A Last Word About Christian Science. 



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■was enough, but now, having got so far, it is impossible to go back 

 without stultifying himself; he is therefore driven by the hobgoblin 

 of a foolish consistency to go on, in order to maintain his standing. 

 If he resorts to questionable means, he probably prefers such a course 

 to an ignominious recantation. Having set out to show that faith is 

 all, he has found, unfortunately for his theory, that faith is only a 



Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, had some queer notions 

 whicli in the few decades since his death have not found universal 

 acceptance. He believed and taught that a medicine which produces 

 head-ache, for example, is the best cure for head-ache; or, in the usual 

 Latin phraseology, similia similibus curantur (like is cured by like). 

 2. That it is necessary to give infinitesimal doses. " If the patient is 

 very sensitive," he says, "it will be sufficient to smell once of a vial 

 containing a globule of sugar the size of a mustard seed; after the 

 patient has smelled it, the vial is to be recorked, and the medicine 

 will thus serve for years without its medical virtues becoming percepti- 

 bly impaired." 3. That seven-eighths of all chronic diseases are pro- 

 duced by the itch. " This itch," says Hahnemann, "is the sole, true 

 and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless forms of 

 disease," and he adds that it took him twelve years to trace out the 

 source of all these diseases.— That the itch is the cause of such an 

 array of ills is no longer maintained by his followers; the use of in- 

 finitesimal doses is also discarded by the leaders of the school; and, 

 lastly, even the doctrine of similia is doubted by many eminent 

 Homceopathists. (See Dr. Geo. Wild, vice-president of the Br. H. 

 Soc, in Lancet, June, 1887.) 



It is probably true, however, that, speaking generally, as many cases 

 recover, or, to use the common expression, as many are cured, by the 

 Homoeopathic as by Allopathic treatment, and the greatest triumphs 

 of Homoeopathy have been achieved by the employment of Hahne- 

 mann's infinitesimal doses. Other beside Mrs. Eddy have recog- 

 nized the long stride between the heroic treatment of the past and 

 the mild treatment of the present; and also the more recent stride, 

 Perhaps quite as great, that between the use of ostensible or pretended 

 medicine and of naked faith. 



It is without doubt better in diseases which of themselves tend to 

 recovery, as the great majority of diseases do, to give little or no 

 medicine, and in such cases the Homoeopath is likely to be a 

 safer man than the phvsician who relies too much on drugs, or 

 gives them without the necessary caution. Most people, however, 

 rel y on medicine and will have it, and therefore the physician is too 



