nized medicine. Hard facts of its utility and benefit to mankind. soon made it respectable.

It is not within the province of my paper to give more of the evil results of orthodox medicine, or I could do so with a vengeance. I can however assert that if I was ill and could not get homeopath to attend me I would trust to nature for recovery. I have not one word to say against old school medical men, for among them I have some very warm friends and many of them are noble specimens of manhood. Its their system that I speak against. Some of these gentlemen are so liberal that they will take a hint from a homeopath or to use the words of Dr. W- "would take a hint from an old woman, from whom he had often got a good one."

I am greatly interested in Dr. W.'s Case Book. He gave me permission to peruse it if I wished, and on doing so a most striking fact became apparent. Every case he had cured was in accordance with homeopathic law, although I may explain he had chosen his medicine quite ignorant of the law upon which a homeopath would have based his choice.

Another great advantage of homeopathy is the shortened period of convalescence and the absence of detrimental after-effects of severe drudging. Who has not observed the countless number of valvular diseases following upon the favorite old school method of treating rheumatic fever? Who has not seen poor sufferers from deafness, noises and ringing in the ears, the results of overdosing with quinine, and still worse, the quiet way of lowering patients into the grave with large doses of bromide potassium. This has become quite common nowadays.

Such dangers are happily avoided by adopting homeopathic treatment. If the public only knew the intrinsic value of the new system of medicine they would never hesitate for a moment to adopt it.

"Ah!" said a gentleman to-day, "It's the faith patients have in their medical attendant that cures them." We will grant that this is a factor in recovery, but tell me how much faith a tiny baby suffering all the suffocating effects of a bad attack of croup could have. There is the livid face, whistling respiration, hoarse, croupy 'cough and gasping for breath. But give this little sufferer a drop of spongia tosta on the tongue every ten minutes and watch the marvellous effect. Slowly the purple color disappears, showing that the blood is being better oxygenated and so prompt relief is given. Tell me whether the fraction of spongia or faith in the one who administered it had most to do with the recovery.

Then in the lower animals how efficient is homeopathy in the treatment of them. I know farmers who would have nothing else, and these men have been most successful in the treatment of their stock. I am quite ready to admit the power of mind over the body but I still stick to my guns and assert that the powder is dry.

Let me ask you how it is that homeopathy makes remarkable cures even upon people who have been under some of the most eminent medical men of the day and have been given up by them as incurable, yet homeopathy frequently saves them from becoming angels simply by its knowledge of the law of cure.

Homeopathy has had to fight and is still fighting its way through bigotry and oppression. As an instance of this when the late Princess Alice offered prize for the best essay on the treatment of diphtheria, one gentleman who wished to compete was excluded because he was a homeopath, but to-day his treatment is most efficient and adopted by both schools of medicine.

I do not allude to the murderous system of injecting anti-diphtheritic serum. The faculty ought never to forget the warning note. sent out to the world by the German Professor who to prove its absolute safety injected this filth into the arm of his son to convince his confreres of its harmlessnes. Within an hour or two his son was dead and the father was nearly wild with grief over this scientific murder. One may well ask the question how many thousands of others have since been sacrificed in a similar manner. Should you wish to peruse this side issue of modern medicine, get your bookseller to procure you "Dying Scientifically," and its companion work, "The Monks of St. Bernard." Also procure "Fifty Reasons for Becoming a Homeopath," sent out by the League at 2d (original cost 2s 6d) and you will find in these a wealth of information. Should your investigation lead you to purchase some of the more expensive books advertised in the "Homeopathic World" and other papers, some of which are as interesting as a novel, you will then realize the confidence with which a homeopath takes up his cases and selects his remedies which often go like a rifle ball straight to the point. What is required to promulgate homeopathy amongst the masses of population is for a John Wesley or a Martin Luther to rise up irrespective of allopathic state medicine and teach pure homeopathy to the public at large. It is more important to look first after the health of the people, for when the body is healthy the soul which inhabits it can shine with greater brilliancy. The old maxim of a sound mind in a healthy body is the acme of bodily perfection.

"Res Non Verba Quaeso."

A PATHOLOGIST'S VIEW OF HOMEOPATHY.

BY W. H. WATTERS, M. D., OF BOSTON.

Many persons have in the past answered with varying degrees of success the self-propounded question "What is homeopathy?"

The subject has been discussed from many different viewpoints, both by the layman and by the physician. One of the most able of the answers to the query will be found in the presidential address delivered by Dr. Sutherland at the Niagara meeting of the Institute in 1904. More recently Dr. Copeland, now of New York, has covered the field in a very comprehensive manner by his numerous addresses on "the scientific reasonableness of homeopathy." The majority of the answers to the question have been along lines distinctly clinical although not a few have gone into the realms of philosophy and some almost into mysticism. Clinical results are certainly the crucial tests of all systems of cure and upon these a method of treatment must stand or fall. Along these lines it would be presumptuous for me to speak to this audience except by giving those old and oft repeated facts with which you are all so familiar and where any original ideas could not be introduced with authority by one who is not a clinician.

