732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



exhibits not so much " decline " as destitution. However, I am not 

 inclined to deal severely with the distinguished professor, and accord- 

 ingly content myself with flinging back the title-page into his teeth. 



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HOMOEOPATHY AS A SCIENCE. 



By EDWAED BAYAED, M. D. 



" Philosophy and science arc so related as to constitute a unity." " The Eelations 

 of Mind and Brain," Calderwood. 



~\ /TANY of the most important discoveries of the psychologists were 

 J3JL rejected by the physiologists, because they could not be proved 

 by their law and conversely with the psychologists. These contend- 

 ing forces have been brought into lasting alliance by Professor Calder- 

 wood. It is believed that as close a relation can be established be- 

 tween Nature's laws and those of homoeopathy. 



Vaccination, as the sole and sure preventive of small-pox, is one of 

 the great, dominant, fixed facts of the old school. Here is the open 

 and avowed application of tbe law of cure by similars, similia simili- 

 bus curantur. If it be a law of cure in one case, by what logical 

 process can it be demonstrated to fail in all others ? Those most con- 

 versant with Nature's laws assert, and truly, that she makes no excep- 

 tions : the laAV of gravity ; that water seeks its own level ; that the 

 pressure of water is equal in all directions ; that sound ascends ; that 

 heat expands. It was this universality of the law of Nature which en- 

 abled the great naturalist, Cuvier, to construct a whole skeleton from 

 two or three bones. So, with equal certainty, if necessary, could the 

 skeleton of the homoeopathic law be evolved from this single bone of 

 its structure vaccination. Starting from different stand-points, the 

 old and new schools have progressed in the same direction, to dimin- 

 ished doses, both in size and repetition. This is concededly due in 

 the old school to the influence of homoeopathy, in the new it is the 

 growth of its own experience. 



Messrs. Bell and Laird, in their admirable monograph on diarrhoea, 

 say : " There is indeed a somewhat prevalent opinion that the strength 

 of the dose makes up for want of due care or knowledge in selection. 

 This may be stated in mathematical terms, as follows : If the thirtieth 

 potency of arsenic is equal to a complete knowledge of the drug, one 

 fifth of a grain of arsenious acid is equal to complete ignorance of it. 

 Stated in this, its true form, we grant it." 



Homoeopathy, as a science, is the law of the vital force ; the body 

 is but the mechanism upon which it operates. The dissecting-knife 

 has laid bare to the astonished gaze of the student a perfect organism, 

 while the operating-table presents the companion picture of an organ- 



