c. is shown in favor of Homœopathy.
The inquiry will here naturally arise:—Why is it that, if the Homœopathic system presents such superior results, that it has not been adopted by the profession generally? While its adherents may with pride refer to its rapid growth in this country, its practitioners having increased from 6 in 1830 to over 6,000 in 1871; yet, if the system is all that its adherents claim, why should it still meet with the most bitter opposition of the old school, instead of that hearty acceptance which its merits would seem to demand?
Before answering this question, let us see how the medical profession, and professors of other branches of science have received the several great discoveries of the last four hundred years.
Copernicus, who taught that the sun is stationary; that the planets revolve around the sun, and that the apparent revolution of the heavens is caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis,—a system now generally received and acknowledged, was persecuted nearly to death. I found, only twenty years ago, a sect of people in Wisconsin, who still disbelieved this great fact, that the earth moves around the sun.
Gallileo, after being converted to the Copernican theory of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and after having improved the telescope of Copernicus, invited his fellow-professors to make these observations with him. They absolutely refused to even look through Gallileo's telescope, and after he had demonstrated to them by actual experiment, that the trifling difference in the falling of two unequal weights is owing only to the resistance of the air, and after making the experiment twice before the eyes of his opposers in dropping two unequal weights from the tower of Pisa, they did not believe it. He also was persecuted through life.
Franklin's electric experiments were received in like manner. After they had been read before the Royal Society, they were considered worthless, and he earned nothing but ridicule and abuse.
So it was with Fulton, when he was moving upon the Hudson River with his imperfect steamcraft before the eyes of the people; they said it was impossible, and could not be done. Yes, they denied the fact, and declared him insane after he had done it.
Harvey, who discovered and taught that there is an arterial circulation of blood through the human system, was persecuted through life, his professional enemies styling him the "Circulator," a word, in its original Latin, synifying vagabond or quack.
In the light of these facts, it was not surprising that Hahnemann, after the promulgation of his doctrine, meets the same fate, and from that day to the present, the most bitter denunciations have been poured by the Old School, not only upon him, but on all who have adopted, or have investigated his method.
But Time ever rectifies the mistakes of mankind. The value of the discoveries of all these great men has long since been acknowledged by the world; and the day will and must surely arrive, when the little acorn of Truth, planted by Hahnemann, which has already taken deep root, and is lifting high its vigorous stem, shall tower far above all other giants of the medical forest, and its wide-spreading branches cast their beneficent shadows over the whole earth.