14









I









ORGANON
OF
HOM(EOPATHIC MEDICINE.


BY SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
Aude sapere.
FIRST AMERICAN,
jrvont the 3SrftfsD Mranstatfon of the jourtt Germtan 2bftfon,
WITH IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONS FROM THE FIFTH, BY THE NORTH AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF THE HOMCEOPATHIC HEALING ART.
ALLENTOWN, PA.:
PUBLISHED AT THE ACADEMICAL BOOKSTORE.
PHILADELPHIA:
FOR SALE BY KAY & BROTHER, 122 CHESNUT STREET,
AND J. G. WESSELIIOEFT, BREAD STREET.
1836.



ENTERED, according to the act of congress, in the year 1836, by THE
NORTH AMERICAN ACADEMY OF THE HOM(EOPATHIC HEALING ART, in the
clerk's office of the district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.
A. WALDIE, PR.



I I     I I                             -.0.1womm"WFORM


ADVERTISEMENT.


One of the first occasions which led to the publication of the present edition of the Organon, was the
express desire of Hahnemann that an enlarged and
improved English version of it, from the fifth German
edition, might appear in the United States. With the
view of fulfilling, as much as possible, every just demand, the Academy entrusted the revision of the following work, to several gentlemen, and would here
express their particular obligations to Constantine
Hering, M. D., Chas. F. Matlack, M. D., of Philadelphia, and to Messrs. J. Radcliffe and A. Bauer, for
services rendered in its preparation.
JNO. ROMIG, M. D.,
Chairman of the Board of Directors.


Academy of the Homceopathic Healing Art, 8
Allentown, Pa. October, 1836.    i



vi


duce symptoms local and constitutional so closely resembling
the poison of lues venerea that medical practitioners who have
spent many years in the investigation of syphilis find it very
difficult, nay, in some instances, impossible, (guided by the
appearances,) to distinguish one disease from the other. Of all
the medicines used in the treatment of lues, mercury is the only
one that has stood the test of time and experience. Let us,
then, compare the effects of syphilis with those of mercury: —
The venereal poison produces on the skin, pustules, scales, and
tubercles. Mercury produces directly the same defcedations of
the skin. Syphilis excites inflammation of the periosteum and
caries of the bones. Mercury does the same. Inflammation of
the iris from lues is an every-day occurrence; the same disease
is a very frequent consequence of mercury. Ulceration of the
throat is a common symptom in syphilis; the same affection
results from mercury. Ulcers on the organs of reproduction
are the result of both the poison and the remedy; and furnish
another proof of the doctrine similia similibus.
Nitric acid is generally recommended in cutaneous diseases;
the internal use of this remedy, in a very dilute form, produces
scaly eruptions over the surface of the body; and the external
application of a solution, in the proportion of one part acid to
one hundred and twenty-eight parts of water, will produce
inflammation and ulceration of the skin. These observations
would lead to the conclusion, that nitric acid cures cutaneous
diseases by the faculty it possesses of producing a similar disease
of the skin. Nitrate of potash administered internally in small
doses, produces a frequent desire to pass water, accompanied
with pain and heat. When this state of the urinary system
exists as a consequence of disease, or the application of a blister,
a very dilute solution of the same remedy has been found beneficial.
'rhe ordinary effects of hyoscyamuis niger are vertigo, deli



vii
rium, stupefaction, and somnolency. Where one or other of
these diseased states exists, it yields to small doses of the tincture of this plant. The internal use of hyoscyamus is followed
by mental aberration, the leading features of which are jealousy,
and irascibility. When these hallucinations exist, this remedy
is indicated.
Opium in general causes drowsiness, torpor, and deep sleep,
and yet this remedy in small doses removes these symptoms
when they occur in disease.
Sulphur is a specific against itch; notwithstanding which,
when it is administered to healthy individuals it frequently excites a pustular eruption resembling itch in every particular.
These observations corroborate the statements of our author
as to the value and importance of homceopathy, and were not
the limits of a preface too confined I could bring forward the
actual experiments from which these deductions have been
drawn.
On the subject of small doses of medicines a few observations
will suffice.
A mixture composed of one drop of hydrocyanic acid and
eight ounces of water, administered in a drachm dose, has produced vertigo and anxious breathing. Vomiting has followed
the use of the sixteenth of a grain of emetic tartar; narcotism,
the twentieth of a grain of muriate of morphia; and spirit of
ammonia, in doses of one drop, acts on the system as a stimulant.
On the homoeopathic attenuation of medicines, many are
sceptical, and presume that the quantity of the article extant in
the dose, cannot produce a medicinal effect.  I refer to the
pages of the Organon for an elucidation of this proposition,



viii


and will relate an experiment which may serve to explain the
degree of dilution substances are capable of. One grain of
nitrate of silver dissolved in 1560 grains of distilled water, to
which were added two grains of muriatic acid, a gray precipitate of chloride of silver was evident in every part of the liquor.
One grain of iodine dissolved in a drachm of alcohol and mixed
with the same quantity of water as in the preceding experiment,
to which were added two grains of starch dissolved in an ounce
of water, caused an evident blue tint in the solution. In these
experiments the grain of the nitrate of silver and iodine must
have been divided into ~-sv- of a grain.
A few particulars connected with the discoverer and founder
of the homceopathic system of medicine, cannot but prove interesting to the readers of this volume. SAMUEL HAHNEMANN
was born in 1755, at Misnia, in Upper Saxony. He exhibited
at an early age traits of a superior genius; his school education
being completed, he applied himself to the study of natural philosophy and natural history, and afterwards prosecuted the study
of medicine at Leipsic and other universities. A most accurate
observer, a skilful experimenter, and an indefatigable searcher
after truth, he appeared formed by nature for the investigation
and improvement of medical science.  On commencing the
study of medicine he soon became disgusted with the mass of
contradictory assertions and theories which then existed. He
found every thing in this department obscure, hypothetical and
vague, and resolved to abandon the medical profession. Having been previously engaged in the study of chemistry, he determined on translating into his native language the best English
and French works on the subject. Whilst engaged in translating the Materia Medica of the illustrious Cullen, in 1790, in
which the febrifuge virtues of cinchona bark are described, he
became fired with the desire of ascertaining its mode of action.
Whilst in the enjoyment of the most robust health, he commenced the use of this substance, and in a short time was



ix


attacked with all the symptoms of intermittent fever, similar in
every respect to those which that medicine is known to cure.
being struck with the identity of the two diseases lie immediately divined the great truth which has become the foundation
of the new medical doctrine of homceopathy.
Not contented with one experiment he tried the virtues of
medicines on his own person, and on that of others. In his investigations he arrived at this conclusion: that the substance
employed possessed an inherent power of exciting in healthy
subjects the same symptoms which it is said to cure in the sick.
He compared the assertions of ancient and modern physicians
upon the properties of poisonous substances with the result of
his own experiments, and found them to coincide in every
respect; and upon these deductions he brought forth his doctrine of homceopathy. Taking this law for a guide, he recommenced the practice of medicine, with every prospect of his
labours being ultimately crowned with success.
In 1796 he published his first dissertation on homceopathy
in Hufeland's Journal. A treatise on the virtues of medicine
appeared in 1805, and the "Organon" in 1810. Hahnemann
commenced as a public medical teacher in Leipsic, in 1811,
where, with his pupils, he zealously investigated the effects of
medicines on the living body, which formed the basis of the
Materia Medica Pura which appeared during the same year.
Like many other discoverers in medicine, the author of the
Organon has been persecuted with the utmost rigour; and in
1820 he quitted his native country in disgust. In retirement
he was joined by several of his pupils, who formed themselves
into a society for the purpose of prosecuting the homoeopathic
system of physic, and reporting their observations thereon.
Several fasciculi detailing their labours have been since published.
b



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
First impressions commonly determine our judgment of books
as well as men. If, on a first interview, a person be repulsive
to us, and those who for years have had familiar intercourse
with him, admit that we are excusable for first impressions, but
nevertheless assure us that he is possessed of very valuable
qualities, and that a nearer acquaintance with him may be useful to us,-when, in addition, our informants give us a key to
a more correct judgment, we are no longer justifiable in maintaining our original impressions. Still more would our opinions
be influenced, if, before seeing the person, we were furnished in
advance with a short and impartial representation of his character
by one who knew him intimately. If this rule of judgment be
applicable to persons, wherefore should it not apply to books?
The Organon contains much that is peculiar and different
from the views hitherto entertained by the prevailing school of
medicine. Most readers of the medical profession, therefore,
conceive prejudices against it, and fall into the vulgar error of
rejecting the whole, merely because they do not justly regard it
as a whole,-they reject the main propositions, because they are
offended at the subordinate.
The reader needs no elaborate introduction to the following
work, and it is requisite, perhaps, only to apprise him of the
different classes into which its several paragraphs may be
divided; and this being done, we shall submit each separate
class to his own judgment.
The entire contents of the Organon may be easily arranged
under the four following divisions, which, indeed, do not occur
in the order in which they are here given, but they might easily
have been designated in accordance to it, by causing them to



xiii


sors, hospital physicians, and others in prominent stations
should carefully study, and so far as the experiments are innocuous, prove his new method; nay, Hahnemann and his adherents often and ardently desire that every physician would learn,
investigate, and prove homceopathy for himself.
But homceopathy is not only a new method, but much more.
This method does not rest upon new views, like every other
hitherto promulgated, but upon new discoveries, which appertain
to the departments of natural philosophy, the natural sciences,
physiology and biology.
The doctrine that every peculiar substance-every mineral,
plant, animal, in fact every part of them, or every preparation
derived from a preceding one, produces a series of peculiar
effects upon the human organism, manifestly belongs to the
natural sciences, and only so far to the materia medica as the
latter calls these properties into requisition. But it is a science
in itself,-a science which treats of the effect of a diversity of
substances upon the human frame. Whether such a science,
in point of fact, be capable of formation, and whether it have
any value, can be determined only by experiment. It were
equally foolish to deny this without trial, as it was formerly to
deny, without exploring, the way which Columbus opened to the
west. It would be inexcusable in the present condition of the
materia medica, confessedly imperfect, and deficient in all the
attributes of a science, to despise this new way of Hahnemann,
before knowing, by careful experiment, that it conducts to nothing better.
The doctrine of the preparation of the remedies into the so
called dilutions, belongs to natural philosophy, in common with
the doctrines of magnetism, electricity, and galvanism. Nor is
it more a subject of wonder than the latter-except that these
sooner came under investigation by the natural philosopher.
The repetition of the new electro-magnetic experiments requires
great accuracy; those concerning the operation of minute
doses require just as much, nay even more. To deny the results of the electro-magnetic experiments, previous to repeating
them, were ridiculous, and it is equally so to deny the results of



xiv


these. But no hasty, superficial, partial, or wholly perverted
experiments, must be instituted.
The doctrine that such dilutions or potences are capable of
curing diseases according to the law "similia similibus," is a
proposition which belongs to biology, and there finds its confirmation; it likewise can only be investigated by experiment,
and cannot be estimated without it.
The cautious investigator will not pass judgment upon all
these discoveries, until he shall have performed a series of
rigorous experiments. Then only will he be prepared either to
reject or accept the method founded thereon, or, at least, learn
the useful part of it.
II.-DIRECTIONS.
These appertain to the method of cure; are derived from the
long continued application of the law previously referred to,
and acquire their principal value from its truth. No one can
judge of them but he who has tested the truth of tie experimental propositions, and in doing so, adhered to these directions.
By this means only can he become convinced of their great
value, which is entirely lost on those who deny the discoveries.
We enumerate under this head, directions for the examination of the sick, for the preparation of the medicines, for trying
them on the healthy subject, for the selection of the remedies,
dietetics, and directions for the psychical treatment.
III.-ILLUSTRATIONS.
Hahnemann has appended certain theories to the laws of
nature discovered by him, by which these laws are illustrated
and brought into unison with other laws already acknowledged,
or with other theories received as true. This has never been
reckoned a subject of reproach to any discoverer. Man will
and must seek to illustrate the phenomena which he observes,
and bring individual parts into co-aptation-the new into harmony with that previously known. In this endeavour, not only
is he liable to err, but actually does err in the great majority of
cases; accordingly, few hypotheses and attempts at explanation



XV


have endured long; and it is a fact of daily acknowledgment,
that one hypothesis gives place to another in all sciences.
Columbus himself entertained numerous conjectures which
time has verified or overthrown.  Whether the theories of
Hahnemarn are destined to endure a longer or a shorter space,
whether they be the best or not, time only can determine; be it
as it may, however, it is a matter of minor importance. For myself, I am generally considered as a disciple and adherent of
Hahnemann, and I do indeed declare that I am one among
the most enthusiastic in doing homage to his greatness; but
nevertheless I declare also, that since my first acquaintance
with homceopathy, (in the year 1821,) down to the present day,
I have never yet accepted a single theory in the Organon as it
is there promulgated. I feel no aversion to acknowledge this
even to the venerable sage himself. It is the genuine Hahnemannean spirit totally to disregard all theories, even those of
one's own fabrication, when they are in opposition to the results of
pure experience. All theories and hypotheses have no positive
weight whatever, only so far as they lead to new experiments,
and afford a better survey of the results of those already made.
Whoever, therefore, will assail the theories of Hahnemann, or
even altogether reject them, is at perfect liberty to do so; but
let him not imagine that he has thereby accomplished a memorable achievement. In every respect it is an affair of little
importance.
IV.-DEFENCES.
Opinions upon this head are also things of secondary consideration, inasmuch as the entire polemical matter is of subordinate
estimation in forming a judgment concerning new discoveries.
Had Hahnemann the right to defend himself as he has done,
and thereby promote the progress of his doctrine, or had he
not? We cannot judge concerning it, but justly commit the
decision of the question to future history. The entire polemical
part may be stricken out, without in the slightest degree changing
the principal matters, or without having any influence either to
ratify or invalidate the doctrine itself.



xvi


Is there a physician who feels that individual expressions
will apply to him, let him take heed to the truth; but if they do
not reach him, then is he unaffected by them.     He who is
offended at the polemical part, let him reflect that it is the first
step towards an unjust estimate of the rest.
A just judgment is all that we wish from every reader of the
Organon, and to contribute something to this end was the design of these preliminary remarks.
CONSTANTINE HERING.
Academy at Allentown, Penn., August 10, 1836.


A.



CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Page
A view of the prevailing allceopathic and palliative medical treatment to the
present time............     9
Examples of homceopathic cures performed unintentionally by physicians of the
old school of medicine...........   45
Persons ignorant of the science of medicine, discovered that the homnceopathic
treatment was the most rational and efficacious......   73
Some physicians of an early period suspected that this curative method was
superior to every other..........    75
ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
~ 1, 2. The sole duty of a physician is, to restore health in a mild, prompt,
and durable manner.
Note. It does not pertain to his office to invent systems, or vainly attempt to
account for the morbid phenomena in disease......    79
~ 3, 4. The physician ought to search after that which is to be cured in disease,
and be acquainted with the curative virtues of medicines, in order to adapt
the medicine to the disease. He must also be acquainted with the means
of preserving health..........    79, 80
~ 5. In the cure of disease it is necessary to regard the fundamental cause and
other circumstances..........    ib.
~ 6. For the physician, the totality of the symptoms alone constitutes the
disease..............  ib.
Note. The fruitless endeavours of the old school to discover the essence of the
disease, the prima causa morbi.
~ 7. To cure disease, it is merely requisite to remove the entire symptoms,
duly regarding, at the same time, the circumstances enumerated in ~ 5.  81
Note 1. The cause which evidently occasions and maintains the disease must
likewise be removed...........   ib.
Note 2. A symptomatic palliative method of treatment, or that directed
against an individual symptom, ought to be rejected.....    82
~ 8. When all the symptoms are extinguished, the disease is at the same time
internally cured............    ib,
Note. This is ignorantly denied by the old school.
C



xviii
Page
~ 9. During health, the system is animated by a spiritual, self-moved, vital
power, which preserves it in harmonious order......    83
~ 10. Without this vital, dynamic power, the organism is dead..       ib.
~ 11. In disease, the vital power only is primarily disturbed, and expresses its
sufferings (internal changes) by abnormal alterations in the sensations and
actions of the system.........    ib.
Note. To know how the symptoms are produced by the vital power, is unnecessary for the purposes of cure.
~ 12. By the extinction of the totality of the symptoms in the process of cure,
the suffering of the vital power, that is, the entire morbid affection, inwardly
and outwardly, is removed..........    ib.
~ 13. To presume that disease (non-chirurgical) is a peculiar and distinct
something, residing in man, is a conceit, which has rendered allceopathy so
pernicious.............    84
~ 14. Every curable disease is made known to the physician by its symptoms. ib.
~ 15. The sufferings of the deranged vital power, and the morbid symptoms
produced thereby, as an invisible whole, one and the same.           ib.
~ 16. It is only by means of the spiritual influence of a morbific agent, that our
spiritual vital power can be diseased, and in like manner, only by the spi.
ritual (dynamic) operation of medicine, that health can be restored.  85
~ 17. The physician has only to remove the totality of the synptoms and he
has cured the entire disease..........    ib.
Nole 1, 2. Explanatory examples.
~ 18. The totality of the symptoms is the sole indication in the choice of the
remedy.............    86
~ 19. Changes in the general state, in disease, (symptoms of disease) can be
cured in no other way, by medicines, than in so far as the latter possess the
power, likewise, of affecting changes in the system.....    ib.
~ 20. This faculty which medicines have of producing changes in the system,
can only be known by observing their effects upon healthy individuals.  ib.
~ 21. The morbid symptoms which medicines produce in healthy persons are
the sole indications of their curative virtues in disease.....    ib.
~ 22. If experience prove that the medicines which produce symptoms similar
to those of the disease, are the therapeutic agents that cure it in the most
certain and permanent manner, we ought to select these medicines in the
cure of the disease. If, on the contrary, it proves that the most certain and
permanent cure is obtained by medicinal substances that produce symptoms
directly opposite to those of the disease, then the latter agents ought to be
selected for this purpose.........        87
Note. The use of medicines, whose symptoms bear no peculiar (affective)
relation to the morbid symptoms, but influence the body in a different way,
is the exceptionable allaeopalhic mode of treatment.
~ 23. Morbid symptoms that are inveterate cannot be cured by medicinal
symptoms of an opposite character (antipathic method)...        88
~ 24, 25. The homccopathic method, or that which employs medicines producing
symptoms similar to those of the malady, is the only one of which experience proves tile certain efficacy........    ib.
~ 26. This is grounded upon the therapeutic law of nature, that a weaker
dynamic affection in man is permanently extinguished by one that is simnilar, of greater intensity, yet of a different origin......  89



xix


Page
Note. This law applies to physical as well moral affections.
~ 27. The curative virtues of medicines depend solely upon the resemblance
that their symptoms bear to those of the disease......    90
~ 28, 29. Some explanation of this therapeutic law of nature...   ib.
Note. Illustration of it.
~ 30-33. The human body is much more prone to undergo derangemcnt from
the action of medicines than from that of natural disease.        91, 92
~ 34, 35. The truth of the homnreopathic law is shown by the inefficacy of nonhornmeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases that are of long standing,
and likewise by the fact that either of two natural dissimilar diseases coexisting in the body, cannot annihilate or cure the other...  92, 93
~ 36, I. A disease, existing in the human body, prevents the accession of a new
and dissimilar one, if the former be of equal intensity to, or greater, than the
latter.................    ib.
~ 37. Thus, non-homcopathic treatment, which is not violent, leaves the
chronic disease unaltered..........    ih.
~ 38, II. Or, a new and more intense disease suspends a prior and dissimilar
one, already existing in the body, only so long as the former continues, but
it never cures it...........   93-95
~ 39. In the same manner, violent treatment with allceopathic remedies never
cures a chronic disease, but merely suspends it during the continuance of
the powerful action of a medicine incapable of exciting symptoms similar
to those of the disease, but afterwards, the latter reappears even more intense
than before............   95-97
~ 40, III. Or, the new disease, after having acted for a considerable time on
the system, joins itself finally to the old one, which is dissimilar, and thence
results a complication of two different maladies, either of which is incapable
of annihilating or curing the other.......    97, 98
~ 41. Much more frequently than a superadded natural disease, an artificial
one, which is occasioned by the long continued use of violent and unsuitable
allceopathic remedies, is combined with the dissimilar prior and natural
disease (the dissimilarity consequently rendering it incurable by means of
the artificial malady), and the patient becomes doubly diseased...  98
~ 42. The diseases thus complicated by reason of their dissimilarity, assume
different places in the organism to which they are severally adapted.  99
~ 43, 44. But very different is the result, where a new disease that is similar
and stronger is superadded to the old one, for in that case the former annihilates and cures the latter........   100 —101
~ 45. This phenomenon explained.........    ib.
~ 46. Examples of the cure of chronic diseases, by the accidental accession of
another disease, similar and more intense......   101-103
~ 47-49. Of any two diseases, which occur in the ordinary course of nature,
it is only that one whose symptoms are similar to the other, which can cure
or destroy it. This faculty never belongs to a dissimilar disease. Hence
the physician may learn what are the remedies with which he can effect a
certain cure, that is to say, with none but such as are homrcopathic.  103, 104
~ 50. Nature affords but few instances in which one disease can homceopathically destroy another, and her remedial resources in this way are encumbered by many inconveniences.........    ib,



XX


Page
~ 51. On the other hand, the physician is possessed of innumerable curative
agents, greatly preferable to those........   105
~ 52. From the process employed by nature, to which we have just adverted,
the physician may deduce the doctrine of curing diseases by no other remedies than such as are homaeopathic, and not with those of another kind,
(alleopathic), which never cure, but only injure the patient..   ib.
~ 53, 54. There are only three possible methods of employing medicines in
disease, viz.
I. The homoeopathic, which only is salutary and efficacious...  106
~ 55, II. The allceopulhic or heteropathic.......       ib.
~ 56, III. The antipathic or enantiopathic, which is merely palliative.  107
Note. Remarks on Isopathy, so called.
~ 57. An exposition of the method of cure where a remedy producing a contrary effect (contraria contrariis) is prescribed against a single symptom of
the disease.-Examples..........    ib.
~ 58. This antipathic method is not merely defective because it is directed
against an individual symptom only, but also, because in chronic diseases
after having apparently diminished the evil for a time, this temporary abatement is followed by a real aggravation of the symptoms....   108
Note. Testimonies of different authors.
~ 59. Injurious consequences of some antipathic cures....  109-111
~ 60. Where a palliative is employed, the gradual increase of the dose never
cures a chronic disease, but renders the state of the patient worse.  ib.
~ 61. Wherefore, physicians ought to have inferred the utility of an opposite,
and the only beneficial method, namely, that of homoeopathy...   ib.
~ 62. The reason that the palliative method is so pernicious, and the homeopathic alone salutary...........   112
~ 63. Is founded upon the difference which exists between the primary action
of every medicine, and the reaction, or secondary effects, produced by the
living organism (the vital power)........    ib.
~ 64. Explanation of the primitive and secondary effects.....    ib.
~ 65. Examples of both...........   113
~ 66. It is only by the use of the minutest homeopathic doses, that the reaction of the vital power shows itself simply by restoring the equilibrium of
health.........ib.
~ 67. From these facts, the salutary tendency of the homeopathic, as well as
the adverse effects of the antipathic (palliative) method, become manifest.  114
Note. Cases in which only antipathic remedies are yet only useful.
~ 68. How far these facts prove the efficacy of the homceopathic method.  ib.
~ 69. How these facts confirm the injurious tendency of the antipathic
method...........        115-117
Note 1. Contrary sensations cannot neutralise each other in the sensorium of
man; they do not react upon each other like chemical substances that are
endowed with opposite properties.
Note 2. Explanatory example.
~ 70. A short analysis of the homceopathic method......   117
~ 71. The three necessary points in healing, are:-1. To ascertain the malady;
2. The action of the medicines; and 3. Their appropriate application.  118
~ 72. A general view of acute and chronic diseases.......    ib.



xxiii
Page
Note. Changes produced in some substances in the process of preparing them
for food.
~ 267. The mode of preparing the most energetic and durable medicines from
fresh  herbs............    198
~ 268. Dry vegetable substances.........    199
~,269-271. The homceopathic method of preparing crude medicinal substances, in order to obtain their greatest medicinal power...  199, 200
Note. Preparation of powder for keeping.
~ 272-274. Only one simple medicine is to be administered at a time.  201
~ 275-287. Strength of the doses used in homceopathic treatment. The manner of graduating them, or of augmenting or diminishing their power.
The developement of their powers.......  202-208
~ 288-292. What parts of the body are more or less sensible to the action of
medicines.............    ib.
Note. Receiving the highly developed medicines by inhalation or smelling,
is the preferable mode of using them.
~ 293, 294. Animal magnetism (Mesmerism). On the application of positive
and negative mesmerism.........   210, 211



INTRODUCTION.


A VIEW OF THE PREVAILING MEDICAL TREATMENT, ALL(EOPATHIC AND PALLIATIVE, TO THE PRESENT TIME.
From the earliest period of time, mankind have been liable
to disease, individually and collectively, arising from causes
natural and moral. In the rude and simple forms of primitive
life, few maladies appeared, and little skill was requisite to
remove them; but as society became more dense, and men
formed themselves into states, diseases multiplied, and medical
aid became, in the same degree, necessary.
Thenceforward, at least after the days of Hippocrates, during
a lapse of nearly two thousand five hundred years, men have
fondly supposed, that these multiplied and complicated maladies were to be removed by methods originating purely in
scheming and conjecture. Innumerable opinions on the nature
and cure of diseases, have successively been promulged; each
distinguishing his own theory with the title of system, though
directly at variance with every other and inconsistent with
itself.
Each of these refined productions dazzled the reader at first
with its unintelligible display of wisdom, and attracted to the
system-builder crowds of adherents, echoing his unnatural
sophistry, but from which none of them could derive any improvement in the art of healing, until a new system, frequently
in direct opposition to the former, appeared, supplanting it, and for
a season acquiring celebrity. Yet none were in harmony with
nature and experience-mere theories spun out of a refined
imagination, from apparent consequences, which, on account
of their subtilty and contradictions, were practically inapplicable at the bedside of the patient, and only fitted for idle disputation.
By the side of these theories, but unconnected with them all,
a mode of cure was contrived, with medical substances of un2



10


known quality compounded together, applied to diseases arbitrarily classified, and arranged in reference to their materiality,
called.Allcopathia. The pernicious results of such a practice,
at variance with nature and experience, may be easily imagined.
Without seeking to detract from the reputation which many
physicians have justly acquired by their skill in the sciences
auxiliary to medicine, such as Natural Philosophy, Chemistry,
Natural History in all its branches, and that of man in particular, Anthropology, Physiology, Anatomy, &c. &c., I shall
occupy myself here with the practical part of Medicine only, in
order to show the imperfect manner in which diseases have
been treated till the present day. It is also far from my
intention to pursue that mechanical routine by which the
precious lives of our fellow creatures are treated according to
pocket-book recipes, volumes of which are still daily appearing
before the public, and show, alas! how frequently, and to what
extent, they are resorted to even at the present time. I turn
from these, as undeserving of notice; and as a lasting reproach
to the Faculty of Medicine. I shall merely speak of the Medical Art, such as it has existed till the present day, and which,
on account of its antiquity, is supposed to be founded upon
scientific principles.
It was the boast of the former schools of medicine, that their
doctrine alone deserved the title of 1" rational art of healing,"
because it was pretended that they alone sought after and
removed the morbid cause, and followed the traces of nature herself in diseases.
Tolle causam! cried they continually; but that was all: they
seldom went farther than that vain exclamation. They talked
of being able to discover the cause of disease, without succeeding in their pretended attempts; for, by far the greater number
of diseases being of dynamic origin, as well as of a dynamic
nature, and their cause, therefore, not admitting of discovery
to the senses, they were reduced to the necessity of inventing
one. By comparing, on the one hand, the normal state of the
parts of the dead human body (anatomy) with the visible changes
which those parts had undergone in subjects that had died of
disease, (pathological anatomy,) and on the other, the functions
of the living body (physiology) with the endless aberrations to
which they are subject in the various stages of disease, (semeiotics,



~4


11
pathology,) and drawing from thence conclusions, relative to
the invisible manner in which the changes are brought about
in the interior of man, when in a diseased state, they succeeded
in forming an obscure and imaginary picture, which theoretic
medicine regarded as the prima causa morbi,* which afterwards
became the nearest cause, and, at the same time, the immcdiate
essence of the disease, and even the disease itself; although common sense tells us, that the cause of any thing can never be, at
the same time, both the cause and the thing itself.
How was it then possible, without deceiving themselves, to
pretend to cure this yet undiscovered internal cause, or venture to prescribe for it medicines, whose curative tendency
was equally for the most part unknown to them, and more
especially, to mix up several of those unknown substances in
what we term prescriptions?
However the sublime project, of discovering, a priori, some
internal invisible cause of disease, resolved itself (at least among
some self-conceited physicians of the old school) into a search,
* It would have been far more suitable to the good sense of mankind,
and to the nature of the case, had they, in order to cure, attempted to
discover as the causa morbi the originating cause of the disease itself,
and had applied a method of treatment which they had found available
for diseases springing from that originating cause, and for others of a
like origin. For example, the same hydrargyrum is properly applied to
every ulcer on the glans penis, after an impure coition, as hitherto with
every venereal chancre-if they, I say, had discovered the originating
cause of every other chronic (non-venereal) disease, either from a recent
or a former infection in a psoric miasm; if for all these they had found
a method of cure, with a therapeutic reference to each particular case,
by which the whole and each separate chronic case could have been
healed; then might they with justice have gained renown, that they
in the treatment of chronic diseases were familiar with the only useful
and successful causa morborum chronicorum (non venereorum,) and
adopting it as a basis, were capable of treating such cases with the best
results. But they were incapable of curing the numberless chronic
diseases in ages past, as their psoric origin was unknown to them, (a
discovery which the world owes to homceopathia, as well as for an effectual method of treatment which it has provided,) and notwithstanding
their vaunting that they alone had the primam causam in view in their
proceeding; after all their boasted science they had not the remotest suspicion of their psoric origin, and consequently every chronic disease
has been mangled.



13
such powerful doses as had been usually administered was
pernicious in maladies where the aptitude to undergo homceogeneous irritation existed to a great extent. Besides this, the old
school never once thought of administering those medicines in
very small or in extremely minute doses. Thus, no one ventured to cure in the direct and most natural way, by using
homogeneous and specific medicines, nor was it possible to do
so, because the fullest extent of their effects was unknown, and
in that state remained, and had it been otherwise, it would have
been impossible to have guessed out remedies so very applicable by such generalising opinions.
However, the old school of medicine, aware that it was more
consistent with reason to pursue a straightforward path than
attempt a circuitous one, still imagined they could arrest disease
by a removal of the supposed morbid material cause. In the theoretic researches after the image which they were to form to
themselves of the disease, as well as in their pursuit of the
curative indication, it was almost impossible for them to divest
themselves of this idea of materiality, or be induced to consider
the nature not only of material but spiritual organism, as being
so potent in itself that the changes in its sensations and vital
movements (which are called diseases) are principally, and
almost solely, the result of dynamic influence, and could not be
produced by any other cause.
The old school regarded all the solids and fluids which had
become changed by disease, (those in-normal substances, turgescent or secreted,) as the exciting cause of the disorder; or,
at least, on account of their supposed reaction, they were considered to be the cause which kept up disease, and this latter
opinion is adhered to, even at the present day.
This theory first inspired them with the idea of accomplishing causal cure, by using every means in their power to expel
from the body that imaginary and supposed material cause of
disease. Hence arises the continual practice of evacuating bile
in cases of bilious fever* by emetics,-the system of prescribing
* The Court Physician, Rau, (loc. cit. p. 176), at a time when he was
not yet fully initiated into homeopathic medicine, but when, however,
he entertained a perfect conviction of the dynamic origin of these fevers,
was in the habit of curing them without any evacuating medicines whatever, merely by one or two small doses of homceopathic medicines. In
his work, he relates two remarkable instances of cure.



15


mescence of the belly in children,* the letting of blood in cases of
hemorrhage,t and especially bleeding of all kinds,+ as their chief
indication in inflammatory cases, and, in imitation of a bloodemetic would only cause a dangerous or mortal inflammation of the
intestines; whereas, slight and repeated doses of a strong infusion of
coffee, would reanimate the depressed irritability of the stomach, and
place it in a condition to evacuate of itself, either upwards or downwards, the substances contained in its interior, however considerable the
quantity may have been. Here, again, the treatment which ordinary
physicians pretend to direct against the cause, is out of place.
It is the custom, at the present day, when gastric acid becomes superabundant, (which is frequently the case in chronic diseases,) to administer an emetic to relieve the stomach of its presence. But the following
morning, or a few days after, the stomach contains just the same quantity,
if not more. On the other hand the pains cease of themselves, when
their dynamic cause is attacked by an extremely small dose of dilute
sulphuric acid, or with another antipsoric remedy, homoeopathic with
the various symptoms. It is thus that, in the plans of treatment, which
the old school say are directed against the morbific cause, the favourite
object is to expel with trouble, and to the great detriment of the patient,
the material product of the dynamic disorder, without exerting themselves in the least to find out the dynamic source of the evil, in order to
vanquish it homoeopathically, as well as to annihilate every thing that
might emanate from it, and thus treat the disease in a rational manner.
* Symptoms that depend solely upon a psoric diathesis, and which
easily yield to (dynamic) mild antipsoric remedies, without either emetics
or purgatives.
t Though most morbid hemorrhages depend solely on a dynamic
change of the vital powers, still the old school assign a superabundance
of blood as their cause, and never fail to prescribe bleeding, in order to
relieve the body of this supposed excess of the juice of life. The disastrous consequences which frequently result from this mode of treatment, such as prostration of the powers, tendency to, and even typhoid
state itself, they ascribe to the malignity of the disease, which they are
then often unable to subdue: in short, though the patient may fall a
sacrifice, they, nevertheless, consider that they have acted in conformity
to the adage, causam tolle, that is, according to their common remark,
"we have done every thing that could possibly be done-let the consequence now be what it may!!"
t Though the living human body may, perhaps, never have contained
one drop of blood too much, still the old school regard a supposed
plethora, or superabundance of blood, as the principal material cause
of hemorrhages and inflammations, and which ought to be attacked by
bleeding, cupping, and leeches. This they call a treatment of the
cause, and a rational mode of proceeding. In fevers with an inflammatory-character, as well as in acute pleurisy, they even go so far as to



16


thirsty physician of Paris, the application to the parts affected, of
a frequently fatal number of leeches. By this mode of proceeding, they think they pursue the causal indication, and treat the
regard the coagulable lymph that exists in the blood, (and which they
call the buffy coat,) as the peccant matter, which they do their best to
evacuate, as much as possible, by repeated bleedings, although it often
occurs that this crust becomes thicker and tougher in appearance, at
every fresh emission of blood. In this manner, when inflammatory
fever cannot be subdued, they often bleed the patient till he is near
death, in order to remove this buffy coat, or the pretended plethora, without ever suspecting that the inflamed blood is nothing more than the product of the acute fever, the inflammatory immaterial (dynamic) irritation; and that this latter, the sole cause of the disturbance that has taken
place in the vascular system, may be arrested by a homeopathic remedy,
such, for example, as a globule of sugar impregnated with the juice of
aconite of the decillionth degree of dilution, avoiding the vegetable
acids; so that the most violent pleuritic fever, with all its attendant
alarming symptoms, is cured in the space of twenty-four hours at farthest, without loss of blood, or any antiphlogistic whatever, (if a little
blood, by way of experiment, be now taken from the vein, it will no
longer exhibit any traces of inflammatory crust,) whereas, another
patient, similar in every respect, and treated according to the pretended
rational mode of the old school, if he escape death after numerous
bleedings and unspeakable suffering, often languishes yet entire
months, reduced and exhausted, before he can stand upright, if he is not
taken off in the interval (as is frequently the case) by a typhus fever, a
leucophlegmacy, or a pulmonary consumption, the common result of this
mode of treatment.
He who feels the steady pulse of a patient an hour before the shivering
comes on, which always precedes acute pleurisy, will be much surprised
when, two hours after, (the fever having set in,) they try to persuade
him that the violent plethora which then exists, makes repeated bleeding necessary; and he asks himself, by what miracle could those pounds
of blood, which are now to be taken away, and which he had, two hours
before, felt beating with a tranquil movement, have effected an entrance
into the arteries of the patient? There could not be an ounce of blood
more in his veins than he possessed two hours before, when he was in
good health. Thus, when the allceopathic physician prescribes venesection, it is not at all superfluous blood that he draws from the patient
attacked with acute fever, because this liquid could not possibly exist in
too great quantity; but he deprives him of a portion of the normal blood
necessary to his existence, and to the re-establishment of health;-a
grievous loss, which it is no longer in his power to repair, and he thinks,
notwithstanding, to have acted according to the axiom tolle causam, to
which he gives so wrong an interpretation, whilst the sole and true
cause of the malady was, not a superabundance of blood, which could



17
patient in a rational manner.  They likewise suppose, that by
removing a polypus by ligature, extirpating a tumefied gland,
or destroying the same by suppuration, produced by local
irritation, by dissecting out the insulated cyst of a steatornatous
or meliceretous tumour, operating for aneurism, fistula lachrymalis, or fistula in ano. amputating a cancerous breast, or a
limb where the bone had become carious, &c. &c. to have
cured the maladies in a radical manner, and destroyed their
cause. They imagine the same thing when they make use
of their repellent remedies, and dry up old ulcers in the legs,
by astringents, oxides of lead, copper and zinc, accompanied, it
is true, with purgatives, which only weaken, without diminishing the fundamental evil; when they cauterise chancres, destroy condylomata locally, drive back itch from the skin, by
sulphur ointment, lead, mercury, or zinc; and, finally, when
they cure ophthalmy, with solutions of lead or zinc, and drive
away pain from the members by the use of opodeldoc, volatile
liniment, or fumigations of cinnabar and amber. In all such
cases, they think they have annihilated the evil, triumphed
over the disease, and performed a rational treatment directed
against the cause.   But mark what follows!  New   forms of
diseases, which infallibly manifest themselves sooner or later,
and which, when they appear, are taken for fresh maladies,
being always worse than the primitive affection, evidently refute
the theories of the old school. These ought to undeceive
never exist, but a dynamic inflammatory irritation of the vascular system,
as is proved by the permanent and speedy cure which may be effected in
similar cases, by administering one or two incredibly minute doses of
the juice of aconite, which is homceopathic with this irritation. The
old school err not less, in recommending partial bleedings, and still more
so, in the application of leeches in great numbers, when treating local
inflammation, after the manner of Broussais. The palliative relief
which they afford at first, is not crowned by a rapid or perfect cure; the
weakness and valetudinarian state to which the parts, that have been
thus treated, remain a prey, and sometimes even the whole body, sufficiently prove how erroneous it is to attribute local inflammation to local
plethora; and how deceitful are the consequences of such bleedings;
when this inflammatory irritation, apparently local, can be destroyed in
a prompt and permanent manner, by a small dose of aconite, or, according to circumstances, of belladonna, a mode by which the malady is
speedily and effectively cured, without having recourse to bleedings;
which nothing can justify.
R



18


them, and prove that the evil has an immaterial cause, the
deeper concealed, because its origin is dynamic, and it cannot
be destroyed but by dynamic power.
An hypothesis, which the schools of medicine generally
entertained until a recent date, (and, I might even say, until
the present time,) is that of morbid or peccant matter in
diseases, however subtile that matter may be supposed to be.
The blood and lymphatic vessels were to be disencumbered of
this matter by the exhalants, the skin, the kidneys, and the
salivary glands; the chest was to be freed from it by the
trachial and bronchial glands; the stomach and the intestinal
canal by vomiting and alvine dejections-to be able to say that
the body was cleansed of the material cause which excited the
disease, and that they had accomplished a radical cure according to the principle-tolle causam!
By incisions made in the diseased body, in which, for years
together, foreign substances are inserted, producing tedious
ulcers (issues and setons), they would draw off the materia
peccans, from the (purely dynamically) diseased body, as dregs
escape by a faucet from a filthy cask. By perpetual blisters
(cantharides and mezereum), they also think to abstract this
peccant matter, and thus thoroughly purify the system. By
such inconsiderate and unnatural treatment, the exhausted
patient is commonly brought into a condition totally incurable.
I grant it was more convenient for human incapacity to suppose, that in the maladies which presented themselves for cure,
there existed some morbid principle, of which the mind could
conceive the materiality, especially as the patients willingly lent
themselves to an hypothesis of this kind. By admitting this,
they had nothing further to do than to administer a sufficient
quantity of medicines capable of purifying the blood and the
fluids, of exciting urine and perspiration, promoting expectoration, and scouring out the stomach and intestines. This is the
reason that all the authors on materia medica, who have
appeared since Dioscorides up to the present day, say nothing
of the peculiar and special action of individual medicines, but
content themselves; after enumerating their supposed virtues in



19


any particular case of disease, with saying, whether they promote urine, perspiration, expectoration, or the menstrual flow,
and particularly if they have the effect of emptying the alimentary canal upwards or downwards, because the principal
tendency of the efforts of practitioners has, at all times, been the
expulsion of a morbid material principle, and of a quantity of
acrid matter, which they imagined to be the cause of disease.
These, however, were vague dreams, gratuitous suppositions,
hypotheses destitute of foundation, skilfully invented for the
convenience of therapeutic medicine, which flattered itself that
it would have an easier task to perform in contending against
morbid material principles. (Si modo essent!)
But the essence of diseases, and their cure, will not bend to
our fancies and convenience; diseases will not, out of deference
to our stupidity, cease to be dynamic aberrations, which our
spiritual existence undergoes in its mode of feeling and actingthat is to say, immaterial changes in the state of health.
The causes of disease cannot possibly be material, since the
least foreign substance* introduced into the blood vessels, however mild it may appear to us, is suddenly repulsed by the vital
power, as a poison; or, where this does not take place, death
itself ensues. Even when the smallest foreign particle chances
to insinuate itself into any of the sensitive parts, the principle
of life which is spread throughout our interior, does not rest
until it has procured the expulsion of this body, by pain, fever,
suppuration, or gangrene. And, in a skin disease of twenty
years' standing, could this vital principle, whose activity is
indefatigable, suffer patiently, during twenty years, an exanthemic material principle (the poison of tetter, scrofula, or gout)
to exist in the fluids? What nosologist has ever seen one of
those morbid principles, of which he speaks with so much confidence, and upon which he presumes to found a plan of medical
treatment? Who has ever been able to exhibit to the view, the
principle of gout, or the virus of scrofula?
* Life was suddenly endangered by injecting a little pure water into
a vein. See Mullen, in Birch, History of the Royal Society, Vol. IV.
Atmospheric air introduced iuto the veins has occasioned death. See
J. H. Voigt, Magazin fiur den neusten Zustand der Naturkunde, Vol.
I. iii. p. 25.
Even the mildest liquids, introduced into the veins, have placed life in
danger. See Autenrieth, Physiologie, II. ~ 784.



