ON THERAPEUTICS. 587 
as to nervous depression. The various changes of property 
or structure we ascribed to malnutrition. 
The restoration of the lost balance we have assumed 
to be effected by the natural subsidence of excitement after 
rest; by the origination of a new stimulus in cases of de¬ 
pression ; and by absorption, or sloughing, or excretion, in 
cases of changed structure or constitution. 
Where the disease is beyond the natural capabilities of the 
system to remove, artificial aid is necessary for the purpose of 
establishing a new action, by the agency of a medicinal agent. 
All medicinal action is provocative of excessive, defective, 
or altered structure or function, and, consequently, produces 
disease of an intensity and duration proportional to the 
potency of the agent and the susceptibility of the system. 
The science of therapeutics includes two principal systems— 
et homoeopathy ” and “allopathy.” 
The homoeopathic system is founded upon the axiom 
that every disease can be simulated by medicinal agency; 
and that the natural disease is cured by the agent or agents 
which produce symptoms similar to those marking the ori¬ 
ginal affection. Hence the motto, “ Similia similibus cu- 
rantur.” In reasoning upon the theory advanced, we are 
not concerned with the question of probability; we are not 
called upon to consider whether it is at all reasonable or 
natural that disease should be cured by agents which pro¬ 
duce similar conditions in the healthy animal: we are con¬ 
cerned only with the facts as they are brought before our 
notice ; and first, with the point on which the system rests— 
the “ characteristic actions ” of medicines. It either is or is not 
true that the various agents possess the property of pro¬ 
ducing in the healthy body symptoms of special and known 
diseases; if true, we are justified in experimentally applying 
those agents to cure such diseases; if false, the homoeopathic 
system obviously exists upon an error, and, whatever success 
may attend the means it applies, that success must be attri¬ 
buted to other causes than the specific action of the drugs 
employed. 
The question can be decided by the best of all tests, namely , 
experiment. Not by an appeal to Hahnemann’s ‘Materia 
Medica/ nor by the adduction of comparisons between the ' 
success of the two systems of treatment, but by the simple 
exhibition of any of the drugs to a healthy or ordinarily 
healthy animal; not in homoeopathic doses, as they form no 
part necessarily of the original experiments, but in quan¬ 
tities sufficient to define their effects. With all our desire 
to treat homoeopathy fairly, we cannot but remark how con- 
