I will close the subject with a brief examination of some of the statements made in Homoeopathic works, and more particularly in the brilliant Manifesto of the "Examiner," before referred to. And first, it is there stated under the head of "Homoeopathic Literature," that "SEVEN HUNDRED volumes have been issued from the press developing the peculiarities of the system, and many of them possessed of a scientific character that savans know well how to respect." If my assertion were proper evidence in the case, I should declare, that, having seen a good many of these publications, from the year 1834, when I bought the work of the Rev. Thomas Everest,"
[Dr. Curie speaks of this silly pamphlet as having been published in 1835.] to within a few weeks, when I received my last importation of Homaeopathic literature, I have found that all, with a very few exceptions, were stitched pamphlets varying from twenty or thirty pages to somewhat less than a hundred, and generally resembling each other as much as so many spelling-books.
But not being evidence in the case, I will give you the testimony of Dr. Trinks, of Dresden, who flourishes on the fifteenth page of the same Manifesto as one of the most distinguished among the Homoeopathists of Europe. I translate the sentence literally from the "Archives de la Medecine Homoeopathique."
"The literature of Homoeopathy, if that honorable name must be applied to all kinds of book-******, has been degraded to the condition of the humblest servitude. Productions without talent, without spirit, without discrimination, flat and pitiful eulogies, exaggerations surpassing the limits of the most robust faith, invectives against such as dared to doubt the dogmas which had been proclaimed, or catalogues of remedies; of such materials is it composed! From distance to distance only, have appeared some memoirs useful to science or practice, which appear as so many green oases in the midst of this literary desert."
It is a very natural as well as a curious question to ask, What has been the success of Homoeopathy in the different countries of Europe, and what is its present condition?
The greatest reliance of the advocates of Homoeopathy is of course on Germany. We know very little of its medical schools, its medical doctrines, or its medical men, compared with those of England and France. And, therefore, when an intelligent traveller gives a direct account from personal inspection of the miserable condition of the Homoeopathic hospital at Leipsic, the first established in Europe, and the first on the list of the ever-memorable Manifesto, it is easy enough answer or elude the fact by citing various hard names of "distinguished " practitioners, which sound just as well to the uninformed public as if they were Meckel, or Tiedemann, or Langenbeck. Dr. Leo-Wolf, who, to be sure, is opposed to Homoeopathy, but who is a scholar, and ought to know something of his own countrymen, assures us that "Dr. Kopp is the only German Homoeopathist, if we can call him so, who has been distinguished as an author and practitioner before he examined this method." And Dr.
Lee, the same gentleman in whose travels the paragraph relating to the Leipsic Hospital is to be found, says the same thing. And I will cheerfully expose myself to any impertinent remark which it might suggest, to assure my audience that I never heard or saw one authentic Homoeopathic name of any country in Europe, which I had ever heard mentioned before as connected with medical science by a single word or deed sufficient to make it in any degree familiar to my ears, unless Arnold of Heidelberg is the anatomist who discovered a little nervous centre, called the otic ganglion. But you need ask no better proof of who and what the German adherents of this doctrine must be, than the testimony of a German Homoeopathist as to the wretched character of the works they manufacture to enforce its claims.
As for the act of this or that government tolerating or encouraging Homoeopathy, every person of common intelligence knows that it is a mere form granted or denied according to the general principles of policy adopted in different states, or the degree of influence which some few persons who have adopted it may happen to have at court.
What may be the value of certain pompous titles with which many of the advocates of Homoeopathy are honored, it might be disrespectful to question. But in the mean time the judicious inquirer may ponder over an extract which I translate from a paper relating to a personage well known to the community as Williams the Oculist, with whom I had the honor of crossing the Atlantic some years since, and who himself handed me two copies of the paper in question.
"To say that he was oculist of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X., and that he now enjoys the same title with respect to His Majesty, Louis Philippe, and the King of the Belgians, is unquestionably to say a great deal; and yet it is one of the least of his titles to public confidence. His reputation rests upon a basis more substantial even than the numerous diplomas with which he is provided, than the membership of the different medical societies which have chosen him as their associate," etc., etc.
And as to one more point, it is time that the public should fully understand that the common method of supporting barefaced imposture at the present day, both in Europe and in this country, consists in trumping up "Dispensaries," " Colleges of Health," and other advertising charitable clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich, and the proprietors of which have a strong predilection for the title of "Professor." These names, therefore, have come to be of little or no value as evidence of the good character, still less of the high pretensions of those who invoke their authority.
