The chests of quite a number of homoeopathic graduates, recent and remote, are expanding with good feeling and satisfaction at the thought that the allopaths have “let down the bars” and now “we are all brothers with one lofty aim.” If this were true it would be lovely, but there are grave doubts. The stalwart, Dr. J.W. Mastin, of the Critique, in his October number, prints and editorial from the Columbus Medical Journal, on the question possibly raised by some hard shelled subscriber, “why is the Homoeopath tolerated by the American Medical Association.” This is it:

     “Simply because the American Medical Association has use for them. That is why. They had to admit them or fight them. The american Medical Association Knew very well that to exclude so large a body of physicians as the Homoeopaths from their association, would be to precipitate sicians as the Homoeopaths from their association, would be to precipitate a fight the would defeat the most of the legislation which they were proposing to ask for. But to admit the Homoeopaths the temporarily blindfold them by a tacith endorsement of their theory of practice, to muzzle them by a little taffy and cajoling, to chloroform them with a pretended fraternity, they could then ask with brazen effrontery for legislation in the name of the whole medical fraternity.”

      There you have it straight and frank. It is all very well, and also very true, to say “truth is mighty and will prevail.” So it will, but it can prevail only in the human mind, even though it be something abstract from the human mind; outside of the human mind you would search long for truth. Books are but that, ultimated and fixed, which came through the human mind and is but ink and paper until it returns to the region whence it came and goes into action.

     Truth being mightly should be mightily used to smash error out of the way. In no field of human life is there more necessity for the lusty swinging of the mighty club of truth than medicine. Every man imbued with the truth of Homoeopathy knows that if it prevailed in the world the swarms of physical ills would be largely cleared away and there would be no excuse for medical would’s race tracks where hobby-horses are trotted to the admiring gaze of a medically ignorant people. So long as truth lies dormant in the human mind it is potentially mighty only, and it is the same so long as those who possess it are tickled to receive a contemptuous nod from error instead of banging the latter over the head as should be done.

     In this banging business, however, another error too often slips in and turns aside the blow from its brother error and lets it fall on the skull of some brother of the truth swinger instead of the error that dominates him. Truth and error are both abstract from the human mind, as is evidenced by the printed page, hence truth should smash error and not persons. Every one in a cool moment sees this, but when he gets hot about the collar he forgets it and slams away at some brother mortal in whose mind error holds revel.

     To drop out of the realm of metaphysics back to the starting point that editorial which Friend Mastin dug out of the Columbus Journal shows the true meaning of the recent spirit of toleration (a thing that heats about the collar) towards the Homoeopahs that prevails to-day among the allopaths; it is merely policy and does not in the least include the great truth embodied in the word “Homoeopathy.” It will be well, very well for the Homoeopaths to tighten up their organizations and to mightily swing their “big stick.” If there be any who think the big stick is only a little switch they out to flock in neutral territory, for truth, mighty as it is, has never downed error without a fight to the finish.