ne without staff or crutch
in the shape of Prefaces. A very few words may be a convenience to the
reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to
find in it.

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.

Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so
will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods
of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and
womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging
among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as a
curious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its
influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm
investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under
the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its
founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago,
we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite
inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is
that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are
"cured" by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger
number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting
well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider
equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every
form of drugging and put their whole trust in "nature." Thus experience,

"From seeming evil still educing good,"

has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of
pseudo-therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of
practitioners in breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging
which has been one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While
keeping up the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be "cured"
by drugging, Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they
would very generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean
time the newer doctrines of the "mind cure," the "faith cure," and the
rest are encroaching on the territory so long monopolized by that most
ingenious of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its
whole ground should be taken possession of by these new claimants with
their flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to
such attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if
Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-bo