A third instance in proof of the Homoeopathic law is sought for in the acknowledged efficacy of vaccination.  And how does the law apply to this?  It is granted by the advocates of Homoeopathy that there is a resemblance between the effects of the vaccine virus on a person in health and the symptoms of small-pox.  Therefore, according to the rule, the vaccine virus will cure the small-pox, which, as everybody knows, is entirely untrue.  But it prevents small-pox, say the Homoeopathists.  Yes, and so does small-pox prevent itself from ever happening again, and we know just as much of the principle involved in the one case as in the other.  For this is only one of a series of facts which we are wholly unable to explain.  Small-pox, measles, scarlet-fever, hooping-cough, protect those who have them once from future attacks; but nettle-rash and catarrh and lung fever, each of which is just as Homoeopathic to itself as any one of the others, have no such preservative power.  We are obliged to accept the fact, unexplained, and we can do no more for vaccination than for the rest.

I come now to the most directly practical point connected with the subject, namely,—­

What is the state of the evidence as to the efficacy of the proper Homoeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases.

As the treatment adopted by the Homoeopathists has been almost universally by means of the infinitesimal doses, the question of their efficacy is thrown open, in common with that of the truth of their fundamental axiom, as both are tested in practice.

We must look for facts as to the actual working of Homoeopathy to three sources.

1.  The statements of the unprofessional public.

2.  The assertions of Homoeopathic practitioners.

3.  The results of trials by competent and honest physicians, not pledged to the system.

I think, after what we have seen of medical facts, as they are represented by incompetent persons, we are disposed to attribute little value to all statements of wonderful cures, coming from those who have never been accustomed to watch the caprices of disease, and have not cooled down their young enthusiasm by the habit of tranquil observation.  Those who know nothing of the natural progress of a malady, of its ordinary duration, of its various modes of terminating, of its liability to accidental complications, of the signs which mark its insignificance or severity, of what is to be expected of it when left to itself, of how much or how little is to be anticipated from remedies, those who know nothing or next to nothing of all these things, and who are in a great state of excitement from benevolence, sympathy, or zeal for a new medical discovery, can hardly be expected to be sound judges of facts which have misled so many sagacious men, who have spent their lives in the daily study and observation of them.  I believe that, after having drawn the portrait of defunct Perkinism, with its