The first is a supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law found in the precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by friction with snow or similar means.  But we deceive ourselves by names, if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat.  The snow may even be actually warmer than the part to which it is applied.  But even if it were at the same temperature when applied, it never did and never could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a mode of regulating the application of what? of heat.  But the heat must be applied gradually, just as food must be given a little at a time to those perishing with hunger.  If the patient were brought into a warm room, heat would be applied very rapidly, were not something interposed to prevent this, and allow its gradual admission.  Snow or iced water is exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly warm, on the contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain frozen up until doomsday.  Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in large or small quantities, is not Homoeopathy.

The next supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire.  This is a popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them.  It produces a most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds.  This is all it is capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox.  If this example affords any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of it as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the flatiron that the fire does not literally “draw the fire out,” which is her hypothesis.

But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle of Homoeopathy.

For you will remember that this principle is that Like cures Like, and not that Same cures Same; that there is resemblance and not identity between the symptoms of the disease and those produced by the drug which cures it, and none have been readier to insist upon this distinction than the Homoeopathists themselves.  For if Same cures Same, then every poison must be its own antidote,—­which is neither a part of their theory nor their so-called experience.  They have been asked often enough, why it was that arsenic could not cure the mischief which arsenic had caused, and why the infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the disease it had produced, and then the; were ready enough to see the distinction I have pointed out.  O no! it was not the hair of the same dog, but only of one very much like him!