Conventional Western medicine, working from an allopathic basis, attempts to cure a disease by opposing and suppressing its most obvious symptoms. Homeopathic medicine, developed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), uses like to cure like and treats the whole patient rather than isolated symptoms. Doré's lithograph pokes fun at a third principal of homeopathy, which asserts that a drug's effectiveness is enhanced when administered in minute doses.

This caption reads (translated):

We acknowledge only a very few remedies, we administer only one at a time, moreover we only use a 100,000,000th of a grain dissolved in a glass of water…It is, as you see, a doctoring of the infinitesimally small. . . . Yes . . . (aside) of infinitesimally small doctors.