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170 blood, we see the victors become the victims, and the merciless engine go on with its work of death and mingle the blood of contending parties in the same pool—when we hear the populace cry Vive le Roi one day, and Vive l'Empereur the next—and when we consider, too, that the unthinking masses often neither understand what they reject nor what they embrace—when, I say, we see and consider all these things, we cannot be surprised that among these same masses individuals should be found who were ready to relinquish the proper system of rational medicine, and embrace the vagaries of Homœopathy. The early disciples of Hahnemann were not such men as Bichat, Dupuytren, Yelpeau and Ricord; but men of slender attainments, whose standing and qualifications did not entitle them to much eminence in the profession, but whose vanity and ambition could find full scope in Homœopathy—men who chose rather to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Hahnemann was sixty-five years old when he arrived in France. Forty-five years had elapsed since he heard his last medical lecture. During