for all time. In his Lesser Writings he states: "A knowledge of diseases, a knowledge of remedies, and a knowledge of their employment (that is, for the cure of disease), constitute medicine." That definition has not as yet been improved upon.

8. He reduced the size of the dose, until all danger of aggravation from the drug was removed. He proved the possibility of successful treatment by the administration of medicines in minute quantities; and when that fact was determined, there was a gradual abandonment of the "kill or cure" doses of the ancients.

9. He developed in medicine the doctrine of transmitted force, a doctrine that the inherent powers of a drug may be passed from the original material to new material without a necessary loss of their natural energies.

Who can estimate the influence of such a man who wrought, during an eventful life, such miracle-like achievements? He developed a philosophy as comprehensive, as beneficent, and as far-reaching in its conception of usefulness, as the prodigious philosophies of Aristotle, of Plato, and of Lord Bacon. This man worked alone, unaided, uninspired, save by his personal sense of the possession of a mighty and glorious truth. With that truth in his soul, he rose like a giant from the ranks of the people, seized the masses of antique theory and uncertain conjecture by which he found himself surrounded, and hurled them into the yawning gulf of a well-earned oblivion. He portrayed with the clearness of sunlight the folly of old-time methods of treating the sick by rash and blindly heroic means, and he proved the powers and effects of drugs upon himself ere he ventured to administer them as medicines to the sick. He covered Europe with the evidences of his marvellous medical skill; he swept back the tide of long and bitter persecution by the sublime triumphs of his art; he kept up the glorious carnival of his successful practice until he was crowned with surpassing honors in Paris; and he rested not until, by the grandeur of his achievements, the city of Leipsic, from which he had been driven as a fugitive and a vagabond, erected a stately monument to his name, a monument that remains to this day as a fitting memorial to his magnificent and imperishable memory.

While Hahnemann and his followers have been opposed at every step during the past eighty years, the cause of homœop athy has continued to exist as a bright and growing cause. The principles which he avowed, and which his enemies sought to depreciate, have at last become, though unwillingly and unadmittedly on the part of some, the settled principles of modern medical practice. The lancet and other harsh methods of depletion have been laid away or rarely used. Polypharmacy is

almost a thing of the past, having been practically discarded in Germany, the medical Mecca of the world.

The use of the single remedy and the divided dose is now tanght by such leaders in the old school as Ringer, and Farquarson, and Bartholow, and Piffard, and T. Lauder Brunton, and C. J. F. Phillips, and A. A. Smith, and Professor Gubler.

That our old-school brethren are recognizing the effects of drug provings upon the mind as well as the body, is evidenced. by the following quotation from an article by J. Leslie Tobey, M.D., L.R.C.P., London, printed in the "American Journal of Insanity" for April, 1887: “Belladonna produces, in over-doses, manja; hyoscyamus, jealous furor; pulsatilla anemone, religious melancholy; nux vomica, ill humor and passionate irritability; mercury, moral perversion; ignatia, lycopodium, etc., dejected, sorrowful humor; opium, intellectual ideation; alcohol, maddening, vicious, profane impulses; stramonium, morbid fear and cowardice; hasheesh, intellectual delusion."

Surely our friends are recognizing at last the light which has shone from the brilliant teachings of Hahnemann for more than fourscore years.

It is a generally recognized fact, that there is a gradual but steady increase in the longevity of the people. This is one of the marked effects of the teachings of Samuel Hahnemann. He not only cured the sick, but he gave us rare lessons relative to the avoidance of disease by proper quarantine in contagious cases, by suitable and careful daily diet, by wise methods of development and fortification of the human body against disease, by the avoidance of all depletory measures, and by the utilizing of all proper hygienic and sanitary means for the promotion and the preservation of health.

The truth in medicine, as sown by Hahnemann, has produced, and is still producing, a rare and luxuriant fruitage.

"A single seed,

When soil and season lend their alchemy,
May clothe a barren continent in green."

The world has been blessed with some great physicians. Many of these have attained what might be called a ripe old age. To show you what has been done in the line of personal living, in accordance with personal beliefs and theories, we now present the ages of some of the most distinguished physicians who have lived within the Christian era : —

Galen, whose Cyclopædia of Medicine was the text-book of the nations for thirteen centuries, died at seventy; Von Helmont at sixty-seven; Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, at seventy-nine; Sydenham, at sixty-five; Vesalius, the

father of anatomy, at fifty; Eustachius, the discoverer of the valvular structures of the heart, lived until he was seventy-four ; Stahl also died at seventy-four; Boerhaave at eighty; Von Heller, the father of physiology, at seventy-one; John Hunter at sixty-five; Cullen, whose Materia Medica Hahnemann translated, at seventy-eight; Jenner at seventy-four; Abernethy at seventy-six; Sir Astley Cooper at seventy-three; Sir Charles Bell at sixty-eight; Abercrombie at sixty-three.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, lived in accordance with the principles which he so fully and carefully enunciated, until he was nearly ninety years of age. His gigantic intellect remained unimpaired to the last, and his mental faculties were bright and strong to the day of his death. So you see

that he outstripped them all in so living " that his days might be long in the land."

It is interesting to note the effects which have been produced by the teachings of Samuel Hahnemann upon the treatment of patients in the public institutions of various countries. To understand these effects, we may briefly compare the death-rates in some of the hospitals for the insane, as they were recorded eighty or ninety years ago, and as they are recorded at the present time.

