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To John Forbes, M1. D., F. R. S.
SIR,
I beg leave to inscribe to you my second edition of " Hom-noepathia Revealed," in testimony and in payment of the debt
of pleasure laid on me by your original and somewhat eccentric
work on Homcepathy, Allopathy, and " Young Physick," which
a valued friiend commended to my perusal. That there may
be a fair estimate, with a view to the general balance of the
amount of obligation on either side, on mine already avowed,
on yours yet to be acknowledged, I begin by declaring myself
DEBTOR,
1. To your solemn denunciation of the too officious and
often murderous assaults of Allopathia on the forces of Nature,
neither carefully watched, nor allowed a sufficient time for their
sanative action.
2. To your endorsing the doctrine that medicines have no
other power to cure diseases that such as is exerted by Nature,
strengthened by their timely assistance.
3. To your corroborating the important fact, that the lists
of mortality in countries enjoying an abundance of physicians,
are comparatively the same, or somewhat larger, than in the
regions wholly destitute of such blessing.
4. To your twenty articles of AGITANDA, EXEOGITANDA, AGENDA, intended to form the new constitution of
"YOUNG PHYSIC," which, to all intents and purposes, are so
many thinly disguised counterparts of what Homcepathia is now
doing, and what, on no mean scale, she has done already.
5. To your formal acknowledgment that Homcepathia, as a
system, is almost as good, and certainly as well established as
Allopathia herself; a concession which, from an opponent of
your calibre, must satisfy her most enthusiastic friends.




ii


LETTER TO DR. FORBES.


6. To your admission of all her claims in full, inferred
from the fewness and fragility of weapons used against her,
hurtful only to the hand that wields them. Thus the attempted
transfer of homcepathic cures, all in a lump, to the credit of Nature alone, provokes the instant charge and proof of being entirely gratuitous; while the straw-catching belief that Homcepathia, after she had cured a disease of sixteen years' duration,
may still be an impostor, because, at the very moment that her
first globule touched the tongue, nature may have taken the
whole affair into her own hands, involves a series of questions
which it may not be easy or pleasant to answer. For instance,
how and whence did Nature get this sudden curing power, of
which her non-exercise of it proves her to have been deprived
for sixteen years previous 1 Again, why should Nature be so
nobly sensitive at the approach of Homcepathia, and yet never
honor Allopathia with the like manifestation of feeling 1 Does
not this indicate the real difference between the mistress cmulous of a worthy rival, and the slave shrinking from the presence
of her despotic oppressor 1 Deny this difference, and what follows? The hypothetical disqualification would apply equally to
both systems, and lead to a direct inquiry how you would like
a patient of yours, on presenting him your bill in the just pride
and full consciousness of having relieved him from sixteen
years' sufferings, to turn upon his heels after coolly telling you
that he owes you nothing, Nature, at the first sight of your pill,
having snatched him from your hands and finished her work of
cure, with thanks to no one but herself?. In like manner, the
assumption that persons in full health, while undergoing the
trial of remedies, would be apt to fancy all kinds of ailments
which Homoepathia sets down as symptoms, is instantly repelled by the fact that no fancy can fancy itself into topical diseases,
which form so great a part of these symptoms. Neither will
imagination accept the charge of homcepathic cures, so wantonly forced upon it, since it is enlisted and works with.all its
might against them in incipient trials; it being a matter of notoriety that nine patients out of ten, when first they turn to
Homoepathia, do so from sheer desperation against their long,
habitual confidence in the old school; against their own fixed




LETTER TO DR. FORBES.                iii
prepossession, fostered by the warnings of that school, and
against the combined influence of all that can create mistrust
and the uneasiness of apprehension. Poor, indeed, must be the
armory where the wants of an offensive war are so ill supplied;
strong the truth that can thus paralyze the arm well-tried and
skilled in combat; and most triumphant the vindication of that
cause, to refute which nothing better has been -found in the
ample stores of professional learning and resources. And now I
take my turn as CREDITOR,
1. By supplying you with a quantum sufficit of those facts
which you deem so necessary to the making up of your mind,
and the call for, which is the dominant note of your book.
2. By showing you that Homeepathia cures promptly and
effectually many diseases which are incurable, when left exclusively to Nature.
3. By satisfying you' that the remedial power of infinitesimal doses is a demonstrable and demonstrated fact, before
which, as you say yourself, " all declamations are vain," and
worse than -useless.
4. By suggesting to you, as I now do, that the easiest, the
shortest, and the surest way to verify this mysterious power, is
to try it on yourself; and that, until you have done so, until you
can oppose something better than your naked assertion to recorded facts, nothing can palliate your hardihood in contradicting, as you do in reference to the Peruvian bark, the highest
authority, that of the martyr of truth, for whom you profess so
great a respect, and who, as you yourself admit, did not announce the peculiar effects of that drug upon a healthy person
until he had ascertained them by an actual experiment upon
himself. Do you likewise! and, it will not require many,days
to place you in a condition to appease the mighty shade whose
resentment you have so justly incurred.
5. By laying before you, in the very charcoal which you
have so confidently selected for nullifying the preparatory process
of Homoepathia, the most striking illustration that her trituration
and much-derided shakings not only evolve the dynamic potency of drugs, but, what you deny most strenuously, convert inert substances into active, as you may at any time convince




iv


LETTER TO DR. FOREES.


yourself by repeating the charcoal experiment upon your own
person.
6. By calling your attention to the mathematical fact that
you cannot annihilate matter by any subdivisions you may assign to it in act or imagination; and that, however infinite may
be, the comminutions of Homcepathia, they still fall short of
reality, of their extremest point of attenuation. Multiply your
seventy-six Os by as many figures as will make your proposed
line of globules reach, not the sun, but the great Sirius himself,
and still there will remain prepared in Nature's own laboratory
a higher dilution, not the less fearful and fatal to man, of the
virus of hydrophobia, of which not the incomprehensibility, but
the fact alone concerns us; and such being the fact, " all declamations are vain " in its presence, and worse than useless, according to your own quotation.
7. By presenting you with a mirror, the only one within
my knowledge, in which the entire form of Homcepathia, spiritual and corporeal, such as it is in reality, a unit of soul and
body, is reflected and exhibited to your contemplation. Analyze
all the parts, examine well each distinct feature, review the
whole in connection, and if all this does not bring you to the
point of making up your mind, I can only say I have given you
the opportunity.
What I have said thus far may give you an idea of my great
vanity and presumption; and I own the appearances are in favor of such conclusion. Appearances, however, are often deceitful, and are so on the present occasion. I am only one of
those plain men -who think that a simple, inoffensive truth may
be uttered in one's own case as freely as in that of another. I
am only confident quo ad hoc, and what reason I have to be so
you will judge presently. I pause only to balance our accounts
by crediting you with being a homoepath in embryo; and I
proceed to address you as such to the end of the chapter.
Be it then known to you, that since the publication of my
little work in 1837, I have made my pilgrimage to the living
fountain of Homcepathia-have gazed upon the countenance,
listened to the voice, and pressed the hand of " the sublime old
man," ere long to be enshrined by grateful posterity among the
greatest benefactors of mankind. I did more. I laid my hum



LETTER TO DR. FORBES.


v


ble revelations before him, and was honored with his unqialified
approbation. The doctrines and principles laid down in them
as the constituent elements of Homcepathia, were pronounced
true and genuine by him from whom she sprang, as did Minerva
from the brain of Jupiter. The means, as therein explained,
which attest her existence and modify her action, were in like
manner acknowledged by him who first discovered, adjusted,
and put them into practice. In short, he that conceived the
bright original, and breathed his spirit into it, recognized its
embodied image in the portrait.
In such circumstan'ces, I trust, you will not think it strange or
unpardonable that I should speak, and think it even my duty to
speak of my work as I would of another man's work, with the
same sincerity and freedom. In truth, I feel that it is gone
from me-that it belongs now to the public, not to be deprived
of its property by my interposition. It is so far ahead of the
author that he perforce must part with it, and be content to rest
unnoticed in the rear. Other hands, more powerful than his,
have placed it on the summit of authority, and there it must stand
palpable to sight, a beacon by whose light the true and the false
disciples may at once be contradistinguished and identified. The
former will hail it with cordial welcome, the latter may be compelled to show cause why they should not be numbered with
those whom the great master-spirit had DISOWNED so formally and on all occasions.
A work of this character was never needed more than at the
present hour, when a laxity on one side, and encroachments on
the other, have placed the deity of health in that false, inverted
position, against the danger of which the public cannot be too
soon or too officiously warned. It is quite time to stop, if possible, the immolation of victims on the altar, and in the name of
the very power that was sent forth to save them; and the martyr who felt the rack may well be permitted the poor consolation of showing where it lies, by way of caution to his fellowcreatures.
I have reason to think that among the opponents of Homoepathia, none is more aware than yourself, or less disposed to
deny that the majority of the votaries of Allopathia, imbued, as
heretofore, with a sense of her supposed dignity and scholastic




vi


LETTER TO DR. FORBES.


superiority, still shun the tabooed dwelling of the new comer;
and acting on mere reports and assumptions, condemn what
they refuse to know, and think it a disgrace in a matter of life
and death to be able to judge for themselves. What particular
medicine more than another cures this or that disease, seems to
be the utmost stretch of their inquiry; but why-by what permanent, inherent quality this medicine performs the cure, is a
question, which although the true one, is scarcely ever asked.
The curative effects of a remedy in presence of disease, gleaned
from the pages of pharmacopoeia, seems to be all they know, or
care to know of its specific virtues; whereas this knowledge,
so vital to the healing art, can only be obtained from its primary
aggressive action upon a person in full health; a fact, the discovery of which by Hahnneman, suffices of itself to gain for him
the gratitude of ages. From this admitted fact, susceptible of
proof so as to stare one in the face, they turn away with marvellous indifference; and while they are so active in distilling
science, skill, rational medicine, and all kinds of imposing learning from their lips, their real locomotive progress ceases just
where it should go on. They certainly have learned the value
of the stranger's pharmacy as far superior to their own, else
they would scarcely make so free with it; but then what led to
the discovery of medicines in substances not used as such,
though not unknown by name, and on what principle those are
and ought to be selected, they seem to consider beyond the
sphere of their profession. Hence it is that they either do not
know, or will not own, that at this very moment they are treading in the steps of their opponents, and differ from them only in
the want of precaution. While they continue to denounce poor
Homcepathia as a sheer humbug, and while their unleashed wardogs bark loud as ever at her passing shadow, they are actually
doing homage to her fundamental creed, "the like cure the
like," by administering her remedies, not only so far as each remedy becomes strictly homoepathic when directed against a disease the like of which it produces in a healthy person, but in
the sense of full unqualified acceptance of such as are emphatically her own, and stand conspicuously on her list. Thus, in
congestions to the head, scarlatinas, acute inflammatory fevers,




vil,


LETTER TO DR. FORBES,


inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, croup, trachitis, peripneumonia, and final consumptions, varying in kind, but alike in their
fatal terminations, they give Belladonce, Aconite, quinine, iron,
ipecacuance, senega, and tartar-emetic, all which respectively
produce the like diseases in the normal state of the body, and
in so high a degree "as to cause death if persevered in, or not
soon enough suspended.
This is what they are doing now, and this is neither more
nor less the veritable Homoepathia herself!! A step farther
this way and all would be right; but they refuse to take this
step, and then what follows is a wanton abuse of means, a barefaced disregard of the laws of inference, and an unnatural violation of the cause by its effects. It is an advance, so far as
there is less groping in the dark, less guesswork in the drug
compounds, less latitude and fancy in prescriptions; but it is
an advance that stops just where it cuts the patient off from all
the benefits of old uncertainty, and from all chances of escape
by means of blunders that were wont to counteract each other.
Nature alonie being invested with the power of cure, a remedy can do no more than, by a dynamic union, add so much of its
strength to the disease as to insure his spoil of life, or so little
as just to quicken his growth into maturity, and end the monster before her vital forces are exhausted. Whether of this important truth they have any suspicion, or studiously conceal it,
they in either case evade the obvious conclusion, that comminution of doses is not a matter of caprice, but the result of absolute necessity, inasmuch as the organ cannot be too tenderly
used, which, in addition to the morbid action of disease already
so enfeebling, has to sustain the like remedial action of a more
than equal power. The consequence is, that they head the
raging conflagration with nothing but combustibles to check it,
and thus add fuel to the flame when they ought to have kindled
the small counter fire, as certain to extinguish as it is sure to
meet it. Persuaded that what they do not know is not worth
knowing, and resolved to stand by each other, come what may,
they rack the victim with their noxious drugs at pleasure, pour
poison upon poison, and when death ensues, they make Homcepathia their scape-goat, by proclaiming that in her hands the




-iii


LETTER TO DR. FORBES.


patient would have died without an effort on her part to
save him!
The peril arising from this hateful practice is farther increased by the corresponding course, the more criminal, as no plea of
ignorance can be set up in its behalf, of the pseudo-homcepathists, who, unfortunately, are neither strangers to this city, nor
so far as to be passed by without notice.
These birds of a feather, forming a recreant clique by themselves, cannot but remember that all their knowledge of Homcepathia has been gathered from her lips; that their own shells
were not yet formed when she broke hers; and fostered by the
parent-hand soon in full plumage started into view; and that
the chickens wise enough to teach the hen, must first be hatched and fledged. Nevertheless they peck at their kind instructress, cluck correction in her ears, and cry out what she ought
to be, on the insulting claim to know her better than she does
herself!!! Extravagance of presumption and the ingratitude of
pupils can go no further!
In vain did the inspired genius whose glorious conception
she is, protest against her character being degraded, her credit destroyed, her name desecrated, and her blessings converted into
curses by a forced union with some unclean abortion of the superannuated alma mater. The clique compel her to endure the
embraces of the hoary, decrepit slanderer. They fix the lancet
in her hands, load her with the forbidden weapons, and fully verify his worst fears and predictions. In vain did he, more anxiously solicitous on this point than any other, insist upon the
comminution of doses as inseparable from her very nature and
existence. The clique increase them con amore, and under the
cover of his very mantle spurn his gift, reject his doctrine, and
cry down as a mere " Hahnnemanism " the most precious fruit
of his protracted labors and painful self-experiments!! And yet,
forsooth, in face of all this they profess their faith in Homo(pathia!! Derision and hypocrisy never yet went so lovingly together!
The only article of faith connected with Homoepathia, is
"( similis similibus curantur." It is her all in all, with which she
cannot part herself without committing. suicide. This, then, if




LETTER TO DR. FORBES.


ix


any thing, must be what they believe in. If so, upon what principle can they defend, and much less justify their practice, so
subversive of their own belief, that the increased strength of a
dose which is akin to the disease, must be the like increase of
strength for the disease itself; and, superadded to its own, must
make it irresistible.? They have assigned yet no good reason,
and likely never will. They may attempt to explain by saying,
for it is all they can say, that it is the result of their own experience; but what is their own puny 'experience to that of one
whose temple had been for more years than they have yet lived,
crowded with the sick from the great nations of the earth, who
had for half a century periled his body as a test of remedies announced by him as such, and whose ability to state the truth
was full as great as his desire and interest to seek and to reveal
it? Empiricism may plume itself upon its feats of cure, which
only show that there are patients strong enough to survive
them; but the. great shade of Hahnneman, and his tried, faithful disciples, have a claim to a more respectful explanation than
such as would impugn the warranty of facts too much respected
to be called in question. If the clique really have a pet-some
pathia of their own-why do they keep it back? Why do they
not come forth like men, place it on its own merits, and boldly
vindicate its title to " a name and local habitation?" If, on the
other hand, they should set up the honest plea of total disbelief
in Homcepathia, why do they wear her colors, and profess to
be what they are not Why should they make her, by this
fraud, a mere by-word, a seeming humbug, the scape-goat of
their own misdeeds? Why should the open frequency of their
rebellion against her rule, furnish her enemies with a constructive proof that she and all her followers who thus betray their
want of confidence in her, are arrant knaves, quacks and impostors? The clique may be all kinds of pathists at their own
discretion; but homcepathists they are none, and it is time that
all should know it. A voice from the tomb, that will be heard
throughout eternity, abjures them all as base, sinister counterfeits, foes in disguise, stabbing the priestess in whose temple
they profess to worship. The sooner they are driven away from
2




X              LETTER TO DR. FORBES.
the sadred precincts the greater will be the benefit conferred
upon the human race.
Thus, by a sort of a tacit, gradual approximation of the
adverse systems, the champions on both sides being false alike
to their creeds, the two extremes have been brought at length
to meet half way, and presently from this unhallowed contact,
not yet openly acknowledged, sprang the new-fangled mischief,
the'practice now in vogue, nought less than Homcepathia armed
to the teeth with allopathic doses!-An enemy more dangerous
and destructive to health than this hideous, misbegotten hermaphrodite, has never yet been pressed into the service of the
medical profession!
THE AUTHOR.




