(Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie, February, 1854). Dr. Crawcour, of New Orleans, has extensively used glycerine as a substitute for cod liver oil.

When they use it internally, the allopaths give glycerine in doses from one to three dessert-spoonfuls in water two or three times a day. Its employment as a substitute for cod liver oil is well worth the consideration of those who have been in the habit of giving that oil.

The writer is of opinion that it would be of great use for burns. In one case of a severe scald from boiling water it acted like a charm.

He has used it extensively for chilblains and chaps, and with decided benefit; and has found it very useful in prurigo. He has applied it in several cases, with marked success, to fetid ulcers. It would, no doubt, be found very beneficial for frostbites; and in one case of wound he found it very useful. He believes it would be very useful as a local application in erysipelas.

He proposes that it should be tried as a remedy in diabetes. He is very anxious that it should be proved, to ascertain if it has any positive medicinal action. From its remarkable antiseptic virtue, there is every reason to suppose it has.

Mr. Headland has prepared a glycerine opodeldoc and a glycerine cerate. The purified glycerine for internal use may be obtained either from him, or from Messrs. Price and Co., Belmont Works, Vauxhall. The writer has used it, internally, in the proportion of a dessert-spoonful to a tumbler of water; and in like proportion as a lotion.

Mr. G. F. Wilson has informed the writer that it is not deteriorated in tropical climates, and that it answers for preserving vaccine matter, so that it may be kept uninjured in the tropics. A great variety of glycerine compounds is being made and experimented on.

The preparation of purified glycerine, and turning it to good. account in divers ways, is one of the triumphs of chemical science; and no small debt is due to Mr. G. F. Wilson for the scientific improvements he has made for its production free from impurities of any kind. As a minor abomination has been

On the Disuse of the Globule, by Mr. Yeldham. 109

turned into a positive good, it is to be hoped that, in another generation, the impurities of the Brick Babylon, known as London, which now poison the air, and make the once "Silvery Thames" a foul and polluted stream-the cause of disease, not of health-may be removed and turned to good account also.

REMARKS ON THE DIFFERENT MODES OF ADMINISTERING HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINES, WITH A VIEW TO THE DISUSE OF THE GLOBULE.

BY STEPHEN YELDHAM, M.R.C.S.

66 Custom, without reason, is no better than ancient error."

The globule.-The globule, in its simple unmedicated state, is the smallest possible quantity that can be rolled into uniform shape and size, of a compound of sugar and starch. It is medicated by being soaked in the tinctures of the different medicines; and, as the ingredients of which it is composed, though readily soluble in water, are insoluble in spirits of wine, (with which the tinctures are made) it retains its original form after saturation. Its potency is determined by the potency of the tincture with which it is saturated. It was originally intended by Hahnemann that, as a rule, a single globule should be the standard dose. This, however, has not been adhered to, and it is now administered in varying numbers according to circumstances, as well as in various ways, viz., placed in its dry state on the tongue; crushed and mixed with sugar of milk in the form of powder; or, dissolved in pure water.

The globule presents many advantages as a mode of administering medicine, both for the medical man and the patient, such as portability, minuteness, tastelessness, &c., but these advantages are shared equally, as we shall presently see, by other forms of medicine which are free from most of the objections which attach to the globule.

Of these objections one of the most prominent is the tendency which the globule engenders to a slovenly and careless mode of practice. Few medical men, at the present day, restrict themselves to the one globule dose. On the contrary, directions are generally given to take two or three globules at a time; or an indefinite number-for who shall count them?-are thrown into a tumbler of water. The patient, observing this, as he sometimes must do, and, not knowing that the dilution, and not the quantity, is the important point, naturally questions the efficacy of a system of medicine which admits of such a careless and indifferent mode of prescribing.

The present generation have been taught to regard a dose of old physic with feelings of respect for its power to do good or harm. The want of this salutary feeling with reference to homœopathy, and which is owing to the minuteness of the globule, has led to the system itself being lightly thought of, and to the medicine being trifled and played with in domestic practice: a state of things which a more definite and imposing dose would entirely obviate.

There are some other objections of a practical nature, common to the globule and the powder, which, to avoid unnecessary repetition, will be noticed under the latter head.

