rned for a few minutes,
until the powder is dissolved, and two shakes are to be given to it. On
this point I will quote Hahnemann's own words. "A long experience and
multiplied observations upon the sick lead me within the last few
years to prefer giving only two shakes to medicinal liquids, whereas I
formerly used to give ten." The process of dilution is carried on in
the same way as the attenuation of the powder was done; each successive
dilution with alcohol reducing the medicine to a hundredth part of the
quantity of that which preceded it. In this way the dilution of the
original millionth of a grain of medicine contained in the grain of
powder operated on is carried successively to the billionth, trillionth,
quadrillionth, quintillionth, and very often much higher fractional
divisions. A dose of any of these medicines is a minute fraction of a
drop, obtained by moistening with them one or more little globules of
sugar, of which Hahnemann says it takes about two hundred to weigh a
grain.

As an instance of the strength of the medicines prescribed by Hahnemann,
I will mention carbonate of lime. He does not employ common chalk, but
prefers a little portion of the friable part of an oystershell. Of this
substance, carried to the sextillionth degree, so much as one or two
globules of the size mentioned can convey is a common dose. But for
persons of very delicate nerves it is proper that the dilution should
be carried to the decillionth degree. That is, an important medicinal
effect is to be expected from the two hundredth or hundredth part of
the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of
the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of a grain of oyster-shell. This is only
the tenth degree of potency, but some of his disciples profess to have
obtained palpable effects from "much higher dilutions."

The third great doctrine of Hahnemann is the following. Seven eighths
at least of all chronic diseases are produced by the existence in the
system of that infectious disorder known in the language of science
by the appellation of PSORA, but to the less refined portion of the
community by the name of ITCH. In the words of Hahnemann's "Organon,"
"This Psora is the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all
the other countless forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous
debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy,