empirical experiences, groundless theories, and ever-changing fancies;
that those best acquainted with its principles, and the results of
its practice, have the least faith in its usefulness; and that the
interests of the suffering, imperiously demand a revolution in the
method of treating disease, and call for a system more in harmony with
Nature, more reliable in its application, and more successful in its
results.

This degraded state of the medical practice was deeply felt by
HAHNEMANN, and in 1778 he retired from the practice of medicine
in disgust at its uncertainties, after having acquired fame as a
scientific scholar and high standing in his profession, breaking away
from the past and opening a new field of glory to his activities, as
well as a new era of progress in the medical art.

SAMUEL HAHNEMANN was a great man; the discoverer of the true law of
cure, in accordance with the principles and laws of Nature.

I need not tell you, that we maintain that this much-desired and
long-looked-for law of cure, which is to be a lamp to the feet of the
physician, making plain his path, and giving him an unfailing guide
in the application of remedies to the removal of disease, not only
exists, but has been proclaimed to the world by the immortal Hahnemann
in his well-known formula: _Similia Similibus Curantur!_ But who was
Samuel Hahnemann? When I say that this great Reformer of Medicine was
a regularly educated physician of great learning and unusual general
culture and literary attainments, I speak but feeble praise compared
with the language of Sir John Forbes, Hahnemann's most learned critic,
where he says:

"No candid reader of his writings can hesitate for a moment
to admit that he was a very extraordinary man; one, whose name
will descend to posterity as the exclusive excogitator and
founder of an original system of medicine, as ingenious as
many that preceded it, and destined to be the remote, if
not the immediate cause of more fundamental changes in the
practice of the healing art, than have resulted from any
promulgated since the days of GALEN himself."

And he adds:

"He was undoubtedly a man of genius and a scholar, a man of
indefatigable industry and of dauntless energy."

The great HALLER, says of him:

"He is a doublehead of philosophy and wisdom."

And HUFELAND, the father of orthodox medicine, speaks of him as one of
the most distinguished physicia