/\ ^r.
 
 
 
OJN   HOMEOPATHIC   MEDICINE,
ILLUSTRATING  ITS  SUPERIORITY
OVER THE  OTHER  MEDICAL DOCTRINES,
TH AN ACCOUNT OF THE REGIMEN TO BE FOLLOWED DURING THE

               TREATMENT OF DISEASES,
            BY  M.  GROSERIO,

;tor of Medicine, President of the Homoeopathic Society of Paris, Member
f the French Homoeopathic Society, Physician to the Sardinian Embassy at
aris, de l'Etablissement de Charit.' tie Saint-Vincent de Paule, de la SocUi*
'rotestante dc Secours Mutuels, &c.
jKrtre aus Erf<i!)runfl.              / speak from experience,

             OaMtmtnn.                      Hahhemanic.
AlTBLATF.n PROM THE FRENCH, WITH MOTES, CONTAISTI^R THE flPIXIOXS

   07 B E E It A,  BROUSSAIS, &c, oir homceopatuia.
By  C.  NEIDHARD,"M. D.
r'*
         PHILADELPHIA:


PUBLISHED BY KIDERLEX & STOLLMEYER,

   No. 86. Arch Street, below Third.



                1837.
/ 
IS37
P. A. Sage, Printer, 3, La Grange Street.
■4 
!
PREFACE.
     After having read the letter  of the Royal Academy of Medi-
L «ine, to the Minister of Public Instruction, against Homoeopathia, I
  had at first conceived the  idea  of critically examining the asser-
  tions which it contained ; on reflecting, however, on the ignorance,
|  which  the  members of this society had  shown of this doctrine,
\ during the discussion, which  had preceded the adoption of this
  singular  manifest, I thought that a rapid exposition of the funda-
^ mental doctrines and the  advantages of Homoeopathia, when corn-
    ered with the imperfections of the old doctrine, would still better
    erve the cause of humanity,  by acquainting  the  public with the
^     le principles of the healing art, and at the same time enable them
   to estimate the  objections of the Academy, such is the aim of this
    vork : the physicians, who have not studied the  classical works
    a Homoeopathia, may hereby  obtain an idea of its importance.  It
   was besides impossible to make a serious  refutation of a criticism,
   devoid of all solid reasoning.
      Homoeopathia, repulsed by the learned and the schools of medi-
S   cine, meets with the fate of all important discoveries made in this
   science.   For how long a time  have not inoculation, vaccination,
   lithotrity and other discoveries been  disowned by  the Academies ?
v   The quinin so  generally  esteemed, was it  not for a long  time
   proscribed by them ?  The same  is  the case with antimony and
   emetin.  Harvey, for having made a  discovery of immense impor-
   tance by its results to physiological and medical  science, was so
   persecuted and calumniated by his colleagues,  that  by their means,
w   his patients forsook him, and he was reduced to the  greatest dis-
   tress.  Galileo, because  he proclaimed the great truth of the mo-
   tion of the earth was assuredly not sustained by the learned of his 
iv                       PREFACE.

time, for he passed a part of his life in the dungeons of the inqu£
sition.  In  taking a cursory  view of all great  discoveries,  we  I1
always see them rejected at first by persons, with whose opmioni;»j
and  authority they come into collision;  the  obscurity  in whicH
the name of the majority of those is enveloped, who introduced tha
most useful innovations is another proof of this caprice of the human
mind.
   The profound Locke  said:  "Where is  the man, who  vfrcndd b«
'' induced by better reasons, suddenly to lay aside his old opinionsi
" his acquirements, the  fruits of a long and  laborious life and ne
" persuaded to adopt ideas entirely new.  The justest and most
" conclusive reasonings, will no more  convince him, than the wind
" could induce  the traveller (in the  fable) to  quit his  cloak."—
Never have these words been better applied, than to the discovery
of Homoeopathia, which completely overthrows all the theoretical
fabrications  (echaufaudages) of the ancient doctrines  and forms a
new creation.  Is  it, therefore, at  all  surprising that eminent phy-
sicians should oppose with all their  might the admission of these  '
principles ?  The passive resistance, which they have adopted, is,  '
the surest means to Obtain  this object; for a serious  examination,'  '
an  examination  by experiments, such as Hahnemann  demands,  j
would infallibly lead them to recognize the truth;  this, as least, is;  '
what has always been the  result of experimental research to  thisf.
day ; it is in this manner that some of the most celebrated men of||
Germany have been converted to the doctrines of Homoeopathia.—
The experiments which they  had  undertaken  for the  purpose of*
proving its falsity, demonstrated to them its solid worth, and  led
to their conversion; but these experiments must not  be made as,
M. Andral has conducted them, without rules, without principles,'
without conforming to  the conditions prescribed by the  Ilomoeo
pathic doctrine, nor without leaving  the habits of the old  school
of medicine.
   Homoeopathia is too  directly opposed to  old opinions, and can
therefore not be judged by them.  Being  founded on experience,
it can be demonstrated by experience alone.  Hahnemann does not
demand a blind belief of his doctrines, he repeatedly says in his 
PREFACE,
vn
works :  " as improbable as all this may appear, I am not afraid of
being contradicted by experience."
   A doctrine, which was proclaimed with such a liberal spirit and
under such auspices, was worthy of being treated  more seriously
by an  assembly of grave men, of whom the government demanded
an opinion of its importance.   If the discussion had not amply de-
monstrated, that none of its members had any exact or just idea of
it,  and that the majority of them absolutely knew nothing but the
name, the words similia similibus  and the infinitely small doses,
tins society would have been still more culpable in  making such an
answer.
   The letter of the  academy may be translated nearly as follows,
viz :  Monsieur le ministre, we know that homoeopathic Medicine
makes proselytes  in Germany,  Russia, and Italy, we see that it
begins to spread  over France, and  that even patients  treated in
vain by ourselves, have been  cured by Homoeopathia, this doctrine,
contrary to what  has  been communicated to us by our masters,
is very difficult and very abstract;  but as the only means of con-
vincing ourselves of its merit,  would be to make experiments in
suitable hospitals, we beg of you, Monsieur le ministre, to deny
us that  means of enlightening ourselves, in order to prevent its
spreading, or at least to retard its propagation  during our life-
time, so that we  may quietly  enjoy our places, without being
obliged to have recourse to such a painful labour,
   Learned bodies have at all  times  been influenced by unjust and
ex parte  motives in their opposition to new discoveries, (a rule
of  action inherent in  all, on the principle  of self-preservation,)
but it was reserved  for  the  nineteenth century, to see a medical
body petition the government, to furnish it with  the  means of re-
maining in ignorance on a subject, to which it ought to be the most
sensitive, and which constitutes  the sole aim of its enquiries, viz :
the health of man !  What answer shall we make to such a society ?
When the governments of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxo-
ny, Coethen, Saxe-Meiningen,  of  Gotha,  Wirtemberg,  Baden,
Hesse &c. have passed laws to facilitate the practice of Homoeopathia;
« clinical hospital is established and supported at Leipsic, solely by 
VU1
PREFACE.
the subscriptions of its adherents ;  when three-fourths of the inhabi-
tants of the North of Germany, will not be treated otherwise than
by this method, when the councils of Darmstadt have unanimously
adopted the resolution of founding a chair of Homoeopathia in the
medical schools of the Dutchy,and not hereafter to permit the prac-
tice of physic to  any physician, who has  not been also examined
on Homoeopathia, when 500 inhabitants of Hanover petitioned the
government for the erection of a Homoeopathic chair at the Univer-
sity of Goettrngen ,*  when  18 journals, which  are exclusively de-
voted  to  it,, disseminate it in every quarter of  the globe, it had
surely acquired sufficient importance, to merit an examination*. * *
«   * The celebrated Brera, in the Anthologia medica of 183T4, after having
mentioned the great progress of Homoeopathia, pronounced the following
opinion of it:  " Homceopathia is decried by some as  useless and by oth-
ers as strange, and though it appears to the great majority as ridiculous
and extraordinary, it can nevertheless not be denied, that it has taken its
stand in the scientific world ;  like every other doctrine, it has its books,
its journals, its chairs, its  hospitals, clinical lectures, professors, and a
public,  forming a most  respectable auditory.  Nolens volens  even its
enemies must receive it in the history of medicine, for its present situa-
tion requires it.
   Having attained this rank,  it deserves by no means contempt, but on
the contrary a cool and impartial investigation, like all other systems of
modern date :  Homoeopathia is the more to be respected, as it propagates
no directly noxious errors.
   If Homoeopathia proclaims facts and theories, which cannot be recon-
ciled with  our present knowledge, this is no sufficient cause as yet, to  -
despise it and to rank it among absolute falsities.  Woe to the physician,
who believes, that he cannot learn to-morrow, what he does not know
to-day.   Do  we not hear daily complaints  of the  insufficiency of the
healing  art1? And are not  those physicians, who  honestly  suspect the
solidity of their knowledge the" most  learned, and  in their practice th«
most successful ?  Such sentiments have undoubtedly  induced most of the
 German physicians to study Homoeopathia and to conquer their aversion
to the new doctrine.   Let us always recollect, that the  greatest discove-
ries have  given origin to the most violent controversies.  Witness the
 examples of Harvey, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, &c. 
PREFACE.
ix
  This necessity seems very well to have been felt by the minister.
The question which he put to the Academy, was it not an indirect
appeal to engage its members to an early study of it ?  The Academy
is, moreover, still  more  culpable in this decision, taken  ab irato
and  without examination, against a doctrine supported  by such a
numerous body of facts, as the society of homoeopathic physicians
in Paris had offered by letter of the  1st of March last, to put in its
possession, and to  place at its disposal all the documents necessary
to throw light upon the subject and even to make experiments
under the inspection of  the committee.  The Academy has prefered
to pronounce judgment without a  hearing, and to  be  guilty of a
veritable prevarication.
  Under these circumstances, the Homoeopathists have  got justice
on their side ;  by the exposition of their doctrines it will be seen,
if they have not reason also.
  The injuries to which the sick are liable from the erroneous ideas
  As respects the small doses, continues Brera, they are by no means to
be rejected indiscriminately.
  In the year 1797, I demonstrated the fact, that salivation produced by
mercury could  be quickly cured by a small dose of another mercurial
preparation.   Several intermittent fevers I have cured with small atoms
of the arseniate  of potash.  (S. Annatazione medico—pratiche, &c. Pavia
1796__98.)  In 1804,1 stated that Belladonna produces in healthy per-
sons a  disease  very  similar  to  Hydrophobia, although it is a powerful
remedy in this terrible disease.   In the year 1822,1 discovered in Stramo.
nium (a few drops of the tincture) a most excellent remedy for Angina
Pectoris, although it is well known from many histories of poisons, that
it produces on the healthy subject, symptoms very much resembling this
disease.  An hysterical  gastrodynia which  defied for the space of two
years all antipblogistics and derivative remedies as well as large doses of
the magisterium bismuthi was finally removed by smaller doses of this
medicine.  I might enumerate a great many similar cases from the records
of my long practice.  To this mode'of employing medicines, I have been
led by an observation of Hippocrates to which Blumenbach of Goettingen
has drawn my attention, it is the following ; " Diseases are sometimes cured
by medicines, capable if producing similar affections."'' 
X
PREFACE.
of the public On medical subjects, and  the obstacles  which  \hc*a
errors  often  oppose to the  success of the best concerted Homoeo-
pathic  treatment, have induced me to address this outline to the non-
medical  part of my readers ;  and in order  to  make it of practical
utility  to the sick, I have added to the  exposition of  the homoeo-
pathic  doctrine, details on  the manner of studying and  expressing
the symptoms, thereby enabling the physician to obtain an accurate
knowledge of the disease, also a chapter on the dietetic rules to be
observed during Homoeopathic treatment.
   I am not ignorant of the disfavour attached to a popular work on
medicine, but the present  one is only in the  nature of  a defence,
that is, an answer to  the  accusations which the royal Academy of
Medicine has itself prefered against  Homoeopathia, with the evident
design of influencing public opinion ;  it becomes therefore necessary
  Another circumstance has also led me to it, namely the observation, that
the diluted and afterwards inoculated matter of small pox, produces after
some time such a powerful reaction of the organism, as  to cover by an
immense multiplication  of the contagion, the whole body with innumer-
able pustules.
  It is also to be considered, that the smaller and more subtile any sub-
stances are, the greater and deeper is their effect on the organism.  The
effects of light, heat., electricity and magnetism make  this clearly appa-
rent.  The observations of Spallanzani on the fructification of eggs are
also to be recollected.

  * * Dr. Dufresne of Latour, says in a letter to the editor of the Biblioth.
Homoeopathique  at  Geneva: " Broussais addressed his audience in
the Ecole de medecine at Paris in the following terms."  " " I do not
reject an opinion, because it may be opposed to my former convictions;
they may call it ridiculous or extravagant.  I never laugh  about it! thus,
I do not laugh  about  Homoeopathia (ironical  murmurs by a part of the
audience.)  No,  gentlemen, I do  not laugh,  and never have  laughed
about Homoeopathia ; indeed it has not responded to my call, as I should
have wished, perhaps I  have  not questioned  it rightly.  Many distin >
quished persons are occupied with it, we cannot reject it  without a hear-
ing, we must investigate the truths it contains t" "             Tr. 
PREFACE.
XI
to address the Academy itself and  to  show  the  errors, and  the
bad faith of these prevaricating judges.
  If any passages appear to be written with some  bitterness, the
friends of truth will excuse me  by reflecting, that the author was
yet under the impression of the sarcasms lavished by the academy
upon the Homoeopathists, but if this circumstance has sometimes
imparted to his expressions  a colouring somewhat too high, it has
never carried him beyond the truth.
  The study and practice of the old system,  for thirty years have
enabled me to judge of its merits and defects, and it was only after
a profound conviction derived from a knowledge of  both doctrines,
that I have recognized the importance of the Hahnemannean reform.
Several years  of  experience in its practical application have served
only to confirm my convictions of its merit; this cirsumstance to-
gether with the well known fact, that no practitioner,  who has within
thirty  years  adopted it, ever returned  to  the  old  system, the
principles of which appear  truly a paltry absurdity to one who has
been practising for some time on the clear and rational precepts of
Homoeopathia, are  pretty favourable  arguments of its real value.
   The tacit contract, made by every physician, embracing Homoeo-
pathia, to contribute with  all his  power to its propagation, en-
courages me in the painful task of publishing the falsity of my creed
during the space of thirty years.  This community of belief which
I avow with the  physicians of the old school, proves, that in the
criticisms into which I  have  entered, I have entirely set aside
their persons.  If this publication be instrumental in  diffusing the
truth  and leading  some of my brethren  to  its study, my dearest
wishes will be attained. 
 
    ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE


ILLUSTRATING ITS SUPERIORITY OVER  OTHER MEDICAL DOCTRINES.
                       CHAPTER  L

                   On Health and Disease.

  The object of the healing art is, to preserve  health and to cure
diseases.
  Health, that  precious gift, which  is truly appreciated by those
only who have  lost it, is the state of an individual, in which all the
physical and  moral functions are  carried on regularly,  with ease
and without pain.
  Perfect health does not  show itself merely by the presence of a
physical well being, by cheer fullness, good humour and moral con-
tentment, but also by the faculty of resisting, without being affected,
the ordinary external or internal morbid causes to which life is in-
cessantly exposed, physical injuries and the action of strong doses
of poisons excepted.   Even age does not change a perfect consti-
tution ;  the aged  man who enjoys good health, although he  does
not possess the  strength of the young, and the  capability of fulfil-
ling the functions proper to youth, is yet not less cheerful and less
generous, nor Jess exempt from  suffering; he enjoys a physical
and moral well  being and knows nothing of the imbecillity attached
to his age. 
14           ON HOM(EOPATHIC MEDICINE.