20


Even when a material substance, applied to the skin, or
introduced into a wound, has propagated disease by infection,
who can prove (what has so often been affirmed in our Pathogeny) that the slightest particle of this material substance penetrates into our liquids or becomes absorbed?* It is in vain to
wash the genitals with care and promptitude, such precaution
will not protect the system from the venereal virus. The least
breath of air emanating from a patient labouring under smallpox is sufficient to produce that formidable disease in a healthy
child.
How   much of this material principle-what quantity in
weight-would be requisite for the liquids to imbibe, in order
to produce, in the first instance, syphilis, which will continue
during the whole term of life; and, in the second, the smallpox, which often rapidly destroys life amidst a suppurationt
almost general?
* A young girl, of Glasgow, eight years of age, having been bitten by a,
mad dog, the surgeon immediately cut out the part, which, nevertheless,
did not save the child from an attack of hydrophobia thirty-six days after,
of which she died at the end of two days. Med. Comment. of Edinb.
Dec. 2, vol. ii. 1793.
t In order to account for the great quantity of putrid fcecal matter, and
fetid ichorous discharge, which arises in disease, and to represent these
substances as the cause that calls forth, and keeps up, the morbid state,
although, at the moment of infection, nothing material had been seen to
enter into the body, they had recourse to another hypothesis, which admitted, that certain very minute contagious principles act upon the body
as a ferment, bringing the humours into the same degree of corruption
with themselves, and converting them in this manner into a similar ferment, which keeps up the disease. But, by what purifying decoctions
do they expect to free the body from a ferment that is constantly
renewed, and expel it so completely from the mass of fluids, that not a
single particle may remain, which, according to the admitted hypothesis,
if any did remain, would infallibly corrupt the humours afresh, and reproduce, as at first, new morbific principles? Thus, according to the
manner of the old school, it would be impossible ever to cure these
diseases. Here we see to what absurd conclusions the most artful hypothesis will lead, if founded in error. The most firmly rooted syphilis,
when the psoric affection, with which it is often complicated, has been
removed, may be cured by one or two small doses of a solution of mercury, diluted to the decillionth potence, whereby the general syphilitic
corruption of the humours is (dynamically) corrected in a permanent
and constitutional manner.



23


to every reasonable man, since no good can result from it, in
treating the principal diseases of mankind, viz. the chronic, but,
on the contrary, much mischief?
No one will deny that the degenerate and impure substances
which appear in diseases, are any thing else than the mere product of disease itself, which the system can get rid of, in a forcible manner, frequently too forcible, without the aid of evacuating
medicines, and that they are re-produced so long as the disease
continues. These substances often appear to the true physician, in the shape of morbid symptoms, and aid him in discovering the nature and image of the disease, which he afterwards avails himself of, in performing a cure by means of
homceopathic agents.
then, if there be no necessity at all for seeking to expel and destroy
the teenia, by means so violent and cruel, and which place the life
of the patient in such imminent danger! The different species of trenia
are only found in patients labouring under a psoric affection, and when
the latter is cured, they instantly disappear. Until the cure is accomplished, they live, without being a source of great inconvenience to the
patient, not exactly in the intestines, but amid the residue of the
aliments, where they exist without doing injury, and find what they
require for their nourishment. As long as this state of things continues,
they do not touch the coats of the intestines, or do any harm to the body
that contains them; but the first moment that an acute disease attacks
the patient, the contents of the intestines become insupportable to the
animal, which turns itself about and irritates the sensitive part of the
entrails, exciting a species of spasmodic cholic, which adds greatly to
the sufferings of the invalid. In the same manner, the child is restless,
turns and pushes, while the mother is sick, but floats quietly in the
amniotic fluid, without inconvenience to her, when she is well. It may
be observed here, that the symptoms which manifest themselves at this
epoch, with persons who have the solitary worm within them, are of
such a nature, that often the smallest dose of tincture of male-fern-root
(filex mas.) speedily effects their eradication in a homeopathic manner,
because it puts an end to that part of the malady occasioned by the disturbed state of the animal: the tape-worm, finding itself once more at
ease, continues to exist upon the intestinal substances, without incommoding the patient in any very painful degree, until the anti-psoric cure
is so far advanced that the worm no longer finds the contents of the
intestinal canal fit for his support, and he voluntarily quits it for ever,
without any purgatives being employed.



24


But the most skilful among the present followers of the former
school of medicine do not wish it to be known, that the chief
aim of their mode of treatment, is the expulsion of material
morbid principles. To the numerous evacuants which they
employ, they apply the name of derivatives, and in so doing,
pretend that they do nothing more than imitate the nature of
the disordered system, which, in her efforts to re-establish
health, distinguishes fever by sweats and urine; pleurisy by
bleedings at the nose, perspiration, and mucous expectoration;
other diseases by vomiting, diarrhcea, and hemorrhoidal flux;
articular pains, by ulcers on the legs; angina by salivation,
&c., or by metastasis and abscesses which she forms in parts
distant from the seat of the disease.
Accordingly, they think they can do nothing better than
imitate nature, and thus they adopt an indirect mode of treatment in the majority of diseases. They follow the traces of
the diseased vital power left to itself, and proceed in an indirect
manner,4 by applying stronger heterogeneous irritation to parts
distant from the seat of the disease, exciting and keeping up
evacuations by the organs dissimilar to the tissues affected, in
order to turn the course of the evil, in some degree, towards
this new position.
This derivative system was, and still continues, one of the chief
curative indications of the prevailing school.
By this imitation of self-helping nature, vis medicatrix naturae
as it is termed by others, they try to excite by forcible means
(in the parts least affected, and which can best support the
malady which the medicines provoke) fresh symptoms which
extinguish the primitive disease,t by assuming the appearance
of a crisis, and thus allow the powers of self-helping nature to
operate a gradual resolution.;
* Instead of extinguishing the evil promptly, and without delay, as in
the homceopathic mode of treatment, by the application of dynamic
medicinal powers directed against the diseased parts of the system.
t As if any thing immaterial could be drawn off'! Yet they suppose
a morbid material, be it as subtile as it may.
+ Diseases that are moderately acute, are the only ones that terminate
quietly, when they have reached the natural term of their career, whether
weak all(eopathic remedies be applied to them or otherwise: the vital
powers, when reviving, gradually substitute the normal state in the placee



25


They recommend diaphoretics, diuretics, venesection, setons,
and cauteries, and above all, excite irritation of the alimentary
canal; so as to produce evacuations from above and more esfecially from below, all of which were irritatives, and to these
they applied the names of aperients and dissolvents.*
In aid of this derivative system they likewise employ another
which bears great affinity to it, and which consists of counterirritants: lamb's-wool applied to the bare skin, foot-baths,
nauseants, the cure by infliction of the torments of hunger upon
the intestinal canal, (abstinence,) applications that excite pains,
inflammation, and suppuration in the neighbouring or distant
parts, such as armoracia, sinapisms, blisters, mezereum, the
seton, Autenrieth's ointment, (ointment of emetic tartar,) the
moxa, actual cautery, the acupuncture, &c. And in this, they
again follow the example of pure nature, which, left to herself,
endeavours to get rid of the dynamic disease by pains which
she causes to arise in the distant regions of the body, by metastasis, and abscesses: by cutaneous eruptions or suppurating
ulcers; but all her efforts, in this respect, are useless, where
the disease is of a chronic nature.
Thus it is evident that it was no well-digested plan, but
merely imitation, that led the old school to these helpless, pernicious, and indirect methods of cure, both derivative and
counter-irritant; and induced them to adopt plans of treatment
so inefficacious, debilitating, and injurious, in ameliorating
and dissipating disease, which arouse another and worse evil to
occupy the place of the former. Can we call that healing
which rather deserves to be called destroying? for the name of
cure could never be applied to such a result. They were conof the in-normal. But in every acute disease, and in those that are
chronic, which constitute the great majority of diseases to which man
is subject, this resource no longer comes to the aid of simple nature, and
the old school of medicine. The efforts of the vital powers, and the
imitative attempts of allceopathy, are not potent enough to effect a resolution; and all that results from them is a truce of short duration, during
which the enemy gathers his forces to re-appear, sooner or later, in a more
formidable shape than ever.
* This very denomination likewise announces a supposition on their
part of the presence of some morbific substance which was to be dissolved
and expelled.
4



26


tented to follow nature in the efforts which she makes, and
which are only crowned with partial success' in acute diseases
of a mild form.
* The ordinary school of medicine regarded the means which the
organism employs to relieve itself, in those patients who make no use of
medicines, as perfect models of imitation; but they were greatly mistaken. The miserable and very imperfect attempts which the vital
powers make to assist themselves in acute diseases, is a spectacle that
ought to excite man to use all the resources of his learning and wisdom,
to put an end, by a real cure, to this torment which nature herself inflicts. If nature cannot cure, homceopathically, a disease already existing in the system, by the production of a fresh malady similar to it,
(sec. 43-46.) a thing not often in her power to effect, (sec. 50.) and if
the system, deprived of all external succour, stands alone to triumph
over a malady that has just broken out, (her resistance is totally powerless in chronic miasms) we see nothing but painful and often dangerous
efforts of the constitution to save itself at all hazards, efforts of which
death is most frequently the result.
Just as little as we can witness what is passing in the interior of
our bodies in a healthy condition, and as certainly as these processes
remain concealed from us, as they lie open to the sight of Omnisciencejust so little can we perceive the internal operations of the ainmal
frame, when life is disturbed by disease. The action that takes place in
diseases manifests itself only by external symptoms, through the medium of which alone, our system expresses the troubles that take place
in the interior; so that, in each given case, we never once discover
which are those among the morbid symptoms, that owe their origin to
the primitive action of the disease, and those which are occasioned by
the re-action of the vital powers endeavouring to rescue themselves from
danger. Both are confounded before our eyes, and only present to us,
(reflected on the exterior) an image of the entire malady within; since
the fruitless efforts by which nature, abandoned to herself, makes, to put
an end to the malady, are also sufferings which the whole frame undergoes. This is the reason why those evacuations which nature usually
excites at the termination of diseases, that have been rapid in their
attacks, and which are called crises, often do more harm than good.
What the vital powers do in these pretended crises, and in what manner
they are accomplished, are mysteries to us, as well as every other internal action which takes place in the organic economy of life. One thing,
however, is certain, which is, that in the course of these efforts, there
are particular parts that suffer more or less, and which are sacrificed to
the safety of others. These operations of the vital power proceeding to
combat an acute disease, solely in conformity to the laws of the organic
constitution, and not according to the inspirations of a reflecting mind,
are, for the most part, merely a section of alleopathy. In order to free



28


miasms, such as psora, syphilis, and sycosis. And, far from
being able to relieve the system of any one of these miasms,
she does not even possess the power of ameliorating them; but,
on the contrary, suffers them quietly to continue their ravages
until death comes to close the eyes of the patient, after long
years of grief and suffering.
In a matter so important as that of healing, —in a profession
that requires so much intelligence, judgment, and skill, how
could the old school (which was accounted rational) blindly
take the vital power for its best instructor and guide; how could
it venture, without reflection, to imitate the indirect and revolutionary acts which the vital power performs in disease-and,
finally, follow it as the best and most perfect of models, whilst
reason, that magnificent gift of the Deity, has been granted to
us, in order that we may go infinitely beyond it, in the aid
which we are to bring to our fellow mortals?
When the prevailing school of medicine, in the accustomed
application of their repellent and derivative systems of cure,
(which have no other basis than an inconsiderate imitation of
the natural, automatic powers of life,) attack the healthy organs, and inflict on them pains more acute, than those of the
disease itself against which they are directed-or, what happens more frequently, force evacuations, which dissipate in
pure loss the strength and the juices;-their aim is to direct
towards the parts which they irritate, that morbid action which
life developed in the organs that were primitively affected, and
thus violently uproot the natural disease, by exciting a stronger
heterogeneous disease in the more healthy parts-that is to say,
by making use of indirect and circuitous means, which exhaust
the powers and occasion great suffering.'
* Daily experience shows us how unsuccessful these manoeuvres are
in chronic diseases. In veryfew cases is a cure effected. But can they
call that a victory, where instead of attacking the enemy in front, hand
to hand, and terminating the difference by his death, they content themselves with setting every part of the country behind him in flames, cutting off retreat and destroying all around. By such means they may
certainly succeed in breaking the courage of their adversary, but their
object is still unattained; the foe is not destroyed, he is still there; and
when his magazines are replenished, he again rears his head, more ferocious than he was before.-The enemy, I say, is not destroyed, but the



30


While the greater number of allceopathic physicians, in their
general imitation of the salutary effects of nature, abandoned to
her own resources, thus introduced into the practice of medicine those derivative systems which they termed useful, and
which every one varied according to the fancied indications
suggested by his own ideas; others, aiming at a still higher
object, promoted with all their skill the tendency which the
vital powers exhibit in diseases, to relieve themselves by evacuations, and opposing metastasis, and endeavoured in some degree to
aid them, by promoting these derivations and evacuations,
imagining that by this mode of treatment they might justly
arrogate to themselves the names ministri naturce. Because it
often happens, in chronic diseases, that the evacuations which
nature excites, bring relief in cases where there are acute pains,
paralysis, spasms, &c., the old school imagined that the true
method of curing disease was by favouring, keeping up, or
even increasing the evacuations. But they never discovered
that all those pretended crises, those evacuations and derivations produced by nature abandoned to her own exertions, only
procure palliative relief for a short period, and, that far from
contributing towards a real cure, they, on the contrary, aggravate the internal primitive evil, by consuming the strength and
the juices. No one has ever seen those efforts of simple nature
effect the durable recovery of a patient, nor have those evacuations, excited by the system,* ever cured a chronic disease. On
the contrary, in all cases of this nature, after a short relief, (the
duration of which gradually diminishes,) the primitive affection is manifestly aggravated, and the attacks return stronger
and more frequent than before, although the evacuations do not
cease.
In the same manner, nature, abandoned to her own resources
in internal chronic diseases which threaten lifi, can only bring
relief by exciting the appearance of external local symptoms,
in order to turn away danger from the organs indispensable to
existence, and transport it, by metastasis, to those which are
not so: such attempts of an unintelligent, inconsiderate but
energetic vital force, have a tendency towards any thing but a
real cure; they are nothing more than palliatives, short stag

* Not more effectual are those artificially produced.



31


nations imposed on the internal disease, at the sacrifice of a
great portion of the liquids and strength, without the primitive
affection losing any thing of its intensity. Without the aid of
homoeopathic treatment, all they can do, at farthest, is to delay
for a time that death which is inevitable.
The Alleopathy of the old school greatly exaggerated the
efforts of pure nature. Falsely judging them to be truly salutary, they sought to promote and develop them still farther,
hoping, by these means, to destroy the entire evil and effect a
radical cure. When, in a chronic disease, the vital power
appeared to improve this or that grievous symptom of the internal state, for example, by means of a humid exanthema, then
the self-styled minister of nature applied a blister, or some other
exutory, upon the suppurating surface, to draw (duce natura)
a still greater quantity of humour from the skin, and thus assist
nature in the cure, by removing from the body the morbific
principle. But sometimes, when the action of the remedy was
too violent, the humid tetter already old, and the body too susceptible of irritation, the external affection increased considerably, without any advantage accruing to the primitive evil, and
the pains, rendered still more acute, deprived the patient of
sleep, diminished his strength, and often brought on a bad description of feverish erysipelas. Sometimes, when the remedy
acted with more gentleness upon the local disease, (which was
perhaps yet recent,) it exercised a kind of external homeopathy
upon the local symptoms which nature had produced upon the
skin, in order to relieve the internal malady; thus renewing the
latter, to which still greater danger was attached, and exposing
the vital powers by the suppression of the local symptoms, to
the excitement of others of a graver nature, in other and more
noble parts. The patient then was attacked with a dangerous
ophthalmy, deafness, spasms in the stomach, epileptic convulsions, suffocation, fits of apoplexy, mental derangement, &c.* The
same pretext of assisting the vital powers in their curative efforts;
led the minister of nature, when the malady caused an afflux
of blood into the veins of the rectum, or the anus, (blind piles,)
* These are the natural results of repelling such local symptomsresults, which the alloopathic physician often regards as diseases that are
perfectly new and of a different character.



32


to have recourse to the repeated application of leeches in great
numbers, in order to open an issue to the blood in that quarter.
The emission of blood procured an amendment, sometimes so
slight, as to be scarce deserving of notice; but, at the same
time, it weakened the body and gave rise to a yet stronger congestion towards the extremity of the intestinal canal, without
effecting the slightest diminution of the primitive malady.
In almost every case, where the diseased vital powers
endeavoured to evacuate a little blood by vomiting, expectoration, &c., in order to diminish the severity of a dangerous
internal affection, they immediately hastened (duce natura) to
give all the assistance in their power to these pretended salutary efforts of nature, and blood in abundance was extracted
from the vein; which never failed to prove injurious in the
end, and to weaken the body to a nanifest extent.
And still more frequently, with the intent of assisting nature,
in chronic nausea, they excited powerful evacuations of the
stomach and administered plentiful emetics; but never with
any good result, and seldom without frightful and even dangerous consequences. To appease the internal malady in a
slight degree, the vital powers sometimes excite indolent
enlargements of the external glands. The minister of nature
thinks he is serving the divinity to whom he is devoted, by
bringing these tumours to a suppuration, by the use of frictions
and warm applications, in order to plunge the knife into the
abscess when it is arrived at maturity, and cause the peccant
matter to flow externally.(?) But experience has a thousand
times proved the interminable evils that always result from this
mode of treatment.
Because the allceopathist has often seen severe sufferings, in
chronic diseases, somewhat relieved by spontaneous nocturnal
perspiration, or by certain natural dejections of liquid matter,
he thinks himself bound to follow these indications of nature;
he likewise thinks it his duty to second the labours which he
sees carried on in his own presence, by prescribing a complete
sudorific treatment, or the continued use, during several years,
of what he calls gentle laxatives, in order to relieve the patient
of the disease that torments him with more speed and certainty.
But this mode of treatment never produces any thing but a



33
contrary result, that is to say, it always aggravates the primitive disease.
Thus the allceopathist, yielding to the force of this opinion,
which he has embraced without scrutiny, notwithstanding the
absence of all foundation, persists in secondingc the efforts of
the diseased vital powers, and augmenting the derivations and
evacuations, which never lead to the attainment of his object,
but rather to the ruin of the patient.  He never discovers that
local affections, evacuations, and apparent derivations, (which
are effects excited and kept up by the vital powers abandoned
to their own resources, in order to afford some slight relief to
the primitive disease,) are of themselves a constituent part of
the ensemble of the signs of the malady, against the totality of
which there could be no real, salutary, and curative remedy,
save a medicine whose effects were analogous with the phenomena occasioned by its action upon mal when in a state of
health, or, in other terms, a homoeopathic remedy.
As every thing that simple nature performs to relieve herself
in acute, and more particularly, in chronic diseases, is highly
imperfect, and is actually disease itself, it may readily be
conceived that the efforts of art labouring to assist this imperfection do still greater injury, and in acute maladies, at least,
* The old school, however, often permitted themselves to follow an
inverse method of treatment, that is, when the efforts of nature, tending
to relieve the internal malady by evacuations, or by exciting local external
symptoms, manifestly injured the patient, they employ against them all
the powers of repellents; and thus combat chronic pains, insomnolency,
and diarrhoea of long standing, with strong and hazardous doses of opium;
vomitings, by effervescing mixtures; fcetid perspiration of the feet, by
cold foot-baths and astringent fomentations; eruptions of the skin, with
preparations of lead and zinc; uterine hemorrhages, by injections of vinegar; colliquative perspirations, by alum curd; nocturnal seminal emissions, by the use of camphor in large quantities; sudden glow of heat
over the face and body, by nitric, sulphuric, and vegetable acids; bleedings at the nostrils, with dossils of lint dipped in alcohol or astringent
liquids; ulcers on the lower extremities, by oxides of lead, zinc, &c. But
thousands of facts attest the melancholy consequences that result from
this mode of treatment. The allcopathist, both in speaking and writing,
boasts of being a rational physician, of searching out the latent cause
of disease, and always of effecting radical cures; but it is evident that a
treatment founded on isolated symptoms must always be detrimental to
the patient.
5



34


they cannot remedy that which is defective in the attempts of
nature, because the physician, incapable of following the concealed paths by which the vital power accomplishes its crises,
could only operate upon the exterior by means of energetic remedies, whose effects not only do less good than those of nature,
abandoned to herself, but on the contrary, are more perturbating
and destructive to the powers.  Even this imperfect relief,
which nature effects. by means of derivations and crises, he
cannot attain by following the same path; do what he will,
even the miserable succour which the vital powers can procure,
when abandoned to their own resources, is infinitely beyond
the skill of the allceopathist.
By a scarification of the pituitary membrane, it has been
tried to produce bleeding at the nose, in imitation of natural
nasal hemorrhage, to relieve, for example, an attack of chronic
cephalalgy. In such a case, a quantity of blood might be drawn
from the nostrils sufficient to weaken the patient; but the relief
would be far less than that afforded at another time, when the
vital instinctive powers, of their own accord, caused only a few
drops of blood to flow.
One of those so called critical perspirations or diarrheas,
which the incessant activity of the vital powers excites, after
any sudden indisposition arising from vexation, fright, cold, or
injury from improper lifting, is far more efficacious in allaying,
momentarily at least, the acute suffering of the patient, than
all the nauseous sudorifics or purgatives, contained in the
shop of an apothecary. This is proved beyond a doubt by daily
experience.
However, the vital power, which is devoid of intelligence
and judgment, and which cannot act of itself, but according to
the organic disposition of our bodies, was not given to us, that
we should follow it as our best guide in the cure of diseases,
much less that we should imitate, in a servile manner, its
imperfect attempts to restore health by joining to it a treatment
more opposed than its own to the object it has in view, for no
other purpose than that of sparing ourselves the study and
reflection necessary to the discovery of the true art of healing,
and finally to place a bad copy of the inefficacious aid which
nature affords when abandoned to her own resources, in the
room of the most noble of all human arts! What reflecting man



35


would copy the efforts of nature in curing disease? These very
efforts are the disease itself, and the morbidly affected vital energy is evidently the source of the malady. It follows then, that
to imitate or to suppress these efforts must in one case augment
them, or in the other, render them dangerous by suppression,
and the allceopathist does both; these are their pernicious
doings, who boast of following the rational plan of healing.
No; that innate power of man which directs life in the most
perfect manner whilst in health, whose presence is alike felt in
every part of the system, in the sensitive as in the irritable
fibre, and which is the indefatigable spring of all the normal
functions of the body, was not created for the purpose of aiding
itself in disease. It does not exercise a system of cure that is
worthy of imitation, that is to say, a work of reflection and judgment, and which, when the automatic and unintelligent vital powers
have been disordered by disease, and in-normal action produced,
knows how to modify them by appropriate remedies, so that after
the disappearance of the new disease produced by the medicine,
(which soon takes place,) they return to their normal stale, and
to their appointed function of maintaining health in the system,
without having undergone, during this conversion, any painful or
debilitating attacks. Homceopathic medicine teaches us the mode by
which we are to arrive at this result.
A great number of patients treated according to the methods
of the old school, which have just passed in review before us,
escaped from diseases, not in chronic disorders, (non-venereal,)
but in those maladies that were acute, and which are less dangerous. This, however, was effected by such painfully circuitous
means, and frequently in a manner so imperfect, that no one
could say the cure was performed by the influence of an art
that acted mildly in its mode of treatment. In cases where
there was no imminent danger, acute diseases were sometimes
repressed by means of venesection, or sometimes by the suppression of one of the principal symptoms, by a palliative
enantiopathic remedy (contraria contrariis), or sometimes suspended by irritants and revulsants applied to parts removed
from the diseased organ, until the course of their natural revo



36


lution was ended-that is to say, they opposed them by indirect
means, exhausting the strength and the juices; so that the
greater part of what was necessary to be done, in order to
remove the disease and repair the losses which the patient had
undergone, remained to be performed by the self-preserving
vital power. The latter, then, had not only to subdue the
acute natural disease, but also to overcome the results of an ill
directed mode of treatment. In casual cases, this vital power
was to exercise its own energies to bring back the functions to
their normal rhythm, which could only be effected imperfectly
and slowly, and with great difficulty.
In acute diseases it is doubtful whether this treatment, of the
existing school, really facilitates or abridges the cure by the aid
of nature, since neither of them act but in an indirect manner,
and their derivative and counter irritating modes of cure,
wound the system more profoundly, and lead to a still greater
dissipation of the vital powers.
The old school practise yet another method of cure, which
they call " exciting and strengthening,"' (by excitantia, nervina,
tonica, confortantia, roborantia.) It is surprising that they should
boast of this mode of treatment.
Has it ever succeeded in removing the weakness which a
chronic disease so often engenders, augments, and keeps up, by
prescribing (as it has so frequently done) etheric Rhine wine,
or spirituous Tokay? As this treatment was not able to cure
the chronic disease, (the source of the debility,) the strength of
the patient decreased in proportion as they made him take more
wine, because the vital powers, in their re-action, oppose
relaxation to artificial excitements.
Did cinchona, or any of the mistaken, ambiguous and pernicious substances, which collectively bear the name of Amara,
ever restore strength in these cases which are of such frequent
occurrence? These vegetable products, which they pretended
were tonic and strengthening in all circumstances, together
* This method is, properly speaking, enantiopathic, and I will again
touch uponit in the course of the Organon, (sec. 59.)



37


with the preparations of iron, did they not add fresh sufferings
to the old ones, by reason of their peculiar morbific action,
without being able to remove the debility which depended on
an unknown malady of long standing?
The so called unguenta nervina, or the other spirituous and
balsamic topical applications, did they ever diminish in a durable manner, or even momentarily, incipient paralysis of an arm
or leg, (which arises, as is frequently the case, from a chronic
disease,) without curing the cause itself? Or have electric and
galvanic shocks ever produced, in such cases, any other results
than those of gradually increasing the paralysis of the muscular
irritability and the nervous* susceptibility, and finally rendering
the paralysis complete?
Have not the highly boasted excitantia and aphrodisiaca,
ambergris, smelts, tincture of cantharides, truffles, cardamoms,
cinnamon, and vanilla, constantly ended with changing the
gradually declining power of the virile faculties (which is
always caused by some unobserved chronic miasm) into total
impotence?
How could they boast of an acquisition of strength, and excitement, which lasts only a few hours, when the results that
follow bring on an opposite state (which is lasting) according
to the laws of all palliatives?
The little good that the excitantia and roborantia did to the
patient treated for acute maladies, according to the old method,
was a thousand times overbalanced by the ill effects which the
use of them produced in chronic diseases.
The allceopathists not unfrequently commence the treatment
of a chronic disease, by blindly administering their so called
* An apothecary (in Jever) had a voltaic column, the gradual strokes
of which gave temporary relief to persons afflicted with deafness. Soon
these shocks caused no more effect, and it was necessary, in order to
produce the same results, to render them yet stronger, until, in their
turn, they likewise became inefficacious: after this, the most powerful
shocks only had the faculty, at the commencement, of restoring the
hearing of the patient for a few hours, but finished by leaving him
a prey to total deafness.



39


medicine, and even the largest soon lose their effect. Their
primary operation being that of a stimulating palliative, the
entire vital energies, during the secondary effects of the medicine, become paralysed, and thus, by means of the rational
treatment of the old school, the speedy dissolution of the patient
is rendered inevitable. As certainly mortal as is the issue of
the case, the followers of the old system do not perceive it, and
the patient's death is ascribed by them to the malignity of his
disease.
Digitalis purpurea is a still more formidable palliative in
chronic diseases, and its virtues are highly extolled by the old
school for allaying the rapid and irritated pulse (purely symptomatic) in these maladies. Though the use of this potent
enantiopathic medicine, may, at first, in many instances, abate
the frequency of the pulse for some hours, yet it will shortly
afterwards become more frequent than ever. To retard its
velocity again, the medicine is repeated in a larger dose; it is
again availing, yet for a shorter period; until by frequent repetition, even in augmented doses, it loses its effects altogether.
The pulse not now being restrained by the secondary or consecutive effects of digitalis, becomes more rampant than before
its use, and too rapid to be reckoned. Among the train of consequences may also be observed, loss of sleep and appetite and
diminution of strength, until, finally, if these disasters do not
terminate in incurable mania, death becomes the patient's only
refuge!
Such, then, was the treatment which the allceopathic physician practised on his patients. The latter, therefore, were
obliged to yield to necessity, since they could derive nothing
better from the other physicians who had drawn their information from the same fallacious source.
The fundamental cause of chronic diseases, (non venereal) and the mode by which they could be cured, remained
* Notwithstanding all this, Hufeland, the representative of the old
school, with great self-complacency, in his pamphlet on homoaopathia,
p. 22, praises the digitalis for the purpose of repressing morbid frequency of the pulse: his words are, " None will deny" (but experience
does) "that a too vehement circulation can be removed by digitalis" (?)
permanently? does he mean removed? what! by the use of an heroic
enantiopathic remedy? Poor Hufeland!



40


unknown to these practitioners, who prided themselves on
their own remedies, which they said were directed against the
cause. How was it possible for them to cure the immense
number of chronic diseases by their indirect methods, their imperfect imitations of the efforts of an automatic vital power,
which were never destined to become models of a treatment to
be followed in medicine?
They regarded that which they believed to be the character
of the malady, as the cause of the disease itself, and accordingly,
directed their pretended radical cures against spasm, inflammation (plethora), fever, general or partial debility, pituita,
putridity, obstructions, &c. which they imagined they could
remove with the aid of their antispasmodics, antiphlogistics,
tonics, irritants, antiseptics, dissolvents, resolutives, derivatives,
evacuants, and other repellent medicines, known to themselves
only in a superficial manner.
But indications of so vague a nature were insufficient to discover those medicines which are of real utility, particularly so
in the materia medica of the old school, which, as I have elsewhere shown,* depended mostly upon mere conjecture, and on
false conclusions ab usu in morbis, mixed up with fraud and
falsehood.
They continued to act with the same degree of coldness in
matters that were still more hypothetical; against the deficiency
or superabundance of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen
in the fluids; against the exaltation or diminution of irritability,
sensibility, nutrition, arterial congestion, venous congestion,
capillary congestion, astheny, &c., without being acquainted
with a single remedy by which they could reach so visionary
an object. It was ostentation that induced them to attempt
these cures which could not be advantageous to the patients.
Every appearance of treating disease effectively and to the
purpose, disappears in their manner of associating various
medicinal substances to constitute what they call a prescription,
and time has not only rendered this association sacred, but has
converted it into a law. They place at the head of this recipe,
under the name of basis, a medicine that is not at all known in
* In the treatise " On the Sources of the Old Materia Medica," in the
third part of my Materia Medica.



42


to expect from it a certain curative effect, is an absurdity
evident to every unprejudiced' and reflecting individual. The
* Even among the ordinary schools of medicine, there have been
persons who discovered the absurdity of mixing medicines, although
they themselves followed this eternal routine which their own reason
condemned. Marcus Herz expresses himself (Hufeland's Journal, II.
p. 33,) on this subject in the following terms:-" When we wish to
remove inflammation, we do not employ either nitre, sal ammoniac, or
vegetable acids, singly, but we usually mix up several antiphlogistics, or
use them altogether at the same time. If we have to contend against
putridity, we are not content with administering, in large quantities, one
of the known antiseptics, cinchona, mineral acids, arnica, serpentaria,
&c., to attain the object we have in view; but we prefer mixing up
several of them together, having a greater reliance upon their combined
action; or, not knowing which of them would act most suitably in the
existing case, we accumulate a variety of incompatible substances, and
abandon to chance the care of producing, by means of one or the other
of them, the relief we designed to afford. Thus, it is rare that, by the
aid of a single medicine, we excite perspiration, purify the blood, (?)
dissolve obstructions, provoke expectoration, or even effect purgation.
To arrive at these results, our prescriptions are always complicated;
they are scarcely ever simple and pure: consequently they cannot be
regarded as experiments relative to the effects of the various substances
that enter into their composition. In fact, we learnedly establish, among
the medicines in our recipes, a hierarchy, and we call that one the basis
to which we (properly speaking) confide the effect, giving to others the
names of adjuvants, corrigents, &c. But it is evident that mere arbitrary will has, for the most part, been the occasion of such a classification. The adjuvants contribute, as well as the basis, to the entire effect,
although, in the absence of a scale of measurement, we cannot determine
to what degree they may have participated. The influence of the corrigents over the virtues of the other medicines, likewise, cannot be
wholly indifferent; they must either increase or diminish them, or give
them another direction. The salutary change which we effect by the
aid of such a prescription, ought then always to be considered as the
result of its whole contents taken collectively, and we can never come
to any certain conclusion upon the individual efficacy of any one of the
ingredients of which it is composed. In short, we are but too slightly
acquainted with that which is essential to be known of all medicines,
and our knowledge with regard to the affinities which they enter into,
when mixed up together, is too limited for us to be able to say, with any
degree of certainty, what will be the mode or degree of action of a substance even the most insignificant in appearance, when introduced into
the human body, combined with other substances."



