Homœopathists often boast of the inroads which their system has made upon the ranks of the medical profession. But it is an empty boast. If the Homœopathic physicians in this country could be gathered together, it would be an assemblage for the most part of very common men. No superior order of talent would be found among them. There would be none who are distinguished for true research; none who have made any respectable additions to the literature of medicine, or to its store of experience; and none who have ever had any commanding influence. There would be some indeed who are reputed among Homœopathists to be great men; but none, who previous to their conversion to Homœopathy, were considered great by the medical profession. A large portion of that assemblage, I am persuaded from what I have seen, would be made up of men, who have no true faith in the so-called science of Homœopathy, but have a strong faith in the deception which can be practised by means of it upon the community, and its consequent availability in a pecuniary point of view. Those who have such a strange cast of mind, as to dupe themselves into a belief of Homœopathic doctrines, after a thorough and scientific examination of them, I suspect would be in the minority.[19] Though Homœopathists commonly look down with contempt upon Thompsonism, as being vulgar and unscientific, there is really considerable resemblance between Samuel Thompson and Samuel Hahneman. Let us look at some of these points of resemblance. Both have a theory on which their practice is based, and nothing is deemed true that does not correspond with that theory. Both reject all former theories and observations as worthless. Their light is the true and only light. “The medical world was in total darkness till I arose,” said Hahneman; and so said Thompson.[20] As Hahneman said, “the Allopathic method never really cures—the Homœopathic method never fails to cure;” so said Thompson, the “regulars” cure no one—my system always cures curable cases. Both claim that all who get well under their system are cured by it, and give no credit to nature; and upon these asserted cures they build the reputation of their systems. Both began their career as arrant quacks. Samuel Thompson sold his patent rights to practice after his theory; and Samuel Hahneman sold his secret nostrum for the cure and prevention of Scarlet Fever.[21] Both were exceedingly dogmatical and authoritative, and both quarrelled with their followers who did not yield to all their assumptions. The followers of both have very generally imbibed the spirit of the “venerated founders” of these systems, and are very sure that they are right, and everybody else is wholly wrong. The followers of both look upon physicians as a body as being wilfully blind to the truth, and unwilling to adopt anything new, simply because it is new. There are a few points in which those noted “reformers” _differ_, which I will very briefly notice.