h the
proposition that all the cases of successful treatment found in the works
of all preceding medical writers were to be ascribed solely to the
operation of the Homoeopathic principle, which had effected the cure,
although without the physician's knowledge that this was the real secret.
And strange as it may seem, he was enabled to give such a degree of
plausibility to this assertion, that any person not acquainted somewhat
with medical literature, not quite familiar, I should rather say, with
the relative value of medical evidence, according to the sources whence
it is derived, would be almost frightened into the belief, at seeing the
pages upon pages of Latin names he has summoned as his witnesses.

It has hitherto been customary, when examining the writings of authors of
preceding ages, upon subjects as to which they were less enlightened than
ourselves, and which they were very liable to misrepresent, to exercise
some little discretion; to discriminate, in some measure, between writers
deserving confidence and those not entitled to it. But there is not the
least appearance of any such delicacy on the part of Hahnemann. A large
majority of the names of old authors he cites are wholly unknown to
science. With some of them I have been long acquainted, and I know that
their accounts of diseases are no more to be trusted than their
contemporary Ambroise Pare's stories of mermen, and similar absurdities.
But if my judgment is rejected, as being a prejudiced one, I can refer to
Cullen, who mentioned three of Hahnemann's authors in one sentence, as
being "not necessarily bad authorities; but certainly such when they
delivered very improbable events;" and as this was said more than half a
century ago, it could not have had any reference to Hahnemann. But
although not the slightest sign of discrimination is visible in his
quotations,--although for him a handful of chaff from Schenck is all the
same thing as a measure of wheat from Morgagni,--there is a formidable
display of authorities, and an abundant proof of ingenious researches to
be found in each of the great works of Hahnemann with which I am
familiar. [Some painful surmises might arise as to the erudition of
Hahnemann's English Translator, who makes two individuals of "Zacutus,
Lucitanus," as well as respecting that of the conductors of an American
Homoeopathic periodical, who suffer the name of the world-renowned
Cardanus to be spelt Cardamus in at least three place