a considerable number of
coincidences between the relief of the patient and the administration of
the remedy. It is altogether probable that there will happen two or
three very striking coincidences out of the whole ninety cases, in which
it would seem evident that the medicine produced the relief, though it
had, as we assumed, nothing to do with it. Now suppose that the
physician publishes these cases, will they not have a plausible
appearance of proving that which, as we granted at the outset, was
entirely false? Suppose that instead of pills of starch he employs
microscopic sugarplums, with the five' million billion trillionth part of
a suspicion of aconite or pulsatilla, and then publishes his successful
cases, through the leaden lips of the press, or the living ones of his
female acquaintances,--does that make the impression a less erroneous
one? But so it is that in Homoeopathic works and journals and gossip one
can never, or next to never, find anything but successful cases, which
might do very well as a proof of superior skill, did it not prove as much
for the swindling advertisers whose certificates disgrace so many of our
newspapers. How long will it take mankind to learn that while they listen
to "the speaking hundreds and units," who make the world ring with the
pretended triumphs they have witnessed, the "dumb millions" of deluded
and injured victims are paying the daily forfeit of their misplaced
confidence!

I am sorry to see, also, that a degree of ignorance as to the natural
course of diseases is often shown in these published cases, which,
although it may not be detected by the unprofessional reader, conveys an
unpleasant impression to those who are acquainted with the subject. Thus
a young woman affected with jaundice is mentioned in the German "Annals
of Clinical Homoeopathy" as having been cured in twenty-nine days by
pulsatilla and nux vomica. Rummel, a well-known writer of the same
school, speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by
Homoeopathic doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona. I happened to
have a case in my own household, a few weeks since, which lasted about
ten days, and this was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital
practice, so that it was nothing to boast of.

Dr. Munneche of Lichtenburg in Saxony is called to a patient with
sprained ankle who had been a fortnight under the common treatment. The
patient gets well by the use of arnica in a little more t