they are
a peculiar compound, when they are artfully associated with a new and
brilliant discovery (which then happened to be Galvanism), when they are
sold at many hundred times their value, and the seller prints his opinion
that a Hospital will suffer inconvenience, "unless it possesses many sets
of the Tractors, and these placed in the hands of the patients to
practise on each other," one cannot but suspect that they were contrived
in the neighborhood of a wooden nutmeg factory; that legs of ham in that
region are not made of the best mahogany; and that such as buy their
cucumber seed in that vicinity have to wait for the fruit as long as the
Indians for their crop of gunpowder.

--------------------------

The succeeding lecture will be devoted to an examination of the doctrines
of Samuel Hahnemann and his disciples; doctrines which some consider new
and others old; the common title of which is variously known as
Ho-moeopathy, Homoe-op-athy, Homoeo-paith-y, or Hom'pathy, and the claims
of which are considered by some as infinitely important, and by many as
immeasurably ridiculous.

I wish to state, for the sake of any who may be interested in the
subject, that I shall treat it, not by ridicule, but by argument; perhaps
with great freedom, but with good temper and in peaceable language; with
very little hope of reclaiming converts, with no desire of making
enemies, but with a firm belief that its pretensions and assertions
cannot stand before a single hour of calm investigation.

II.

It may be thought that a direct attack upon the pretensions of
HOMOEOPATHY is an uncalled-for aggression upon an unoffending doctrine
and its peaceful advocates.

But a little inquiry will show that it has long assumed so hostile a
position with respect to the Medical Profession, that any trouble I, or
any other member of that profession, may choose to bestow upon it may be
considered merely as a matter of self-defence. It began with an attempt
to show the insignificance of all existing medical knowledge. It not
only laid claim to wonderful powers of its own, but it declared the
common practice to be attended with the most positively injurious
effects, that by it acute diseases are aggravated, and chronic diseases
rendered incurable. It has at various times brought forward collections
of figures having the air of statistical documents, pretending to show a
great proportional mortality among the patients of the Med