The Journal of Health and Disease

Physical, the Intellectual, the Moral and the Social Benefits of MARRIAGE remain still to be noticed, and they will be detailed in the volume to be entered upon in July.

Besides the important truths, contained in this volume in connexion with the above, this volume has on its pages a resuscitation, as it were, of the illustrious GALL. What masterly essays are those by him which have been presented to the reader of this volume! What a delight is it to read "the Master: " to drink at the fountain, to see the mind of the founder of Phrenology, to trace his forcible reasonings, his striking illustrations! It is a pleasure to add that the English dress, in which Gall has been clothed in the pages of this volume, was manufactured by a lady.

The phrenological student will regard this as the most important part of the volume. No regret will be felt if so he estimates.

But something else this volume presents. It has defences of another glorious truth; it contains illustrations of another law of Heaven; the law, which regulates the action of medicines on diseased bodies, the law discovered, demonstrated, defended by Hahnemann, practically carried out now by hundreds of physicians in the four quarters of the world; vilified by those who will not or cannot understand it, and, yet, notwithstanding all this vilification, receiving the attestations yearly of thousands, who have been benefitted by the application of this law, "Similia similibus curantur."

This volume further contains some important cases,

drawn up with the most scrupulous accuracy, in which homœopathy has been applied with success in the treatment of various diseases of the Heart and of the Brain; and, in connexion with which the reasons are given why each medicine was beneficially used in the cases in which employed.

It has been a matter of regret that the contributions have been principally by one physician and one surgeon. Such circumstance is difficult of explanation, as the pages were open to all practitioners, who would draw up their cases, according to a formula, strictly scientific, which formula could have been preventive only to crudities, which those who do not understand Homœopathy would be likely to intrude. If men will not write to do good, but will write simply to promote their own interests, their writings are best kept unprinted. A man, who writes to do good to others, will be sure to do good to himself in the doing good to others. To such writers the pages of this work will ever be open, as they have been.

In the defence of Homœopathy against the incursions of Allopathy, it has been deemed advisable at times to carry the warfare into the enemy's country. Many illustrations will be found in this volume of the miserable (the word is used advisedly) uncertainty and unscientificness of the old-system practice; and these illustrations are taken from the territories of the enemies. Never has homoeopathist said such hard things as these advocates of allopathy, contemners of homœopathy, have said of themselves. In fact, the homœopathic enlightened practitioner wonders at the

degraded state of medical practice; he quite laments over it; and, in this country, he labours to relieve the public from it by the means of co-operation, which the English Homœopathic Association affords.

It has been attempted in this Journal to do justice in a way where justice is too frequently forgottennamely, the acknowledgement of the sources of information; and in doing so, an attempt has been made, it is hoped successfully, to make this volume a standard work, by giving, whenever it was possible, not only the name of the author but the title of the work, the edition and the page. Often, truly often, in reading Journals, deep has been the mortification to find the miserably small conscientiousness showing itself in giving the name, but not the date or any particular, by which the original could be searched. Against this dishonourable mode of proceeding the pages of this volume contain a continual practical protest.

A valuable and a full INDEX is presented; another essential to a volume. Did book-makers know how students love a good Index, surely they would labour to make one; but the question comes, What index can there be of verbiage? An index* is a proof of a book's nature.

But to the readers, the steady supporters of this

*This Index, too, is given with the conclusion of the volume. That trade method of putting the index of the preceding volume in the first number of the succeeding is detestable.

volume, a few words - Hail to you friends: thanks to you; your support has cheered the minds, that have recorded their thoughts; when the fingers were tired of the pen work, when Inertness was about to seat himself in eye-closing power on the brows, then appeared in the distance the hundreds of eyes that would be engaged in looking for the thoughts to be stamped on the volume's pages, and this resisted the mighty influence and onward urged the pen, and thus one volume has been concluded.

Your kindly aid is looked for in completing another volume; and at its end, may it be, that Truth shall still be stronger!

May 31st, 1846.

THE EDITORS.

GENERAL INDEX TO VOLUME I.

PHYSIOLOGY IN REGARD TO THE LAWS OF INCREASE, AND THE

INFLUENCE OF PARENTS ON OFFSPRING.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

. 1

SECTION I.-Change characteristic of all terrestrial objects. Man's power

of arresting change. Wealth, wherein consisting. Change, nature's law.

Two problems, Given change how to gain increase; and, given increase,