follows, that the essential nature of the process is unknowable; and therefore it devotes itself to the proper function of therapeutic science, which is to determine, by vital tests alone, the curative relation which may exist between any medicine and any form of disease.

According to this test, a remedy for a disease is to be found by comparing the symptoms of the patient in a given case with those which the various medicines are capable of producing upon a well person, since it has been found by experiment that the symptoms which a medicine may cause in health are like those which it will cure in disease. This solution of the problem, it will be seen, is practicable and scientific, for it deals with the question upon its own ground of vital action and reaction.

Disease, from the therapeutic standpoint, is no longer an abstraction to be speculated upon, or a man of straw under some pathological name, to be overcome by a physical or chemical force, but is simply to be considered as the actual condition of the individual patient, and the study will consist in a comparison of the particular symptoms which the sickness may present with those which characterize the action of particular medicines.

The medicines of homœopathy are not chosen for their physical qualities nor their chemical affinities, nor for the speculative properties which are imputed to them, like that of sedative, tonic, etc., but solely for the special effects which they are known to produce on living men and women.

This method of considering the relations of medicines and diseases would have the same validity, whether the formula, similia similibus curantur, were the correct one for therapeutics or not. The question whether the medicines do or do not act homoeopathically, I do not propose to discuss, if indeed the question admit of discussion.

If the statistics which have been gathered from all available

sources,. if the ever-accumulating testimony of the thousands of physicians and millions of patients who have made the experiment be not conclusive upon this point, there is nothing to be done but to wait for still further evidence. If we compare the practical results of this method with that of allopathy, we shall find that, whereas the allopathic method has failed to discover the virtues of any medicines (this statement, remember, is that of Stillé, one of the most respectable authors of allopathic materia medica), the homoeopathic method has added to the resources of the materia medica a knowledge of the curative uses of medicines so vast that all previous knowledge is as nothing compared with it. Take, for instance, the drug called aconite. This medicine has been known to the medical profession since the year one of the Christian era. Before its homoeopathic proving, it had no standing at all as a curative agent; now it is a household word throughout the bounds of civilization, and every one knows something of its virtues. The same may be said of many other medicines. Dr. Watzke, a German author, in a recent monograph on colocynth, says: "The number of works on materia medica, old and new, thick and thin, which I consulted in pursuit of my remedy, amount to at least fifty. . . . What I found in the first huge pig's-skin folio of Dioscorides respecting colocynth, that same I found in the whole set of followers; hypothetical healing virtues, not a trace of one positive fact, of one physiological foundation, till we come to Hahnemann." There are this day in use by homoopathists scores of medicines, with curative properties as well known and as important as those of any in the whole materia medica, whose virtues nay, whose very names are utterly unknown among allopathists.

On the other hand there is not a fact relating to the physiological or clinical action of a medicine, reported in allopathic literature, but what is seized at once by homoeopathic writers, and made to take its proper place in the homeopathic materia

medica. These things illustrate the tendency of the ideas which animate the two parties in medicine, and explain the antagonism which they present. The old school, with its false therapeutic method, drifts hopelessly towards scepticism in the remedial virtues of drugs, and looks with contempt and hatred upon the rapidly increasing body of heretics, who, driven from its own ranks, have the impertinence to found organizations of their own, to assert the superiority of a new method in therapeutics, and to maintain this assertion by a most triumphant success.

The new school, inspired with renewed faith in the curative powers of medicine, finds in the experience of the past, no less than in that of to-day, testimony to the truth of its doctrine. Alert, progressive, it hopes and expects to give to therapeutics a scientific form worthy of its high function, and thus to crown the arch of medical sciences with a keystone which shall complete its symmetry, and fix it firmly for all future time. But it is not for its positive benefits alone that the world has reason to regard the introduction of the homœopathic method in therapeutics with interest and gratitude. Think of the abuses which it drives before it,-the deadly blood-lettings, the mercurial poisonings, the emetics, the purgings, the blisterings, which are fast passing away forever!

Indeed, whether its claims of positive power to prolong life, to abridge the periods of disease, and alleviate suffering, be allowed or not, humanity will have cause to count it no small gain. Ignorance in the guise of medical science is no longer suffered to add these tortures to the pangs of disease.

E. M KELLOGG, TREASURER, IN ACCOUNT WITH THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF HOMEOPATHY.

June 1. To cash received from members for dues, diplo

XII.

CONSTITUTION, AND BY-LAWS.

CONSTITUTION.

ARTICLE I.

THIS Association shall be styled the AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF HOMEOPATHY.

ARTICLE II.

The object of the Institute shall be the improvement of the science of medicine.

ARTICLE III.

The Institute shall be composed of those physicians who are already members, and of such others as may be hereafter duly chosen in conformity with its By-laws.

ARTICLE IV.

The officers of the Institute shall be a President, a VicePresident, a General Secretary, a Provisional Secretary, and a Treasurer, with such other officers as shall be designated by the By-laws, to be chosen at such time, in such a manner, for such a period and with such duties, as those by-laws shall ordain.