In Germany, as well as everywhere, the general progress of Homoeopathy vastly depends upon its practical success with the public. The patients and their friends induce its spread; notwithstanding their gratitude they really do little to actually further it. Only in one state of the German Empire, in Wurttemberg, the local society, Hahnemannian, successfully agitated the state government and the legislature. Hundreds of other minor societies who bear the name "Homoeopathic" have done nothing, their only aim being to get their remedies and periodicals at wholesale prices. For decades the business centre of these societies has been the pharmacy of the above mentioned Dr. Schwabe in Leipsic, who, as a thorough business man, has furthered and assisted them in every possible manner until he founded a private polyclinic as a branch of his establishment for the benefit of his customers, and became at last the greatest publisher of German Homoeopathic literature. Thus Schwabe's pharmacy, with its branches, appears to be the centre of all Homoeopathic interests in Germany in the eyes of those who stand outside the real Homoeopathic fraternity, but who incline towards them. Certainly five-sixths of those young physicians who became Homoeopathic training, or have at least spent some time there. Therefore, these young men have taken Schwabe's book, with the anonymous editor for a guide in their studies. For those who have been so familiar with the Allopathic fashion of having the remedy fitting the disease, this book naturally seems very convenient and promising. Only later on, after they have become acquainted with a thoroughly educated Homoeopathic physician, they begin to perceive that the study of Homoeopathic Materia Medica is something entirely different, and that real success can be gained only buy the careful, dry study of symptoms. This is the reason why a large number of Homoeopath physicians,now practicing in German, are not in the position make a scientific propaganda for their method. They do not make exceed the enthusiastic laity in the defense of their views. But for this reason again our colleagues of the dominant school find no interest for a science in the public representatives of which they recognize mainly lay men or half-educated physicians.