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED


A
BRIEF EXPOSITION
OF


THE WHOLE SYSTEM,
ADAPTED TO
GENERAL COMPREHENSION.
WITH A NOTICE OF PSORA AND DR. DURINGE'S OBJECTIONS.
BY ALEXIS EUSTAPHIEVE.
SECOND EDITION, WITH A SKETCH OF ISOPATHIA.
INSCRIBED TO
JOHN FORBES, M.D. F.R.S.
----- a== D~ =----_NEW-YORK:
Printed and Published by D. Fanshaw,
575 BROADWAY.
1846.




I




INVOCATION.
HAIL, Fountain Nymph! Hail to thy cup of health,
Bought cheaply with an Empire's treasur'd wealth!
No Poet's dream, no Fiction's pleasing guile,
Lurk in thy form, or light a doubtful smile;
Thy breath is LIFE: and they themselves must blame,
Who grudge thee welcome, and scarce know thy name.
'Tis but to ask-and all thy flowing stores,
More precious than Golconda's mines, are ours.
All hail! most noble, fair, rich-gifted maid,
So young, so wise: we now invoke thy aid!
Genius and Fame, to whom thy birth we owe,
Impress'd their signets on thy infant brow;
Who then shall stay'thee in thy bright career?
Come, take thy crown! Thou hast but to appear....








ORIGIN


HO1 M(E PATT HIA,
AND
GROUNDS OF BELIEF.
The fair, health-bearer delights not in the darkness of
concealment, and, so far from seeking disguise, entreats
to be revealed. Of her renowned sire, the long-persecuted but never discomfited Hahnemann, it is less easy to
decide whether he is now most adored and glorified, or
most hated and feared; than to predict his future station
in the eyes of posterity, as one of the brightest luminaries
that ever shed light upon the medical world. For his
surprising early proficiency in the study of medicine,
which, without any patronage or collateral support, procured him several honorable and responsible appointments, and installed him as "Doctor of Physic," in a
lucrative practice, before he had reached his 25th year;
as well as for his total renunciation of that practice, with
the profession itself, on the ground that his conscience was
no'satisfied with either, the reader is respectfully referred
to the "Encyclopaedia Americana," where an epitome
of his life is given with sufficient impartiality and correctness. It is enough, that his subsequent studies, and
particularly that of chemistry, by a fortuitous detection




16


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


of the true principle upon which the Peruvian bark produces an ague, similar to the one against which it is the
acknowledged specific, led him to a series of experiments
and discoveries, which finally terminated in the creation
of a system entirely new, and so much to his mind as
to have removed all his former scruples and objections.
Such is the origin of Homoepathia!
This new system, or rather the system-destroying system, besides the weight of character imparted to it by its
no longer slighted author, has been since espoused by so
many eminent physicians, well known for their talents,
works, and extensive practice; and its progress, in consequence, has been so extraordinary, that it is scarcely
wise or possible to treat it now with the passing notice of
a sneer, or refuse its pressing claims to the consideration
of the public most interested in its promises of health.
It is time that this science, for such it undoubtedly is,
should be fairly, and in the clearest manner, exhibited
to the eyes of all, in order that full justice may be done
to its merits; and that no lingering regret may come
hereafter for a gift thrown away on the misconception of
its value; one too, which Hahnemann proclaims emphatically as "( the precious gift of Divinity."*
It is under this solemn impression that the public are
now presented with " Homoepathia Revealed;" a humble attempt to embody the whole system in a form more
concise, and popularly intelligible, than is known yet to
have been done: a work-a full-length miniature scanned at a glance-possessed of the advantage of standing on its own exclusive ground, nowise connected with ~
the profession, and removed from all suspicion of being
influenced by private speculation, party spirit, local in* " Homoepathic treatment of chronic diseases," page 3. French
translation, by J. L. Jourdan, Member of the Royal Academy.




HOMQEPATHIA REVEALED.


17


terests, or time-serving discussions. It is likewise believed, that the best mode of communicating knowledge is
the one by which it was acquired; and, that, therefore,
an amateur student may impart the fruits of his acquisition to the uninformed majority, more acceptably than a
learned professor habitually writing for the learned
minority.
So far as faith in Homoepathia is concerned, the author's position is that of a sincere believer, anxious, and
deeming it his solemn duty to share what he considers a great
blessing with his fellowp-creatures.
It was his happy lot, and there are few to whom it
could have been otherwise, to have, some years since,
attracted the notice, and to have preserved up to this
time the favorable opinion of Admiral Mordvinow, a nobleman generally so styled, by reason of the preference
he gives to this over all his other titles. This is the venerable Mecenas, who, at the age which brings decrepitude to the less favored of mankind, seems to ward off
all bodily decay by the active vigor of his mind. A patriot and philanthropist almost from his cradle; his sword
and life at the command of his country; his pen at the
service of science and useful literature, and his purse
ever open to the support of liberal public and private
institutions; confidential adviser and correspondent of
crowned heads; president of the national council of
state; by rank and weight of character the head of the
Russian nobility; the object of reverence to his compatriots-he is the last of the great men who upheld and
adorned the splendid reign of Catharine II. and the first
that has had discernment and courage enough, when the
Asiatic cholera invaded the southern provinces of the
empire, to entrust himself, his family, and his numerous
peasantry, to the care and treatment of Homnoepathia!
How well this confidence has been repaid will appear
3




18


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


from the following, among other documents published
by him for the interests of humanity, and for the pecuniary benefit of "the Free Economical Society" at St.
Petersburg.
No. I. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF MADAM LVOFF,
TO HER FATHER, ADMIRAL MORDVINOW, dated in the
government of Saratow, August 6th, 1831.
" The dreadful cholera broke out last month in our
own village and its vicinity with the-greatest fury. My
husband was the first person attacked; but, thanks to
Homoepathia, was cured in a few days. From a desire
to rQlieve the sufferings of humanity, he visited all the
places in the neighborhood wherever the disease raged
the most; administered the remedies; instructed the
priests and the elders in the use of them; and was
whole weeks thus employed, while I remained at home
occupied with the preparation of Homoepathic powders.
Four hundred cholera patients, saved and restored to
perfect health, was the gratifying reward of his zeal and
the triumphant result of Homoepathic doses liberally
distributed to all who applied for them. We are all
now so well convinced of the miraculous power of this
system, that we cannot sufficiently deplore the ignorance
that cannot, and still more, the obstinate prejudice that
will not invoke its aid, and thereby rescue relatives and
friends from certain death. The Asiatic cholera, preceded by terror, ushered in by danger, and followed by desolation, comes now, remains, and departs a harmless
thing. Its cure is in reality easier than that of a fever.
Multiplied experiments, and consequent confidence in
Homcepathic treatment, have divested it of all its apalling attributes, by subjugating it entirely to the skill of,man. We had fifty patients in our own village, and not
one of them died. On the estate of my sister-in-law,
there were likewise a good many cases, but no deaths.




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


19


There is also an abundance of reason to believe, that the
fatal termination of the disease, wherever it occurred,
was occasioned altogether by neglect, want of necessary
precaution, or deviation from the rules of regimen prescribed by Homoepathia. All the sick who took medicine, in strict conformity to the rules, were saved, although some of them were already in a state of collapse,
which apparently precluded all hope. In this last stage
there were not a few with their teeth clenched so fast
that it was necessary to force them open for the purpose
of introducing the medicine; and yet, on the very day
following they were relieved and convalescent! My
good husband, from the constant intercourse with the
sick, took the infection several times, but in every instance was restored by a few Homoepathic globules. In
short, we consider ourselves perfectly safe from this
dreaded scourge, whatever may be its potency and virulence. The repeated numerous trials have more than
satisfied us, that in the presence of Homoepathia, with
its five remedies only," (camphor, veratrum album, cupricum metallicum, carbo vegatabilis, and metallum album,)
" the Asiatic cholera is not a mortal disease, and still less
so when encountered at the commencement."
No. 2. RESULTS OF HOM(EPATHIC TREATMENT OF
THE ASIATIC CHOLERA IN 1830 AND 1831, REPORTED
TO ADMIRAL MORDVINOW       FROM   VARIOUS PLACES, BY
public and private committees, and the propiietors themselves.
Sick. Cured. Died.
" In several villages and hamlets in the government of
Saratow,........ 625 564 61
On the estate of Mr. Lvoff,  do.  do..   50  50
Estate of Mr. Povalichin,  do.     do..  38  36   2
Do.   do. Stalipin,      do.     do..  13   12  1
Do.   do. Bitiutsky,     do.     do..   19  16   3
Do. Baron Bode,          do.     do.. 188 177 11
In the government-city of Saratow,....  39  36  3
In the gymnasium of the same city,....  20  20




20


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


Sick. Cured. Died.
In a village within the possessions of the Don Cozacks, 59  53  6
In two settlements on the Caucasus line,...  85  67 15
Two estates of Mr. Tulinew and Poltoratzky, government of Tambow,.......  92   87  5
Estate of Poltoratzky, government of Twer,.. 45  44  1
1273 1162 108
" N. B. Not a single death has occurred where Homoepathic treatment was resorted to in the incipient
symptoms of the cholera. It was also remarked, that all
the patients cured by Homcepathia, regained, in a very
short time, their former health and strength; while those
"who survived other treatments were left in a state of
weakness which lasted for several months, and but too
often terminated in another disease which proved fatal."
These documents, with the Admiral's original work,
" Glance at Homcepathia," and'his translation of HARTLAUB'S celebrated exposition of the same, have been forwarded to the author by the Admiral himself, three
years ago, with a long autograph letter, amply explanative and convincingly instructive. With such vouchers
before him, how can the author refuse his belief in Homcepathia? But even this authority he can now dispense with, having been since convinced by the irresistible evidence of his own senses. There have occurred in
this very city, and within his own personal knowledge,
cases of Homoepathic cure, in serious chronic, and particularly consumptive maladies, which would have made
a convert of him in spite of the strongest resolution to
the contrary. Let but the public spirit of inquiry go
forth in good earnest, and he hesitates not to predict
that there will be many converts besides himself, among
those even who are desirous and predetermined not to be
converted. Indeed, his task, if he do no more than give
impulse to this spirit, will- have been performed quite
well enough to secure him against all disappointment on
the score of ambition.




IbHOMCEPATHIA REVIFALED.


21


He will now state, as briefly and correctly as he can,
first, the doctrines of Homoepathia; secoidly, the principles, as deduced from those doctrines; and lastly, the
means of action, viz. the minute doses employed for the restoration of health. Any deficiency or mistake, should
he not be able to avoid them, will be easily made up and
corrected by more experienced professional Homcepathists, without diminishing, in the least, his satisfaction
of having presented to the public an object, not of mere
curiosity, but of vital importance, exactly as he sees it;
and although not a few of his positions are not to be
found any where in the same form and terms, being, in
truth, set down for the very purpose of supplying this
omission; he is fully confident that, laying apart some
minor inaccuracies, already referred to the proper source
of correction, he has advanced nothing which is not
warranted by a general comprehensive view of the
whole, or not in accordance with the spirit of Homcepathia, diffused throughout the "Organon," and thence
drawn and concentrated into one prominent unit, more
easily recognised, and admitting of a more satisfactory
definition.




DOCTRINES.
DEATH is no diseaseý but the natural end of a natural
beginning-the pre-ordained condition of life, placed
from the first, far and for ever, beyond the ken and cognizance of man. The same may be said of all those irremnediable defects, mal-conformations, or deformities, preceding the birth, which are only deviations from the ordinary form of existence, but'no obstacles to it, and,
consequently, no diseases. Inasmuch, then, as the primitive law of life and death is an abstraction resting on its
own immutable, ever-enduring foundation, inaccessible
to the will or skill of man; by so much the phenomenon
of disease, having no such distinct foundation, must be,
and can only take place, within the reach of humanity,
where, like any other accident, it may be avoided or
prevented, and, on the pledge of either, may also be removed. There can be, therefore, no such thing in reality
as an incurable disease, as long as the affected organ is
not destroyed, or the reparative force of nature crushed
by supervening violence. Thus, then, the true art of
healing-such as Homoepathia aspires to-the art of conducting a living being safe, and without the agency of malady, to the closing scene of old age-is not only attainable,
but consonant to the designs of Providence, which grants
no favors for the purpose of thwarting them, and which,
in entrusting the gift of life to its possessor, must have
endowed him at the same time with powers quite adequate, if he knows how to use them, to preserve the trust
until the end of its appointed term.




HOMCEPAr HIA REVEALED.


23


Among the adequate powers granted by Providence to
preserve this trust, there is none so obvious, efficient and
easy of adoption as temperance in its general sense;
and no system in medicine can prosper that has not
this special virtu6 for its principal basis, or does not adhere to it with as much tenacity and firmness as is inseparable from the very means of action employed by Homcepathia, most safe and certain of success in their exalted state of unity and comminution, but in the same
proportion liable to be interrupted by the least obtrusion
of an uncalled-for medicinal agent, and therefore admitting of no deviation in the rigid observance of a wholesome, nourishing, but simple diet, free from all ingredients of a higher quality than that of mere nutrition.
All theories, leading to no useful practical issues-all
attempts tb comprehend the incomprehensible, to discover
the undiscoverable, to unveil the ever-forbidden mystery of
"vitality"-the hidden, invisible, immaterial primitive
cause of health as well as disease, which, even if known,
would in no degree facilitate the efforts and the obvious
task of a physician, cannot be too soon renounced as
pernicious chimeras, engendered only to perplex the
genius of medicine, by interposing their deceitful glare
and bewildering shadows between his eagle eye and the
sun of true science.
Equally forbidden and useless is the waste of time
and labor in the pursuit of materiality where it does not.
exist-in the vain attempts to. trace in the out-breakings
of a disease its unsubstantial form, and the impenetrable secret of its action, without regarding the all-important fact that vitality alone, when deranged, gives rise to
the disease, and necessarily imparts to it its own impalpable nature, imaged in the mirror of the mind, but never to be reached by the senses: and it follows, of
course, that the remedy, to effect a successful cure, must




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


be alike impalpable (dynamic) as far as human art and
means are capable of subjecting it to the process of
sublimation.
The physician's study must be solely and wholly confined to what he is permitted to know-the actual presence of a disease indicated by unerring symptoms, and
the choice of suitable remedies directed by a positive
previous knowledge of their properties and effects.
In the art of healing, that is in the application of remedies, nothing must be left to conjecture, supposition,
or mere influence of opinion, but every thing must be
done on the authority of facts experimentally proved
and fixed upon an immoveable basis.
Nature can scarcely minister to herself, without great
risk and imminent danger; because the greater and the
more successful are her struggles with the disease immediately pressing upon her, the more she is in the situation of a besieged general, who, by drawing his
forces to one particular point of defence, leaves the rest
of the fortress exposed to fresh and more vigorous attacks, the more dangerous as they come from a quarter
the least suspected. An exception seems to present itself in acute diseases, where there is generally a crisis
and cessation; but this appears to be the mere result of
that extreme activity in the disease itself, which sometimes brings it to maturity soon enough to give nature
time to recover, and to resume the seat from which she
was so forcibly displaced.
Although nature, when left to herself, in presence of a
long-lived disease, cannot repel her enemy with impunity, yet, when assisted in the right way, she alone is
always the real conqueror; the remedies being only her
auxiliaries-the conservators, not the constituent drops,
of the mysterious fountain of life.
The notion that medicines possess in themselves a




11OM-IPAT IIA REVEALED.