  It cannot be  said, that  an individual enjoys perfect health, if a
light current of air,  the least bad weather, the  changes of  the sea-
son, or of the moon, a frost, a little over excitement, fatigue, some-
what prolonged vigils, the smallest excess in eating, the least vexa-
lion, or trouble, in a word the  slightest deviation from his accus-
tomed manner of living, produces indisposition and sickness.
  In looking around us, therefore,  we shall soon be convinced, that
very few persons, in our present state of civilization enjoy perfect
health ;  almost all  possess  it in a relative degree only,  that  is,
approaching more or less to the state of normal health or of disease,
which may be the consequence either of our  manner of living, so
contrary  to the laws of nature, or  of  an  hereditary predisposition,
which our ancestors have bequeathed to us.
  Disease may infinitely vary according  to  the constitution and
habits of the  individual ; from the slightest  indisposition, from a
whitlow  or wart, to a fever and the  most serious disorganisations
of  the viscera.  A state of debility, susceptibility, lowness  of
spirits or mental  irritability may be a state of habitual health to one
person, while  it is to  another,  who  is  generally cheerful  and
healthy,  a real disease.
  Disease differs,  then, from  health, when the functions of the
various organs do not perfectly fulfill their destination.  The same
force, the same principle which governs  health, contributes also to
the formation of disease, if it receives an irregular impression.
  Physicians have  at all times endeavoured to discover the internal
changes, Which were going on in the organs, sufficient to  produce
disease ; but as  they could never attain a knowledge of  its real
cause, or even of the principle of life in  the  normal  state, it was
naturally impossible for them, to discover the changes, which thi*
cause,  this unknown principle underwent during  disease.  How
many hypotheses, how  many absurdities have  arisen from these
investigations into the interior state of the disease on the part of the
physicians,  who would  not  acknowledge  the impotence of the
human mind upon  this subject.   All the ideas, which  have suc-
cessively prevailed  in the schools of different  ages, are full of such
conjectures : at  one time' it was  an evil spirit, the anger of the 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           15
Gods ; now a fire, a dessication, an internal humidity ; sometimes
it was a rigidity or relaxation of the fibres, sometimes a fermentation
of humours, at others a salt, now it was an  excess, now a want of
the   alkaline  principle, of acidity, &c, now it was the equilibrium
destroyed by certain fluids and  solids, then an obstruction of the
capillaries, at another time spasm, or a spasmodic contraction of
these vessels, or of the fibres or nerves ; sometimes it was also  an
excess or a deficiency of Caloric,  (Phlogiston,) at others, it was a
superabundance of bile, of black bile, which had penetrated into the
blood, or oppressed the digestive organs ;  sometimes it was an ex-
cess or want of the power of excitability  or of stimulation, some-
times an  irritation, or want of irritation,  inflammation, subinflam-
mation, &c, &c ; according as  the reign of religious superstitions,
alchymy, mechanics, mathematics, chemistry, spiritualism, &c. &c.
prevailed  in the doctrines professed by the learned of the age.
  All those theories, after having  governed the opinions of physi-
cians, have by degrees extended to persons not of the medical pro-
fession.
  And the sick successively thought themselves under the influence
of divine  punishment or  of an  evil spirit, or believed they had a
saline principle in the body, an excess of  caloric in the blood, viti-
ated humours, relaxed or rigid fibres, contracted or irritated nerves,
and  of latter time, very nearly every thing  is,  according to them,
an irritation  or inflammation of the stomach, because the author of
the  prevailing medical theory  has  attributed  to this  cause the
majority of acute, febrile and chronic diseases.
  These different theories, being the  result of  a species of reason-
ing,  one necessarily succeeded  another, and in proportion as the
new  opinions gained ground,  the old ones were forsaken;  one
theory always took the place of another with the physicians, but,
with the public the case was different.  The new doctrines which
followed,  were allied to the old; new theories were communicated
to them by the faculty, the old they retained  by the traditions of
ancestors  and of non medical contemporaries, who had not yet been
converted to  the medical theories of the day.  AVhat a chaos, what
incongruities  do  we  thus generally  hear in the account the sick 
 *6          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 give of their diseases !  Except  supernatural causes, (as rnligioua
 belief  is unfortunately  rare in our times,) all opinions which have
 prevailed down to the present time, rise up  in their imaginations,
 and by certain superstitious  individuals, we  even yet see superna-
 tural causes alledged.  We could cite deplorable instances of sorcery
 which have occurred in  different departments, and which are men-
 tioned by the journals.
   The founder of Homoeopathia has been much wiser, and the only
 sage down to the present day on this point.   Seeing the futility of
•all opinions entertained on life, its principle  and the uselessness of
 the investigations of philosophei-6 and physiologists on this impor-
 tant subject, the  knowledge of which belongs unto  God alone, he
 blushed not to confess the same  ignorance of it,  as of the  intrinsic
 nature  or the essence of diseases.  According to  him, disease is an
 aberration of the vital principle in the organism,  determined  by
 different morbific causes, acting upon  the nervous system,  and
 which manifest themselves  by different painful  sensations felt by
 the patient, by the functional derangement of different organs, by
 the changes of their tissues or by other phenomena, perceptible to
 the external  senses.  We  consequently reject  every  conjecture,
 every hypothesis, because these are  commonly the sources of error,
 and in this case, error would be attended by such pernicious  conse-
 quences to humanity, that  every thing  should  be avoided,  which
 might lead to it.  What injurious effects resulted to the sick from
 applications made according to the prevailing opinions on the  nature
 of diseases ! How many poisonings from  active medicines or me-
 dicines for a long time  repeated, from purgatives,  sudorlfics,  diu-
 retics ! What enormous quantities of blood spilled by the hands of
 phlebotomists !  We will cite only one example :  The celebrated
 Bouvard, physician to Louis XIII, ordered his royal patient 47 bleed-
 ings, 215 emetics or purgatives  and 312 clysters during the space
 of one year.*  During  the extremes to which the so called  physi-
  • How could  this unhappy sovereign be otherwise  than feeble and
tumid to excess,  as history presents him to us. 
ON HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          17
ological medicine was carried, more than  six millions  of leeches
were used in the hospitals of Paris and at  the  Hotel Dieu;  more
than 200,000 pounds of human blood were spilled in one year.  I
shall not speak of the enormous quantities of violent poisons, admin-
istered by the disciples of Rasori, as the appearance of  the Brous-
saian  doctrine has fortunately placed a check to the extension of
this doctrine of true poisoners in  Frano.3
                        CHAPTER II

                    Origin of Homoeopathia.

   We have  seen in the preceding chap'3r, how vague, uncertain
and absurd were the opinions, whichhav.3 been promulgated to this
day on the nature  of diseases, and tin:;  uncertainty has been just
as great, with respect to their treatment.
   This unsettled state of theories on..j!u. necessarily to have  pro-
duced doubts, as to  the best means to bi. pursued for the cure of
diseases; hence, what incoherences, what contradictions,  among
authors in the common medicine!  Some will heat, others cool,
some strengthen or weaken the fibres, m; ne purify the blood, some
coirect or neutralize thesaline, acrid, ;    ', alkaline or putrid prin-
ciples; some evacuate the bile, or Uo diffused milk, some  will
increase or diminish the excitability, oth    calm irritation or spasms,
relax  the rigidity of the fibres, or inert- >  -  the tone of relaxed fibres,
Sec, &c.;   These  diversities, these  u jcertainties were still more
opposed  to each other, when the obje■;! was  to employ a curative
remedy.   For, if in the mind of a  c niscientions  physician, the
theoretical  illusions  of the schools !,  -3  given place  to  practical
realities at the bedside of the patient,  J ; soon perceives the insuffi-
ciency and uncertainty of the resource, of his art, and being afraid
of injuring his patient by active medic-J treatment, he employs the
exspectative  method, that is, he  1:   ■■■■-, to nature the  cure, only
removing the causes, which might disturb her salutary efforts.
                              B 
 18           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

  These truths, which are generally acquired by physicians, only
after a number of years practice, deeply impressed Dr. Hahnemann
at the beginning of  his medical earner.  Having been educated by
his father in  an excessive, we  might say. superstitious  horror  of
every falsehood, and to account for every thing he did, his candour
would not permit him to practice any longer an art, devoid of prin-
ciples, and which he saw  replete only with uncertainties ;  his up-
rightness and veracity were repugnant to giving daily prescriptions
to the sick, of which he neither knew the  probable effects,  nor the
laws, which ought to determine him in  their administration.  He
preferred seeking a livelihood from other departments  of knowledge,
more congenial to his exalted intellect and directed his attention  to
chemistry, natural history and general literature, rather than continue
the practice of medicine, although it had acquired  for him a well
merited reputation.
  Occupied in 1790 with the translation of Cullen's Materia Medica,
he was struck  by the eulogies, bestowed  by this author  on  cin-
chona, in a  number of  different  maladies,  and which  seemed
contradictory, according to the prevailing  ideas, on the  nature  of
diseases.  Not being able to find a cause for effects,  so opposed  to
each other, it occurred to him, that the only means,  of learning t!i«
true  effect of this so much vaunted  medicine, was,  to  try it on a»
individual in good  health, before its action in diseases  could be
ascertained ;  for this purpose he took early in the morning a decoc-
tion  of bark for several hours consecutively and failed not to expe-
rience towards evening a febrile action,  analogous to the fevers  of
marshy countries, and  he observed, that  this attack occurred  for
several days at the same hour.   This phenomenon was to tho
observing genius of Hahnemann a ray of light, it made  the same
impression upon him, as did the fall  of the apple upon the mind  of
the groat-Newton.
  From this attack of fever is dated the  origin of Ilomnjopathia.
Struck with the resemblance of the disease produced by Cinchona,
with that which this medicine  cures specifically, he thought, that
the cause of these  curative effects consisted  in  this similarity of
action ; in order to be assured of this, he repeated these experiment* 
            ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           19

with different medicinal substances, the virtues of which were most
known in medecine,  particularly with'mercury.   This medicine
produced affections resembling  sj'phylis, which it  has  the  power
to cure ;  that is to say, it produced ulcerations, inflammatory swel-
lings, discharges from the genital organs, sv/elling of the inguinal
glands, ulcers of the throat, <fec, <fec.   Sulphur, produced eruptions
of the skin similar to those of the itch.  This analogy is so  strik-
ing in the case of mercury, that the most experienced physicians,
when caU.;d upon to give  a diagnosis  of these maladies, are often
embarrassed to know, whether they are the product of the mercurial
treatment or of the  syphyltic  virus yet remaining in  the  consti-
tution.  The most distressing consequences often ensue  to the sick,
who are fed with mercury to cure symptoms, which are considered
to be venereal, but which  are in reality only the effects of mercury.
Persons, who have frequented the  sulphur baths, know that at a
more or less advanced period  during their use, there  appears a
pustular eruption with pruritus, which is often not extinquished a
long time after the sick have left the baths.
   As these observations confirmed the previously conceived opinion
of  Hahnemann,  he  endeavoured to  ratify it in the treatment  ol
diseases, and by confronting these experiments with those obtained
on healthy individuals, he obtained the proof, that the more the
effects of medicines produced, in the latter case, were similar to the
disease which they were intended to cure, the more rapid and com-
plete was the recovery of the patient.
   It was not until these experiments had been repeated with perse-
verance and assiduity and confirmed  during 20 years, that Hahne-
mann laid the foundation of his new medical doctrine, to which  he
gave the name  Homoeopathia  from the  Greek words " homoios"
similar and " pathos" affection, that is to say " a system of medi-
cine, which  cures diseases  by tuch agents  as produce  similar
symptoms, when taken by an individual in health."
   This method  of curing  diseases was at all  times used in a great
number of cases, unconsciously and empirically, by the physicians
and the people ;  thus, an inclination to vomit was cured by tartar
emetic, or ipecacuanha,  which produce vomiting in the  healthy 
 20          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 individual.  Diarrhoea was cured by a dose of the  neutral salts,
 rheubarb, jalap or calomel, &.c, which  purge the healthy.   The
 reaper, the weary  traveller  overheated  by  the  sun, the smith,
 exhausted by the heat of his fire, do not endeavour to relieve them-
 selves by cool drinks, but  by a small portion  of generous wine or
 other spirituous liquor.  A glass of weak punch or tea will refresh a
 fatigued dancer much better than ice-water, and will cause the perspi-
 ration sooner to  disappear.  The ophthalmic pomades of  Regent,
 Granjean and de l'Hopital  de  Lyon, &c, which consist principally
 of the red precipitate,  how do they act,  if not by producing a dis-
 ease  similar to that, which they are intended to  cure, and which
 they do sometimes cure ? This is sufficiently proved by the pain and
 redness,  which they produce in the eye.   Are not burns every day
 exposed  to a strong heat and is this  method of cure not much more
 to be relied on than immersion of the  burnt part in cold water 1
 This  undoubtedly relieves  the pain for a moment, but as  soon aa
 the effect of the cold ceases, the pain returns with increased violence
 and becomes insupportable if refrigeration be not continued until
 the burn  is cured.  Every body is acquainted with  the effects  of
 frictions  with snow  on frost bitten parts ; how  many of our  soldiers
 at the time of the memorable retreat from Moscow, owe to it tho
 preservation of their limbs !  We might greatly multiply the cata-
logue of homoeopathic cures, which have  been accidentally discov-
 ered.   Some physicians had  already proclaimed  tins great  truth,
 among others,  Hippocrates when he  says :  Vomitus, vomitwn
 curat; but their opinions, as they were not supported by reasoning,
 were  disregarded as simple conjectures.  Hahnemann alone, by
direct and repeated experiments, has incontestably established it on
 a solid basis.  After having published several works on this dis-
covery since the year 1790, he collected and dispersed its laws in
the form  of a regular  doctrine in his work, entitled :  Organon of
the healing art, published in  1810, which may at present be con-
sidered as the  bible of Homoeopathia.   A year after, his materia
medica pura made  Its appearance.  This immense  collection, in
which are registered the various phenomena, alterations, sufferings
and symptoms, produced on healthy persons by the action of medi- 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
21
cinal  substances taken internally, constitutes the arsenal of those
instruments which are employed in a homoeopathic cure.
   From  this period Hahnemann  publicly professed the  medical
reform at Leipsic ; a considerable number of students or young phy-
sicians and even veteran practitioners congregrated around him with
the view of studying the new method and employing it in practice,
the majority, under the guidance of the master submitting to experi-
ments for the purpose of learning the effects of new medicinal sub-
stances,  and by these means of augmenting  the resources of the
new medical art.   They have successively brought it to a state of
perfection, sufficient to enable  them, to become fully convinced of
its efficacy in all cases of disease and of its superiority over the old
method, as well by the certainty and  quickness of the cure as by
the gentle, expeditious and easy manner of its performance.
   If we take into consideration the obstacles, which the founder of
 Homoeopathia  has had to surmount, by reason of the professional
 interests, which were compromised, the self love, which was wound-
 ed, and above all, the despotic organization of the healing art in Ger-
 many, we  shall not be astonished at the slow progress of this
 doctrine in  its native country,   Hahnemann, a private individual,
 by menacing the fortunes of the apothecaries and of an all  powerful
 medical hierarchy, which possessed an exclusive jurisdiction over
 the physicians of that country, was persecuted in all possible ways
 and finally even proscribed, so that it needed all the constancy of
 the man of genius, convinced  of the truth of his  discoveries, to
 persevere for so long a time in such laborious exertions, and alone
 to sustain such an unequal contest.   In the mean time, such great
 and  courageous efforts  have not been put forth without success.
 God has granted to its  author a sufficient number of years to see
 his doctrine spread over  the face of the globe, and although it ha»
 not, as yet, universally prevailed, yet all parts of the world are not
 without physicians, who propagate its  principles by the performance
 of cures.   Since  the year 1822  several disciples  of Hahnemann
 united, to publish at Leipsic a periodical work, entitled the "Archives
 of Homoeopathia," having for its object, the propagation of the new
 art.   Since that period, its progress has been very rapid, and so  to
                               *B 
22          ON 1IOMCEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

speak gigantic;  until  then, it had scarcely overstept the limits of
the city,  where it originated ; but soon after, Dresden, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Vienna, Italy, Hungary, America, Asia,  and Africa had
their Homceopathists.  A savant, esteemed as well  for his private
worth as for extensive condition, Dr. de Guidy, has  brought it into
good repute in the second city of France, by the successfull cures,
which he performed by it; and by his zeal to communicate to his
colleagues the knowledge, which he  possessed, he has  powerfully
contributed to the rapid extension which it has made during these
latter years. Dr. Peschicr and Dufresne of Geneva, have given an
extraordinary impulse to its propagation by the publication of their
journal,  exclusively devoted to the  new  doctrine.   Hitherto,  the
progress of Homoeopathia  in  France, has been much  more rapid
than elsewhere, owing to the liberal  manner in which the practice
of medicine is  there organized.  Nearly  every town in France of
any magnitude already possesses homoeopathic practitioners, several
societies have been established to  cultivate and  extend the know-
ledge of  the  new art,  public lectures on  the  theory and practice
have  been organized, and  the numerous  students  of the medical
school at Paris, will soon carry it into every corner of the kingdom.
The important original German works  are already translated, and
every thing seems to announce the near fulfillment of the prophecy
of the veneraUe reformer  himself, viz :  that from France would
issue that general impulset which would render his discovery po-
pular in  all parts of the worlcL
                       CHAPTER  III.