44


homceopathic mode of treatment, and yet more, no one has
ever put it into practice. But if this is the only true method,
(of which every one may be convinced with myself,) we ought
to discover sensible traces of it in every epoch of the art,
although its true character may have been unknown during
thousands of years.   And such has, in reality, been the
case.*
In all ages, the diseases which have been cured by medicines,
in a prompt, perfect, durable, and manifest manner, and which
were not indebted for their cure to any accidental circumstance,
or to the accomplishment of the natural revolution of the acute
disease, or to the circumstance of the bodily powers having
gradually regained a preponderance by means of an allceopathic
or antipathic treatment, (for being cured directly differs greatly
from being cured indirectly;) these diseases, I say, have yielded,
although without the knowledge of the physician, to a homceopathic remedy, that is to say, to a remedy in itself capable of
exciting a morbid state similar to that whose removal it
effected.
Even in an effectual cure that had been performed by the
aid of mixed medicines, (of which there are but few examples,)
it has been discovered, that the medicine whose action dominated over that of the others was always of a homceopathic
nature. But this fact presents itself to us still more evidently
in certain cases, where physicians performed a speedy cure by
the aid of a single remedy, in violation of the custom that
admitted none other but mixed medicines in the form of a prescription. Here we see, to our astonishment, that the cure was
always the effect of a single medicinal substance, capable of
itself to produce an affection similar to that under which the
patient laboured, although the physician did not know what he
was doing, and only acted thus in forgetfulness of the precepts
* For Truth, like the infinitely wise and gracious God, is eternal.
Men may disregard it for a time, until the period arrives when its rays,
according to the determination of Heaven, shall irresistibly break through
the mists of prejudice, and, like Aurora and the opening day, shed a
beneficent light, clear and inextinguishable, over the generations of
men.



45


of his own school. He gave a medicine, where, according to
the established laws of therapeutics, he should have administered exactly a contrary one, and by these means alone his
patients were promptly cured.
I shall here relate some examples of these homceopathic
cures, which find a clear and precise interpretation in the
honceopathic doctrine now discovered and acknowledged, but
which we are by no means to regard as arguments in favour of
the latter, because it stands firm without the aid of any such
support.*
The author of the treatise on epidemic diseases (;Es/lizv)
(attributed to Hippocrates), at the commencement of lib. 5.
mentions a case of cholera morbus that resisted every remedy,
and which he cured by means of veratrum album alone, which,
however, excites cholera of itself, as witnessed by Forestus,
Ledelius; Reimann, and many others.t
* If, in the cases which will be cited here, the doses of medicine
exceeded those which the safe homceopathic doctrine prescribes, they
were, of course, very naturally attended with the same degree of danger
which usually results from all homoeopathic agents when administered
in large doses. However, it often happens from various causes which
cannot at all times be discovered, that even very large doses of homoeopathic medicines effect a cure, without causing any notable injury;
either from the vegetable substance having lost a part of its strength, or
because abundant evacuations ensued which destroyed the greater part
of the effects of the remedy; or, finally, because the stomach had received
at the same time other substances, which, acting as an antidote, lessened
the strength of the dose.
t P. FORESTUS, xviii. obs. 44.-LEDELIUS, Misc. nat. cur. dec. iii. ann.
i. obs. 65.-REIMANN, Bresl. Samml. 1724, p. 535. In this, and in all the
examples that follow, I have purposely abstained from reporting either
my own observations or those of my adherents upon the special effects
of each individual medicine, but merely those of the physicians of times
past. My object for acting in this manner, is to show that the art of
curing homoeopathically might have been discovered before my time.



47


The remark made by Murray,* that oil of aniseed allays
pains of the stomach and flatulent colic caused by purgatives, ought not to surprise us, knowing that J. P. Albrechtt
has observed pains in the stomach produced by this liquid,
and P. Forestust violent colic likewise caused by its administration.
If F. Hoffman praises the efficacy of millefoil in various
cases of hemorrhage; if G. E. Stahl, Buchwald and Loseke
have found this plant useful in excessive hemorrhoidal flux; if
Quarin and the editors of the Breslauer Sammlungen speak of
the cure it has effected of hemoptysis; and finally, if Thomasius (according to Haller) has used it successfully in uterine
hemorrhage; these cures are evidently owing to the power
possessed by the plant, of exciting of itself hemorrhage and
hematuria, as observed by G. Hoffman,~ and more especially of
producing epistaxis, as confirmed by Boecler.II
Scovolo,** among many others, cured a case where the
urinary discharge was purulent, by arbutus uva ursi; which
never could have been performed if this plant had not the property of exciting heat in the urinary passage with discharge of a
mucous urine, as seen by Sauvages.tt
And though the frequent experience of Stoerck, Marges,
Planchon, Du Monceau, F. C. Junker, Schinz, Ehrmann, and
others had not already established the fact, that colchicum
autumnale cures a species of dropsy, still this faculty was to
have been expected from it, by reason of the particular power
which it possesses of diminishing the urinary secretion, and of
exciting at the same time a continual desire to pass water. It likewise causes the flow of a small quantity of urine of a fiery red
colour, as witnessed by Stoerck+t and de Berge.~~ The cure of
* Appar. Medic., 2d edit. 1, p. 429, 430.
t Misc. nat. cur. dec. ii. ann. 8, obs. 169.: Observat. et Curationes, lib. 21.
~ De Medicam. Officin. Leyden, 1738.
I| Cynosura Mat. Med. Cont. p. 552.
** In Girardi, de uva ursi. Padua, 1764.
tt Nosolog., iii. p. 200.:t Libellus de Colchico. Vienna, 1763, p. 12.
~~ Journal de Medecine, xxii.



48


an asthma attended with hypochondriasis, effected by Guritz*
by means of colchicum, and that of an asthma complicated
with an apparent hydrothorax, performed by Stoerckt with the
same substance, were evidently grounded upon the homceopathic property which it possesses, of exciting by itself asthma
and dyspnoea, as witnessed by de Berge.+
Muralto~ has seen what we may witness every day, viz. that
jalap, besides creating gripes of the stomach, also causes great
uneasiness and agitation. Every physician acquainted with the
facts upon which homoeopathy rests, will find it perfectly
natural, that the power so justly ascribed to this medicine by
G. W. Wedel,ll of allaying the gripes, restlessness, and screaming which are so frequent in young children, and of restoring
them to tranquil repose, arises from homoeopathic influence.
It is also known and has been attested by Murray, Hillary,
and Spielmann, that senna occasions a kind of colic, and produces, according to C. Hoffmann* and F. Hoffmann,tt fatulency
and agitation of the blood,+ ordinary causes of insomnolency. It
was this innate homceopathic virtue of senna, which enabled
Detharding~~ to cure with its aid patients afflicted with violent
colic and insomnolency.
Stoerck, who had so intimate a knowledge of medicines, was
on the point of discovering that the bad effects of the dictamnus,
which, as he observed himself, sometimes provokes a mucous
discharge from the vagina, 11l arose from the very same properties
in this root by virtue of which he cured a leucorrhea of long
standing.*"
* A. E. Bichner, Miscell. Phys. Med. Mathem, Ann. 1728, Jul. pp,
1212, 1213. Erfurt, 1732.
t Ibid. cas. 11, 13. Cont. cas. 4, 9.
1 Ibid. loc. cit.
~ Misc. Nat. Cur. dec. ii. a, 7, obs. 112.
II Opiolog. lib. 1, p. 1, cap. ii. p. 38.
** De Medicin, Officin. lib. 1, cap. 36,
tt Diss. de Manna, ~ 16.
It Murray, loc. cit. ii. p. 507. 2d, edit.
~~ Ephem. nat. cur. cent. 10, obs. 76.
II Lib. de Flarnm. Jovis. Vienna, 1769, cap. 2.
*** Ibid.



49


Stoerck, in like manner, should not have been astonished
when curing a general chronic eruption (humid, phagedenic
and psoric) with the clematis,* having himself ascertainedt that
this plant has the power of producing a psoric eruption over the
whole body.
If, according to Murray,+ the euphrasia cures lippitudo and a
certain form of ophthalmy, how could it otherwise have produced this effect, but by the faculty it possesses of exciting a
kind of inflammation in the eyes, as has been remarked by
Lobelius?
According to J. H. Lange,ll the nutmeg has been found efficacious in hysterical fainting fits. The sole natural cause of this
phenomenon is homceopathic, and can be attributed to no other
circumstance, but that the nutmeg, when given in strong doses
to a man in health, produces, according to J. Schmid* and
Cullen,tt suspension of the senses and general insensibility.
The old practice of applying rose-water externally in ophthalmic diseases, looks like a tacit avowal, that there exists in the
leaves of the rose some curative power for diseases of the eye.
This is founded upon the homceopathic virtue which the rose
possesses, of exciting by itself a species of ophthalmia in persolns who are in health, an effect which Echtius,+ Ledelius,~~
and Rau,lll1 actually saw it produce.
If, according to Pet. Rossi,"*' Van Mons,1t+ J. Monti,ftt
Sybel,~~~ and others, the Rhus toxicodendron and radicans have
the faculty of producing pimples which gradually cover the entire
* Lib. de Flanmm. Jovis. Vienna, 1769, cap. 13.
t Ibid. p. 33.
+ Appar. Medic. 11, p. 221. 2d edit.
~ Stirp. Adversar. p. 219.
{I Domest. Brunsvic. p. 136.
** Misc. nat. cur. dec. ii. ann. 2, obs. 20.
ft Arzneimittellehre, ii. p. 233.
++ In Adami, Vita Medic. p. 72.
~~ Misc. nat. curios. dec. ii. ann. 2, obs. 140.
111 Rau, fiber den Wertli des Homoeop. Heilverfahrens, p. 73.
*** Ohserv. de Nonnullis Plantis, que pro venenatis habentur. Pisis,
1767.
tt-f In Dulfresnoy Ueber den wvurz2lndlen Sumachl, p. 206.
t++ Acta Instit. Bonon. sc. et art. iii. p. 165..~~ In Med. Annalen, 1811, July.
7



50


body, it may be easily perceived how it could effect an homceopathic cure of various kinds of herpes, which it really has
done, according to information furnished by Dufresnoy and
Van Mons. What could have bestowed upon this plant (as in
a case cited by Alderson') the power of curing a paralysis of
the lower extremities, attended with weakness of the intellectual
organs, if it did not of itself evidently possess the faculty of
depressing the muscular powers by acting on the imagination of
the patient to such a degree as to make him believe that he is
at the point of death, as in a case witnessed by Zadig.t
The dulcamara, according to Carrere,+ has cured the most
violent diseases emanating from colds, which could result from
no other cause but that this herb, in cold and damp weather,
frequently produces similar affections to those which arise from
colds, as Carrere himself has observed~ and likewise Starcke.ll
-Fritze** saw   the dulcamara produce convulsions, and De
Haentt witnessed the very same effects, attended with delirium;
on the other hand, convulsions attended with delirium, have
yielded to small doses of the dulcamara, administered by the
latter physician.++-It were vain to seek amid the vast empire
of hypotheses the cause that renders the dulcamara so efficacious in a species of herpes, as witnessed by Carrere, ~~ Fouquet, lll
and Poupart.*** Nature, which requires the aid of homeopathy
to perform a safe cure, sufficiently explains the cause, in the
faculty possessed by the dulcamara of producing a certain
* In Samml. aus. Abh. f. pr. Aerzte, xviii. 1.
t In Hufeland's Journal der Prakt. Arzneik. v. p. 3.
+ Cayrere (and Starcke,) Abhandl. ueber die Eigenschaften des Nachtschattens oder Bittersuesses. Jena, 1786, pp. 20-23. (Treatise on the
Properties of the Woody Nightshade or Bitter-sweet.)
~ Ibid.
|i In Carrere, Ibid. p. 140, 249.
** Annalen des Klinischen Instituts, iii. p. 45.
ft Ratio Medendi. Tom. iv. p. 228.
+t Ibid. where he says: " Dulco-amarma stipites majori dosi convulsiones et deliria excitant, moderata vero spasmos, convulsionesque solvunt." How near was De Haen to the discovery of the law of healing
the most conformable to nature!
~~ Ratio Medendi. Tom. iv. p. 92.
I11 In Razouz, Tables Nosologiques, p. 275.
*** Trait6 des Dartres. Paris, 1782, pp. 184, 192.



51


species of herpes.  Carrere saw   the use of this plant excite
herpetic eruptions which covered the entire body during a fortnight;* and on another occasion where it produced the same
on the hands,t and a third time where it fixed itself on the labia
pudendi.+
Rucker~ saw the solanum     nigrum  produce swelling of the
entire body.  This is the reason that Gatackerll and Cirillo**
succeeded in curing with its aid (homaeopathically)a species of
dropsy.
Boerhaave,tt Sydenham,t+ and Radcliffe~~ cured another species of dropsy with the aid of the sambucus niger, because, as
Hallerl 1I informs us, this plant causes an cedematous swelling when
applied externally.
De Haen,** Sarcone,ttt and Pringle+++ have rendered due
homage to truth and experience, by declaring freely, that they
cured pleurisy with the scilla maritima, a root, which on account of its excessive acrid properties, ought to be forbidden in
a disease of this nature, where, according to the received
method, only sedative, relaxing, and refrigerant remedies are
admissible. The disease in question subsided, nevertheless,
under the influence of the squill, on homceopathic principles;
for T. C. Wagner~~~ formerly saw the action of this plant alone
produce pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs.
A great many practitioners, D. Crueger, Ray, Kellner, Kaaw
Boerhaave, and others, lllll have observed that the datura stramo* Traite des Dartres. Paris, 1782, pp. 96.
t Ibid. p. 149.               + Ibid. p. 164.
~ Commerc. Liter. Noric. 1731, p. 372.
1I Versuche & Bemerk. der Edinb. Gesellschaft, Altenburg, 1762, vii.
pp. 95, 98.
** Consult. Medichi. Tom. iii. Naples, 1738, 4to.
tt Historia Plantarum, P. I. p. 207.  +f Opera, p. 496.
~~ In Haller, Arzneimittellehre, p. 349.
||II In Vicat, Plantes veneneuses, p. 125.
*** Ratio Medendi, P. I. p. 13.
ttt History of Diseases in Naples, vol. i. ~. 175.
f++ Obs. on the Diseases of the Army, ed. 7, ~. 143.
~~~ Observationes Clinicae. Lubec, 1737.
I lIll C. Crueger, in Misc. Nat. Cur., dec. iii. ann. 2, obs. 88.-Boerhaave,
Impetum Faciens.-Leiden, 1745, p. 282.-Kellner, in the Bresl. Samml.
172.



53


sively the vital powers, producing mental and bodily exhaustion,
indigestion, and loss of appetite, as observed by Cleghorn, Friborg, Crueger, Romberg, Stahl, Thomson, and others.'
How would it have been possible to stop hemorrhages with
ipecacuanha, as effected by Baglivi, Barbeyrac, Gianella, Dalberg, Bergius, and others, if this medicine did not of itself possess
the faculty of exciting hemorrhage homoeopathically?-as Murray, Scott, and Geoffroyt have witnessed. How could it be so
efficacious in asthma, and particularly in spasmodic asthma, as
it is described to have been, by Akenside,+ Meyer,~ Bang, lI
Stoll,* Fouquet,tt and Ranoe,++ if it did not of itself produce
(without exciting any evacuation) asthma, and spasmodic asthma
in particular, as Murray,~~ Geoffroy,llll and Scott`s* have seen it
call forth?  Can any clearer hints be required, that medicines
ought to be applied to the cure of diseases according to the
morbid effects which they produce?
It would be impossible to conceive why the Faba Ignatia
could be so efficacious in a kind of convulsions, as we arc
assured it is, by Hermann,ttt Valentin,t++  and an anonymous
writer,~~~ if it did not possess the power of exciting similar
convulsions, as witnessed by Bergius,llll I Camelli,*** arid Durius.tttt
Persons who have received a blow or a contusion, feel pains
in the side, a desire to vomit, spasmodic, lancinating and burning pain in the hypochondres, all of which are accompanied
with anxiety, tremors, and involuntary starts, similar to those
* Mat. Med. iii.              t Ibid. pp. 184, 185.
+ Medic. Transact. I. No. 7. p. 39.
~ Diss. de Ipecac. refracta dosi usu, p. 34.
11 Praxis Medica, p. 346.   ** Prelectiones, p. 221.
tt Journal de Medecine, tom. 62, p. 137.
+* In Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn., ii. p. 163, iii. p. 361.
~~ Medic. Pract. Bibl., p. 237.
Ilil Traite de la Matiere Medicale, ii. p. 157.
*** In Med. Comment. of Edinb. iv. p. 74.
ttt Cynosura Mat. Med. ii. p. 231.
I+- Hist. Simplic. Reform. p. 194, ~ 4.
~~~ In Act. Berol. dec. ii. vol. x. p. 12.
IIII1 Materia Medica, p. 150.
"** Philos. Trans. vol. xxi. No. 250.
tttt Miscell. nat. cur. dec. iii. ann. 9, 10.



54


produced by an electric shock, formication in the parts that
have received the injury, &c. As the arnica montana produces
similar symptoms, according to the observations of Meza, Vicat,
Crichton, Collins, Aaskow, Stoll, and X. C. Lange,* it may be
easily conceived on what account this plant cures the effects of
a blow, fall, or contusion, and consequently the malady itself
occasioned by such a contusion, as experienced by a host of
physicians and even whole nations for centuries past.
Among the effects which belladona excites when administered to a person in sound health, are symptoms, which, taken
collectively, present an image greatly resembling that species
of hydrophobia and rabies canina which Mayerne,t Miinch,t
Buchholz,~ and Neimike,ll cured in a perfect manner with this
plant homceopathically.**  The patient in vain endeavours to
sleep, the respiration is embarrassed, he is consumed by a burning
thirst, attended with anxiety; the moment any liquids are presented
to him, he rejects them with violence; his countenance becomes
red, his eyes fixed and sparkling, (as observed by F. C. Grimm;)
he experiences a feeling of suffocation while drinking, with
excessive thirst, (according to E. Camerarius and Sauter;) for
the most part he is incapable of swallowing any thing, (as affirmed
by May, Lottinger, Sicelius, Buchave, D'Hermont, Manetti,
* See my Mat. Medica, i.
t Praxeos in Morbis internis Syntagma alierum. Augusta! Vindelicorum, 1697, p. 136.
+ Beobachtungen bey angewendeter Belladonne bei den Menschen.
Stendal, 1789.
~ Heilsame Wirkungen der Belladonne in ausgebrochener Wuth.
Erfurt, 1785.
II In J. H. Munch's Beobachtungen, Th. i. p. 74.
** If belladonna has frequently failed in cases of decided rabies, we
ought to remember that it cannot cure in such instances, but by its
faculty of producing effects similar to those of the malady itself, and
that, consequently, it ought not to be administered but in the smallest
possible doses, as will be shown in the Organon, (~ 275-283.) In general, it has been administered in very large doses, so that the patients
necessarily died, not of the disease, but of the remedy. However, there
may exist more than one degree or species of hydrophobia and rabies,
and consequently (according to the diversity of the symptoms) the most
suitable homceopathic remedy may be sometimes hyosciamus, and sometimes stramonium.



55


Vicat, and Cullen;) he is alternately actuated by terror and a
desire to bite the persons who are near him, (as seen by Sauter,
Dumoulin, Buchave, and Mardorf;) he spits every where around
him, (according to Sauter;) he endeavours to make his escape,
(as we are informed by Dumoulin, E. Gmelin, and Buc'hoz;)
and a continual agility of the body is predominant, (as witnessed by Boucher, E. Gmelin, and Sauter.)* Belladonna has
also effected the cure of different kinds of madness and melancholy, as in the cases reported by Evers, Schmucker, Schmalz,
the two Munches, and many others, because it possesses the
faculty of producing different kinds of insanity like those mental
diseases caused by belladonna, which are noted by Rau, Grimm,
Hasenest, Mardorf, Hoyer, Dillenius, and others.t  Henning,4
after vainly endeavouring, during three months, to cure a case
of amaurosis with coloured spots before the eyes, by a variety
of medicines, was at length struck with the idea that this
malady might perhaps be occasioned by gout, although the
patient had never experienced the slightest attack; and upon
this supposition he was by chance induced to prescribe belladonna,~ which effected a speedy cure free from any inconvenience. He would undoubtedly have made choice of this
remedy at the commencement, had he known that it was not
possible to perform a cure but by the aid of a remedy which
produces symptoms similar to those of the disease itself; and
that, according to the infallible law of nature, belladonna could
not fail to cure this case homeopathically, since, by the testimony of Sauterll and Buchholz,** it excites, of itself, a species
of amaurosis with coloured spots before the eyes.
The hyosciamus has cured spasms which strongly resembled
epilepsy; as witnessed by Mayerne;tt Stoerck, Collin, and others.
It produces this effect by the very same power that it excites
convulsions similar to those of epilepsy, as observed in the writings
* The places from these authors are referred to in my Mat. Medica, i.
t Ibid.
$ In Hufeland's Journal, xxv. iv. pp. 70, 74.
~ Mere conjecture alone has led physicians to rank belladonna among
the remedies for gout. The disease which could, with justice, arrogate
to itself the name of gout, never will nor can be cured by belladonna.
11 In Hufeland's Journal, xi.
** Ibid. vol. i. p. 252.       tt Prax. Med. p. 23.



56


of E. Camerarius, C. Seliger, Hinerwolf, A. Hamilton, Planchon, Acosta, and others.*
Fothergill,t Stoerck, Hellwig, and Ofterdinger, have used
hyosciamus with success in certain kinds of mental derangement. But the use of it would have been attended with equal
success in the hands of many other physicians, had they confined it to the cure of that species of mental alienation, which
hyosciamus is capable of producing in its primitive effects, viz.
a kind of derangement with stupefaction, that Van Helmont,
Wedel, J. G. Gmelin, La Serre, Hiinerwolf, A. Hamilton, Kiernander, J. Stedmann, Tozzetti, J. Faber, and Wendt saw
produced by the action of this plant.t
By taking the effects of hyosciamus collectively, which the
latter observers have seen it produce, they present a picture of
hysteria arrived at a considerable height. We also find in J.
A. P. Gessner, Stoerck, and in the Act. Nat. Cur.~ that a case
of hysteria, which bore great resemblance to the above mentioned, was cured by the use of this plant.
Schenkbecherll would never have succeeded in curing a
vertigo of twenty years' standing, if this plant did not possess,
in a very high degree, the power of creating generally an
analogous state, as attested by Hiinerwolf, Blom, Navier, Planchon, Sloane, Stedmann, Greding, Wepfer, Vicat, and Bernigau.*
A man, who became deranged through jealousy, was for a
long time tormented by Mayer Abramsontt with remedies that
produced no effect on him, when, under the name of a soporific, he one day administered hyosciamus, which cured him
speedily. Had he known that this plant excites jealousy and
madness in persons who are in health,++ and had he been
acquainted with the homeopathic law, (the sole natural basis
of therapeutics,) he would have been able to administer hyosciamus from the very commencement with perfect confidence,
* See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv.
t Memoirs of Med. Soc. of London, i. pp. 310, 314.: See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv.  ~ IV. obs. 8.
II Von der Kinkina, Schierling, Bilsenkraut, &c. Riga, 1769, p. 162.
* See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv.
ft In Hufeland's Journal, xix. ii. p. 60.
++ See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv.



58


insensible drunkenness, attended with stertorous breathing,
similar to that state of deep intoxication which wine produces,
was cured in a single night by wine which Rademacher' administered to the patient. Can any one deny the power of a
medicinal irritation analogous to the disease itself (similia similibus) in either of these cases?
A strong infusion of tea produces anxiety and palpitation of
the heart in persons who are not in the habit of drinking it; on
the other hand, if taken in small doses, it is an excellent remedy
against such symptoms when produced by other causes, as
testified by G. L. Rau.t
A case resembling the agonies of death, in which the patient
was convulsed to such a degree as to deprive him of his senses,
alternating with attacks of spasmodic breathing, sometimes also
sobbing and stertorous respiration, with icy coldness of the face
and body, lividity of the feet and hands, and feebleness of the
pulse, (a state perfectly analogous to the whole of the symptoms
which Schweikert and others saw produced by the use of opium,)+
was at first treated unsuccessfully by Stiitz~ with ammonia,
but afterwards cured in a speedy and permanent manner with
opium. In this instance, could any one fail to discover the
homceopathic method brought into action without the knowledge of the person who employed it? According to Vicat, J.
C. Grimm, and others, I opium also produces a powerful and
almost irresistible tendency to sleep, accompanied by profuse perspiration and delirium. This was the reason why Osthoff"* was
afraid to administer it in cases of epidemic fever which exhibited similar symptoms, for the principles of the system which
he pursued prohibited the use of it under such circumstances.
(The poor system!) However, after having exhausted in vain
all the known remedies, and seeing his patients at the point of
death, he resolved, at all hazards, to administer a small quantity
of opium, whose effects proved salutary, as they always must,
according to the unerring law of homaoopathy.
* In Hufeland's Journal, xvi. i. p. 92.
t Ueber den Werth des Homceopathischen Heilverfahrens. Heidelberg, 1824, p. 75.
t See my Mat. Med., vol. i.
~ In Hufeland's Journal, x. iv.  |I See my Mat. Med., i.
** In the Salzburg Med. Chirurg. Journal, 1805, iii. p. 110.



59


J. Lind* likewise avows that "opium removes the complaints
in the head, while the perspiration tediously breaks forth
during the heat of the body; it relieves the head, destroys
the burning febrile heat of the skin, softens it, and bathes
its surface in a profuse perspiration.   But Lind was not
aware that this salutary effect of opium    (contrary to the
axioms of the school of medicine) is owing to the circumstance of its producing analogous morbid symptoms, when
administered to a person in health. There has, nevertheless,
here and there been a physician, across whose mind this
truth has passed like a flash of lightning, without ever
giving birth to a suspicion of the laws of homoeopathy.
For example, Alstont says that opium is a remedy that excites
heat, notwithstanding which, it certainly diminishes heat where
it already exists.  De la Guerenet administered opium in a
case of fever attended with violent head-ache, tension and
hardness of the pulse, dryness and roughness of the skin, burning heat, and hence difficult and debilitating perspirations,
the exhalation of which was constantly interrupted by the
extreme agitation of the patient; and was successful with it,
because opium possesses the faculty of creating a feverish
state in healthy persons, which is perfectly analogous, as
asserted by many observers,~ and of which he was ignorant.
In a fever attended with coma, where the patient, deprived of
speech, lay extended, the eyes open, the limbs stiff, the pulse
small and intermittent, the respiration disturbed and stertorous,
(all of which are symptoms perfectly similar to those which
opium excites, according to the report of Delacroix, Rademacher, Crumpe, Pyl, Vicat, Sauvages and many others,ll) this
was the only substance which C. L. Hoffman** saw produce
any good effects, which were naturally a homceopathic result.
Wirthenson,tt Sydenham,11 and Marcus,~~ have even succeeded
* Versnch iiber die Krankheiten denen die Europaer in heissen Klimaten unterworfen sind. Riga and Leipzig, 1773. (Treatise on the
Diseases to which Europeans are subject in Warm Climates.)
t In Edinb. Versuchen, v. p. i. art. 12.
+ In Rimer's Annalen der Arzneimittellehre, I. ii. p. 6.
~ See my Mat. Med., vol. i.        I Ibid.
** Von Scharbock, Lustseuche, &c. Munster, 1787, p. 295.
tt Opii vires fibras cordis debilitare, &c. Miinster, 1775.
t+ Opera, p. 654.           ~{ Magazin fur Therapie, I. i. p. 7.



(i0


in curing lethargic fevers with opium. A case of lethargy of
which De Meza' effected a cure, would yield only to this substance, which, in such cases, acts homeopathically, since it
produces lethargy of itself.
C. C. Matthai,t in an obstinate case of nervous disease, where
the principal symptoms were insensibility, and numbness of the
arms, legs, and belly, after having for a long time treated it
with inappropriate, that is to say, non-homoeopathic remedies,
at length effected a cure by opium, which, according to Stiitz,
J. Young, and others,+ excites similar symptoms of a very
intense nature, and which, as every one must perceive, only
succeeded on this occasion by homeopathic means. The cure
of a case of lethargy which had already existed several days,
and which Hufeland performed by the use of opium,~ by what
other law could this have been effected, if not by that of
hommeopathy, which has remained disregarded till the present
time?  In that peculiar species of epilepsy which never manifests itself but during sleep, De Haen discovered that it was not
at all a sleep, but a lethargic stupor, with stertorous respiration,
perfectly similar to that which opium produces in persons who
are in health; it was by the means of opium alone that lie
transformed it into a natural and healthy sleep, while at the
same time he delivered the patient of his epilepsy. 1
How would it be possible that opium, which of all vegetable
substances is the one whose administration, in small doses,
produces the most powerful and obstinate constipation, as a
primary effect, should notwithstanding be a remedy the most to
be relied upon in cases of constipation which endanger life, if
it was not in virtue of the homteopathic law, so little knownthat is to say, if nature had not decreed that medicines should
subdue natural diseases by a special action on their part, which
consists in producing an analogous affection? Opium, whose
first effects are so powerful in constipating the bowels, was discovered by Tralles** to be the only cure in a case of ileus,
* Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn. iii. p. 202.
t In Struve's Triumph der Heilk. iii.
i See my Mat. Med. vol. i.
~ In Hufeland's Journal, xii. i.
II Ratio Medendi, V. p. 126.
** Opii usus et abusus, sect. ii. p. 260.



61


which he had till then treated ineffectually with evacuants and
other unappropriate remedies. Lentilius* and G. W. Wedel,t
Wirthenson, Bell, Heister, and Richter,T have likewise confirmed the efficacy of opium, even when administered alone in
this disease. The candid Bohn~ was likewise convinced by
experience that nothing but opiates would act as purgatives in
the colic called miserere; and the celebrated Fr. Hoffman,ll
in the most dangerous cases of this nature, placed his sole
reliance on opium, combined with the anodyne liquor called
after his name. All the theories contained in the two hundred
thousand volumes that have been written on medicine, would
they be able to furnish us with a rational explanation of this
and so many other similar facts, being ignorant of the therapeutic law of homceopathia. Have their doctrines conducted
us to the discovery of this law of nature so clearly manifested
in every perfect, speedy, and permanent cure-that is to say,
have they taught us that when we use medicines in the treatment of diseases, it is necessary to take for a guide the resemblance of their effects upon a person in health, to the symptoms
of those very diseases?
Rave*" and Wedekindtt have suppressed uterine hemorrhage
with the aid of sabina, which, as every one knows, causes
uterine hemorrhage, and consequently abortion with women
who are in health. Could any one, in this case, fail to perceive
the homeopathic law which ordains that we should cure similia
similibus?
In that species of spasmodic asthma designated by the name
of Millar, how could musk act almost specifically, if it did not
of itself produce paroxysms of a spasmodic constriction of the
chest without cough, as observed by F. Hoffman?++
* Eph. nat. cur. dec. iii. ann. i. app. p. 131.  t Opiologia, p. 120.
+ Anfangsgriinde der Wundarzneikunde, V. ~ 328.-Chronische Krankheiten. Berlin, 1816, ii. p. 220. (Rudiments of Surgery, V. ~ 328.Chronic Diseases, Berlin, 1816, ii. p. 220.)
~ De Officio Medici.
11 Medicin. rat. system. T. IV. p. ii. p. 297.
** Beobachtungen und Schlilusse (Observations and Conclusions), ii.
p.7.
tt In Hufeland's Journal, X. i. p. 77.; and in his " Aufsaetzen," p. 278.
~+ Med. ration. system. iii. p. 92.



63


our cantharides, made use of meloe cichorii, Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Capo di Vacca, Riedlin, Th. Bartholin,* Young,t
Smith,+ Raymond,~ De Meza,ll Brisbane,** and others, performed perfect cures of very painful ischury that was not
dependent upon any mechanical obstacle, with cantharides.
Huxham has seen this remedy produce the best effects in cases
of the same nature; he praises it highly, and would willingly
have made use of it had not the precepts of the old school of
medicine (which, deeming itself wiser than nature herself, prescribes in such cases soothing and relaxing remedies,) prevented
him, contrary to his own conviction, from using a remedy
which, in such cases, is specific or homeopathic.tt In cases of
recent inflammatory gonorrhea, where Sachs von Lewenheim,
Hannaeus, Bartholin, Lister, Mead, and chiefly Werlhoff,
administered cantharides in very small doses with perfect
success, this substance manifestly removed the most severe
symptoms which began to declare themselves.tS
It produced this effect by virtue of the faculty it possesses
(according to the testimony of almost every observer) of
exciting painful ischury, urinary heat, inflammation of the
urethra (Wendt), and even, when applied only externally, a
species of inflammatory gonorrhea (Wichman~~).
The application of sulphur internally very often occasions,
in persons of an irritable disposition, tenesmus, sometimes even
* Epist. 4, p. 345.              t Phil. Trans. No. 280.
+ Medic. Communications, ii. p. 505.
~ In Auserlesene Abhandl. fur pract. Aerzte (Select Treatises for
Practical Physicians), iii. p. 460.
II Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn. ii. p. 302.
** Auserlesene Falle (Selected cases), Altenburg, 1777.
tt Opera, edit. Reichel, t. ii. p. 124.
++ I say " the most severe symptoms which began to declare themselves," because the subsequent treatment demands other considerations;
for, although there may have been cases of gonorrhea so slight as to disappear very soon of themselves, and almost without any assistance whatever, still there are others of a graver nature, especially that which is
become so common since the time of the French campaigns, which
might be called gonorrhea sycotica, and which is communicated by
coition, like the chancrous disease, although of a very different nature.
~~ Auswahl aus den Niirnberger gelehrten Unterhaltungen, i. p. 249,
note.



65


application of a solution of salt of tartar increased the irritability
of the muscles to such a degree as to excite tetanic spasm.
The curative power which caustic potash exercises in all kinds
of tetanus, in which Stiitz and others have found it so useful,
could it be accounted for in a more simple or rational manner
than by the faculty which this alkali possesses of producing
homceopathic effects?.rsenic, whose effects are so powerful upon the human
economy that we cannot decide whether it is more hurtful in
the hands of the fool-hardy than it is salutary in those of the
wise,-arsenic could never have effected so many remarkable
cures of cancer in the face, as witnessed by numerous physicians, among whom    I will only cite Fallopius,* Bernhardt,t
and Roennow,t if this metallic oxide did not possess the
homceopathic power of producing, in healthy persons, very
painful tubercles, which are cured with dfficulty, as witnessed by
Amatus Lusitanus;~ very deep and malignant ulcerations,
according to the testimony of Heinreichll and Knape;** and
cancerous ulcers, as testified by Heinze.tt The ancients would
not have been unanimous in the praise which they bestowed
on the magnetic arsenical plaster of Angelus Salat+ against
pestilential buboes and carbuncles, if arsenic did not, according
to the report of Degner~~ and Pfann,ll11 give rise to inflammatory
tumours which quickly turn to gangrene, and to carbuncles or
malignant pustules, as observed by Verzascha*** and Pfann.ttt
And whence could arise that curative power which it exhibits
in certain species of intermittent fevers (a virtue attested by so
* De Ulceribus et Tumoribus, lib. 2. Venice, 1563.
t In the Journal de Medecine, chirurg. et pharm. LVII. Match, 1782.
+ Konigl. Vetensk. Acad. Handl. f. a. 1776.
~ Obs. et. Cur., cent. ii. cur. 34.  |I Act. Nat. Cur. ii. obs. 10.
** Annalen der Staatsarzneikunde, I. i.
tt In Hufeland's Journal for September, 1813, p. 48.
++ Anatom. Vitrioli, t. ii. in Opera Med. Chym. Frankfort, 1647, pp.
381, 463.
~~ Act. Nat. Cur. VI.
IIII Annalen der Staatsarzneykunde, loc. cit.
'** Obs. med. cent. Basil, 1677, obs. 66.
ttt Samml. Merkwitrd. Falle. (Collection of remarkable cases.)
Nuremberg, 1750, pp. 119, 130.
9



66
many thousands of examples, but in the practical application of
which, sufficient precaution has not yet been observed, and
which virtue was asserted centuries ago by Nicholas Myrepsus,
and subsequently placed beyond a doubt by the testimony of
Slevogt, Molitor, Jacobi, J. C. Bernhardt, Jingken, Fauve,
Brera, Darwin, May, Jackson, and Fowler,) if it did not
proceed from  its peculiar faculty of exciting fever, as almost
every observer of the evils resulting from this substance has
remarked, particularly Amatus Lusitanus, I)egner, Buchholz,
Heun, and Knape.*    We may confidently believe E. Alexander,t when he tells us that arsenic is a sovereign remedy in
some cases of angina pectoris, since Taclenius, Guilbert,
Preussius, Thilenius, and Pyl, have seen it give rise to very
strong oppression of the chest; Greselius,+ to a dyspncea approaching even to suffocation; and Majault,~ in particular, saw it produce sudden attacks of asthma excited by walking, attended with
great depression of the vital powers.
The convulsions which are caused by the administration of
copper, and those observed by Tondi, Ramsay, Fabas, Pyl, and
Cosmier, as proceeding from the use of aliments impregnated
with copper; the reiterated attacks of epilepsy, which J.
Lazermell saw result from the accidental introduction of a
copper coin into the stomach, and which Pfiindel* saw produced by the ingestion of a compound of sal ammoniac and
copper into the digestive canal, sufficiently explain, to those
physicians who will take the trouble to reflect upon it, how
copper has been able to cure a case of chorea, as reported by R.
Willan,tt Walcker,++ Thesussink,H~ and Delarive,llll and why
preparations of copper have so frequently effected the cure of
epilepsy, as attested by Batty, Baumes, Bierling, Boerhaave,
* See my Mat. Med. vol. ii.
t Med. Comm. of Edinb. Dec. t. i. p. 85.
+ Misc. Nat. Cur. dec. I. ann. 2, p. 149.
~ In the Sammlung Auserles. Abhandl. fiir Aerzte, VII. 1.
II De morbis internis capitis. Amsterdam, 1748, p. 253.
** In Hufeland's Journal, II. p. 264; and according to the testimony of
Burdach, in his System of Medicine, i. Leip. 1807, p. 284.
tt Sammlung Auserles. Abhandl. XII. p. 62.
++ Ibid. XI. iii. p. 672.       ~~ Waarnemingen, No. 18.
III In Kiahn's phys. med. Journal, January, 1800, p. 58.



