John Charles Peters, an American physician, born in New York, July 6, 1819. He studied in the medical department of Columbia college, and at Leipsic, Berlin, and Vienna, and began practice in New York as a homoeopa-thist, but finally became an allopathist. He holds that the homoeopathic law, Similia simi-libus curantur, is not universally true, but is a complement of the general law of medical treatment, Alterantia alterantiis curantur; that similar things differ as well as resemble, and as a medicine which acts similarly to a disease necessarily acts somewhat differently from it, it follows that homoeopathic remedies exert an alterative action. Hence homoeopathy and antipathy are not in reality opposing systems, but are parts of the great law of specific alterative or specific allopathic treatment. Among the suggestions made by him which have been adopted are the employment of alcohol in the treatment of consumption; the use of phosphates in medicine; the curative treatment of Bright's disease of the kidneys with corrosive sublimate; and the use of bromine and bromide of potassium as specific remedies in true membranous croup.

He was one of the founders of the New York pathological society, and in 1859 was elected president of the proposed American college of medical sciences; and he has been president of the " Medical Library and Journal Association " of New York. He has published treatises on " Diseases of the Head " (8vo, New York, 1853); "Diseases of Females" (8vo, 1854); "Diseases of the Eyes" (8vo, 1855); " Treatment of Asiatic Cholera " (12mo, 1867); and "Principles and Practice of Medicine," published in numbers, and which is to form 2 vols. 8vo. In conjunction with Dr. Wother-spoon he translated Rokitansky's " Pathological Anatomy" (8vo, 1849); and in conjunction with Dr. F. G. Snelling and others he has published a " Materia Medica " (8vo, 1856-'60). He has been editor of the " North American Journal of Homoeopathy " and of the " Transactions of the Pathological Society".