If we would follow an orderly sequence of facts, we shall be obliged to recast this work into a new and different mould. Small as the work is, I am of the opinion a very considerable part of it might well be cut away. A careful comparison of the 294 paragraphs will reveal the fact that many of them are but repetitions. A thing once plainly stated should be left to stand. And taking Hahnemann at his word, that there is no value whatever to any explanation as to the action of the therapeutic law, we may lay aside all his explanations-which form no inconsiderable part of the book—and so get down to the solid facts.

If we arrange what is left in logical form, then the Organon is an open book. This is the plan :

There are three factors to be considered :

1st. The disease to be cured.

2d. The agent by which it is to be cured.

3d. The mode by which the agent is to be employed.

I insist upon it, pathology must take precedence. Until you understand the nature of the thing to be attacked, you cannot ascertain what kind of agents will be required to make the assault.

But the teachings regarding pathology according to the Organon are not in accordance with the ideas most prevalent among the medical profession. Pathological anatomy, of which so much is made by the non-Homœopathic schools, holds to the mind of the true pathologist a secondary and incidental relationship. Hahnemann insists upon the totality of the symptoms. Pathological anatomy is built chiefly upon post-mortem evidences. Homœopathic pathology rests wholly upon ante-mortem evidences.

Theoretical propositions respecting supposable internal changes that can be revealed only after death cut no figure in the practical mind of the Homoeopathic pathologist.

The products of disease are not the disease itself. Since the writing of the Organon a discovery of no mean importance has been made in demonstrating the existence of bacteria. But their presence in connection with many or most morbid conditions of disease does not alter the fact that the fountain of all morbid states lies in the changed condition of the correlation of those forces of the body that constitute life and health, and that it is change of relationship that constitutes the disease.

The symptoms which arise out of that altered condition of rela

tionship constitute all that we can make of any use.

Each patient

is by himself an object of study, and it is not, after all, the disease itself, but the patient, as representing a peculiar morbid state, that we are to cure. Let my first proposition, then, stand as

1. The patient to be cured.

The Organon lays down the specific method of determining the condition of the patient. It is the only true method.

This point being slurred over, forgotten, or ignored, makes all further effort futile in attempting to treat a patient by the Homoeopathic method.

This foundation being well laid, we can understandingly advance to the second step, namely,

2. The agent by which it (the patient) is to be cured.

It goes without saying, that the non-Homœopathic schools, not pursuing the right course in the study of remedial agents, have no true materia medica. Their literature is full of profound and scientific studies of drugs. But no drug can be made a remedial agent until its action upon the living and healthy body is revealed, and thereby demonstrated to have a fixed relationship to the morbid condition of the patient.

The Homœopathic materia medica unfolds this relationship. The Organon unfolds this method in perfectly plain terms; and since Hahnemann taught it, there has been no material betterment of it. Improvements have been suggested and adopted, but the principle remains unchanged.

The last point, which is,

3. The mode by which the agent is to be employed, is open to a wide discussion. Hahnemann, himself, was not upon all points entirely settled. Hence, he has been supposed to hold various views upon the subject. But there is one thing sure-we can never get away from the single remedy and the minimum dose. Nothing more nor less than this can be substantiated from the teachings of the Organon.

If the book rested solely upon these three points, and left out all extraneous matter, it would win the assent of a large majority of the medical world. Compact and comprehensible, it would be easily to be resting on the bed-rock of eternal truth. Eliminating the vagaries of individual opinion, we should have before us the simple and undeniable laws of nature.

Time and space forbid that I should proceed farther. The title of my paper should be changed to read, "A Part of What I Know about Hahnemann's Organon."

DISCUSSION.

T. C. DUNCAN, M.D.: I am deeply interested in this subject for the simple reason that we have a revival of Homœopathy, and of an attempt by the professors of different faculties to have the Organon taught in the colleges. The chief trouble seems to be to place the Or ganon in its proper place; whether it belongs to materia medica or to theory and practice. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Homœopathic professors would class it in materia medica, and I think that is one reason why it is not understood better, and has not received more attention from the members of the profession in general. As the writer has said, there is a great deal that is reiteration, and which could be expressed in much fewer pages; and it seems to me, that, for the benefit of the members of the profession, there should be written an epitome to be placed in the hands of first-course students. We have had a variety of Organons, as you know, and there is quite a controversy which is the correct and right one. I think there have been three or four different translations of the Organon. As I understand it, the Organon deals with the principles of Homœopathic therapeutics. When I use the word " therapeutics," I mean the practice of medicine. I do not mean materia medica at all. Therapeutics is a distinct science. I think, if we could separate these two ideas, that the study of medicine is a science just as much as the study of disease is a science, then make a place and recognize that therapeutics is separate and distinct, there would not be so much confusion. The Organon is practically a stepping-stone to Homœopathic therapeutics.

