Hahnemann-was demonstrated and so written in fact,-but certainly by no one else before Hahnemann.

"1. Keeping in mind the tendency of self-limitation of pathological processes and the possibility of cure as a result of natural forces, never prescribe a remedy that will interfere with, or upset the conservative effects of the organism.

"2. Keep the problem of treatment as simple as possible by the exhibition of few remedies, well selected.

"3. Bear in mind the possibility of aggravating existing pathological conditions and introducing new ones, by injudicious or too heroic methods of treatment.

"4. Remember that the benefit to be expected from remedies is generally offset or neutralized when a large number of remedies are exhibited at the same time.

"5. Try to remove the cause-this presupposes a careful study of the case, rather than a hasty prescription for this, that, or the other symptom.

"6. Do not forget that most medicines are two-edged swords; if a medicine does no good it is likely to do harm.

"7. Prescribe for conditions, not for diseases.

"8. When necessary, hit hard, but not too often.

"9. Watch constantly for symptoms that may be the result of remedies prescribed for the relief of other symptoms."

It may be said that the whole medical world has accepted the validity of the demonstration by Hahnemann of the increased activity of triturated or otherwise minutely subdivided drugs, and has abandoned the old views of mass action as strictly therapeutic. Of course results can be often achieved by mass action, and good results, but these are not therapeutic by specific activities, but mechanical or chemical, as soporifics, cathartics, styptics, caustics, hydro-therapy, etc., etc., and are no more medicines, in the true sense, than is the surgeon's knife, or spectacles, or splints, or opening an abscess, or replacing a dislocated articulation. The fields of therapeutic medicine. lie far deeper, and within the arcana of metabolism and what precedes or disturbs metabolism.

So, also, Hahnemann's single remedy and minimum dose have been accepted with practical unanimity by all schools of medicine. The question to-day is, not how much the patient will bear, but how little will suffice; and, not to make up shot-gun prescriptions in the hope that something will hit the case, but to find out what will precisely hit the case, and use only that.

And even the law of similars has been largely incorporated, as a method if not a law of nature, in the practice of all schools, and especially of the dominant school. Nearly all the newer medicines (excepting coal-tar products, and even the older of these), in the old school repertory are directly derived from the Homeopathic materia medica, and used precisely in accordance therewith. I might cite Hepar as an example, but any list of new remedies will demonstrate this fact. It is not so much the game as it is the name that is objected to, and we have authority for saying that, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"-and a conglomeration secundum artem, of the old Pre-Hahnemann days, would taste as villainous, and act as badly by any other name than "Stinking Pills," and the like, if still administered, which is fortunately not the case. In this case the whole system has gone by the board.

There are but two obstacles to-day in the way of a general acceptance of the law of similars, and these are, in the first place the misunderstanding of the homeopathic law of cure, and in the second place an erroneous view of biology which is only recently being displaced, after enormous research and the labors of thousands of investigators of the highest ability, by newer and more correct views of this subject which, of necessity, must lie at the base of any system of medicine. And these two subjects are closely inter-related.

It was the recognition of this law of inter-relation between biology and drug-action which produced the great law of homeopathic therapeutics, and, strangely enough, this was worked out by Hahnemann in a day in which true scientific biology had not even begun to exist.

It is marvelous, perhaps the most marvelous of all the works of this extraordinary man, that he was able to seize upon this great biological principle almost by a sort of prescience, when its laboratory and pathological and physiological significance was not possible to be suspected. But it was the result of a most rigid and persevering use of the true principle of Baconian reasoning by induction. The problem admitted of no other solution, when all its factors had been stated, and Hahnemann dared to plant himself on this immutable law, and wait for the slower feet of chemical, microscopical, and biological science to reach and demonstrate the facts. It is only within a very few years past that this has been possible, and it is with these facts that I am endeavoring to deal in this paper.

Hahnemann did not announce the Homeopathic law of cure as the only law of cure, nor did he exclude any of the other agencies of cure unless superseded in efficacy by some known Homeopathic medi