•J”HOUQHTp FOR THE 
An Address 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
HOMEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY 
OF MASSACHUSETTS, 
AT 
TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON, APRIL 9, 1872. 
By J. HEBER SMITH, M.D., 
[Reprinted from theN. E. Medical Gazette.] 
PUBLISHED BY 
otxs clapp sc sonsr, 
3 Beacon St., Boston. THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES. 
An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Medical Society. 
J. HEBER SMITH, M D., MELROSE, MASS. 
Gentlemen: — It is fitting that the hours set apart from ordi- 
nary duties for this annual meeting, should be occupied mainly 
with the interchange of the gleanings of another year’s work. 
But I hope that you will bear with me, for the time usually 
allotted to this address, while I pass briefly in review some of 
the errors of medicine, and the prospects of its future advance- 
ment. 
We have entered into the labors of the fathers, to whom 
descended those weighty secrets of physic, " whereby a man 
might preserve his body in health, or cure himself being sick ”; 
to whom every tender floret seemed to harbor the warm influ- 
ences of Venus or the martial fire of Mars, and every goodly and 
tall tree stood sentinel under some planetary sign, potent against 
witch and devil, thunder and lightning, and the cold humors and 
destroying fluxes of mortality. We have entered into the labors 
of the fathers indeed, but their works and curious devices are 
following them to the chambers of oblivion. They abased 
medicine in deifying it; in bringing it down to its proper plane, 
we are seeking to ennoble it. They ignored facts in the con- 
struction of pretentious theories. But the age of theories is 
fast passing away. We have become gleaners of facts. Sim- 
plicity and eager questioning to-day characterize the labors of 
the student of medicine. Nature delights in rewarding his 
patient, imploring search. Medicine, the oldest, though per- 
haps not the most changing and uncertain of the learned pro- 
fessions, having at length assumed the attitude of humility, there 
is hope for its future. 
It was written by the poet iEschylus : "Time, as he grows 
old, teaches all things.” But time has everything to teach. Some 
of his pupils have not, in the past, been very docile scholars ; 4 
and among them may be numbered whole generations of physi- 
cians. Hippocrates aptly compared the practice of physic to a 
fight, and also to a farce, acted between three persons, —the 
patient, the physician, and the disease. It is a mistake to look 
for the immediate apprehension of medicine as a science. Its 
phenomena are too involved; and not only is there in most 
cases an absence of faculty subtile enough to grasp its com- 
plex phenomena, but there is mostly an absolute unconscious- 
ness that there are any such complex phenomena to be grasped. 
Our ideas have been framed out of experiences gathered within 
comparatively narrow areas, and with our judgments biased by 
preconceived notions. We have lacked that plasticity of the 
conceptive faculty that may enable coming generations to bring 
order out of confusion. 
Nor will medical truths be readily adopted. Men are not 
unchangeable, nor do they change easily. We must remember 
that human nature is only changed in the slow succession of gen- 
erations, by social and mental discipline. The very truths, to 
us so vital and paramount, that are now making such slow head 
against class-prejudice, may come to be viewed as so unques- 
tionable, and even rudimentary, that the names of the elect few 
who established them will have passed to oblivion. Their 
names indeed may perish, together with whatever is false or 
valueless ; but it is a source of reverent gratitude that not one 
of their thoughts pregnant with truth shall ever die. These 
shall live, not in monumental crypts or storied urns, but in the 
unquenchable and pervading brilliancy of truth, whose fires are 
ever consuming the dross, and revealing the form of whatever 
is pure, as " one of the sons of God.” 
Said the learned physician and courtier, Baron Stockmar : 
" The king complains of medicine. I can write no apology for 
tiie art, because I have learned to know the exact limits of its 
power.” A declaration so seemingly modest would not at first 
be seen to embody the most absurd self-assertion. Ten years 
of the study of medicine in the universities of Wurzburg, Erlang- 
en, and Jena, and a few more as hospital and regimental sur- 
geon, had qualified him, it seems, to declare that only in the 5 
prevention of maladies can a good and great physician be really 
of use. But while it may be a salutary conviction that time 
and nature are the best allies of the physician in the treatment 
of physical disease, as well as of the social evils of mankind, it 
is painful to note the apathy with which so many eminent men 
have rested here, with folded arms. Nature spreads out before 
them a neglected field. 
