Mr. Wynne Thomas, of Birmingham, a comparatively recent adherent of Homoeopathy, when acknowledging, at the Annual Meeting of the Governors of the Birmingham Homoeopathic Hospital, his appointment as one of its medical officers, gave the following interesting sketch of his news of Homoeopathy before he had studied it, and of the investigation which led to his faith in it. Speaking of Homoeopathy, he says:

“In my own experience I have found it to be looked upon as either an imposture or a deception. To medical men generally the infinitesimal dose is the distinctive feature of Homoeopathy, and they argue that, as it is preposterous to believe that the decillionth of a grain of an inert substance - say charcoal - can have any effect upon the human body, the whole subject may be dismissed as ridiculous. Of the law they know nothing - at least nineteen out of twenty know nothing: I have often conversed with surgeons about the law, and never found one who clearly understood it. One gentleman in large practice, who professed to have investigated it, asserted that we treat a case of gastric or cerebral sickness in the same way; and I have no doubt he expressed what a great many besides himself believe. I confess that for years I felt as the rest do, and scorned to investigate a system of medicine so evidently opposed to my common sense. I made the oft-repeated mistake of deciding by common sense what equally lies beyond it, and should be tested by special sense - i. e., special experience. My common sense or common experience, told me that to produce a certain effect so many grains of a particular medicine were necessary, and I knew that the billionth part of that quantity could not do the same thing. That, I thought settled the matter, and yet what had I settled? nothing but what was agreed to by all Homoeopaths and Allopaths. I had thought only of the dose, and not of the different law according to which the medicine must be administered. A little more than three years ago cases said to have been cured under homoeopathic treatment came under my observation; and I laid to myself, 'Perhaps, after all, the new practice, which has got a footing, and is evidently spreading, may have something in it;' and I asked, 'Is it wise to ridicule what I do not understand?' So I came over to my old college friend, Dr. Blake, and asked him to lend me a book on Homoeopathy. He gave me Sharp's Tracts, which I read with intense interest. I saw the beauty of the law of 'similia similibus curentur,' and what a grand advance it must be for the practice of medicine to be based on a law, if only that could be proved to be a true law. Now came the final step, the practical test. Having mastered a portion of the Materia Medica, I selected some simple but marked cases, and was surprised and delighted to find how quickly they were cured; and so I went on studying, and gradually applying it to severer cases, till at last I treated, and very successfully, the most dangerous diseases to which we are liable. Gentlemen, I hope and believe that before many years we shall succeed in convincing our medical brethren of the superiority of our system; so that, instead of hindering our progress, they may help us in working out one of the grandest truths the world has yet seen.”

Would that more such men as Mr. Thomas would do as he has done! -

[Monthly (London) Homoeopathic Review.

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