67


Causland, Cullen, Duncan, Feuerstein, Helvetius, Lieb, Magennis, C. F. Michaelis, Reil, Russel, Stisser, Thilenius,
Weissmann, Weizenbreyer, Whithers, and others.
If Poterius, Wepfer, Wedel, F. Hoffmann, R. A. Vogel,
Thierry, and Albrecht; have cured a species of phthisis, hectic
fever, chronic catarrh, and mucous asthma, with stunnum, it is
because this metal possesses the faculty of producing a species
of phthisis, as Stahl* has observed. And how could it cure
pains of the stomach, as Geischlager says it does, if it was not
capable of exciting a similar malady. Geischlager himself,t
and Stahlt before him, have proved that it does possess this
power.
The evil effects of lead, which produces the most obstinate
constipation, and even the iliac passion, (as Thunberg, Wilson,
Lazuriaga, and others, inform us), do they not also give us to
understand that this metal possesses likewise the virtue of
curing these two affections? Like every other medicine, it
ought to subdue and cure, in a permanent manner, the natural
diseases which bear a resemblance to those which it engenders,
by reason of the faculty which it possesses of exciting morbid
symptoms. Angelus Sala~ cured a species of ileus, and J.
Agricolall another kind of constipation which endangered the
life of the patient, by administering lead internally. The
saturnine pills with which many physicians (Chirac, Van
Helmont, Naudeau, Pererius, Rivinus, Sydenham, Zacutus
Lusitanus, Block, and others) cured the iliac passion and
obstinate constipation, did not operate merely in a mechanical
manner by reason of their weight; for, if such had been the
sources of their efficacy, gold, whose weight is greater than
that of lead, would have been preferable in such a case; but
the pills acted particularly as a saturnine internal remedy and
cured homeopathically. If Otto Tachenius and Saxtorph
formerly cured cases of obstinate hypochondriasis with the aid
of lead, we ought to bear in mind that this metal tends of itself
to excite hypochondriasis, as may be seen in the description of
its ill effects given by Lazuriaga.**
* Mat. Med., cap. 6. p. 83.  t In Hufeland's Journal, X. iii. p. 165.
t Mat. Med. loc. cit.    ~ Opera, p. 213.
II Comment. in J. Poppii chym. med. Lips. 1638, p. 223.
R* Recueil period. de Litterature, i. p. 20.



