the general rule and the exceptions change places. Again, even when the larger doses fail of their general effect, they leave, I fancy, potent signs to consciousness that something has been taken; whereas I can take one or ten of your decillionths of a grain every hour for four-and-twenty hours together without any conscious effects whatever; and other folks have similar obstinate experience. Once more, then, what am I to think of the matter

as a Baconian ?

You tell me, and truly, but to no purpose, that the most minute elements of nature are often of the most potent character; that a drop of the Cobra's poison is fatal; that in certain localities we breathe subtle forms of death, which we cannot detect. But here is still the difference; we know these agents by their effects, which are the very things which I do not find in the exhibition of your infinitesimal doses. About the bite of a rattlesnake (or even of a mosquito, for the matter of that) there is no mistake; and if I could discern by any facts, whether of sense, consciousness, or reasoning, that the millionth part of a grain of belladonna had produced any appreciable effect on me, I should just as easily credit it. My difficulty is that I cannot find the effects.

You say that there are some substances so potent, that exceedingly minute doses—as of strychnine-have a sensible effect. I admit it; but still if you keep to the same scale of minute doses, -minute proportionably as the medicine is potent, the same objections apply. A fraction of a grain of strychnine is doubtless equal to many grains of nux vomica; but if you give only a quadrillionth or trecillionth of a grain, I shall still have no objection to take it.

If you say there may be substances so potent that even such a dose may be appreciable, I should think the wisest way would be to have little to say to such dangerous poisons, since you cannot, I fancy, control them.

Another doubt I feel as to your infinitesimal doses is this. How can you be sure that you have administered them—that they have got into the patient's stomach at all? If they have not got there, I admit that they will produce no more effect than-they

usually do when they have got there. But I know not how to be sure that they have reached their destination. They may, like the globule which was arrested in the hollow tooth of Hahnemann's ⚫ patient (his solitary fatal case!) be waylaid by a million obstacles, each too much for the poor little atom. Like the elements of nature, which you truly say are too subtle for our inspection or control the contagious air, for instance, whence we inhale poison without knowing it— these infinitesimals are too minute for your manipulation. You had better leave them alone.

Moreover, I cannot comprehend, on such a theory as yours, how it is that we can remain in health for a day, since we must be taking all day long through our lungs and in our food (especially in these days of adulteration), your minute doses of the most deleterious substances. If you say, according to the usual assumption (and it is nothing more), that they will only affect the man in disease, and not in health, then when he is out of health, positively ill, and under treatment, these potent, though inappreciable agents, must come into play, and, one would think, must confound your therapeutics. If you say that they all happily neutralise one another, I suppose your little globule will be but another element among them, and must, one would think, get neutralised too; certainly you know as little what becomes of it as of them. At all events, it is clear that if such a chance-medley of potent "infinitesimals" can thus happily neutralise one another, any thing like a calculable administration of your solitary "infinitesimal" is out of the question. One need not be surprised that the homoeopathist, the contents of whose chest his children got hold of, played with, and jumbled together (all unknown to him), went on practising with the same success as before! In short, I cannot away with your hypothesis- or rather, I must away with it.

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER LXX.

To the Same.

My dear Friend,

I begin to suspect the logic of your legal maxim, "De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio;" so valorously do you contend for your infinitesimal doses. I cannot get myself to go further into them, but they shall be very welcome to go into me instead.

You have far outdone the generality even of the homœopathists themselves in the defence of Hahnemann's strange theory of "dynamisation," that is, that infinitesimal doses are not only potent, but potent in the ratio of their minuteness; really I am unable to say one serious word to you.

According to this, the "second, third, fourth nth orders of infinitesimals" (as mathematicians would say) are progressively powerful; in proportion, it seems, as an atom becomes nearer to nothing, it becomes so much more efficacious! Just as it vanishes, I presume, it must be-omnipotent !