25


positive healing or curative virtue, powerful enough to
exterminate disease, is the popular error of ages, as
fatal to the progress of medical science as the fruitless,
presumptuous sebrch after vitality, "vis mediatrix," or
by whatever name the inscrutable principle of life may
have been designated; and the mischief it has already
caused can never be fully atoned even by its complete
abjuration in favor of the no longer eludible truth, that
to dislodge disease is the only way to overcome it; that
there is no such thing as healing, except in surgical
cases; and that what is called cure is nothing more than
expulsion.
Whenever two analogous or simple diseases happen
to meet together in the same body, they will, if their
force be equal, either disappear by neutralizing each
other, or terminate in a third new one produced by
their combination; and, if unequal, the weaker will be
absorbed by the stronger.
No local malady is admitted into the creed of Homcepathia; because all apparently local morbid indications,
excepting always surgical cases of external violence,
are only symptoms of a cause -acting internally, and to
be treated as such. Remove the cause, and the symptoms disappear at once. This, too, is the reason why
Homcepathia forbids the use of local remedies-,-unnecessary, because they do not reach the source of mischief; treacherous, because under a semblance of relief
they destroy those visible signs of disease which are
the best guides to a correct judgment of its nature, state
and progress; and   dangerous-the most dangerous
when they seem most successful-because the cure they
are supposed to have effected is nothing better than a
forcible deposit, within the centre of the animal system,
of all those seeds of future diseases, which nature was
4




26


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


engaged, and, but for this ill-judged interference, would
have, with proper aid, succeeded in throwing out. External use of sulphur, for the diseases of the skin, has
laid many a victim in the premature grave; yet there is
scarcely any thing that will cure those same diseases
with more expedition and safety than this very substance internally given. Bleeding, blistering, purging,
and vomiting, as remedies, are likewise prohibited; because they partake of the character of local applications, and either prostrate nature when she has most
need of all her strength, or distract her active vigilance
by multiplied and misplaced irritations, or else divert
her conservative forces by lateral attacks from the post
of danger, and thus enable the enemy to enter the breach
unmolested.
As in a well-going clock, where the mechanism is in
perfect order, the least change, produced by an unguarded touch, is a change for the worse; and as disease, in
all cases, is nothing else than a disturbance, more or
less, of the internal mechanism, that is, the healthy
(normal) condition of the body-it follows, of course,
that medicine, introduced into a healthy body, being not
an article of food, but a potential substance, must always be the immediate cause of such disturbance; and
that consequently its operation, while it lasts, is a positive disease artificially produced, and, in this alone, differing from the natural, that it is a poison within our
control, while the latter obtrudes itself without our leave
and knowledge.
Natural or primary diseases, although often obstinate
and fatal, and although their causes are beyond our
knowledge and control, are, nevertheless, since so many
escape them, less certain, uniform, and regular in their
approach or aggression, than the artificial or secondary,
produced by medicine, invariable in its effect, and, for




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


27


this very reason, subjected to our command, so that it
may be protracted or shortened, as we may choose to
continue or suspend its action: hence it is both our advantage and duty to encounter the natural uncontrollable
by the artificial controllable, and not to withdraw the latter until it has matured or absorbed the other, and thus
afforded a respite to nature sufficient to enable her to
expel the invader.
In order that the natural disease may be matured or
absorbed by the artificial, and thus expelled altogether,
the latter must be of proportionate strength,* and corresponding in sympathy, for which purpose there must
be a previous thorough conviction of the specific virtue
Sof the medicine selected for the occasion.
As it would be an obvious error to argue in favor of
any change in the above-mentioned well regulated clock,
on the ground that a change is necessary in its deranged
state; so all conclusions, as to the genuine invariable
quality of any particular medicine, would be equally
unsafe and erroneous, if predicated only on its secondary benignant influence in the presence of another primary disease-conclusions which, in spite of their antiquity, are not more sound than would be an attempt to
define the element of fire exclusively from the comfort
it affords: it is evident, therefore, that the real specific
virtue of a medicine must be tried, judged, and identified by its effects a priori, not a posteriori-by its aggressive, (pathogenic,) not relieving (therapeutic) force;
in the same way as the true nature of fire is recognised
by its destructive, not soothing power; not as a slave in
* It must be somewhat stronger, otherwise it acts only as a preventive; thus, the vaccine prevents, not cures, the small-pox, because the
latter is the stronger of the two.




28


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


our service, but as the master, in the full possession and
free exercise of his independent powers.
A previous thorough knowledge of remedial forces, in
their primary state of aggression, as they affect a healthy
body, not as they relieve its sufferings, is clearly unattainable under the ordinary compound practice; because, in a mixed dose it is impossible, in case of success, to ascertain which of the medicines in particular
has produced that success, or what are the respective
aggressive as well as curative virtues of each, of more
than one, or of all of them in combination; and because such practice presupposes a distinct individual
action of each ingredient in the mixture, contrary to the
established fact that chemical union, unavoidable in this
instance, of various substances, whether analogous or
dissimilar, always produces a new substance entirely
different from every such substance in its state of separation: yet as this knowledge is absolutely indispensable,
forming as it does the very foundation of safe practice,
there exists a manifest necessity for resorting to the only
means by which such knowledge can be obtainedmeans so simple and obvious as to excite no less regret
than astonishment at their having been so long overlooked-the administering of never more than one remedy at a
time, the contrary course being no better than the throwing of a full-charged bomb into the stomach, in hopes of
a chance that some of the ingredients may hit the disease, no matter how they may shatter the whole frame in
the explosion.
The essential aggressive remedial forces being ascertained, and the agents for producing artificial diseases
being thus secured, it becomes the paramount duty, not
only to find out and to estimate with precision the relative character of the artificial to the natural diseases
which they have to combat, but to fix also on the best




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


29


and safest of the only three modes by which such agents
can be introduced, and which are, ALLOPATHIA, (mixed
or remote suffering,) the present universally adopted
practice; ENAN'IOPATHIA or ANTIPATHIA, (contra suffering,) connected with the preceding; and HOMCEPATHIA, (similar sufftring,) a new comer, standing alone,
but in opposition to both. ALLOPATHIA, with its arbitrary uncertain mixed doses, promises nothing better
than some chance-creation of a disease, independent in
itself, an additional unwelcome intruder, who will either
take and hold more tenaciously the place of the one already on the premises, or commence and carry on depredations in another quarter on his own account, until
there are no more spoils left for either. ENANTIOPATHIA,
whose doses are likewise mixed, may produce something like a palliation, but no more, unless it be the danger ever lurking in the rear of contending forces-victory on either side leaving deep traces behind. If fire
overcomes water, the conflagration rages with redoubled
force; if water proves the victor, there is ruin in the inundation. HOMCEPATHIA administers the pure unalloyed
medicine by itself, whose aggressive force produces a
disease in all respects like the one to be removed; and
it would be difficult to disprove that she is on the right
path; for whoever has seen forests and prairies on fire,
knows well that not only one fire is best extinguished by
another,* but, what is of the first consequence in the
practice of medicine, this extinction of each other, divested of all posthumous mischief, is effected in less
time than could be achieved by the overwhelming
masses of a Niagara: nor can the safety of this astonishing operation be sufficiently appreciated without con"* The common expression, " the sun puts out the fire," implies a fact
strictly Homcepathic.




30


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


trasting it with the peril averted-the peril of the antagonist-force acting with the same instantaneous rapidity,
too fearfully disproportionate to be invoked against a
local evil: and this is precisely what takes place, more
or less, both in Allopathia and Enantiopathia, where, it
is ten to one, as has been said already, the friend will
prove a more troublesome and pertinacious guest than
the foe he was invited to assist in driving away. It is
evident, therefore, that to command and secure the services of this friend, with as much advantage as expedition-to put it out of his power to do harm, and compel
him to do good-is the enviable privilege of Homcepathia;
and the most that her adversaries can do is to afford
a temporary alleviation, which is usually followed by
the reaction and increased irritation of the original
disease.
It being conceded, that in a healthy body mercury produces a syphilis; sulphur cutaneous diseases; cinchona
an ague; ipecacuanna vomiting; rhubarb a diarrhoea;
vaccination a small-pox; and it being a well-known fact
that the syphilis is removed by mercury; cutaneous diseases by sulphur; the ague by cinchona; vomiting by
ipecacuanna; and the small-pox prevented by vaccination; not to mention other similar cases; one cannot but
wonder how the pregnant truth-that all such least uncertain cures are in the strictest sense Homewpathiccould have so long escaped the notice of physicians,
who came quite within its reach when they classed the
remedies themselves under the head of specifics, and
who actually lay their fingers upon it every time they
prescribe ipecacuanna, for instance, as a tonic in small
and as a vomitive in large doses! If, therefore, this
truth is now disinterred from the lumber of useless
learning; if it be no longer questionable that all remedies produce diseases in the healthy, and cure such as




HOMCAPATHIA IREVEALVD1


31


are analogous to them in the morbid state of the body;
and that every remedy is a specific against a disease
whose symptoms'correspond with its own; if, by extending the specific principle to the entire materia medica,
every part of the noble fabric has been strengthened,
so as to consolidate the whole, the merit of the achievement is due to Homoepathia; and by this alone, had
she done nothing more, she has acquired a just and lasting claim to universal respect and the gratitude of
mankind.
As true quackery consists either in the attempt to impose a remedy or remedies, destitute of the virtues ascribed to them, or in the higher and still more absurd
pretensions to cure all kinds of maladies by one secret
specific; so every system in medicine which has a specific basis for its foundation, a general uniformly preferred
rule of action, a pre-conceived notion, a pre-established principle to which the treatment of diseases must be accommodated-and there is scarcely one of them, from the
Sangradian to the Brunonian, that does not in some measure partake of this character-must be more or less a
modification of quackery, with this only difference against
the patient, that it is almost irresponsible,.endowed with
impunity, and empowered to dispose of human life at
pleasure. Homcepathia, therefore, if a system at all, is
the only one untainted with quackery, inasmuch as it
has no other basis to stand upon but the destruction of
quackery, privileged as well as tolerated, by her rejection
of all specific systems whatsoever.
The ORGANISM OF LIFE, as far as its phenomena present themselves to our observation-such for example as
the growth of grass quickened by the scythe, of hair by
the razor, or of young shoots by the pruning knife, is
unquestionably endowed with that spring-like elasticity
which recoils upon itself from the blow, and with in



32


IHOMCEPATHIA REVEALEDI


creasing vigor returns to repair the injury done; and it
is here that we find an additional reason, and a satisfactory explanation of the fact, that natural or primary diseases are removed by such only artificial or secondary
as are the nearest assimilated in their character and
symptoms: for here the slighest touch (any blow would
be too much) bearing directly on the part already alfected, provokes it into action, and excites its recoiling
as well as repelling energy to a point, at which both
diseases, or rather two in one, the natural being matured
or absorbed by the artificial, give way and disappear,
as soon as the stimulating cause in the form of medicine
is withdrawn; and it is quite clear that this result cannot be produced either by the Allopathic or Antipathic
processes, because in either the touch would be a blow,
and the blow itself would fall on some other part of the
spring, where, if too light, it would not be felt, if strong
enough, or too strong, would only press too much in the
wrong place, and weaken the whole, so as to frustrate
all effbrts to cffect a cure; and if now and then have
appeared some favorable exceptions, they were owing
either to the reaction of the vital spring in spite of remedies, or to the unsuspected, chance-directed application of specific Homoepathic principles. Thus, then, the
all-important fact, " the like cure the like," espied but
not pursued by several eminent physicians, and practised, without being known, by the ignorant peasant,
whenever he rubs the frost-bitten part with snow, holds
the burnt finger to the fire, or thaws frozen provisions in
cold water, is at length triumphantly established by Homoepathia; and fill well has she won the right to wear
on her shield the motto of ( similia similibus curnturL."




PRINC IPLE S.
The foregoing doctrines, comprising, as it is believed,
the whole theory of Homcepathia, naturally resolve
themselves into certain fixed principles, considered as
axioms, which serve as guides and rules in practice, and
which may be summed up as follows:
Human s'kill fails in the presence of death, not because this skill is powerless against diseases but because deathi is no disease.
Constitutional deformities admit of no cure, not as
diseases, but as simple deviations from the ordinary
course of nature, not incompatible with health.
To keep off death until the natural termination of old
age is the requisite perfection of the healing art.
No disease is incurable as long as the organ affected
is not destroyed, and there 'is no prostration of vital
powers.
The power of curing all diseases that are really such,
is not only attainable, but implied in the very gift of life.
MEDICINE, the curing power, can only be sustained
by TEMPERANCE, the health-preserving power.
The best of curative systems is that which, from its
very nature, stands on the exclusive basis of temperance, and of necessity can have no other.
The principle of vitality is forbidden to our knowledge, and useless if known.
Vitality is the source of that elastic, recoiling and re5




34'


3HOMC(EPATHIA REVEALED.


acting power, with which the animal organism is so perceptibly endowed.
Vitality, whenever deranged, becomes the source of
disease.
Disease, the effect of deranged vitality, partakes of
the impalpable nature of the cause.
The impalpable can only be cured by the impalpablc.
Disease, as it reveals itself by its symptoms, is the
sole legitimate object of the physician's study.
Absolute certainty, as regards the nature and effects
of remedies, is the only principle on which they are to
be administered.
Nature, unassisted, is incapable of self-cure otherwise
than at the risk of exposure to new maladies, where diseases do. not die of themselves.
Nature, assisted, is the sole agent that effects the cure.
Nature requires no other aid than what is necessary to
give her time to profit by the reaction of that mysterious,
elastic organism of life, over which she presides alone.
Medicines have no healing or curative power in themselves, being mere auxiliaries in the cause of health.
There is no such thing as local malady, disconnected
from surgical cases.
Cure is merely an expulsion of disease.
Two or more similar diseases cannot co-exist in the
same body, one being destroyed by the other, or a third
one produced by a combination of both.
The stronger of the co-existent diseases, whether it be
artificial or natural, will absorb the weaker.
The cause alone, remote or immediate, as far as it
can be traced, not the symptoms, is the true object of
medical treatment.
Disease is a disturbance of the healthy functions of
the body.
Every medicine disturbs the ordinary healthy functions, and consequently produces a disease.




0OM<EPATIIIA REVEALED.


35


Poison is the cause, and disease the form, of this disturbance; consequently every medicine is a poison or no
medicine at all.
Artificial diseases, caused by medicine, must be of
requisite strength, and always analogous to the natural,
which are to be removed.
Natural diseases are less certain and uniform in their
aggression and operation than the artificial, and thence
advantageously controlled by the latter.
Aggressive, not curative quality, is the only index of
a remedial power.
The true index of a remedial power can only be obtained from the use of one medicine at a time.
All true remedies are specifics.
Every remedy is specific against a disease which resembles the one produced by itself.
Mixed or compound doses are absolutely inadmissible.
Bleeding, blistering, purging and vomiting, as remedies, are worse than useless, and not to be employed.
Disease, when at its height or crisis, is brought to full
maturity by its own over-action, while passive nature
has strength enough to withstand the shock.
Disease cannot survive its own maturity, and for that
reason is made to reach this point, by slight aggravation
and absorption, before it has destroyed the organism
of life.
Timely acceleration of disease to maturity is the true
and the only mode of effecting a cure.
The timely acceleration can be performed in no other
way, than by an union and co-operation of the artificial
disease with the natural.
All remedies produce diseases in the healthy and cure
them in the morbid state of the body.
All diseases, without exception, are cured, that is,
expelled on the great principle, involving all others,
" the like cure the like," or similia similibus curantur.




TrHE' MEANS OF ACTION, OR DOSES.


The artjificial or secondary disease produced by medicine, being always such as to bear directly upon the
organ affected by the natural or primary disease which
is to be removed; and the sensibility of this particular
organ beingr consequently more excitable than that of
any other, it was soon found that scarcely any touch
could be applied here with sufficient delicacy and caution: and hence the origin and explanation of those minute Homcepathic doses, which, necessarily regulated
by imperceptible augmentations of morbid ascendancy
on one hand, and the requisite corresponding diminutions of pressure on, the other, have been gradually attenuated almost beyond the reach of human calculation.
The tyrant, defying all open at-tacks, has been made to
yield to that soft, insinuating, sympathetic force, operative in proportion to its sublimation, which penetrates in
an instant to his strongest hold, lulls him asleep, and at
the physician's command, delivers him up a fettered,
harmless captive.
That the decillionth part of a grain, be the medicine
what it may, should have the power to expel a formidable disease, is certainly an operation at once wonderful
and incomprehensible; yet, that it is actually performed, no better guarantee can be produced than Homcepathia herself, who, as has been shown already, wastes




HOMMEPATHIA REVEALED.