70
In perusing the works which have been published on the
subject of medical electricity, it is surprising to see what
analogy exists between the morbid symptoms sometimes produced by this agent, and the natural diseases which it has
cured in a durable manner by homceopathic influence. Innumerable are the authors who have observed that acceleration of
the pulse is among the first effects of positive electricity; but
Sauvages," Delas,t and Barillon,+ have seen febrile paroxysms
excited by electricity.  The faculty it has of producing fever, is
the cause to which we may attribute the circumstance of
Gardini,~ Wilkinson,l] Syme,'* and Wesley,tt curing with it
alone a tertian fever, and likewise the removal of quartan
fevers by Zetzel++ and Willermoz.~~    It is also known that
electricity occasions a contraction of the muscles which resembles a convulsive movement.  De Sansllll was enabled to excite
even continued convulsions in the arm of a young girl as
often as he pleased to make the experiment. It is by virtue
of this power which electricity develops, that De Sans"** and
Franklinttt applied it successfully in convulsions, and that
Theden"ft cured with its aid a little girl ten years of age who
lost her speech and partially the use of her left arm by lightning, yet kept up a constant involuntary movement of the
arms and legs, accompanied by a spasmodic contraction of the
fingers of the left hand. Electricity likewise produced a kind
of ischias, as observed by Jallobert~~~ and another; 111111 it has
also cured this affection by similarity of effect, (homceopathically,) as confirmed by Hiortberg, Lovet, Arrigoni, Daboueix,
Manduyt, Syme, and Wesley. Several physicians have cured
a species of ophthalmia by electricity, that is to say, by means of
the power which it has of exciting of itself inflammation of the
* In Bertholon de St. Lazare, Medicinische Electrisitat, von Kiihn.
(Medical Electricity.) Leip. 1788, t. i. pp. 239, 240.
t Ibid. p. 232.      + Ibid. p. 223.      ~ Ibid. p. 232.
II Ibid. p. 251.     ** Ibid. p. 250.     tt Ibid. p. 249.:t Ibid. p. 52.      ~~ Ibid. p. 250.     1111 Ibid. p. 274.
*** Ibid. p. 274.       ttt Recueil sur l'Electr. Medic. ii. p. 386.
+:$ Neue Bemerkungen und Erfahrungen, iii. (Recent Observations
and Experiments.)
~~~ Experiences et Observations sur P'Electricite.
[11111 Philos. Trans. vol. 63.



eyes, as observed by P. Dickson* and Bertholon.t Finally,
it has in the hands of Fushel cured varices; and it owes this
sanative virtue to the faculty which JallobertS ascribes to it
of producing varicose tumours.
Albers relates, that a warm bath at one hundred degrees of
the thermometer of Fahrenheit greatly reduced the burning of
an acute fever, in which the pulse beat one hundred and thirty
to the minute, and that it brought back the pulsation to the
number of one hundred and ten. Loffler fbund hot fomentations very useful in encephalitis occasioned by insulation or the
action of the heat of stoves,~ and Callisenll regards affusions of
warm water on the head as the most efficacious of all remedies
in cases of inflammation of the brain.
If we except those cases where ordinary physicians have discovered (not by their own research but by vulgar empiricism)
the specific remedy for a disease which always retained its
identity, and by whose aid they could consequently cure it in a
direct manner; such, for example, as mercury in the chancrous
venereal disease, arnica in a malady resulting from contusions,
cinchona in intermittent fevers arising from marsh miasmata,
sulphur in a recent development of itch, &c.;-I say, if we
except all these cases, we shall find that those which they have
cured promptly and permanently by the bounty of Providence
alone, are to the mass of their other irrational cures in the
proportion of one to a thousand.
Sometimes they were conducted by mere chance to a homceopathic mode of treatment;** but yet they did not perceive the
* Bertholon, loc. cit. p. 406.  t Loc. cit. ii. p. 296.
+ Loc. cit.                  ~ In Hufeland's Journal, iii. p. 630.
lI Act. Soc. Med. Hafn. iv. p. 419.
** Thus, for example, they always imagine they can drive out the perspiration through the skin (which they say stops up the pores after catching cold) by administering, in the cold stage of the fever, an infusion of
the flowers of the sambucus niger, which is capable of subduing such
fevers homoeopathically, and restores the patient to health. The cure is
most effectually and speedily performed, without transpiration, when the
patient drinks but little of this liquor and abstains from all other medi



74


these means cure themselves in a few hours, well knowing that
the so-called cooling ointments would not produce the same
application it appears to increase the pain, (see ~ 160), but the latter is
soon allayed and gives place to an agreeable sensation of calm and tranquillity. This method is never more efficacious than when the whole
part is plunged into alcohol; but where the immersion is not practicable,
it is requisite to keep the burn continually covered with pledgets imbibed
with this liquid." I further add, that warmn,'and even very hot alcohol,
affbrds still more prompt and certain relief, because it is far more
homoeopathic than alcohol that is cold. This is confirmed by every
experience.
Edward Kentish treated several men who were often dreadfully
burned in the coal mines by the explosion of fire-damp; he made them
apply hot oil of turpentine or alcohol, as being the best remedies that
could be used in severe burns. (Second Essay on Burns, London,
1798.) No treatment is more homeopathic than this, nor can there be
any more efficacious. The worthy and skilful physician Heister also
recommends this practice from his own personal experience, (Instit.
Chirurg. Tom. I. p. 333); he praises the application of the oil of turpentine, of alcohol, and of cataplasms as hot as the patient can bear them.
But nothing can more strongly exhibit the surprising superiority of the
homceopathic method (that is to say of the application of substances that
excite a sensation of heat and burning, to parts that are burned) over
the palliative, (which consists of cold applications), than those simple
experiments, where, in order to compare the results of these two opposite proceedings, they have been simultaneously tried upon the same
patient, and on parts that were burned in an equal degree. Thus J.
Bell (Kuhn's Phys. Med. Journal for June, 1801, p. 428) having to treat
a lady who had scalded both arms with boiling liquid, covered one with
the oil of turpentine, and plunged the other into cold water.  The
first was no longer painful at the expiration of half an hour, while
the other continued so during six hours: the moment it was withdrawn
from the cold water the patient experienced far greater pain, and it
required much longer time to cure this arm than it did to heal the other.
J. Anderson (Kentish, loc. cit. p. 43) likewise treated a woman who
had scalded her face and arm with boiling fat. " The face, which was
very red and painful, was covered with oil of turpentine a few minutes
after the accident: as for the arm, the patient had already plunged it of
her own accord into cold water, and expressed a desire to await the
result of this treatment for a few hours. At the expiration of seven
hours the face was better, and the patient relieved in this part. With
regard to the arm, around which the water had been several times
renewed, it became exceedingly painful whenever it was withdrawn
from the water, and the inflammation had manifestly increased. The
next day I found that the patient had suffered extreme pain in the arm;



75
result in an equal number of months, and that cold water'
would only make the evil worse.
An experienced reaper, however little he may be accustomed
to the use of strong liquors, will not drink cold water (contraria
contrariis) when the heat of the sun or the fatigue of hard labour
have brought him into a feverish state: he is well aware of the
danger that would ensue, and therefore takes a small quantity
of some heating liquor-viz. a mouthful of brandy. Experience, the source of all truth, has convinced him of the advantage and efficacy of this homeopathic mode of proceeding.
The heat and lassitude which oppressed him, soon diminish.t
Occasionally there have been certain physicians who guessed
that medicines might cure diseases by the faculty which they
possessed of exciting morbid symptoms that resembled the disease itself.,
inflammation had extended above the elbow, several large blisters had
burst, and a thick eschar had formed itself upon the arm and hand, which
were then covered with a warm cataplasm. The face was no longer painful, but it was necessary to apply emollients a fortnight longer to cure the
arm."  Who does not perceive, in this instance, the great superiority of
the homceopathic mode of treatment (that is to say, of the application of
agents which produce effects resembling the evil itself) over the antipathic prescribed by the ordinary physicians of the old school of medicine?
* J. Hunter is not the only one who has pointed out the evil results
that attend the treatment of burns with cold water. Fabricius de Hilden,
(De Combustionibus Libellus. Basil, 1607, cap. V. p. 11) likewise
assures us that cold applications are very hurtful in such cases, that
they produce the most disastrous effects-that inflammation, suppuration,
and sometimes gangrene are the consequences.
t Zimmerman (Ueber die Erfahrung, II. p. 318) tells us that the
inhabitants of warm countries act in the same manner, with the most
beneficial results, and that they usually drink a small quantity of spirituous liquors when they are much heated.
+ In citing the following passages of writers who have had some presentiment of homoeopathy, I do not mean to prove the excellence of the
method, (which establishes itself without further proof), but I wish to
free myself from a reproach of having passed them over in silence to
arrogate to myself the merit of the discovery.



76
Thus the author of the book        rol Trwy rny xa.r' ayeowrovy,*
which forms a part of the works attributed to Hippocrates, expresses himself in the following remarkable words: Dad Ta o'o0a
YovroQ; yvTS&ts, XOC d&C roT oposX 7reoo-PEohSVaX MM   POO~EICWVY  Vy&;i&vGVTa;iSSad TO 1fsivlY Elth 1TOx twa6.
Physicians of a later period have likewise known and proclaimed the truths of homoeopathy.     Thus B. Boulduc,t for
example, discovered that the purgative properties of rhubarb
were the faculty by which this plant cured diarrhcea.
Detharding guessedl that the infusion of senna would cure
the colick in adults by virtue of the faculty which it possesses
of exciting that malady in healthy persons.
Bertholon~ informs us that in diseases, electricity diminishes
and finally removes a pain which is very similar to one which
it also produces.
Thouryll affirms that positive electricity accelerates arterial
pulsation, also that it renders the same slower where it is
already quickened by disease.
Stoerck** was struck with the idea that if stramonium disturbs the senses and produces mental derangement in persons
who are healthy, it might very easily be administered to
maniacs for the purpose of restoring the senses by effecting a
change of ideas.
The Danish physician Stahltt has, above all other writers,
expressed his conviction on this head most unequivocally. He
speaks in the following terms:-" The received method in
medicine, of treating diseases by opposite remedies —that is to
say, by medicines which are opposed to the effects they produce; (contraria contrariis),-is completely false and absurd.  I
am convinced on the contrary, that diseases are subdued by
agents which produce a similar affection, (similia similibus): —
burns, by the heat of a fire to which the parts are exposed; the
* Basil, Froben, 1538, p. 72.
t Mem. de PAcad. Royale, 1710.
+ Eph. Nat. Cur. cent. x. obs. 76.
~ Medic. Electricit. II. pp. 15, 282.
II Mem. lu A l'Acad. de Caen.
* * Libell. de Stramon. p. 8.
t t In J. Hummel, Comment. de Arthritide tam tartarea, quam scorbutica, seu podagra et scorbutico. Budingae, 1738-in 8, pp. 40, 42.



77
frost-bite, by snow or icy cold water; and inflammation and
contusions, by spirituous applications. It is by these means I
have succeeded in curing a disposition to acidity of the stomach,
by using very small doses of sulphuric acid in cases where a
multitude of absorbing powders had been administered to no
purpose."
Thus far the great truth has more than once been approached
by physicians. But a transitory idea was all that presented
itself to them; consequently, the indispensable reform which
ought to have taken place in the old school of therapeutics to
make room for the true curative method and a system of medicine at once simple and certain, has, till the present day, not
been effected.



ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
~ 1. The first and sole duty of the physician is to restore
health to the sick.* This is the true art of healing.
* His mission is not, as many physicians (who wasting their time and
powers in the pursuit of fame) have imagined it to be, that of inventing
systems by stringing together empty ideas and hypotheses upon the
immediate essence of life and the origin of disease in the interior of the
human economy; nor is it that of continually endeavouring to account
for the morbid phenomena with their nearest cause (which must for ever
remain concealed) and confounding the whole in unintelligible words
and pompous observations which make a deep impression on the minds
of the ignorant, while the patients are left to sigh in vain for relief. We
have already too many of these learned reveries which bear the name
of medical theories, and for the inculcation of which, even special professorships have been established. It is high time that all those who
call themselves physicians should cease to deceive suffering humanity
with words that have no meaning, and begin to act-that is to say, to
afford relief, and cure the sick in reality.
~ 2. The perfection of a cure consists in restoring health in
a prompt, mild, and permanent manner; in removing and
annihilating disease by the shortest, safest, and most certain
means upon principles that are at once plain and intelligible.
~ 3. When the physician clearly perceives the curative indication in each particular case of disease-when he is acquainted
with the therapeutic effects of medicines individually-when,
guided by evident reasons, he knows how to make such anl
application of that which is curative in medicine to that which
is indubitably diseased in the patient (both in regard to the
choice of the substances, the precise dose to be administered,



80


and the time of repeating it) that a cure may necessarily follow
-and finally when he knows what are the obstacles to the
cure, and can render the latter permanent by removing them;then only can he accomplish his purpose in a rational mannerthen only can he merit the title of a genuine physician, or a man
skilled in the art of healing.
~ 4. The physician is likewise the guardian of health when
he knows what are the objects that disturb it, which produce
and keep up disease, and can remove them from persons who
are in health.
~ 5. When a cure is to be performed, the physician must
avail himself of all the particulars he can learn, both respecting the probable origin of the acute malady and the most significant points in the history of the chronic disease, to aid him in
the discovery of their fundamental cause, which is commonly
due to some chronic miasm. In all researches of this nature,
he must take into consideration the apparent state of the physical constitution of the patient, (particularly when the affection
is chronic,) the disposition, occupation, mode of life, habits,
social relations, age, sexual functions, etc. etc.
~ 6. The unprejudiced observer, (however great may be
his powers of penetration,) aware of the futility of all elaborate
speculations that are not confirmed by experience, perceives
in each individual affection nothing, but changes of the state
of the body and mind, (traces of disease, casualties, symptoms,) that
are discoverable by the senses alone, —that is to say, deviations from the former sound state of health, which are felt by
the patient himself, remarked by the individuals around him,
and observed by the physician. The ensemble of these available signs represents, in its full extent, the disease itself —that
is, they constitute the true and only form of it which the mind
is capable of conceiving.*
* 1 cannot, therefore, comprehend how it was possible for physicians,
without heeding the symptoms or taking them as a guide in the treatment, to imagine that they ought to search the interior of the human
economy (which is inaccessible and concealed from our view), and
that they could there alone discover that which was to be cured in



81


disease.  I cannot conceive how they could entertain so ridiculous
a pretension as that of being able to discover the internal invisible
change that had taken place, and restore the same to the order of
its normal condition by the aid of medicines, without ever troubling
themselves very much about the symptoms, and that they should have
regarded such a method as the only means of performing a radical and
rational cure. Is not that which manifests itself in disease, by symptoms, identified with the change itself which has taken place in the
human economy, and which it is impossible to discover without their
aid? Do not the symptoms of disease, which are sensibly cognizable,
represent to the physician the disease itself? When he can neither see
the spiritual essence, the vital power which produces the disease, nor
yet the disease itself, but simply perceive and learn its morbid effects,
that he may be able to treat it accordingly? What would the old school
search out farther from the hidden interior for a prima causa morbi,
whilst they reject and superciliously despise the palpable and intelligible
representation of the disease, the symptoms which clearly announce
themselves to us as the object of cure? What is there besides these in
disease which they have to cure?**
** The physician who engages in a search after the hidden springs of the internal economy will hourly be deceived; but the homieopathist, who with due attention seizes upon the faithful image of the entire group of symptoms, possesses
himself of a guide that may be depended on, and when he has succeeded in
destroying the whole of them, he may be certain that he has likewise annihilated
the internal and hidden cause of disease." (Rau, loc. cit. p. 103.)
~ 7. As in a disease where no manifest or exciting cause
presents itself for removal, (causa occasionalis') we can perceive
nothing but the symptoms, then must these symptoms alone
(with due attention to the accessory circumstances, and the
possibility of the existence of a miasm) (~ 5) guide the physician
in the choice of a fit remedy to combat the disease.        The
totality of the symptoms, this image of the immediate essence of
the malady reflected externally, ought to be the principal or sole
object by which the latter could make known the medicines it
stands in need of-the only agent to determine the choice of a
remedy that would be most appropriate. In short, the ensem.
ble2 of the symptoms is the principal and sole object that a
physician ought to have in view in every case of disease —the
power of his art is to be directed against that alone in order to
cure and transform it into health.
It is taken for granted that every intelligent physician will cornmence by removing this causa occasionalis; then the indisposition
usually yields of itself. Thus it is necessary to remove flowers from the
11



82


room when their odours occasion paroxysms of fainting and hysteria, to
extract from the eye the foreign substance which occasions ophthalmia;
remove the tight bandages from a wounded limb which threatens gangrene, and apply others more suitable; lay bare and tie up a wounded
artery where hemorrhage produces fainting; evacuate the berries of belladonna, &c. which may have been swallowed, by vomiting; extract the
foreign particles which have introduced themselves into the openings of
the body, (the nose, pharynx, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina); grind down
a stone in the bladder; open the imperforate anus of the new born
infant, &c.
2 Not knowing at times what plan to adopt in disease, physicians have
till now endeavoured to suppress or annihilate some one of the various
symptoms which appeared. This method which is known by the name
of the symptomatic, has very justly excited universal contempt, not only
because no advantage is derived from it, but because it gives rise to
many bad consequences. A single existing symptom is no more the
disease itself, than a single leg constitutes the entire of the human body.
This method is so much the more hurtful in its effects, that in attacking
an isolated symptom, they make use solely of an opposite remedy, (that
is to say, of antipathies or palliatives,) so that after an amendment of
short duration the evil bursts forth again worse than before.
8. It is not possible to conceive or prove by any experience, after the cure of the whole of the symptoms of a
disease, together with all its perceptible changes, that there
remains or possibly can remain any other than a healthy state,
or that the morbid alteration which has taken place in the interior of the economy has not been annihilated.*
* In one who has thus been restored from sickness by a genuine physician, so that no trace of disease, no morbid symptom any longer
remains and every token of health has again durably returned, can it for
a moment be supposed, without offering an insult to common sense, that
the entire corporeal disease still resides in such an individual? and yet
Hufeland, at the head of the old school, makes this identical assertion
(in his work on Homaeopathy, p. 27, 1. 19) in the following words, viz.
"The homceopathist may remove the symptoms, but the disease will
still remain." He affirms this partly out of mortification at the progress
and salutary effects of homceopathy, and partly because he entertains
wholly material ideas of disease, which he is unable to regard as an
immaterial change in the organism, produced by the morbid derangement
of the vital power; he does not consider it as a changed condition of the
organism, but as a material something, which, after the cure is completed, may yet continue to lurk in some internal corner of the body, in
order one day or other, at pleasure, and during a period of blooming health, once more to burst forth with its material presence! So



83


shocking is still the delusion of the old pathology! That such a one
only could produce a therapeutica, solely intent upon cleansing out the
poor patient, is not surprising.
~ 9. In the healthy condition of man, the immaterial vital
principle which animates the material body, exercises an absolute sway and maintains all its parts in the most admirable
order and harmony, both of sensation and action, so that
our indwelling rational spirit may freely employ these living,
healthy organs for the superior purposes of our existence.
~ 10. The material organism deprived of its vital principle,
is incapable of sensation, action, or self-preservation*; it is the
immaterial vital principle only, animating the former in its
healthy and morbid condition, that imparts to it all sensation
and enables it to perform its functions.
* It is then dead and subjected to the physical laws of the external
world; it suffers decay and is again resolved into its constituent elements.
~ 11. In disease this spontaneous and immaterial vital principle pervading the physical organism, is primarily deranged
by the dynamic influence of a morbific agent which is inimical
to life. Only the vital principle thus disturbed, can give to the
organism its abnormal sensations and incline it to the irregular
actions which we call disease; for as an invisible principle
only cognizable through its operations in the organism, its morbid disturbances can be perceived solely by means of the expression of disease in the sensations and actions of that side of
the organism exposed to the senses of the physician and bystanders, in other words, by the morbid symptoms, and can be
indicated in no other manner.
~ 12. It is solely the morbidly affected vital principle which
brings forth diseases,* so that the expression of disease, perceptible by the senses, announces at the same time all the internal
change, that is, all the morbid perturbations of the vital principle; in short, it displays the entire disease. Consequently,
after a cure is effected, the cessation of all morbid expression,
and of all sensible changes which are inconsistent with the



84


healthy performance of the functions, necessarily pre-supposes,
with an equal degree of certainty, a restoration of the vital
principle to its state of integrity and the recovered health of
the whole organism.
* In what manner the vital principle produces morbid indications in
the system, that is, how it produces disease, is to the physician a useless question, and therefore will ever remain unanswered. Only that
which is necessary for him to know of the disease, and which is fully
sufficient for the purpose of cure, has the Lord of life rendered evident
to his senses.
~ 13. Disease, therefore, (those forms of it not belonging
to manual surgery,) considered as it is by the alloeopathists as
something separate from the living organism and the vital principle which animates it, as something hidden internally, and
material, how subtile soever its nature may be supposed, is a
non-entity, which could only be conceived in heads of material
mould, and which for ages, hitherto, has given to medicine all
those pernicious deviations which constitute it a mischievous
art.
~ 14. There is no curable malady, nor any invisible morbid
change, in the interior of man, which admits of cure, that is
not made known by morbid indications or symptoms to the
physician of accurate observation-a provision entirely in conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of
men.
~ 15. The sufferings of the immaterial vital principle which
animates the interior of our bodies, when it is morbidly disturbed, and the mass of symptoms produced by it in the
organism, which are externally manifested, and represent the
actual malady, constitute a whole-they are one and the same.
The organism is, indeed, the material instrument of life; but
without that animation which is derived from the instinctive
sensibility and control of the vital principle, its existence is as
inconceivable as that of a vital principle without an organism;
consequently, both constitute a unit-although, for the sake of
ease in comprehension, our minds may separate this unity into
two ideas.



85


~ 16. By the operation of injurious influences, from without,
upon the healthy organism, influences which disturb the harmonious play of the functions, the vital principle, as a spiritual
dynamis, cannot otherwise be assailed and affected than in a
(dynamic) spiritual manner; neither can such morbid disturbances, or in other words, such diseases, be removed by the physician, except in like manner, by means of the spiritual (dynamic
virtual) countervailing agency of the suitable medicines acting
upon the same vital principle, and this action is communicated
by the sentient nerves every where distributed in the organism;
so that curative medicines possess the faculty of restoring, and
do actually restore health, with concomitant functional harmony,
by a dynamic influence only, acting upon the vital energies, after
the morbid alterations in the health of the patient which are
evident to the senses (the totality of the symptoms) have
represented the disease to the attentive and observant physician
as fully as may be requisite to effect a cure.
~ 17. As the cure which is effected by the annihilation of
all the symptoms of a disease removes at the same time the
internal change upon which the disease is founded-that is to
say, destroys it in its totality'-it is acccordingly clear, that the
physician has nothing more to do than destroy the totality of
the symptoms in order to effect a simultaneous removal of the
internal change-that is, to annihilate the disease itself.  But
by destroying disease we restore health, the first and sole duty
of the physician who is sensible of the importance of his
calling, which consists in affording relief to his fellow mortals,
and not in discoursing dogmatically.2
A dream, a presentiment resulting fiom a superstitious imagination,
a solemn prediction, impressing a person with the belief that he will infallibly die on a certain day and at a certain hour, have often produced
the embryo uf the growing disease, the signs of approaching death, and
even death itself at the hour prognosticated. Such effects could never
take place without some change having been operated in the interior of
the body, corresponding with the state which manifested itself externally.
In cases of this nature, it has also sometimes happened, that by deceiving
the patient or insinuating a contrary belief, it has succeeded in dissipating
all the morbid appearances which announced the approach of death, and
suddenly restored him to health: circumstances that never could have



86


taken place without annihilating at the same time, by this moral remedy,
the internal morbid change of which death was to be the result.
2 The wisdom and goodness of the Creator in the cure of disease to
which man is subject, could not be more manifest than in developing to
the physician the incidents, in the malady to be removed, openly to the
observation of the physician in order for their removal and the consequent restoration of health. But what would be thought of those divine
attributes if (as the prevalent school of medicine, hitherto affecting a
supernatural insight of the internal nature of things, have pretended,) he
had veiled what is to be cured in disease in mystic darkness, wrapt it
in concealment within, and thus rendered it impossible for man to know
distinctly the malady, and the cure equally impossible.
~ 18. From this incontrovertible truth, that beyond the
totality of the symptoms there is nothing discoverable in
diseases by which they could make known the nature of the
medicines they stand in need of, we ought naturally to conclude
that there can be no other indication whatever than the ensemble
of the symptoms in each individual case to guide us in the
choice of a remedy.
~ 19. As diseases are nothing more than changes in the
general state of the human economy which declare themselves by
symptoms, and the cure being impossible except by the conversion of the diseased state into one of health, it may be readily conceived that medicines could never cure disease if they did not
possess the faculty of changing the general state of the system,
which consists of sensation and action, and that their curative
virtues are owing to this faculty alone.
~ 20. By a mere effort of the mind we could never discover
this innate and hidden faculty of medicines-this spiritual
virtue by which they can modify the state of the human body
and even cure disease. It is by experience only, and observation of the effects produced by their influence on the general
state of the economy, that we can either discover or form to
ourselves any clear conception of it.
~ 21. The curative powers of medicines being nowise
discoverable in themselves, a fact which few will venture to
dispute, and the pure experiments which have been made even
by the most skilful observers not exhibiting any thing to our



88


save themselves at all hazards, a power to which the organism was
confided merely to preserve its harmony so long as health continued.
However inapplicable this method may be, it has for so long a time
been practised by the existing school of medicine, that the physician
can no more pass over it unnoticed, than the historian can be silent on
the oppression to which mankind has been subject for thousands of
years beneath the absurd rule of despotic governments.
~ 23. From pure experience and the most careful experiments that have been tried, we learn that the existing morbid
symptoms, far from being effaced or destroyed by contrary
medicinal symptoms like those excited by the antipathic,
enantiopathic, or palliative methods, they, on the contrary,
reappear more intense than ever, after having for a short
space of time undergone apparent amendment. (Vide ~ 58 -62, and 69.)
~ 24. There remains, accordingly, no other method of
applying medicines profitably in diseases than the homoeopathic, by means of which we select from all others that
medicine (in order to direct it against the entire symptoms of
the individual morbid case) whose manner of acting upon
persons in health is known, and which has the power of
producing an artificial malady the nearest in resemblance to
the natural disease before our eyes.
~ 25. Plain experience,* an infallible oracle in the art of
healing, proves to us, in every careful experiment, that the
particular medicine whose action upon persons in health
produces the greatest number of symptoms resembling those of
the disease which it is intended to cure, possesses, also, in
reality, (when administered in convenient doses,) the power of
suppressing, in a radical, prompt, and permanent manner, the
totality of these morbid symptoms-that is to say, (~ 6-16.)
the whole of the existing disease; it also teaches us that all
medicines cure the diseases whose symptoms approach nearest
to their own, and that among the latter none admit of exception.
* I do not mean that kind of experience acquired by our ordinary
practitioners after having long combated, with a heap of complicated
prescriptions, a multitude of diseases which they never examined with
care, and which (true to the errors of the old school) they regarded as



89
being already included in our pathology, thinking that they perceived in
them some imaginary morbific principle, or some internal anomaly not
less hypothetical. In fact, they were in the habit of seeing something,
but they knew not what they saw, and they arrived at conclusions
which a deity alone could unravel in the midst of so great a concourse
of diverse powers acting upon an unknown subject, a result from which
no information was to be gained. Fifty years of such experience are
like fifty years passed in looking through a kaleidoscope, which, full of
unknown things of varied colours, revolves continually upon itself:
there would be seen thousands of figures changing their forms every
instant without a possibility of accounting for any one of them.
~ 26. This phenomenon is founded on the natural law of
homceopathy-a law unknown till the present time, although
it has on all occasions formed the basis of every visible curethat is to say, a dynamic disease in the living economy of man is
extinguished in a permanent manner by another that is more
powerful, when the latter, (without being of the same species,)
bears a strong resemblance to it in its mode of manifesting itself.'
* Physical and moral diseases are cured in the same manner. Why
does the brilliant planet Jupiter disappear in the twilight from the eyes
of him who gazes at it? Because a similar but more potent power, the
light of breaking day, then acts upon these organs. With what are we
in the habit of flattering the olfactory nerves when offended by disagreeable odours? With snuff which affects the nose in a similar manner
but more powerfully. Neither music nor confectionery will overcome
the disgust of smelling, because these objects have affinity with the
nerves of other senses. By what means does the soldier cunningly
remove from the ears of the compassionate spectator the cries of himn
who runs the gauntlet? By the piercing tones of the fife, coupled with
the noise of the drum. By what means do they drown the distant roar
of the enemy's cannon, which carries terror to the heart of the soldier?
By the deep-mouthed clamour of the big drum. Neither the compassion
nor the terror could be suppressed by reprimands or a distribution of
brilliant uniforms. In the same manner, mourning and sadness are
extinguished in the soul when the news reach us (even though they
were false) of a still greater misfortune occurring to another. The evils
resulting from an excess of joy are mitigated by coffee, which, of itself,
disposes the mind to impressions that are happy. The Germans, a
nation which had for centuries been plunged in apathy and slavery by
their princes-it was not till after they had been bowed to the dust by
the tyranny of the French invader, that a sentiment of the dignity of
man could be awakened within them, or that they could once more arise,
from their abject condition.
12



91


guished by the unaided vital energies, until these are more strongly
aroused by the physician, through the medium of a very similar yet
more powerful morbific agent (a homnopathic medicine). Such an
agent, upon its administration, urges, as it were, the insensate, instinctive vital energies, and is substituted for the natural morbid affection
hitherto existing. The vital energies now become affected by the medicine alone, yet transiently; because its effect (that is to say, the natural
course of the medicinal disease thereby excited,) is of short duration.
Those chronic diseases which (according to ~ 46) are destroyed on the
appearance of small-pox and measles, (both of which run a course of a
few weeks only,) furnish similar instances of cure.
~ 30. Medicines (particularly as it depends on us to vary
the doses according to our own will), appear to have greater
power in affecting the state of health than the natural morbific
irritation; for natural diseases are cured and subdued by
appropriate medicines.
~ 31. The physical and moral powers, which are called
morbific agents, do not possess the faculty of changing the
state of health unconditionally;* we do not fall sick beneath
their influence before the economy is sufficiently disposed and
laid open to the attack of morbific causes, and will allow itself
to be placed by them in a state where the sensations which
they undergo, and the actions which they perform, are different
from those which belong to it in the normal state.      These
powers, therefore, do not excite disease in all men, nor are they
at all times the cause of it in the same individual.
* When I say that disease is an aberration or a discord in the state
of health, I do not pretend by that to give a metaphysical explanation of
the immediate essence of diseases generally, or of any morbid case in
particular. In making use of this term, I merely intend to point at that
which diseases are not, and cannot be; or to express what I have just
proved, that they are not mechanical or chemical changes of the material
substance of' the body, that they do not depend upon a morbific material
principle, and that they are solely spiritual and dynamic changes of the
animal economy.
~ 32. But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific
powers which we call medicines. Every real medicine will at
all times, and under every circumstance, work upon every
living individual, and excite in him the symptoms that are



92


peculiar to it, (so as to be clearly manifest to the senses when
the dose is powerful enough,) to such a degree, that the whole
of the system is always (unconditionally) attacked, and, in a
manner, infected by the medicinal disease, which, as I have
before said, is not at all the case in natural diseases.
~ 33. It is therefore fully proved by every experiment,* and
observation, that the state of health is far more susceptible of
derangement from the effects of medicinal powers than from
the influence of morbific principles and contagious miasms; or
what is the same thing, the ordinary morbific principles have only
a conditional and often very subordinate influence, while the medicinal powers exercise one that is absolute, direct, and greatly superior to that of the former.
* The following is a striking observation of the kind directly in point:
previously to the year 1801, the genuine smooth scarlet fever of Sydenham prevailed epidemically among children, and attacked all, without
exception, who had not escaped the disease in a former epidemic;
whereas, every child who was exposed to one of the kind which came
under my observation in Konigslutter, remained exempt from this highly
infectious disease, if it had timely taken a very small dose of belladonna.
When a medicine can thus evince a prophylactic property against the
infection of a prevalent disease, it must exercise a predominating influence over the vital power.
~ 34. In artificial diseases produced by medicines, it is not
the greater degree of intensity that imparts to them the power
they possess of curing those which are natural. In order
that the cure may be effected, it is indispensable that the
medicines be able to produce in the human body an artificial
disease, similar to that which is to be cured; for it is this resemblance alone, joined to the greater degree of intensity of the
artificial disease, that gives to the latter the faculty of substituting itself in the place of the former, and thus obliterating it.
This is so far a fact, that even nature herself cannot cure an
existing disease by the excitement of a new one that is dissimilar, be the intensity of the latter ever so great; in the same
manner the physician is incapable of effecting a cure when he
applies medicines that have not the power of creating in healthy
persons a morbid state, resembling the disease which is before
him.



93


~ 35. In order to illustrate these facts, we will examine
successively in three different cases the proceedings of nature
where two natural diseases that are dissimilar meet together in
the same patient, and also the results of the ordinary treatment
of disease with allceopathic medicines which are incapable of
exciting an artificial morbid state, similar to that of the disease
which is to be cured. This examination will fully prove, on
the one hand, that it is not even in the power of nature herself
to cure an existing disease by one that is dissimilar, be the
intensity of the latter ever so great, and on the other, that even
the most energetic medicines, when not homoeopathic, are incapable of effecting a cure.
~. 36 I. If the two dissimilar diseases which meet together
in the human body have an unequal power, or if the oldest of
them is stronger than the other, the new disease will be repulsed
from the body by that which existed before it, and will not be
able to establish itself there. Thus a person already afflicted
with a severe chronic disease, will never be subject to an attack
of slight autumnal dysentery or any other epidemic. According to Larry,* the plague peculiar to the Levant never breaks
out in places where scurvy prevails, nor does it ever infect
those who labour under herpetic diseases.     According to
Jenner, the rickets prevent vaccination from taking effect, and
Hildebrand informs us that persons suffering under phthisis are
never attacked with epidemic fevers, except when the latter are
extremely violent.
* Mem. and Observ. in the Description of Egypt, tom. i.
~ 37. In the same manner, a chronic disease, of long standing, will not yield to the ordinary mode of cure by allceopathic
remedies, that is to say, by medicines which are incapable of
producing in healthy persons a state analogous to that by which
it is characterised. It resists a treatment of this kind, provided
it be not too violent, even prolonged during several years.
Practice verifies this assertion, it therefore requires no examples
to support it.
~ 38. II. If the new disease, which is dissimilar to the old,
be more powerful than the latter, it will then cause its suspension



94


until the new disease has either performed its own course or
is cured; but then the old disease reappears. We are informed
by Tulpius' that two children having contracted tinea, ceased
to experience any further attacks of epilepsy to which they had
till then been subject; but as soon as the eruption of the head
was removed, they were again attacked as before. Schoepf
saw the itch disappear when scurvy manifested itself, and
return again after the cure of the latter disease.  A violent
typhus has suspended the progress of ulcerous phthisis, which
resumed its march immediately after the cessation of the
typhoid disease.3 When madness manifests itself during a
pulmonary disease, it effaces the phthisis with all its symptoms;
but when the mental alienation ceases, the pulmonary disease
again rears its head and kills the patient.4 Where the measles
and the small-pox exist together, and have both attacked the
same infant, it is usual for the measles, which have already
declared themselves, to be arrested by the. small-pox which
bursts forth, and not to resume their course until after the cure
of the latter; on the other hand, Manget5 has also seen the
small-pox, which had fully developed itself after inoculation,
suspended during four days by the measles which intervened,
and after the desquamation of which, it revived again to run
its course. The eruption of measles on the sixth day after
inoculation has been known to arrest the inflammatory operation of the latter, and the small-pox did not break out until the
other exanthema had accomplished its seven days' course.6 In
an epidemic, the measles broke out among several patients four
or five days after inoculation, and retarded until their entire
disappearance the eruption of the small-pox, which subsequently
proceeded in a regular manner.7 The true scarlet fever of
Sydenham,8 with angina, was arrested on the fourth day by
the manifestation of the cow-pock, which went through its
natural course; and not before its termination did the scarlet
fever manifest itself again. But as these two diseases appear
to be of equal force, the cow-pock has likewise been seen to
suspend itself on the eighth day by the eruption of genuine
scarlatina, and the red areola was effaced until the scarlatina
had terminated its career, at which moment the cow-pock
resumed its course, and terminated regularly.9 The cow-pock
was on the point of attaining to its state of perfection on the



95


eighth day when measles broke out, which immediately
rendered it stationary, and not before the desquamation of
which did it resume and finish its course; so that, according
to the report of Kortum,'~ it presented on the sixteenth day the
aspect which it usually wears on the tenth. The vaccine
virus has been known to infect the system even where the
measles had already made their appearance, but it did not
pursue its course until the measles had passed away; for this
we have also the authority of Kortum.l'
I have myself had an opportunity of seeing a parotid angina
disappear immediately after the development of the cow-pock.
It was not till after the cow-pock had terminated, and the
disappearance of the red areola of the vesicles, that a great
swelling, attended with fever, manifested itself in the parotid
and sub-maxillary glands, which ran its ordinary course of
seven days.
It is the same in all diseases that are dissimilar; the stronger
one suspends the weaker, (except in cases where they blend
together, which rarely occurs in acute diseases); but they never
cure each other reciprocally.
I Obs. lib. i. obs. 8.          2 In Hufeland's Journal, XV. ii.
* 3 Chevalier, in Hufeland's neuesten Annalen der franz. Heilkunde.
ii. p. 192.
4 Mania phthisi superveniens ear cum omnibus suis phaenomenis
aufert, verum mox redit phthisis et occidit, abeunte mania. Reil,
Memorabilia Fasc. III. v. p. 171.
5 Edinb. Med. Comment. T. I. i.
6 J. Hunter on the Venereal Disease.
7 Rainey, Edinb. Med. Comment. iii. p. 480.
8 It has also been very accurately described by Withering and Plenciz,
and differs greatly from purpura, to which they often give the name of
scarlet fever. Only within the last few years have both, originally very
different diseases, approached more or less to each other in their
symptoms.
9 Jenner, in the Annals of Medicine for August, 1800, p. 747.
o0 In Hufeland's Journal, XX. iii. p. 50.  1 Loc. cit.
~ 39. The ordinary schools of medicine have witnessed all
these effects during whole centuries. They have seen that
nature was never in any instance capable of curing a disease
by adding another, whatever degree of intensity the latter



96


might possess, if it was not similar to the pre-existing disease.
What opinion, then, ought we to form of these schools of
medicine, which continued, notwithstanding, to treat chronic
diseases with alloeopathic remedies-that is to say, with substances which were scarcely ever able to excite any thing else
but a disease dissimilar to the affection that was to be cured?
And though physicians had never before regarded nature with
a due share of attention, would it not still have been possible
for them to discover, from the miserable results of their mode
of treatment, that they were pursuing a wrong path, which
could only lead them still farther from their purpose? Could
they not see that in having recourse (according to their usual
practice) to violent allceopathic remedies in chronic diseases,
they did nothing more than provoke an artificial malady
dissimilar to the primitive disease, which certainly had the
effect of extinguishing the latter so long as the other continued
to exist, but which suffered it to reappear as soon as the
diminished powers of the patient could no longer support the
vigorous attacks of allceopathy on the vital principle? It is in
this manner that strong purgatives, frequently repeated, cause
eruptions of the skin to disappear pretty quickly; but when the
patient can no longer endure the dissimilar disease that has
been violently kindled in the vitals, and is compelled to discontinue the purgatives, then the cutaneous eruption either
flourishes again in its former vigour, or the internal psoric
affection manifests itself by some bad symptom or another,
while, in addition to the primitive malady, (which is not in the
least degree diminished,) indigestion ensues, and the vital
powers are exhausted. Thus, also, when ordinary physicians
insert setons, and excite ulceration of the surface of the body,.
for the purpose of destroying chronic diseases, they never
accomplish the object they have in view-that is to say, they
never perform a cure, because those factitious cutaneous ulcers
are perfectly foreign and allmcopathic to the internal disease;
but the irritation produced by many cauteries being often a
more powerful disease than the primitive morbid state,
(although at the same time dissimilar,) it frequently has the
power of silencing the latter for a short time, which is nothing
more than a suspension of the disease obtained at the expense of
the patient, whose powers are thereby gradually diminished.



98


reigned together, there were about three hundred cases in
which one of these maladies suspended the other, and in which
the measles did not break forth until twenty days after the
eruption of the small-pox, and the latter till from seventeen to
eighteen days after that of the measles-that is to say, until
after the first disease had run its entire course; but there was
a single instance in which P. Russell2 met with these two
dissimilar maladies simultaneously in the same patient.
Rainey3 saw the small-pox and the measles together in two
little girls; and J. Maurice4 remarks that he never met with
more than two instances of this kind in the whole course of his
practice.  Similar examples may be found in Ettmiiller,5 and a
few  other writers.  Zencker6 saw the cow-pock pursue its
course in a regular manner conjointly with measles and
purpura; and Jenner likewise observed it pursue its course
tranquilly in the midst of a mercurial treatment directed
against the venereal disease.
1 The cures which I performed of these kinds of complicated diseases,
together with the accurate experiments which I have made, have convinced me that they do not arise from an amalgamation of two diseases;
but that the latter exist separately in the organism, each occupying the
parts that are most in harmony with it. In short, the cure is effected in
a very complete manner by administering alternately, and at the proper
time, mercurials and antipsoiics, each according to its approriate dose
and preparation.
2 Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Med. and Chir.
Knowledge, vol. ii.
3 Med. Comment. of Edinb. iii. p. 480.
4 Med. and Phys. Journal, 1805.
5 Opera, ii. p. i. cap. 10.     6 In Hufeland's Journal, xvii.
~ 41. The complication or co-existence of several diseases
in the same patient, resulting from a long use of medicines that
were not homceopathic, is far more frequent than those to
which nature herself has given birth. The continued application of inappropriate medicines finishes by adding to the
natural disease which it is intended to cure, such fresh morbid
symptoms as those remedies are capable of exciting according
to the nature of their special properties. These symptoms not
being capable of curing by analogous counter irritation, (that
is to say, homceopathically,) a chronic disease to which they



99


bear no similitude, gradually associate themselves to the latter,
and thus add a new factitious disease to the old one, so that the
patient becomes considerably worse, and far more difficult to
cure. There are many observations and cases cited in the
medical journals and treatises that support this assertion.
One proof of it is also to be met with in the frequent cases of
the venereal chancrous disease, especially when complicated
with  psora, and even    with  gonorrhea sycotica, which,
far from being cured by considerable and repeated doses of
inappropriate mercurial preparations, station themselves in the
organism alongside of the chronic mercurial disease which
developes itself gradually,* and form together a monstrous
complication generally designated by the name of masked
syphilis (pseudo-syphilis), a state of disease which, if not
absolutely incurable, cannot at least but with the greatest
difficulty be changed to that of health.
* For besides the morbid symptoms analogous to those of the venereal
disease, which would be capable of curing the same homeaopathically,
mercury produces a crowd of others which bear no resemblance whatever to those of syphilis, and which, when administered in large doses,
especially where there is a complication with psora, as is frequently the
case, engenders fresh evils, and commits terrible ravages on the body.
~ 42. Nature, as I have before said, sometimes permits the
coincidence of two and even three spontaneous diseases in one
and the same body; but it must be observed, that this complication never takes place but in diseases that are dissimilar, and
which, according to the eternal laws of nature, cannot annihilate or cure each other reciprocally. Apparently this is
executed in such a manner that the two or three diseases
divide, if we may so express it, the organism between them,
and each takes possession of the parts that are best suited to it
individually; a division which, in consequence of the want
of similitude between them, can very well take place without
doing injury to the unity of the vital principle.
~ 43. But the result is very different when two diseases that
are similar meet together in the organism-that is to say, when
an analogous but more powerful disease joins itself to the preexisting malady. It is true that we here see how a cure is



100


performed according to nature, and how man is to proceed in
effecting the same object.
~ 44. Two diseases that resemble each other closely can
neither repel (as in the first of the three preceding hypotheses,
1.), nor suspend each other (as in the second, II.), so that the old
one re-appears after the cessation of the new one; nor, finally,
(as in the third, III.), can they exist beside each other in the
same organism, and form a double or complicated disease.
~ 45. No! Two diseases that differ greatly in their
species,' but which bear a strong resemblance in their development and effects —that is to say, in the symptoms which
they produce, always mutually destroy each other when they
meet together in the system. The stronger annihilates the
weaker; nor is it difficult to conceive how this is performed.
Two dissimilar diseases may co-exist in the body, because their
dissimilitude would allow of their occupying two distinct
regions. But, in the present case, the stronger disease which
makes its appearance, exercises an influence upon the same
parts as the old one, and even throws itself, in preference, upon
those which have till now been attacked by the latter, so that
the old disease finding no other organ to act upon, is necessarily
extinguished.? Or to express it in other terms, as soon as the
vital powers, which have till then been deranged by a morbific
cause, are attacked with greater energy by a new power very
analogous to the former, but more intense, they no longer
receive any impression but from the latter, while the preceding
one, reduced to a state of mere dynamic power without matter,
must cease to exist.
I See the note attached to ~ 26.
2 In the same way that the light of a lamp is rapidly effaced from the
retina by a sunbeam which strikes the eye with greater force.
I 46. Many examples might be adduced where nature has
cured diseases homceopathically by other diseases which
excited similar symptoms. But if precise and indisputable
facts alone be required, it will be necessary to confine ourselves to the few diseases which arise from some permanent



104


the efforts of nature, nor the skill of the physician, have ever
been able to cure a disease by a dissimilar morbific power,
whatever energy the latter may have possessed; also, that a
cure is not to be obtained but by a morbific power capable of
producing symptoms that are similar, and, at the same time, a
little stronger. The cause of this rests with the eternal and
irrevocable law of nature, which was hitherto not understood.
~ 49. We should have met with a much greater number of
those truly natural homoeopathic cures, if, on the one hand,
observers had been more attentive to the subject, and, on the
other, nature had at her disposal more diseases capable of
effecting homoeopathic cures.
~ 50. Even nature herself has no other homeopathic
agents at her command than the miasmatic diseases which
always retain their identity, such as itch, measles, and smallpox.' But of these morbific powers, the small-pox and the
measles are more dangerous and terrific than the maladies
which they cure; and the other, psora, demands itself, after
the performance of a cure, the application of a remedy that is
capable of annihilating it in its turn: both of these are circumstances that render their use as homceopathic remedies difficult,
uncertain, and dangerous. And how few are the diseases to
which man is subject, that would find their homceopathic cure
in psora, measles, or small-pox! Nature can, therefore, cure
but a very limited number of diseases with those hazardous
remedies. Their use is attended with considerable danger to
the patient, because the doses of these morbific agents cannot
be varied according to circumstances, as in the case with
