PREFACE. 
In undertaking the publication of the present work, the 
Author is actuated by a double motive. In the first place, 
he considers that the actual position of the cause he advo- 
cates renders it most desirable that those interested in 
homoeopathy should be in possession of some regular 
account or history of the medicines employed ; and, in the 
second place, because a great number of persons entertain 
a mistaken notion that homceopathic medicines vary from 
those used in the allopathic school, both as being different 
in kind, of a highly poisonous nature, and therefore most 
deleterious to the human frame. 
This unfounded prejudice, the Author regrets to find, is 
frequently promulgated and held ix ¢errorem over timid 
persons by many medical opponents, who thus endeavour 
to discourage and suppress a system of practice contrary to 
their own opinions, by intimidation rather than by argu- 
ment. It is hoped that the error of these conclusions will 
be made apparent, and that it will be proved that the medi- 
cines are precisely the same as those adopted by the 
opponents of homeeopathy, and gathered either from the 
surface of the earth, or extracted from its interior recesses... 
but with this great difference, that in homeopathy they 
are so prepared, that no mistake can render them danger- 
ous in their action, when, through want of coincidence 
