pneumonia with small doses of tartar emetic, or Mr Syme dare to use arnica? Is that their meaning? Or is it that the small doses are the only ground of quarrel? In that case a minimum must be assigned, the transgression of which shall infer expulsion. At present, in the mere matter of quantity, there is more difference between the high and the low Homœopathic dilutions, than between the last of these and the small doses frequently prescribed by Drs Christison and Simpson. If half a grain be too much, may not Dr Simpson give 14th of a grain, or 1/10th, or 100th, or even 1/1000th, without incurring banishment? Of all possible spectacles, a grand schism in the medical profession, on the sole ground of the quantities of the drugs prescribed, is about the most melancholy; and when such a disastrous course is violently urged by those who, on their own confession, have made no experiments with a view to ascertain in how small quantities medicines are efficacious remedies, and against those who have had large experience on the subject, leading to the conviction that minute quantities are best, the measure can only be regarded as the attempt of a dominant sect to crush their advancing rivals by force of authority. . When the matter is pushed to such an extremity, that the patient may die while the operating surgeon is requiring the physician to repeat the articles of his faith, it is surely time that the creed should be known, and the shorter it is the better. Let it be "in certis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas!"

P.S. Since these pages were written, Dr Simpson has published a second edition of his pamphlet, on which we can here make but one or two remarks.

Our first is, that we congratulate Dr Simpson on the progress he has made in a fortnight; and, should he continue to press on with the same energy, he will soon be in medias res of this controversy. He has already come to the

rough statement of the Homœopathic law; the next time we meet him he will have learned something of its necessary limitations and conditions, for he has now taken to consulting the writings of credible Homœopathists, instead of judging of their opinions, as heretofore, from the statements of their most reckless calumniators. He has yet hardly touched the surface of the argument; when he goes deeper into it, we shall be glad to fight the battle once more. Before he can be entitled to such consideration, he must have learned to distinguish the Homœopathic system, the extension and success of which depends upon no secret remedies or local circumstances or personal influence, from the instances he quotes of individuals here and there having for a time achieved wide and yet very unenviable reputation as administrators of some one treatment. He must abandon his old vice, to which he still holds, of classing Homœopathy with the pretended infallible universal remedies. To a thoughtful mind, it will be quite apparent that nothing can in truth be more essentially unlike belief in one universal specific than faith in the prevalence of a law of relation, according to which the remedies must be as indefinitely various as are the phenomena of disease. Dr Simpson's own practice approaches much nearer to that referred to than does the Homoeopathic; for he applies the same remedy to many dissimilar states of body, which any good Homœopathist would consider malpractice.

Dr Simpson has yet to learn that, although the Homœopathic law be universally true, its application to practice must yet be extremely difficult; and that thus occasional or frequent failure no more proves it fallacious, than the failure of ninety-nine out of a hundred arrows to pierce the bull's-eye disproves the law of projectiles. Homœopathy is not more than fifty years old, and has much to learn; yet the strength of its youth gives promise of a supremely victorious manhood.

Audacious as ever, Dr Simpson not only denies the efficacy of small doses, but disputes the alleged provings. Not only are the alleged cures by infinitesimals ascribed by him to imagination, but the alleged effects of large doses, taken for the purpose of ascertaining their action. If Dr Simpson knew anything of the evidence on this subject, even he would hardly hazard such a line of argu

ment.

Into the details on which he enters we cannot now follow him; but, rejoicing in the improved tone of his treatment of the subject, we must here part with him—leaving to other hands, or another opportunity, the particular exposure of his many errors and fallacies. Before he can be ripe for the discussion of this vital question, he will have to spend more hours than he seems yet to have spent minutes on its examination. Aware that it is the great medical question of the day, he seems resolved to prosecute it; and we hope to meet him again.

DR RUSSELL'S ADDRESS

AT THE

SECOND CONGRESS OF HOMEOPATHIC

PRACTITIONERS.

HELD AT LONDON ON THE 23D AND 24TH JULY, 1851.*

GENTLEMEN, It is now nearly a century since the birth of the great man to whom we owe the reformation which gives us our distinctive appellation and task; and a bare recital of the leading events which have been more or less caused or affected by the idea he first embodied and taught, would more than occupy the space allotted to this address. But it would be more profitable could we discover the spirit which shaped itself in these outward effects, for it is only by so doing that history becomes an oracle, directing us how to act, and telling what we may anticipate.

The career of Hahnemann is too familiar to us all to require narration here. The features of his character most important to bear in mind, when we attempt to estimate the results of his life, are those which he derived from the country of his birth, and those which he shared in common with all great actors in this world's drama.

Germany, that land of promise, of promise unfulfilledthat land which has so often given us a prince for our throne and a monarch in the realms of thought-was em

* From the "British Journal of Homœopathy," Vol. ix.

phatically his fatherland. There he acquired that width of culture and experience corresponding to his future elevation; thence he derived that simplicity, a frequent attendant if not essential attribute of high genius—a simplicity blended with lofty imagination, which delights to recognise a symbolic significance in things of everyday life. Thus, upon one occasion being visited in his retreat at Cœthen by a disciple who had often heard of the garden attached to his house which afforded him his only exercise, being at the time unable from the hostility of his persecutors to venture beyond his own threshold, in reply to the natural observation of "How small this much talked-of garden of yours is, Hofrath," he observed, "Yes, it is narrow, but (pointing to the sky) of infinite height." His enemies could not interdict his ascent, however much they circumscribed his rambles. And thus he became a

"Type of the wise, who soar but never roam,

True to the kindred points of heaven and home."

From the too great inclination of his countrymen to exalt the ideal over the practical, what might be called a tendency to run to ghost, he was saved by an intense desire, inherent in all reformers, to give substantial reality to the truth he had won from "the void and formless infinite." To the critical element so excessive in his time and country, and which now threatens all creeds and systems with destruction, he united a faith firm as that of a former and greater age and the zeal of a prophet, which, even in the act of consuming the old and false, quickens into being à higher and more enduring form of life. To this combination of opposite qualities, to the profound abstract thinker, the scientific inquirer united with the vehement preacher, and the sagacious man of the world, do we owe one of the greatest achievements recorded in the annals of science.

As Hahnemann's character, like that of all men whose lives have told directly upon the human race, was essen