I need not tell you, that we maintain that this much-desired and long-looked-for law of cure, which is to be a lamp to the feet of the physician, making plain his path, and giving him an unfailing guide in the application of remedies to the removal of disease, not only exists, but has been proclaimed to the world by the immortal Hahnemann in his well-known formula: Similia Similibus Curantur! But who was Samuel Hahnemann? When I say that this great Reformer of Medicine was a regularly educated physician of great learning and unusual general culture and literary attainments, I speak but feeble praise compared with the language of Sir John Forbes, Hahnemann's most learned critic, where he says:
"No candid reader of his writings can hesitate for a moment to admit that he was a very extraordinary man; one, whose name will descend to posterity as the exclusive excogitator and founder of an original system of medicine, as ingenious as many that preceded it, and destined to be the remote, if not the immediate cause of more fundamental changes in the practice of the healing art, than have resulted from any promulgated since the days of Galen himself."
And he adds:
"He was undoubtedly a man of genius and a scholar, a man of indefatigable industry and of dauntless energy."
The great Haller, says of him:
"He is a doublehead of philosophy and wisdom."
And Hufeland, the father of orthodox medicine, speaks of him as one of the most distinguished physicians in Germany, while the late Dr. Mott of New York, after having visited Hahnemann in Paris, speaks in the highest terms of his candor, learning and genius.
It has often been stated by close observers of the working of Divine Providence, that "The darkest hour is just before day," and also, that "The Creator ever wisely and well provides agents perfectly adapted to carry out His beneficient designs in the crisis of human affairs." History, both sacred and profane, gives unwavering and very numerous evidences of the justice and verity of these propositions. In matters theological as well as political this is equally the case. When there could scarcely be greater gloom or greater danger, the wise Arbiter of human destinies has educated, nerved, inspired and protected some master-spirit, who has caused light to shine out of darkness, and peace and order to take the place of chaos and destruction. Never were these propositions more fully illustrated than in medical matters towards the close of the past century. All the arts and sciences had received the impetus of new discoveries. The inductive method of investigation had brought out clearly to view first principles, on which it was easy for succeeding generations to build solid, stable and beautiful temples of truth.
Astronomy, chemistry, botany and every branch in Natural Philosophy, instead of continuing mere matters of speculative theory, as they were before, became sciences. The sons of Æsculapius alone were enshrouded in an Egyptian darkness, wandering about without guide and compass, rushing wildly to and fro with instruments of deadly power in their hands; whom they wished to heal, they slew; and tortured those whom they fondly hoped might find timely relief from sufferings and woes through their ministrations.
The hearts of the benevolent were deeply pained, and the conscientious wavered in their work when they gathered statistics of the results of their labor. A cry ascended heaven-wards from the practitioners of medicine, the longing for better days, seemed seconded by a phalanx of ghostly beings, who had untimely passed away by means of fearful treatment, and by the living miseries of multitudes of shapeless deformed ones, who ever stood unpleasant and incontrovertible witnesses of the cruelties and barbarities of the healing art.