                    Division of Diseases.

  The healing art has up to the present time divided diseases accord-
ing to their nature, origin and duration.  According to their nature,
there were sthenic and asthenic (excess or deficiency of tone) inflam-
matory, bilious, mucous, nervous diseases, &c   Hahnemann, for 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          23
the reasons assigned in the preceding chapter, considers all these
divisions as arbitrary and inadmissible.   Under the head of causes
of diseases, we shall demonstrate  the justness of this principle of
Homoeopathia.
   The  division of maladies into  general and local, (according as
they attack the whole of the body  or only one of its parts,) adopted
by the old school, is not more  admissible by Homoeopathiat  The
life of the individual is  indivisible in  health as well as  in disease;
consequently, no part of the body can be sick, without  the partici-
pation of the whole organism.   There, exists then, properly speak-
ing, no local disease, except very  slight and very recent mechanical
injuries ;  for, when a serious physical injury  has existed for some
time, it will  have affected  the  organism to such a degree, that it
can no longer be regarded as a local disease.   This opinion, already
expressed by Hippocrates, when he said, Consentiunt omnia—is
easily confirmed, if one will observe with attention, what happens
during the developement of the slightest as well as gravest disorders.
The diseases, produced by occassional causes, acting on one organ,
as  well as those, which manifest their action on the whole organism,
are^all preceded by a forming stage, more or less  long, more or less
perceptible,  before their development takes  place in a  particular
part, or in the whole body.   Erysipelas, and  even coryza (one of
the slightest of the diseases considered local) are they not always
preceded by general indisposition  for a greater or less time, in the
same  manner as the most intense pneumonia, or small pox, and
every other  disease called general ? This stage, which physicians
call the incipient or forming stage, is a proof of the share, which
the organism takes in the production  of  a malady appearing in one
part of the body, and proves also that the principle of the localization
of diseases,  according  to the  physiological  doctrine prevalent  ia
France, is opposed to the imprescriptible laws of nature.   Hahno-
mann, having better studied these laws, and  justly considering all
maladies as general, has rejected their division  into local and general,
and has in consequence directed all his  applications of medicine to
the whole organism.
    The common healing method  has also established a division of 
24           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
diseases according to their duration ;  it calls those acute ,which ter-
minate their course  before the lapse of six weeks, and those which
reach beyond this term, are  called chronic.—It is easy to perceive,
of how little importance is this consideration of the duration of dis-
eases, and what small influence it ought to have upon their treatment;
for the long continuance merely of a disease cannot change its nature;
a cold of eight days or six weeks will never be any thing else but a
cold, if other circumstances are not combined; a phlegmasia to-day,
will always be a phlegmasia, if its nature be not change/1.  Homoeo-
pathia certainly admits of the division  of diseases  into acute and
chronic, but the characters, which it assigns to them do not depend
on their duration merely, but also on the cause of this continuance,
which entirely  changes their nature, and requires a special consid-
eration in the treatment.
   Hahnemann  calls those diseases acute, whatever may be their
duration, which, if  left to themselves, are  cured by the powers of
nature alone;  in these  diseases,  the remote occasional cause  is
always accidental and often susceptible of  being overcome, without
the aid of art.   He denominates those  diseases chronic, which, if
left to themselves, have  an incessant tendency to aggravation, and
generally finish by causing the  death of the individual; the efforts
of nature or a  palliative medicine may, it is  true, produce their
disappearance for some time, but will never cure them.  They can
only be cured by appropriate specifics, because, they are  always
produced by an internal  virus, which has  a constant tendency to
extend itself and which nature alone cannot destroy.  The diseases
brought on  by a continued  and  incessantly renewed occassional
cause as excess in eating or drinking, abuse of pleasures, noxious
substances, an unhealthy habitation, excessive labours, in a word.
by an improper  manner  of living, may  be  arranged in the class of
acute  diseases,  (although their  duration may  frequently be  very
long,) because they  disappear of themselves on removing the occas-
sional causes which produce them.
   The virus, producing chronic  diseases,  according to the founder
of Homoeopathia are of three kinds:  The syphilitic virus, the syco-
tic virus, and the psoric virus. 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          25

  The  syphylitic virus was already known  to the old medicine,
until, during the rage of theories, a modern sect of physicians
denied its existence, because its cure with mercury did not agree
with the ideas, which they had formed concerning the modus oper-
andi of medicines ; for, according to the  principles of the physiolo-
gical school, every medicine  must necessarily be a stimulant, and
the precepts of that school did not permit them to prescribe it in a
disease, where there often existed swellings, redness and the other
characteristics of inflammation.  Experience has not been slow
in doing justice  to  this arbitrary supposition, and the reasonable
and experienced physiological physicians  no  longer find any diffi-
culty in admitting the existence of a virus.  This  virus, if not  de-
stroyed by a  specific, remains perpetually in the organism, and if
by repellent remedies and the usual regimen, we remove the local
symptoms  produced by  an impure coitus, as is done by charlatans
or physicians deceived by a  false theory concerning the absorption
of the  virus, it identifies itself with the constitution, and is mani-
fested sooner or later by ravages of different kinds in the organism,
viz., by what is called secondary syphylis. Thus a disease, wnich
might  have been cured in a few  days  by an atom of the proper
specific, will require years of medical treatment and assiduous care
to effect its removal.
  The sycotic virus manifests its  presence by the development of
excressences on the  surface of the body or interior of  the organs.
This virus, which the old physicians confounded with the venereal,
because the excrescences appeared on  the parts of generation, or
the surrounding parts, on the perineum  and anus, in consequence
of an impure connexion, is of a nature quite distinct from syphilis.
Hahnemann, having observed, that the mercury had no  effect upon
these excrescences ;  it occurred to his penetrating mind to attribute
them to another origin, because they required other treatment, and
reproduced themselves, if they were not combatted by the  proper
specific.   He has ascribed them to a particular virus, to which he
has assigned  the  name  of the  visible phenomenon, which it  ge-
nerally produces.   It is from this  virus  that the warts are derived
which  appear  on different parts  of  the body, and especially on 
26           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
the fingers, polypi of different organs, naevi materni, Sic.  Expen*
mcnts on the healthy subject, l«d him to find a specific in a vegeta-
ble substance (Thuja oc.mljntalis,) which  has  an  action on  this
virus, and whose effects are nearly as  certain as that of mercury
in the' syphilitic virus.
   The third kind of virus is called  by Hahnemann,  the psoric. that
is to sav, the virus of the itch.   This virus, according to him, is
of all others the most diffused among mankind, and exercises its
ravages from the  first conception  of the germ to the last stage of
life.  From this virus are  derived the malformations of the body,
the congenital rucvi. crusta; lacteae, worms, glandular swellings,
rachitis, and all  preternatural deformities of the  bones, chronic'
diarrhoeas, catarrhs, chronic opthalmias, phthisis, herpetic eruptions,
biles, scirrhus, cancers, dropsies, aneurisms, haemorrhoids, chlorosis,
different nervous  disorders, obstructions of the breasts,  ulcers of
the uterus,  of the legs, &c,  varicose veins, leucorrhoeas, chronic "
gonorrhoeas,  hysteria, melancholy, insanity,  encysted  tumours,
corns on  the  feet, caries  of the teeth,  hydrophobia,  cataract,
amaurosis,  rheumatism, gout, asthma, &c. &c. in a word, almost
all the chronic maladies, which afflict mankind.
   If we reflect  with a little attention, we will soon be convinced,
that all  the diseases which we have enumerated,  arise  from the
same cause, because one  of them often  succeeds another in the
same individual, and they always  have  a tendency to aggravation,
if the cause be not destroyed by the proper treatment.  As soon as
an individual has had a fit of the gout, we may prognosticate, with-
out  fear of contradiction by facts, that  these attacks will approxi-
mate each other and become longer, that probably he will  after-
wards  be  subject to gravel,  urinary calculus, or vesical catarrhs,
to deafness, etc., or that the virus  will attack another system of or-
gans, the heart, the brain, &c.   The same may be remarked with
regard to all other chronic affections, and  might be infinitely "mul-
tiplied.  From year to year the condition of the patient deteriorates,
the tolerable intervals become more and more protracted until the
All Merciful, as the good Hahnemann  expresses  it, having pity
upon the excessive sufferings of  the patient,  releases him  from 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          27
his disease, and at the same timefrcm the tortures inflicted upon
him by physicians.
  If, by reason of the development of vigour in youth or by some
Other circumstance the vital energy of the individual is so much
augmented, that nature is able  to master or balance the expansive
force of the  virus  lodged  in  the system, its  effects  may be re-
pressed for a longer or shorter period, the virus will remain in that
case in the body, in a dormant or latent state as  it were, without
showing a single sensible sign of its existence, and the individual
will enjoy apparently perfect health ;  but, if age or a casual cause
enfeeble the vital forces of the  individual, the effects of the slum-
bering virus will renew themselves with  impetuosity, and chronic
diseases of various kinds will assail him ; and this, we observe, if
the psoric virus is hereditary.   In infancy, when  the forces of na-
ture are not yet developed,  the psoric virus exercises its ravages by
producing, what are called the different maladies proper to that age,
(and which are really nothing but the effects  of aq hereditary in-
fection,) as crusta lactea, convulsions, worms,  Sic
  The vigour acquired by increased age commonly puts an end to
these sufferings, that is, generally after  the second dentition; and
with weakly  children at the age of puberty, a period of good health
commences for these p*oric#beings ; with girls  the beginning of the
men-trual  discharge is considered  as the natural  emunctory.  but
with boys there exists no  such emunctory, and  nevertheless this
happy  change is still more apparent; to  what other cause could it
be ascribed, if not  to the  development  and  increased energy  of
the vital forces ?  But towards the age of forty, or before, if by ac-
cidental causes, as a  severe acute disf'ase or a violent moral affec-
tion caused by the loss of a person who  was  dear to us, or that of
fortune, an unhappy passion,  jealousy, or by  an unwholesome
manner of living, sexual excesses, low diet, a too sendentary life,
Sic. Sic, the  vital power or the principle of life becomes weaken-
ed, the psoric virus becomes reanimated  with renewed violence ;
now asthma, hypochondriasis,  haemorrhoids, partial  headache,
rheumatism, gout, catarrh, &c.  will begin to assail the years which
follow  manhood, and which make old age so sorrowful to us by 
28
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
the infirmities, with which it is habitually accompanied, that they
appear to be a necessary consequence of advanced age, while they
are only the effects of the psoric virus which is so largely diffused
among  our species, and  which was never  recognized, until  the
penetrating genius of the founder of  homoeopathia  had  clearly
shown the cause of these infirmities.
  The  psoric virus derives  its origin  according to Hahnemann
from the itch.   This so communicative plague  has been  greatly
multiplied  by  armies and foreign  wars ; one of the causes  of its
great extension in  lurope may also be  ascribed to  the holy wars
of the 13th century, by the importation of the lepra.  This virus,
which was never destroyed by  the proper specifics, has at length
Bpread from one generation to another, and those who have escaped
it by inheritance, have contracted it by the  contact or approach of
psoric persons;  because it is  not "necessary that an eruption of  the
itch should appear, in order  that  the infection  may take place;
for, this virus  being extremely  diffusive, we cannot determine at
what distance a person infected may  communicate  the taint to  an-
other individual. The psoric virus manifests its existence only during
the increasing deterioration of the health of the individual, and
then without any  signs  of local itch, it no less displays all  the
characteristics  of a psoric malady.
  The transmission of the psoric virus takes place also at the pre-
Bcnt day by an operation otherwise  very useful, viz: by vaccina-
tion ;  the matter of the vaccine  pustule is often  impregnated with
the hereditary  psoric virus of the individual from whom it is taken,
and in this way transmitted to a newly  vaccinated person.  Not-
withstanding the pertinacious denial of physicians, dictated by  tha
laudable zeal with  which they endeavour to distribute this preser-
vative  against  small pox, we cannot  disbelieve the  evidence of
our senses, that the  commencement of psoric affections may b«
dated  in many children from the time of vaccination, and  is  mani-
fested  generally by the  character  of scrophula.   These  children
had always previously enjoyed very good health, whereas, a short
time after vaccination, eruptions, tumours, scabs, Sic. Sic. began to
show  themselves.   Very frequently after this  operation a more or 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
29
less general eruption of pimples appeared, which were solely expelled
again by the reaction of nature, but which were a proof of the inocula-
tion of  psora.  All these  affections  have the same origin, a virus
of the nature of herpes or psora developing different forms of dis-
ease, according to the predisposition of the  subject.   How many
generations will  yet  owe benedictions to  Homoepathia  from this
circumstance !  AUoeopathia is satisfied  to repel by  baths and
other means, the external  morbid  phenomenon, (the  cutaneous
eruption,) it does not perceive, that this  is an emunctory which
nature seeks to establish, in order  to  save  more important organs,
and it imprudently repels  the virus  on the internal organs, and in
this way renders  them liable to the  most serious  disorders. Ho-
moeopathia on the contrary, by administering to the  vaccinated
person,  some  doses  of  the  suitable  specific, at proper  intervals,
eradicates  the cause  of the  eruptions and prevents their internal
developement.   The vaccine  matter  on  this account  also, like
every other disease,  causes the developement of psora latent in
the individual and is followed  by new chronic disorders without
the occurrence of a new infection, by the weakness- it may  impart
to the organism, &c.
   If we question attentively the sick labouring under chronic dis-
orders,  we shall  always hear,  that they have had the itch, (nine
tenths at least) or in their infancy have been afflicted with what
are called  bad  humours,  or that  their  ancestors had analogous
chronic  disorders; that  these different  chronic affections were at
first  only  indispositions,  which sometimes  entirely  disappeared,
and to which the  sick person paid little attention, that they have in
time increased, and  this inclination to increase and multiply has
always  continued, that if they were sometimes suspended by medi-
cal treatment, they always  rose  again  with renewed energy, and
that, on  the whole, the state of  the individual had  been better dur-
ing the  preceeding years of his life;  that these sufferings have
always  been  on  the ascendant notwithstanding  all the  remedies
which the common method  could oppose  to  them; because it is
unable to combat diseases, of which  it is ignorant of the cause.
   Several physicians have endeavoured to investigate the origin of
                               C 
:<0          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
the psoric vims, which is so widely disseminated among mankind,
but these  researches  have not been more  successful  than  those
made on the  origin of syphylis,  small  pox, scarlet fever, plague"
and other known  contagious diseases.  The acarus of the itch is
only a guest in the pustules of that disorder, and it  would be  ab-
surd to deny  the existence of the  psoric virus, because we have, ad
vet, been unable to discover its origin.
                       CHAPTER IV.

                   On the causes of Diseases.

