mula drawn from facts by legitimate induction. We may affirm, then, that Hahnemann has crowned our nosographic knowledge with a wise and truly scientific method of treatment, and that he has consequently improved the synthetical part of practical medicine in its most important object.

What influence will nosography exert in its turn on Hahnemann's method?

We know that Hahnemann, through fear of his disciples seeking a remedy for each kind of disease, forbad the study of essential diseases, and declared them to be illusions, chimeras invented only for the convenience of easy practice. Hence all his invectives and proscriptions against those who should call a disease by a name. This is a serious error, although it arise from a good motive; and if it were considered as the keystone of the homeopathic arch, and taken advantage of by ignorance and sectarian feeling, might operate to the serious prejudice of Hahnemann's work. In fact, the first thing to be done in a homœopathic treatment is to make sure of the indication. To do this is to prepare the completest possible picture of the symptoms experienced by the patient and of all the circumstances that may have an influence on their development. I ask of the plainest common sense if it be possible to describe exactly the phenomena of a disease of which we know not the name, says Hahnemann, the essence, say we, that is, the fundamental character, the forms, the different combinations, the varieties, the symptoms, lesions, the ordinary causes? Without this fundamental knowledge, what is the pretended picture, or representation of the disease? It is enough to point out this impossibility to physicians for them to be struck with the evidence of it.

But the case to be treated is absolutely an individual one, it will be said, such as is never seen twice. This is a joke. Persons affected with the same disease resemble each other as much as different individuals of the same animal or vegetable species do. There is not absolute identity, but there are all the characters of unity. To arrive at individuality, it is enough to take notice of the differences we have enumerated; as forms, &c., adding thereto idiosyncracies and the genius epidemicus.

By these means we get the expression, or exact image of every particular case, and this faithful, scientific picture permits no important omission. This is the regular proceeding to be used in seeking real and positive indications. But the picture thus furnished will scarcely ever find its analogue in the Materia Medica as it now exists. We know this perfectly well, and understand therefore why (provisionally at least) the picture of the phenomena follows the order of regions as in Hahnemann's scheme. But who does not see how immensely the practical application of the method will gain in precision when the physicians shall know exactly what form and variety of malady he is called upon to treat, with its several modifications, lesions, progress, duration, and danger? He will then stand at his patient's bed-side armed with theoretical knowledge and practical skill, instead of being the clumsy copyist of symptoms incapable of verification, or having to toil through comparisons of the physiological effects of various substances. If, then, Hahnemann's homœopathy be the complement of nosography in its capital, namely, treatment, the nosographic method in its turn is the scientific complement of the application of homoeopathy. Homœopathy, again, necessitates more full and exact nosographic descriptions. And thus these truths mingle and unite to form a more perfect science.

Let us now do for the analytic what we have done for the synthetic part of practical medicine. The latter, comprising ætiology, semeiology, pathological anatomy, and therapeutics, will admit the blessed influence of homoeopathy into the three first divisions, and the first results will be an ætiology free from hypothesis, and a semeiology based on a richer symptomatology. But all these are nothing compared to the therapeutical reform.

What are the sources of our knowledge of materia medica ? Chance; hypothesis based on colour, odour, taste, on the form of plants; on sidereal analogies, chemical qualities, and finally the effects observed in the course of diseases treated with drug mixtures. For these imperfect notions Hahnemann has given us the results of the experimental method, . . . a general formula stating the relation of the remedy to the disease; based upon observation and experience. His reform, then, consists in

the substitution of experimental in the stead of hypothetical therapeutics.

It remains to determine the value of the law of similars. Educated persons know that in the sciences of observation, indication is always conjectural. Royer Collard says-" The induction of the physicist is founded on the stability of natural laws, whence it follows that his conclusions are always hypothetical. The laws of nature could never be established except on the universality of facts, whence it follows that the physicist, when deducing an unknown fact from the few known facts, never obtains more than a probability, greater or less."

