[A paper read before the last Annual Meeting of the Vermont State Homœopathic Medical Society, by the Chairman of the Bureau of Materia Medica. E. J. Foster, M.D., C.S.B., who not only graduated from the Hahneman Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1869, but received a certificate from Dr. W. W. Keen's Philadelphia School of Anatomy, and was two years in the clinic classes in two Allopathic hospitals.]
That which distinguishes Homœopathy from all other schools of medicine is its materia medica, and its shibboleth is Similia similibus curanter. Only in this does Homœopathy differ particularly from the regular schools of medicine, the college curriculum in other respects being virtually the same.
Samuel Hahneman, of searching and progressive mind, educated in the old school of medicine, could not be satisfied with the blind and crude way in which the members of that profession were groping; nor was he content in the Stygian darkness which surrounded them. Turning his eyes toward the light he began to follow in a better way, a way that led out of the mazy intricacies of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition. He purified the nauseous compound, prescribing the one pure and cleanly drug; and not only this, but he removed medicine far from the crude and material, by the use of dilutions. He promulgated the law, that Like cures Like, administered his dilutions with wonderful effect, and behold! the world was amazed at his practice and teaching.