37


no time upon mysteries-watches and studies facts
alone, and does nothing at hazard. Moreover, as the
fundamental principles and doctrines on which she has
built her edifice, can be in nowise impaired by any imperfection imputed to her doses, which are only her
working tools; and as both policy and convenience
would dictate to her the employment of large ordinary
doses, as the best possible mode of shutting up the principal armory from which her opponents draw their weapons of offence against her, it is to be presumed that
nothing short of conviction could have induced her to
adopt and persevere in the opposite course; and this is
really the case.
Experience has soon taught her, that, although large
ordinary doses produce, in a healthy body, their characteristic diseases, fully developed and identified; yet
that they do not only fail, when brought to act in their
secondary curative capacity against similar diseases
pre-occupying the ground to be contested; but that the
failure, paradoxical as it may seem, is owing entirely to
their being both too strong and too weak-too strong,
when they press too much upon the affected organ, and
aggravate the disease beyond the point required; and
too zoeak, when the irritation thus produced communicates itself too soon to the other parts of the organism,
whereby the whole is ejected by the alimentary canal
or otherwise, before it had time to perform its office as
to the disease present, whatever mischief it may have
done in other respects;and this is a sufficient solution
of the apparent difficulty-much derided and insisted
upon by the adverse party-of reconciling the extreme
lightness with the signal potency of Homoepathic doses.
There can be no doubt that this difficulty was serious, and must have appeared at one time insurmountable; but Homcepathia, or rather he whose child and




36.


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


representative she is, and who must be understood
whenever her name is mentioned, overcame it by one of
those inspirations which belong to genius alone. She bethought herself of trituration in solids, and agitation in
fluids, and the wonder was done! The remedial essence, thus disengaged from gross and inert mattersubtle, quick, elastic, tenacious, and almost allied to vitality, sprung at once to the seat of disease, breathed
gently but effectually upon the wound, fastened upon
the wounder, and held him passive, spell-bound, till the
concentrated reacting energy of the organism has struck
him in its turn, and hurled him from the citadel of
health! Such is the untangible, or, as it is technically
termed, dynamic power of these minute doses! It seems
not only infinitely ductile, but indestructible; since the
point at which it ceases to act has not yet been reached,
although two celebrated Homoepathists, HARTMAN of
Germany, and KORSAKOEF of Russia, have pushed the
process of attenuation to the utmost stretch of human
calculation.
The foregoing exposition may well seem fanciful,
since any attempt to obtain what is inexplicable must
needs wear that aspect; yet it is certain, that this mysterious power is reflected in many images which nature
daily presents to our contemplation. The spider's exquisite and almost endless fibre, compressed within the
globule of a grain, yet strong enough to hold up his own
weight, with all his weaving stores, and the suspended
prey besides; the stroke of the serpent's fang that destroys life; the drop of Prussic acid, that prostrates an
elephant; the scarcely visible speck of morbid matter
on the lancet's point, that conveys disease and death itself into our veins; the pestilential miasm, that viewless
sweeps along, and strews the earth with the unmourned,
unburied dead; the first perceptible ray of the sun,




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


39


that strikes the earth with the crushing velocity of one
hundred million miles in eight minutes, and yet is so attenuated as to be scarcely felt; the steam that is rarified
even to freezing, yet still rising in strength; the galvanic
spark that melts platina, and gives the shock to a thousand beings at once; the electric flash that splits the
rocks; the magnetic spell that controls the obedient
needle; the baleful light that blasts the stout but careless sleeper beneath the Equatorial moon; the torpedo,
that at a touch, paralizes the arm of the hardy fisherman; the boundless diffusion of odor; the fainting produced by the presence of a flower; the smell by which
one detects the unseen object of his antipathy; the scent
by which the dog traces his absent and far-distant master; the instinctive sight, that, from a distant, unfamiliar
region, guides the carrier-pigeon straight to his home;
the strange but exact presension of winds, rains, and all
atmospheric changes, which distinguishes several animals, and occasionally man himself; the unknown, but
well authenticated influence upon the nerves of stone
and metal amulets worn about the body; the sudden,
unperceived, but often certain blow of death, that comes
from terror, grief, and even joy itself; and, lastly, the
marvel of ANIMAL MAGNETISM vouched for by the most
respectable medical authorities: are so many manifestations, exemplifications, and evidences of the active,
penetrating element of imponderous Homcepathic doses.
But the most striking illustration, on account of its
close analogy and distinctness, is the well known ductility of gold, one grain of which, as seems to have been
demonstrated by REAUMER, can be expanded into a
leaf, impervious to light and water, yet large enough to
cover, a house! The leaf being a solid body, reduced to its minutest particles by trituration, will thus
be found, with the aid of a microscope, to be actu



40


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


ally and palpably present in the highest Homoepathic dose of this metal. Moreover, who doubts, that
not atoms, but organized living beings, can be discovered in each millionth part of a drop of water? Who
disputes the mathematical position that an entity can
never pass into non-entity; that a something cannot be reduced to nothing, and that matter, at the extremest point
of divisibility, still leaves some remnant behind? Who,
because unable to realize, will deny the possibility so
indispensable to the perfection of the laws of equilibrium, of balancing a huge rock so that the additional
weight of a single fly will overturn it? Belief, then, is
not always credulity, nor scepticism a mark of wisdom.
The most active imagination would try in vain to measure that minimum portion of a drop which first insinuates
itself into the heart of a solid mass to be decomposed
by water; yet, that such is the commencement of the
work of decomposition, no rational philosophy will permit itself to question. It would be scarcely less difficult
to fix the size or weight of a spark struck from the flint;
yet, of what mighty mischief is it the source and cause,
we have the painful confirmation in cities laid in ashes,
and millions of lives suddenly and prematurely destroyed.
It is a self-evident truth, that constituents cannot impart to their integer any quality not possessed originally
in themselves. If atoms, therefore, exert so much power
in combination, which, by the by, is all we know of them
besides the name, by what crooked ways of a logic,
erected upon our own ignorance, can we conduct the
mind to the gratuitous conclusion that they are powerless when separated from each other? Should not sound
reasoning lead us rather to the opposite conclusion, that
power is inherent in them, and that, in proportion as it
retrogrades towards the primitive state of unity, it be



HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


41


comes certainly less ponderous, overwhelming, and irresistible-but for this very reason, more elastic, insinuating, and operative, even as the primary fibres, when
detached from the main artificial or natural body, gain
in fineness what they lose in bulk, or as the keen poitit
of a small sword penetrates far deeper than the axe,
and by its very'"lightness becomes more effective? If
this be not so, what is there in a slight touch, or a momentary breath, that conveys the plague from one person to another? What is it but a transitive impalpable atom, evolved from the infectious stuff in a high
statedof fermentation, diffusion, and exhalation? That
such is really the case, and that-the principle adopted
in this instance is the true one, acted upon and thereby
sanctioned by Nature, the following, as presented by
herself, is a conclusive evidence:
The genuine virus of Hydrophobia, which, according
to Dr. Marochetti,* is concentrated in one or more pustules under the tongue, of the size of a pin's head, has
not yet, as far as is known, been extracted, and added
to the materia medica, and consequently has never yet
been detected, seen or exposed to practical investigation; and to identify it, as has been done, with the saliva of a rabid animal, is to take refuge in a desperate
conjecture. What then is this saliva, the well known
medium of infection? It is the constant, distinguishing.sign, more or less obtrusive, of the convulsive agitation
of the nerves, and, of course, most fearful and unsightly,
when the nerves are acted upon with concentrated virulence by the most potent of diseases. That it is to a cer* Vide the "Letter on Hydrophobia," published in the Courier and
Enquirer of August 6th, 1836, where Dr. Marochetti's account of the
Ukranian method of treating Hydrophobia is given in detail.
6




42


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


tain degree impregnated with poison there can be no
question; but that there is any particular affinity or reciprocal attraction in the case, is, to say the least, very
doubtful. To no pre-eminence of malignity in itself, but
solely to its proximity and immediate connection with
the chief instrument of execution, the tooth, it is obviously indebted for the equivocal distinction of being the
chosen favorite vehicle of the fell destroyer. Its capacity
to receive and to propagate the virus may increase with
the emission of its own quantity, rising with the excited
action of the glands; but whatever it thus contains can
only be a portion of that extreme dilution which has
reached every part of the frame, and probably rendered all other secretions, if infused into a wound, equally
fatal. In short, the saliva is truly, distinctly, in every
respect, and in the strictest sense, a Homcepathic preparation elaborated in the pharmacy of nature! Divide
it as you please, and into as matny parts as possible, it
will give but so many Homoepathic doses in a state of
comminution to which Homcepathia herself is comparatively a stranger. How infinite must needs be their attenuation, the most resolute effort of conjecture is baffled
by the astounding fact, that even of the minute portion
conveyed by the tooth, much is lost by the friction before reaching the wound, although the virus, so inconceivably diluted when it first entered the system, was
itself an atom, emanating through a series of the like
intermediate atoms and dilutions, from that original
source, which is itself a mystery not yet solved and not
likely to be so. Well! To unbelievers, who form the
great majority of the multitude, the idea of such attenuation will probably be quite acceptable as a subject of
merriment and derision; if so, are they willing and
ready to prove their sincerity? Will they dare the test?
Will the bravest of them bare his arm to the lancet




HIOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


43


dipped in this infinite dilution? No. They know better.
They know that the least absorption of the least portion
that can sustain itself on the invisible point, will raise a
burning lava in their veins, extinguished but with life.
Their stoutest, lion-hearted men will shrink with terror
from  the perilous trial.
Illustrations, however, are no longer needed. These
minute doses are now questioned only by the uninformed, or such as are loth to lose so favorite a point of attack. Their potency has been fully acknowledged by
all those who have tried them, even when there was no
predisposition to be convinced. Dr. Duringe, one of the
ablest argumentative opponents of Homoepathia, not
only admits this potency in its full extent, and cites cases
in which he has proved it himself, but he affirms farther,
that there are few men strong enough to bear one whole
grain, or even half a grain of a Homoepathic dose. "Un
malade ne doit prendre ni plus ni moins que la dose
prescrite, et il faut remarquer qu'il n'existe que tres peu
d'individus assez robustes pour supporter la dose d'un grain,
ou meme d'une demi-grain."*
" * Vide page 73. L'Homoepathy, nouveau system en medicine, ses
advantages et ses dangers, par le Dr. Duringe, membre de 1'Universite
de Goettung, & cet.-For cases and proofs, vide ibidem, pages 78, 99,
113 and 134.
Dr. Duringe goes still farther, and actually challenges the unbelievers to try the Hydrophobic virus in the manner proposed; so that, next
to Hahnemann himself, and Admiral Mordvinow, Homcpathy is indebted to this very professed, but at times liberal opponent, for some of
the most convincing illustrations presented now to the reader, of the potency of Homoepathic doses.
If, notwithstanding all these authorities, a seeing and believing proof,
one nearer at hand should still be insisted upon, it is furnished in a recent experiment made upon himself by Dr. Elliot, the distinguished
oculist of this city, who rejected all belief in minute Homcepathic
doses Common charcoal, for the very reason that it is a well known




44


RHOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


It would be unjust to omit here other essential advantages which Hoincepathia derives from her doses, and
which cannot be realized by any other known system
whatever. First, the extreme smallness of the dose permits its being so completely disguised, and made palatable, that the most feeble, delicate and irritated stomach
retains it, while the most wayward child, and even the
infant at the breast, will swallow       it with   avidity; secondly, the strength of the dose, in chronic diseases,*
being always in the inverse ratio of the strength of the
disease, the greater the danger to be encountered, the
less chance is there of doing harm by any error in the
choice of medicine, which, in such case, has no effect at
all; thirdly, the wrong medicine being always recognized by its want of effect, and not by its injury, it may be
changed with perfect safety to the patient until the right
one is found and the relief obtained; and, fourthly, all
harmless substance, taken with impunity at discretion, was selected for
the trial, and given him in pills of the 4th degree of comminution, that
is, each pill containing one X millionth part of a grain of charcoal,
three of them to be taken every day, and the whole in the course of
six!! Great indeed was his astonishment, when in spite of his resolution to go on, he found himself compelled to stop on the fourth day; for
by this time the overpowering effect of what he had already taken was
quite sufficient, and painfully so, to convince him of the extreme danger
of advancing farther. In short, he was perfectly satisfied, and so would
be any one who is not a wilful rebel against the paramount principle,
that condemnation should follow, not precede the trial. It is to be hoped
that this experiment, stated with the Doctor's permission, will, in this
city at least, set at rest the question of Homcepathic doses.
* In violent acute diseases, where prompt action is indispensable, the
dose may be of any allowable strength, for then it is never given at
once, but only in minute portions or spoonfulls, until the desired effect
is produced, when it is immediately stopped, all danger of aggravation
averted, and the patient, with undiminished precaution, conducted to a
state of convalescence, which is always the state of health under Homcepathic ministration.




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


45


irritating, tormenting, external applications or auxiliary
remedies being dispensed with, the patient is relieved of
all those extraneous sufferings, which, in addition to the
pains of disease, are generally inflicted by the system
now in vogue and general practice: so that to the main
salutary efficacy of these doses must be superadded the
extreme facility in administering them-the absolute impossibility of doing harm by mistake-the auspicious certainty
of applying at last the proper remedy, and a total exemption of the patient from all accessory trouble, personal
inconvenience and needless torture.
This is not all. The strict exclusion of all medicinal
substances capable of interrupting the effects of doses
so extremely delicate, such particularly as alcohol in all
its modifications, required by Homoepathic treatment,
and cheerfully submitted to by the patient in his natural
anxiety for health, brings on insensibly a change of habit
for the better, which, once acquired, is apt to be retained
forever after, as has often been the case with habitual
drunkards and tobacco consumers; so that Homcepathia
goes hand in hand with temperance, and is a host within herself, having the power to achieve more in this
good cause in one month than can be done by a temperance society in a whole year, or by all the societies together in a given period of time. Surely a system, possessed of such accumulated and highly important advantages over all others, deserves at least to be well understood before it is rejected!
As to the precise manner in which these diminutive
atomic doses operate upon the animal system, Homoepathists themselves do not even pretend to be acquainted
with it. They see the effect, and they require no more.
With the worthy author* of the " Glance at Homoe

* Mordvinow.




46


4HOMMPATHITA REVEALED.


p athia." I consider the operation in question as that of
" INOCULATION;" but inoculation, however familiar in
name, isý itself a mystery, and this is all that will ever
be known of it by the wisest of men. We must needs
be content with our ignorance in this respect, as we
are with our excellent old planet-the limits of both
being impassable.
NOTE
Omitted accidentally in the first edition.
In one of the hospitals of the Ukraine, some eighteen years since,
the precise date has escaped my recollection, there were no less than
twenty persons exposed at one time and from the same cause to Hydrophobia; and of these, the choiee of treatment being left to their option,
six, bitten last, escaped the infection, three died under the care of the
hospital surgeon, and the rest recovered in the hands of a reputed peasant leech; that is, the fearful malady, incurable when once manifested,
in one instance broke out in spite of all the usual surgical precautions,
and in the other was prevented by the genista and pustule method
practised by the peasantry, as described by lIAROCHETI. The accident
which led to this took place on a fine summer day, when a large isolated hall, containing several bed-ridden patients, was thrown open for the
benefit of fresh air, and a rabid wolf, rushing in, bit twenty of them
before he could be despatched, in various parts of the body, protected
only by a single sheet covering suitable to the season. All idea of a
fresh supply of virulent matter being precluded by the rapid succession
of bites, the astounding fact is thus established, that the invisible fatal
atom on a tooth's point was sufficient to inoculate fourteen persons, and,
although it had each time to pass through coarse linen, was not wiped
off and dislodged till the fifteenth application!!! What comment on
the stultified perverseness that presumes to scoff at Homcepathic dilutions, so infinitely surpassed by the process of Nature'
The above was communicated to me in 1828, while on my visit to
the Ukraine, by the Surgeon himself, one of my own two brothers.
THE AUTHOR.




PSORA.


