Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/759

Rh disease, so is the constitution to the condition of the patient when the disease shall have left it. Convalescence in homœopathy commences when the correct remedy begins to act. In allopathy, when the remedy and disease have left the patient prostrate, then Nature takes the matter in hand. It is a common error with the ignorant traducers of homœopathy that the higher the potencies or its remedies the weaker they become, as one weakens wine by adding water. It is sufficient answer to quote the following high authority, who discloses the true purpose and effect:

"If it be conceded that the vital principle is identical with electricity, the action of dynamized medicaments becomes easy of comprehension; for in these preparations we have material substances subdivided to a degree that enables them to penetrate the most delicate tissues of the body."—(Dr. Currie's preface to Jahr's "Homœopathic Manual.")

The writer's assertion, that "homœopathy, being a system utterly void of any scientific foundation, is now dying a natural death," receives, to say the least, doubtful support from the animated debate which has been progressing so vigorously in the New York County Medical Society of the regular school in reference to consultation with homœopaths, where the exclusionists accused the more liberal brothers of having an itching palm for the fat fees which now find their way, without chance of tax, to the pockets of the homœopathic physicians, while the argument by the liberal members is that as now homœopathy has progressed and its disciples have a thorough medical education, there is no longer any reason why they should be treated as quacks and impostors. So far as noted, the alleged moribund condition of homœopathy had escaped their observation.

What shall be said of the pretensions to be enrolled with the sciences of that school which has progressed from one stage of universal disease or cause and remedy to another—typhoid, malaria, miasm germ, bleeding, calomel, morphine, quinine—by discarding nearly all that its pioneers held most dear; which, before it can build, must tear down; which retreats from the necessary labor of that scientific investigation which by great diligence and skill eliminates every remedy but one as useless or hurtful, to take refuge in a nauseous mixture of several powerful drugs, administered upon the hit or miss blunderbuss principle—those drugs which are neither allopathic nor homœopathic to the disease, doing more potent injury than the one (which by hap-hazard has some relation) can do good, as Sir John Forbes says, "the monstrous poly-pharmacy which has always been the disgrace of our" (the allopathic) "art"?

It may well be doubted whether homœopathy will ever have enrolled under its banners the same number of practitioners as the regular school. The nearer we approach to an exact science, the fewer are its votaries. The conditions admit fewer. In it there are no formulated