   The discovery of the law similia similibus  applied  to  the cure
of diseases, would necessarily  influence the views of its author
with  regard to  their nature  and causes, and induce him  to leave
the errors and the routine of speculative medicine.
   ^'e have to consider three  kinds of causes in  diseases :  the pre-
disposing, the remote or occassional and the proximate cause, or
the essence of the disease itself.
   The predisposing cause is  the state of the living organism, by
which the individual is  disposed  to contract  a disease by some
cause or other, which will have  no effect upon a person, who does;
not possess this  organization; we have  already seen, that this pre-
disposition, this  particular susceptibility is a sign of an  imperfect
state of  health.   Homoeopathia  consequently regards  this remotei
cause itself as a morbid state, deserving  the  whole attention of thei
physician, either to remove it before a more  severe form of the dis-
ease has developed itself, or if this disease exists, to manage it pro-i
perly during its treatment.   Hahnemann generally ascribes this'
predisposition  to disease to one of  the  internal latent causes,  of
which we have  spoken in  the  preceding chapter, and  which' he
advises to combat during childhood with the  suitable medicines, be-'
fore it has developed itself by the occasional causes, and given rise' 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          31
 to a graver disease ;  the  old medicine on  the contrary pays no at-
 tention to these predisposing causes, because it has no other reme-
 dies  to  oppose them than a  suitable regimen, always an insuffi-
 cient resource to destroy them completely.
   The remote causes are those, the action of which  on the living
 system determine the developement of  the malady:  they may be
 either external or internal, that is, they may come  from without, a
 cold  air, humidity,  heat, light,  the distemperatures of the atmos-
 phere, excessive fatigue, mechanical injuries, abuse of aliments, or
 drinks, or  their bad quality,  the  different poisons,  or contagious
 virus, &c. &c.  These causes, which exercise such a great influ-
 ence in the production of diseases, (since it is owing  to  their ac-
 tion that the  latter are developed,) are yet very little studied or are
 even sometimes entirely neglected by the physicians of the old
 school:  the disease,  once developed, they direct their  attention only
 to the supposed nature of it, without troubling themselves about the
 cause, which might have produced it; with them, a pleurisy is always
 only an inflammation of the pleura, which was produced by a cold,
 or by an abuse of stimuli, or  some other cause, they always em-
 ploy the same antiphlogistics to combat  it, and similar views  are
 taken with regard to all other diseases ; they direct their  attention
 solely to the  supposed change-of the organs.  Homceopathists,  on
 the contrary, never loose sight of the remote cause, at every period
 of the treatment of the disease,  because experience has taught
 them,  that it  often impresses some  different characteristics on the
 internal nature of the disease  and  exacts  particular considerations
 in the choice of the remedy,  designed  to combat it; a diarrhoea
 caused by a cold, ought not to be  treated by the same remedy as
 that brought on by a fit  of colic, or by  the use of unwholesome
 food;  a  rheumatic  pain should  not be  treated with the same
 remedy,  if it has been produced by a shower of rain, by a gust of
 wind,  by an  hereditary  cause, or by fatigue.  Meningitis or  en-
 cephalitis (inflammation  of the brain) could not be  cured by the
 same medicine,  if it arose from a  repelled erysipelas or from a
 stroke  on the head,  or from a violent impression  of the  sun,  or
by an abuse of spirituous liquors, or from a fit of colic, or excessive 
 32           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 grief, mental anxiety, &c.  The enlightened Homoeopathist will al-
 ways pay attention to the known determining cause of the disease in
 the choice of the medicine, and if the homaopathicily is equal, he
 will always prefer that one, which will correspond with this occasion-
 al cause, whilst the old medicine would see in these diseases only a
 diarrhoea, an encephalitis, and direct its treatment only to the  dis-
 ease itself,  that is to the morbid changes which it supposes to havo
 been developed in the diseased organ, whatever might have been
 the determining cause.
   The proximate cause of diseases is the change which takes place
 in  the body by the action of the remote cause, and constitutes, pro-
 perly speaking, the disease itself.   According to this definition it is
 clear, that it is as impossible for us, by the exercise of our senses, to
 know the proximate cause of diseases as that of life itself in health ;
 that, what the common school represents  as  the proximate cause is
 really nothing but the immediate effect; the augmentation  of  the
 afflux of blood, the dilatation of the vessels, the heat, swelling, and
 the pain in  the inflamed tissues are only the products of the dis-
 ease in phlegmasia.   Its proximate cause consists  in the alteration
 of the vital forces, either in the whole system, or in the organ more
 particularly affected, and which has occassioned these physical disor-
 ders of the  tissues.   This alteration of the vital force is absolutely
 imperceptible to our senses, it is a secret which is not  permitted to
 any living being to unravel. Thus the redness, the afflux of blood, the
 swelling of the tissue which we observe in the pleura and the lungs,
 in pleurisy and pneumonia, the redness of the tunics of the stomach
 in  gastritis, the swelling  of  the liver in hepatitis, the serosities,
 accumulated in the  cavity of  the peritoneum, or under the subcu.
 taneous cellular tissue in dropsy, ascites, or anasarca, the blood dif-
 fused in the brain in apoplexy Sic ,  are only the material productions
 of the malady; they are  no more  the proximate  cause, than  the
 different organic changes, which we observe  in post mortem exami-
 nations : all these changes in the structure, density, or form of organs,
 are  only the product of the  power  which governs all the functions
 of life, in health as well as in disease, known by the name of vital
fluid, vitality, Sic.  In the same way, the expulsion of water, by 
              ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          33

 whatever method, be it by an artificial  mechanical opening, or by
 the natural passages, by urine or stool, does not cure dropsy, if we
 do not correct the vital alteration,yvhich has occassioned the morbid
 derangement of the exhalation :  it will soon accumulate in greater
 quantities, than before its discharge.  In inflammations of the chest,
 evacuation  of sometimes  enormous  quantities  of  blood, does not
 prevent the disease  from running through  its  course, of from two
 to six weeks, if the vital force is strong enough  to resist the morbid
 cause, and  the  fatal medications of  the system of medicine called
 rational.  The miserable and lingering life of so many people afflicted
 with pretended gastritis, sufficiently proves that the accumulation
 of the blood in the membranes of the stomach, was not the proxi-
 mate cause of the  disease ;  the  little effect of bleeding and its bad
 consequences in the majority of apoplectic cases  proves, that the few-
 drops of blood diffused in the cavity of the cranium are not the proxi-
 mate cause of this affection, but merely the effect of a much more pro-
 found alteration of the vessels and the tissue, in wfrch it has origi-
 nated ; for, if apoplexy be the effect of a superabundance of blood, we
 would observe it in young persons, at the age, when this fluid seems to
 be  superabundant, or when the turgescence of  the  vessels, and the
 energy of their pulsations seems to demonstrate its superfluity ;  and
 yet, apoplexy but  seldom, and  as an exception to general rules,
 occurs at this period of life.   It is in old age, when the less abun-
 dant nutrition, the feebler and more relaxed pulsations of the blood
 vessels attest a diminution of  the  mass of blood, that we observe it.
 The curious investigations, which a celebrated professor of Montpel-
 lier has made, with regard to the alterations observed in post mortem
 examinations of the brains  of individuals, who had died from this
 disease, do in no wise show the cause of it, but merely the changes *
 to which  it has given rise.   The  stone in the bladder cannot be
reasonably regarded as the proximate cause of lithiasis, except it
was produced by a foreign body lodged in the bladder.  Operators
therefore, have, unfortunately too  often been   convinced, that its
extraction generally produces only a temporary relief to the patient,
and that the stone is reproduced more or  less rapidly, if the vicious
                              *c 
34
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
state of the vital functions, which has occassioned it, has not been
modified by a proper treatment.
  These different alterations can only be considered as symptoms,
like the headache and fever which sometimes accompany them, and
the other indications  accessible to our senses, which  show us the
nature of the malady and direct us in the choice of the medicine to
oppose to  it.   Homoeopathia  no more  neglects these  indications,
than the old medicine; but it attaches  no other value to  them
than that of signs, while  the old school considers them as the
essence of the disease itself; and by directing its treatment, against
them  alone, leaves entirely out of sight the real proximate cause of
disease.
  These truths, though  not avowed, have  been felt by physicians
at all times ; for, from the fabulous times of  the healing art down
to the present  day, all have  endeavoured to divine the  interior
imperceptible derangements producing  the  symptoms, which they
had before their eyes in  diseases, and  to which  they particularly
directed their rational treatment.   The most  praiseworthy men in
other respects, men of the most judicious minds, could not resist this
inclination of endeavouring to explain what is inexplicable, and of
putting the fruits of their own  imaginations in the  place of the real-
ity which nature offered to them.
  The venerable father of medicine disfigured his fine observations,
the models of precision and perspicuity, and violated the wise pre-
cepts, laid  down  by himself, viz :  always  to study nature and to
follow experience, when he became misled by the erroneous theo-
retical ideas, by which he thought  to discover the proximate cause
of diseases in the  coldness, heat, dryness, or humidity of the fibres.
These ideas, modified in so many ways by succeeding physicians,
have prevailed in all the different forms which medical theories have
presented to us  down to the present time.
  The illustrious  Boerhaave, who has enjoyed such a great and well
merited reputation as a learned man and practitioner, has also sub-
mitted to the yoke of this unhappy propensity, of imagining that
the proximate cause of diseases were obstructions in different orders
of vessels, so that he was also obliged to make suppositions, in 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
35
order to form an idea of the internal changes of the organs, which
constitute diseases.   He could no less resist the prevailing opinions
on chemistry and the chemical changes of the blood and the humours;
these arbitrary theories on the proximate cause of diseases, have
rendered the labours of this author much more  pernicious than use-
ful to humanity, notwithstanding  the real merit of his observations
at the sickbed.
  Sydenham, distinquished by the surname of the English Hippo-
crates, has also disfigured his valuable works by the arbitrary and
absurd theoretical views of his time.
  This rage of regarding these internal changes  as the real proxi-
mate  causes  of disease, has been so strong,  that it has  finally
absorbed  all  medical  science, properly so called.   Brown, in the
main, had only  in view this proximate cause, which consisted with
him always in  an excess or want of excitement,  all other consi-
derations  were  superfluous and set aside, the external phenomena,
the antecedent and concomitant phenomena, were nothing with him,
he only regarded the point of the  scale of excessive excitement,  or
want of excitement, or debility.  These views with some modifica-
tions in their application, have even been brought down to our times,
for the Pinels,  as well as the Rasoris  and Broussais still  consider
these as the only two kinds of the internal  morbid state of the dis-
eased organism, that is to say, the excess or wrant of force, professed
by Themison, disciple of Asclepiades, in  the seventh century from
the foundation  of Rome, by the name of Methodism.  1 will not
speak of the ingenious comparison made by Van Helmont, of the
thorn fixed in the finger, or the intelligent soul of Stahl, nor of the
fermentation of the blood, imagined by  the chemists, nor  of the
thousand  other whims, which the imagination of physicians has
successively invented to explain diseases, because this would lead
us too far from our subject.
   But, how could man entertain the hope of discovering the proxi-
mate cause of diseases, the changes which the living body under-
goes in the morbid state ?  Has he ever been  able to arrive at the
knowledge of the cause of life in  the healthy  state, and what con-
stitutes life itself, how could he then flatter himself that he  was able 
36
ON HOMOEOPATHIC  MEDICINE.
 to discover the changes which it undergoes, in the diseased state.
 Could he ever even understand, in what  consists the difference
 which exists between a dead grain, and one in the state of germina-
 tion ; in short  does  he  understand  a single  one  of the internal
 proximate causes of any phenomenon of the created universe ?   If
 the natural philosopher ascribes gravitation of bodies to  the  attrac-
 tive force of the centre of the earth, does  he  know then, in what
 this attractive force itself consists ?   Its prescribed laws serve well
 enough to explain the phenomenon of gravitation, but they in  no
 wise indicate its nature.  If we  review all physical facts, we shall
 find throughout the same obscurity, and should physicians be more
 fortunate in their researches ?  They would penetrate  the secrets
 of nature on a subject,  which is the most complicated, the most
 impenetrable to human  intelligence !  How  much wiser and more
 rational is the founder of Homoeopathia, when he  exclaims ; God
 alone has reserved to himself the  knowledge of the intrinsic na-
 ture of things !  and further, if  these  errors had only been specu-
 lative errors, which had not got beyond the closets of the learned,
 but they have been transported  to  the bed side of the  patient!
 The physician, moved by these ideas, and by the importance of the
 imaginary proximate cause, searched for it alone, in his examina-
 tion of the disease, and when he believed he had discovered the
 existence of one of these dreams of the imagination, his mind be-
 came entirely absorbed by  it; his attention  was occupied to dis-
 cover the means of destroying this chimerical  enemy, or of expell-
 ing it from the body; and ere long the three  kingdoms of nature
were  put in contribution to obtain  this result.  If the  physician
was an alchymist, and thought this  cause was to be found in  an
alkaline,  acid  or  saline  state of the blood, he would make of the
body a kind of alembic, or a  chemical receiver, and by excessive
heat, or by choaking the patient  under covers,  or  by  hot drinks,
he  endeavoured to excite  perspiration, to drive  away  the bad
humours, or stuffed him with pharmaceuticsl mixtures to neutra-
lize the salts, alkalies, or acids, which he  considered as  the  cause
 of the  disease ; and when  the learned physician believed he had
 attained his object, and while by  the  sufferings of the patient, and 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
37
 the excessive aggravation of the fever, he thought the two enemies
 were struggling against each other, the poor  patient  rendered up
 his last breath.  Another, seeing  nothing  but fermentation or in-
 flammation of the  blood, used the veins as an  outlet, (robinet de
 degagement) and let the blood flow, which he  believed could not
 be contained any more in the  vessels, or which he supposed to be
 inflamed or deteriorated by putrid fermentation, and life escaped
 with the last drops of this fluid.
    In these latter times of the  dominion of medicine called physi-
 ological, have we not seen physicians, more zealous than their mas-
 ter, in  their persuasion that the proximate cause of diseases existed
 in an excess of energy or irritation, attack them by  hundreds of
 leeches, and sometimes these animals crawl over the corpse of the
 unfortunate patient, of whom  they had sucked the life in draining
 the last drops  of his blood. And what shall we say of the revulsive
, method of treatment often not  less  barbarous, of setons from four
 to six inches in length, as if intended for horses, of moxa,  of red
 hot iron, of sinapisms and of blisters, by which the  sufferings of
 the sick are so  cruelly multiplied ?  And what of that excessive
 abuse of opium, which  agreeably  to the  presumed idea of the
 proximate cause of diseases,  is to  calm or subdue the irritation
 of the  suffering  part?   They  were not aware of the  injury  they
 did, in ruining irrecoverably a system of organs indispensable for
 the salutary reaction of nature, that is, the brain and its dependen-
 cies.   With their doses of opium they relieve for the moment the
 most acute  sufferings of the  patient  and calm  his complainings,
 and they are  ready afterwards to attribute to  the malignity of the
 disorder the very severe symptoms, which resnlt from this method
 of treatment.
   All the alterations of fluids, observed in diseases, and to which
 their causes have been  attributed, are in  reality only  the effect.
 The buffy coat, which the physician examines with so  much car j
 in certain diseases for the  purpose of judging of the  necessity of
 repeating  venaesection, are only an effect  of  the  acceleration of
 respiration and of the irregular action  of the vital forces produced
 by the disease ;  fluidity of the blood in  scurvy is  no more the 
38           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
cause of that  disease, than the bile diffused over  the tissue of the
skin, and which renders  it yellow, is  the  cause of the affection of
the liver in jaundice. Happily these errors and mistakes of theories
and opinions which have been adopted concerning proximate causes,
are soon discovered in practice  by  intelligent physicians; we see,
therefore, very  few, who after some years practical  experience,
continue to be guided by  them in  the treatment of the  sick ; they
ravert to the  truths demonstrated by  experience  and observation,
and having seen the injuries which were produced by  a mode of
treatment dictated iu reference to these presumed proximate causes,
rather than run the risk  of  hurting the efforts of diseased  nature
by  active  and  hazardous means, they  content  themselves with
preventing its entire prostration, by removing every thing  which
might retard or restrain its efforts  for the cure of disease, that is,
they practice the art of healing so  much recommended by  Hippo-
crates, the expectative method, or at least, they modify very much
the precepts dictated by the theories of the schools, and  these prac-
tioners are generally the most successful.
  Other physicians, dissatisfied with the prevailing opinions enter-
tained on the proximate  causes of diseases, owing to  the bad re-
sults they experienced from their  application in practice, entered
into  new theoretical speculations, with  the hope of being  more
fortunate than their predecessors.   In this way have sprung up in
succession, the different medical theories  which in their turn have
decided the  fate  of mankind afflicted with disease : nor have their
advocates reflected,  that by  following  the same principles and
reasoning upon laws unknown and impenetrable, they must neces-
sarily fall into the same errors.  Thus, every foundation of a new
system of medicine, consisted of two pretty distinct parts, viz ;  the
refutation of the old  systems and  the establishment of the  new.
The first part has always been made with the greatest facility and
perspicuity, even by authors of an inferior class,  because, having
only to combat systems without foundation, they had only to follow
the impulse of simple reasoning to overturn  them ;  but when it
was requisite  to reconstruct the new theoretical edifice, the same
rocks on which  their predecessors were wrecked, arrested thein 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           33