PsoaA, although intimatelyr connected with Homoepathia, and directly emanating from it, is, nevertheless,
a subsequent discovery of Hahnemann's, distinct in itself. He had observed, fbr some time, that chronic diseases in particular often resisted the salutary effect of
well approved, and, in every respect, well chosen Homepathic medicines, which in ordinary circumstantmes,
where similar diseases were in their primary state, independent of other causes, acted with their uniform
success, and with all the certainty of specifics. To a
mind so daring, indefatigable, and exhaustless in resources, this obstacle, which would have sunk any other
into utteir despair, was but an additional spur to action;
and accordingly, after years of intense study, his suspicion was directed to the probable existence of some
remote original cause, itself invisible, but producing
from time to time, whenever roused into action, various
chronic diseases, which, though seemingly distinct, are,
in reality, its own eitended modifications, exhibited under different forms and aspects. The suspicion being
once excited, the trail was soon found and followed up
with tenacious sagacity, until the labyrinth of the yet
hidden mysteries of nature was still farther explored,
and the perseverance of search rewarded by the discovery of three individual principles, in a certain sense permanent, some of which are present in most, if not all
constitutions-sometimes insinuating themselves from




48


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


without, and sometimes internally transmitted from generation to generation, and often dormant, quiescent, and
in the absence of particular excitement, undetected, and
not even suspected during the whole term of life.
These are Sycosis, Syphilis, and Psora. The last is
the only one now under consideration; for, besides being
especially denounced as the representative of the other
two, its paramount importance is attested by Hahnemann himself, who imputes to it eight-tenths of all the
obstinate chronic diseases with which poor humanity is
afflicted. He has detected its secret operation in many
instances, and traced it back to the primitive ages. He
explains it to be the itch principle, gives it the technical
name of Psora, and proves its identity with the ancient
leprosy, which, although less apparent in our days, has
never yet ceased to exist. He maintains that not only
the pervading presence of this morbific element is to be
feared and suspected, where remedies fail of effect, but
that the very progress of civilization, furnishing whole
communities with better means for its apparent subjugation, has placed the succeeding generations more and
more at its mercy. As long as nature can drive this
enemy to the outer walls, and keep there his bannered
forces, so long the struggle may be continued with comparative safety to the seat of life; but the moment any
additional, well-intentioned, but mistaken influence compels these forces to re-enter, the struggle, which appears
suspended, is in reality given up in favor of the invader;
and the seeming cessation is nothing else than the interval afforded him to plot new and more serious aggressions, to concoct and concentrate his multifarious poisons, and to diffuse them, now that there is no outlet to
the surface, through all the interior paths and inmost recesses of the human frame.
Thus the lacerated skin of the ancients, covered with




1IOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


49


disgusting foulness, and irritated to torture, was a protection to the vital power within; while with us, the
clean exterior, kept free of unsightly, eruptions by improved artificial means, is a shelter for the malignant,
deep-seated Polypus, whose arms, when extruded and
lopped of their extremities, turn to self-reproduction,
and set at nought all the power and resources of the
healing art. The outward suffering of old was the
price of inward security; our apparent security, the
pledge of internal disorder. Leprosy was then a polluting
harpy, preying on all the visible decencies of social and
private life; now it is the ravenous Promethean vulture, chained to the heart, and feeding upon the entrails.
Such is the doctrine of Psora; and, that it is not
without foundation, may be inferred from the success
with which this miasm has been combatted by suitable
remedies denominated anti-pso/ic, and forming a part of
the same discovery, which otherwise would have been
useless. It may be well supposed that Hiahnemann was
not likely to content himself with the abstract honor.of
solving a mystery, or of illustrating some theoretic point
leading to no practical benefit. He drew forth an occult
evil, not for the purpose of exhibiting it as a specimen of
his skill and penetration, but in order to lay it bare to
the paralizing touch of medicine, and he rested not until
this object also was fully attained.
The annunciation of this discovery was a signal for
new attacks, more than ever fierce and determined; and
Psora became the rallying point of all the inveterate enemies, great and small, of Homcepathia. Dr. Duringe,
otherwise a fair adversary, who has already been quoted,
assails this new doctrine with unqualified denunciations
and gratuitous assertions, with ridicule, and at the same
time With bitterness, which impair all his former professions and indications of liberality, justice and modera7




60


HOMMEPATHIA REVEALED.


tion. He has persuaded himself this is the weakest and
most vulnerable part of his great antagonist, and, with no
charitable spirit, is determined to probe to the utmost
the wound which'he thinks he has inflicted. In his imagination he bestrides the noble sire of Homcepathia, all
bridled and tamed to his purpose, and plies his spurs
without mercy or a moment's relaxation. He forgets,
however, that there is a trunk to sweep down, and a
foot to crush even the mighty lion, seeking to plant-himself on the back of an elephant!
How far the present aspirant has escaped the trunk
and the foot in his fancied elevation, may be judged
from what follows-not as a deviation from the primal
resolution to adhere strictly to the office of interpreter,
and avoid all discussion where facts should speak for
themselves;- but as an exception authorized and demanded by the double -call of justice, first to allow a
witness, the professed opponent, who has already been
summoned in favor of the cause, to give the rest of his
testimony against it; and secondly, not to suffbr objections to derive any fictitious force, not possessed in
themselves, from the previous comparatively liberal admissions and confessions. Moreover, the antagonist selected on the present occasion, is not only too respectable, when compared with others, not to be entitled to an
answer, which, as far as is known here, has not yet been
given; but his arguments embrace every objection that
can be plausibly urged against Homoepathia; and.,
therefore, a satisfactory reply to them is all that is necessary to save her all farther trouble of defence, and to
dispose at once of all her enemies and malignant detractors.




DR. DURINGE'S OBJECTIONS,


As far as it can be extracted and compressed into a
few words, the unfavorable part of the deliberate judgment of Dr. Duringe, pronounced in a tone of decision,
and asserted to be the result of personal experience and
practice, is that Homcepathia, although fully entitled to
be engrafted on the old stock as a new branch, never can,
and never will realize her lofty pretensions, inasmuch as she
falls short of Allopathia in effective power and fertility of
resources; degrades the dignity of intellect and science; is
wavering and fallible, unsatisfactory and unsafe; limited in
her operations; based upon false assumptions; supported by
a denial of correct principles; depending on contradictory
caprices, and faithless to herself. Consequently, so far from
being the true exclusive system, capable of uprooting
and replacing all others, Homoepathia, overloaded as she
is by the paternal hand, has no strength to sustain herself
alone, and must soon pass away, like the phantom of Psora,
with which she has been so unfortunately associated.
For the sake of conveniency, the arguments in support of this judgment will be considered and answered
in subdivisions; and the author has to renew his former
declaration, that, although for the reasons just mentioned, he has allowed himself, in this only instance, to deviate into a line of defence, " he does not hold himself
responsible" for the temper of the weapons which Ho



52


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


maepathia has placed in his hands, and left him no
choice but to use them.
ARGUMENT.
Homcepathia falls short of Allopathia in effective power
and fertility of resources; because the latter makes use of
more decisive means, and, instead of being, like Homoepathia, restricted to one mode of proceeding, ranges
at large; employs without hesitation all known kinds of
treatment, internally or externally, as may seem most
eligible; and has remedies at command to multiply the
chances of cure, not only by their abundance, but, what
is of the highest importance, by their infinite variety of
combination.
COMMENT.
No one will dispute that Allopathia sticks at nothing,
and has a summary process, her own par exeellence,o of
disposing of her patients; but the question is not what
kills, but what saves; and the last, being the better power, and the only one in requisition, reverses the decision
in favor of Homoepathia, to which it belongs also par
excellence. As to the comparative fertility of resources,
the numerical part of which is greatly against Allopathia, the question again is not which has the most, but
which employs the most-which is the first on the road of
certitude, which is the last on, the path of discovery: a
question of preference easily decided.
The boasted advantage of various other modes of treatment, and of all those high-sounding expedients, which,
classified under the different heads of astringents, emollients, diaphoretics, and the like, form so cabalistical and
imposing a nomenclature, might well be envied as insuring the pre-eminence claimed, were it really an advantage; and were it not that Homppathia rejects it, not be



IHOMCEPATHIA REVEALEi           3


63


cause she cannot reach it, but because she has found itj
by repeated experience, to be a positive evil; and because, preferring what is sure to what-is doubtful, she
contents herself vith the choice of a method on which
alone she can always rely for success. She has no need
of palliatives, and accepts of none for the best possible
reason, that she deals only in curatives-opium itself in
her hands being compelled to cure, while the only services it performs for the old school are alleviation or
death.
The learned Doctor, more than once, in the course of
his work, alludes with unqualified approbation to that
unique elevated prerogative of Homcepathia, by which
" she can do no harm:" therefore, as he admits at the
same time and defends, to their full extent, the aggressive
as well as curative potency of Homoepathic doses, tried
and proved by his own practice, and depending altogether on the use of one medicine at a time, not weakened
or diverted by any accessory whatever; and as he acknowledges, moreover, the benefit of discoveries contributed by her to the general stock of medicine, to be
such as ought to have contented her with the honor thus
acquired, it is quite clear that he is the best possible
witness against himself, and that the whole of the argument, with the position it was intended to support, is
completely and triumphantly refuted'by himself.
ARGUMENT.
Homoepathia degrades the dignity of intellect and science; because she checks the higher aspirations of the
mind, brings it down to the earth, when it fains to soar
on the track of the mysterious spirit of Eternity, and
plants it by the sick bed, to watch like the humble nurse,
or to note like the plodding clerk, symptoms after symptoms, always symptoms, and nothing but symptoms; so




54


4HOM(EPATHIA REVEAtEIM


that a mere matter-of-fact proceeding is substituted for
profound study, the rationale of medicine-that which
requires the interposing and guiding agency of reasonsubjected to the contracted dominion of the senses, and
the noble science itself, divested of all its conceptive,
imaginative, and speculative attributes, is reduced to a
mere mechanical occupation.
COMMENT.
If there be any point in pathology higher on the scale
of professional study than these same toujours verdris
symptoms, the discovery has yet to be made and pointed out for the benefit of the uninformed. What is it that
the sick require of a physician? Is it a learned and eloquent discourse on the nature of diseases in general, or
is it the experienced eye that detects the special disease,
and the no less experienced hand that applies the right
remedy? When the ship is ready for sea, it is not the
astronomer, but the practical seaman that is wanted for
a commander, and if both should be united in one person,
so much the better; but, of the two apart, we listen to
the first, and sail with the second.
The child of genius and inspiration, Homoepathia,
cannot, if she would, descend to a lower region, and inhale a grosser atmosphere than what were assigned to
her at her birth; arrd the true dignity of science, identified with herself, cannot be more effectually vindicated
than by her refusing to recognise as such the dreaming
alckymy, that, in the illusive search of the elixir of immortality, in the fruitless attempt to discover forbidden
secrets, useless if discovered, has for so many centuries
diverted a mass of human intelligence from the pursuit
of truth, wasted a world of mental labor, and produced
that very retrograde, rather than that progressive state of
medical science which it is her main object to advance,




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


55


and against the errors of which, so prejudicial to public
health, her greatest efforts are particularly directed. So
far from dispensing with the mind, Homcepathia taxes it
with an intensity, of application sufficient to have induced her adversaries to accuse her of imposing upon the
observer of her symptoms "a by no means sinecure office," of requiring in general too much, and of being
withal so dynamic and spiritualized in all her operations,
that the space of a whole life is not sufficient to produce
a Homcepathist in the true sense, and that " whole ages
must elapse" before her demands and prescriptions in
this respect can be properly understood and reduced to
practice!
To comprehend the whole constructive force of this
strangely inconsistent accusation, it is only necessary to
know that it is drawn fromr the repeated assertions of the
once more self-refuting witness, the learned Doctor
himself!!!
ARGUMENT.
Homcepathia is wavering and fallible; because hesitation is the unavoidable result of a confused crowd of
symptoms, jostling and crossing each other in every direction, and of the extreme consequent perplexity in
forming them into the requisite distinct images of disease
and remedy, 'of a sufficient resemblance to indicate the
proper treatment; and because one failure being the
earnest of another, Homcepathia having failed before,
particularly in chronic maladies, is pretty sure to fail
again, notwithstanding that her new pretensions to infallibility, are, like the former, urged with zeal and assurance, well calculated to impose and mislead.


a




56


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


COMMENT.
In starting the objection to a confused crowd of symptoms, with which it seems Allopathia does not allow herself to be much incommoded, the erudite professor has
added another item in refutation of his charge, of intellectual degradation; the difficulty, however, is frankly
acknowledged, with the reservation that it is not insuperable. As to infallibility, it is no where assumed, and
exists only in his own gratuitous inference. His reasoning, to be just, ought to be reversed; and then the right
conclusion will be, that the avowal of a failure, and
subsequent precautions, are the best possible guaranty
against its recurrence. The works of man, like himself,
must necessarily be imperfect; and where so much has
been done by one individual,yet living, the wonder is,
not that there should be failures, but that these failures
should be so few as to become mere exceptions to the
general rule--exceptions which, so far as infallibility itself is only relative or comparative, tend rather to establish than to disprove it.
The simple truth is, that the learned professor, in opposition to his own memory and discretion, has permitted, in this instance, his overweening zeal to blind
him to the peculiar advantages of Homoepathia, possessed by her alone, which are sufficient at all times to
guard her against the danger of wavering,' and failing in
consequence. With her phalanx of 200 specifics, so well
trained, that if they sometimes miss the enemy, they never
hit the friend; with power to raise antidotes at will,
alert in need, and scrupulous in executing her commands; no error in the choice of medicine can check
her course, or scare her from her duty. Her vigilance
detects it; her substitutes replace it; her patient feels
it not; so that, what in other hands works out such fearful peril, performs in hers the office of a faithful guide.




HOMMEPATHIA REVEALED.


57


Thus, step by step, inverting the progress of the hazard,
she reaches the true point of action, where decision,
promptitude, and security, attest her finished task, while
her adversaries rejoice yet in the dream of her wavering
and fallibility.
Suppose, by way of illustration, that two persons, attacked with a sudden violent headache, have sent, one
for a Homcepathic, and the other for an Allopathic physician, and that both these gentlemen, on their arrival,
mistaking alike the serious nature of the malady, have
administered their remedies accordingly. The Homoepathist, who well knows the effect he intended, waits
for its appearance, as in duty bound. It comes not, or
it comes in a different aspect. His suspicions are immediately excited. New symptoms are anxiously watched,
and he discovers that the supposed slight affection is the
congestion of blood to the head, indicating the morbific
agency, similar to that of opium. At once the medicine
already administered is driven out or suspended by its
antidote-a minute dose of opium is given instead; and
the relief is almost magic, the cure is certain, and the
patient is saved!
Not so with the Allopathist. His work may be easier,
quicker, and perchance more sure; but not quite within
the spirit of the contract. Proceeding on the soothing
principle, he hts already begun with 20 or 30 drops of
laudanum, and his beginning is the end. The malady,
being itself of the kind produced by an overdose of laudanum, is of course aggravated and accelerated beyond
what the organism can bear, Thus 20 or 30 drops
more, harmless" or alleviating in other circumstances,
act here exactly as if they were superadded to what
was already taken kin a quantity sufficient to destroy.
The consequence, too, is exactly the same. The patient
-. 8




8


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


sleeps, and wakes no more!* Such is the difference
between the two treatments, or rather systems, which
respectively influence them!
How many victims have been dispatched in the like
summary manner can never be known, for the dead
tell no tales; something, however, of this secret of the
grave may be guessed by the well authenticated fact,
that the average mortality among a rude people, unacquainted with the luxury of regular physic, is not greater
than that of civilized communities, in the full enjoyment
of this blessing; and that, in truth, it is much less, since
it is sufficient to balance the number of deaths in infancy, which, owing to the discomforts and privations
of savage life, is supposed to be as 2 to 1, when compared with the deaths at the same tender age, in a state
of civilization.
ARGUMENT.
fiomoepathia is unsatisfactory and unsafe; because, doing too little being at times as dangerous as doing too
much, no physician who cares for his patient or for his
own reputation, would be rash enough to resort to her
feeble and dilatory aid in acute pressing diseases, such
as apoplexy, et cet.
COMMENT.
This multum in parvo objection would be the most serious of all, if it were well founded-if it did not wholly
rest upon that which renders it impossible-a contingency which is yet to take place. The fear of harm is
no proof of it; and though it may induce one man to
abstain from a certain attempt, it is no rule for the like
forbearance in others. As well the verdict of guilty may
* A case like this occurred within the author's own knowledge.




HOMMEPATHIA REVEALED.


