Homeopathy had never a more violent adversary than Dr. Griffon. He look upon this method as absurd and homicidal; thus, strong in his convictions, and wishing, as he said, to drive the homeopathists to the wall, he offered to abandon to their care a certain number of patients, on whom they might experiment to their liking. But he affirmed in advance, sure of not being contradicted by the result, that, out of twenty patients submitted to this treatment, not over five, at the outside would survive. The homeopathists gave the go-by to this proposition, to the great chagrin of the doctor, who regretted the loss of this occasion to prove, by figures, the vanity of homeopathic practice. Dr. Griffon would have been stupefied if any one had said to him, in reference to this free and autocratic disposition of his subjects:
"Such a state of things would cause the barbarism of those days to be regretted when condemned criminals were exposed to undergo newly-discovered surgical operations; operations which they dared not practice on the uncondemned. If it were successful, the condemned was pardoned. Compared to what you do, sir, this barbarity was charity. After all, a chance for life was thus given to a poor creature for whom the executioner was waiting, and an experiment was rendered possible which might be useful to all. But to try your hazardous medicaments on unfortunate artisans, for whom the hospital is the sole refuge when sickness overtakes them; to try a treatment, perhaps fatal, on people whom poverty confides to you, trusting and powerless; to you, their only hope; to you, who will only answer for their life to God--do you know that this is to push the love of science to inhumanity, sir? How! the poorer classes already people the workshops, the field, the army; in this world they only know misery and privations; and when, at the end of their sufferings and fatigues, they fall exhausted--half-dead--sickness even does not preserve them from a last and sacrilegious "experiment!" I ask your heart, sir, would not this be unjust and cruel?"