It is an instinct of organized life to seek remedial aid. Must 
this instinct, so universal,ever follow a blind search ? The univer- 
sal prevalence of a belief is an axiomatic argument for its truth. 
The ethnic religions of the world, embracing the belief in a future 
state and a Supreme Being, having their origin in the rudest 
conditions of savagery, and culminating in the liberty and strength 
of Christian thought, suggest that, as the litanies of nations 
exhibit man in search of spiritual life, so the general attention 
and homage paid to plants, show man in search of bodily health. 
Out of the depths of humanity, in its prehistoric developments, 
came the thought of cure ; and the medicine-man, with his fan- 
tastic dress and horrid orgies, gave place to the more refined 
cruelties of the modern empiric. 
It is not strange, in view of the absurdities of ancient med- 
icine, and the divisions of its present disciples, that sceptics 
have multiplied, who assert that nature intended that the expen- 
diture of life should be supplied by genesis alone; that she has 
provided man with defence against everything but disease ; that 
death must come through the breaking down of organic tissues, 
and that we may not, with our drugs, triumph over him, or 
pluck out his sting. " For thee the field has no medicinal leaf, 
and the vexed ore no mineral power.” 
What a melancholy view is this to take of the provisions of 
our Mother Nature ! She whom we have thought the benign 
parent of things, becomes the cruel and veiled Isis, of the un- 
moved countenance, whose rod disposes the mournful silence of 
the dead. 
The more complex and highly endowed a creature, the more 
numerous are its enemies and its resources. It must then be 
that man, the crowning work of creation, whose thought pierces 6 
the hills, spans oceans, and girdles earth with sentient fire; 
whose foes are the elements, the unseen things of air, and the 
forces that balance the universe, or array themselves against 
him in the mimic world of a drop of water, — it must be that a 
being of such surpassing capabilities has been provided by the 
Genius of Life with the means of combating disease. The wild 
beast that drags his emaciated form to some mineral spring on 
the mountain-side, or laps the salt-lick of the plain, teaches man 
the lesson of cure. 
In healing, we delight to see the Mind that formed nature 
again in operation. Healing is a natural work, as much in har- 
mony with nature’s plan as is organic reproduction. It is a law 
set in opposition to the unceasing forces of segregation and dis- 
integration. It is the expression of conservation; the knot in 
the thread of creation. 
The more complex the laws that form organic structures, the 
more difficult of comprehension are the forces that operate for 
their conservation. From this thought arises the condemna- 
tion of the former systems of medicine for their childish sim- 
plicity and puerile completeness. Let us beware of theories that 
cover too well the facts already known. They will be found 
insufficient to answer the discoveries of the future. 
I come now to a statement of the underlying principle of the 
homoeopathic school of medicine. 
The French scientist, Dumont, has truly asked : " Can one 
imagine, in the recesses of an organ, a single cell, a single ele- 
ment which is not fighting for existence?” It is recognized, as 
one of the fundamental facts in biology, that in organic or life- 
structures it is inherent to resist disintegration. We, as ho- 
mceopathists, recognizing this inherent stubbornness of life, seek 
to rouse it, in the sick, to active opposition to forces kindred to 
its natural enemies. By this vital opposition are overcome, in 
one struggle, both diseases and their kindred remedies. In the 
application of this principle to the treatment of the sick, as 
expressed in the familiar, though unsatisfactory formula, Sim- 
ilia similibus curantur, medicine advanced at once almost to 
the dignity of a science. From it grew, as a logical sequence, the practice of proving drugs on the well, adding certainty to 
experiment, and removing half its terrors from the visitation of 
disease. The principle of the similars, when practically applied, 
necessitates the attenuation of the dose, lest the opposition 
aroused by the remedy be too violent, or lest the powers of the 
system to resist a force so kindred to the disease, be overborne 
and paralyzed. Perchance the truth of this law would have been 
more generally accepted, had it been clearly shown that the 
attenuation of the dose stands as a necessary corollary to the 
law itself. 
As one unprejudiced, and made familiar by the daily use of 
the extremes of potencies, I would suggest that we may have 
carried the attenuation of the dose beyond the necessities of the 
case, although matter would seem to be indestructible by almost 
infinite division. But, in these days of materialism, we must 
not adopt this faith as a Shibboleth, or give it undue promi- 
nence. There are men whose minds are not constituted to 
receive it. These materialists have gone out into the wilderness 
of medicine to see a reed shaken by the wind. Their ear is not 
attuned to hear the still, small voice of nature. 
The experiments conducted by M. Davaine, of Paris, with 
septin, upon rabbits; by injection within the veins,—reported 
Sept. 17, 1872, to the French Academy of Medicine, —demon- 
strate the power of a poison, even when diluted to the one- 
trillionth of a drop, to cause death in twenty-four hours. But 
according to this almost startling report, so confirmatory of the 
efficiency of infinitesimals, this was the limit of the transmissi. 
bility of septicaemia. The one-quadrillionth of a drop, from the 
blood of a rabbit that had died from the one-millionth of a drop, 
did not, in every instance, destroy life. He has thus proved 
that matter can be carried by the homoeopathic process of atten- 
uation above the ninth centesimal degree without ceasing to 
be present or losing the activity proper to it. Beyond this 
limit there doubtless lies a still wider reach of curative effi- 
ciency with the same poison, in cases suggestive of its use. 
But may there not, even in respect to its curative range, be 
found a limit of dilution beyond which the attenuation of a 8 
remedial agent ceases to be advisable ? The latitude of belief, 
and the contagious enthusiasm of a few, suggest an interroga- 
tory form for a thought that cannot long be seriously ques- 
tioned by scientific men. We must either cut away from 
the known laws of matter, hpwever closely it verges on spirit, 
or candidly admit that there is a point of attenuation, suffi- 
ciently removed from the limit of toxication, yet requiring for 
its attainment the widest separation of atomic constituents, and 
the highest development of the specific forces of the agent that 
can be consistent with the susceptibility of the diseased organ- 
ism; and this limit of attenuation lies doubtless in the golden 
mean between crudity and nothingness. It seems hardly dis- 
putable that this remove from the limit of toxication need not 
be very great, in the preparation of remedies for many forms of 
acute diseases. It was the thought of Hahnemann to attain 
the smallest dose that would cure, without a serious aggrava- 
tion of symptoms. That the Master often found this dose among 
the highest ranges of attenuations, neither demonstrates their 
universal applicability, nor excuses the short-sightedness of 
those of his disciples who adhere to their exclusive use. In- 
deed, it is hardly a matter of question that this exclusive use 
of extreme attenuations by many of our influential physicians 
has deprived the profession of the fullest reward of their efforts, 
and the results obtained have not enabled us to recognize in 
such a procedure the inductive method of the natural sciences. 
The great law of the similars we cherish as fondly as they; but 
in our anxiety to hasten its general recognition, we deprecate 
the prominence that has been given to spiritualistic opinions 
and hasty deductions. We would not load our law with irons, 
nor seek to invest it with unreal wings. 
We are guardians of a principle that must not die. Too 
young to protect itself, too lovely to perish, our law of cure 
stands by the shore of the Dead Sea of ancient medicine, like 
Aphrodite when she sprang from the ocean’s foam, to be re- 
ceived by the gold-filleted Seasons, and led to the assembly of 
the immortals. We pledge ourselves to the advancement of 
this law, until the white pellet, the badge of our derision, shall 9 
have a place in all the homes of the world, bathing the snow- 
wreaths of the North, keeping company with the moving tents 
of Arabia, and the dusky children of the tropics, the admira- 
tion of the subtile minds of Asia, and, in Greece, the long for- 
gotten Panacea, daughter of the god of medicine. Who is 
able to foretell the triumphs of homoeopathy in America? 
Light is covering the land ; from the east it travels with heal- 
ing in its rays. 
Let us, who have so lately beeu charged with "practising ac- 
cording to an exclusive dogma,” show the people our catholicity, 
and our eagerness to accept reform. And here let me allude 
to our position regarding the admission of women to member- 
ship in this Society. There is in our by-laws at present noth- 
ing for or against their membership. But I shrink from recall- 
ing your past exclusiveness or indifference. The world moves 
fast, and some of you have recently shown, by the most gener- 
ous magnanimity, your freedom from prejudice. Woman no 
longer asks of man the right to heal the sick. Her future 
position in medicine is assured. Knocking at the outer portal 
of knowledge, standing in divine humility in the hall of prepa- 
ration, woman waits the judgment of this century of assize. 