59


be pronounced upon a criminal whose parents have not
yet been called into existence!, The attempt ought to
have precedence at all events; and since the Doctor has
not only declined it for himself, but will neither suffer it
to be made, nor see it when made by others, his objection is too suspiciously prophetic to be taken on credit,
where deeds alone pass current.
Among the prominent rules, systematically laid down
and generally adopted in the practice of Homcepathia,
the very first is, " that the more acute or rapid the disease, the sooner can its issue be decided; and that in
acute diseases, such as apoplexy, et cet. 10 or 15 minutes are sufficient for the purpose. Now, a rule which
limits the time, necessarily implies the corresponding
means of action; otherwise one of the Doctor's best
prescriptions must be presumed to nullify its own use
and application!! If he did not know this rule, or drew
no inference from it, he must give up his claim either to
his intimacy with Homcepathia, or to the acuteness and
sound morality of his logic. He may, however, dismiss
now all his apprehensions, since a short inquiry will satisfy him, that in these very extremes which so greatly
excited his fears for Homoepathia, she has been fairly
tried, and her metal has been found pure sterling. Apoplexy, and its numerous train of cousins-german, have
been mastered by her quite quick enough, if there be
any expedition in doing it within 15 minutes!! She did
more-she cured, radically cured the patient. The
work, where it could be done, was done so well, that no
spectre of a departed disease came back in the form of
relapse, to pnatch the reprieved victim frbm her hands-a
visitation to which Allopathia is but too often exposed, all
her spells not beifig potent enough to lay the troublesome
ghost in the Red Sea!!
The learned professor is too much of a gentleman to




60


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


give the downright lie to such reports of cures as rest
exclusively on Homcepathic authority; yet there is "a
lurking devil in his eye "-a sneer on his lip, which in
dicates, as plain as plain can be, that he does not, or
pretends not to believe one word of such reports. Be it
so! Will he then question the truth of the official records
of St. Petersburg? lHe will not-be cannot; for well he
knows that no falsehood is daring enough to soil their
pages on the state of public health. Well, then, he has
but to look that way, and he will find there more than
eleven cures to one death-more than eleven patients
out of twelve saved from that dreadful scourge, the
ASIATIC CHOLERA, which fills no small space on the list
of acute and pressing diseases, calling for instant aid,
and at the same time defying the utmost efforts of human skill and science! Let him compare this mighty
achievement with the puny feats of Allopathia against
the same formidable enemy-and that nothing may be
wanting, let him recall to mind his own triumphant defence of the potency of Homoepathic doses: and he not
only will have no farther misgivings about the power
which he stigmatises as unsatisfactory and unsafe, but to
this power-to Homoepathia alone, will he apply hereafter, even in that most terrific of all inflictions, Hydrophobia.
ARGUMENT.
Homcepathia is limited in her operations; because experience has demonstrated that, although some individuals
are particularly accessible to her influence, there are
many others who are proof against it, and yet easily
yield to that of Allopathia; consequently, what does not
reach all, and acts not upon all alike, is and must be
limited in its operations.




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


61


COMMENT.
All this is perfectly true, but not exclusively so. Mercury, which is used by both systems, is not the less a
specific power, general in its application and effect, because the Doctor has met with some constitutions in no
degree affected by it-a fact well known to many besides
himself. The term limited is therefore one of comparison
only; and in this sense it is much more likely to be the
property of Allopathia than of her youthful rival, whose
influence must naturally, be more extensive, in consequence of its mildness and insinuating quality, backed
by the assurance that'it cannot be felt without being salutary--an assuirance which is too often reversed by the
other.
ARGUMENT.
Homcepathia is based upon false assumptions; because,
among other things, she takes for granted that the property of every medicine is morbific per se, whereas the
Doctor has cured more than one person with a few
drops of pure spring water, necessarily divested of such
property.
COMMENT.
As the learned Doctor does not say what those "other
things" are, but confines himself to the pure spring
water alone, which in the city of New-York, for instance, would no doubt be a restorative worth all the
drugs in the shops of apothecaries-the exception is too
partial to make out the general case of false assumption,
and might as well have been omitted. Pure water is certainly a preserver of health-so is good and wholesome
bread; but they are not medicines. Food is the means,
not the machinery of life. One can no more be cured of




62


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


famine and thirst by bread and water, than a steam-boat
of stoppage by fuel, or a gristmill of draught by a fresh
stream. Cure is that which puts in order the machinery
itself when deranged; not that which sets and keeps it
in motion. While nature continues the sole undisturbed
mistress of her mansion, presiding over the interior arrangements, and disposing of her stores to the best advantage at her own will and discrietion, the agent that
supplies the daily wants of her household is her purveyor, and no more: but, when she is rudely assailed,
struck down, and threatened with ejection, that which
replaces her on her lawful seat, reinstates her in her domain, expels and prostrates the usurper of her rights, is
something more than a mere help-it is a power stronger than the usurper himself, and consequently able, if so
circumstanced, to do her the like injury to an extent still
greater. It is a power that from its very nature must be
salutary or morbific, that is, curative or aggressive, according as it comes an invited friend or an intruding enemy;
and cannot exist at all except in this relative or reciprocal state of action. It is the true power of medicine, and
medicine is this true power.
Convert food itself into medicine, and it becomes instantly this same double acting- power, alias poison. If
the pure spring water administered by the Doctor really
effected the cure he mentions, it was medicinal, and
would have been found so upon a trial. What is there
more innoxious, more in ordinary use, or more conducive
to our daily enjoyments than the salt which seasons and
renders both wholesome and palatable our daily repasts?
Well! take one grain of this very salt, subject it to the
Homcepathic process, reduce it to pills, so that each will
contain one X millionth part of the grain-then invite
the learned Doctor, while in full health, to swallow
three of these pills in twenty-four hours, for four or five




r    1. -


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


63


days successively. Will he do it? Be assured he knows
too well, and has proved too much, not to decline the
invitation. He rqeeds no experiment like that of charcoal, mentioned in a preceding note, to satisfy himself
that he would thereby fall into the hands of troublesome
companions, who might, perchance, lay him up on the
fifth day in a manner not very agreeable to himself or to
his neglected patients. Of all men, therefore, the learned Doctor has the least reason to dispute the morbific or
aggressive property of every medicine, acknowledged as
such; and it is quite evident that the doctrine which is
proof against his own weapons, is too strong to be battered down by any other.
ARGUMENT.
Homcepathia is supported by a denial of correct principles; because, in denying the power of nature to minister to herself, and in substituting for the prompt aid of
bleeding the tardier one of medicine, which, if successful, produces the same effect in the end, she makes war
upon the principles universally acknowledged-established by the daily experience of ages, and, with regard
to bleeding, indicated from time to time by spontaneous
effusions, the purport of which cannot be misunderstood
for a moment.
COMMENT.
This again is a principle, which, whether true or not,
is isolated, and too abstract to impair the general usefulness and soundness of a system. Nature, as long as shie
is so well Served by Homcepathia, cannot be seriously
incommoded or offended by any attempt, on the part of
the latter, to diminish the nominal credit of her resources. Besides, what Hahnemann maintains, is not that




64


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


nature cannot cure herself, for he expressly alludes to
her crisis-operating power, but that she cannot do so
'without self-exposure in other respects to imminent danger, and this will scarcely be denied by any reflecting
pathologist. In constituting her the sole agent of cure,
and by strietly limiting all his remedies to the office of
auxiliaries, Hahnemann has in truth paid her a greater
compliment than Allopathia, which often undertakes to
control her, and not always to her advantage.
The difference between him and his antagonists is,
after all, the difference of terms; for, what they call the
cure of nature, he denominates a revolution, that is, a
maturity of disease-a point which it is his main object
and chief aim to attain by artificial means where others
fail, and which, once being gained, the disease is no
more, and nature is herself again!
With respect to the sameness of effect produced by
bleeding and corresponding medicines, it is a fallacy
on the very face of it. Bleeding allays the inflammation
-aconite or wolfsbane does the.same. So far the effect
may be the same; but, as regards health, it is fearfully
unlike. There, poor nature is weakened into submission,
and made to propitiate the tyrant at the expense of her
future safety; here, the tyrant himself is encountered
hand to hand, subdued, and compelled to leave nature
in the full possession of her forces. In one case the fermentation is stopped, and the contents are saved; in
the other, the contents are spilled to check the fermentation, and the more there is drawn off; the more will
rise to the issue to be drawn off again, until little or nothing is left within. This last is the true process by
which the precious fluid is wasted, vitality impaired,
the extremities completely drained, and the dissolution
of the sufferer commences at the moment that the inflammation ceases. If this be not a daily occurrence



HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


65


if the sick do not generally die of exhaustion* subsequent to, and consequent on, the paroxysm-then the
present prevailing practice is most grossly belied, and
king SANGRADO, unless he is kind enough to begin with
himself, may reign and bleed until there is not a single
subject left for the favorite exercise of his insatiate lancet!
The true difference between the act of bleeding and
* That such is really the case, is fully acknowledged by the Allopathists themselves, and against themselves, whenever they decline, as
they do sometimes, to bleed an old subject, where they would have
tapped and re-tapped a young one without stopping to calculate the
cost. Ask them the reason, and you will be informed, that they are full
of apprehensions, lest te feebleness of age should sink under the operation, so easily sustained by the strength of youth and manhood. What
is this but a plain confession, that the best chance of life is not in the
hope of surviving such operation, but in the act of avoiding it altogether?  The remedy, too bad and dangerous to be adopted in one
case, must be equally so in all; for, the sword that kills one, and only
wounds another, is not the less an instrument of destruction in itself.
But why call forth hope where assurance can so easily replace it?
Why use at all what is so much better not used, and multiply the difficulties to be overcome, when there is a way to diminish and remove
them at the outset? The erudite gentlemen will reply again, that a
robust constitution is more susceptible of serious inflammation, and, that,
having no other means to reduce it, they resort to bleeding, as the least
of the two evils. The reply is too true. They have, indeed, no other
means-but Homcepathia has: and, what is still more conclusive of her
superiority, it is not possible to deprive her of such means, or even to
participate in them, without coming over to her standard. Allopathia
may certainly use them; but if she does it otherwise than under the
auspices and instructions of Homoepathia, the substitute will prove
more fatal than the lancet itself. The trut1i is, that there is not the
same steady light, the same unerring clue to guide the Allopathist
through the dark labyrinth of uncertainties; and it must have been
the full consciousness of this perplexity that induced one of the same
school, the late distinguished professor of medicine, Dr. Gregory, to
exclaim, in the bitterness of his disappointment, and in the presence
of his scholars, that "ninety-nine out of a hundred of medical facts
are medical lies, and all medical doctrines stark, staring nonsense."
9




66


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


the substituted dose-Homoepathic dose of course, for
none else will answer the purpose-is that the first takes
away from the source of life what it cannot replenish:
while the last restores and preserves it in all its puritywhich is the precise difference between the two systems.
As to the indications by spontaneous effusion, bleeding
at the nose, etc. etc. they are most wofully misunderstood, notwithstanding the Doctor's authoritative assertion to the contrary. They show anr irregular accumulation, or unusual flow of blood in some parts, to the detriment of others, and this is all; the idea of having too
much blood being as preposterous as that of a vessel containing more water than its capacity will admit. A superabundance of the means of life is a doctrine well
worthy of ignorance or a disordered imagination! Restore the equality of circulation, and the patient is cured
at once! This is what Homcepathia does without bleeding. This is the way in which she removes apoplexy
with so little danger of relapse. This is the way in
which she has cured, in a few days, the most acute
pleurisy that ever occurred in this city, contrary to the
predictions of speedy death, with which Allopathia consoled herself, for being repulsed in her attempts to open
the sluices of life.
To aid nature by crippling her-to heal by reducing
the chances of recovery-to purify the fountain of health
by desiccation, or by cutting off its main supplies-to
give life by taking it away-in short, to bleed-is a barbarous piece of absurdity, no less destructive in itself
than disgraceful to the present state of science and general civilization. Sound reason and sober reflection view
it as a monster privileged to kill; and a case of internal
disease, where bleeding is indispensable as a remedy,
exists only in the conventional but despotic rules of an
unfeeling, remorseless school, that, according to the Doc



1OMCEPATIUA R]VE tED.67


67


tors own implied confessions, will not yield a single fibre
of her cobweb precedents to ithe pleading voice and
pressing claims of humanity.
ARGUME N1ý
Homcepathia is depending on contradictory caprices;
because her despotic master lays down rules and doctrines which he afterwards revokes at pleasure, unsays
and undoes his sayings and doings, and is, in short, not
the same Hahnemann in 1828 that he was in 1810.
COMMENT.
This is the unkindest cut of all, not only at Homoepathia, but at every science under heaven, since none
could advance a step without those posterior successive
improvements, which are made here a matter of reproach; an outcry against a noble structure of gigantic
dimensions, the splendid monument of the genius and
toil of one man, because not so superhumanly faultless
as not to require, after eighteen years' standing, some
repair in detail; and detail alone, partakes, to say the
least, of the burning ambition of the youth of Ephesus;
and Hahnemann may well be lJroud of the distinction
of being reviled for what others would have been extolled to the skies-for the zeal, devotion, and frankness
with which he effected and announced his subsequent
discoveries and ameliorations.
And what is the amount and importance of these supposed contradictory caprices? Why, the most prominent,
by which one may judge of all the rest, is the original
prescription to administer unmixed but otherwise ordinary Allopathic doses in experiments upon persons in
health, which prescription is now extended, and, indeed,
transferred to minute Homepathic doses, it being sub



68


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


sequently ascertained that the effect of both is alike satisfactory, and that inert substances, such as charcoal,
salt, silex, et cet. cannot be given at all as medicines,
unless previously subjected to the Homoepathic process!
This is all, and has as much to do with the general merits and strength of the system, as a longer or shorter
mane with the vigor of an Eclipse starting for the race!
Let it be, however, rightly' interpreted, and it will become the most striking and conclusive of all proofs,
that an edifice, in which, after a lapse of years, there
was found so little to alter on the score of beauty, symmetry, and solidity, can have no other foundation than
that of immutable, perpetual, immortal truth!
ARGUMENT.
Homoepathia is faithless to herself; because, since her
ill-chosen connection with Psora, she has called to her
aid the counteracting anti-psoric medicines, resorted to
the trick of mystification, and thus became false to her
own professions, which had so disdainfully rejected the
one and the other.
COMMENT.
The all-sufficient reason why the anti-psoric remedy
is not, and should not be Homoepathically in unison with
the apparent or approximate disease which is to be
cured, is that it is not given for this disease at all, but
directed exclusively against the source whence it is supposed to have originated. The medicine, with regard to
this source, being never otherwise than strictly Homoepathic, the great pervading principle, " the like cure
the like," is preserved throughout with scrupulous fidelity; and the learned Doctor ought to have known better
than to make a mistake so liable to the suspicion of being


a




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALEIh6


69


intentional. Nor can Psora itself, although a latent source
of diseases, be justly confounded with any imaginary
objects of medical alchymy; since it is a palpable morbific matter, too well known and authenticated to pass
for a mere trick of mystification. If European experiments are doubted, there is no want of them herey in
this very city, where, among other cases, there has occurred one of an ague, technically intermittent marsh
fever, so obstinate that it baffled and effectually resisted
both Allopathia and Homcepathia; and the two great
specifics, cinchona and arsenic, produced no other result
than that of aggravation. The ruddy health of the patient, previously to the disease, precluded all suspicion
of Psora, and after most careful inquiries not the least
trace of it could be detected. Nevertheless, as there
was no other resource left, the case was treated as that
of Psora, and sulphur, one of the anti-psoric remedies,
was given in Homcepathic proportions. The astonishment of those who were in the secret was great indeed,
when, in a few days after the first dose, the ague was
completely subdued, and disappeared   to return no
more! The disease in this instance was not the produce
of Psora, but it roused this latent principle into action,
strong enough to obtain the mastery: as otherwise, if
the disease had retained its own preponderance, it
would have required a dose of specific medicine for
itself, after the anti-psoric one had been continued long
enough to produce the effect intended,
ARGUMENT.
Consequently, so far from being the true exclusive system,
capable of uprooting and replacing all others, Homoepathia,
overloaded as she is by the paternal hand, has no strength
to sustain herself alone, and must soon pass away, like the