doses of medicine, and in curing an analogous disease of long
standing, they weigh down the patient with the dangerous
burden of psora, measles, and small-pox. Notwithstanding
this, we have many examples where their favourable junction
has produced the most perfect homceopathic cures, which are
a living commentary upon the sole therapeutic law of naturecure with medicines that are capable of exciting symptoms analogous to those of the disease itself.
* And the exanthematic miasm which is contained in the cow-pock
lymph.



105


~ 51. These facts will more than suffice to reveal to the
understandings of men the great law which has just been
declared. And behold the advantage which man has here
over rude nature, whose acts are not guided by reflection!
How are the homceopathic morbific powers multiplied in the
various medicines which are spread over the creation, all of
which are at his disposal, and may be brought to the relief of
his suffering fellow-mortals!  With these, he can create
morbid symptoms as varied as the countless natural diseases
which they are to cure. With such precious resources at his
command, there can be no necessity for those violent attacks
upon the organism to extirpate an old and obstinate disease,
and the transition from the state of suffering to that of durable
health is effected in a gentle, imperceptible, and often speedy
manner.
~ 52. After such evidence and examples, it is impossible
for any reasonable physician to persevere in the ordinary
allceopathic treatment, or continue to apply remedies whose
effects have no direct or homceopathic relation with the chronic
disease that is to be cured, and which attack the body in the
parts that are least diseased, by exciting evacuations, counterirritation, derivations, &c.* It is impossible that he can persist
in the adoption of a method which consists in exciting, at the
expense of the powers of the patient, the appearance of a
morbid state entirely different from the primitive affection, by
administering strong doses of mixtures which are for the most
part composed of drugs whose effects are unknown. The use
of such mixtures can have no other result but that which proceeds from  the general law of nature when one dissimilar
disease joins itself to another in the animal economy-that is
to say, the chronic affection, far from being cured, is, on the contrary, always aggravated. Three different effects may then
take place:-1st. If the allceopathic treatment, though of long
duration, be gentle, the natural disease remains unchanged,
and the patient will only have lost a portion of his strength,
because, as we have seen before, the disease which already
exists in.the body will not permit a new dissimilar one that is
weaker to establish itself there likewise.  2d. When the
14



106


economy is attacked with violence by allmeopathic medicines,
the primitive disease will yield for a time; but it re-appears,
with at least the same degree of vigour as before, the moment
this treatment is interrupted, because, as before stated, of two
concurrent diseases, the new one, which is the stronger,
destroys and suspends for a time that which existed before it,
which is weaker and dissimilar. 3d. Finally, if large. doses of
allioopathic medicines be continued for a length of time, this
treatment only adds a new factitious disease without ever
curing the primitive one, and renders the cure still more
difficult, because, as we have already seen, when two dissimilar
chronic affections of equal intensity meet together, one takes
up its station beside the other in the system, and both are
simultaneously established.
* See the introduction, "A View," etc., and my book-Die Allceopathie, ein Wort der Warnung an Kranke jeder Art.-Leipzig, bei Baumgartner.
~ 53. These cures are, as we see, performed solely by
means of homeopathy, which we have at length attained to,
by consulting reason and taking experience for our guide
(~ 7-25). By this method alone can we cure disease in the
most speedy, certain, and permanent manner, because it is
grounded upon an eternal and unerring law of nature.
~ 54. I have before remarked (~ 43-49) that there is no
true method but the homceopathic; because, of the only three
modes of employing medicines in disease, this alone leads in a
direct line to a mild, safe, and durable cure, without either
injuring the patient or diminishing his strength.
~ 55. The second mode of employing medicines in disease,
is that which I term the allceopathic, or heteropathic, which has
been in general use till the present time. Without ever
regarding that which is really diseased in the body, it attacks
those parts which are sound, in order to draw off the malady
from another quarter, and direct it towards the latter. I have



107


already treated of this method in the Introduction, and therefore
will not speak of it farther.
~ 56. The third and last mode of employing medicines in
disease is the antipathic, enantiopathic, or palliative. By this
method, physicians have, till the present time, succeeded in
affording apparent relief, and gained the confidence of their
patients by deluding them with a temporary suspension of their
sufferings. We will now show its inefficacy, and to what
extent it is even injurious in diseases that run their course
rapidly. In fact, this is the only feature, in the treatment
employed by allmopathists, that has any direct reference to the
sufferings occasioned by the natural disease. But in what
does this reference consist? In precisely that which ought
most to be avoided if we would not delude and mock the
patient.
~ 57. An ordinary physician who proceeds upon the antipathic method, pays attention to one symptom only-that of
which the patient complains loudest, and neglects all the
others, however numerous. He prescribes against this symptom a medicine that is known to produce the very opposite
effect; for, according to the axiom contraria contrariis laid
down fifteen hundred years ago by the old schools of medicine,
it is from this remedy that he expects the most speedy relief
(palliative).  Accordingly, he administers strong doses of
opium in pains of every description, because this substance
rapidly benumbs the feeling. He prescribes the same drug in
diarrhaea, because in a short time it stops the peristaltic movement of the intestinal canal, and renders it insensible. He
administers it likewise in cases of insomnolence, because it
produces a state of hebetude and stupor. He employs purgatives when the patient has for a long time been tormented with
constipation.  He plunges a hand that has received a burn
into cold water, because its icy quality appears suddenly to
remove the pain as if by enchantment. When a patient complains of a sense of cold and loss of vital heat, he places him in
a warm bath, whereby heat is immediately restored. Any one
complaining of habitual weakness, is advised to take wine,
which immediately re-animates and appears to refresh him.



110


that of constipating the bowels in a still greater degree. An
ordinary physician prescribes wine as a remedy in chronic
debility; but it is only the primitive action of this agent that is
stimulating, and its definitive results are those of reducing the
powers still more.
It has been imagined that bitters and spices would warm and
strengthen the cold and inactive stomach; but the secondary
effect of these heating palliatives is to increase the inactivity of
the gastric viscera. Warm baths have been prescribed in cases
of rigors and an habitual deficiency of the vital heat; but on
coming out of the water the patients are still weaker, more
incapable of receiving warmth, and more subject to rigors than
they were before. Immersion in cold water instantly relieves
the pain occasioned by a severe burn; subsequently, however,
this pain is increased to an insupportable degree, and the
inflammation extends to the neighbouring parts.*  To cure
gravedo of long standing, sternutatories are prescribed, which
excite the pituitary secretion; and it has not been perceived
that the final result of this method was always that of aggravating the evil which it was intended to cure. Electricity and
galvanism, which at first exercise great influence upon the
muscular system, quickly restore activity to members that have
for a long time been feeble and nearly paralysed; but the
secondary effect is absolute annihilation of all muscular irritability and entire paralysis. It has been said that venesection is
a fit remedy to stop long continued congestions of blood in the
head; but this mode is al ways succeeded by a still greater determination of blood to the upper parts of the body. The sole
remedy that physicians in ordinary know to apply in cases
where the moral and physical powers are inactive and half
paralysed, which are predominant symptoms in different kinds
of typhus, is valerian, administered in strong doses, because this
plant is one of the most powerful excitants they are acquainted
with; but it escaped their notice, that tile excitement which valerian produces is merely its primitive effect, and after the re-action
of the organism, the stupor and the incapability of motion-that
is to say, the paralysis of the body, and tlhe debility of the mind,
increase-they have not observed that the patients on whom
they lavished doses of the antipathic valerian, are precisely
those who have suffered the greatest mortality. In short, the



112


nature never accomplished a speedy and perfect cure but by
means of a similar disease which she added to the old one
(~ 46); notwithstanding all this, physicians have, during so
many centuries, never arrived at a truth on which alone
depended the safety of the patient.
~ 62. The source of all these pernicious results of palliative
antipathic treatment, and the salutary effects proceeding from
the reverse method, the homceopathic, will be sufficiently
explained in the following observations, which are drawn from
experience, and a number of facts that have hitherto escaped
the notice of every other physician, although they were immediately before the view, perfectly evident in their nature, and
of the deepest importance to the medical art.
~ 63. Every agent that acts upon the human economy,
every medicine produces more or less some notable change in
the existing state of the vital powers, or creates a certain
modification in the health of man for a period of shorter or
longer duration: this change is called the primitive effect.
Although this is the joint effect of both a medicinal and a vital
power, it belongs, notwithstanding, more particularly to the
former, whose action is exercised upon the body. But our
vital powers tend always to oppose their energy to this influence
or impression. The effect that results from this, and which
belongs to our conservative vital powers and their automatic
force, bears the name of secondary effect or re-action.
~ 64. So long as the primitive effects of artificial morbific
agents (medicines) continue their influence upon a healthy
body, the vital power appears to play merely a passive part, as
if it were compelled to undergo the impression of the medicine
that is acting upon it from without. But, subsequently, this
also appears, in a manner, to rouse itself. Then, if there
exists any state directly contrary to the primitive effect, (a) the
vital power manifests a tendency to produce one (b) that is
proportionate to its own energy, and the degree of influence
exercised by the morbid or medicinal agent; and if there
exists no state in nature that is directly contrary to this primitive effect, the vital power then seeks to gain the ascendency



115


the symptoms produced by the latter, leave in the organism a
slight medicinal disease which outlives the primitive affection.
But the extreme minuteness of the dose renders this disease so
slight and susceptible of dissipating itself, that the organism
has no need to oppose to it any greater re-action than that
which is requisite to raise the existing state to the habitual
degree of health-that is to say, to establish the latter. And
all the symptoms of the primitive disease being now extinct, a
very slight effort will suffice to accomplish this (~ 65. 6.)
~ 69. But precisely the reverse of this takes place in the
antipathic or palliative method.  The medicinal symptom
which the physician opposes to the morbid symptom (such as,
for example, stupefaction, which constitutes the primitive effect
of opium, opposed to an acute pain,) is not wholly foreign and
alloeopathic to this latter. There is an evident affinity between
the two symptoms, but it is inverse. Tile morbid symptom is
to be annihilated here by a medicinal symptom opposed to it.
This cannot possibly be accomplished. It is true the antipathic remedy acts precisely on the diseased part of the
organism, just as certain as the homceopathic; but it confines
itself to covering, in a certain degree, the natural morbid
symptom, and rendering it insensible for a certain length of
time. During the first moments of the action of the palliative,
the organism undergoes no disagreeable sensation, neither on
the part of the morbid symptom, nor on that of the medicinal
one, which appear to be reciprocally annihilated and neutralised,
as it were, in a dynamic manner. This, for example, is what
takes place in regard to pain and the stupifying powers of
opium, for, during the first moments, the organism feels as if it
were in health, alike free from the painful sensation and the
stupefaction. But as the medicinal symptom that is opposed
cannot occupy in the organism the place of the pre-existing
disease, (as is the case in the homceopathic method, where the
remedy excites an artificial disease similar to the natural one,
but merely stronger,) the vital power consequently not being
affected, by the remedy employed, with a disease similar to
that which had previously tormented it, the latter does not
become extinguished. The new disease, it is true, keeps the
organism insensible, during the first moments, by a kind of



116


dynamic neutralisation,l if we may so express it, but it soon
dies away of itself, like all medicinal affections; and then it not
only leaves the malady in its former state, but still more (as
palliatives can never be administered but in large doses to
afford apparent relief) it compels the organism to produce a state
contrary to that excited by the palliative medicine, and creates
an effect opposite to that of the remedy-that is to say, gives
birth to a condition analogous to the natural disease which is
not yet destroyed. This addition, then, which proceeds from
the organism itself, (the re-action against the palliative), does
not fail to increase the intensity and severity of the disease.2
Thus the morbid symptom (this single part of the disease)
becomes worse the moment the effect of the palliative ceases, and
that, too, in a degree proportionate to the extent of the dose of the
palliative.  And, to continue with the same example, the
greater the quantity of the opium administered to suspend the
pain, in the same degree does the pain increase beyond its
primitive intensity when the opium has ceased to act.3
1 Contrary or opposite sensations in the living economy of man cannot
be permanently neutralised like substances of opposite qualities in the
laboratory of the chemist, where we may see, for example, sulphuric acid
and potash form, by their union, a substance that is entirely different, a
neutral salt that is no longer acid or alkali, and which not even fire will
decompose.  Combinations like these, producing something that is
neutral and durable, can never take place in the organs of sensation
with regard to impressions of an opposite nature. There is, indeed,
some appearance of neutralisation or of reciprocal destruction, but this
phenomenon is of short duration. The tears of the mourner may cease
for a moment when there is some merry spectacle before his eyes, but
soon the mirth is forgotten, and the tears begin to flow again more freely
than ever.
2 However intelligible this proposition may be, it has nevertheless
been misinterpreted and an objection made to it, that a palliative would
be just as well able to cure by its consecutive effect, which resembles the
existing disease, as a homoeopathic remedy by its primitive effect. But
in raising this obstacle, it has never been considered that the consecutive
effect is by no means a product of the remedy, that it always arises from
the re-action exercised by the vital powers of the organism, and that
consequently this re-action of the vital powers, by reason of the application of a palliative, is a state similar to the symptom of the disease
which this remedy failed to annihilate, and which consequently was
aggravated by the re-action of the vital power against the palliative.
3 As in a dungeon where the prisoner scarce distinguishes the objects



118


resemble those of the disease itself, is the only one that is really
salutary, and which always annihilates disease, or the purely
dynamic aberrations of the vital powers, in an easy, prompt,
and perfect manner. In this respect, nature herself furnishes
the example when, by adding to an existing disease a new one
that resembles it, she cures it promptly and effectually.
~ 71. As it is no longer doubted 'that the diseases of mankind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms which
cannot be destroyed but by the aid of medicines, and the
inherent faculty which those substances possess of exciting
morbid symptoms similar to those of the natural disease, the
points to be considered in the mode of treatment are the three
following:1st. By what means is the physician to arrive at the necessary information relative to a disease, in order to be able to
undertake the cure?
2d. How is he to discover the morbific powers of medicinesthat is to say, of the instruments destined to cure natural
diseases?
3d. What is the best mode of applying these artificial
morbific powers (medicines) in the cure of disease?
~ 72. Relative to the first point, it will be necessary for us
to enter here into some general considerations. The diseases
of mankind resolve themselves into two classes. The first are
rapid operations of the vital power departed from its natural
condition, which terminate in a shorter or longer. period of time,
but are always of moderate duration. These are called acute
diseases. The others, which are less distinct and often almost
imperceptible on their first appearance, seize upon the organism,
each according to his own peculiar manner, and remove it by
degrees so far from the state of health that the automatic vital
energy which is destined to support the latter, and which is
called vital power, cannot resist but in a useless and imperfect
manner; and not being potent enough to extinguish them herself, she is compelled to allow them to grow until, in the end,
they destroy the organism. The latter are known by the
appellation of chronic diseases, and are produced by infection
from a chronic miasm.



122


patient with an accumulation of miseries that endure till the
latest period of his existence. These are the greatest and
most frequent scourges of the human species, since the most
robust constitution, the best regulated life, and the greatest
energy of the vital powers, are insufficient to extinguish them.
~ 79. Hitherto, syphilis only was in some measure known
as one of these chronic miasmatic diseases, which, being
uncured, continued to the end of life. Sycosis, which likewise
cannot be subdued by the vital powers alone, has never been
regarded as a distinct species of chronic disease depending on
an internal miasmr; and it was supposed to be cured when the
excrescences on the skin were destroyed, while no attention
was paid to the source which still continued to exist.
~ 80. But a chronic miasm that is incomparably greater
and far more important than either of the two last named, is
that of psora. The two others disclose the specific internal
affection whence they emanate-the one by chancres, and the
other by excrescences in the form of a cauliflower. It is not
until the whole of the organism is infected, that psora declares
its huge internal chronic miasmin by a cutaneous eruption
(sometimes consisting only in a few pimples) that is wholly
peculiar to it, accompanied by insupportable tickling, voluptuous itching, and a specific odour.  This psora is the sole
true and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless forms of disease* which, under the names of nervous
debility, hysteria, hemicrania, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, madness, epilepsy, and spasms of all kinds,
softening of the bones, or rickets, scoliasis and cyphosis, caries,
cancer, fungus htematodes, pseudomorphm of all kinds, gravel,
gout, haemorrhoids, jaundice and cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhea,
gastrorrhagia, epistaxis, hemoptysis, hematuria, metrorrhagia,
asthma and phthisis ulcerosa, impotency and sterility, deafness,
cataract and amaurosis, paralysis, loss of sense, pains of every
kind, &c., appear in our pathology as so many peculiar,
distinct, and independent diseases.
* It has cost me twelve years of study and research to trace out the
source of this incredible number of chronic affections-to discover this
great truth which remained concealed from all my predecessors and



123


cotemporaries-to establish the basis of its demonstration, and find out,
at the same time, the principal antipsoric remedies that were fit to combat this hydra in all its different forms. My observations on this subject
have been given to the world in the Treatise on Chronic Diseases
which I published in the year 1828-30, iv. vols. Dresden, by Arnold.
(Second edition. 1835.)
Until I had examined the depths of this important matter, it was
impossible for me to teach the mode of subduing all chronic diseases but
as isolated and individual affections by the medicinal substances that
were till then known according to their effects upon healthy persons; so
that the followers of my method treated each case of chronic disease
separately as a distinct group of symptoms, which, however, did not prevent their cure to such an extent that suffering humanity had good cause
to rejoice at the newly discovered system of medicine. But how much
more satisfactory must it be, now that remedies have been discovered
which are still more homceopathic for the cure of chronic diseases that
owe their origin to psora! from among which the physician, who is truly
skilled in his art, will select only such whose medicinal symptoms correspond best with those of the chronic disease which it is intended to
cure.
~ 81. The progress of this ancient miasm through the
organisms of millions of individuals in the course of some hundreds of generations, and the extraordinary degree of development which it has by these means acquired, will explain, to a
certain extent, why it is able at present to make its appearance
beneath so many different forms, especially if we contemplate
the multiplicity of circumstances' that usually contribute to the
manifestation of this great diversity of chronic affections,
(secondary symptoms of psora), besides the infinite variety of
their individual constitution. It is, therefore, not surprising
that such different organisms, penetrated by the psoric miasm,
and exposed to so many hurtful influences, external and
internal, which often act upon them in a permanent manner,
should also present such an incalculable number of diseases,
changes, and sufferings, as those which have, till the present
time, been cited by the old pathology2 as so many distinct
diseases, describing them by a number of particular names.
1 Some of these causes, which, in modifying the manifestation of psora,
give to it the form of a chronic disease, evidently depend, in a certain
degree, either on climate and the natural situation of the dwelling, or on
the diversities of the physical and moral education of youth, which has,
in some instances, been either neglected or too long delayed, and in



124


others carried to excess, or on the abuse of it in respect to regimen,
passions, morals, customs, and habits.
2 How many are found among them whose names bear more significations than one, and by each of which very different diseases are designated, that have no connection with each other but by a single symptom?
Such as ague, yellow jaundice, dropsy, phthisis, leucorrhaa, h(emorrhoids, rheumatism, apoplexy, spasms, hysteria, hypochondriasis,
melancholy, insanity, angina, paralysis, &c., (I  in this country,
dyspepsia, liver complaint, disease of the spine, and other fashionable
terms,) which are represented as fixed diseases that always preserve
their identity, and which, by reason of the name they bear, are always
treated upon the same plan. How can we justify the identity of medical
treatment by the adoption of a name? And if the treatment is not
always to be the same, why make use of an identical name, which also
supposes a coincidence in the manner of being attacked by medicinal
agents? Nihil sane in arter  medicam pestiferam  magis unquam
irrepsit maltum quanm generalia qucedam nomina morbis imponere
iisque aptare velle generalem quandam medicinam: it is thus that
Huxham, a physician as enlightened as he is admired for his candour,
has expressed himself. (Op. Phys. Med. t. i.) Fritze likewise complains (Annalen, i. p. 80) that the same names have been given to
diseases that are essentially different.
Even epidemic diseases, which are probably propagated by a specific
miasm in each particular case of epidemy, receive names from the existing medical school, as if they were fixed diseases, already known and
always returning under the same form. It is thus they speak of hospital
fever, jailfev;er, camp fever, bilious fever, nervous fever, mucous fever,
&c., although each epidemic of these erratic fevers manifests itself
beneath the aspect of a new disease that never existed before, varying
considerably both in its course and in the most characteristic symptoms,
and also in its whole department. Each of them differs so widely from
all the anterior epidemics, whatever names they bear, that it is overturning every principle in logic to give to diseases so manifestly different
from each other one of those names that have been introduced into the
pathology, and then to regulate the medical treatment according to a
name that has been so abused. Svdenham alone discovered the truth of
this (Oper. cap. 2, de morb. epid. p. 43); for he insists upon the necessity of never believing in the identity of one epidemic disease with another that had manifested itself before, or of treating it according to this
affinity, because the epidemics which exhibit themselves successively
have all differed from  each other. Animtum admiratione percellit,
quam discolor et sui plane dissimilis morborum epidemicorum facies;
quae tam aperta horum morborum diversitas turn propriis ac sibi peculiaribus symptomatis, tum etiam medendi ratione, quam hi ab illis disparem  sibi vindicant, satis illucescit. Ex quibus constat morbos
epidemicos, utut externa quatantenus specie et symptomatis aliquot
utrisque pariter convenire paullo incautioribus videantur, re tamen



125


ipsa, si bene adverteris animtum aliene esse admodum indolis et distare ut era lupinis.
From all this, it is clear that these useless names of diseases, which
are so much abused, ought to have no influence whatever upon the plan
of treatment adopted by a true physician who knows that he is not to
judge of and treat diseases after the nominal resemblance of a symptom,
but according to the totality of the signs of the individual state of each
patient; his duty is, therefore, to search scrupulously for diseases, and
not to build his opinion upon gratuitous hypotheses.
Should it, however, be thought sometimes necessary to have names
for diseases in order to render ourselves intelligible in a few words to
the ordinary classes when speaking of a patient, let none be made use of
but such as are collective. We ought to say, for example, that the
patient has a species of chorea, a species of dropsy, a species of nervous
fever, a species of ague, because there certainly do not exist any diseases
that are permanent and always retaining their identity, which deserve
these denominations or others that are analogous. It is thus we might
by degrees dissipate the illusion produced by the names given to
diseases.
~ 82. Although the discovery of this great source of chronic
affections has advanced the science of medicine some steps
nearer to that of the nature of the greater number of diseases
that present themselves for cure, still the homceopathic physician, at every chronic disease (psoric) that he is called upon to
treat, ought not to be less careful than before in seizing upon
the perceptible symptoms, and every thing that is connected
with them; for it is no more possible in these diseases than in
others to obtain a real cure without particularising each
individual case in a rigorous and absolute manner. It is only
necessary to distinguish whether the disease is acute or
chronic, because, in the first case, the principal symptoms
develope themselves more rapidly, the image of the malady is
found in a much shorter time, and there are far fewer enquiries
to be made, because the greatest part of the signs are of themselves more evident to the senses" than is the case in chronic
diseases of several years' standing, whose symptoms are ascertained with greater difficulty.
* According to this, the method I am about to point out for the discovery of the symptoms is only suited in a partial degree to acute
diseases.
~ 83. This examination of a particular case of disease,



126


with the intent of presenting it in its formal state and individuality, only demands, on the part of the physician, an
unprejudiced mind, sound understanding, attention and fidelity
in observing and tracing the image of the disease. I will content myself, in the present instance, with merely explaining the
general principles of the course that is to be pursued, leaving
it to the physician to select those which are applicable to each
particular case.
~ 84. The patient details his sufferings; the persons who
are about him relate what he has complained of, how he has
behaved himself, and all that they have remarked in him.
The physician sees, hears and observes, with his other senses,
whatever there is changed or extraordinary in the patient. He
writes all this down in the very words which the latter, and the
persons around him, made use of. He permits them to continue speaking to the end without interruption,* except where
they wander into useless digressions, taking care to exhort
them, at the commencement, to speak slowly, that he may be
enabled to follow them in taking down whatever lie deems
necessary.
* Every interruption breaks the chain of ideas of the person who speaks,
and things do not afterwards return to his memory in the same shape he
would at first have described them.
~ 85. At each new circumstance related by the patient or
the persons present, the physician commences another line, in
order that the symptoms may all be written down separately,
and stand one beneath the other. By this mode of proceeding,
he will be enabled to add to that which has, in the first
instance, been related to him in a vague manner, any thing he
may subsequently acquire from a more accurate knowledge of
the case.
~ 86. When the patient and those about him have finished
all they had to say, the physician then asks for more precise
information with regard to each individual symptom, and proceeds as follows:-He reads over all that has been communicated to him, and asks at each particular symptom, for
example-At what epoch did this or that circumstance occur?



127
Was it previous to the use of the medicines which the patient
has taken till the present time, or while he was taking them, or
only a few days after he had discontinued their use? What
kind of pain, what particular sensation was it that was felt in
such or such a part of the body? Which the precise spot that
it occupied? Did the pain come on in separate attacks at
intervals, or was it lasting and uninterrupted?  How long did
it continue? At what hour of the day or night, and in what
part of the body, was it most violent, or where and when did it
cease entirely? What was the precise nature of this or that
particular circumstance or symptom?
~ 87. Thus the physician causes all the indications which
were given in the first instance to be described to him more
closely, without ever appearing, by his manner of putting the
question, to dictate the answer,* or place the patient in such a
position that he shall have nothing to reply but yes or no to his
question. To act otherwise would only lead the person interrogated to deny or affirm a thing that is false, or only half true,
or even wholly different from that which has really occurred,
according as it may suit his convenience, or for the purpose of
gratifying the physician. An unfaithful description of the
disease would then result, and, consequently, an inappropriate
choice of the curative remedy.
* For instance, the physician ought never to say-" Did not such or
such a thing take place in this manner'?" By giving this turn to his
questions, he puts a false reply into the mouth of the patient, and draws
from him a wrong indication.
~ 88. If in this spontaneous narrative no mention is made
of several parts or functions of the body, and of the state of
mind of the patient, the physician may then ask if there is not
something more to be said respecting this or that particular
part or function, or relative to the disposition and state of
mind,t taking care, at the same time, to confine himself to
general terms, in order that the person who furnishes the
explanation may, thereby, be constrained to answer categorically upon these various points.
f For example-Has the patient had an evacuation from his bowels?
How does he pass water-freely or otherwise? How does he rest by



128


day and by night? What is the state of mind and temper of the patient?
Is he thirsty? What kind of taste has he in the mouth? What kinds of
food and drink are most agreeable to him, and which are those he dislikes? Do the different articles taste as usual, or have they another
taste that is wholly different? How does he feel after meals? Have
you any thing more to tell me relative to the head, belly, or limbs?
~ 89. When the patient (for it is to him we are to refer, in
preference, for every thing that relates to the sensations he
experiences, except in diseases where concealment is observed)
has thus personally given the necessary details to the physician,
and furnished him with a tolerable image of the malady, the
latter is then at liberty to question him more specifically if he
finds he is not yet sufficiently informed on the subject.*
* For example-How often have the bowels been evacuated, and
what was the nature of the discharges? Did the whitish discharges
consist of mucus or faeces? Were they painful or otherwise? What
was the precise nature of these pains, and in what part were they felt?
What did the patient throw up? Is the bad taste in the mouth putrid,
bitter, or acid, or what kind of taste is it? Does he experience this
taste before, during, or after eating or drinking? At what part of the
day does he feel it in particular? What kind of taste was connected
with the eructation? Is the urine turbid at first, or does it only become
so after standing a while? Of what colour was it at the time of emission? What was the colour of the sediment? Is there any peculiarity
in the state of the patient when he sleeps? Does he sigh, moan, speak,
or cry out? Does he start in his sleep? Does he snore in inspiration
or expiration? Does he lie on his back only, or on which side does he
lay himself? Does he cover himself up close, or does he throw off the
bed covering? Does he easily awake, or does he sleep too soundly?
How does he feel on waking? How often does this or that symptom
occur, and on what occasion? Is it when the patient is sitting up, lying
down, standing up, or when he is moving about? Does it come on
merely when he has been fasting, or at least early in the morning, or
simply in the evening, or only after meals, or if at other times, when?
When did the shivering come on? Was it merely a sensation of cold,
or was he actually cold at the time? In what part of the body did the
patient feel cold? Was his skin warm when he complained of being
cold? Did he experience a sensation of cold without shivering? Did
he feel heat, without the face being flushed? What parts of his body
were warm to the touch? Did the patient complain of heat without his
skin being warm? How long did the sensation of cold, or that of heat,
continue? When did the thirst come on? During the cold or heat?
Or was it before or after? How intense was the thirst? What did the
patient ask for to drink? When did the perspiration come on? Was



129
it at the commencement or at the expiration of the heat? What space
of time elapsed between the heat and the perspiration? Was it when
sleeping or waking that it manifested itself? Was it strong or otherwise? Was the perspiration hot or cold? In what parts of the body
did it break out? How did it smell? What did the patient complain
of before or during the cold, during or after the heat, during or after the
perspiration, &c.?
~ 90. All the answers being committed to writing, the
physician then notes down what he himself observes in the
patient,* and endeavours to ascertain if that which he observes
existed or not when the latter was in health.
* For example-How he behaved during the time of the visit? Was
he irritable, peevish, quarrelsome, hasty, grieved, anxious, despairing,
sad, calm, or resigned? Did he appear overcome with sleep, or lost in
reverie? Was he hoarse? Did he speak low? Was his discourse incoherent, or how was it? Of what colour was the countenance, the
eyes, and the skin, generally? What degree of vivacity was there
visible in the face and eyes? How was the tongue, the respiration, the
smell from the mouth, or the hearing? Were the pupils of the eyes
dilated or contracted? Did they contract and dilate quickly in light and
darkness, and in what degree? What was the state of the pulse?
What was the condition of the abdomen? Was the skin moist and
warm, cold or dry, upon this or that part of the body, or was it so all
over? Did the patient lie with his head thrown back, with his mouth
wholly or half open, with his arms crossed above his head; was he on
his back, or in what position was he? Did he raise himself with difficulty? In short, the physician is to keep notes of every thing he has
observed that is strange and remarkable.
~ 91. The symptoms which appear, and the sensations of
the patient during the use of medicine or shortly after, do not
furnish a true image of the disease. On the contrary, the
symptoms and the inconveniences which exhibited themselves
previous to the use of the medicines, or several dayis after their
discontinuance, give the true fundamental notion of the original
form of the malady. These are, therefore, to be noted down
in preference by the physician.   When the disease is of a
chronic nature, and the patient has already made use of
remedies, he may be allowed to remain some days without
giving him any medicine, or at least without administering
any thing but substances that are not medicinal.   A rigorous
examination may likewise be deferred for the same space of
17



130


time, because it is the means of obtaining permanent symptoms
in all their purity, and of being able to form a true representation of the disease.
~ 92.  But where an acute disease is to be treated, so
dangerous in its nature as not to admit of delay, and the
physician can learn nothing of the symptoms that manifested
themselves previous to the remedies, then he is to view the
whole of the existing symptoms as they have been modified by
the latter, in order that he may at least be able to seize upon
the present state of the disease; that is to say, be enabled to
embrace in one and thb same image the primitive disease and
the medicinal affection conjointly. The latter of these being
most frequently rendered more severe, and at the same time
more dangerous than the former, by the application of remedies
that are generally the very opposite of those which ought to
have been administered, they often demand immediate assistance, and the prompt application of the appropriate homceopathic remedy, in order to prevent the patient falling a sacrifice
to the irrational treatment he has undergone.
~ 93.  If the acute disease has been caused recently, or if
the chronic one has been so for a longer or shorter period of
time by some remarkable event, and if the patient or the
parents, when interrogated secretly, do not disclose this cause,
the physician must then use his address and prudence in order
to arrive at a knowledge of it.-"
* Should there be any thing humiliating in that which has given birth
to the disease, so that the patient, or those about him, hesitate in avowing the cause, or at least in declaring it spontaneously, the physician
ought then to seek to discover it by questions that are skilfully turned,
or by secret enquiries. In the catalogue of these causes are ranked,
poisoning or attempts to commit suicide, onanism, ordinary or unnatural
debauchery, excesses at table, or in the use of' wine, cordials, punch, and
other spirituous drinks, riotous eating generally, or especially unwholesome food, venereal or psoric affection, disappointed love, jealousy,
domestic disappointments, anger, grief, occasioned by a family misfortune, bad treatment, repressed vengeance, injured pride, embarrassment
in pecuniary affairs, superstitious fear, famine, defect of the organs of
reproduction, hernia, prolapsus, &c.



132


exaggerated terms, to induce the physician to relieve them
promptly.'
* Even the most impatient hypochondriac never invents sufferings and
symptoms that are void of foundation, and the truth of this is easily
ascertained by comparing the complaints he utters at different intervals
while the physician gives him nothing at least that is medicinal; it is
merely requisite to retrench a part of his exaggeration, or at least ascribe
the energy of his expressions to his excessive sensibility. In this
respect, even the exaggeration he is guilty of in describing his sufferings
becomes an important symptom in the list of those which constitute the
image of the disease. It is a very different case with maniacs, and those
who feign disease through wickedness or other causes.
~ 97.  Others, on the contrary, either through indolence,
mistaken modesty, or finally by a sort of mildness and timidity,
are silent with regard to many of the sufferings they endure,
and only hint at them in obscure terms, or point at them as
being of little importance.
~ 98. If it be then true that we are to rely more particularly
upon the patient's own language in describing his sufferings
and sensations, and prefer the expressions he makes use of to
portray them (because his words are almost always changed in
passing through the mouths of those who are about himn); it is
no less so, that in all diseases, and more especially in those of
a chronic character, the physician must be possessed of an
uncommon share of circumspection and tact, a knowledge of
the human heart, prudence and patience, to be enabled to form
to himself a true and complete image of the disease in all its
details.
~ 99. The examination into acute diseases, or those that
have recently broken out, is generally less difficult, because the
patient and those about him are struck with the difference
between the existing state of things and the health that has
been so recently destroyed, of which the memory still retains a
lively image. Here, also, the physician must necessarily be
acquainted with every thing; but there is less occasion for
being urgent in acquiring the particulars, which, for the most
part, come before him spontaneously.



133


~ 100. With regard to a search after the totality of the
symptoms in epidemic and sporadic diseases, it is wholly
indifferent whether any thing similar ever existed before in the
world or not, under any name whatever. Neither the novelty
nor the peculiarity of an affection of this kind will make any
difference in the mode of studying it, or in that of the treatment.
In fact, we ought to regard the pure image of each prevailing
disease as a thing that is new and unknown, and study the
same from its foundation, if we would really exercise the art of
healing-that is to say, we ought never to substitute the
hypothesis in the room of the observation, never regard any
given case of disease as already known, either in part or
wholly, without having first carefully examined all its appearances. This prudent mode of proceeding is so much the more
requisite here, as every reigning epidemic is, in many respects,
a particular species of phenomenon, and which, upon attentive
examination, will be found to differ greatly from all former
epidemics to which the same name has been wrongfully
applied. We must, however, except those epidemics which are
caused by miasms that always retain their identity, such; for
example, as the measles, small-pox, &c.
~ 101. It may happen that a physician, who, for the first
time, treats a person attacked with an epidemic disease, will
not immediately discover the perfect image of the affection,
because a knowledge of the totality of the signs and symptoms
in these collective maladies is not acquired till after having
observed several cases. However, a practised physician will,
after having treated one or two patients, see so far into the real
state of things as to be often able to form to himself a characteristic image of the same, and know   what homceopathic
remedy he is to have recourse to in order to combat the disease.
~ 102. By carefully noting down all the symptoms observed
in several cases of this description, the image that has once
been formed of the malady will be always rendered still more
comprehensive.  It neither becomes extended in a greater
degree, nor lengthened in the detail, but it is made more
graphic and characteristic of the peculiarities of the collective
malady. On the one side, the general symptoms (such, for



134


example, as loss of appetite, insomnolency, &c.) acquire a still
greater degree of precision; on the other, the special and more
marked symptoms, which are even rare in epidemics, and
belong elsewhere to a small number of diseases only, develope
themselves and form the character of the disease.  It is true,
that persons attacked with an epidemic have all a disease
arising from the same source, and consequently equal; but the
entire extent of an affection of this nature, together with the
totality of the symptoms-a knowledge of which is necessary
to form a complete image of the morbid state, and to choose
according to that the homceopathic remedy most in harmony
with the ensemble of the symptoms-cannot be observed in the
case of a single patient; in order to arrive at these, it will be
requisite to abstract them from a view of the sufferings of
several patients of different constitutions.
*The physician who has already in a first case discerned an approximate homoeopathic remedy will, by a study of successive ones, be enabled to prove whether the choice he made was appropriate, or this will
point out to him a remedy that is still more suitable than the former, or
even one that is better than all others.
~ 103. In the same manner as is here taught in reference
to epidemic, and chiefly acute diseases, I had to investigate
those of a miasmatic and chronic character, (always remaining
identical in their nature,) and particularly psora. This
examination was conducted with much more accuracy than
had hitherto been observed, in order to grasp the disease in its
entire compass, since different patients are affected with
dissimilar symptoms, and each particular case embraces but
one disjointed part, as it were, of the symptoms constituting the
totality of one and the same disease. Hence it is manifest, that
the totality of the symptoms appertaining to such a chronic
malady, to psora in particular, could only be collected by the
examination of numerous individual patients, and without
obtaining an entire view, and forming a collective image of
that malady, the medicines (viz. the antipsorics) which are
efficient for its entire removal, and which, at the same time,
are the true remedies for the particular cases of it, could not
be discovered.



135


~ 104. The totality of the symptoms which characterise a
given case-or, in other terms, the image of the disease-being
once committed to writing, the most difficult part is accomplished.*  The physician ought ever after to have this image
before his eyes to serve as a basis to the treatment, especially
where the disease is chronic. IHe can then study it in all its
parts, and draw from it the characteristic marks, in order to
oppose to these symptoms-that is to say, to the disease itselfa remedy that is perfectly homceopathic, whose choice has been
decided on according to the nature of the morbid symptoms
which it produces from its simple action on the body. And if,
during the course of the treatment, he enquires after the effects
of the remedy, and the changes that have taken place in the
state of the patient, it only remains to obliterate from the group
of primitive symptoms those which have entirely disappeared,
to note down those of which there are still some remains, and
add the new ones which have supervened.
* The physicians of the old school in their treatment of the sick adopt
an extremely convenient method. No accurate enquiries are heard from
them concerning all the circumstances of the case, and the patients,
during the recital of their individual symptoms, are not unfrequently
interrupted by the physician to prevent disturbance in the rapid writing
of his prescriptions, compounded of a medley of ingredients, the genuine
effects of which are unknown to him. No alloeopathic physician, as
already observed, desires to know a full and accurate account of the
symptoms, much less to commit them to writing. If after several days
he re-visits his patient (numerous others having been seen in the interval), he will then have retained in his memory little or nothing of the
minute circumstances of the case, as at first heard, and what had passed
into one ear will have escaped from the other. In his succeeding visits,
he does little more than ask a few general questions, feels the pulse, looks
at the tongue, and forthwith, without an intelligible reason, proceeds
to write another prescription, or directs the former (in large and frequently repeated portions through the day) to be continued. Then with
mien polite he hastens to the fiftieth or sixtieth patient of those whom
he has visited in the same thoughtless manner on the same day. Thus
a profession which. of all others, properly requires the most reflection,
the conscientious and careful examination of each and every case, and
the special cure founded thereon,-such a profession is thus practised by
persons who call themselves rational physicians.
~ 105. The second point in the duty of the physician is to
examine into the instruments destined to cure natural diseases, to



136


study the morbific powers of medicines, in order, when he is to
cure a disease, that he may be able to find one among the
number whose list of symptoms constitutes a factitious disease
that resembles as closely as possible the principal signs of the
natural malady which he intends to cure.
~ 106. It is necessary to know the full extent of the power
by virtue of which each medicine excites a disease. In other
terms, it is requisite that all the morbid symptoms and changes
of the health which their action individually is capable of producing in the economy shall have been observed, as closely as
possible, before any one can hope to be able to find or select
from among them homceopathic remedies that are appropriate
to the greater number of natural diseases.
~ 107. If, to arrive at this object, we were only to administer
medicines to invalids, prescribing them, one by one, in a simple
state, little or nothing would be seen of their pure effects,
because the symptoms of the natural disease then existing
mingling with those which the medicinal agents are capable of
producing, the latter can rarely be distinguished with any clearness or precision.
~ 1(8. Thus there is no safer or more natural method of
discovering the effects of medicines on the health of man, than
by trying them separately and singly, in moderate doses, upon
healthy individuals, and observing what changes they create in
the moral and physical state; that is to say, what elements of
disease these substances are capable of producing:* for, as we
have before seen (~ 24-27), the entire curative virtues of
medicines depend solely upon the power they have of modifying
the state of health, which is illustrated by observing the effects
resulting from the exercise of this faculty.
* In the course of twenty-five centuries no physician, that I know of,
except the immortal Haller, has ever thought of a method so natural-so
absolutely necessary, and so perfectly true-as that of observing the pure
effects of each medicine individually, in order to discover, by that means,
the diseases they were capable of cuiing. Before me, Haller was the
only one who conceived the necessity of pursuing such a plan (see the
preface to his Pharmacopoeia Helvet. Basil, 1771, p. 12). " Nempe primum in corpore sano medela tentanda est, sine peregrina ulla miscela;



137


odoreque et sapore ejus exploratis, exigua illius dosis ingerenda et ad
omnes, qute inde contingunt, affectiones, quis pulsls, quis calor, quce
respiratio, qulenam excretiones, attendendum. Inde ad ductum phcenomenormn, in sano obviorum, transeas ad experimenta in corpore
cegroto, 4.c." But no physician has profited by this invaluable advice;
no one has paid the slightest attention to it.
~ 109.  I am the first who has pursued this path with a perseverance that could alone result from, and be supported by,
the intimate conviction of this great truth so valuable to the
human race,1 that the homnoopathic administration of medicines
is the sole certain method of curing disease.2
It is as impossible that there should be any other true method of
curing dynamic diseases (i. e. those not surgical) besides homceopathy,
as that more than one straight line can be described between two given
points. How little can they be grounded in the true art of healing, who
imagine that there is"yet another way of curing diseases, who, after
having thoroughly contemplated the basis of homceopathy and practised
it with sufficient care, or, from upright motives, have either read of or
witnessed homoeopathic cures, and, on the other hand, duly weighed the
groundlessness of every species of allceopathic treatment, and enquired
into the sinister effects thence arising-who, with a loose indifference,
place upon an equality the true art of healing with that injurious
method, or pronounce it the sister of homceopathy, whose company she
cannot dispense with! My conscientious successors, the genuine and
accurate adherents of homoeopathy, who have practised it with almost
infallible success, could teach them a better lesson.
2 The first fruits of my labours, so far as they could then be perfected,
are contained in a work entitled Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum
positivis, sive in sano corp. hum. observatio, p. i. ii. Leipsic, 1805, in
Svo. Others, that are still more matured, are contained in the two
editions of my Materia Medica, (Reine Arzneimittellehre, 6 vols. in
Svo., third edition, 1833,) and in the second and following volumes of
my Treatise on Chronic Diseases. Die Chronische Krankheiten.
Dresden, 1828, in Svo., second edition, 1835.
~ 110.   On perusing the works of authors who have written
upon the morbid effects caused by medicinal substances, which,
through negligence, mischief, criminal intent, or otherwise, had
got into the stomachs of healtly individuals in large quantities,
I saw that the facts they contained coincided with the observations which I had made in trying them on myself and other
persons in health.  These are reported as cases of poisoning,
IS



138


and as proofs of the inherent pernicious effects of these energetic agents, pointing out the danger of making use of them.
By some, they have been mentioned for no other purpose than
that of making a parade of the skill they manifested in the discovery of remedies which gradually restored the health of
persons that otherwise would have been lost by such violent
means. Others, to free their consciences of the death of patients,
have alleged the malignity of these substances which they then
designated poisons. Not one among them has ever suspected
that the symptoms, in which they wished merely to see proofs
of the poisonous qualities of drugs which produce them, were
certain indications that disclosed the existence in these identical
substances of the faculty of annihilating (under the title of
remedies) similar symptoms in natural diseases. No one
imagined that the evils which they excite were so many
certain proofs of their homceopathic effects.  rhey never
imagined that an observance of the changes to which medicines give birth in healthy persons was the sole means of discovering their medicinal and curative virtues, because they
can neither arrive at this result by any specious reasoning
apriori, nor by the smell, taste, or appearance of the medicinal
substances, not by chemical analysis, nor by administering
prescriptions to patients where they are associated with a
less or greater number of other drugs.    Finally, none of
them  ever had the slightest presentiment that these histories of
diseases produced by medicine would one day furnish the
elements of a true and pure mnateria medica-a science which,
from its origin down to the present time, has consisted of a
mass of false conjectures and fictions; or which, in other terms,
never yet had any real existence.*
* See what I have said on this subject in my " Treatise on the
Sources of the ordinary Materia Medica," in the third part of the " Reine
Arzneimittellehre."
~ 111. The conformity of my observations upon the pure
effects of medicines with those of a more ancient date, which
were made without reference to any curative aim, and even
the correspondence of these latter with others of a similar kind
that are spread throughout the writings of various authors,
plainly prove to us that medicinal substances, in creating



141


~ 118. Each medicine produces particular effects in the
body of man, and no other medicinal substance can create any
that are precisely similar.*
* This fact was also recognised by Haller, who says, (in the preface
to his Hist. Stirp. Helv.), " Latet immensa viriutm diversitas in iis
ipsis plantis, quarum facies externas dudum novimus, animas quasi
et quodcunque celestius habent, nondumn perspeximus."
~ 119. In the same manner that each species of plant differs
from all others in its external form and peculiar mode of vegetation-its smell and taste; in the same manner that each
mineral and each salt differs from others in regard to external