The verdict has already gone forth: "You that have waited 
without, pass in.” The angel of the household becomes not 
only the cherisher of infancy, but the patroness of science, the 
savior of society. The subject of numberless medical experi- 
ments and surgical abuses, her hand has at last seized the 
scalpel, and her cunning fingers measure the currents of life. 
Vivified as by the touch of a spirit, medicine already begins to 
feel the pulses of a new life. Her quiet ministrations in the sick- 
room, and her intuitive observation of nature, will never merit 
the sarcasm of that cotemporary of Cicero, who termed the 
physician’s watch of his patient " the study of death. ” Let not 
our school of practice be slow to enlist her aid. We can never 
have a full and trustworthy materia medica until women, edu- 
cated and refined observers, assist in the proving of drugs. 
Hitherto we have been fighting death single-handed. Women 
are, by constitution and temperament, sensitives, trembling and 10 
vibrating to the unseen, like the magnetic needle, and as true 
to the polar star of duty. Only such are fitted for the highest 
usefulness in our profession. Let them prove their vocation 
by devotion to science. 
The past year has been the most eventful one in the history 
of homoeopathy in America. The animosity so long cherished 
by "the established school of medicine,” has, in this Common- 
wealth, culminated in an attempt at a general expulsion of 
homoeopathists from the Massachusetts Medical Society. We 
sought the protection of the Supreme Court, but have learned 
that its judges cannot interfere, by injunction, to correct irreg- 
ularities in the pleadings, in procedure, or in the constitution 
of the Board of Triers. Let them proceed, if they will, with 
this farce, with this mediaeval trial. They shall discover who 
is on trial at the bar of public opinion. Their "Foe victis” is 
changing to "Wo to the victors !” They begin to see a hand- 
writing on the wall: " Another such victory and you are 
undone.” 
Who are the individuals to be tried ? Gentlemen whose pro- 
fessional conduct has ever been worthy that honorable name. 
Their diplomas, stained only with time, were granted by allo- 
pathic colleges. They practised, some of them, many years 
according to the principles of the old school; and because they 
claim to have found a better way, even though planted with the 
thorns of fraternal hatred, they are to be held up before their 
fellows for censure, and the ignominious ordeal of dismissal. 
Thrice armed in a just cause, we raise the gauntlet of defiance 
that these redoubtable knights of the lancet have thrown into 
the arena. The battle, begun in their own asylum, under se- 
crecy of guarded doors, shall break forth to the gaze of men. 
Great is truth and mighty above all things. If we have acted 
hitherto on the defensive, we shall no longer rest satisfied until 
we have stormed their strongholds, and secured their high- 
places of public trust and distinction. 
It needs no-prophet’s eye to see the drift of events. Under 
the influence of homoeopathy, old physic is throwing off its 
garb of senility, and its marks of decay,— like Faust trails - 11 
formed by the draught of Mephistopheles into the strength and 
freshness of youth. It may never acknowledge us as disciples, 
or accept our .law of cure under its present name. But as sure 
as truth is with us, the old and new schools of medicine must, 
in practice at least, gradually become alike. We claim for the 
principle of the similars, that it is the crowning law of cure, 
that may in time render therapeutics a science. In no other 
essential do the two schools differ. Recent advancement in the 
collateral branches of chemistry, physiology, surgery, and to a 
limited extent, of pathology, we accept with just appreciation, 
as a common good. The time is approaching when the old 
school must openly avow its respect for the law of cure, now 
observed only in the secrecy of private practice. We ask only 
that it may have a trial in the great public hospitals, in the tent 
and on the field, by educated observers. 
But amid the pleasant hopes of this hour, and into this assem- 
bly of living men, comes the invisible spirit of one whose form 
we can never forget. He stands among us in his accustomed 
place, drawn hither by his devotion to truth. Above the meed 
of praise or the clamors of hate, he lends his influence to our 
deliberations. In the fullness of a well-rounded life he speaks 
to us, and from the cerements of death. When we met, in the 
autumn, to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the memory 
of Samuel Gregg, we were reminded by the sere leaf, and 
by that venerable and lifeless form, that we may not escape the 
summons of death. But as we approach the budding of 
spring into the fullness of a new life, let us think of our late 
companion as one who has conquered death, and is now devel- 
oping the perfections of moral and intellectual growth. He 
fell as one of our leaders, great in action and counsel, in the 
very arena of strife. Would that the loss of such a man to the 
city that loved him so well, to the State of his early choice, and 
to his fellows, of either Society, might serve to end fraternal 
discord, and stay the unwarranted proceedings that embittered 
the last months of his life. The names of his colleagues may 
yet be stricken, unjustly, from the roll of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society ; but who will answer when he is called ? Of 12 
him it can only be said, that he fell in the discharge of duty, 
thus relieving that honorable body of the stigma of dismissing 
one, who, in all the relations of life, proved himself for fifty 
years a gentleman and an honorable physician. 
