Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/27

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HOMŒOPATHY.
23

publications, and contributing to various miscellaneous works. After plodding along in that way nearly twenty years, he broached the scheme of Homœopathy, and in 1796 published his first essay on the subject. It does not appear that he ever practised medicine as taught at Leipsic, but, after probably forgetting most that he had learned during the brief period of his scholarship, he broke out with a scheme of his own getting up, although it does not appear to have been made entirely of new materials. It is well known that, at the time Hahnemann was a pupil at Leipsic, medical science in that school was extremely crude and imperfect, and much of the theory that was taught him has long since been exploded. Many important truths had been established, but these were mingled with numerous false theories, and the clergy had not entirely released their hold upon the profession.

Hahnemann probably had for his text-books the writings of Galen, Sydenham, Boerhaave, Haller, Van Swieten and Cullen; Jenner was at that time in his early boyhood, and the great lights which have since illumined the medical