It not infrequently happens that various persons in approaching the same object by convergent routes see that object in different ways and are able to portray to others phases that from their position would be otherwise unseen. The question of homeopathy, therefore, has been approached from many sides in the past, but unless a mistake has been made, the view point of the exclusive worker in pathology has never yet been given. It has seemed wise, therefore, to look at the question from such a point and to inquire how much of the subject will appeal to the pathologist as capable of demonstration or as in accordance with demonstrable facts.

As an introduction to the subject may a few personal notes be pardoned explanatory of my early attitude toward the entire matter of drug therapeutics. As the son of a physician who graduated from a non-homeopathic college but who early became a homeopath by conviction, my early training gave familiarity with the medicines used according to the law of similars. As a graduate of an university where all teaching and traditions never favored homeopathy the reverse side of the picture was exposed. Later during a course at an homeopathic university where all possibble spare time was

passed in laboratory work, not a great impression was made by materia medica or its clinical application, in spite of very excellent. courses of instruction. As a graduate, therefore, never having tested and never intending to test the clinical application of drug therapy, an honest skepticism was the attitude reached. During the past twelve years of exclusively laboratory work it has been necessary to keep in touch with the results of other investigations along the line of my particular specialty and its allied subjects in various parts of the world. In these years the principles of homeopathy have been more and more brought to the front as discovery after discovery has shed enlightenment on some of its contentions that formerly had been obscure. The result is that the skepticism has entirely disappeared to be replaced by a firm and steadfast belief that the statements made by Samuel Hahnemann scores of years ago are in their essential features not only true but are now becoming capable of actual laboratory demonstration. In other words I have by laboratory and closely allied study become convinced that the phrase similia similibus curentur stands for a great principle not only in connection with drug therapy but probably applicable to many other remedial agencies as well. I believe that the production of immunity, that goal so ardently striven for by the dominant school in medicine, has been, is now, and will be in the future attained largely, if not entirely, by application of the same principle that underlies the homeopathic faith.

I do not claim that there are no errors in homeopathy, nor that we have in our ranks no fanatics or faddists. No mortal is omniscient in his interpretation of the facts of nature. We must always make mistakes. What I do believe, however, is that all classes of medical thought are insensibly growing together and that the new product of this growth is very closely approximating in its principles. the ideas of homeopathy that are so familiar to you all.

In presenting my reasons for these beliefs it seems advisable to examine the various associated peculiarities of homeopathy and to see how far they are now capable of defense upon distinctly scientific grounds. These, it seems, are capable of division into five groups: The single remedy.

The proving of drugs.

The size of the dose.

The frequency of repetition.

The law of cure.

Taking these seriatim, let the single remedy be first considered. When Hahnemann, disgusted with the medicine of his day, intro

duced his famous law, polypharmacy ran riot throughout the world.. Medicines of the most repulsive and nauseating materials were compounded, often including fifteen, twenty or more ingredients in varying proportions. One of his first acts was to insist on the use of but a single remedy at any one time, claiming that only in this manner could we know of the curative powers of the drug. Since then homeopathy has firmly and steadfastly opposed combinations of drugs. The result is familiar to you all, polypharmacy is practically a thing of the past, its folly is admitted by adherents of all schools of medicine. Modern laboratory research shows that while we may know the effect of three or more drugs given singly, there is no way of definitely knowing from this what will be the result when they are combined in any of the various ways. This result will not be the combined effect of them all, neither may it be that. of any one but is frequently something quite unlooked for. The tenableness of this ground, so strongly held by Hahnemann and his followers is in this day certainly amply proven and the most strenuous defenders now come from the very recent sect that in early years so actively derided the idea. Let any who question this statement refer to a paper read before the Suffolk County Society by a well known physician, in which a very strong plea was made for the single remedy as opposed to combinations. Time forbids further reference to it. Here, then, there can be no debatable ground.

In the next section there may be opportunity for discussion. This section has to do with the proving of drugs. It is an unnecessary task to recall to this audience the classic studies of Peruvian bark that opened the door to the construction of an entirely new materia medica.

Homeopathy has always advocated as one of its most important beliefs the proving or testing of drugs on the well and the systematic recording of the symptoms thereby induced. True there are some among us that carry this symptomatology to what many others of our number consider an extreme and in this way have filled our materia medica with much that is of questionable value or authen-ticity. But on the general principle we are all agreed that for the successful use of medicines on the sick we must first know their action on the well. This principle has not yet been generally admitted by the whole of the dominant school, although many influential individual members are coming to recognize its value. Formerly all such tests were made under ridicule, but during the past decade great concessions have been made in this respect, that is, it is now generally admitted that animal experimentation cannot be carried