also in ther course, and  they left  the  healing art in the same un-
certainty.  Three thousand years of this groping in the dark made
no real advancement in the healing  art, properly so called, until a
superior genius, having followed another track, a track quite in an
opposite direction, viz : that of  direct experiment and observation,
established new and more solid foundations for the study of  dis-
eases.
  Hahnemann, that profound philosopher, convinced of the  im-
penetrability of the secrets of  nature to our feeble  intelligence, of
the impossibility of discovering  the proximate causes of diseases,
that is, the internal changes  which give rise to disease, has, in or-
der to  appreciate these  changes, regarded only the  phenomena
perceptible to  the senses ol  the  patient or the  by-standers,  and
which "alone, God has allowed our feeble intellect to perceive.  He
entirely sets aside every definition of  the causes which nature has
covered with an impenetrable veil.
   Homoeopathia, we cannot too often  repeat it, does not then  con-
sider a disease  as an over excitement, an irritation, or a want of
excitement or irritation, a decomposition of the blood or humours,
&c.:  it considers them as an innormal state of life, manifested by
the sufferings and derangement of the organic functions.  The homce-
opathicjphysician possesses superior means over that of the old school,
to discover the true nature, or  the proximate cause of the disease.
For,  by taking into account all the  antecedent circumstances  in
relation to the patient, the causes  which have produced the disease,
the condition of all the physical and moral functions of the individual,
the external changes, which are perceptible to him, the sufferings
and sensations  which are felt by the patient, he will acquire a much
more positive and exact knowledge, than his antoganist, of the inter-
nal disease which gives  rise to the actual sufferings of the indivi-
dual.  The latter will content himself with the investigation of the
proximate cause,  according to  theoretical  opinions which he has
embraced.  For, in good logic,  an effect always indicates a cause,
and as this cause is absolutely unknown to us, the more we examine
its effects  methodically, the more  data we shall have of it; and if
we have a just apprehension of all of them, we shall necessarily be 
40         _ ON HOMOEOPATHIC  MEDICINE.

possessed of the best indications of the cause itself, wliich we ara
called upon  to combat.   These effects, which characterize the dis-
ease, are called symptoms.
  With these arguments in view, it may be  readily seen whedicr
the  old school is  not wrong in  reproaching Honuropathia with
neglecting the proximate cause of diseases, because it only regards
their  symptoms.   Homoeopathia  searches  into  the  proximate
cause,  and discovers all that  is possible for our imperfect senses,
disregarding no  indication which  might enable "it to discover its
nature, it  merely stops  at the  point, beyond  which human intelli-
gence is not permitted to go.   It rather prefers to avow its ignorance- f
than to throw itself into the darkness  of hypotheses, while its
adversaries, content with their suppositions,  neglect the true indi-
cations, to busy themselves only with the reveries of their imagi-
nation.   An example will serve to illustrate in what respect  the
manner of proceeding of the homoeopathic physician differs from
that of his antagonist in the diagnosis, that is to say, in the exami-
nation  of the nature of a disease, and the advantages of the former
over the latter.
  A patient complains of fever, and a  physician of the old system
will immediately endeavour to discover the proximate cause of his
sufferings, that  is, to give a name to the disease.  If he belongs to
the physiological school, for example, he will investigate the organ
which principally suffers, and if it be  irritated, he would know
what degree of irritation or inflammation exists in it, or whether  it
be in a state of debility  or want of irritation.   If the pain or sensi-
bility  of  the stomach and the redness of the tongue lead him to
suppose that the disease is an inflammation of the stomach, he will
have recognised a  gastritis  and  pursue  his  investigations no
farther;  he  will neglect, or pay little attention to the phenomena
which might divert his attention from the supposed proximate cause
which he believes  he has found, and directs his treatment against
the latter.  The homoeopathic physician will, on the contrary, in
the same case of disease, not be satisfied with the examination of the
Bymptoms which might indicate an irritation of the stomach, he will
inform himself of  the cause, to which this irritation should be at- 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          41

tributed ;  if it is the abuse of spirituous liquors, an excess of eating
or grief, passion, or some other moral impression, disappointed love,
hatred, jealousy, fear, a sudden fright, or suppression of a natural or
habitual evacuation, or too abundant evacuations, the abuse of some
medicine, the impression of cold, a change of temperature, -exces-
sive mental labour, the action of a poison, Sic.   Moreover, he will
examine the external aspect of  the patient,  the colour of the skin,
of the eyes, the expression of the countenance, the posture of the
body, the manner of his lying down in bed, Sic   Finally,  he will
investigate the condition of all his functions, and the unusual sensa-
tions, painful or otherwise, which the patient feels from head to
foot,  the hours or periods of the day when they make their appear-
ance, the  circumstances which augment or diminish them, and he
will terminate  his diagnosis by  an examination of the moral con-
dition of the patient, of his temper  as well before as during his
disease, of the state of his intellectual faculties,  and his previous
diseases.
   If  he has  carefully  collected  all these indications, he will not
task his imagination to discover what may positively be the inter-
nal changes, which have taken place in the normal state of the vital
power, and which have produced all these  disorders and present
sufferings ;  he will only say to himself, that the vital power Or life
has undergone an alteration, such as has produced the phenomena
before him, and  without  seeking to  define that aberration of the
vital power,  he will endeavour to search for a remedy which may
conduct it back again to its  harmonious operations.   By paying at-
tention in the treatment to all  the perceptible indications  which he
observes in the patient, he will be much more certain  of reaching
the proximate cause, (although he refrain from defining it) because
he will be surrounded by all the indications by which it can be ap-
preciated ;  and without having applied a name to it, he will, never-
theless, be in a better condition to treat it successfully, which is the
true aim of the physician, than his adversary, who will be satisfied
with imperfect indications, in forming a conjecture of the proximate
cause, and who builds his treatment upon this presumption.
  Although guided  by the  symptoms of diseases, Homosopathia
                               D 
42           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

does not direct  its curative means against these symptoms  them-
selves, but rather against the cause which has produced them ;  tha
is to say, the proximate  cause  of the  disease ; for, when  these
abnormal phenomena cease, the alteration of the vital power, which
must necessarily precede them, has previously returned to its regu-
lar  healthy  state, and the knowledge  of   all these  symptoms
furnishes the best guides to reach the disease with certainty.
  If a shining intumescence with  itGhing appears  on the face  of a
patient, it will be considered by  the alloeopathic physician, only as
an erysipelas, an inflammation of the skin.  By  the Homoeopa-
thist, this  swelling of the face,  or erysipelas will be viewed as only
one of the symptoms of the disease, he  will  investigate all  the
other indications which may be found in any part of the body, their
occasional causes, the previous diseases of the  patient, the state of
his temper, and above all the symptoms of the head, in order to
obtain a due  estimate of the internal changes of the vital power, of
which  the visible swelling of the  cuticle of the  face  is only an
effect, and by these means will be able to treat it  with more success.
But the common physician, who  is satisfied with the name of the
malady, will not be able to hinder it from running its course of from
nine to twenty-one  days.  The Homoeopathist, on  the contrary
will remove it in a day or two,  if he has selected a medicine ex-
actly indicated by all the symptoms  of the disease, or in  other
words,  a  remedy strictly homoeopathic.  Now, which physician
will have best reached  the proximate cause of the disease, he who,
believing he has discovered it,  applies to it a medicine wliich  will
not prevent the disease from running its course,  or he, who candid-
ly avowing his inability to define  it, opposes to  it a medicine,
which  removes it in a few hours.
  From what has been said, it follows that Homoeopathia differi
from the  common medicine with respect to its opinions on  the
causes  of diseases,  since the latter attends little to the predis-
posing  causes, and  not  at all, or very slightly to  the occasional,
in order to concentrate its whole  attention to the inscrutable proxi-
mate cause;  Homoeopathia, pays the greatest  attention to the oc-
casional or predisposing causes,  and by confessing its inability to 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          43

discover the  proximate cause, it is  furnished with the best indica-
tions for overcoming it.
                        CHAPTER V.

                 On the Diagnosis of Diseases.

   We call Diagnosis that part  of medicine  which teaches us the
means of distinguishing diseases :  this is the most important part
in ordinary medicine.   Having divided the morbid  derangements
of the body into  genera and species, to which it applies a mode of
treatment devised according to the  prevailing theory, the  whole
share, which is left to the sagacity of the physician at the sick-bed,
consists  in determining to what species  the disease under treat-
ment belongs ;  because, the name of the  disease being ascertained,
theory easily points out to him the remedy.
   According to the prevailing medical doctrine in France the phy-
sician is  particularly occupied  in determining, which is the  suffer-
ing organ.   This organ once found, all difficulty ceases, and gene-
rally, he has only to  direct his venesections and the other anti-
phlogistic means mainly in reference to this  organ.
   With  Homoeopathia the  Diagnostis is much more difficult and
much more minute.  Homoeopathia fully admits the special lesions
of the organs in  diseases;  but, considering them  as one  of the
sensible phenomena of  the general deviation in the whole system
from its normal and regular state, these aberrations fnrnish to every
case of disease a  particular character and form many individuali-
ties ;  the homoeopathic physician, by his anatomical and patholo-
gical  knowledge  ought not only to decide  what organ or organs
chiefly suffer, and what is  the nature of the change,  which the
disease produces in them, but  also, as we have stated in the pre-
ceding chapter, investigate as minutely as possible, what changes
have taken place in the  organism generally, and in all the functions 
 44           ON HOMOEOPATHIC  MEDICINE.

 in particular ; and, moreover, take  into consideration  the constitu-
 tion and the previous habits of the individual, his mode of life, his
 age, sex, remote causes  of the disease, its type,  progress ;  finally,
 the hours of the day, when it is more or less violent, the seasons of
 the  year,  the state of the atmosphere, the  changes of the moon,
 in short, all external circumstances, which may have any influence
 upon it.  It is only after all these investigations have been made
 with the greatest possible accuracy, that the physician can acquire
 a just idea of the disease in  a homceopathical point of view:  that
 is, distinguish properly the  particular case, which he has to treat,
 from those analogous to it, in order to make a selection of the  spe-
 cific medicine.
   The  homoeopathic physician,  who is fully penetrated with the
 spirit of his doctrine,-  will accurately note down in writing, at the
 dictation of the  patient, all the symptoms of the latter and the cir-
 cumstances which he mentions, together with the  answers, which
 are elicited by the questions, which the physician thinks himself
 obliged to put to him, for the purpose of rectifying expressions or
 of perfecting  ideas  indispensable to  a  good diagnosis.   Hahne-
 mann counsels  the  sick, to  mistrust the physician who  will  rely
 merely  on his memory to retain  minutiae, which are indispensable
 for obtaining an accurate idea of  the disease, except in very slight
 and very  common  cases ; for  this physician practices Homoeopa-
 thia  with the superficiality of  AUoeopathia, he generalizes diseases
 according to that method, that is, he will only see gastritis, menin-
 gitis, pneumonia, Sic and not the particular  individualities, which
 they really represent.
  The necessity of  minute investigations of diseases  in  the prac-
 tice of Homoeopathia will always remain one of the causes, which
 will prevent this doctrine from being adopted by physicians in ex-
tensive practice, who chiefly regard their pecuniary interests.   For
it is much more  agreeable and especially more expeditious to come
to a patient, feel his  pulse, look at his tongue, press upon his  epi-
gastrium, beat a little upon the sides of the chest, ask  two or three
questions, and finally, write a prescription.   In this  manner one
may  make six visits in an hour, whilst a conscientious Homoeopa-* 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           45
thist could not make a greater number during a whole day, because,
besides  the time necessary for the examination of the patient, a
period equally as long must be occupied for the proper selection of
the medicine.   Physicians of the  former class,  as soon as their
patients  become numerous,  prefer retaining  their expeditious
routine, because, it combines the interests of their purse, with the
demands of their indolence.
                       CHAPTER  VI.

                On the Prognosis of Diseases.

  Prognosis  is that part of medicine, whieh teaches us to foresee
the course and issue of diseases.
  This prognostication is founded on the knowledge of the disease
and  the  means which science offers,  to overcome it.  We have
already seen in the foregoing chapters, how much  more careful
Homoeopathia is in its investigations,  in order to know all the cir-
cumstances and the true state of  the disease, than the common
method ; the general precept to consider every disease as an indivi-
duality, imposes upon the homoeopathic physician the obligation of
acquiring a much more exact notion  of the nature of the morbid
alterations, than  his  antagonist of the old  school, who contents
himself by determining to what species it belongs.  We shall see
in the  following chapters, that Homoeopathia is also much better
instructed  as  to  the  remedies which  it  employs, because it has
studied all of them  in their effects  on the living and healthy indi-
vidual ; whilst AUoeopathia has only uncertain opinions  of them,
which  it has gained by chance or inference  merely,  but  never by
accurate study.  Homoeopathia has an immense superiority over
the old medicine, in the sources from which it derives its knowledge
to establish the prognosis in diseases,  consequently the probability
of its predictions  is much greater, and we indulge the  hope that 
46          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

it will  arrive at mathematical certainty, when in the  course  of
future ages,  it will have acquired a knowledge  of  all the remedies
which  God  has placed at  our disposal for the relief of diseased
humanity.   In  some kinds  of diseases, such as are produced by an
animal virus, always identical and wliich run a regular course, as
the so  called eruptive fevers,  like  measles, scarlatina, purpura,
small pox and erysipelas,  Sic the common medicine is tolerably
exact in its prognosis,  because  it has no means of abridging their
habitual course ; but this certainty turns eventually to its disgrace
and only serves to demonstrate its weakness : for, if these diseases
had been treated according  to their homoeopathic  indications, their
duration and their severity would have been much diminished, con-
sequently their  courses would have been modified.
  The Homoeopathist  however, must not be less circumspect in
the declaration  of a  prognosis:  the human body is so complicated,
it is so difficult  to discover with certainty its internal condition, and
so many unforeseen circumstances may disturb the action of a medi-
cine, or influence the patient, that, in the present state of our know-
ledge,  it would be imprudent to determine in too absolute a manner
the result of the treatment,  and of the issue of the disease.  These
predictions,  which in the case of Homoeopathia, may be made with
sufficient accuracy in  acute diseases, are  far more difficult to be
established  in  chronic diseases, where  the  radical  cure can only
be  effected   by  the  destruction  of  the  virus, which cherished
them.   The Hommopathist being  possessed,  however, of  more
efficacious' means of correcting the morbific deviations of nature,
his predictions  may always be more  favourable,  than  those of his
antagonists.   In all cases  generally, where the old medicine can
effect  something, Homoeopathia will  always perform  cures in a
much  more expeditious, certain and gentle manner, that is, with
less suffering to the patient.   In the majority of acute diseases it
cures in as many hours or  days, as the old  medicine requires days
or weeks ;  and in many cases, where the  latter  can do absolutely
nothing, Homoeopathia performs a prompt cure, at least a real alle-
viation, where  the other has given up all hope.   It is impossible to
fix the limits of its power in the present state of our knowledge;  the 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           47