DR. WILSON: If all you people believe as I do, it seems to me that the profession at large would not do as they do. I will refer to the article on diphtheria. The whole tone of it was absolutely in violation of, and ignoring the principles of Hahnemann.

BY THE CHAIRMAN: How about the 200 potency, doctor?

DR. WILSON: I beg the gentleman's pardon as to that particular part. There is one thing that should be done, and that is, to have this work put in a more compact form. Pick out what is desirable and true in this book, and then, and then alone, are we on the right track.

ALLOPATHIC AND HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT OF PNEUMONIA.

BY CONRAD WESSELHOEFT, M.D., BOSTON, MASS.

EVERY year we read in the reports of great assemblies of physicians that "medicine" has made enormous progress. The audiences thus addressed are pleased to hear it and take it for granted, for each member of the audience is impressed with his own participation in the great progress and is in it. This progress is readily defined in a few words. Surgery, inasmuch as it is a branch of the art of healing, though it has now almost nothing to do with medicine, has made great strides in the last fifteen years, and has proved the greatest blessing to poor suffering mortals, who, a few years ago, were silently surrendered to death after a long period of suffering. This was all changed when absolute cleanliness was made a science, which, as it is still further cultivated, will make surgery still more successful. But how about medicine proper? Who would not wish that it could share the praise of surgery? But to expect this, or to deplore the absence of such praise, would be uncharitable in this vastly greater and less explored territory. The progress—or, rather, the condition of medicine may be stated briefly thus: Up to the beginning of this century medical treatment was harsh, not to say brutal, and its results far and wide of what the results of medical treatment should have been, or what, in the hands of science, they are to-day. In pneumonia there were from 15 to 35 per cent. of deaths, as we shall see later on. Why did not physicians and patients see this and change it at once? For the same reason that they did not use the telephone and railroad in the middle ages and much later. Doctors thought they were doing well; they even considered their results as brilliant when the mortality, especially in pneumonia, receded a few points-to about 15 per cent. They considered it absolutely impossible for a pneumonic patient to recover unless that pestilential fluid called blood, surging through heart and lungs, were removed; unless

those turbulent nerves were subdued by the deadly nausea of tartar emetic, or the excited brain blunted to the verge of torpor by opium. Human experience progresses, but its progress is exceedingly slow. When it once plants itself firmly on a dogma sup ported by "rational" theories, it will hold its position or perish rather than admit an error. We may call the treatment of pneumonia, as practiced up to 1749, wrong-nay, bad and pernicious; but we should not reproach the character of the men who practiced it. So it went on to about 1796 and 1820, during which period a schism arose in the medical ranks. Shooting off from the main current of doctors there was a small stream of men who discovered that by using infinitely less medicine under a simple formula or maxim, the mortality in pneumonia was reduced from about 32 to 5 per cent. This opened the eyes of a less dogmatic member of the main body of doctors who thought he perceived that excessive use of bleeding and medicine was the cause of the great death-rate of pneumonia in hospitals. Being in charge of one of the largest, he prohibited bleeding and largely medicine, so that in the course of ample time and after the observation of very numerous cases (750 cases), he could prove, by unimpeachable statistical evidence, that the death-rate was thus reduced to about 7 to 9 per cent., leaving still, more than 3 per cent. in favor of Homoeopathy. This was Dietl, of Vienna, and, oh! how his colleagues hated and persecuted him! But reason was conquered by reason; by 1859 little or nothing was heard about bleeding. But it was most reluctantly abandoned, for habit is all-powerful, and sorely were doctors tried by popular prejudice clinging tenaciously to old methods. For in those and earlier days, as old doctors of thought and experience tell us, patients did not send for the doctor that he might act according to his judgment, but he was called to bleed and to purge, and if, in his better judgment, he protested, his peremptory dismissal followed as surely as the funeral of the patient in the hands of a more "tactful"

successor.

So the main body of doctors went on the world over. Though everywhere the little stream of Homœopaths could be seen to be given off by the main current, and although it proved itself vastly more successful in the treatment of pneumonia and other acute diseases, it did not spread as rapidly as it deserved. The public learns very slowly or not at all. The fact that very few die under one