these things, it sat down in the shadow of a brazen bust of its
founder, and invited mankind to join in the Barmecide feast it had
spread on the coffin of Science; who, however, proved not to have been
buried in it,--indeed, not to have been buried at all.

Of course, it had, and has, a certain success. Its infinitesimal
treatment being a nullity, patients are never hurt by drugs, _when
it is adhered to_. It pleases the imagination. It is image-worship,
relic-wearing, holy-water-sprinkling, transferred from the spiritual
world to that of the body. Poets accept it; sensitive and spiritual
women become sisters of charity in its service. It does not offend the
palate, and so spares the nursery those scenes of single combat in
which infants were wont to yield at length to the pressure of the
spoon and the imminence of asphyxia. It gives the ignorant, who have
such an inveterate itch for dabbling in physic, a book and a doll's
medicine-chest, and lets them play doctors and doctresses without fear
of having to call in the coroner. And just so long as unskilful and
untaught people cannot tell coincidences from cause and effect in
medical practice,--which to do, the wise and experienced know how
difficult!--so long it will have plenty of "facts" to fall back
upon. Who can blame a man for being satisfied with the argument, "I
was ill, and am well,--great is Hahnemann!"? Only this argument serves
all impostors and impositions. It is not of much value, but it is
irresistible, and therefore quackery is immortal.

Homaeopathy is one of its many phases; the most imaginative, the most
elegant, and, it is fair to say, the least noxious in its direct
agencies. "It is melancholy,"--we use the recent words of the
world-honored physician of the Queen's household, Sir John
Forbes,--"to be forced to make admissions in favor of a system so
utterly false and despicable as Homaeopathy." Yet we must own that it
may have been indirectly useful, as the older farce of the weapon
ointment certainly was, in teaching medical practitioners to place
more reliance upon nature. Most scientific men see through its
deceptions at a glance. It may be practised by shrewd men and by
honest ones; rarely, it must be feared, by those who are both shrewd
and honest. As a psychological experiment on the weakness of
cultivated minds, it is the best trick of the century.

--Here the old gentleman took his cane and walked out to cool himself.

FOREIGN.

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