most  severe  and  most desperate  acute cases have been cured in a
few hours : such, for example, as croup, peritonitis, puerperal fever,
brain  fever, &c, and the most dangerous organic changes have
often been cured by the mild but pervading effects of its medicinal
agents, so that its power appeared  only to stop at the boundaries
of existence.
   The cure of diseases by Homoeopathia requires  three essential
conditions :   1, The employment of a medicine corresponding with
the disease.  2, The reaction of nature.   3, That the action of the
medicine  be  not  disturbed by any external or internal accidential
causes : the prognosis must be pronounced according to the more
or less complete union of these three anditions.
   The variety of our diseases  is so great, that we may find one,
for which the specific has not yet been discovered and  that among
the medicines experimented upon, none answers so exactly to the
symptoms of the disease, as to  cure it;  but thanks  to the new
experiments  made by physicians with new substances, this causs
of the want of success, is daily diminishing.
   The second cause of unsuccessfullness will also much diminish,
in proportion as the study of Homoeopathia  becomes more general
and as the sick resort to it before life has  become  exhausted, and
before they  become debilitated by  venesection, want  of nourish-
ment and excessive doses of medicines, administered by physicians
of the old school, wiiich destroy sometimes for many years or  for
ever the power of nature to respond in an efficacious manner to the
action of salutary medicines.
   The third  conditions may in  a great measure be regulated by the
prescriptions of the physician  and the docility of the patient.
   An immence advantage of Homoeopathia is, that the patient is
spared the period  of convalescence in acute diseases, because, not
having been  exhausted by medicines, he passes immediatedly from
the state of disease to that of health, to the regular exercise of  his
functions.
   This consideration ought indeed to open the eyes of those respec-
table  persons, who are charged with the  management of the poor,
and the  direction of hospitals.   It would  appear that  these esta- 
48           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

blishments very little merit their title, when we consider the situation
of the miserable beings who inhabit them, and the state of excessive
debility, and  exhaustion  in  which  they go out—(  and  are  called
convalescent,) a debility, which prevents them for a long time from
working and gaining their livelihood.  Poverty and miserable food,
the  consequence of it, soon reduce them to a condition worse than
at first, and they are finally obliged to  re-enter the  Hopital, never
to return.
  How much more useful would  these  places of refuge be, if the
attending physicians followed the precepts of Homoeopathia! Eco-
nomy of medicines, economy of time, and economy of strength, would
render these houses the true  asylums of consolation,  the sick  would
leave them, full of life and health, and in resuming their occupations
would, with grateful hearts bestow  blessing on the men, who had
procured  them such real benefits.
                       CHAPTER VII.

                On the Treatment of Diseases.

  The treatment of diseases may take place in three different w;yi
by medicine:  1, by the action  of medicines opposed to the symp-
toms of the  natural malady; 2, by  revulsive means; 3, by medi-
cines producing an effect, similar to the disease.
  The treatment by opposition (called antipathic,) is  that which
attacks  maladies by means of  agents having the property of pro-
ducing a state,  opposed to that which constitutes the disease, as
cold by the  application  of heat, burns by the  application of cold,
over heating by refrigeration, constipation by purgatives, diarrhoea
and the other morbid evacuations, by astringents,  debility by tonics,
Sic  This method, always prefered by the old school,  wherever it
can be  employed, would on a superficial view  seem to  merit the
first rank, but  it generally produces only a transient  alleviation, 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           49

because nature possessing a tendency of reacting upon all foreign
impressions and of producing opposite movements, soon reproduces
the same disease in a much more powerful degree, after the pallia-
ting cause has ceased to act.   Thus the pain of a burn, which has
been momentarily dissipated by an immersion of the part in o cold
water, returns much more violently after its withdrawal, constipation
is  more obstinate after purgatives—the discharge of urine is dimin-
ished  after  the  use  of diuretics, Sic   The use  of medicines by
opposition, is therefore, no true curative process, but merely apallia-
tive one, that is to say, a temporary relief, slight affections excepted,
where nature works  her  own cure  during the suspension of the
suffering Drought on by her action.'  H omoeopathia therefore rejects
such fallacious aid, and resorts to it as a provisionary means only,
in cases where nature has not the power  of reacting upon the
appropriate  homoeopathic medicines,  as in cases of asphyxia, or
complete syncope, where it  is necessary to resuscitate suspended
animation, which would  be insensible to the homoeopathic agents,
the power of which, if strong, might extinquish the few remaining
sparks of vitality.
   The revulsive method, which Hahnemann calls allceopathic (from
the Greek word " alloios" foreign and " pathos" affection) is that,
by which another disease is  produced in a part more or less re-
mote from that which it is our object to cure. This method, which
nature sometimes-employs in certain diseases, by means  of erup-
tions, tumours, abscesses, and what are called critical evacuations,
often procures a sensible alleviation of a disease, it sometimes even
performs a cure ; but these advantages are always difficult to ob-
tain by art, they are never gained without many sufferings, and a
great number  of diseases alleviated  by the primary effects of the
revulsive remedies, soon resume their  original intensity.   To this
species of remedies belong purgatives, emetics and all  stimulants
taken into the alimentary canal, blisters, the  actual cantery, setons,
moxa,  sinapisms, shower baths, fumigations, urtication,  Sic This
view in the treatment of diseases, based on the laws of the physi-
ological  sympathies,  does not enough regard the  unity  of  vital
action.   Considering  disease  as a mere local alteration of  a given 
60          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

orejan, it thinks it may with impunity produce a morbid change in a
less important  organ, or the injuring of which would be less danger-
ous,  without  being  detrimental  to the first, and by these  means
remove  the disease from its original seat; but the vital union, con-
necting  the human body as an  entire  whole, does not permit it in
obedience to the  will or imagination of the physician to separate
its component parts ; the irritation,  the  morbid  state, which the
n vulsive means produce  on an organ more or less distant, reacts
upon the  original disease  which  it  complicates  and  aggravates
without curing;  on this  account  Homoeopathia rejects  all these
means as painful, insufficient and often hurtful.
  To this method, forming the basis  of the treatment pursued ac-
cording to every other system of  medicine,  Hahnemann has ap-
plied the name of AUoeopathia, and by this title he has designated
the prevalent medicine of the day.
  The medical treatment by similars,  is that  which we  have in-
dicated in the  commencement  of this  work, in which diseases are
treated by medicines producing on  the healthy person an affection
similar  to  that which it is proposed  to combat.   This method of
treatment  called  by  Hahnemann  the  homoeopathic, because it is
exclusively made use of in the  reformed medicine, has given its
name to  it.   The  common   art of  healing  sometimes  employs
homoeopathic medicines,  as we have before remarked, without be-
ing aware of it;  as,  for  example,  when  it prescribes  quinine for
the cure of fever, gangrene, debility  caused by a long continued
suppuration, or by considerable loss of the  animal fluids ; digitalis
for  overcoming  palpitations  of  the  heart;  ipecacuanha  against
nausea,  complaints  of the heart  and  vomiting; nux  vomica, in
paralysis ; iron in chlorosis ; sulphur in the itch ; mercury in syphilis;
sarsapai ilia and gold  in chronic syphylis;  mezereum, dulcamara,
the wild pansy and others in herpes; blisters  in erysipelas, nitrate
of potash  and  emetics in pneumonia ; squills in pleurisv ; vaccine
matter  as  a preventive in small pox, Sic   Nature also often per-
forms cures of this kind; patients have been cured by the  small
pox of obstinate  opthalmias,  or  convulsions, which had resisted
every method of treatment, because the virus  of small  pox  some- 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          51
times produces opthalmias and convulsions; scrophulous affections
have  been cured  by vaccination;  herpetic  and other  cutaneous
eruptions  and  scrophulous  affections  were  obliterated  by  the
measles, because  this disease produces similar eruptions of the
skin  and obstructions of  the glands; how many  obstructions of
the abdominal viscera have been cured by an attack of intermittent
fever, because these  fevers are  sometimes followed by similar al-
terations.   Obstructions in the  female  breasts remaining after a
first child-bed are often removed by the secretion  of milk after a
subsequent delivery, a disease originating in profound grief is often
cured by a new disasterous event which befalls the individual,  &c.
Homoeopathia, as  we have seen, makes use of this  method of treat-
ment, because, it  only produces a genuine cure ; the  reactive force
of nature which renders the antipathic cure only transient,  renders
that produced by  the homoeopathic action  of medicines lasting and
durable, because  the latter determines  the vital movement neces-
sary for the  cure.
   It is not medicines, however, which cure diseases, they only aid
 nature in attaining the aim of her  conservative efforts ; the physi-
cian, who administers them according to this principle, is the only
 true  minister of  nature, and not he who by antipathic or alloeopa-
 thic  agents endeavours  to counteract or destroy her efforts.   The
 alheopathic  physician  by  his blood-lettings, exhausts  the powers
 of nature* he prevents  her reaction; he fetters and baffles her salu-
 tary efforts;  much  better therefore, would he merit the title of her
 tyrant than her minister, and when he  endeavours by enormous
 doses of medicinal substances to produce an action opposed to that
 of the disease, still better would he deserve the title of her execu-
 tioner ; because, already almost sinking under the action  of accidental
 morbid causes, she  is  destroyed  by the addition of this new im-
 pression of an opposite character.   The  diseases, which  this per-
 turbating method of treatment leaves behind  it,  sufficiently attest
 its impropriety.  These  are the  gastralgias,  the  different organic
 injuries of the stomach and alimentary  canal, of the liver, urinary
 organs,  uterus,  lungs,  &c. which are generally attributed to the
 malignancy of the disorders, but which are frequently nothing but 
 52          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 the effect of large  doses of medicines given during the treatment
 of the disease, or during convalescence,  or the  result  of debility
 caused by bleeding and low diet.
   The necessity  of accounting for phenomena which pass before
 our eyes, and of uniting them by a common  tir, did not allow the
 author of Homoeopathia to confine himself exclusively to that which
 experience and observation taught him; he wished also  to explain,
 how the  medicines  acted;  although incontestable reasons have led
 him to declare the nature of diseases and their proximate causes as
 impenetrable to our understandings;  he  nevertheless,  thought  it
 possible to understand  the  internal action of medicines.  Hahne-
 mann supposes that two similar diseases cannot exist at the same
 time in the same individual, without the stronger extinguishing th«
 weaker one.   But the  action of the homoeopathic medicine being
 always the stronger, because'it is the effect of an extraneous agency,
 always produces a more powerful disease  which takes the place of
 the  natural affection;  but  the action of the medicine having  a
 tendency of itself to become  extinct, this natural disposition of the
 new disease and  the reaction of nature  excited  by it, cause its
 complete destruction.
   This theory, which  the enlightened understanding of the author
 considers as a simple supposition, which he really declares it to be
 and  to which, as  he says, no importance is  to be attached, has,
 during the few years,  since the  existence of Hommopathia, been
already followed  by many others,  so  true it is,  that when once
 engaged  in  the field of hypothesis, little  else but doubt and hesi-
 tation remain.
   The learned Dr. Rau has supposed the homoeopathic action of
medicines governed by  the laws of the magnetical polarization.
   The system of universal  harmony has also  been put  in contri-
bution ;  and its theories have  been applied to  the action of homoeo-
pathic medicines  by the  philosophical minds of Germany; Dr.
 Hering and other  homoeopathic physicians explain by the laws of
this system the origin and cure of diseases, a doctrine also lucidly
taught by our friend  Dr. Simon Leon, in his lectures on Homoeo-
pathia.  We will  not proceed farther with the examination of thes« 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           53

theories, because, even a superficial account, would be insufficient,
to give an ide,a of them to readers, who have not  become familia-
rized to these philosophical doctrines, and we would wander too
far from our  subject, should we attempt to  furnish  explanations
necessary to a  proper  comprehension of them; it will suffice  to
have proved hereby, that  the Homoeopathists in no wise merit the
accusation of  empiricism, which some Alloeopathists have cast upon
them; that they have, on the  contrary, put  in contribution every
branch  of human knowledge,  for  the  purpose of illustrating the
doctrine which  they have embraced, and  of placing it in harmony
with the general laws of nature.   Whatever may be in other respects
the fate  of these theories, the  groundwork of Homoeopathia will
not be shaken by them, because the homoeopathic law is the expres-
sion of a reality, distinct from all modes of explaining it.*
     * The principle c.i Homoeopathia has been most beautifully explained
   by the  microscopical discoveries in inflammation, artificially excited by
   wounds, by Kaltenbrunner, in his exper, circa statum sanguinis et vaso-
   rum in  inflammatione, pp. Monach, 1826.  Communicated dn Archiv fuer
   die  horn. Heilkunst, B.XV, 3tes H. p. 106,  by professor  Jahn, the
i   celebrated pathologist.  Hitherto,  these  are the  only  facts  which
J   throw light [upon the internal nature of diseases.  "After a wound has
   been received," remarks Kaltsnbrunner, "there commences an accelerated
   motion  and a turgescence of the blood in the vessels surrounding it.   From
   this point, those alterations extend to a greater or less distance.  In some
   of the smaller bloodvessels nearest to the wound, the  motion of the blood
   is thrown into disorder, some canals  become entirely emptied, in some it
   accumulates in irregular masses, while in others again, it diffuses itself
   into the parenchyma, forming reddish islands of blood, at the same time
   the  parenchyma begins to swell."  This state, denoted by the changes,
   which  proceed from the wound, and dependant on  the degree  of the
   injury,  is evidently morbid, and called by Kaltenbrunner morbid  inflam-
   mation.  But he observed futher, that in all cases, for the cure and dissi-
   pation of this morbid inflammation, a state perfectly similar to it, is devel-
  * oped, which he calls the curative inflammation.  " Driven with accelerated
   motior, masses of the glolubes of the blood here and there, rush by start-
   from their canals,  and pour, themselves into the parenchyma  of th
                                  E 
 54           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.


                        CHAPTER VIII.

                  On Homoeopathic Medicines.