But these objections, not unimportant when viewed by themselves, sink into insignificance when compared with the moral influence which the globule has exercised over the progress and present position of homœopathy.

Those who are not prepared to subscribe to the assertion, not unfrequently heard now-a-days, that "the globule is the curse of homœopathy," will scarcely deny that it has operated as a heavy blow and great discouragement to our cause. For our system it has earned the greater part, if not all, of the abuse and ridicule which have been heaped upon it; and for ourselves, its practitioners, the not very dignified title of "Globulists." If all this were necessary and unavoidably associated with homoeopathy, then, I am sure, there is not one amongst us who would not cheerfully submit to this, or any greater amount of odium, in support of what he knows to be the truth. So far from this being the case, we assert that

it is altogether avoidable and unnecessary.

The globule

forms no essential part of homœopathy, either theoretically or practically. It is a mere form, which we have voluntarily adopted, and which it is equally in our power at any moment to repudiate.

That the globule constitutes the most insuperable barrier to the reception of homœopathic doctrines, by the professional as well as the non-professional mind, is, we think, undeniable. Persons disbelieve in homeopathy, not as a system of medicine, for of that they cannot be expected to know much; they disbelieve in the small dose, not as involving the doctrine of the development of medicinal power by minute subdivision of particles, for of that they know even less; but they disbelieve both in homeopathy and the small dose, simply as they are represented by the globule. Take away this, and their disbelief vanishes.

There is a proneness in all reformers to run into extremes. This arises from a natural repulsion in the mind between what they regard as their former errors and their later belief; and this tendency receives an additional impulse from the opposition which their new doctrines are almost sure to encounter. Hahnemann found in old physic vagueness, complexity, inconsistency:-he found unanimity in nothing but the pernicious practice of administering large quantities of powerful medicines. What wonder if, having discovered the true law of cure, and the scarcely less important fact that power is eliminated by the minute division of matter, he should push this latter point to its utmost limit, and teach that diseases should be treated not only by medicines in their highest state of attenuation, but that they should be administered in the smallest possible quantity? With admirable discrimination he selected the most suitable substance in nature in which to exhibit his medicines. His great errorfor such we must regard it-consisted in moulding this substance into a form so unnecessarily small as the globule.

The globule was introduced with a view to the minuteness of the dose. But, we maintain, that within certain reasonable limits, the quantity, paradoxical as it may appear, has, pro

perly speaking, little or nothing to do with the dose; the dose, we mean, as expressing power or potency. This, it is evident, is regulated by the attenuation, or dilution, of the medicine, and not by the number of globules, or drops, of any particular dilution. Take, for illustration, the third dilution, the lowest that is ordinarily prescribed. One drop of this, according to Hahnemann's mode of dilution, contains a millionth part of a grain or drop of the original medicine; and is said to be equal to 200 globules. Now, it is not uncommon to see either a drop of this tincture, or a globule, prescribed, indifferently, to the same person, in the same disease: the one representing a millionth, the other the two hundred millionth part of a grain of medicine. Can it be imagined that the medical man contemplates such a difference as this in his dose? Clearly not. What he intends to do, and what alone it is important that he should do, is to be sure that he gives some portion of the third dilution. That this is the correct view of the case, is evident from the fact that many medical men discard the globule, or at least employ it only in chronic cases, and use the tinctures, because they cannot feel satisfied that the former contains that positive amount of medicine which they wish to administer.

But, that to which, more than to any other consideration, the globule has owed its prolonged hold upon the profession, has been the fear of aggravating the disease by an over dose of the medicine. Hahnemann, probably impelled, as we have already suggested, by a powerful revulsion against the old system of drugging, and alarmed at the energetic action which he observed to follow the ordinary doses of medicines when administered in accordance with the homeopathic law, rushed into the opposite extreme, in order to avoid these perturbations or aggravations, as he called them. This movement, up to a certain point, was perfectly right and philosophical; but, operated upon by an active imagination, he believed that he observed these aggravations as the frequent result of infinitesimal doses of medicine. It would be presumptuous to assert that these appearances were fallacious, and that Hahnemann was deceived; and we are not war