A number of public trials of Homoeopathy have been made in different parts of the world.  Six of these are mentioned in the Manifesto of the “Homoeopathic Examiner.”  Now to suppose that any trial can absolutely silence people, would be to forget the whole experience of the past.  Dr. Haygarth and Dr. Alderson could not stop the sale of the five-guinea Tractors, although they proved that they could work the same miracles with pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe.  It takes time for truth to operate as well as Homoeopathic globules.  Many persons thought the results of these trials were decisive enough of the nullity of the treatment; those who wish to see the kind of special pleading and evasion by which it is attempted to cover results which, stated by the “Homoeopathic Examiner” itself, look exceedingly like a miserable failure, may consult the opening flourish of that Journal.  I had not the intention to speak of these public trials at all, having abundant other evidence on the point.  But I think it best, on the whole, to mention two of them in a few words,—­that instituted at Naples and that of Andral.

There have been few names in the medical profession, for the last half century, so widely known throughout the world of science as that of M. Esquirol, whose life was devoted to the treatment of insanity, and who was without a rival in that department of practical medicine.  It is from an analysis communicated by him to the “Gazette Medicale de Paris” that I derive my acquaintance with the account of the trial at Naples by Dr. Panvini, physician to the Hospital della Pace.  This account seems to be entirely deserving of credit.  Ten patients were set apart, and not allowed to take any medicine at all,—­much against the wish of the Homoeopathic physician.  All of them got well, and of course all of them would have been claimed as triumphs if they had been submitted to the treatment.  Six other slight cases (each of which is specified) got well under the Homoeopathic treatment, none of its asserted specific effects being manifested.

All the rest were cases of grave disease; and so far as the trial, which was interrupted about the fortieth day, extended, the patients grew worse, or received no benefit.  A case is reported on the page before me of a soldier affected with acute inflammation in the chest, who took successively aconite, bryonia, nux vomica, and pulsatilla, and after thirty-eight days of treatment remained without any important change in his disease.  The Homoeopathic physician who treated these patients was M. de Horatiis, who had the previous year been announcing his wonderful cures.  And M. Esquirol asserted to the Academy of Medicine in 1835, that this M. de Horatiis, who is one of the prominent personages in the “Examiner’s” Manifesto published in 1840, had subsequently renounced Homoeopathy.  I may remark, by the way, that this same periodical, which is so very easy in explaining away the results of these trials, makes a mistake of only six years or a little more as to the time when this at Naples was instituted.