   Every agent, capable of modifying the state of health of a healthy
 individual, is a poison,  and becomes a medicine, when suitably
 employed in disease.   There are therefore in nature no absolute
 poisons ; the most violent poisons, that is, those substances which
 have the strongest and most deadly action upon a person in health,
 become the most useful and beneficial remedies, if they are adminis-
 tered judiciously and in small doses;  and reciprocally, the most effi-
 cacious substances, in the treatment of diseases, become necessarily
 deleterious, in a state of health, that is, they become poisons.
   That medical doctrine, which will  furnish us with the  most accu-
 rate  knowledge of the  effects of  medicines on the living system,
 will  be able to make the best application of them.   In this  respect
 airaic, Homoeopathia possesses an immense superiority  over other
methods.
inflammed part.  Here they lie as bright red spots or islands of different
sizes.  Soon  the whole wound  is surrounded by these  islands, and the
intervening parenchyma, becomes highly turgid.  This process, ^which
appears at first at the circumference  of  the inflammation, by degrees
involves  also the centre, and resembles  the morbid inflammation com-
pletely, and it is  by its means, that the morbid alterations, produced by
the latter, are  gradually extinquished."
  Taking it for granted, that the physician is always only the servant of
nature, it may be asked:  Can the homoeopathic principle be more beauti-
fully illustrated, than by  these discoveries? And if this question can
only be answered in the affirmative, I further ask :  Can the principle of
the •' common"  healing art be  as well established in an anatomico—
physiological point of view, as that of Homoeopathia 1  This last question
must decidedly be answered in  the negative; the so called Alloeopathio
medicine, finds  not the least support in the microscopical discoveries on
Pathogeny.                                                 Tr, 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          55

  The most  common source, whence AUoeopathia has gained its
knowledge of the virtues of medicines, is, ab usu in morbis, from
their  effects  in  diseases.  The slightest reflection will suffice to
convince any one, how much this  process is subject to error; dis-
eases are never perfectly similar, there never occur in practice two
absolutely identical cases, consequently, even if we admit that the
observations  on  preceding cases had been accurate, it would be a
matter of the greatest uncertainty,  that the  remedy, which was
salutary  in another disease, would  be  precisely adapted to that
which is  now under  treatment, although it might be of the same
species.   The age, sex, idiosyncrasy, or  temperament of the patient,
remote causes, concomitant phenomena,  Sic, cause so many modi-
fications in a disease, that under these circumstances it is absolutely
impossible, to learn accurately the changes produced by a medicine ;
hence it  is, that  so many specifics and  other medicines employed
against different diseases, have failed in the hands of alloeopathic phy-
sicians.  One medicine, which was  extolled  for the cure  of inter-
mittent fever, because it  had cured some  affections of this kind, was
found inefficacious in others, and on  that account entirely rejected;
another for cephalalgia, diarrhoeas, &c.   What eulogies  has  not
Ipecacuanha, obtained, and merited for the cure of dysentery ? What
good  results were not really sometimes  obtained by it ?  But, as it
was necessarily ineffectual in a great number of cases, to which it
was not adapted, it was entirely abandoned in these diseases.
  AUoeopathia is indebted almost always  to chance for the discovery
of the medicines, which it employs, (the history of all heroic medi-
cines proves it;) at one time it conjectured the virtues of medicines
by their physical or chemical properties, by their taste, odour, exte-
rior aspect or elements, or by their family,  or natural genus.
  If chance  is a bad teacher, it offers us  sometimes useful hints ;
but if we have no laws to classify them, they may lead us as easily
to error as to truth.  By chance  it  was discovered, that cinchona
had^cured fevers; but empiricism, which took hold of this discovery
made a wrong application of it; ignorant of the law by which the
remedy had effected a cure  in  the given case, it supposed, that it
would cure  all  analogous cases;  and  exhibited it in all  kinds of 
 56          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 fevers ; but instead of a cure, this remedy often produced obstruc-
 tions of the bowels, marasmus, and other diseases still more serious
 than the one it was intended to cure.
   The analogy of the genera and species of different substances in
 nature, does not furnish us with a better indication of their mcdicii al
 virtues, for, one plant of the same family presents us with excellent
 nourishment, whilst the other is  one  of  the most active poisons.
 Thus, the potatoe of our kitchen furnishes a very wholesome food,
 whilst the  other species of this family (the Solanunis) are the most
 violent poisons.
   Nor is chemical analysis  any  surer means  of discovering the
 virtues of medicines; its apparatus and processes are entirely in-
 capable of  seizing the characters of the different medicinal proper-
 ties.  The celebrated Davy,  to  whom  chemistry  owes so many
 delicate  and minute analyses, has not been able to find the differ-
 ence between our culinary cabbage so innoxious and mild, and the
 virulent hemlock,  a poison  so  active  and violent.   Our chemists
 can  discern none  between saliva  and the virus contained  in the
 maxillary vesicles of the serpent,  of which the smallest drop is
 sufficient in a few moments to kill the stoutest man.
   External  impressions made upon our senses, do  not offer us any
 better  data; the odour and  the  taste of substances do in no wise
 determine their medicinal properties  ; the most  insipid substances
 are sometimes endowed with the  most powerful virtues; arsenic
 has very little taste or odour  in its simple form ; and the truffle so
much esteemed by our  gourmands, has a  very  penetrating odour
and taste.  These  conditions are so common  in nature, that one
might be almost tempted to consider these  properties as negative
indications.   Since direct experiments  with different substances
have been repeated on a large scale,  it seems to have been ascer-
 tained, that the more  a substance  possesses odour and taste, the
less is it endowed with medicinal properties; or at least, its  effects
 on vitality  are less powerful,  less pervading  and less durable.
   Homoeopathia does  not  proceed on  such data  to  discover the
virtues of  medicines:  Hahnemann believed,   that  in  order  to
appreciate  fully the action of a medicine,  it was  necessary  to 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           57
make a trial of it on a healthy person.   In this manner, with the
necessary precautions it  is  easy to determine what changes were
wrought by its action;  by such experiments he  has  ascertained,
that this  action was  not transient,  momentary, or of a few hours
duration, as had been hitherto believed, but that it was on the con-
trary prolonged in the case of several substances for whole months,
even if taken in the smallest doses ;  and that if strong doses were
taken, their action lasted for years and even sometimes during life,
as is observed in  individuals, who  have made an excessive use of
mercury.
   In order to make a trial with medicines, a healthy person must
be chosen, or still better, we take ourselves, early in the morning,
a small dose of the substances, with which we wish to experiment,
and repeat it daily, until some sensible effect, or unusual phenomenon
supervene;  we must take care to  mark  these sensations when-
ever they manifest themselves and remark also in what order,  or
under  what circumstances they are produced.   The dose of th8
medicine is to be renewed as often  as  these effects entirely cease.
During these experiments, we  must avoid all impressions, having a
tendency  to disturb  its  action, that is,  highly  seasoned dishes,
violent emotions, Sic Sic   The same medicine must be  tried  on
persons of different ages, sexes and temperaments.  When a medi-
cine has thus been  tried on a number of individuals sufficiently
great, the different effects produced by  its use are classified and
such as have  manifested themselves most constantly, are marked
down as  the particular characteristics of the medicine.   It is only
after these direct investigations undertaken for the purpose of ascer-
taining its virtues, that  a medicine is employed by Homceopathia
in disease, and takes its place in the Materia Medica.
   In viewing this mode  of proceeding,  every  disinterested and
reasonable person will  perceive, what advantages  Homoeopathia
has  in this so important branch of its doctrines over the ordinary
medicine, leaving nothing to chance, and endeavouring by direct in-
vestigations, made under the most favourable conditions to obtain
certain results.   By these means medicine ceases to be conjectural,
and  takes its rank  among  the exact and experimental sciences.
                              E* 
58           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
These studies of medicinal virtues the Homocopathists  have ex-
 tended to  the  different  kingdoms of  nature, from man  down to
 minerals ;  and in the space of twenty-five to thirty years, the small
 number of adherents of Homoeopathia have already furnished us
 with  more  than 200 well tried remedies,  the effects of which
answer to  an almost  infinite number of the most-various diseases,'
  *The medicines, actually
are the following:
 Jlconitum,
 Ae'husa cynapium,
 Agaric us muscarius,
 Agnus castus,
 Alumina,
 Amhra grisea,
 Ammonium carbonicum,
 Amnionturn muriaticum,
 Anacardium,
 Anisum sUllatum,
 Angustura,
 Aniimonium  crudum,
 Argenlumfuliatum,
 Arnica montana,
 Arsenicum album,
 Arum maculatum,
 Asafwtida,
 Asarum Europaeum,
 Aurum foliatum,
 Badiaga,
 Baryta,
 Belladonna,
 Berberis,
 Bismuthum,
 Borix J'uneta,
 Bovista,
 Bryonia,
 Caladium seguinum,
composing the Materia Medica homoeopath ica,

         Cakarea carbonica,
         Cannabis saiiva,
         Canlharides,
          Capsicum,
         Carbo animalis,
         Carbo vegetabilis,
         Cascarilla,
         Castoreum,
         Causticum,
         Chamomilla,
         Chclidonium my.,
         China,
         Cicuta virosa,
         Cina,
         Cinnabaris,
         Cinnamornum,
         Clematis erecta,
         Cocciimella septempunelala,
         ('occulus,
         Coffea Cruda,
         Colchicum Autumnale,
         Colocynthis,
         Conium maculatum,
         Copaivae balsam,
         Corallia rubra,
         Orocus sativus,
         Oroton tiglium,
         Cuprum, 
ON  HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           43
and if the continually increasing
this  doctrine, imitate the zeal o
Cyclamen Europaeum,
Diadema,
Diclamnus,
Digitalis purpurea,
Drosera rotundifoiia,
Dulcamara,
Eugenia Jambos,
Euphorbium,
Euphrasia  Officinalis,
Evonimus Europaens,
Faba Tonga,
Fcrrum,
Filix mas,
Graphites,
Gratiola,
Guajaium,
Helkborus,
Hepar sulphuris,
Jfyoscyamus,
Jalappa,
Jatropha Curcas,
Ignatia amara,
Indigofera tinctoria,
Iodium,
Ipecacuanha,
Kali carbonicum,
Kali hydriodicum,
Kreosotum,
Lachesis,
Lactuca viroaa,
Lamium Album,
Laurocerasus,
Ledum palustre,
Lycopodium,
Magnesia carbonica,
Magnesia muriatica,
number of  physicians, cultivating
' its first followers we may enter-
 Magnesia sulphurica,
 Manganum,
 Menyanthes trifoliata,
 Mercurius vivus,
 Mercurius sublimatus,
 Mezereum,
 Millifolium,
 Moschus,
 Muriaticum acidum,
 Natrum carbonicum,
Natrum muriaticum,
 Natrum nitricum,
 Natrum Sulphuricum,
 Niccolum,
 Nitrum,
 Nitri acidum,
 Nux vomica.
 Oleander,
 Oleum animate,
 Oleum Terebinth,
 Oniscus Asellus,
 Opium,
 Paeonia,
 Paris quadrifolia,
 Petroleum,
 Petroselinum,
 Phellandrium,
 Phosphorus,
 Phosphoricum acidum,
 Platina,
Plumbum,
 Prunus spinosa,
 Psoricum,
Pulsatilla,
 Ranunculus bulbosus,
Ranunculus sceleraius, 
60           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
tain the hope, that the number of medicines will one day be large
enough  to answer to all  the varieties  of disease, afflicting  the
human body.
  Although  experiments with medicines on  the healthy system
have been  recommended by the  celebrated  Haller  as  the only
means of acquiring a knowledge of their virtues, the subject has,
nevertheless, been entirely  neglected by the schools of  medicine
prevailing in France for the  last twenty years, which, having com-
prised them all  under the  head of stimulants, and considering all,
or nearly all dynamic diseases as  irritations,  had to include these
remedies in a general denunciation, and  confine itself exclusively
  Ratanhia,
  Rheum,
  Rhododendron,
  Rhus toxicodendron,
  Ruia grateolens,
  Sabadilla,
  Sabina,
  Sambucus,
  Sassaparilla,
  Secale cornutum,
  Selenium,
  Senega,
  Senna,
  Sepiae succus,
  Silicea,
  Solanum mammosum,
  Solarium nigrum,
  Spigelia,
  Spongia tosta,
  Squilla maritime^
  Slannum,
  Slaphysagria,
  Stramonium,
  Stroniiana  carbonica,
  Latterly different morbid, or
the human body.
      Sulphur,
      Sulphuris acidum,
      Tabacum,
      Tanacetum vulgare,
      Taraxacum,
      Tartarus emeticus,
      Tartaricum acidum,
      Tcucrium Marum,
      Thea cacsarea,
      Theridion.
      Thuja occidentalis,
      Tonga,
      Uva ursi,
      Valeriana,
      Veratrum album,
      Verbatcnm,
      Vinca minor,
      Viola odorata,
      Viola tricolor,
      Zincum,
      Magnes artificialis,
      Magnetis polus arcticus,
      ------auslralis,

natural products have been added  from 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
61
to debilitating  and depletory means, as  the only useful practice in
the majority  of diseases.   As  the adoption  of this doctrine in
France was the signal of an  almost complete  abandoning of every
pharmaceutical prescription, it  has hereby rendered an  immense
service to our  contemporaries in delivering them from all those dis-
gusting  and absurd amalgamations, with  which the bottles of our
pharmacopolists were filled, of all those electuaries, confections,
opiates, extracts, elixirs, tinctures, wines, decoctions, prescriptions
composed of  a base, of one or several adjuvants, one  corrective
and a vehicle,  Sic Sic, with which the  physicians  overburdened
the bowels of  their patients;* this service is so  important, that, if
the prevailing doctrine had not  substituted  its own excessively
debilitating practice, its author would have merited  much praise,
because in that case, nature  would have had to contend against the
pure disease only, without being counteracted by a powerful medi-
cinal action, with which the vital forces were oppressed.   But such
is the fabric of our minds, that when we  recognize a fault, in order
to avoid it, we fall into the opposite extreme.   The author  of the
  * Hahnemann however, was not the first to expose the absurdity of
these  combinations.  More than one of the elder physicians was aware
of it.  We shall only quote the opinion of Bichat, contained in his " An; -
tomie generale."  "There have  been no general systems  in the Materia
Medica.  This science has been  alternately ruled by the leaders in medi-
cine.  All have left their  impressions upon it.  From this cause arises
the uncertainty, with which it presents us to this day.   An incoherent
medley of yet more incoherent opinions, it is of all physiological sciences
that, in wliich the perversity of the human mind has most  signally mani-
fested itself.  Yes, for a mind pursuing a method, it is no science at all.
It is a formless  collection of erroneous ideas, of childish observations, of
fallacious  remedies, of oddly  conceived and disgustingly combined for-
mulas.  It is said, the practice of medicine is often a  disgusting art.  I
say more and maintain that under certain circumstances it is also contrary
to reason, if its principles are taken from our common  Materia Medica." 
62           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
physiological doctrine, by proclaiming irritation or inflammation as
the general tvpe of diseases, has necessarily placed blood-letting
at the head of his  remedial  resources.   The principal treatment
of only a  slight disease  consists according to this  doctrine in
a more  or  less abundant abstraction of blood,  either by  venesec-
tion, leeches, or cupping: the second remedial means prescribed,
is hunger or deprivation of aliments, and the third, revulsives ;  we
might vet add a fourth class of remedies, viz : the specifics, that is,
those medicines which cure special diseases without its being possi-
ble to explain their action by denominating it debilitating or exciting,
for example, such as mercury, cinchona, Sic
   Of all these  remedies none  has been studied in a methodical
manner, yet the first (bleeding) frequently takes place in the healthy
individual by accident, as in  the case of wounds or hannorrhages,
and in the domestic  animals in our butcheries, these examples might
have taught that the loss of blood  causes that of  life.  Physicians
have very often an opportunity of  witnessing the  sad effects which
bleedings exercise on persons in health or with slight indispositions
(in the case of  pregnant women venesection is  resorted to without
remission on the least indisposition;)  they could have seen how
weak and sickly they generally remained during the  whole period
of their pregnancy and even during  their confinement, and how
often blood-letting  is followed by abortion, (the  foetus not finding
any nourishment from the deficiency of blood in the mother).   But
all these facts will not open the  eyes of persons who will not  see
them and who are  fascinated by theories.  In almost all fevers  the
pulse is frequent and quick, and the skin is hot, Sic  As bleeding
pushed to syncope is followed by a diminution and cessation of the
pulse, and by general coldness and weakness, it was, according to
the law of opposition, considered  the best, or, to speak more cor-
rectly, the  only efficacious means of opposing the fever or every
increased movement of the arterial system ; they do not consider,
that if  nature be  not overcome  by this  abstraction  of forces,  her
movements soon revive with double force,  in order to react against
this cause of destruction, when they will always  have at command 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          68
the resource of new bleedings, until death puts an end to the contest,
or until a more powerful nature grants a truce to the suffering of the
patient, by changing  the acute disease into a chronic one, which
will render existence  a thousand times worse, than a speedy death.
We are far from asserting, that blood-lettings and the antiphlogistic
method do not sometimes cure diseases, or at least contribute to
their cure;  the existence of the present generation is a proof of it;
for there are few  individuals,  who have not been subjected to it,
either before or after their birth, and  it cannot be contested, that in
certain purely inflammatory diseases moderate  bleedings alleviate
and often cure the patient; but it is  no less true, that every cure
effected by these means, is always followed by a  remarkable debility
and that its  effect  on the living body, has never been carefully
investigated.
   At no period, in the history of medicine have Therapeutics been
reduced to such a state of empiricism as under the medical doctrine
called physiological:  entirely disregarding the  vital forces, which
govern  all  the  phenomena  of organized beings,  the  physician
takes  blood  in every  derangement of the human system.  This
fluid, so precious, which some philosophers have designated as the
seat of the soul and which has been confounded with it, (so great is
its importance) he spills in the slightest as well as the gravest dis-
eases ;  a fall, a wound, a haemorrhage, chilblains, haemorrhoids,
vertigos, complaints of the eye, ear, teeth, stomach, abdomen and
throat, rheumatism, menstrual  derangements, palpitation, dropsy,
Sic in a word, almost  every  disease  requires bleeding.   And is it
to be wondered then,  that  mankind  degenerates,  that the human
size becomes smaller and smaller, and the limbs less strong, that
the powers of the mind become weakened, when  we see a fluid,
on which depends  the nutrition, growth and vigour of the body, so
rashly spilled. It was time, in order to prevent the complete degra-
dation of the human race, that a more rational system  of  medicine
should succeed one productive of such pernicious practice. In order
to prevent our total destruction, God  in his infinite goodness, has
raised up the founder of Homoeopathia to heal diseases with reme- 
 64          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 dies  more  in  conformity  with the  intentions of nature, and  to
 re-establish health without destroying the source of life.* *
   Hunger, which the  common medicine advises in diseases, ia a
 suffering, which those in the station of physicians have seldom tried
 on themselves, yet  their  profession calls them  pretty  frequently
 to prescibe it to persons, who have felt too often its terrible effects ;
 but have physicians not been able to convince themselves that absti-
 nence exhausts  the sources  of life  nearly as  much as  the loss of
 blood itself, and produces  a complete  alteration  in the  organs of
 digestion? How dare they hope for a salutary reaction of the efforts
 of nature, when they exhaust  all  her vigour,  when they weaken
 her by every means  in  their  power ?  And  they call themselves
 Ministers of nature ! To witness the madness with which they per-
 secute, exhaust and oppress her, they could with much more reason
 be called the Ministers of death.
   As to revulsives, there is always  the  same ignorance displayed
 of their direct effects on the human  body ;  a blister is applied, with-
 out considering for a moment the injurious effects which cantharides
 may produce on the  sick, besides those on the urinary organs.
   The inefficacy of this systematic mode of treatment and the inju-
ries  which often thereby resulted  to the sick, has given rise to
 another sect of  physicians called  the  eclectic, because they  put
into  practice the different doctrines of the  schools, which have
preceded  them.   The  eclectic physicians, in  retaining  blood-
letting with the  other antiphlogistic treatment,  and not having
a better knowledge  of the virtues of the remedies which they
employ, than their predecessors, endeavour to restore the formulas
and pharmaceutical preparations of which professor Broussais  has
  * This is  undoubtedly very true.  Several homoeopathic  physicians
have already observed  in their practice, that all children, born after the
parents had  been  subjected to homoeopathic treatment, were generally
much stronger, healthier and less liable to disease than those born whilst
the parents were treated in the old way.  We may therefore justly enter-
tain the hope, that with the extension of Homoeopathia, a stronger and
certainly also a more noble generation will rise up in future time.   Tt. 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          6',