At the Bicétre, in France, from 1784 to 1794, the death-rate was 48 75. At Salpetriére, from 1805 to 1813, the death-rate was 28.17. At the Retreat, in York, England, from 1796 to 1836, the death-rate was 22.22. At Wakefield, from 1818 to 1836, the death-rate was 31.61. At Aversa, Italy, in twenty years, the death-rate was 21.35. In Amsterdam, Holland, from 1832 to 1837, the death-rate was 21.56.

During a period of four years, ending Sept. 30, 1885, the deathrate in the old-school asylums for the acute insane, in the State of New York, was 5.90. That of the Middletown Asylum, under the new system of treatment, was 4.47. During the year ending Sept. 30, 1886, the death-rate under old-school treatment, in the New York asylums, was 5. 16. In the Homoeopathic Asylum at Middletown, the death-rate for the same period

was 2.99.

Outside of insane-asylums we find that during the year 1876 the death-rate in the old-school charity hospitals of New York City ranged from eight to twelve per cent; while at the Homœopathic Hospital on Ward's Island, for the same year, the deathrate was 6 14. Since that year, the first after the Homoeopathic Hospital was established on Ward's Island, the death-rates in all the New York City hospitals have been lighter than they were previous to the establishment of the Homoeopathic Hospital. This shows the beneficial influence of competition, as well as the

beneficial effects of homoeopathic treatment of disease, in our public hospitals.

Contrasting the death-rates of the olden times, where they range from twenty-one to forty-eight per cent, with those of the present day, where they range from less than three to about ten or twelve, you will note a marked change for the better.

With regard to the results attained by the homoeopathic treatment of typhoid fever, of pneumonia, of scarlatina and of cholera, the comparison in favor of the new system of medicine is remarkable. You are so familiar with these statistics that we will not repeat them here.

Samuel Hahnemann not only lived up to the fulness of his own time, but, like all who are truly great, he projected himself, his work, and his influence, upon the undiscovered future. Some of the theories which he but dimly outlined have since been developed by scientific processes into reasonable and understandable truths. While some have sought to claim that the psora theory of Hahnemann simply meant the itch, and that this great physician failed to discover the existence of the acarus, or itchmite, as an exciting and continuing cause of the skin disorder, we find, upon close investigation, that Hahnemann did know about the itch insect; for he writes, concerning the itch: “I agree with those who attribute the disease to a living cause." And, concerning the remedy which he applied for the cure of the itch, he says: "All insects and worms are killed by sulphuretted hydrogen.' To confound the eruption caused by the itch-mite with the constitutional and far-reaching dyscrasia termed psora, is, stating it mildly, a mistake of his enemies, and not of Samuel Hahnemann.

Concerning the cholera, he says, "It grows into an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible, living creatures so inimical to human life, of which the contagious matter of cholera most probably consists."

The master of homoeopathy did not fail to discover the mystery of the itch-mite, and, unaided by the microscope, yet with unerring vision, he recognized the comma bacillus of cholera, about which the renowned Koch has written so much within the past few years.

But grander than all his discoveries concerning the physical and material nature of disease, his recognition of the influences of imponderable forces upon the life and the health of the physical structures of man, of which we have already spoken, was a discovery which shall last while the earth lasts and the inhabitants thereof continue to live.

No other author has more fully portrayed the subtile influences which the mind exerts over the body. No other author

has so fully described and portrayed the effects of drugs in the production of abnormal mental conditions.

Here is the secret and source of Hahnemann's power as a physician to the sick, and in the future the potency of the master will become more apparent as the refined subtilties of the human mind become better understood.

Hahnemann was a physician who not only sought to cure disease, but he endeavored, also, to fortify and protect the community against the encroachments of pathological enemies. The prophylactics which he proclaimed against cholera and scarlet fever are among the most benign measures ever instituted.

The experiments of Pasteur at the present day, in seeking, by homoeopathic prophylaxis, to ward off the approaching crisis of hydrophobia, are experiments in line and in sympathy with the homœopathic idea.

The modifying and renovating influences which Samuel Hahnemann shed upon modern medicine are immeasurable and incomputable. His achievements as a renovator of the old and a proclaimer of the new deserve to rank with the proclamations of a Martin Luther and the discoveries of an Alexander Von Humboldt or a Sir Isaac Newton.

Samuel Hahnemann deserves to be crowned and canonized as one of the world's greatest benefactors. More than a century has elapsed since his great work began, but his influence is neither dead nor forgotten. The monopolizing greed of his opponents cannot absorb them, nor will the careless apathy of his professed friends dim the lustre of his rare achievements. We may turn always, with profit and with pleasure, to his written works, as to an old gospel that is ever new; and we shall find therein, if we study them aright, fruitful sources of inspiration, of encouragement, and of helpful information. It is only when we stray from the teachings of the master, when we grow weary of making those patient and profound investigations so necessary to a proper understanding of disease and the best methods of curing it, that we turn our faces from the light, and direct our footsteps into paths of darkness and disgrace.

Are the virtues and powers of homoeopathy exhausted? A thousand times, no! They are as yet but partially discovered, imperfectly understood, and feebly utilized. One of the saddest failings of our times, and it is a failing which has touched with a leprous hand the brightest pages of human history, is that weakness of human nature which makes us prone to forget and forsake the faith of our fathers, and to slip away from those eternal truths which are hidden in the arcana of nature, waiting only for human intelligence, guided by divine inspiration, to discover and bring to proper use.