The disturbance created in the system by morbific causes produces in the organism a mass of symptoms, which represent the actual malady or disease. The object of the medicine then is to annihilate these symptoms, in doing which the internal change on which the disease is founded is also removed. The object is not by means of opiates to palliate for the time, or by active depletion to decrease the severity of the symptoms, - for in either case the cause is not removed, - but to remove thoroughly, and effectually, in fact, annihilate the symptoms, and thereby eradicate the disease.

How is this to be done? There surely must be some principle to guide us in the selection of a remedy and its appropriate administration. It cannot be possible that we are left to grope in the dark, striking about us at random in the hope that some of our blows will hit the mark. If this were the case, we should be far more likely to hit the wrong than the right place, and be pretty sure of doing more injury than good. But this is not the way in which nature performs any of her operations. There is no chance, no guess-work, no confusion, in any of her movements. And certainly we should not expect to be thrown on the broad ocean of conjecture, where man the noblest and most beautiful of all its works is concerned. No, there is a law by which we are to be guided in the removal of disease, as immutable and unchangeable as the laws which govern the heavenly bodies. No cure can be performed, unless in obedience with this law, from which, if we depart, we embarrass, instead of aid nature in its operations.

This law is perfectly plain and simple. A medicine taken into the healthy system produces a certain disturbance, which acting on the organism, gives rise to a peculiar class of symptoms. In other words, a disease is produced by artificial means, creating a peculiar disturbance, in the system, and producing a particular class of symptoms. Now, where a disease is produced by other causes, with symptoms similar in every respect to those produced by the drug, we of course conclude, that there is a similar disturbance in the system, a similar internal change, in fact, a like disease to that developed by artificial means.

If then, we now give this drug, it is evident we produce an artificial disease, occasioning the same disturbance, producing the same internal change, giving rise to the some symptoms, in fact, precisely similar to the one already existing in the system. But these affections cannot exist together, for the more intense or powerful will destroy the weaker. If then with our drug we produce an artificial affection, a little more intense or powerful than the old, we of course demolish the old intruder, and expel it from the system. In a word, a weaker dynamic affection in man is permanently extinguished by one that is similar, of greater intensity, yet of a different origin. A reaction of nature is excited by the drug, and thus the disease expelled. Of course, the remedy must be allowed to produce its specific effect, and be given unmixed with any other. If two or three remedies are mixed together, and given at the same time, it is clear, that you get the pure effects of neither. The drug given must cover, or be capable of producing in health, not one symptom alone, but the entire group.

An affection produced artificially, dissimilar to the one existing in the system, does not destroy that affection, but if more powerful, simply causes its suspension until the new disease performs its course, or is cured, when the old disease re-appears. Thus the stronger may suspend the weaker, but they never cure each other reciprocally. Therefore the method frequently adopted in allopathy of producing contrary symptoms, is wrong, and cannot cure.

If then, as has been already said, disease is removed by giving drugs, which when taken into the healthy system produce a train of symptoms similar to those existing in the diseased, the absolute necessity of a pure Materia Medica will be readily perceived. Each drug must be tried on the healthy system, and the symptoms developed under its use carefully noted down. And this has been done not by one alone, but by hundreds, who have gladly endured the suffering to which they have thus submitted themselves, that in so doing they might be the better enabled to alleviate human suffering, and check the fearful desolations of disease. These investigations have been carried on by different persons, in countries, widely separated from each other, at the same time. Thus the proving of the same drug may have been going on at the same time in Germany, France, England, and America, and the progress of each unknown to the other until the whole was finishod. When compared they have been found to agree in every important particular. Thus, by thoroughly proving each drug on the healthy system, the only pure Materia Me-dica ever made has been prepared. Each drug has been submitted to a laborious and painful investigation, and in no other way can a Materia Medica be produced on which any reliance can be placed.

How different a Materia Medica thus prepared, from the loose, uncertain, and guess-work affair of allopathy. We know from actual experiment, that a drug will produce such and such symptoms. In allopathy there is no such certainty. Not a drug has been thoroughly investigated in the only correct way, that of a trial on the healthy system. The allopath then has no sure ground on which to stand. Somewhere he has read or heard that a certain drug will benefit in a certain disease, but how does he know the symptoms indicating it are present, or that his informant might not have received it from as uncertain a source as himself.

We have presented a principle which experience has clearly established as the only law of cure ever discovered. On this broad principle has been produced the only pure Materia Medica the world has seen. Such then is Homoeopathy. The corner-stone of the edifice, the broad platform upon which is reared the whole glorious structure is "similia similibus curantur" or "like is cured by like." This is the great law of cure, the law through which all cures must be performed, the principle for which we contend, which is inscribed on all our banners, and which will as surely triumph throughout the world as truth will triumph over error.