character as well as internal chemical properties, (a circumstance which alone ought to have sufficed to prevent confusion,)
in the same manner do all these substances likewise differ from
each other in regard to their morbific effects, and, consequently,
their curative powers.1  Each substance exercises upon the
health of man a certain and particular influence, which does
not allow itself to be confounded with any other.2
t He who knows that the action of each substance upon the body differs
from that of every other, and who can appreciate the importance of this
fact, will have no difficulty in discovering that there can be no such
things (in a medical point of view) as succedanea-that is to say, medicines that are equivalent, and capable of replacing each other mutually.
It is only he who is ignorant of the certain and pure effects of medicinal
substances, that can be so foolish as to endeavour to persuade us that one
remedy can serve in the room of another, and produce the same salutary
effect in any given case of disease. In this manner children, through
their simplicity, confound things that are essentially different, because
they hardly know them otherwise than by their exterior, and have no
idea of their innate properties or of their real intrinsic value.
2 If this be the pure truth, as it undoubtedly is, then can no physician
who wishes to preserve a quiet conscience, and to be looked upon as a
reasonable man, henceforward prescribe any other medicines than those
with whose true value he is precisely and thoroughly acquainted-that
is to say, those whose action upon healthy individuals he has studied
with sufficient attention to be convinced that any particular one among
them was that which, of all others, produced the morbid state most
resembling the natural disease it was intended to cure; for, as we have
before seen, neither man nor nature ever effects a perfect, prompt, and durable cure, but by the aid of a homceopathic remedy. No physician can,
therefore, in future, disregard a research of this nature, without which it



142


would be impossible for him to acquire the knowledge of medicines
indispensable to the exercise of his art, which has been neglected till
the present time. Posterity will scarcely believe that, until the present
day, physicians have always contented themselves with administering
blindly in disease remedies of whose real value they were ignorant,
whose pure and dynamic effects, upon healthy persons, they had never
studied, and that they were in the habit of mixing several of those unknown substances whose action is so diversified, and then left it to
chance to dispose of whatever might accrue to the patient from this
treatment. It is in this manner that a madman, who has just forced his
way into the workshop of an artist, seizes with open hands upon all the
tools within his reach for the purpose of finishing a work which he finds
in a state of preparation. Who can doubt but that he will spoil it by
the ridiculous manner in which he goes to work, or perhaps even destroy
it entirely?
~ 120. Thus we ought to distinguish medicines carefully
one from another, since it is on them that life and death, disease and health, depend. To effect this, it is necessary to have
recourse to pure experiments, made with care, for the purpose
of developing the properties that belong to them, and the true
effects which they produce on healthy individuals.    By this
mode of proceeding we may learn to know them properly, and
so avoid their misapplication in the treatment of disease, for
nothing but a judicious choice of the remedy that is to be employed can ever restore to the patient, in a prompt and permanent manner, that supreme of all earthly blessings-a sound
mind in a healthy body.
~ 121. In studying the effects of medicines upon healthy
persons, it must not be forgotten that even the administration
of moderate doses of the so called heroic remedies is sufficient
to produce modifications in the health of the most robust
individuals. Medicines that are more gentle in their nature
ought to be given in larger doses if we would likewise prove
their action. Finally, if we would try the effects of the weakest
substances, the experiment must be made upon persons only
who are, it is true, free from disease, but who, at the same
time, are possessed of a delicate, irritable, and sensitive constitution.
~ 122. In circumstances of this nature, on which depend
the certitude of the medical art, and the welfare of future gene



143


rations, it is necessary to employ only medicines that are well
known, such as we are convinced remain pure, unadulterated,
and possessed of their full energy.
~ 123. Each of these medicines ought to be taken in its
simple and pure form. As to indigenous plants, the juice is
expressed and mixed with a small quantity of alcohol, in order
to preserve it from corruption. With regard to foreign plants,
they are to be pulverised or prepared as spirituous tinctures,
and mixed with a certain quantity of water previous to
administration. Salts and gums, however, ought not to be dissolved in water till the moment they are to be used. If a plant
cannot be procured but in its dry state, and if its powers are
naturally feeble, it may be tried in the form of an infusion;
that is to say, after having cut it up small, boiling water is
poured upon it, in order to extract its virtues. The infusion
ought to be drunk immediately after its preparation, and while
it is still warm, because all the juices of plants, and all vegetable
infusions to which no alcohol is added, pass rapidly into
fermentation and corruption, and thereby lose their medicinal
virtues.
~ 124. Every medicinal substance that is submitted to a
trial of this nature ought to be employed alone, and perfectly
pure. Care must be taken not to add any heterogenous substance to it, or to use any other medicine, either on the same
day and much less on those that follow, if we would observe
the effect it is capable of producing.
~ 125. During the whole time of this experiment the diet
must be extremely moderate. It is necessary to abstain as
much as possible from spices, and to make use of nothing but
simple food that is merely nourishing, carefully avoiding all
green vegetables,1 roots, sallads, and soups with herbs, all of
which, notwithstanding the preparations they have undergone,
are aliments that still retain some small medicinal energy that
disturbs the effect of the medicine. The drink is to remain the
same as that in daily use, taking care that it is as little stimulating as possible.2



144


Green peas, French beans, and even carrots, may be allowed, as being
vegetables that contain the least medicinal properties.
2 The subject of experiment must either have been previously unaccustomed to the use of wine, ardent spirits, coffee, or tea, or have for
some time thoroughly abstained from these stimulating and medicinally
injurious beverages.
~ 126. The person on whom this experiment is tried ought
to avoid all fatiguing labour of mind and body, all excesses,
debauches, or mental excitement, during the whole of the time
that it continues. No urgent business must prevent him
making the necessary observations, and he must of his own
accord be scrupulously attentive to every thing that passes in
the interior of the body without permitting any thing to interrupt his care, and finally, unite with a healthy body (in its
kind) a necessary degree of judgment, that he may be able to
express and describe clearly all the sensations he experiences.
~ 127. Medicines should be tried on the persons of women
as well as of men, in order that those changes in the economy
which are referable to difference of sex, may be clearly ascertained.
~ 128. The most recent experience has taught that medicinal substances, when taken by the experimenter in their
crude state for the purpose of testing their peculiar effects,
do not for a long time display the full extent of those virtues
which lie concealed within them, as is the case when they are
taken in higher developments, i. e. exalted in power by due
trituration and agitation. By means of this simple mode of preparation, the virtues which, in the crude state of the medicines,
lay concealed and, as it were, dormant within them, become
incredibly developed and aroused into activity. Thus, any
one even of those medicines whose virtues are considered
weak, is now found to be the most advantageously investigated,
if from four to six minute saccharine globules impregnated
with the thirtieth (decillionth) dilution of such medicine, and
mixed with a little water, be given to the experimenter every
morning, fasting, and continued for several days.
~ 129. When the effects of one such dose appear to be



145


weak, then it may be daily increased a few globules, until the
effects become stronger and more distinct, until the changes in
the system be evident, for one particular medicine does not
affect every individual in a like manner, or with the same
degree of energy; on the contrary there exists, in this respect,
the greatest diversity possible. Sometimes a person apparently
delicate is not at all affected by a medicine that is known to be
very powerful, though administered in moderate doses, while
other substances that are much weaker make a tolerable
impression on him. At the same time, there are individuals of
robust constitutions who experience very considerable morbid
symptoms from medicinal agents that are apparently mild, and,
on the other hand, they are likewise but little affected by others
that are powerful. But as it can never be known beforehand
which of these two cases will occur, it is proper that each
should commence with a small dose, and be afterwards
increased progressively, if deemed requisite. Advancing, from
day to day, to higher and still higher doses.
~ 130. If at the commencement, and after administering the
first dose, the effects are sufficiently powerful, one advantage
results from it, which is, that the person who undergoes the
experiment becomes acquainted with the succession of symptoms which this agent principally excites, and is enabled to
note them down with precision the moment they appear, a
circumstance of vast import to a knowledge of the character of
medicines, because the order of their primitive effects, and likewise that of their alternative effects, is thus exhibited in the
least equivocal manner. A very weak dose often suffices, if
the individual on whom it is tried is endowed with great sensibility, and pays due attention to his state. The length of time
that the action of a medicine continues, can only be known by
a comparison of the results of several experiments.
~ 131. If, to acquire at least some knowledge of a medicine,
it is found requisite to administer to the same person, several
days in succession, doses of the same, progressively increased,
this may show us the various morbid changes that this substance is capable of exciting generally; but we do not learn the
order of their succession, and a succeeding dose often extin19



146


guishes one or other of the symptoms produced by the preceding one, or creates in its place a contrary state. Symptoms
of this kind should be noted between two parentheses, as being
equivocal, until new experiments of a purer nature shall have
decided whether they are to be considered as the re-action of
the organism, or the alternative effects of the medicine.
~ 132. But where it is intended merely to find out what are
the symptoms that a medicinal substance, particularly a weak
one, is capable of producing by itself, without paying any
attention to the order of these symptoms, or to the duration of
the action of the medicine, it is advisable to continue the
experiment several days successively, only augmenting the
dose each day. By this means, the effects of even the most
gentle medicines that are unknown will come to light, particularly if they are tried on a sensitive person.
~ 133. Should the individual who undergoes the experiment experience any particular inconvenience from the action
of the medicine, it is 1useftil, and even necessary, to the exact
determination of the symptom, that he should place himself
successively in various postures, and observe the changes that
ensue. Thus he will be enabled to examine whether the
motion communicated to the suffering parts by walking up and
down the chamber, or in the open air, seated, lying down, or
standing, has the effect of augmenting, diminishing, or dissipating the symptom, and if it returns or not upon resuming
the original position. He will also perceive whether it changes
when he eats or drinks, or by any other condition, when he
speaks, coughs, or sneezes, or in any other action of the body
whatsoever. Ile must also observe at what hour of the day or
night the symptom more particularly manifests itself. All
these details are requisite, in order to discover what is peculiar
and characteristic in each symptom.
~ 134. All external agents, particularly medicines, produce
changes in the state of the living organism that vary each in
themselves. But the whole of the symptoms peculiar to any
medicinal substance whatever, never manifest themselves in
the same individual, neither do they appear simultaneously, or



147


during a single experiment; on the contrary, the same person
experiences, in preference, at one time, one set of symptoms,
and in a second or third experiment yet others, (with another
person these or other symptoms will appear,) so that by the
fourth, eighth, or tenth person, perhaps, some or more of the
symptoms which had already manifested themselves in the
second, sixth, ninth, &c., will be visible. Neither do the
symptoms re-appear at the same hour.
~ 135. It is only by repeated observations mnade upon a
great number of individuals of both sexes, properly selected for
the purpose from among a variety of constitutions, that we can
acquire a pretty accurate knowledge of the whole of the morbid
effects that a medicine is capable of producing.  rhere can be
no certainty of having properly proved the symptoms of any
medicinal agent-that is to say, of the faculty which it has of
changing the health, until such time as the persons who make
further trials of it perceive but few new symptoms arising from
its use, and observe almost always only those that have been
previously remarked by other persons.
~ 136. Although, as before stated, the medicine that is tried
upon a healthy person cannot manifest on a single individual
all the modifications of health which it is capable of producing,
and only exhibits them in several persons, differing from one
another in regard to physical constitution and moral disposition, it is, however, equally true that the eternal and immutable law of nature has endowed it with the faculty of exciting
these symptoms in every human being (~ 117). This is the
cause of all its effects, of even those which it is rarely seen to
produce in healthy' persons, but which do not fail to appear
when administered to a patient attacked with a disease resembling the one it is capable of exciting. Provided the medicine
be hommeopathically chosen, and administered even in the
smallest doses possible, it will then produce in the patient an
artificial state approaching closely to the natural disease, and
cure the latter in a prompt and durable manner.
~ 137. The more moderate the dose (without, however,
going beyond a certain limit) the more are the primitive effects



148


developed, which are most important to be known. Scarcely
any but the latter will then be perceptible, and there will be
hardly any traces of re-action. But it is understood that the
individual on whom the experiment is made must be one who
can be relied upon in regard to veracity-that he is moderate
in every respect, of a sensitive mind and body, and shall
attend to his person with all possible care. On the other hand,
if the dose be excessive, there will not only be several reactions visible among the symptoms. but yet more, the primitive effects will manifest themselves in a manner so precipitate,
violent, and confused, that it will be impossible to make any
correct observation. Let us add to this, the danger that might
result from it to the individual on whom the experiment is
tried, which cannot be regarded as a matter of indifference by
one who has any respect for his fellow-mortals, and who looks
upon every human being in the light of a brother.
~ 138. Provided all the conditions before stated (~ 124 -127) (which are necessary to the trial of a pure experiment) be
complied with, the symptoms, modifications, and changes of
the health that are visible during the action of the medicine,
depend upon that substance alone, and ought to be noted down
as properly belonging to it, if even similar symptoms, occurring
spontaneously, should have been experienced a long time before
by the person on whom the experiment is made. The reappearance of those symptoms, in the course of the experiment,
only proves that in virtue of his own constitution this person
has a special tendency to admit of their manifestation. In this
case, they are the effects of the medicine, for it cannot be said
that they came of themselves at a moment when a powerful
medicinal agent exercised its sway over the entire organism.
~ 139. Where the physician does not try the remedy on his
own person, and the experiment is made on another individual,
it is requisite for the latter to note down, with perspicuity, all
the sensations, inconveniences, symptoms, and changes, that he
experiences at the very moment of their occurrence. He must
also be able to tell what time elapsed between the administration of the medicine and the appearance of each symptom, and
in case they continued any length of time, what was the exact



149


period of their duration. The physician is to read this report,
immediately after it is finished, in the presence of the person on
whom the experiment is made, or if it lasts several days, he
then reads it over each day, in order that, by refreshing his
memory, the person may be enabled to reply to the questions
which it may be necessary to put to him relative to the precise
nature of each symptom, and to give him an opportunity of
adding fresh details, or making any necessary corrections.*
* He who publishes to the medical world such experiments, is responsible for the credibility of the experimenter, as well as for the correctness of his statements, and very properly so, as the welfare of suffering
humanity is at stake.
~ 140.  If the individual cannot write, the physician must
then interrogate him each day, in order to learn his sensations.
But this examination ought, for the most part, to be confined
to listening to his narrative. The physician must not indulge
in any conjectures or suppositions, and he is to ask as few
questions as possible, taking care to maintain the same circumspection and reserve, which I have before recommended
(~ 84-99), as an indispensable precaution in seeking the
information requisite to form the image of the natural disease.
~ 141. But of all the pure experiments relative to the
changes which simple medicines produce, and the morbid
symptoms they excite in healthy persons, those are always the
best which a physician (enjoying a good state of health, free
from prejudice, and able to analyse his sensations) makes on
his own person, observing, at the same time, the precautions
that have just been prescribed. A thing is never more certain
than when it has been tried on ourselves.*
* The experiments that are made on our own persons have one advantage above all others. In the first place, they furnish a conviction of
this great truth, that the curative virtues of medicines depend solely
upon the power they possess of creating changes in the physical
economy of man. In the second place, they teach us to understand our
own sensations, mind, and disposition, which is the source of all true
wisdom, (yvc;6 caEasTov), and exercise our powers of observation, an
indispensable talent in a physician. All our observations on others are
by no means so interesting as those made on ourselves. In all the
observations made on other individuals, it is continually to be feared



152


cocculus, colocynthis, conium, copaiva, cyclamen; digitalis, drosera, dulcamara;
euphrasia; ferrum; graphiles, guaiacum; helleborus, hydrarg. solub., hydrarg.
corros., hyoscyamus; iodium, ipecacuanha; ledum, lycopodium; magnes. carb.,
magn. mur., manganum, menyanthes, moschus, mur. acidum; nitri acidum,
nux vonica; oleander, opium; petroleum, phosphorus, phosphoric. acid., potassa
carbonas, pulsatilla; rheum, ruta; sambucus, sassaparilla, scilla, sepia, silica,
soda carbonas, sodii chloretum, spigelia, spongia, stannum, staphisagria, stramonium, sulphur, sulphuric. acid.; taraxacum, toxicodendron, thuya; veratrum,
verbascum, viola tricolor.
2. By Stapf.-Agnus, anacardium, antimonii ct potasse tartras; barytae acetas;
clematis, coffea, colchicum; cuphorbium; lamium; marum verum; mezercum;
paris.; sabadilla, sabina.
3. By Gross and Stapf.-Crocus; platina.
4. By Gross.-Epeira; soda nitras; viola odorata.
5. By Franz.-Assa fetida; cuprum; ranunculus; veleriana; zincum.
6. By Hartlaub. —Ethusa, antimon. sulphuretum; bovista; cantharis; gratiola;
indigo; krameria; laurocerasus; oleum  aniinale; phellandrium, phosphorus,
plumbum, potassas iodidum; strontianum; tabacum, terebinthi oleum.
7. By Hering.-Arum; brucea; caladium, curcas; jambos; lachesis et crotalus;
phosphas calcis, psorinum; selenium, sericum, solanum mammosum; theridion;
urea.
8. By Heine.-Actaa, alkekengi, aquilegia; chenopodium, chiococca; nigella.
9. By Nenning.-Ammonia mnurias; magn. sulphas, millefolium; niccolum; soda
sulphas; tongo.
10. By Caspari.-Castoreum; terri oxyd. magneticnm.
11. By Wahle.-Laurocerasus; prunus spinosa.
12. By Seidel.-Rhododendron; senega.
13. By Schreter.-Potassas nitras; sodae boras.
14. a, By Apel.-Amanita.    b, Attomyr.-Corallia.  c, Bute.-Rhus vernix.
d, Helbig.-Myristica. e, Hesse.-Berberis. f, Trinks.-Secale.
At the same time, while making trials, they mutually assisted each other, and
had help from many others, so that, in addition to the names above given, we find
mentioned among those who tried them, the following: —Alner, Adams, Becher,
Bethman, Baehr, Behlert, Bauer, Becker, Cubitz, Flamming, Freitag, Gatmann,
Gersdorff, Fr. Hahnemann, Hartmann, Haubold, Ilromada, Hempel, Hornburg,
Hugo, Haynel, Ihm, Kummer, Langhammer, Lehmann, Lingen, Matlack, Meyer,
Michler, Muller, Pleyel, Preu, Th. and L. Ruckert, Rummel, Rosazcwsky, Romig,
Reichhelm, Schoenke, Sonnenberg, Schweickert, Schmid, Schmoele, Teuthorn,
Tiezc, Wagner, Wislicenus, Wesselhoft, De Young; and a great many individuals
participated, more or less, some handing in their names, and others contributing
anonymously.                                                    C. Hg.
~ 146. The third point in the duty of a physician is to
employ those medicines whose pure effects have been proved
upon a healthy person in the manner best suited to the cure of
natural diseases homeopathically.
~ 147.    Of all these medicines, that one whose symptoms



153


bear the greatest resemblance to the totality of those which
characterise any particular natural disease ought to be the most
appropriate and certain homceopathic remedy that can be
employed-it is the specific remedy in this case of disease.
~ 148. A remedy which has the power and tendency to
produce an artificial disease closely resembling the natural one
against which it is employed, and which is administered in
proportionate doses, affects, in its action on the organism, precisely those parts which had till then been a prey to the
natural disease, and excites in them the artificial disease which
it is naturally capable of producing. The latter, by reason of
its similitude and greater intensity, now substitutes itself for
the natural disease. From that moment it then results that
the vital powers no longer suffer from the last mentioned,
which, in its quality of purely dynamic immaterial power, has
already ceased to exist. The organism is no longer attacked
but by the medicinal disease. But the dose of the remedy
administered having been very small, the medicinal disease
soon disappears of itself. Subdued by the energy of the vital
power, like every other mild medicinal affection, it leaves the
body free from suffering-that is, in a perfect and permanent
state of health.
~ 149. When a proper application of the homeopathic
remedy has been made,* the acute disease which is to be cured,
however malignant and painful it may be, subsides in a few
hours, if recent, and in a few days, if it is somewhat older.
Every trace of indisposition vanishes; scarcely any thing is
seen of the artificial disease produced by the remedy; and
health is restored by a speedy and almost insensible transition.
Diseases that are of long standing, especially those which are
complicated, require a longer treatment. Particularly those
chronic artificial maladies which the maltreatment of the
allmopathists so often produce, and which, along with the
uncured natural disease, requires a far longer time for recovery;
they are often nearly incurable, by reason of the shameless
deprivation of the vital energies of the patient, the prevailing
and principal measure adopted by the allceopathists in their so
called cures.
20



154


* But the difficult and sometimes very laborious affair of searching
out and selecting the homceopathic medicine, which shall be adapted in
all respects to the morbid conditions of a given case, is one which, notwithstanding all the praise-worthy attempts to simplify the labour by
adminiculary publications, requires the study of the sources themselves,
besides the exercise of much circumspection and deliberation, which
meet with their best recompense in the consciousness of having faithfully performed our duties. But how will this careful and laborious
process, by which the best cure of diseases can only be effected, please
the gentlemen of the new mongrel sect, who, while pluming themselves
with the honourable title of homceopathists, for appearance sake, administer a medicine in the form of homceopathic, that they have hastily
snatched up (quidquid in buccam venit). If it does not immediately
relieve, they will not impute the failure to their own unpardonable indolence and levity in hurrying over one of the most important and critical
of human concerns, but to homoeopathy,-they reproach its imperfections, because it does not of itself, without any trouble on their part,
provide the suitable homceopathic remedy, and, as it were, serve it up
like food already cooked, and prepared to their hands. They know,
indeed, full well how to console themselves for the failure of their
scarcely half homceopathic remedy, by dexterously calling in requisition the more pliable resources of alloeopathy, whence a few dozen
of leeches are applied, or a small and harmless venesection of eight
or ten ounces is prescribed in due form; and if, after all, the patient
should recover, they extol the leeches and the venesection, &c., as
if he would not have recovered without them.  They cause it to be
understood in no equivocal language that, without the trouble of racking
their brains, these operations afforded by the pernicious routine of the
old school would, in truth, have been the best means of cure. If, however, the patient should sink under the treatment, they endeavour to
soothe the disconsolate relatives, by declaring " that they themselves
were witnesses, how that every thing imaginable had been done for the
deceased." Who would honour such a light minded and pernicious sect,
by calling them, after the difficult yet beneficent art, homceopathic physicians?
~ 150. If a patient complain of slightly accessory symptoms,
which have just appeared, the physician ought not to take this
state of things for a perfect malady that seriously demands
medicinal aid. A change in the diet and mode of life usually
suffices to remove so slight an indisposition.
~ 151. But if the few symptoms of which the patient complains are very violent, the physician who attentively observes
him will generally discover many others which are less
developed, and which furnish a perfect picture of the malady.



156


~ 155. I say without any great degree of suffering, because
when a perfect homceopathic remedy acts upon the body, it is
nothing more than symptoms analogous to those of the disease
labouring to surmount and annihilate these latter by usurping
their place. The remaining symptoms, caused by the medicinal substance, which are often numerous, and correspond in
no respect with the existing malady, scarcely ever show themselves, and the patient improves from hour to hour. The
reason of this is, that the dose of any medicine applied homceopathically being necessarily very feeble, this substance does not
possess sufficient power to exhibit its effects non-homceopathically in the parts of the body that are free from disease.
But it produces its effects homceopathically in those parts of
the organism that are already a prey to the irritation arising
from the symptoms of the natural disease, and excites in them
a stronger medicinal affection which extinguishes and annihilates the other.
~ 156. There is no homceopathic remedy, however suitably
chosen, that does not (especially in a dose not small enough)
produce at least during its action some slight inconveniences
or fresh symptoms in very sensitive and irritable patients. In
fact, it is scarcely possible for the symptoms of the medicine to
cover those of the malady with as much precision as a triangle
would do in regard to another which is possessed of angles and
sides that are equal to its own. But these differences, which
are of little importance in a case that terminates in a short time,
are easily effaced by the energy of the vital principle, and the
patient does not perceive it himself, unless he is excessively
delicate. The re-establishment of health goes forward, notwithstanding, unless impeded by the influence of heterogeneous
medicinal agents upon the patient, errors of regimen, or excitement of the passions.
~ 157. But although it is certain that a homeopathic
remedy, administered in a small dose, quietly annihilates the
acute disease which is analogous to it without producing its
other non-homceopathic symptoms-that is to say, without
exciting new and grievous sufferings; it often happens, notwithstanding, that it produces, at the expiration of one or a few



157


hours after ingestion (according to the dose), a state something
less favourable, which resembles the primitive affection so
closely that the patient supposes the original disease aggravated.
But in reality it is nothing more than a medicinal disease,
extremely similar to the primitive one, and rather more intense
in its nature.
~ 158. This trifling homceopathic aggravation of the malady
during the first few hours-this happy omen which announces
that the acute disease will soon be cured, and that it will, for
the most part, yield to a first dose-is perfectly as it ought to
be, because the medicinal disease should naturally be rather
more intense than the one it is intended to cure, if it is to subdue and extinguish the latter; in the same way as a natural
disease can destroy another that resembles it, by exceeding it
in power and intensity (~ 43-48).
~ 159.  The smaller the dose of the homceopathic remedy,
the slighter the apparent aggravation of the disease, and it is
proportionably of shorter duration.
V 160. As a homeopathic dose, however, can scarcely ever
be made so small as not to amend, and, indeed, perfectly cure
and destroy the undisturbed, natural disease, analogous to it,
and of recent origin (~ 249, note), it may be readily conceived
wherefore a suitable homoeopathic remedy, if not given in the
very smallest dose, should always occasion, in the first hour
after its administration, a remarkable homaeopathic aggravation
of this nature.*
* This preponderance of the symptoms of the remedy over those of the
analogous symptoms of the disease, which looks like an increase of the
natural malady, has also been observed by other physicians when chance
led them. to a homeopathic medicine. When the patient afflicted with
itch, after having taken sulphur, complains that the cutaneous eruption
grows worse, the physician, who is ignorant of the cause, consoles him
by saying that the itch comes out entirely before it can be cured; but he
is not aware that it is an exanthema caused by the sulphur, which
assumes an appearance of aggravated itch.
Leroy (Med. Instr. for Mothers) informs us that the viola tricolor
commenced its action by rendering the cutaneous eruption of the face
worse, of which it subsequently effected the cure; but he did not know



158


that the apparent increase of the evil was caused solely by the administration of too large a dose of the remedy, which, in this instance, turned
out to be homeopathic. Lysons (Medic. Trans. vol. ii. London, 1772)
says, that the skin diseases which yield with the greatest certainty to
elm bark are those which it increases in the first instance. If he had
not, according to the prevailing custom of the allceopathic school,
administered the bark of the elm in too large doses, but if, as its homoeopathic character requires, it had been given in extremely small doses,
the exanthemata against which he prescribed it would have been cured
without experiencing this increase of intensity, or, at least, they would
have been subjected to but a very slight development.
~ 161. When I fix the so called homceopathic aggravation
(or rather the primitive action of the homceopathic remedy
which appears in a slight degree to increase the symptoms of
the natural disease) to the first hour or the first few hours, this
delay applies to acute affections that have recently intervened.'
But when the remedies whose action lasts for a long time have
to combat a disease of some duration, or one of very long
standing, and consequently the dose ought to continue its
action several days successively, then we may see, during the
first six, eight, or ten days, from time to time, some of those
apparent aggravations of the original malady which last
during one or several hours, while the general amendment
develops itself sensibly in the intervals.  When these few days
are once passed, the amelioration produced by the primitive
effects of the remedy continues, without interruption, for some
days longer.
* Although the effects of remedies whose action is of the longest duration rapidly disappear in acute diseases, they last a considerable time in
chronic affections (arising from psora); and thence it occurs that antipsoric remedies do not often produce this slight homoeopathic aggravation of the symptoms during the first hours, but bring it on later and at
different periods during the first eight or ten days.
~ 162. The number of medicines whose pure andprecise action
is known being moderate (200), it sometimes happens, that only
a part of the symptoms of the disease that is to be cured are to
be found among those of the most homoeopathic remedy, and,
consequently, this imperfect remedy is obliged to be employed
for want of another that is less so.



159


~ 163. In this case, a perfect cure, free from all inconvenience on the part of the remedy employed, ought not to be
expected. During its use, some symptoms are seen to appear
that were not observed before in the disease; these are accessory symptoms resulting from a medicine that is not perfectly
homoeopathic with the existing case. This does not, however,
prevent the remedy from annihilating a great part of the evil
-that is to say, the morbid symptoms which resemble those of
the medicinal disease, and thence arises a tolerable commencement towards a cure.
~ 164. The small number of homeopathic symptoms in a
well-selected homceopathic remedy never injures the cure when
it is in a great measure composed of the extraordinary symptoms
which particularly distinguish and characterise the disease; the
cure then follows without further inconvenience to the patient.
~ 165. But if among the symptoms of the remedy not one
is to be found that bears a perfect resemblance to the striking
and characteristic symptoms of the malady-if the totality of
them does not correspond with this latter, but in regard to
general symptoms that are badly developed, (nausea, faintness,
head-ache, &c.)-and among the known medicines there is not
one to be found more homeopathic, or which could be selected
for the purpose-the physician ought not to expect an immediate favourable result from the administration of a remedy so
imperfectly homceopathic.
~ 166. This is, however, very rarely the case, particularly
as the number of medicines whose pure effects have been discovered is considerably increased of late; and when it does
occur, the inconveniences that flow from it are diminished
after another remedy is employed, whose symptoms bear a yet
greater resemblance to those of the malady.
~ 167. In short, if the application of an imperfect homceopathic remedy used, in the first instance, causes any accessory
symptoms of some importance, the action of the first dose is not
allowed to exhaust itself in acute diseases; the altered state of
the patient is then to be examined, and the remainder of the



160
primitive symptoms to be joined to those which have been
recently discovered, to form of the whole a new image of the
disease.
~ 168. A remedy that is analogous may then be easily
found among the medicines that are known. a single application of which will suffice, if not to destroy the disease entirely,
at least to facilitate the cure in a great degree. If this new
remedy is not sufficient to restore the health completely, then
examine what yet remains of the diseased state, and select the
homceopathic remedy that is most suitable to the new image
that results from it. In this manner the physician must continue until he attains his object-that is to say, until he has
fully restored the health of the patient.
~ 169. It may easily occur, on examining a disease for the
first time, and also on selecting for the first time the remedy
that is to combat it, that the totality of the symptoms of the
disease is found not to be sufficiently covered by the morbific
symptoms of a single medicine, and that two remedies dispute
the preference as to eligibility in the present instance, the one
being homoeopathic to one part of the disease, and the other
still more so to another. It is then by no means advisable,
after using the preferable of the two remedies, to take the other
without examination, because the medicine given as the inferior
of the two, under the change of circumstances, may not be
proper for the remaining symptoms; in which case, it follows
that a suitable homceopathic remedy should be selected for the
new set of symptoms in its stead.
~ 170. In the present instance, as well as in every other
where a change has taken place in the state of the disease, it is
requisite to seek out what actually remains of the symptoms,
and select as suitable a remedy as possible to the present state
of the malady, without any reference whatever to that one
which, in the commencement, appeared to be the second best
of the two remedies that were found suitable. Should it still
happen, though it is not often the case, that the medicine,
which at first appeared as the second best, may now be very



161


suitable to the rest of the morbid symptoms, it will then be the
more worthy of confidence, and should be used in preference.
~ 171. In non-venereal chronic diseases, (consequently
those which owe their origin to psora,) it is often necessary in
the cure to employ several remedies one after the other, each of
which ought to be chosen homceopathic to the group of symptoms which still exist after the preceding one has exhausted its
action; and which may have been applied in a single dose, or
in several in succession.
~ 172. The small number of symptoms in disease gives rise
to another difficulty in the cure-a circumstance which has an
equal claim to our attention, since by its removal we do away
with nearly all the obstacles that this system presents; for, if
we except the yet incomplete apparatus of known hommopathic remedies, this is the most perfect of all curative methods.
~ 173. The only diseases that appear to have but few
symptoms, and which are, therefore, more difficult to cure, are
those which may be called partial (einseitige), because they have
but one or two principal and prominent symptoms which mask
almost all the others. These are for the most part chronic
diseases.
~ 174. Their principal symptom is, perhaps, either an
internal malady, (such, for example, as cephalalgia, diarrhma,
cardialgia, &c., of long standing,) or a more external injury.
These latter affections, particularly, are called local diseases.
~ 175. As to partial diseases of the first species alluded to,
the want of attention on the part of the physician is frequently
the reason that he does not fully trace out the symptoms which
are extant, by whose aid he would be able to form a more complete outline of the image of the disease.
~ 176. There are, however, some few diseases which, notwithstanding all the care with which they may be examined in
the first instance (~ 84-98), exhibit only one or two strong
21



162


and violent symptoms, while all the others are manifest but in
a slight degree.
~ 177. A case of this description very rarely occurs, but
when it does, it will be requisite, in a successful treatment, to
commence by selecting, according to the indication of the few
symptoms that are perceptible, that medicine which appears to
be the most homceopathic.
~ 178. It sometimes may happen that this remedy, carefully
selected according to the exigency of the homeopathic law,
will present the artificial disease, which, by its analogy to the
natural one, is capable of destroying it; and this will be the
more easily effected in proportion as the symptoms of the
natural disease are prominent, characteristic, and decisive.
~ 179. But it more frequently happens that it is only in a
certain degree appropriate to the disease, and that it does not
suit exactly, because there was not a sufficient number of
symptoms to direct the choice of the remedy.
~ 180. The medicine now operating upon a disease to
which it is only partly analogous, excites accessory symptoms,
as in the case (~ 162 and others) where the choice is imperfect,
in consequence of the limited number of homeopathic remedies. It will then produce several appearances belonging to
the mass of its own symptoms. But these appearances are
equally symptoms belonging to the disease itself, which the patient
did not till now perceive, or he had rarely felt them, and which
now do nothing more than develope themselves in a greater
degree.
~ 181. It will, perhaps, be objected that the accessory
symptoms, or the new ones appearing in the disease, ought to
be attributed to the remedy which had just been administered.
This is indeed the source they spring from; but they are not
less, on that account, symptoms that this disease itself was
capable of producing in this patient, and the remedy in its
character of exciting similar symptoms only provoked their
manifestation. In short, the totality of the symptoms which



164
hold a most important rank. By these, are meant the changes
and sufferings experienced by the external part of the body.
Until the present time, it has been the theory of the former
schools of medicine that the external parts only were affected
in such a case, and that the rest of the body did not participate
in the disease, an absurd theoretical proposition that has led to
the most pernicious medical treatment.
~ 186. The so called local diseases of recent origin arising
only from external causes seem more than others to be entitled
to this name. But the injury must then be very trifling, and
is of no particular importance; for if the evils which attack
the body externally are of any importance, the entire system
sympathises, and fever declares itself, &c. The treatment of
these maladies belongs to surgery, so far as it is necessary to
bring mechanical aid to the suffering parts, in order to remove
and annihilate mechanical obstacles to the cure, which can
only be expected from the powers of the organism itself.
Among these may be ranked, for example, the reduction of
dislocations; uniting wounds by bandages; extracting foreign
substances that have penetrated the living parts; opening the
cavity of the abdomen, either to remove a substance that is
burdensome to the system, or to give vent to effusions and
collections of liquids; placing in apposition the extremities of
a fractured bone, and consolidation of the fracture by means of
an appropriate bandage, &c. But as, when the injuries occur,
the entire organism always requires active dynamic aid to be
placed in a condition to accomplish the cure-when, for
instance, it is necessary to have recourse to internal remedies
to extinguish violent fever, arising from a severe contusion, a
laceration of the soft parts-viz. muscles, tendons, and bloodvessels-or when it is requisite to combat homzeopathically the
external pain caused by a burn or cautery, then commence the
functions of the dynamic physician, and the aid of homceopathy
becomes necessary.
~ 187. But it is very different with the changes and maladies which occur on the surface of the body, not originating
from any external violence, or merely from the consequences
of some slight external injury. These owe their source to an



167


the disease is not wholly removed-if, notwithstanding the
regularity of the mode of life of the patient, there still remains
some local or general trace of it which the vital power is not
able to restore to the normal state-then the acute local affection was (what happens very frequently) the product of psora,
which had till then been latent in the interior of the organism,
and which is now on the point of manifesting itself in the form
of a chronic disease.
* For example, aconite, rhus toxicod., belladonna, mercury, &c.
~ 195. To perform a radical cure in these cases, which are
by no means rare, it is necessary, after a tolerable abatement of
the acute state, to direct an appropriate antipsoric treatment
against the symptoms which continue to exist, together with
those which the patient had been subject to previously, (according to the instructions given in the work on chronic diseases*).
An antipsoric treatment is, besides, requisite in local chronic
affections that are manifestly not venereal.
* The second edition of this work is about to be translated, and will be
published immediately.-EDI'roR.
~ 196. It might be supposed that these diseases would be
cured more promptly, if the remedy known to be homceopathic
to the totality of the symptoms was employed not only internally, but likewise externally, and that a medicine applied to
the spot itself that is diseased, ought then to produce a more
rapid change.
~ 197. But this method should be rejected not only in local
affections which depend upon the miasm of psora, but also
in those especially which result from the miasms of syphilis or
sycosis. For the simultaneous application of a remedy internally
and externally, in a disease whose principal symptom is a permanent local evil, brings one serious disadvantage with it-the external affection* usually disappears faster than the internal
malady, which gives rise to an erroneous impression that the
cure is complete, or at least it becomes difficult, and sometimes
impossible, to judge whether the entire disease has been destroyed or not by the internal remedy.
* Recent psoric eruption, chancre, sycosis.



169


and substitute an external evil in the place of one that is internal. In this way the local affection silences, for a while, the
internal malady, but without being able either to cure or
diminish it in a great degree.* The local malady, however, is
never any thing more than a part of the general disease, but it
is a part that the vital power has (einseitige) greatly magnified,
and which she has carried back to the surface of the body
where there is less danger, in order to diminish the internal
affection in an equal degree. But this latter is not the less
cured on that account: on the contrary, it makes a gradual
progress, so that the organism is likewise compelled to enlarge
and aggravate the local symptom, in order to replace it to a
certain extent, and procure for it partial relief. Thus, old
ulcers in the legs grow large so long as the internal psora is
not cured, and chancres increase in size as long as the internal
syphilis remains without cure, just as the internal disease of
the whole body grows and enlarges of itself.
* The issues of the old school produce something that is analogous.
These ulcers, created by art on the external parts, may, though for a
very short time, allay several internal chronic diseases, but they can
never cure them; on the other hand, they weaken and destroy the health
far more than the instinctive vital power does, by the most of its metastases.
~ 202. If the physician who has imbibed the precepts of
the ordinary school destroys the local malady by an external
remedy, thinking by these means to cure the disease itself,
nature replaces this affection by increasing the internal sufferings, and rousing all the other symptoms that already existed
with the local malady, and which appear to have been till that
time in a latent state.  It is, therefore, erroneous that the
external remedies have (as usually asserted) then driven back
the local malady into the body, or that they have thrown it
upon the nerves.
~ 203. Every external treatment of a local symptom whose
aim is to extinguish it on the surface of the body without
curing the internal miasmatic disease-such, for example, as
that of destroying a psoric eruption on the skin by means of
ointments, healing up a chancre by the use of caustic, destroy22



170


ing the granulations of sycosis by ligature, excision, or the
application of a hot iron-is not only useless but injurious.
This pernicious method, in such general use at the present
day, is the chief source of the innumerable chronic diseases
(with or without names) that oppress the human race. This
is the most criminal practice physicians can adopt, and it has
notwithstanding been very generally practised till the present
time, and taught, ex cathedra, as the only one.*
For all the medicines which are directed to be given inwardly during
the local treatment, serve only to aggravate the evil, since they possess
no specific power to remove the entire disease, but assault and weaken
the organism, and, in addition, inflict on it other chronic medicinal diseases.. 204. If we except all chronic maladies which depend
upon a mode of living habitually unhealthy, as well as those
innumerable factitious diseases (v. ~. 74) which arise from the
senseless and protracted; the assaulting and ruinous treatment,
even of slight diseases, by allkeopathic physicians, then all the
remainder, without exception, are occasioned by the developement of these three chronic miasms, viz., internal syphilis,
internal sycosis, but especially, and in an infinitely greater proportion, internal psora.  Each of these is already in possession of the entire organism, and has penetrated it in all its
parts, before the respective primary representative and local
symptom makes its appearance, which prevents the bursting
forth of its corresponding miasm in another form, and is manifested in psora by a peculiar eruption, in syphilis by chancre
or bubo, and in sycosis by condylomata.     Either of these
chronic miasms being deprived of its local symptoms, will,
sooner or later, under the influence of natural causes, become
developed, burst forth, and multiply the incredible multitude of
chronic diseases which for ages has afflicted the human race.
These diseases never would have existed in such abundance,
had physicians strenuously endeavoured to effect a radical cure
of these three miasms, and to extinguish them     from  the
organism, by means of the internal employment of homceopathic remedies adapted to each, without treating the external
symptoms by topical applications.



173


ment. He must likewise endeavour to learn wheth er the
patient's state of mind is any obstacle to the cure, and whether
it be necessary to modify, favour, or direct it.
~ 209. It is not till after repeated enquiries of this nature
that the physician should endeavour to trace out, according to
the directions already given, as perfect an image of the disease
as possible, to enable him to distinguish the most prominent
and characteristic of the symptoms by which he is to choose
the first anti-psoric or other remedy, at the commencement of
the treatment, observing, as a guide, the greatest possible
analogy with the symptoms, &c.
~ 210. Almost all those which I before designated by the
name of partial (einseitige) diseases belong to psora, and seem,
on that account; more difficult to cure, because all their other
symptoms disappear before that one great prevailing symptom.
To these belong the so called diseases of the mind and temper.
These affections, however, do not form a distinct and wholly
separate class from the others, for the state of the mind and
temper varies in all other so called bodily diseases,* and it
ought to be comprised as one of the principal symptoms, of
which it is important to note the whole, in order to trace a
faithfill image of the disease, and to be able to combat it with
success, homceopathically.
* How often do we not meet with patients who, though they have
been a prey for many years to painful diseases, nevertheless preserve a
gentle and peaceful disposition, so much so as to inspire us with compassion and respect? But when the disease is overcome, which is
often the case, by the homceopathic mode of treatment, we sometimes
see the most frightful changes of disposition ensue, and ingratitude,
obduracy, refined malice, revolting caprices, which were the attributes
of the patient before he became diseased, again make their appearance.
Sometimes a man who is patient while in the enjoyment of health, becomes passionate, violent, capricious, and unbearable, or impatient and
despairing, when he is ill, or the formerly chaste and modest are now
become lascivious and shameless. It is frequently the case that a sensible man becomes stupid in sickness, whereas, on the contrary, a weak
mind is rendered stronger, and a man of a slow temperament becomes
full of presence of mind and resolution.



177


arrested, provided the patient does not depart from the regimen
that has been prescribed for him.
It is a very rare case that mental alienation of long standing ceases
spontaneously, (since the internal malady recedes upon the grosser corporeal organs.) These are the few cases in which a patient, after having
been the inmate of a mad-house, is discharged as apparently cured.
Every institution for the insane has hitherto been filled to excess, so that
the multitude of others waiting for admission have scarcely ever found a
place, if vacancies did not occur in the house by the decease of patients.
Not one among them is really and permanently cured! A striking
evidence this, among many others, of the complete nullity of the pernicious treatment hitherto pursued, which allceopathic ostentation has
ridiculously honoured with the title of the rational art of healing. On
the other hand, how often have these unfortunate beings, by means of a
treatment purely homceopathic, been restored to the possession of their
mental and bodily health, and returned to their gratified connections and
the world.
~ 223. But where the anti-psoric treatment is discontinued,
it is almost certain that a much slighter cause than that which
excited the first appearance of insanity will suffice to bring on
a fresh and more permanent attack of it, during which psora
developes itself in a perfect manner, and it will then turn to a
periodical or permanent mental alienation, which can with
difficulty be cured by anti-psorics.
~ 224. In a case where the mental disease is not yet completely formed, and where it is doubtful whether it really
results from a bodily affection, or if it is not rather the effects
of bad education, evil habits, corrupted morals, a neglected
mind, superstition, or ignorance, the truth will be readily discovered by acting as follows. The patient is to be addressed
in a tone of friendly exhortation, while motives of consolation,
serious remonstrances, and solid arguments, are to be urged on
the occasion: if the disorder of the mind does not proceed
from a bodily disease, it will readily yield to such means; but
if the contrary is the case, the malady rapidly grows worse,
the melancholic becomes still more grave, downcast, and inconsolable, the wicked maniac more outrageous, and the unmeaning prattler more foolish.*
* It seems as though the mind were sensible of the truth of these
representations, and acted upon the body as if it would restore the lost
23



179


patient who vents his sufferings in grief and lamentation,
silent pity that is expressed by the countenance and gestures;
to senseless prattle, a silence not wholly inattentive; to disgusting and detestable demeanour and similar discourse, entire
inattention. What regards the injury and damage that a
maniac may commit, we are only to anticipate and prevent it
without ever expressing a word of reproach to him; every
thing ought to be so ordered, that punishments and the infliction of bodily sufferings may be dispensed with.* And this can
be effected without any great difficulty, since in administering
the medicine (the only point where the use of coercive measures
would be justifiable) the dose in the homceopathic treatment is
so small that the medicinal substance never offends the taste,
and the patient can be made to swallow it in his drink without
ever perceiving it.
* It is surprising to witness the hard-hearted and imprudent treatment
adopted in several mad-houses, not only in England, but also in Germany, by physicians who, ignorant of the only true method of curing
mental disease by the aid of homceopathic (anti-psoric) remedies, do
nothing more than beat and torture the unfortunate beings who are so
worthy of compassion. By this revolting mode of treatment, they lower
themselves beneath the rank of the common jailer in the houses of correction; for it is in virtue of his office, and upon criminals only, that the
latter exercises his cruelty, while the physician, either too ignorant or
indolent to go in search of a suitable method of treatment, only appears
to exert his tyranny upon the innocent patient through spite, because he
is not able to cure him.
~ 229. On the other hand, contradiction, zealous remonstrance, violence, and reproaches, are as inapplicable and
injurious in the treatment of mental disease as are indecision
and timidity.   But mockery, in particular, and deception,
which the maniac is not slow in perceiving, only irritate and
provoke him. The physician, and those who guard the patient,
ought always to appear as if they believed him to be possessed of
reason. It is likewise necessary to remove from his view all
external objects that could disturb or afflict him. There is on
relief or distraction for the clouded mind-no salutary recreation-no means of instruction or consolation either in books,
