an five billion
doses each, the action of each dose lasting about four days.

Yet this is given only at the quadrillionth, or fourth degree of potency,
and various substances are frequently administered at the decillionth or
tenth degree, and occasionally at still higher attenuations with
professed medicinal results. Is there not in this as great an exception
to all the hitherto received laws of nature as in the miracle of the
loaves and fishes? Ask this question of a Homoeopathist, and he will
answer by referring to the effects produced by a very minute portion of
vaccine matter, or the extraordinary diffusion of odors. But the vaccine
matter is one of those substances called morbid poisons, of which it is a
peculiar character to multiply themselves, when introduced into the
system, as a seed does in the soil. Therefore the hundredth part of a
grain of the vaccine matter, if no more than this is employed, soon
increases in quantity, until, in the course of about a week, it is a
grain or more, and can be removed in considerable drops. And what is a
very curious illustration of Homoeopathy, it does not produce its most.
characteristic effects until it is already in sufficient quantity not
merely to be visible, but to be collected for further use. The
thoughtlessness which can allow an inference to be extended from a
product of disease possessing this susceptibility of multiplication when
conveyed into the living body, to substances of inorganic origin, such as
silex or sulphur, would be capable of arguing that a pebble may produce a
mountain, because an acorn can become a forest.

As to the analogy to be found between the alleged action of the
infinitely attenuated doses, and the effects of some odorous substances
which possess the extraordinary power of diffusing their imponderable
emanations through a very wide space, however it may be abused in
argument, and rapidly as it evaporates on examination, it is not like
that just mentioned, wholly without meaning. The fact of the vast
diffusion of some odors, as that of musk or the rose, for instance, has
long been cited as the most remarkable illustration of the divisibility
of matter, and the nicety of the senses. And if this were compared with
the effects of a very minute dose of morphia on the whole system, or the
sudden and fatal impression of a single drop of prussic acid, or, with
what comes still nearer, the poisonous influence of an atmosphere
impregnated with invi