During the last half century a great change has taken place in the treatment of disease. Medicine has advanced with rapid strides, from the narrow limits of mere empiricism, to the broader realm of rationalism, until to day it comprehends all the elements of an art and a science. Scientific researches and investigations have added many valuable truths to the general fund of medical learning, but much more has been effected by observation and empirical discovery. It is of little or no interest to the invalid to know whether the prescribed remedy is organic or inorganic, simple, compound, or complex. In his anxiety and distress of body, he seeks solely for relief, without regard to the character of the remedial agents employed. But this indifference on the part of the patient does not obviate the necessity for a thorough, scientific education on the part of the practitioner. Notwithstanding all the laws enacted to raise the standard of medicine, and thus protect the public from quackery, there yet exists a disposition among many to cling to all that savors of the miraculous, or supernatural. To insure the future advancement of the healing art, physicians must instruct mankind in Physiology, Hygiene, and Medicine. When the people understand the nature of diseases, their causes, methods of prevention and cure, they will not be easily deceived, and practitioners will be obliged to qualify themselves better for their labors. The practice of medicine is every year becoming more successful. New and improved methods of treating disease are being discovered and developed, and the conscientious physician will avail himself of all the means, by a knowledge of which he may benefit his fellow-men. The medical profession is divided into three principal schools, or sects.

THE ALLOPATHIC, REGULAR, OR OLD SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

This is the oldest existing branch of the profession. To it is due the credit of collecting and arranging the facts and discoveries which form the foundation of the healing art. It has done, and is doing, much to place the science of medicine on a firm basis. To the text-books of this school, every student who would qualify himself for medical practice must resort, to gain that knowledge upon which depends his future success. The early practice of this branch of the profession was necessarily crude and empirical. Conservative in its character, it has ever been slow to recognize new theories and methods of practice, and has failed to adopt them until they have been incontrovertibly established. This conservatism was manifested in the opposition to Harvey when he propounded the theory of the circulation of the blood, and to Jenner when he discovered and demonstrated the beneficial effects of vaccination. Thus has it ever defended its established opinions against innovation; yet out of this very conservatism has grown much real good, for, although it has wasted no time or energy in the investigation of theories, yet it has accepted them when established. In this manner it has added to its fund of knowledge only those truths 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 same drug. While it may be exceedingly difficult for a member of another school to accept this doctrine and comprehend the method founded upon it, yet no one can deny that it contains some elements of truth.

Imbued with the spirit of progress, many of its most intelligent and successful practitioners have resorted to the use of appreciable quantities of medicine. This school associates hydropathy with its practice, and usually inculcates rigid dietetic and hygienic regulations. Many homoeopathic remedies are thoroughly triturated with sugar of milk, which renders them more palatable and efficacious. Whether we attribute their cures to the infinitesimal doses which many homoeopathists employ, to their "law of cure," to good nursing, or to the power of nature, it is nevertheless true that their practice is measurably successful. No doubt the homoeopathic practice has modified that of the other schools, by proving that diseases may be alleviated by smaller quantities of medicine than were formerly employed.

THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL.

This school, founded by Wooster Beach, instituted the most strenuous opposition to the employment of mercury, antimony, the blister, and the lancet. The members of this new school proclaimed that the action of heroic and noxious medicines was opposed to the operation of the vital forces, and proposed to substitute in their place safer and more efficacious agents, derived exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. The eclectics have investigated the properties of indigenous plants and have discovered many valuable remedies, which a kind and bounteous nature has so generously supplied for the healing of her children. Marked success attended the employment of these agents. In 1852, a committee on "Indigenous Medical Botany," appointed by the "American Medical Association," acknowledged that the practitioners of the regular school had been extremely ignorant of the medical virtues of plants, even of those of their own neighborhoods. The employment of podophyllin and leptandrin as substitutes for mercurials has been so successful that they are now used by practitioners of all schools. Although claiming to have been founded upon liberal principles, it may be questioned whether its adherents have not been quite as exclusive and dogmatic as those whom they have opposed. It cannot be denied, however, that the eclectics have added many important remedies to the Materia Medica. Their writings are important and useful contributions to the physician's library.

THE LIBERAL AND INDEPENDENT PHYSICIAN.

After this brief review of the various medical sects, the reader may be curious to learn to what sect the physicians of the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Institute belong. Among them are to be found graduates from the colleges of all the different schools. They are not restricted by the tenets of any one sect, but claim the right and privilege, nay, consider it a duty, to select from all, such remedies as careful investigation, scientific research, and an extensive experience, have proved valuable. They resort to any and every agent which has been proved efficacious, whether it be vegetable or mineral.

And here arises a distinction between sanative remedial agents and those which are noxious. Many practitioners deplore the use of poisons, and advocate innocuous medicines which produce only curative results. We agree with them in one proposition, namely, that improper medicines not only poison, but frequently utterly destroy the health and body of the patient. Every physician should keep steadily in view the final effects, as well as present relief, and never employ any agent without regard to its ulterior consequences. However, an agent which is noxious in health, may prove a valuable remedy in disease. When morbid changes have taken place in the blood and tissues, when a general diseased condition of the bodily organs has occurred, then an agent, which is poisonous in health, may prove curative. For instance it is admitted that alcohol is a poison; that it prevents healthful assimilation, solidifies pepsin, begets a morbid appetite; that it produces intoxication, and that its habitual use destroys the body. It is, therefore, neither a hygienic nor a sanative agent, but strictly a noxious one; yet, its very distinct antiseptic properties render it valuable for remedial purposes, since these qualities promptly arrest that fatal form of decomposition of the animal fluids which is occasioned by snake-venom, which produces its deadly effects in the same manner as a drop of yeast ferments the largest mash. Alcohol checks this poisonous and deadly process and neutralizes its effects. Thus, alcohol, although a noxious agent, possesses a special curative influence in a morbid state of the human system; but its general remedial effects do not entitle it to the rank of a hygienic agent. We believe that medicine is undergoing a gradual change from the darkness of the past, with its ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, to the light of a glorious future. At each successive step in the path of progress, medicine approaches one degree nearer the realm of an exact science. The common object of the practitioners of all medical schools is the alleviation of human suffering. The only difference between the schools is in the remedies employed, the size of dose administered, and the results attained. These are insufficient grounds for bitter sectarianism. We are all fellow laborers in the same field. Before us lies a boundless expanse for exploration. There are new conditions of disease to be learned, new remedies to be discovered, and new properties of old ones to be examined.

We do not deplore the fact, that there are different schools in medicine, for this science has not reached perfection, and they tend to stimulate investigation. The remarks of Herbert Spencer on the "Multiplication of Schemes of Juvenile Culture," may be pertinently applied to the different schools in medicine with increased force. He says: "It is clear that dissent in education results in facilitating inquiry by the division in labor. Were we in possession of the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous independent seekers carrying out their researches in different directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts—each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in its efforts to make known its success—each of them merciless in its criticism on the rest—there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one of them has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment and failure, be exploded. And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually be developed a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion passes—the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise—it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third."

We believe the time is coming when those maladies which are now considered fatal will be readily cured—when disease will be disarmed of its terrors. To be successful, a physician must be independent, free from all bigotry, having no narrow prejudice against his fellow-men, liberal, accepting new truths from whatever source they come, free from restrictions of societies, and an earnest laborer in the interests of the Great Physician.