conversation, or otherwise, for the soul that languishes in the
prison of a diseased body-nothing can procure him repose but



180


the cure of his bodily sufferings; and he is equally a stranger to
comfort and tranquillity until reason is restored.
~ 230. If the anti-psoric remedy that is to be used in any
given case of mental affection, of which there are an endless
variety of cases, be perfectly honmeopathic to the true image of
the disease, (which is easily discovered when the number of
known medicines is sufficiently great that the principal symptom, viz. the moral state of the patient, is strongly developed,)
then the smallest dose often suffices to produce, in a short time,
a very decided amelioration, which could not have been
obtained by all the other (allceopathic) remedies administered
in large doses, and lavished on the patient till he was near
death.  I can even affirm, after long experience, that the
superiority of homoeopathy over every other curative method
whatever was never more manifest than in mental diseases of
long standing, which owed their origin to bodily affections or
which were developed simultaneously.
~ 231. There is yet another class of diseases that merits our
particular attention.  These are the intermittent diseases, such
as return at stated periods like the innumerable intermittent
fevers, and the non-febrile affections assuming the same form,
and also those which in certain morbid states alternate with
others at indefinite intervals.
~ 232.  These latter (alternating) species are likewise in
great variety;* but they all belong to the number of chronic
diseases. The greater part of them result from a developement
of psora, sometimes, but rarely, complicated with a syphilitic
miasm. This is the reason that they are cured in the first
instance by anti-psoric medicines, and in the second by antipsorics, alternating with anti-syphilitics, as I have stated in my
Treatise on Chronic Diseases.;' * It is possible for two or three different states to alternate with each
other. For example, in a case that regards the alternation of two different states, it can happen that certain pains may be produced in the
lower extremities as soon as ophthalmia disappears, and the latter may
return again immediately when the pains have ceased-or that spasms
and convulsions may immediately succeed some other affection, either of



182


is, therefore, necessary that the remedy employed against
them, which is to be selected from the medicines hitherto tried,
commonly from the non-anti-psorics, shall likewise (as the surest
means) be able to excite in healthy persons two (or all three)
of the morbid stages that are similar, or, at least, it shall have
the faculty of exciting, with all its accessory symptoms, the
strongest and most prominent of these two or three consecutive
stages, viz. either that of chill, with its accessory symptoms, or
of heat, with the symptoms accompanying it, or of perspiration,
with its attendant complaints, according as the one or the
other stage may be the strongest and most distinguished; yet
the state of the patient, during the apyrexia, especially, must
indicate the choice of the most appropriate      homceopathic
remedy.
Till the present time, pathology has only been acquainted with one
single intermittent fever, which has been called ague. It admits of no
other difference than the interval which exists between the paroxysms;
and upon this are founded the particular denominations, quotidian,
tertian, quartan, &c. But, besides the variety which they present in
regard to the periods of their return, the intermittent fevers exhibit yet
other changes that are much more important. Among these fevers
there are many which cannot be denominated ague, because their
attacks consist solely of heat; others are characterised by cold only, succeeded or not by perspiration; while yet others freeze the body of the
patient, and inspire him, notwithstanding, with a sensation of heat, or
even create in him a feeling of cold, although his body seems very warm
to the touch; in many, one of the paroxysms is confined to shivering or
cold, which is immediately succeeded by a comfortable sensation, and
that which comes after it consists of heat followed by perspiration or
not. In one case, it is heat that manifests itself first, and cold succeeds;
in another, both the cold and heat give place to apyrexia, while the next
paroxysm, which sometimes does not occur before an interval of several
hours, consists merely of perspiration; in certain cases, no trace of perspiration is perceptible; while in others the attack is composed solely of
perspiration, without either heat or cold, or of perspiration that flows
during the heat alone. There exist, likewise, innumerable differences
relative to the accessory symptoms, the particular kind of head-ache, the
bad taste in the mouth, the stomach sickness, the vomiting, the diarrhoea,
the absence or degree of thirst, the kind of pains felt in the body and
limbs, sleep, delirium, changes of the temper, spasms, &c., which manifest themselves before, during, or after the cold, hot, or sweating stages,
without taking into the account a multitude of other deviations. These
are assuredly intermittent fevers that are very different from one another,



183


each of which demands naturally that mode of homeopathic treatment
that is appropriate to it individually. It must be confessed, it is true,
that they may almost all be suppressed (a case that so frequently occurs)
by large and enormous doses of cinchona or quinine-that is to say, cinchona prevents their periodical return, and destroys the type. But when
this remedy is employed in intermittent fevers where it is inappropriate,
(as is the case with all epidemic intermittents which pass over whole
countries, and even mountains,) the patient is not at all cured, because
the character of the disease is destroyed; he is still indisposed, and often
much more so than he was before; he suffers from a peculiar chronic
bark complaint, often incurable, and yet this is what physicians term a
cure.
~ 236. The best, most appropriate, and serviceable method
in these diseases, is to administer the remedy immediately, or
very shortly after the termination of the paroxysm, as soon as
the patient has, in some measure, recovered from it. Administered in this manner, it has sufficient time to produce in the
organism  all its various effects to  restore health without
violence or commotion; whereas, if taken immediately before
the paroxysm, (even though it were homoeopathic or specific in
the highest degree,) its effect would coincide with the renewal
of the natural disease, and excite such a strife in the organism,
so powerful a reaction, that the patient would lose at least a
great portion of his strength, and even life would be endangered." But when the medicine is administered immediately
after the termination of the paroxysm, and before the next fit
has prepared itself, even at a distance, to appear, the organism
is in the best possible condition to allow itself to be gently
modified by the remedy, and by these means return to a state
of health.
* There are proofs of this, unfortunately, in the too frequent cases
where a moderate allceopathic dose of opium, administered to the patient
during the cold stage of the fever, has quickly deprived him of life.
~ 237. If the period of the apyrexia be of short duration, as
is the case in some very violent fevers, or if it be disturbed by
symptoms which belong to the preceding paroxysm, then it is
necessary to administer the homceopathic remedy as soon as
the perspiration or other symptoms, pointing out the termination of the fit, beginl to diminisl.



184


~ 238. When a single dose of the appropriate remedy has
destroyed several paroxysms, and manifestly restored health,
and, notwithstanding which, indications of a fresh attack are
seen some time after, then only can and ought the same
remedy to be repeated, provided the totality of the symptoms is
still the same. But this return of the same fever, after an
interval of health, is not possible, except when the cause which
excited the malady, in the first instance, still exercises its
influence upon the convalescent, as occurs in marshy countries.
In such a case, a permanent cure is seldom effected but by
removing the patient from this exciting cause, and advising
him to go and reside in a mountainous district, if that which
attacked him was a marsh intermittent fever.
~ 239. As almost every medicine, in its simple action, produces a peculiar fever, and even a species of intermittent,
which differs from all those excited by other medicines, consequently the immense number of medicinal substances presents
the means of combating all natural intermittent fevers homceopathically. Some efficacious remedies against a multitude of
these affections, have already been discovered in the few medicines that have been tried, till the present time, on healthy
individuals.
~ 240. When a remedy is found to be homceopathic or
specific in a reigning epidemy of intermittent fevers, and there
is, notwithstanding, now and then, a patient whom it does not
cure in a perfect manner, and no influence of a marshy
country opposes its operation, then the obstacle generally arises
from the psoric miasm, and, consequently, anti-psoric medicines
ought to be employed until health is perfectly restored.
~ 241. Epidemical intermittent fevers, in places where
none are endemic, have the nature of chronic diseases, composed of individual, acute paroxysms.    Each particular
epidemic has a peculiar character, per se, that is shared in
common by every patient affected by it, and which, when it is
discovered in the totality of symptoms common to all, indicates
the suitable homoeopathic remedy (specific) for all the cases;
and this remedy is almost universally effectual in patients who



185


had enjoyed tolerable health before the onset of the epidemic,
that is, who suffered under no chronic malady from developed
psora.
~ 242. If, however, in such an epidemic intermittent, the
first paroxysms have passed over uncured, or if the patient's
strength had been reduced by improper allceopathic treatment,
then the internal psoric miasm (though slumbering, yet unfor
tunately existing in so many persons), developes itself, assumes
here the intermittent type, and, in appearance, continues to
play the part of the intermittent fever itself, so that the medicine
(rarely an anti-psoric) which would have been beneficial in the
incipient paroxysms, is now no longer suitable or capable of
affording relief. The disease at present to be combated has
degenerated into a psoric intermittent, which is generally overcome by means of a minute dose, seldom repeated, of sulphur
and sulphuretum calcis, of the highest developements.
~ 243. Those frequently very malignant intermittent fevers
which attack an individual here and there, not inhabiting
marshy regions, must in the commencement be treated as
acute diseases (to which they bear some resemblance, as regards
their psoric origin), by selecting a homceopathic remedy, for
the special case, from the class of the other proven (non-antipsoric) medicines, which is to be continued for some days with
the view of affording the greatest possible relief. But if the
recovery should be lingering, it must be seen that psora is now
on the point of developement, and that a radical cure cannot be
effected without anti-psoric remedies.
~ 244. The endemic intermittent fevers of marshy districts
and countries subject to inundations are a source of much
embarrassment to physicians of the prevailing school of medicine. A healthy man may, however, accustom himself in his
youth to the influence of a country that is covered with
morasses, and live there in perfect health, provided he confines
himself to a regular mode of life, and is not assailed by want,
fatigue, or destructive passions. The endemic intermittent
fevers will at farthest attack him on his first arrival in the
country: but one or two of the smallest doses of a solution of
24



186


cinchona, attenuated in a very high degree, suffice to deliver
him from it promptly, if, in other respects, he does not depart
from a strict regimen. But when a man who takes sufficient
bodily exercise, and who pursues a course every way suited to
his mind and body, does not cure of a marsh intermittent fever
by the influence of this single remedy, we may be certain that
there exists within his body a psoric affection, which is on the
eve of developing itself, and that the intermittent fever will not
yield to any other than an anti-psoric treatment.' It sometimes
happens, that if this man quit the marshy country without
delay to go and reside in another that is dry and mountainous,
his health is apparently restored, and the fever leaves him, if it
has not taken too deep a root-that is to say, the psora passes
again to a latent state, because it had not yet reached its final
degree of developement; but he is not cured, nor can he enjoy
perfect health, until he has made use of an anti-psoric treatment.
*' Large doses of cinchona or sulphate of quinine may certainly free
the patient from the typical attacks of marsh intermittent fevers; but he
is still unhealthy in another way, and anti-psorics only will effect a perfect cure.
~ 245. Having now seen what degree of attention ought, in
the homeopathic treatment, to be bestowed on the principal
diversities of diseases and their peculiar circumstances, we pass
on to the remedies themselves, the manner of applying them, and
the regimen to be observed by the patient during the time he is
submitted to their action. Both in acute and chronic diseases,
every perceptible amelioration that takes place making continual progress, though of ever so feeble a nature, is a state
which, as long as it endures, formerly forbids the repetition of
any medicine whatever, because the one already taken by the
patient has not yet produced all the good that may result from
it. Every fresh dose of a remedy, even of the one last administered, and which had till then proved salutary, would have no
effect but that of disturbing the operation of the cure.
~ 246. On the contrary, one dose of a suitable homaeopathic
remedy, if its developement be sufficiently subtile, gradually
completes all the beneficial effects which, from its nature, it is



188
so long as allceopathy (and what is but little short of it, the practice of
the new mongrel sect, consisting in a combination of allceopathy and
homeopathy) continues to gnaw like a cancer upon the vitals of diseased
human beings, and to destroy them with large doses of medicine, will
separate these pretended arts by an immeasurable gulph from homceopathy.
On the other hand, although practice points out to us that a single
small dose is sufficient in some cases of disease, particularly those of a
lighter kind, and in those of small children and adults of a tender and
irritable constitution, to produce almost all that the medicine is capable
of producing, yet in most cases, both of chronic disease of long standing,
(often previously almost ruined by the use of improper medicines,)
as well as in important acute diseases, such a minute dose, even
when given in the higher developements, is manifestly not sufficient to
perform all the curative effects which was to have been expected from
one and the same medicine. For this purpose, unquestionably, it becomes necessary to administer several of the same, that thereby the vital
power may be pathogenetically influenced, and its healthy re-action extended so high, that it may wholly obliterate all that portion of the
original disease which the well-selected homceopathic remedy is capable
of doing.  One small dose of the best selected medicine produces,
indeed, some relief, but not sufficient.
But the careful homeopathic physician will not venture frequently to
repeat a dose of the same remedy, at short intervals, because no advantage is derived from this practice, but more frequently, as is attested by
accurate observation, it is the source of certain injury. He generally
sees an aggravation of the symptoms, even from the smallest dose of a
suitable remedy, which, on being given to day, is repeated to-morrow
and the day following.
In order to afford greater relief in cases where he is convinced that
the remedy is the most fitly chosen, than has been hitherto effected by
prescribing only one small dose, it naturally occurred to the physician
to enlarge it (since, for the reasons aforementioned, it was to be
administered once only), and instead of one minute globule moistened
with the medicine in the highest developement, to give six or eight at
once, and even a whole or half a drop. But, almost without exception,
the results of this practice were less favourable than they ought to have
been, often really injurious and of difficult reparation.
Neither did the substitution of the lower dilutions administered in
larger doses furnish any better expedient.
To increase the strength of the dose of a homceopathic remedy sufficient for producing the supposed degree of pathogenetic excitement of
the vital powers requisite for salutary and sufficient reaction, fulfils,
therefore, as experience teaches, by no means the desired intention.
The vital power is thereby too violently and too suddenly assaulted to
allow of time for a gradual, equable, and salutary counteraction; in order
to accommodate itself to its change, therefore, it endeavours to rid itself,



191


by the more or less rapid course of the disease to be combated, so that,
when requisite, it may be given in twenty-four, sixteen, twelve, eight,
or four hours, or even at shorter intervals, if without check, or the production of new symptoms, the remedy has proved beneficial; but for a
dangerous acute disease whose progress is rapid, the interval must be
lessened; thus in the most rapidly mortal disease with which we are
acquainted, in cholera, one or two drops of a dilute solution of camphor
must be administered every five minutes, in order to procure speedy and
certain relief, and in the more developed form of the disease, doses of
cuprum, veratrum, phosphor, &c. (X~), often every two to three hours,
as well as arsen. carb. veg. &c., at intervals equally short.
In the treatment of the so called nervous fever, and other continued
fevers, the practitioner is to be governed, in the repetition of the minutest
dose of the suitable medicine, by the same precautions.
In pure syphilitic diseases I have generally found a single dose of
mercury (X~) sufficient; yet where the least complication with psora
was perceptible, sometimes two or three such doses were necessary,
given in intervals of six or eight (lays.
In those cases wherein a particular remedy is strongly indicated, but
the patient is very weak and irritable, once smelling a globule of the
size of a mustard seed, moistened with the medicine, is safer and more
serviceable than when it is taken in substance, even in the minutest
dose of the higher dilutions. In the process of smelling, the patient
should hold the vial containing the globule under one nostril, when one
momentary inhalation of the air in the vial is to be made, and if the
dose is intended to be stronger, the same operation may be repeated with
the other nostril. The operation of the medicine thus administered,
continues as long as when it is taken in substance, and therefore the
smelling must not be repeated at shorter intervals than when taken in
the latter mode.
~ 247. Subject to these conditions, the most subtile doses of
the best chosen homceopathic medicine can be repeated at
intervals of fourteen, twelve, ten, eight, to seven days, with the
best and frequently almost incredible effects; when more haste is
necessary, in cases of chronic disease approaching to acute, it
may be repeated at still shorter intervals; but in acute diseases,
the periods of repetition may be far more considerably abridged
to twenty-four, twelve, eight, or four hours, and in the most acute
from one hour down to five minutes: in short, proportionably
to the greater or less rapidity with which the disease runs its
course, and to the nature of the remedy administered, as is
more fully explained in the note to the preceding paragraph.



192


6 248. The dose of the same medicine should be repeated
until a cure is effected, or until it ceases aly longer to afford
relief; in the latter alternative, the remnant of the disease,
with its altered group of symptoms, will require another
homceopathic remedy.
~ 249. Every medicine which, in the course of its operation,
produces new symptoms that do not appertain to the disease to
be cured, and that are annoying, is incapable of procuring real
amendment,* and cannot be considered as homceopathically
chosen.   If the deterioration of symptoms be important, the
effect of the medicine must be extinguished, in part, without
delay, by means of an antidote, before another and more
homceopathic remedy is given, or if the new symptoms be not
violent, the other remedy must be immediately given, to take
the place of that which has been so unfitly chosen.
* All experience teaches us, that scarcely any homoeopathic medicine
can be prepared in too minute a dose to produce perceptible benefit in a
disease to which it is adapted (~ 161. 279). Hence it would be an improper and injurious practice, when the medicine produces no good
effect, or an inconsiderable exacerbation of the symptoms, after the
manner of the old school, to repeat or increase the dose under
the idea that it cannot prove serviceable on account of its minuteness. Every exacerbation caused by new symptoms, when nothing
injurious has occurred with regard to diet or mental impressions, always
proves the unsuitableness of the medicine previously given, but never
indicates the weakness of the dose.
~ 250. When in urgent cases, after the lapse of six, eight,
to twelve hours, it becones manifest to the observant physician
who has accurately investigated the character of the disease,
that he has made a false selection of the remedy last administered, when, during the appearance of new symptoms, the disease becomes, though slightly, yet evidently worse from hour to
hour, it is not only admissible, but duty renders it imperative
on him to rectify the mistake he has made, and administer
another homceopathic remedy not only tolerably, but the best
possibly adapted to the morbid condition at the time (~ 167).
~ 251. There are some medicines, for example, ignatia



193


amara, bryonia, rhus, and sometimes belladonna, whose power
of changing the human economy chiefly consists in the production of alternate effects-a kind of primary symptoms, partly in
opposition to each other. If the physician find no improvement
after the strict homoeopathic selection and administration of one
of these remedies (in acute cases, after a few hours), then by
repeating it in the same dilution, he will quickly obtain the
desired effect.*
* As I have explained more circumstantially in the introduction to the
article ignatia (Mat. Med. vol. ii.)
~ 252.  But if in a chronic disease (psoric) the most honmeopathic remedy (anti-psoric), administered in the smallest and
most suitable dose, does not produce an amendment, it is a sure
sign that the cause which keeps up the disease still exists, and
that there is something either in the regimen or condition of the
patient that must be first altered before a permanent cure can be
effected.
~ 253. In all diseases, particularly those which are acute,
the state of mind and general demeanour of the patient are
among the first and most certain of the symptoms (which are
not perceived by every one) that announce the beginning of
any slight amendment or augmentation of the malady.   If the
disease begins to improve, though in ever so slight a degree,
the patient feels more at ease, he is more tranquil, his mind is
less restrained, his spirits revive, and all his conduct is, so to
express it, more natural. The very reverse takes place where
there is only a slight increase; an embarrassment and helplessness, which call for commiseration, are observable in the
mind and temper of the patient, as well as in all his actions,
gestures, and postures-something both remarkable and peculiar
which cannot escape the eye of an attentive observer, but which
it would be difficult to describe in words.*
* But the signs of amendment furnished by the mind and temper of
the patient, are never visible, (shortly after he has taken the remedy,)
but where the dose has been attenuated to the proper degree-that is to
say, as much as possible. A dose stronger than necessary (even of the
most homceopathic remedy) acts with too great violence, and plunges the
moral and intellectual faculties into such disorder that it is impossible to
25



194


discover quickly any amendment that takes place. I must observe in
this place, that it is the common fault of physicians who go from the
old school of medicine over to the homceopathic to violate this most important rule. Blinded by prejudice, they avoid small doses of medicines
attenuated to the highest degree, and thus deprive themselves of the
great advantages which experience has a thousand times proved to result from them; they cannot accomplish that which the true homoeopathist is capable of doing, and yet they falsely declare themselves his
disciples.
~ 254. If we add to this, either the appearance of fresh
symptoms, or the aggravation of those which previously existed, or, on the contrary, the diminution of the primitive symptoms without the manifestation of any new ones, the physician
who is gifted with discrimination and discernment will no
longer doubt whether the disease is aggravated or ameliorated,
though there may be patients who are incapable of telling
whether they are better or worse, and even some who refuse to
tell it.
~ 255. Even in the latter case it is easy to arrive at the
positive truth by going through all the symptoms which have
been noted down in the description of the malady and passing
them in review successively with the patient. If the latter does
not complain of any new symptoms that were not mentioned
before-if none of the previous symptoms are aggravated in a
manifest degree-and when, finally, an amendment of the
moral and intellectual faculties is perceptible-it is certain that
the remedy has effected an essential diminution of the malady,
or if only too short an interval has elapsed since its administration, that it is on the point of doing so. But if the remedy has
been well selected, and the amendment, notwithstanding, delays
its appearance, it can only be attributed, either to some irregularity on the part of the patient, or to the lengthened duration
of the homceopathic aggravation (~ 151) excited by the medicinal
substance, and we ought thence to conclude that the dose was
not minute enough.
~ 256. On the other hand, if the patient describes any recent symptoms of some importance, (which indicate the unsuitable choice of the remedy) if will be vain for him to declare



195


that he feels himself better; the physician, far from believing
him, ought, on the contrary, to consider him worse than before,
of the truth of which he will soon have ocular demonstration.. 257. A true physician will beware of forming a predilection for any particular remedies which chance may sometimes
have led him to administer with success. This preference
might cause him to reject others which would be still more homceopathic, and consequently of greater efficacy.
~ 258. He must, likewise, be carefil not to entertain a prejudice against those remedies from which he may have experienced
some check, because lie had made a bad selection, and he should
never lose sight of this great truth, that of all known remedies
there is but one that merits a preference before all others, viz.
-that whose symptoms bear the closest resemblance to the
totality of those which characterise the malady.    No petty
feeling should have any influence in so serious a matter.
~ 259. As it is requisite, in the homceopathic treatment, that
the doses should be extremely small, it may be readily conceived that every thing which exercises a medicinal influence on
the patient, should be removed from his regimen and mode of
life, in order that the effects of such minute doses may not
be destroyed, overpowered or disturbed, by any foreign stimulant.*)
* The softest tones of the flute, which at a distance in the stillness of
the night inspire the gentle mind with a sentiment of religion and piety,
only cleave the air in vain when they are accompanied by noise and discordant sounds.
~ 260. In chronic diseases, more especially, it is important
to remove all obstacles of this nature with the greatest care,
since it is by them, or some other errors in regimen (which
often remain undiscovered), that they are aggravated.*
* Such, for example, as by coffee, teas of all the different kinds, or
beer containing vegetable substances that are unfit for the patient,
liqueurs (cordials), especially those prepared from medicinal aromatics,
all kinds of punch, spiced chocolate, sweet waters and perfumery of all
kinds, odorous flowers in the room, preparations for the teeth either in



196


powder or liquid wherein medicinal substances are included, perfumed
bags, strongly seasoned viands and sauces, pastry and ice cream with aromatics, pot herbs, culinary greens, or roots containing medicinal properties, old cheese or butter, stale meat, the flesh and fat of swine, geese and
ducks, young veal, or acids. Every one of these act medicinally, and
ought to be carefully removed from patients of this kind. All excesses at
table are to be interdicted, even in the use of sugar and salt, as well as of
spirituous liquors, hot rooms, flannel worn next to the skin. (Flannel
must not be left off till warm weather, and then exchanged for cotton,
and afterwards for linen.) The physician will likewise forbid a sedentary
life in close rooms, passive exercise (by iiding or driving, swinging and
rocking in chairs,) sleeping too long after dinner, nocturnal occupations,
uncleanliness, unnatural voluptuousness, and the reading of obscene
books, the occasions of anger, grief, and malice, a passion for gaming,
excessive mental and bodily labour, a residence in a marshy situation,
or in a chamber that is not properly ventilated, penurious living, &c. &c.
All practicable care should be observed by the patient to avoid these forbidden things, in order that no impediment may be interposed which
would render the cure difficult or impossible. Some of my adherents
appear to exact too much from their patients, by unnecessarily and improperly excluding from their diet things indifferent.
~ 261. The most suitable regimen in chronic diseases consists in removing every thing which might impede the cure, and
by bringing about an opposite state, where it is necessary, by
recommending innocent cheerfulness, exercise in the open air,
in almost all weathers (daily walks, light manual labour), aliments that are suitable, nourishing, and free from medicinal
influence, &c., &c.
~ 262. On the other hand, in acute diseases (mental alienation excepted) the preservative instinct of the vital power
speaks in so clear and precise a manner that the physician has
only to recommend to the family or nurses of the patient not
to thwart nature by refusing the patient any thing he may long
for, or by trying to persuade him to take things that might do
him injury.
~ 263. The food and drink demanded by a patient labouring under an acute disease act for the most part as palliatives
only, and can at farthest effect momentary relief; but they contain no real medicinal qualities, and are merely conformable to
a species of desire on his part. Provided the gratification which



197


they, in this respect, procure the patient, be confined within proper limits, the slight obstacles' which they could place in the
way of a radical cure of the disease are more than covered by
the influence of the homeopathic remedy, by the greater extent
of liberty given to the vital powers, and the ease and satisfaction that follow the possession of any object that is ardently
desired. In acute diseases, the temperature of the chamber as
well as the quantity of bed-covering should likewise be regulated according to the wishes of the patient; likewise care is
to be taken to remove every thing that could disturb his mental
repose.
* These are, however, unfrequent. Thus, for example, in a pure inflammatory disease, where aconite is indispensable, but which by the
use of vegetable acids would be neutralised, the patient has, in almost
all cases, a longing for pure cold water.
~ 264. A skilful physician will never rely on the curative
virtues of medicines unless he has procured them in the most
pure and perfect state.  It is, therefore, requisite that he should
be capable of judging of their purity.
~ 265. For the repose of his own conscience, he ought to
be thoroughly convinced that the patient always takes the
right remedy chosen for him.
~ 266. Substances derived from the animal and vegetable
kingdoms are never in the full possession of their medicinal
virtues but when they are in a raw state.'
* All animal and vegetable substances in a crude state are more or
less possessed of medicinal virtues, and can modify the health each in
its own peculiar manner. The animals and plants which civilised nations are in the habit of using as food have the advantage over all others
that they contain more nourishment, are less energetic in their medicinal
properties, the greater part of which is lost by the preparation which
they undergo-such as by the expression of the pernicious juice (e. g. of
the American cassada), by fermentation (that of the dough with which
bread is made, sour-crout, &c.), by dressing or torrefaction which either
destroys or dissipates the parts to which these properties adhere. The
addition of salt or vinegar likewise produces the same effect, but then
other inconveniences result from it.
Plants containing the most powerful medicinal virtues are likewise



198


rendered totally or partially inert when they are treated by the same
process. Iris root, horse radish, the arum and peony, also become inert
by drying. The virtues of the most active vegetable juices are often
completely destroyed by the high temperature employed in the preparation of their extracts. The juice of the most dangerous plant will be
divested of all its properties if it be suffered to stand still for a certain
time-it passes rapidly into a state of vinous fermentation even when
the temperature is moderate, and immediately after it becomes sour, and
then putrid, which annihilates all its medicinal virtues, and the sediment
which remains is nothing more than inert fecula. Green herbs put
together in a heap lose the greater part of their medicinal properties by
the transudation which they undergo.
~ 267. The most certain and effectual means of obtaining
the medicinal power of indigenous plants which can be procured fresh, is to express their juice and mix it immediately after
with equal parts of alcohol of sufficient strength to consume
spunk that is immersed in it. Let the mixture stand twentyfour hours in corked bottles, decant the clear liquor from the
filamentous and glairy dregs, then preserve for medicinal use.'
The alcohol which is added to the juice prevents fermentation.
The liquor is to be kept in a dark place in well corked glass
bottles.  In this manner the medicinal virtues of plants may be
preserved for ever perfect and free from the slightest change.2
1 Buchholz (Taschenbuch fur Scheidekiinstler und Apotheker, 1815, I.
VI.) assures his readers (uncontradicted by his critic in the " Leipzige
Literaturzeitung, 1816, No. 82,) that they are indebted to the Russian
Campaign for this excellent mode of preparing medicines, previous to
which (1812) it was unknown in Germany. But, in reporting this in
the very words of the first edition of my Organon, he intentionally conceals that I am the author who published it two years before the Russian
Campaign (1810). Some people would rather make it appear that a discovery came from the deserts of Asia, than attribute the honour of it to
a German! It is true alcohol was formerly sometimes added to the
juice of plants in order to preserve it for a time previous to making extracts of it; but this addition was never made with the intent of administering this mixture under the title of a remedy.
2 Although equal parts of alcohol and juice recently expressed are
generally the proportions best suited to produce the precipitation of albuminous and fibrous matter, there are, however, some plants which
contain so much mucus, such as symphytum, jacea, &c., or an extraordinary quantity of albumen, such as athuca synapium, solanum nigrum,
and others, that they usually require double the quantity of alcohol.
As regards plants that are very dry, such as oleander, buxus, taxus,



199


ledum, sabina, &c. it is necessary to commence by rubbing them down
into a homogeneous and humid paste, and then add double the quantity
of alcohol, which unites with the vegetable juice, and facilitates its extraction by means of the press. But the latter may be also rubbed to
the third power with sugar of milk, and afterwards its energy developed
according to ~ 271.
~ 268. With regard to exotic plants, bark, seeds, and roots,
which cannot be obtained in a fresh state, a prudent physician
will never accept the powder upon the faith of other individuals.
Before he makes use of them in his practice, it is necessary that
he should have them entire and unprepared, to be able to satisfy
himself of their purity.*
* To preserve them in the form of powder one precaution is necessary,
which has hitherto been neglected by the majority of pharmacopolists,
who were unable to preserve even the most carefully dried animal and
vegetable substances in the form of powder without their undergoing a
change. Vegetable substances, even when they are perfectly dry, still
retain a certain portion of moisture which is indispensable to the cohesion of their tissue, which does not prevent the drug being incorruptible
so long as it is left entire, but which becomes superfluous the moment it
is pulverised. It therefore follows, that any animal or vegetable substance that was quite dry when entire, becomes slightly moist when reduced to the form of powder, which soon spoils and grows mouldy even
in bottles that are well stopped, unless this superfluous moisture has been
previously removed. The best mode of effecting this is to spread the
powder on a flat plate of tin with raised edges, floating in a boiling
water-bath, and stir it till the parts no longer hang in small lumps, but
glide separately from each other like fine sand. When they are dried by
this process, and sealed up in bottles, powders will retain all their primitive medicinal powersfor ever without either growing mouldy or engendering mites, but care must be taken to keep the bottles in a dark
place enclosed in chests or boxes. Animal and vegetable substances
gradually lose their medicinal virtues even when they are preserved entire, but much more so when they are in the form of powder, if the bottles are not stoppered air proof, and kept in a dark place.
~ 269. The homceopathic healing art developes for its purposes the immaterial (dynamic) virtues of medicinal substances,
and, to a degree previously unheard of, by means of a peculiar
and hitherto untried process. By this process it is that they
become penetrating, operative, and remedial, even those that,
in a natural or crude state, betrayed not the least medicinal
power upon the human system.



200


~ 270. If two drops of a mixture of equal parts of alcohol
and the recent juice of any medicinal plant (see ~ 267) be
diluted with ninety-eight drops of alcohol in a vial capable of
containing one hundred and thirty drops, and the whole twice
shaken together, the medicine becomes exalted in energy
(potenzirt) to the first developement of power, or, as it may be
denominated, the first potence.    The process is to be continued through twenty-nine additional vials, each of equal
capacity with the first, and each containing ninety-nine drops
of spirits of wine; so that every successive vial, after the first,
being furnished with one drop from the vial or dilution immediately preceding (which had just been twice shaken), is, in its
turn, to be shaken twice,* remembering to number the dilution
of each vial upon the cork as the operation proceeds.  These
manipulations are to be conducted thus through all the vials,
from the first up to the thirtieth or decillionth developement of
power (potenzirte Decillion-Verdinnung, X.), which is the one
in most general use.
* In order to have a determinate rule for the moderate developement
of power of the fluid medicines, multiplied experience and observation
have led me to retain two shakes for every vial, in preference to a greater
number, which had previously been used, but which developed the energy
in too great a degree. On the contrary, there are homceopathists who,
in their visits to the sick, carry about their persons the medicines i-n a
fluid state, which, they nevertheless affirm, do not in time become increased in energy by the frequent agitation to which they are thus subjected. This declaration, however, betrays on their part the want of a
talent for accurate observation. I dissolved a grain of natron in half an
ounce of a mixture of water and a little alcohol, poured the solution into
a vial, which was thereby filled two-thirds, and shook it uninterruptedly
for half an hour. By this agitation, the fluid attained an energy equal
to that of the thirtieth dilution.
~ 271. All other medicinal substances, excepting sulphur,
which of latter years has been employed only in the form of the
highly diluted tincture (X), such, for example, as the metals
either pure, oxydized, or in the form of sulphurets, and other
minerals, petroleum, phosphorus, the parts or juices of plants,
obtainable only in their dry or inspissated state, animal substances, neutral salts, &c.-one and all were. in the first place,
exalted in energy by attenuation in the form of powder (by



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means of three hours' trituration in a mortar,) to the millionth
degree. Of this, one grain was then dissolved and brought
through  twenty-seven  vials, by a process similar to that
employed in the case of vegetable juices, up to the thirtieth
developement of power.*
* The process is described at large in the " Chronische Krankheiten,"
second edition, and in the " Arzneimittellehre," vol. ii. third edition.
~ 272. In no instance is it requisite to employ more than
one simple medicinal substance at a time.*
* Experiments have been made by some homceopathists in cases
where, imagining that one part of the symptoms of a disease required
one remedy, and that another remedy was more suitable to the other
part, they have given both remedies at the same time, or nearly so; but
I earnestly caution all my adherents against such a hazardous practice,
which never will be necessary, though, in some instances, it may appear
serviceable.
~ 273. It is scarcely possible to conceive how a doubt can
still exist on the question, whether it is more reasonable and
conformable to nature to employ but one known medicine at a
time in a case of sickness, or to prescribe a mixture of several
drugs.
~ 274. As the true physician finds in simple and uncompounded medicines all he can desire-that is to say, the artificial morbific agents whose homeopathic powers completely
cure natural diseases; and as it is a wise precept never to
attempt with the aid of several powers that which can be
effected by a single one, he will never think of administering
as a remedy more than one simple medicine at a time. For he
knows that if even the pure and specific effects of every medicine, upon the healthy state of man, had been discovered, we
should still remain as ignorant as we were before, as to the
manner in which two medicinal substances, mixed together,
might oppose and modify each other reciprocally in their
effects. IHe is aware that a single medicine, administered in a
disease where the totality of the symptoms is perfectly similar
to its own, cures it completely; and he is likewise convinced,
even in the least favourable case, where the remedy would
26



204


as to be inferior to the power of the natural disease which it can, at
least, partially extinguish and cure, provided it be capable of producing only a small increase of symptoms immediately after it is
administered (~ 157-160).
~ 280.  This incontrovertible axiom, founded upon experience, will serve as a rule by which the doses of all homceopathic
medicines, without exception, are to be attenuated to such a degree
that after being introduced into the body they shall merely produce.an almost insensible aggravation of the disease.  It is of little
import whether the attenuation goes so far as to appear almost
impossible to ordinary physicians whose minds feed on no
other ideas but what are gross and material."  All their arguments and vain assertions will be of little avail when opposed
to the dictates of unerring experience.
* Mathematicians will inform them, that in whatever number of parts
they may divide a substance, each portion still retains a small share of
the material; that, consequently, the most diminutive part that can be
conceived never ceases to be something, and can in no instance be reduced to nothing. Physicians may learn from them that there exist
immense powers which have no weight, such as light and heat, and
which are consequently infinitely lighter than the medicinal contents of
the smallest homoeopathic doses. Let them weigh, if they can, the injurious words which excite a bilious fever, or the afflicting news of the
death of a son, which terminates the existence of an affectionate mother.
Let them only touch, for a quarter of an hour, a magnet capable of carrying a weight of an hundred pounds, and the pain will soon teach them
that even the imponderable bodies can also produce on man the most
violent medicinal effects! Let any of these weak-minded mortals of a
delicate constitution but gently apply, during a few minutes, to the pit
of the stomach the extremity of the thumb of a vigorous mesmerist who
has fixed his intent, and the disagreeable sensations that he experiences
will soon make him repent having set limits to the boundless activity of
nature.
If the allceopathist, in essaying the homoeopathic method, cannot
resolve upon administering doses that are so feeble and attenuated, only
let him ask himself what risk he ventures by doing so. If there is
nothing real except that which is possessed of weight, and if every thing
which has no weight ought to be looked upon as equal to nothing; a dose
that appears to him like nothing, could have no worse results than that
of producing no effect at all, which is at least far more innocent than the
effects resulting from the strong doses of allceopathic medicines. Why
will the physician believe his own inexperience, which is flanked by pre



205


judice, more competent than the experience of several years grounded
upon facts? Added to this, the homceopathic medicines acquire at each
division or dilution a new degree of power by the rubbing or shaking
they undergo, a means of developing the inherent virtues of medicines
that was unknown till my time; and which is so energetic, that latterly
I have been forced by experience to reduce the number of shakes to two,
of which I formerly prescribed ten to each dilution.
~ 281. All diseases have an extraordinary tendency to undergo a change when operated upon by the influence of homogeneous medicinal agents.    There is no patient, however
robust his constitution may be, who, if attacked merely by a
chronic disease, or by what is called a local malady, does not
speedily experience a favourable change in the suffering parts
after having taken the appropriate homoeopathic remedy in the
smallest dose possible. In short, the effects of this substance
will make a greater impression on him than they would upon a
healthy child twenty-four hours after its birth. How insignificant and ridiculous is mere theoretic incredulity, when opposed
to the infallible evidence of facts!
~ 282. However feeble the dose of a remedy may be, provided it can in the slightest degree aggravate the state of the
patient homceopathically;- provided it has the power of exciting symptoms similar to those of the primitive disease, but
rather more intense, it will, in preference, and almost exclusively, affect those parts of the organism that are already in a
state of suffering, and which are strongly irritated and predisposed to receive any irritation analogous to their own. Thus
an artificial disease rather more intense is substituted in the
place of the natural one. The organism no longer suffers but
from the former affection, which, by reason of its nature, and
the minuteness of the dose by which it was produced, soon
yields to the efforts of the vital force to restore the normal state,
and thus leaves the body (if the disease was an acute one) free
from suffering-that is to say, in a healthy condition.
~ 283. To proceed, therefore, in a manner conformable to
nature, the true physician will only administer a homceopathic
remedy in the precise dose necessary to exceed and destroy the
disease to which it is opposed, so that if by one of those errors,



206


pardonable to human frailty, he had made choice of a remedy
that was inappropriate, the injury that might result from it
would be so slight that the developement of the vital force, and
the administration of the smallest dose of another remedy more
homceopathic, would suffice to repair it.
~ 284. The effects of a dose are by no means diminished in
the same proportion as the quantity of the medicinal substance
is attenuated in the homoeopathic practice. Eight drops of a
tincture taken at once do not produce upon the human body
four times the effect of a dose of two drops; they merely produce one that is nearly double. In the same manner the single
drop of a mixture, composed of one drop of a tincture and ten
of a liquid void of all medicinal properties, does not produce
ten times the effect that a drop ten times more attenuated would
produce, but merely an effect that is scarcely double. The progression continues according to this law, so that a single drop
of a dilution, attenuated in the highest degree, ought, and does
in fact, produce a very considerable effect.*
* Suppose, for example, that one drop of a mixture containing the tenth
of a grain of any medicinal substance produces an effect - a; a drop
of another mixture containing merely a hundredth part of a grain of this
same substance will only produce an effect= a; if it contains a ten thousandth part of a grain of medicine, the effect will be =  -; if a millionth,
it will be  a; and so on progressively, to an equal volume of the doses,
the effects of the remedy on the body will merely be diminished about
one half each time that the quantity is reduced nine tenths of what it
was before. I have often seen a drop of the tincture of nux vomica at
the decillionth degree of dilution, produce exactly half the effect of
another at the quintillionth degree, when I administered both one and
the other to the same individual, and under the same circumstances.
~ 285. By diminishing the volume of the dose, the power
of it is also diminished-that is to say, when instead of one
entire drop of attenuated tincture merely a fraction of this drop
be administered,* the object of rendering the effect less powerful
is then very perfectly attained. The reason of this may be easily
conceived: the volume of the dose being diminished it must
necessarily follow that it will touch a less number of the nerves
-of the living organism, by contact with which, it is true, the



207


power of the medicine is communicated to the whole body, but
it is transmitted in a smaller degree.
* The best mode of administration is to make use of small globules of
sugar, the size of a mustard seed; one of these globules having imbibed
the medicine, and being introduced into the vehicle, forms a dose containing about the three hundredth part of a drop, for three hundred of
such globules will imbibe one drop of alcohol; by placing one of those
on the tongue, and not drinking any thing after it, the dose is considerably diminished. But if the patient is very sensitive, and it is necessary
to employ the smallest dose possible, and attain at the same time the
most speedy results, it will be sufficient to let him smell once. (See ~
288, note).
~ 286. For the same reason, the effect of a homoeopathic
dose is increased when we augment the quantity of the liquid in
which it is dissolved to administer it to the patient; but then
the remedy comes in contact with a much more extended surface, and the nerves that feel its effects are far more numerous.
Although theorists have asserted that the extension of a medicine in liquid weakens its action, experience proves the reverse,
at least as far as regards homceopathic remedies.*
* Only wine and alcohol, which are the most simple of all excitants,
lose a portion of their heating and exciting power when they are attenuated in a large quantity of water.
~ 287. It ought, however, to be observed, that there is a wide
difference between mixing imperfectly the medicinal substance
with a certain quantity of liquid, and incorporating it so intimately1 that the smallest fraction of the liquid may still retain
a proportion of the medicine equal to that which exists in all
the others.  In short, the mixture possesses a much greater
medicinal power in the second case than it does in the first.
Rules may be deduced from this to serve as a guide in the preparation of homeopathic medicines, where it is necessary to
diminish the effects of the remedies as much as possible in order
to make them supportable to the most delicate patients.2
1 When I make use of the word intimately, I mean to say that by
shaking a drop of medicinal liquid with ninety -nine drops of alcohol once
-that is to say, by taking the phial in the hand which contains the
whole, and imparting to it a rapid motion by a single powerful stroke of
the arm descending, I shall then obtain an exact mixture of them; but



211


recalls to life persons who have remained in a state of apparent
death during a long interval of time,-a species of resurrection
of which history records many examples.
1 The smallest homeopathic dose, when properly applied, effects wonders. It not unfrequently occurs, that patients are overwhelmed, by
incompetent homoeopathists, with a rapid succession of remedies, which,
though well selected and of the highest potence, yet produce a state of
such excessive irritability, that the life of the patient is placed in jeopardy,
and another dose, however mild, may prove fatal. Under such circumstances the hand of the mesmeriser gently sliding down, and frequently
touching the part affected, produces an uniform distribution of the vital
power through the system, and rest, sleep, and health, are restored.
2 Although this operation of locally supplying the vital power, which
ought to be occasionally repeated, cannot effect a durable cure when the
local affection is of an ancient date, and depends upon (what very frequently occurs) some general internal malady, still the positive communication of the vital power, which is no more a palliative than food
and drink to hunger and thirst, is of no slight aid in the radical cure of
the entire affection by antipsoric remedies.
3 Particularly one of those men, of whom there are but few, who, possessing great good nature and complete bodily power, have a very moderate inclination for sexual intercourse, and are able without difficulty
to suppress all their desires; in whom, consequently, an abundance of
the subtile vital energy, which would else be employed in the secretion
semen, is disposed to communicate itself to other men through the
medium of the touch, seconded by a strong intention of the mind. Some
such powerful mesmerisers whom I have known had all these singular
peculiarities.
~ 294. All these methods of applying mesmerism depend
upon the afflux of a greater or lesser quantity of vital power in
the body of the patient, and are, on that account, termed positive mesmerism'. But there exists yet another, which deserves
the name of negative mesmerism, because it produces a contrary effect. To this class belong the customary transits to
awaken a subject from a state of somnambulism, and all the
manual operations which are designated by the names calming
and ventilating. The most simple and certain means of discharging, by the aid of negative mesmerism, the excess of vital
power accumulated in any part of the body of a patient who has
not been weakened, consist in passing, in a rapid manner, the
right arm, extended at about the distance of an inch from the
body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet.2  The



212


quicker this passage is performed the stronger is the discharge
that it produces. It can, for example, when a woman, previously
in the enjoyment of health, has been plunged into a state of
apparent death by the suppression of her menses occasioned by
some violent mental commotion, recall her to life by carrying off
the vital power which probably accumulated in the precordial
region, and re-establish the equilibrium in the whole organism.4
In the same manner a slight negative passage, that is less rapid,
frequently allays the great agitation and fatiguing insomnolency
which are the results of a positive passage that is too strong
when exercised upon a very irritable patient.
I In treating here of the certain and decided curative virtues of positive
mesmerism I do not speak of the frequent abuses that are made of it, where
by repeating the passages during half an hour, and even a whole hour,
daily, they occasion, in patients labouring under nervous affections, that
vast revolution of the human economy which bears the name of somnambulism-a state in which man, removed from the animal world, appears
to belong more to the spiritual world, a highly unnatural and dangerous
condition, by means of which a cure of chronic diseases has frequently
been attempted.
2 It is a known rule, that a person subjected to either positive or negative mesmerism ought not to wear silk on any part of the body.
3 Consequently, a negative transit, particularly if it is very rapid,
would be extremely injurious to a person who had been for any length of
time in a weak condition, or in whom the vital powers were not very
active.
4 A young country boy of robust constitution, about ten years of age,
was mesmerised for some slight indisposition by a woman who performed
several strong passages on him with the ends of her two thumbs from
the precordial region down to the termination of the ribs; the boy immediately fell pale as death into such a state of insensibility and immobility
that all means were tried in vain to recall him to life, and lie was thought
to be dead. I caused his elder brother to make as rapid a transit as possible on him from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet; he
immediately recovered his senses, and was healthy and cheerful.


THE END.



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