The indignity offered to medical reform has redounded to its 
rapid advancement in public favor. Our school of practice is, 
in a moral point of view, threefold stronger in this State to- 
day, than before the intolerant proceedings of our opponents 
one year ago. We care little should they at length, without the 
hiuderance of law, carry the manifestations of bigotry to its 
extremest limit. Fellowship with a body of men who cling to 
the follies of the past, and seek to fetter knowledge, has become 
a questionable honor. In the light of the nineteenth century, 
and among a people pledged to liberty of thought, we dare 
them to proceed. How long, think they, will Boston, the na- 
tional fountain of intellectual and moral agitation, tamely sub- 
mit to the usurpation by a class of the right to administer to 
the sick in the retreats provided by the public funds ? How 
long will her citizens consent to be taken from their homes, 
during the visitations of a pestilence, and hurried from the min- 
istrations of homoeopathic attendants to the houses of death ? 
To what pitch of indignation must the people of Massachusetts 
be taxed for the maintenance of asylums for the insane, in 
which no one can enjoy the benefits of rational medicine, and 
whose doors open only inward for their wretched victims ? 
If we are alive to the responsibilities of the hour, let us not 
rest until we have brought our constituency, which represents 
so largely the intelligence and wealth of New England, to a 
proper understanding of its rights. Not for ourselves alone we 
stand or fall; but as the representatives of thousands, we are 
deputed to demand the removal of unjust preferments, not only 
in the medical department of State institutions, but also of the 
national government. 
At the fair so lately held in this city, for the purpose of estab- 
lishing a State homoeopathic hospital, our friends proved their 
devotion to principle, and poured out their money like water. 
In every village, however remote from the exigencies of metro- 13 
politan life, busy fingers, unused to toil, plied the needle, and 
art proved herself once more a handmaid of mercy. The suc- 
cess of that memorable enterprise has taught us what may be 
accomplished by organization and persistent effort. 
You are familiar with the history and objects of the Ho- 
moeopathic Association of Boston University. This young and 
promising institution, one of the principal educational enter- 
prises of a denomination noted for its efforts in securing the 
education of the people, has allied itself with homoeopathy. 
Before homoeopathy was known, a follower of John Wesley stood 
under the Old Elm on Boston Common, and maintained " man’s 
moral freedom and his capability of God,” before an enraged 
mob, set on to acts of violence by the representatives of secta- 
rian bigotry. After the lapse of a century, there have arisen in 
this city more than a score of churches holding the faith of 
Jesse Lee ; their taper spires point heavenward, and their bells 
ring an unbroken peal of joyful triumph. To-day the Univer- 
sity founded by this powerful and wealthy denomination to meet 
all the requirements of New England culture, recognizes homoe- 
opathy in its Department of Medicine. In this fateful union, 
we behold the flowing together of two streams for the healing 
of the nation, — the bridal of two reformations. 
•This college that we seek to endow, springs into being like the 
fabled creations of Eastern romance. But its foundations are 
historic, and are sunk deep in the three hills of a city known 
in all the world as the birthplace of civil and intellectual free- 
dom ; known widely also for its generosity, which is commen- 
surate only with its gathered wealth. In this city we purpose 
to establish, not a feeble and ephemeral school, pinched with 
want and riven with internal dissensions, but one that is rich in 
means, ample in curriculum, and liberal in policy, a credit alike 
to homoeopathy and the University whose name it bears. 
And for this Society, it only remains to go forward, cherish- 
ing ever the true law of cure, welcoming the fellowship of all 
good physicians of either sex, renouncing the errors of the past, 
loyal to the principles of our departed leaders, and firm in our 
demands for justice. Truth shall bear the victory.