Thus the year 1790 gave birth to the celebrated system of Hahnemann, which has received from him a Greek title, expressive of its peculiarities--Hom[oe]opathy, and in opposition to "_Contraria Contraries Curantur_."--Allopathy. It is not my purpose to entertain you with a detailed history of medicine, nor even to notice the successive and conflicting theories that have arisen from time to time; but simply to show that the old, or Allopathic system of medicine as practiced till this day is unworthy of our confidence; that its theory of therapeutics is irrational and worthless; that there is an absence of any reliable principle to guide the physicians in the treatment of diseases; and that the sick are far better off when left to nature, than when subject to the pernicious system of dosing, while a growing want of confidence in this system, both in the public mind and the medical profession, loudly calls for something more rational in its theory and more successful in its practice. I shall not ask you to accept my individual opinions in support of these views, but shall place upon the witness-stand, and give you the declarations of men who have spent their lives in the practice of this system--most of them authors and teachers, men living in different countries, and from the highest ranks of the profession, and who, if any, should be able to pronounce a eulogy upon this system of practice. I introduce to you first BOERHAVE, a man justly illustrious in the history of medicine, he lived a century before HAHNEMANN, and was for over forty years Professor at the University at Leiden. Hear him! He says: "If we compare the good which a half dozen true disciples of Æsculapius have done since their art began, with the evil which the immense number of doctors have inflicted upon mankind, we must be satisfied that it would have been infinitely better for mankind if medical men had never existed." The celebrated BICHAT of Paris, thus speaks of the therapeutic system of his day: "It is an incoherent assemblage of incoherent opinions; it is perhaps, of all the physiological sciences that which best shows the caprice of the human mind. What do I say?--It is not a science for a methodical mind; it is a shapeless assemblage of inexact ideas, of observations often peurile, of deceptive remedies and of formula as fastidiously and fantastically conceived, as they are tediously arranged." Then we find the equally celebrated French physician, MAJENDIE, saying: