There is no doubt of the truth of this statement where drugs are heedlessly administered. When I was a student I was told that _calomel_ was par excellence a babies’ medicine without any qualification. I was credulous enough to believe it and prescribed it for my own children for its purgative effect whenever it was deemed necessary. In later childhood, when the second dentition set in, the germs of the permanent teeth were so injured, evidently from the calomel that had been absorbed into the system, that the teeth were ragged and defective. The glands of the neck were also inclined to swell and suppurate, and there is no doubt in my mind that a great deal of what is generally supposed to be scrofula in young children, is nothing more nor less than a “drug disease.” I believe that Hahnemann was cognizant of the potency of nature under ordinary circumstances to cure disease. I believe that he absorbed this view of the philosophy of healing from the writings of Paracelsus, which he had studied, and from which he drew his inspiration, but he also appreciated the practical necessity that success depended on satisfying the superstitious belief of the times, and that consisted in offering some tangible remedy. Hahnemann proved himself equal to the emergency by formulating his doctrine of potentizing drugs or medicinal substances by reducing them to a wonderful degree of minuteness. The preparation of these dilutions was directed to be carried out in a ceremonial sort of way. Chalk from an oyster shell, sulphur, charcoal, or any other substance, was potentized by taking one grain of the drug and mixing it with one hundred grains of sugar of milk. Of this mixture one grain was taken and mixed in the same manner with another hundred grains sugar of milk. This gave the ten-thousandth of a grain of the drug. Take one grain of this with another hundred grains of sugar of milk and the powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the substance, or the first potency, which forms the bases of other dilutions. This is reducing the doses of any drug to an absurdity, and Hahnemann was too brilliant a mind not to know this. It might be mentioned in connection with these dilutions, that if one grain of the most powerful drug, strychnine, aconitin, arsenic, or any other chemical that is known, is mixed with six hundred grains of sugar of milk, one grain of this powder, or the one six-hundredth of a grain of this substance, cannot be detected by any test or chemical reagent; or, in other words, the quantity of the drug or chemical contained is so small that the most delicate chemical test fails to show it; yet, in homeopathy, the dilutions are carried to the decillionth of a grain, from which important medical effects are expected.