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The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English - or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred - and Fifty Thousand by Ray Vaughn Pierce
page 327 of 1665 (19%)
which are of real and intrinsic value.

The history of medicine may be divided into three eras. In the first,
the practice of medicine was merely empiricism. Ignorant priests or
astrologers administered drugs, concerning the properties of which they
had no knowledge, to appease the wrath of mythological deities. In the
second or heroic era, the lancet, mercury, antimony, opium, and the
blister were employed indiscriminately as the _sine qua non_ of medical
practice. The present, with all its scientific knowledge of the human
structure and functions, and its vast resources for remedying disease
may be aptly termed the liberal era of medicine. The allopathic differs
from the other schools, mainly in the application of remedies. In its
ranks are found men, indefatigable in their labors, delving deep into
the mysteries of nature, and who, for their scientific attainments and
humane principles are justly considered ornaments to society and to
their profession.


HOMOEOPATHY.


Although this school is of comparatively recent origin, yet it has
gained a powerful hold upon the public favor, and numbers among its
patrons very many intelligent citizens. This fact alone would seem to
indicate that it possesses some merit. The homeopathic differs from the
allopathic school principally in its _"law of cure,"_ which, according
to Hahnemann, its founder, was the doctrine of _"similia similibus
curantur"_ or "like cures like." Its method of treatment is founded upon
the assumption that if a drug be given to a healthy person, symptoms
will occur which, if transpiring in disease, would be mitigated by the
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