70


HOMCIPATItIA REVEALED.


vision of Psora, with which it has been so unfortunately associated.
COMMENT,
Whether Homoepathia is destined soon to pass away, or
last till the world's end, time alone can decide; and if
the phantom of Psora be the criterion to judge of the
future by the present, her friends need not despair of
her longevity, since this phantom has been shown to be
any thing but " an airy nothing," and since her elements
of durability, her constituent parts, and her very foundation, are all merged in the great principle "similia
similibus curantur "-one which, if false, is no principle
at all-if true, admits of no modification, no substitution, no amalgamation! Does the learned Doctor deny
this principle? So far from this, he claims it in favor of
Allopathia, and considers it too great an honor to allow
Hahnemann to enjoy it, unshared by others. What is
the strangest thing of all, this honor is actually disputed
upon the authority of Hahnemann himself, who has
taken great pains to collect and publish, in his " Organon," upwards of two hundred examples of eminent
physicians, ancient and modern, wherein this principle
was espied, put occasionally into practice, and by some
few, particularly STAHL of Denmark, actually declared
as the sole true basis of the healing art! And who is he
that has had the candor to announce all this? Here is
his portrait by the learned Doctor himself!
"t' In judging Hahnemann impartially, as the founder
and chief of a new doctrine and system, however one
may blame his faults and errors, a due homage must be
rendered to the vast capacity and genius of which he
has given such brilliant proofs. No other man has pushed farther the study of chemistry, and the practical ob



HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


"71


servation of therapeutic phenomena. Bold in his designs, circumspect in their execution, he never turns for
an instant from the object he has in view, and in certain
cases has penetrated deeper into the mystery of organic
nature than has yet fallen to the lot of man. There will
always remain for him a distinguished place in the history of science, and the immortal glory of having revealed, on one hand, the specific virtues of a great number of medicines, and, on the other, the particular sensibility of the human organism to their specific action."
Vide page 13.
Now, a truly great man, having so many laurels of his
own, is as unlikely to usurp them from others as to deal
in "humbug" doctrines and systems; and, accordingly,
Hahnemann declares, with perfect simplicity, that all
those examples were but transient and incidental glimpses of the truth, and that he was the first to seize it entire, and to lay it down as the solid and permanent
foundation of a new temple of science. This is all he
claims; and who will dispute the claim? Who will say
that in this sense he is not the founder of a new system?
Certainly not the Doctor, who has already volunteered
the affirmative, and thus once more furnished evidence
against himself. The real state of the case, as regards
this gentleman, is, that while inclination and perhaps
interest often lead him to the side of prejudice and hostility, good sense and innate candor as often bring him
back to that of justice; and it is not surprising, therefore, that he demolishes with a few words his whole
work of opposition, when, in addition to what he concedes to Hahnemann, he admits distinctly and unequivocally, that Homcepathia is entitled to a prominent rank in
the department of medical science; that with all persons of
susceptible constitutions she succeeds to admiration; and that,
with respect to women and children, she is their best protec00  O  0  a0




72


HOMGEPATHIA REVEALED.


tress, and does for them what Allopathia may as well confess to be beyond her power!
Thus, with ample concessions to the genius of Hahnemann; with such strength of admissions in favor of
Homnoepathia; with such weakness of objections against
her; and, lastly, with the full acknowledgment of a
principle, whose immutability must impart itself to its
superstructure, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion, that, according to the learned Doctor himself,
Homcepathia, and she alone, if there be such a thing as
an exclusive system, is entitled to that distinction, being
the true, and therefore the only one capable of uprooting
and replacing all others.
C   C  9  4  1
C C  C  C  C




CONCLUSION.
How far the foregoing general deductions in favor of
Hommepathia are supported by faith and facts, which, in
certain proportions, are equally necessary to the formation and existence of a system, a glance at both will
easily satisfy those who are at all times disposed to be
liberal in the use of their memory, reasoning faculties,
and powers of examination. Any attempt to overcome
predetermined incredulity would, of course, be worse
than useless; since, were it possible to cure blindness,
deafness, or any other defect that happens to be intentional, convalescence would be the state of pain and resentment, not that of pleasure and gratitude.
\In science, as in religion, the value of a particular
creed is indicated, no less by the nature of difficulties it
had to overcome, than by the constancy and fidelity of
its adherents; but, above all, it is depressed or elevated
in the scale of public estimation, by the weight of moral
and intellectual worth exhibited in its support.
In applying this test to Homoepathia, it is only necessary to point to her astonishing progress-a progress, to
which, since the date of christianity, there has been no
parallel in history. Like christianity she came forth, not
as a fragment to be modified, or incorporated with the
edifices already known-not as a leaf to be suspended
to an aged tree, or a branph to be added to an ancient
forest-but as an original, independent power, striking
at the root of pre-existing institutions, and admitting of
no alternative but their total subversiori. She came to
10




74


74OMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


break the altars and overturn the temples raised by the
toil, cherished by the affections, fostered by the care,
sustained by the zeal, and consecrated by the homage
of generations!     She came to mortify the pride of learning, by announcing its ways to be the ways of darkness! She came to bid the most powerful passion of the
human breast, the love of lucre, to resign'its spoils, and
give up the certain gains of a profitable traffic,* almost
without equivalent or consideration! She came to do all
this, alone, poor, unsupported, her very breath enkindling strife and deadly opposition; yet still her march is
onward, and her foot has already crossed the Atlantic
wave!     She has succeeded where         an  army   of giants
would have failed, and where it was a miracle not to be
* By a calculation made for the State of New-York, it appears that
drugs administered according to the Homcupathic process of attenuation,
could be supplied for the whole population at the rate of three hundred
dollars a year! Can it be, then, a matter of surprise, that an innovation
threatening so serious a reduction in the long-enjoyed profits of a powerful set of men, should be resisted by them to the last extremity? Is
it not, on the contrary, quite natural, that pharmacopolists, like other
men deeply interested in the trade by which they live, should exert
their utmost energy, and use all their influence with physicians, with
whom they are necessarily more or less connected, to avert a visitation
so ominous to their worldly prosperity? In this they do but follow the
first of laws-the law of self-preservation, and it would be unjust to
cast any reproach on them; but it is absolutely necessary to be informed of the true source of opposition to Homcepathlia, in order to do full
justice to her merits. The wonder is that she should have been able to
make the first step, and not that she should advance as she now does,
with a pace which may be retarded for & while, but which it is no longer
within the power of any combination of men to arrest. A greater wonder
still is, the fact, that even among the men so deeply interested in opposing her, there is now in this very city more than one convert to her doctrines, and consequently more than one honorable exception to the selfishness of human nature. No higher proof can be adduced in favor of
hlr just pretensions.




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


75


crushed! Star after star, of the first magnitude, have
spontaneously quitted their stations in the old firmament,
and passed within her orbit. New stars are constantly
rising to take their places in the splendid galaxy of talent that marks her path of triumph6 Whence is this
prodigy? Is there any mystery in it? No. The whole is
the achievement of simple truth.
TRUTH ALONE IS PERMANENT. This is a position
which no one will venture to controvert; and, consequently, what is not permanent in science as well as
ethics, must be and is necessarily false. In adopting
this standard of reasoning, it may be argued that Homoepathia, although till now unchanged in her course
and aspect, has not yet existed long enough to establish
her claim to stability- Be it so! Uncertainty still lingers
on her traces, but then it is already distanced by hope,
expectation, and confidence in the future.
Allopathia has unquestionably the advantage of certainty, but it is the unenviable certainty of proof that her
gorgeous plumage falls off at the slightest touch of scrutiny; that her pompous pretensions to superiority are
founded on nothing better than toleration and acquiescence on the part of the uninitiated; that her contradictions, oscillations, mutations, and practical errors,, admitted by the most experienced of her own teachers,
are infallible tokens of unwilling, but conscious imposture; that she is not an entity existing and acting by itself, but only an offspring or modification of the many
which have preceded it-a sample -of those plausible
chimeras, which, in the forms of systems, had sprung
up at stated periods, like mushrooms, in rapid succession-falsified and replaced one another, and each in its
turn vanished in the chaos of oblivion; and that, consequently, being one thing to-day and another to-morrow,
she must be at different times false to herself, false to




76,


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


humanity, and false in her promises, enterprises, relations and operations.
The most zealous defender of Allopathia will not dare
to impeach the self-evident principle that so many conflicting systems cannot all be true; and that, if not all
false, one of them only can be true, for truth is a unit by
itself. It follows then, of course, that Allopathia can
never be this unit, since she is a part or a compound of
those same conflicting systems which would have been
more fiercely opposed, had they, in the same degree,
menaced the interests of an important branch of industry, dependent on the present practice of medicine. Thus
the main point of inquiry must be what this only one
true system is; and to ascertain this, it is only necessary to define that to be a true system, which is the most
successful in attaining the great object of all such systems, by
the most suitable means; and. then to explain the object and
the means, so that the question, who is right and who is
wrong, may be decided at once, to the satisfaction of the
sincere and impartial examiner.
The great OBJECT of the healing art is, not merely, as
appears upon the face of it, to heal diseases, but, as has
been shown elsewhere, to conduct a living being safe
through the natural period of life, in a manner best adapted to prevent as well as to cure diseases with the least
possible annoyance to the invalid.
The MEANS by which all this is accomplished are individuality in the treatment of diseases, removal of morbid
causes instead of their effects, simplicity of proceeding,
economy of the forces of nature, conveniency and comfort
of the sick, guaranty from harm, certainty of cure, celerity
of operation, and speedy convalescence. By these, in succession, shall the two systems be tried.
INDIVIDUALITY IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES.
Allopathia, either from a desire to save trouble, or from




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


an immoderate love of the parade of learning, or what
is most probable, from both, these motives, has divided
all diseases, accprding to their resemblances, into separate groups, and classified them under different heads,
as febrile, inflammatory, eruptive, cerebral, nervous, gastric,
intestinal, profluent, refluent, constitutional, and local, and,
of course, treats each group or class, as if it were one
lump, with the remedies particularly appropriated to it,
pretty much in the same manner as some empiric would
dose all black men with one kind of drugs, all white
men with another, all red men with another yet, and so
on, deviating so far only from the practice of the ignorant rustic, that this last marks all his sheep black, white,
and parti-colored, with the same unchanging hue of the
red ochre!!
Now, as no two things in nature are strictly and absolutely alike, not. even two drops of water; and as this
difference is more especially obvious and striking in the
human species, Homoepathia, neither scared by toil, nor
tempted by the glare of erudition, rejects all such generalities, classifications, and specifications; and, considering every disease as partaking of the idiocracy of the
person affected, studies each case separately by itself,
and makes its peculiarity, that is, individuality, the absolute rule in the choice of medicine and the mode of
treatment. On which side preponderate common sense
and reason may be decided without the aid of an oracle.
REMOVAL OF MORBID CAUSES, INSTEAD OF THEIR
EFFECTS. Tolle causam, is a precept, on which there is
no difference of opinion. Remove the cause, has beenthe
constant cry of Allopathia; and, if it turns out, as it
often does, all cry and no wool, the merit of the hoax is
fairly monopolized by herself! By a singular fatality,
she seems to be impressed with a conviction, that a previous personal acquaintance with the cause is the indis



HOMEPATHIA REVEALED.


pensable condition of its removal; and, accordingly,
spares neither pains nor importunities to obtain an introduction to this mysterious something, which, rudely
enough, but not the less perseveringly, rejects the intended honor, eludes pursuit, refuses to shake hands even
through a grating, and never for an instant lays aside the
dark veil that conceals its unexplored countenance. The
consequence is, that she either becomes the dupe of her
own imagination, by mistaking something else for the
sormething" sought for, or, at all events, loses so much time
that the intended removal is often postponed until the
removal of the patient himself!
Not so with Homoepathia! The cry of the other is
with her the period of action. Knowing well that she
can never see the cause face to face, she cares nothing
about it, contents herself with examining its visible traces, and proceeds at once to the business. If on entering
the premises she perceives some smoke in a corner, she
pours out water upon it, without waiting to see the fire;
or, if there be indications of noxious vermin harbored in
accessible holes, she does not stop to ascertain whether
it be mice, rats, weasels, or the like-and still less does
she wait to catch a glimpse of whatever it may be-but
straight ignites the charcoal, shuts up the room, and ends
at once the mischief and the cause.
SIMPLICITY OF PROCEEDING. Here probably lies the
very pith of the offence committed by Homcepathia in
the eyes of such of the profession as form unfavorable
exceptions to the liberal character by which it is generally distinguished; for, be it observed once for all,
that war is made here upon the system and not on the professors, whose personal respectability is proverbial. In
sober truth, however, one can scarcely blame even those
who form such exceptions, when it is scarcely possible
not to infer, that their prosperity is not likely to be pro



HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


79


moted by that of Homoepathia. Without the least fear
of masonic penalties, she has divulged the secrets of the
craft-demolished all its imposing emblems, and swept
away all its drapery of mystification, with such want of
tenderness and consideration, as to expose it to the peril
of nullification, by enabling every man to be his own physician. The worst is, that for this unscrupulous simnplification there is no remedy, unless it be to enlist under
her banners. The public, however, is a gainer by the
process, and has much less reason to complain than to
be thankful.
SECONOMY OF THE FORCES OF NATURE is emphatically
the terra incognita of the Allopathists, where, if they
should visit it in their dreams, they would find havoc
and devastation enough to startle the most hardened of
them, on being told that it is all their own handy-work,
not the less cruel and inexpiable because they were not
aware of it themselves.
Under this head it is sufficient to say, that Homcepathia never bleeds, and Allopathia almost always begins,
and often ends with bleeding. There is something in this
fatal operation-nay, in the word itself that acts upon
the faculties of an Allopathist like some potent spell,
from which he can no more free himself, than a bird
from the fascination of the serpent's glare. It is the malignant ignis fatuus that plays constantly before his eyes,
and draws him on towards some treacherous bog-holetreacherous so far only as it sucks in all that comes within
its reach, except himself-the greedy elves being trappers
of too shrewd a cast not to preserve, as long as need
the decoy for the sake of the prey.
In no other way can this phenomenon be explained,
unless it springs from the more ignoble motives which
induce the ignorant or lazy surgeon to begin always with
the first letter of the alphabet, as it stands in A-mputa



80


80       HOMO3EPAT1IIA REVEALED.


tion,* because, when the limb is off, he knows how to
proceed, and has the advantage of being relieved from
all the care, embarrassment, and responsibility to which
an attemipt to cure would necessarily have subjected him!
If bleeding be the veritable sovereign remedy, as is
asserted, in cases of inflammation, in what manner does
it act, and upon what known principles are its vaunted
effects produced? If it be true, that inflammation is allayed by it, and removed without injury to the constitution, what is inflammation itself? Mysteries, like certain bugbears, as you approach them, grow less in size,
and disappear; and so, the curtain shall be drawn
aside....
Look at yon noble stream, that fanned by the refreshing breeze speeds onward, like some gallant courser, in
the pride of freedom, health and strength! How gay
and bright, yet how measured and self-controlled-at
all times full, but never overflowing! There is velocity
to keep it pure, and hidden springs just rich enough to
compensate its daily tribute to the thirsty sun. Look
there!-A crushing weight of noxious filth, torn from
the flank of an impending cliff, is hurled and lodged
within its breast, where, part seen, and part buried, it
lies too firm to be removed by outer force. Observe, how
quick to the first recoil succeeds the accelerated movement-the simultaneous rush of waters to displace the
nuisance, and wash its traces from the spot! The effort
has failed! A second recoil takes place; the eddies
multiply their fast-receding circles; the deposit of filthy
SThis was actually the prevailing practice in the British navy and
army some thirty years since, as stated on the authority of Mr. Chevahier, an eminent surgeon of London, who wrote a valuable work upon
the subject.




HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


81


sediment commences; the motion is more and more retarded; the accumulated matter swells and breaks into
masses-the current stops, stagnation follows, corruption spreads, and the stream, late so buoyant, becomes
a dead pool! Look on with a thinking eye, and you will
recognise in the stream the blood that flows in our veins;
in the precipitated missive the stroke of disease; in the
encumbered spot the seat of inflammation; in the accumulation of matter the gathering ulcer, and in all the
subsequent changes the exact, progressive, and rapid
transition from life to death!
INFLAMMATION, then, is that vitiated deposit, which the
blood, checked and deranged in its course, and thence deteriorated in its quality, leaves on the spot struck by disease,
after the first rush and unsuccessful efforts to repair the injury
inflicted by the blow.*
* While these sheets were in the press, the fifth volume, containing
the 37th and 38th numbers of the " Archives et Journal de la Medicine Homcepathique," published in Paris, has reached the author's
hands, and realized his ideas by a confirmation so strong, and at the
same time so extraordinary, as to appear to have been extorted by some
special act of Providence from the lips of the unbelievers themselves.
The learned Allopathic physician, Ferdinand Jahn of Meiningen, in
a communication occupying 298-302 pages of the above journal, performs the following act of justice to Homcepathia, and of duty to his
fellow-creatures.
" Dr. Ralterbrunner, the friend too soon lost to me, was enabled, by
means of a microscope, to detect the following process and results of an
inflammation artificially produced. " As soon as a wound is inflicted, an
accelerated motion and intumescence of blood take place in the vessels
nearest to the wound, and thence extend themselves, more or less, in various directions. In some spots, in the immediate vicinity, the blood, disturbed in its course, appears to start out from its usual channels: in some
it hurries on in irregular masses, and in others again it attaches itself to
the Parenchyma, (the spongy flesh serving as a filter to the blood,) and
there forms small sanguineous islets, while the Parenchyma itself becomes much inflated." This state of derangement, more or less aggrava11




82


HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


The candid and intelligent reader, if he is satisfied
with the illustration and the definition preceding, will
be convinced at once, that the event of life or death, in
ted by the depth and extent of the wound, is called, by Raltenbrunner,
morbid inflammation. He was shortly convinced, that, in order to restore every thing to its former healthy condition, another change perfectly similar to the first was indispensable; for, on farther observation,
he soon perceived that nature was already at work to effect such change,
which he, accordingly, denominated curative inflammation. " This second inflammatory phenomenon, which appears much later, and is the
exact resemblance of the original, encircles the seat of disease, constantly approaches the centre, and gradually covers and extinguishes all the
indications of the morbid inflammation."
The above, furnished by a professed opponent, or, at least, no friend
of Homcepathia, ought to settle the question of bleeding for ever. It is
shown there, as clear as day, that a diminution of blood would have deprived nature of her only means of relief, and thus prevented the cure;
and this is precisely what takes place in all inflammatory cases Allopathically treated.
Take that of Scarlatina as an example. The patient is bled as a
matter of course. The loss of blood is the loss of its strength, of its
activity, and of its purity. The force necessary to repair the injury is
taken away from it, and vitiated deposit is the immediate consequence.
The lancet is succeeded by the cups, leeches, and Spanish flies, and
thus aggravations are superadded to aggravations. The deposited matter goes on increasing in quantity and pruriency, and soon degenerates
into corroding ulcers. Finally caustics are applied, and irritation is at
its height. The ulcers, partially burned, spread, multiply, become putrescent, close the passage of the throat, and the patient is laid on his
last bed! Then comes the mighty consolation, that all was done that
could be done by the skill of man, but that the disease was too malignant, too potent to be overcome by human means. Cruel sophistry!
The reverse of all this is the fact. All that was done by the skill of
man was done to destroy, and the disease became malignant and potent
because it was not checked in time, but, on the contrary, in every possible way was made irresistible. Here, too, the author speaks from his
personal knowledge.
Give that same case to Homcepathia, and the scene of misery. is
changed in an instant! She brings her aid, not as the mistress, but as




HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


83


the presence of a highly inflammatory, dangerous disease, depends entirely on the invigoration or reduction
of the conservative power of the blood itself; and that
the manner in which this power is affected by the
practice of Homoepathia and Allopathia, is the best possible criterion of their respective merits.
CONVENIENCY    AND COMFORT     OF THE    INVALID  are
totally incompatible with   the  Allopathic   treatment,
where the wanton spilling of blood, besides its first or
immediate effects, so injurious to the constitution, leads
to all those secondary medical inflictions, not the least
of which is fasting and hunger, imposed upon the patient when he can least bear them, and is most in need
of food. It is sufficient, therefore, to say here, that Homcepathia, by the single act of abjuring all kinds of bloodspilling, is enabled to spare the patient all subsequent
torture, and never for a moment subjects him to the additional privation of a wholesome and nourishing diet.
GUARANTEE FROM HARM, AND CERTAINTY OF CURE,
have already been explained in the safety and efficacy
of minute Homoepathic doses, whose power of action
expires the moment it ceases to be salutary, and whose
effects are never felt, except as a sure pledge of success.
The idea of the negative mischief attributed to Homoepathe pupil of nature. She preserves the blood, increases its activity, restores its purity, equalizes its deranged circulation, and thus enables it
to overcome obstruction, and to effect a cure in the only way in which it
can ever be effected-by its own recovered energies. If the followers,
as well as the leaders of the present dominant school are not acquainted
with the special control which Homcepathia exercises over scarlet fever-their want of information is shameful and unpardonable; if they
are, and will not profit by their knowledge, their deliberate guilt is
greater than the power of fiction to increase it, or the range of moral
justice to punish it as it deserves.




84


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


thia in not doing enough, or in not being quick enough, is an
absurdity full worthy of the motives and general character of her better informed opponents. In the first instance,
any evil from this source, if it did exist at all, would
never equal the twentieth part of the evil caused by Allopathic overdoings and misdoings; and, in the second,
such a result is an impossibility, because in critical diseases requiring an instant aid, Homoepathia, to say the
least, is as well prepared as Allopathia, and, in all
others, her aid comes always in support of that ability
of nature, which, down to this period, has already been
found adequate to the preservation of existence.
CELERITY OF OPERATION.-Were it possible to enumerate here the many instances where a single dose has
performed a seeming miracle of resurrection, it would
astonish the most obdurate of skeptics, and convince all
who are open to conviction, that where Allopathia talks,
halts, walks, and runs, Homoepathia acts, walks, runs, and
gallops; and that Where the former alleviates and weakens
a disease in five weeks or days, the latter arrests and
cures it in two: this being the general proportion of success between them, of the truth of which any one may
satisfy himself by a proper reference to Homoepathic
physicians, who will furnish him with an abundance of
croups,* scarlatinas, cerebral fevers, et cet. effectually
cured at the point of time at which Allopathia begins
only to hope, and look with some confidence to a successful issue.
SPEEDY CONVALESCENCE, although the last in order,
is of the first importance, when it is considered that it
* A croup, already forming, was completely cured in twenty-four
hours, in the author's own family, by a single Homcepathic dose given
in spoonfulls.




HOIMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


85


is in the state of exhaustion that life is most frequently
the price of a short respite. Allopathia spills blood with
the wantonness 6f a boy who spills water, and, like him,
although she profits less by the lesson, she soon finds
that what is sport to one is death to another, and that it
is much easier to empty a bucket than to fill it up again
through a small valve, yielding but a few drops at a time.
The secondary state of weakness, wherein the patient
is kept quiet, soothed, nursed, and just preserved from
starvation; and the third or last one of convalescence,
wherein he is drugged with tonics, and subjected to the
long, slow and tedious operation of distilling fresh blood
by the process of cookery, and pumping it into his veins,
are the exclusive creation of Allopathic enterprise and
resources. Nature and Homcepathia know nothing of
either. With them the crisis of disease is the signal of
restored health, and the space of convalescence is annihilated.
But it is time to conclude. The reflecting reader must
now be in possession of all the data upon which to form
his final judgment as to the respective claims of the old
and the new systems. He can be at no loss to decide
which of them is the true, the only one, when he can no
longer doubt, that, with the exception of slight or fanciful diseases, in all cases of recovery under the Allopathic treatment, the patient lives in spite of it, and not by
its special favor; and that, where a poor fellow has to
swim for his life, nature will keep his head above water,
Homoepathia will place corks under his arms, and Allopathia will fasten a mill-stone to his neck; so that with
the first he may be generally safe, with the second he is
sure to reach the shore, and with the last he must inevitably go down unless he is lucky enough to have a life
or two in reserve-a blessing, which, it seems, is often
granted by the benignant all-foreseeing Providence.




ISOPATHIA.


Usefully ard extensively employed in the service of
Homcepathia, and dependent upon her in the preparation
of means, although differing in the use of them, is her
own legitimate offspring " Isopathia, who, whenever she
acts for herself, instead of curing the like with the like,"
opposes the same to the same, and is accordingly contradistinguished by a name which means self same suffering.
By simply reversing the entry and location of a disease,
she turns its own destructive power against it, and stings
with his own sting the scorpion to death.
The new comer is yet in her infancy. How far her
latent powers are capable of expansion and general application; how far miasms and poisons, primary or artificial, idiopathic or remedial, may all be mastered by
her skill; and how far the internal process against the
external, and vice versa, may in all cases prove alike
efficacious; is a matter of speculative inquiry of the
highest importance, but in nowise relevant to the present
subject, and must be left to future investigations. There
is a floating idea, that every disease, being a miasm or
a poison, deposits its own virus, however impalpable
may be its form, in some part of the body; and that
consequently to every disease there is an antidote supplied by itself, lodged in the human organism, and re



HOMCEPATHIA REVEALED.


87


quiring only to be traced out and properly identified.
There is also a dream that this mystery of self-cure,
and the consequent millenium of the reign of health,
without physicians, is the predestined grand achievement of Isopathia; but as this would make her prematurely a greater scarecrow than Homcepathia herself to
all the parties interested, the patients only excepted, it
may be as well to exhibit her solely in her known and
familiar sphere of action, limited as yet to such miasms
and poisons, as, without our knowledge and control, enter the body from without, and in their developed inorbid form become tangible enough for remedial purposes.
It is to the concentration of not a few remedies within
Athis contracted sphere, that one may look, without
idealizing or dreaming, for the great secret, the true antidote to Hydrophobia. The preparation, found here, of
the virus as far as it is attainable, called Hydrophobine,
and used with such success in those convulsive maladies, which, like Hydrophobia itself, act so exclusively
and fearfully upon the nerves, is the very treasure so
long sought-for; or all analogies are false, and no dependence can be placed on reasonings from like effects
to the like causes.
Homcepathia teaches, that an incurable disease exists
only as a demonstration of our ignorance of the remedy, inasmuch as in the merciful dispensation of Providence inflictions go hand in hand with the means of relief, the discovery of which is left to our own impulses
of self-preservation. If so, and it can scarcely be otherwise, consistently with divine justice, the most dreadful of diseases will sooner or later, even now, prove
curable like any other. The poison of Hydrophobia is
so potent, that, once roused into action, there is an end
to all hopes of resistance. The whole material and inmaterial world, as far as accessible to man, offers as yet




88


HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


no force potent and subtle enough to encounter it with
any advantage. Prussic acid itself, and the serpent's
mortal poison, much relied on and procured for this purpose, are absolutely powerless in its presence. ITSELF,
therefore, is the only antagonist that can enter the lists
with'it, and by self-execution free the victim from its
deadly grasp. The foul fiend must be checkmated by
himself, and Isopathia is to play the game, uncertain and
hazardous, but more, much more than any of the numerous foregone attempts, supported by inductive promises
and forerunning pledges of success.
It is a well-known undisputed fact, recorded in the
medical archives of Europe, and confirmed, in more
than one instance, by professional practice in this very
city, that syphilis, the itch, the small-pox, scrofula, and, so
far as reports may be relied on, the plague, the cancer,
and scarlet fever, have been cured by their own morbid
matter homepathically prepared, and internally administered; and, what enhances the importance of these cures,
they were performed with no less certainty, but with far
greater rapidity than by any other indicated specifics,
usually and successfully employed. Now, Hydrophobia
in its state of development is precisely in the category
of the above-enumerated diseases. Its entrance from
without, and its subsequent ravages in the interior, are
recognized by the same tokens. Its effect and operation,
constituting the disease itself, ate precisely the same as
those of the other misasms and poisons, except that
they are infinitely more virulent and always fatal. It is
scarcely possible, therefore, to resist the rational and natural inference, that it may also be cured in the same
manner. The only question then is, has it been tried?
No one can doubt for a moment that Homcepathists, if
any one of them had made the trial and found it successful, would have reported it as extensively as possi



HOM(EPATHIA REVEALED.


89


ble, from the combined motives of interest and duty, as
well as from inclination. Still less can it be supposed,
that, if the trial so made had failed, they would have
been permitted to be silent. Their implacable opponents,
from whose knowledge it would have been impossible to
conceal it, not content with simply making it known
through all their channels of communication, would
have converted it into a general triumph over Homcepathia, and set ten thousand triple throats of Cerberus
to rend the air with her defeat and signal ruin; for, it is
Snot the least of her hardships, that, while her detractors
are exalted to the third heaven for not destroying all, she
is condemned for not saving all; as if she were, at one
and the' same time a lying impostor, indebted only to
chance and nature for her cures, and a merciless spirit,
having full power over death, yet refusing to exercise it.
The absence of all trace and record of such a trial, as
far as is known here, is a strong presumptive proof that
it has never yet been made; and the next question is,
why has it not been made?
If homoepathists had any chance of it, they lost it
probably by resorting in the first instance to belladona,
stramonium, hyoasimus, and laehesis [the serpent's poison] Homoepathic specifics of the greatest potency, but
not sufficient to subdue Hydrophobia in its full rage.
The only satisfactory answer, then, that can be given
on this point, is, that the practitioners of the old school,
forming as yet the most numerous medical body every
where, such cases as occurred fell into their hands, and
they would not part with them. They have no objection
tothe practice of Homoepathia in their own way, when
not called upon to avow it; but any thing like an open
concession in her favor, ever so remote, although it may
save the life of a fellow-creature, is of course incompatible with the monopolising, unyielding, pitiless, and all12




90


HOMGEPATHIA REVEALED.


exacting spirit of the school. There may be as much
harshness as injustice in saying that they had rather all
the patients should perish in their hands, and perish
they must, than give up one of them to a detested rival
for a chance of cure; but pedagogues are proverbially
obstinate and unfeeling, and there certainly is no want
of room for the painful suspicion that the proffered aid
on this occasion is more feared than desired.
Isopathic treatment in cases of Hydrophobia has been
more than once suggested and recommended through
the public press, and could not be unknown to all who
had such cases at their disposal; and yet not one of
the whole number has been found humane and liberal
enough to let another do, or try to do, what he well knew
he could not do himself. Victims fall, one by one, as
heretofore, beneath the scythe of the relentless mower;
yet the relieving power, ready at a nod to tempt the rescue,. stands full in sight, inactive, motionless, for it receives no sign! A slender cord, suspended from a dizzy
precipice, from which there is no descent, hangs over
the abyss below, and mocks the desperate clutches of a
fellow-being struggling there for life. They cannot save
him, for their station is on the top, but they can lengthen
the cord: Alas! The cord is not of their own making,
and thrown by a stranger's hand-they cut it off, and
turn about declaring that it was not strong enough!!
How knew they it was not, and whence their right to
act on such conclusion? It might break in the pull, but
still there was a chance that it might not-a chance that
none " of woman born " should have refused! It was a
chance, the rejection of which is nothing less, in the
sight of God and man, than a felonious homicide, aggravated by the very impunity of its commission.
In the ancient venerable temple of Esculapius no
antidote to Hydrophobia is yet to be found, for that




H0M(EPATHIA REVEALED.       9


91


which is only preventive, not curative, is no antidote at
all. To pretend to the contrary, even if the god himself
were to do so, is to be guilty of a gross and conscious
imposture. The physician, therefore, if he be honest,
will suffer no motives, in a case so desperate, to prevail
on him to violate so far all. his duties at once, as to decline any remedy offered for trial, however he may distrust its efficacy and contemn 'its source. No matter how
slight the chance, how far placed beyond the sphere of
his regular functions, useless and hopeless in this instance, he will not spurn it on-mere previous conclusions
derived from his own doubts and prepossessions.
Phys 'icians of this description, who are still believed
to form a great portion of the liberal profession, to whatever creed, school, or system they may respectively belong, are earnestly invited and entreated to lay aside
their differences, and unite, one and all, in the benign
rsleto suffer no new case of Hydrophobia to run its
course without giving it the chance of Isopathic, aid soliciting their notice. The powerful aid of the press is
also invoked to make it known as far as possible, that it
may,~ t be missed for want of information. It is the
caus  1 humanity. The trial is worth making, must be
made, and will be made, if this appeal be not in vain.
















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