HOMCEOPATHY AS A SCIENCE. 733 



ism in total ruins dominated by the vital principle. What, then, is 

 disease typhoid, pneumonia, scarlet fever ? No ; disease is the im- 

 pairment of the equalization of the vital force, and it finds expression 

 where the organism is weakest. 



What is cure to take physic for typhoid or scarlet fever ? No ; 

 to cure is to locate the center of the disturbance, the diseased nerve- 

 cell, and restore the equilibrium. 



How do you do this ? In spite of its many ramifying influences, 

 the nerve-cell preserves, to the close and exact student, its individ- 

 uality, often veiled under the apparently familiar features of others, 

 but still recognizable by the differentiating mind. It is this similar 

 of state and remedy which the homoeopathic physician, who knows 

 and applies the law, seeks in the patient and in the materia medica ; 

 when found, the means of restoring the equalization of the vital cur- 

 rent is found with it. 



As there is but one nerve-center of a disease, so is there but one 

 remedy. 



The system has always a tendency to resist, by reaction, the mor- 

 bific cause which disturbs it. The similar stimulates reaction. When 

 you put your hot hand into hot water, and take it out and wipe it dry, by 

 the law of reaction it becomes cool. So, if to the frost-bitten ear or 

 hand you apply snow or ice, by the law of reaction the frozen part 

 burns under its stimulus. The power of resistance, which is reaction, 

 is the strength of the constitution, or is the constitution itself. It is 

 this law of reaction under which homoeopathy works, by its similars 

 stimulating the additional resistance necessary to aid in nature's cure. 



If you go out into excessive cold, and the power of resistance is 

 equal to the demand, you turn red ; if not, and this power is over- 

 whelmed, you turn white. And the same difference is markedly ob- 

 servable among those who take sea-baths. By the law of reaction they 

 vary in color from that of a boiled lobster to the livid hue of death, 

 graduated and shaded off by the loss of the power of resistance. All 

 cures are sought by homoeopathy under this law, and depend for their 

 success upon this power of resistance, and it is of vital importance 

 that this power be not diminished, for without it there can be no 

 cure. Outside of medicine this law of reaction in the system is recog- 

 nized as an accepted fact. It is the law of cure, and the study of this 

 law is a science, and that science is homoeopathy. 



The reason why scarlet fever, measles, chicken-pox, and small-pox 

 do not, as a general rule, recur in the system is that, at the first attack, 

 the system has reacted so strongly against these diseases as to be 

 proof against a second attack. The reaction has so strengthened the 

 system to resist the particular form of morbific influence that it will 

 not readily yield to it again. 



" Homoeopathy is another form of quackery," says a writer in the 

 June number of " The Popular Science Monthly." It might be ob- 