If the law of similars has the same value as the inductions of physical science, that is good reason why we should view it as the dawn of a new era in therapeutics. It is possible that the form of this new therapeutic constitution may be changed, for no man can assign limits to the progress of science. The knowledge of the pure effects of medicines cannot but be extended by contact with aetiology and toxicology. A classified symptomatology, a precise pathological anatomy will throw fresh light on a pure materia' medica, the sphere of which will be enlarged by ulterior observations and experiments, its terminology improved and its primitive divisions be cast aside. Then those substances which have been proved to be useful in diseases are ready to the hand of experimenters for the determination for their physiological actions. If homoeopathy has given much to the analytical sciences of practical medicine, it will receive in turn extension and improvement from them.

To conclude :—In practical medicine homœopathy has worked a real and scientific therapeutical reform, both in the synthetical and analytical point of view. It has replaced syncretism and hypothesis, and is destined to become the science of therapeutics, the true medicine of indications.

But can it fulfil every indication in every possible case, and so represent all therapeutic science? Is there no truth to be preserved beyond the drugs proved on Hahnemann's plan, beyond the law of similars, and infinitesimal posology? Let every man's experience answer! For my own part I believe in certain specifics, in mineral waters, and other empirical remedies

which will perhaps some day come under the formula of similitude. As to the little doses, if they succeed in most cases they may fail in those where the medicine would succeed in ordinary doses. From the doses of Rasori to those of Korsakoff I admit every degree of the scale; this is only a secondary question of observation and experience.

We have ended our task and shown the rank that homoeopathy, or, if the reader likes it better, the rank that Hahnemann's labours and discoveries ought to hold in medicine. What wonder if carried away by enthusiasm for his great work, he was blind to every thing in medicine except therapeutics, saw in homœopathy the whole of therapeutic science, and failed to perceive the bond that might link his discoveries with tradition, and the vast benefit that would thereby accrue to them! man of genius does not see everything; and what he does see is through the prism of his peculiar idea: that is human weakness. It is for us, teachers and practitioners, to act the part of magister definitionum, and to set everything in its proper place, so as to preserve the unity and harmony of our art.

A

There is more excuse for Hahnemann than for Boerhaave, who wrote thus:-I would prefer a physician with a knowledge of semeiology and ignorant of everything else, to one who knew everything but it. This is exaggeration. It was error and exaggeration both, which made Bichat say that we knew nothing of disease if we knew not its seat. None would question the importance of semeiology or pathological anatomy, because Boerhaave and Bichat have exaggerated their function. Therefore we should not account it a crime that Hahnemann overrated the importance of the method of indications which he restored, the experimental therapeutics which he founded.

Is it in the name of tradition, of truth in medicine, that Hahnemann and his doctrine are vilified? No! The sect of the organicists, which has occupied every position in the teachings of the schools, pretended to effect a reform in medicine, and most completely failed. In vain do they teach one day the mortality of the soul, that chastity is a crime another; the abyss yawns around them, and their senseless declamations are rarely and faintly echoed. Let us appeal to the friends of

truth to allow principles freely to ultimate themselves in their consequences; and let us close in the words of a prophetic thinker of our own day :-The time is coming when philosophers shall say to sophists, as Abraham said to Lot, " Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou take the right hand, we will go to the left."

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE HOMOEOPATHIC HOSPITAL IN LEOPOLDSTADT,

BY DR. WURMB, OF VIENNA.

It is self-evident that a physician of a public hospital must have a large number of cases of diseases under his care; hence his contributions must, at least in a statistical point of view, prove of some interest. In reference to the following reports allow me previously to remark that they are the result of five years of observation, viz., since 1850 and inclusive of 1854, and that I usually prescribed the 30th dilution during 1850, 1851, and 1852, and the sixth the two following years.

During the five years 3,789 cases were admitted into the hospital; 3,165 were dismissed cured; 381 were discharged incurable; 211 died; 32 remaining.

The admissions of the several years were as follows:

The average rate of mortality amounts, then, to 5.5.

The diseases which came under treatment will be shown by the table at the end of this report.

In 1850 there were 156 cases of cholera treated by us in a separate locality; of whom ninety-eight recovered and fiftyeight died.