pied with it; we cannot reject it without a hearing; we must investigate the truth it contains." He proved the sincerity of his advice, by instituting a series of experiments on his own person and in general practice, which were only interrupted by his lamented demise.

Italy. BRERA, who holds a distinguished rank among the allopathists of Italy, has uttered opinions of homœopathy with fearless liberality, which demand a careful perusal In his Anthologia Medica he thus writes: Homœopathy is decried by some as useless, and by others as strange, and though it appears to the great majority as ridiculous and extraordinary, it can nevertheless not be denied, that it has taken its stand in the scientific world: like every other doctrine, it has its books, its journals, its chairs, its hospitals, clinical lectures, and most respectable communities to hear and to appreciate. Nolens volens, even its enemies must receive it in the history of medicine, for its present situation requires it.

Having attained this rank, it deserves by no means contempt, but on the contrary, a cool and impartial investigation, like all other systems of modern date: homoepathy is the more to be respected as it propagates no directly noxious errors: if homoeopathy proclaims facts and theories which cannot be reconciled with our present knowledge, this is no sufficient cause as yet, to despise it, and to rank it among absolute falsities. Wo to the physician who believes that he cannot learn to-morrow what he does

not know to-day. Do we not hear, daily, complaints of the insufficiency of the healing art? And are not those physicians, who honestly suspect the solidity of their knowledge the most learned, and in their practice the most successful? Such scntiments have, undoubtedly, induced most of the German physicians to study homoeopathy, and to conquer their aversion to the new doctrine.

Let us always recollect, the greatest discoveries have given origin to the most violent controversies. Witness

the example of Galileo, Harvey, Newton, Descartes.*

*D' ISRAELI, in his interesting work, "Curiosities of Literature," gives an article under the title, "The Persecuted Learned." As it bears upon our subject we will copy it for our readers:

"Those who have laboured most zealously to instruct mankind, have been those who have suffered most from ignorance; and the discoveries of new arts and sciences have hardly ever lived to see them accepted by the world. With a noble perception of his own genius, Lord Bacon. in his prophetic will, thus expresses himself: For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages. Before the times of Galileo and Harvey, the world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and in the diurnal immovability of the earth; and for denying these the one was persecuted and the other ridiculed. The intelligence and the virtue of Socrates were punished with death. Anaxagoras, when he attempted to propagate a just notion of the Supreme Being, was dragged to prison. Aristotle, after a long series of persecution, swallowed poison. The great geometricians and chemists, as Gerbert, Roger Bacon and others, were abhorred as magicians, Pope Gerbert, as Bishop Otto gravely relates, obtained the pontificate by having given himself up entirely to the devil: others suspected him too, of holding an intercourse with demons; but this was, indeed, a devilish age.

Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg, having asserted that there existed antipodes, the Archbishop of Metz declared him a heretic, and consigned Him to the flames; and the Abbot Trithemius, who was fond of improving stenography, or the art of secret writing, having published several curious works on this subject, they were condemned as works full of diabolical mysteries; and Frederic II., Elector Palatine, ordered Trithenius's original work, which was in his libra-. ry, to be publicly burnt. Galileo was condemned at Rome, publicly to disavow sentiments, the truth of which must have been to him abundantly manifest. Are these, then. my judges? he exclaimed, in retiring from the inquisitors. whose ignorance astonished him. He was imprisoned, and visited by Milton,

England. Dr. J. G. MILLINGEN, surgeon to the British forces, and an allopathic physician of distinction, has offered the following comments on homoeopathia, in his "Curiosities of Medical Experience." The mere hopes of being able to relieve society from the curse of constant drugging, should lead us to hail, with gratitude, the homoeopathists' investigations.

who tells us he was then poor and old. The confessor of his widow, taking advantage of her piety, perused the manuscript of this great philosopher, and destroyed such as, in his judgement, were not fit to be known to the world. Gabriel Naude, in his apology for those great men who have been accused of magic, has recorded a melancholy number of the most eminent scholars, who have found, that to have been successful in their studies, was a success which harassed them with continued persecution, a prison, or a grave.

Cornelius Agrippa was compelled to fly his country and the enjoyment of a large income, merely for having displayed a few philosophical experiments which now every schoolboy can perform; but particularly, having attacked the then prevailing opinion that St. Anne had three husbands, he was so vio. lently persecuted that he was obliged to fly from place to place. The people beheld him as an object of horror; and not unfrequently when he walked, he found the streets empty at his approach. He died in a hospital.

