THE SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE. 537 



traria contrariis curantur," or a system founded upon the belief in a 

 certain antagonism discoverable between drug-action and disease. 



Upon the face of these definitions, seemingly irreconcilable differ- 

 ences exist between the two leading schools of medicine ; differences 

 which, if borne out by the facts of to-day, furnish ample excuse for 

 this persistently anxious query of the public. That the present status, 

 however, of medical science affords no adequate support to this popu- 

 lar idea of a hopeless variance is clearly susceptible of proof. 



When Hahnemann promulgated his new and remai'kable dogmas, 

 they certainly came into direct collision with the then accepted opin- 

 ions and practice of the medical world. They were conceived and 

 brought forth in an age of heroic measures in medicine ; an age, too, 

 in which the sthenic types of disease were largely predominant, and 

 when the lancet and its auxiliary depletives were accounted the un- 

 failing panaceas of all human ills in which failure was not a foreor- 

 dained fact. 



The homoeopathic tenets rushed to the other extreme of theory, 

 and, in practice, won the faint praise of doing at least no injury to 

 human life. But, starting thus from widely separated points, the two 

 schools have steadily traveled forward along paths set in inevitably 

 convergent lines. The unbridged space which lay between them a 

 century ago has been narrowed imperceptibly in their onward march, 

 until men discover with surprise that to-day, across the intervening 

 chasm, they can safely join their hands ; and that, by mutual ap- 

 proaches, they may soon walk side by side, in common effort for the 

 relief of humanity, and yet keep steadily " abreast of truth." Uncon- 

 sciously receiving the impress of its opponent's teachings, the older 

 school has learned, first, to lessen, and then to minimize its doses ; to 

 improve the preparation of its drugs, and to seek for better forms and 

 methods in their administration. If it can boast the direct salvation 

 of no greater number of lives, in consequence, it is at least responsible 

 for fewer deaths. Its distinguishing characteristics have ever been an 

 active spirit of investigation, and the consequent widening of the lim- 

 its of its medical faith. 



The homoeopathy of to-day has also shaken from its feet the dust 

 of more than one worthless theory. Although within its ranks are 

 still numbered some so-called " high dilutionists," its leaders have long 

 ceased to insist upon infinitesimal dosage as an essential principle of 

 treatment. Not a few of its representative men administer many of 

 their drugs in crude form, as the rule rather than the exception of 

 practice. If it still clings to its central dogma, its principal adher- 

 ents no longer claim for it the respect or merit of a universal law. 

 That it serves as a good indication for the use of certain drugs, in the 

 treatment of many conditions of disease, few careful students of ma- 

 teria medica and therapeutics will deny. Witness, as instances, the 

 physiological as related to the curative action, in some particulars, of 



