482 
HOMCEOPATHY V. ALLOPATHY. 
reasonings Mr. Dun has designated as “ dubious ” and 
“ specious but if such be the fact, the censure falls upon his 
own party, and it is a piece of illnature on his part to endea- 
vour to fix it upon my head. 
Mr. Dun is kind enough to inform the reader that my last 
reply consists of the rakings up of “ the old and oft van- 
quished forces with which Homoeopathy has for years past 
been making feeble fight with rational medicine. 5 ’ If such be 
the case, I can only say, with Falstaff, that it is a “most 
forcible feeble 55 to have been so frequently vanquished, and yet 
reappear in the field of battle with such renewed vigour ; 
allow me, however, to say, that they are neither old nor yet 
oft vanquished ; if they have been vanquished before, it is 
easy to vanquish them again, and why the gentleman has not 
done so, when the materials (if we are to believe him) are so 
plentiful, is best known to himself. My opponent is very 
tenacious upon one point, and he holds to it with much the 
same desperation, that a drowning man would be supposed 
to hold to a straw. He wishes to know the exact limits of 
similarity which should exist between the disease-producing 
power of a drug ; and the disease to which it may be administered 
for the purpose of cure ; for without this definition, we are further 
informed, that all my “ talk about Homoeopathy is perfectly 
vague and useless.” I am surprised at this question being so 
repeatedly asked — is the asker so foolish as to suppose that 
the exact limits can be defined with the same precision and 
accuracy that he may be able to define a problem of Euclid ? 
Mr. Dun either knows, or he ought to know r , that no such 
definition can be given to any question, of whatsoever nature 
it may be, unless it fairly comes within the sphere of pure 
mathematics. The rule laid down by Hahnemann is suffici- 
ently clear and simple to any man who will use his common 
sense, instead of straining after hair breadth distinctions 
and differences — distinctions and differences which come 
within that interminable region, designated as the metaphy- 
sical. Hahnemann says : “ To effect a mild , certain , and per- 
manent cure , choose in every case of disease, a medicine which can 
itself produce an affection similar to that sought to be cured .’ 5 * 
Elsewhere, he again observes, when speaking of the same 
thing : “ In order that they (drugs) may effect a cure, it is 
before all things requisite that they should be capable of pro- 
ducing in the human body an artificial disease as similar as 
possible to the disease to be cured. Such are the words of 
Hahnemann, and I should say that any man of common 
* ‘Ogancn, Introduction/ p. 56. 
+ Vide p. 133. 