In these times, it was a common opinion to suspect every great man of an intercourse with some familiar spirit. The favourite black dog of Agrippa wassupposed to be a demon. When Urban Grandier, another victim to the age, was led to the stake; a large fly settled on his head: a monk, who had heard that Belzebub signifies, in Hebrew, the God of flies, reported that he saw this spirit come to take possession of him. Mr. De Langear, a French minister, who employed many spies, was frequently accused of diabolical communication. Sextus the Fifth, Mareschal Faber, Roger Bacon, Cæsar Borgia, his son Alexander, and others, like Socrates, had their diabolical attendant.

Cordan was believed to be a magician. The fact is, he was, for his time, a very able naturalist; and he who happened to know something of the arcana of nature, was immediately suspected of magic. Even the learned, themselves, who had not applied to natural philosophy, seem to have acted with the same feelings as the most ignorant; for when Albert, usually called the Great, an epithet he owed to his name, De Groot, constructed a eurious piece of mechanism, which sent forth distinct vocal sounds. Thomas Aquinas was so terrified at it, that he struck it with his staff, and to the mortification of Albert, annihilated the curious labour of thirty years!

Descartes was horribly persecuted, in Holland, when he first published his opinions. Voetius, a bigot of great influence at Utrecht, accused him of atheism, and had even projected, in his mind, to have this philosopher burned at

That many physicians, but especially apothecaries, who live by overwhelming their patients with useless, and too frequently pernicious medicines, will warmly, nay, furiously inveigh against any innovation of this kind, must be expected, as the natural result of interested apprehension; and any man that aims at simplicity in practice will be denounced as guilty of medical heresy.

Have we not seen inoculation and vaccination branded with the most opprobrious epithets, merely because their intervention tended to diminish medical lucre? But the facts I am about recording-facts which induced me, from baving been one of the warmest opponents of this system, to investigate, carefully and dispassionately, its practical points, will effectually counteract all these assertions

Utrecht in an extraordinary fire, which, kindled on an eminence, might be observed by the seven provinces. Mr. Hallam has observed, that the ordeal of fire was the great purifier of books, or men. This persecution of science and genius lasted till the close of the seventeenth century.

If the metaphysician stood a chance of being burned as a heretic, the natural philosopher was not in less jeopardy as a magician, is an observation of the same writer, which sums up the whole.

The persecution of the practitioners of homoeopathy in Germany, at the commencement of its discovery, is not less remarkable. The venerable discoverer of this great truth, was driven from Leipzig, and deprived of his subsisstance. He owed it to the Duke of Anhalt-Cœthen, to be sheltered in his territories. The practitioners of homeopathy were compelled to send their prescription to the apothecary. This could not be done, as the apothecary does not understand homœopathy. The argument could not avail. Those who would not obey were dragged to the court-house, and forced to pay heavy penalties; and, in case of poverty, imprisoned! This fury is now beginning somewhat to abate. Now, that homeopathy cannot be considered any longer a novelty, as it has been practised for the last thirty years, by thousands and thousands of enlightened physicians in the different parts of Europe. We think it strange that it is so little known in America, our happy adopted country. Indeed, it is barbarous to use car loads of drugs, when a discovery has been made by which diseases can be cured with atoms of medicine.

regarding the inefficacy of the homoeopathic doses, the influence of diet, or the agency of the mind; for in the following cases, in no one instance could such influences be brought into action. They were (with scarcely any exception,) experiments made without the patients' knowledge, and where no time was allowed for any particular regimen. They may, moreover, be conscientiously relied upon, since they were made with a view to prove the fallacy of the homoeopathic practice.

This result fully convinced me that the introduction of fractional doses will soon banish that farrago of nostrums that are now exhibited, to the manifest prejudice both of the health and the purse of the sufferer.

At the conclusion of his experiments, Dr. Millingen adds: I could record many instances of similar results, but they would, of course, be foreign to the nature of this work. I trust that the few cases I have related will afford a convincing proof of the injustice, if not injustifiable obstinacy of those practitioners who, refusing to submit the homoeopathic system to a fair trial, condemn it without investigation.

Homœopathy is a science on which numerous voluminous works have been written by enlightened practitioners, whose situation in life placed them far above the necessities of speculation.

Their publications are not sealed volumes, and any practitioner can also obtain the preparations they recommend. It is possible, nay, more than probable, that