Nothing can exceed your doctrine except Hegel's philosophical paradox Nothing Being. If your theory be true, I marvel at the usual language of homœopathists, who speak of the higher dilutions in the order of feebleness, not of potency, and tell a patient not to venture in such and such a case on anything stronger than No. 30! They ought rather to enlarge than diminish their doses, when they wish to diminish the effect! Nay - surely a scruple of strychnine ought to produce less effect than a grain, and a grain than the trecillionth of it!

But there is one argument in your last letter I cannot let pass. You say that, at least, the public is indebted to the theory of minute doses for a modification in the practice of allopathists; that it has abridged that wholesale exhibition of drugs which used to be the fashion, and which turned many a poor patient's

stomach into a druggist's shop. I am really pleased to believe that the rivalry between the medical factions has been attended with some such effects. At the same time do not flatter yourself that the revolution is greater than it is.

Too much physic used to be given, that is certain; but do not suppose that all was physic that was taken. Rely on it,as many a medical man's confession, if ingenuous, would show us,- -that it was not left to the homœopathists to find out the art of doing nothing under the appearance of doing something, just to amuse a patient; "vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona;" millions of bread pills, millions of innocent draughts of infusion of roses and a dram of syrup, quite as harmless as your globules, used to travel down the throats of patients, simply because they would have something, and because the doctor must be paid.

The only difference between the two classes of practitioners often is, that the one charges in the direct proportion of the innocent bulky nothing, and your friends charge in the inverse proportion of the innocent infinitesimal nothing. It was, I grant, a rather absurd practice; but, on the other hand, it was hard to know what to do, since many patients would not be cured unless they swallowed all this nothing; and, what is much more important to the doctor, would not pay unless they had, as they thought, "value received" in the shape of the material drugs, instead of reckoning their true debt to be to his visits and his skill.

Strangest of all, the law allowed the general practitioner his claims only in the shape of so much medicine from his-shop! For aught I know, the law remains as it was; but the sense of the people is beginning to see that a professional man is to be paid for his knowledge and his time, and not according to the "weight avoirdupois" of the goods he supplies from his warehouse. But, be assured, the essence of this branch of the art,-of doing nothing under imposing forms, was understood long before homœopathy was born, and will be understood as long as the credulity of patients shall demand that something be done when the medical man thinks that nothing need be.

Nor can I admit your sarcastic remark, that "if the globules

do no good, they at least cannot on my theory do harm; and that this is more than can be said of allopathic doses." I fear there are many cases, and I have seen some, where your globules have done much harm by preventing anything good being done; where symptoms that required prompt treatment, were dawdled with till disease got strength, and it was too late to do anything. I must also express my conviction that your doctors have an incomparable knack at making hypochondriacs; and, as I must think, very naturally. How should it be otherwise? Your system teaches a patient to believe that his life is ever at the mercy of infinitesimal elements and infinitesimal changes. Can he be other than fidgety about matters which never trouble other people's sleep?

Certainly, as far as I have observed, there are no folks in the world who require the doctor or take physic so often as the homoeopathic patient; hardly a day passes without the medicinechest being opened; well for him that it contains nothing! Similarly, nobody is so sensitive about all sorts of innocent changes of air and diet. For my own part, it would be a torment to live on the terms of some of the votaries of your infinitesimal doses, whom I have known.

However, I freely admit that such people are to be met with often enough among the patients of allopathists; though I must think that your system is specially adapted to befool a nervous temperament and stimulate a morbid fancy.

I handsomely concede that there are classes of patients to whom your practice may be beneficial. 1st. I think it is of admirable use for those patients-and there are many-who have nothing in the world the matter with them; for, as they will take physic, but require none, it is better they should take nothing, though they think it something!—at the same time, it must be said that the bread pills and the infusion of roses might, on the other system, do the work of nothing just as well. 2ndly. For those who suffer from anomalous conditions of the nervous system, amenable, in a measure, to the fancy (as they often seem to arise from it), but whose symptoms baffle all rational treatment. It is