So happily delivered medicine; they are seen sometimes to adin;-
nister enormous doses of the most energetic medicines, of the mo--!
violent poisons, without troubling  themselves about the result.  An
eclectic physician, will  prescribe  with  the utmost sang-froid, 1U
grains of the acetate of lead per day, from 2 to 3 grains of  nux-vo-
mica or belladona, 20 or 30 grains of digitalis or tartar emetic,  ou-
grain of corrosive sublimate or a tenth of a grain of arsenic with the
6;une assurance, the same calmness, or rather the same carelessness,
as his  fellow colleague, the  physiological physician, will present
a tisane of sweetened gum-water ! and it is this  sect principally,
which  exclaims the most against moderate prescriptions,  against
the minimum doses of Homoeopathia!  Poor humanity !
                       CHAPTER IX.

  'On the Doses of Homoeopathic Medicines and the manner of
                     administering them.

  Medicines, exercising  their effects specifically, or by a kind of
elective affinity on a diseased organ, will always be strong enough
to produce an impression on the already irritated fibres, the morbid
sensibility existing in a  diseased part, rendering  it susceptible of
being affected by the feeblest agent, which has a direct anology to
it.  A healthy eye may without inconvenience bear the ardent rays
of a mid-day sun in the equalorial regions, while one afflicted with
ophthalmia, will find  too much light in a  chamber  closed almost
hermetically, in which the healthy eye will only be sensible of com-
plete obscurity; a person afflicted with a violent head-ache or ear-
ache, will experience  very painful sensations, from die lightest ste;^
of a person, walking in his room, while a healthy ear, will bear
without pain the  noise of artillery;  a drop of the  sweetest and du
most harmless liquid will  produce vomitings and violent pains in
an inflamed stomach, while a healthy one will bear  the  most indi-
gestible  food, Sic.  Moreover, as the  curative effect of the tr'jat-
                               F 
 66          ON  HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE!.

 ment by homoeopathic  remedies takes place only by the reaction
 of the vital force, excited by the  medicine in the organism, we must
 give it time, fully to display that reaction and not endeavour to dis-
 turb the salutary movement by new impressions, which might retard
 or hinder the cure ;  these two facts have given rise to two  funda-
 mental precepts of Homoeopathia in the prescription of medicines,
 viz: the most  minute doses and the  necessary  interval  between
 each of them.
  The common medicine, always intending in its prescriptions, to
 act on a healthy part in order to cure a diseased one, or rather to
 excite in the latter an opposite  movement, must employ a pretty
 strong action to make a more vivid  impression on the healthy part
 than that produced in the diseased one  by the malady itself, so that
 the latter may at least be rendered less sensible, or as it were pro-
 duce in the diseased part a movement, opposed  to that impressed
 upon it by the malady.   Under  all  these circumstances it is indis-
 pensable, that the dose  of the medicine should be strong; it is on
 this account that the physicians of the old school cannot comprehend,
 that Homoeopathia can obtain any sensible  results with such small
 doses, they call themselves  rational physicians,  but their reason
 does not even comprehend  this remarkable difference between the
 two methods of employing medicines viz :  the opposite ends which
the  two  doctrines propose ;  besides, the efforts made by  nature Jo
 overcome  the  action of external agents  renders their repetition
necessary, if we do not wish to obtain  a result quite the reverse of
what we had intended;  and  as living nature possesses the property
of accustoming  itself insensibly to external impressions, there hence
arises the necessity, of successively increasing the quantities of these
agents :  and thus  it  happens, that AUoeopathia  is often obliged to
give such frightful doses of the most energetic substances,  of which
physicians even boast, without regarding the grave and irreparable
injury which is thereby generally inflicted upon the constitution of
the  patient for the rest of his days.
  Homoeopathia, which never administers a medicine, without be-
ing well acquainted, as we have  already seen, with  its virtues and
its action on the healthy system, always  employs them in their 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          67
state of purity and without admixture, because, if it  were to com-
bine two medicinal substances together, it would lose all its certainty,
nor could it know, what effect they would have, when thus united ;
for, two perfectly well known substances, producing different effects
(no substances  possessing  properties  perfectly alike) would form
by their union  a compound, which would have quite different pro-
perties, and as the physician ought not to judge blindly,  or hypo-
thetically,  the  precepts  of Homoeopathia  will not permit their
application, before this compound has been duly tried on the healthy
system.
  Physicians of the old school do not take so much trouble ;  not
being  acquainted with the virtues of  the simple substances, they
care little what may be their  action in a state of combination, they
do not think  it amiss  therefore, to unite two, three, six or ten to-
gether as imagination may suggest;  to  every  phenomenon of the
disease,  or to  every  symptom  they prescribe  a medicine, which
they deem capable, of combating it, the  whole is then combined
under the form of a potion, electuary, or pill,  and thrown into the
human body like a bomb, that each of its fragments or pieces may
strike that part of the malady, against  which  it is directed  and
destroy it,—this they call rational medicine !   They  are not aware
that the  body is one,  that life is one,  and that  every thing is con-
tiguous in the living body; that all the  symptoms, however com-
plicated they may be in a disease,  form  nevertheless, a constituent
part of the same ; that it is contrary to the  laws of nature, thus to
separate  an entity,of wdiichthe different parts alone impress it with
its individual and proper character. If bleeding enfeebles the powers
of nature and renders  more difficult her  salutary efforts, which are
indispensable to the cure of a disease,  the enormous doses of medi-
cines and the compound prescriptions, besides exhausting the same
powers, render the diseases still more complicated, by the production
of symptoms proper to the different  substances of which they are
composed, and produce real poisoning. 
&           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.


                        CHAPTER X.

         On the Preparation of Homoeopathic Medicines.

  To prepare the medicines  used by Homoeopathia, Hahnemann
d.rects that one grain of one of the solid  medicinal substances, or
of those which are insoluble in alcohol should be taken in its state
of greatest possible purity; this is triturated with the  third part of
100  grains of very pure  and dry sugar of milk  in  a mortar  of
unglazed porcelain with a pestle of the same material, for a quarter
of an hour; to this mass the remaining two-thi -ds  of sugar of milk
are  then added, half at a time, and each part 'riturated for a quarter
ef an hour: in the  intervals of the operation  the  mass is  stirred
with a  wooden or horn  spatula  for four or five minutes.—Again
one grain of this mixture containing the  100th part of a grain  of
t'ie  medicine is taken and triturated with  99 grains of fresh sugar
of milk in the same manner as before,  with the grain of the pure
medicine.  Every  grain  of this  second  trituration  will  contain
io,»») of a grain of the medicine; another grain of this preparation in
taken, and the trituration repeated with 99 grains of a new portion
of the sugar  of milk, every  grain of this  third  preparation will
contain  1,000,000 of a grain of the medicine.
  Ail substances in nature triturated  in this manner will become
perfoctlv soluble in alcohol ; consequently,  in order to render the
subsequent  attenuations  more easy, the 99 grains of the sugar of
milk are  succeeded,  by 99 drops  of a  fluid,  (distilled water or
alcohol)  to  which is  aided a grain of this third trituration,  rind
which is then strongly shaken twice.  Every drop of this  mixture
contains ioo.ooo,ooo"'  Iu  the  same  manner all farther dilutions  are
made.*   Of  all substances soluble  in alcohol, one drop instead of
  * Every dilution (from the  Millionth to the  Decillionth,) may be em-
;:•!•: yod  with  advantage according to  the  susceptibility of tho patient;
sometimes, iven the original  tinctures will become necessary,   If wr;
wish to be successful! in practice, we should, however, always commence 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
69
one grain  is taken and diluted in that vehicle in the manner indi-
cated.
   Hahnemann for a long time used much stronger doses ; but the
necessity which  he felt to aim at perfection in his art, afterwards
led him  to  adopt the mode of  preparation just described.  The
results which he has  obtained from them, demonstrate, that in pro-
portion  as  the  attenuations of medicinal substances  were carried
beyond their crude or gross state, or in other words, as they became
more refined, in the same proportion, to a certain degree, they were
rendered more  energetic  and penetrating  in their effects on the
living fibre.
   This remarkable phenomenon has led homoeopathists to give  the
name  of potential to an  operation, which at  first  view, would
appear to constitute a mere dilution or diminution of  power in  the
medicine.
   Physicians, accustomed  to regard  medicines  as acting only in
virtue of the properties inherent in matter, cannot be  persuaded to
believe that any active virtue can  remain in such small quantities
of medicinal substances; it is especially this  part of  the Homoeo-
pathic doctrine (although its essence by no means consist in it, as
experience shows, that we may cure homoeopathically by the  ordi-
nary material doses)  which the most excites their  incredulity, and
yet, they are daily witnesses of quite as great and  even more sen-
sible effects on the human body by agents no less imponderable, no
less incommensurable.  Can these detractors of the  discovery of
Hahnemann tell  us, the  weight in  grains,  or the dimensions in
square inches, of a piece  of news, capable  of producing the  sud-
den death of the individual  who has  received it, or of recalling to
life a man  who  is about descending into the grave; how many
ounces or grains  the  rays of'light  weigh which are reflected  from
the body of  a toad,  and sometimes produce syncope in the person
with the smallest doses, as a small dose will ofien effect what a larger
will not.  The alternate exhibition of higher and lower dilutions, as well
as the external application of the medicines and the solution of them in
water, will also be found sometimes very useful.                Tr.
                              r* 
n          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
whose retina they  strike; wdiat is the weight in grains  or ounce*
|~f the luminous rays emitted from the  mouth of die adder, forcing
the nightingale  to throw itself into  the adder's throat;  but to give
some  illustrations from medical observations, of which the recollec-
tion  is yet unfortunately too recent; can  they tell us how  lcmy
grains or pounds of the minima of cholera are required to  commu-
nicate the disease  to  an individual or to a whole country?  flow
many pounds must the miasma at its  departure from Calcutta weigh,
:>i order to make the round  of  two-thirds of the earth,  without
hiving lost an atom of its virulence  in  traversing all climates i.nd
-;e,isons, leaving every where the  same mourning and desolation ?
Ar.J the atom of the  plague (cited  by Hahnemann) imported in a
<?m di  parcel of  wool, and which in a few months infected  a  whole
continent, what fraction of a grain ought it to weigh?   The small
pox, how many pounds of  the virus are required to infect a town
or a whole country ?  How many grains on what part of a grain cf
(he v.ieeine virus nre required to protect an individual against the
small pox ?  The  point of the lancet, moistened in the pustule, id
placed on the epidermis before penetrating the sensible or  vascular
[i ret of the  skin, the blood which generally issues from  the wound,
carries away a  pirt of the matter, and yet inoculation takes  place.
   If  from  these phenomena, which may chiefly be attributed to
morbid causes,  wc pass to the  examination of phenomena proper to
organized beings, or to nature at large, it would be necessary  to cite
all the phenomena offeree and of action in order to mention  all the
nowers not material, or, to speak more  exactly,  the powers  which
are destitute of the proper ies  of  extension and weight inherent to
matter, and  we should arrive at the conclusion, that  all  the real
powers in  nature are  subject to these negative conditions.  What
measurable extension, for example,  can  we discover in  the vegeta-
 • ive power, which governs the extraordinary phenomena of germina-
tion and the growth of plants,  their efflorescence, the maturation of
 ffid's. Sic, the fecundation of germs,  the nutrition and growth of
 >)[ organized beings?  What is the weight of the  power, which
 warns life?  What is its measurable extent?   No one, however,
  iv ill  deny, that thj  power  which  governs  all our functions,  our 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          71

entire being, is very great.  That energy of man, tenax propositi
vir of Horace, so admirable, so powerful, which faces every dangeT
in the accomplishment of duty, which prefers the horrors of a prison,
exile, and even  death, to  the  pleasures  of wealth,  to honour and
power, is it  capable of being  estimated  by weight and measure?
How many more ounces or pounds was this power in Socrates than
in  Anitus ?  How much did  that of Leonidas  weigh more than
that of Xerxes ?
   Is not the  force of affinity itself in direct ratio with the  attenua-
tion of the atoms of a body ?  The power of nutrition in organized
beings, is it  not exclusively to be  attributed to  the imponderable
and incommensurable divisions of the minute  particles of  matter ?
What  weight has  an atom of  light emitted  from  a light-house,
which strikes the eye at the distance of five leagues? Eveiy point
of  a circumference, comprised  in this  same  ray,  is yet equally
impregnated at  the same instant with this light. Now, into how
many fractions must the drop  of oil, consumed during this instant,
be  divided, in  order  thus  to  fill  a space of  ten square leagues ?
This property of medicinal substances called  by  its  discoverer,
their dynamic property, which is susceptible  of being developed
by their  trituration with inert bodies, is not  without  analogy  in
nature.   Electricity is  disengaged from bodies by friction alone,
caloric is also developed by  the friction of two  solid bodies, and
the spark emitted from steel, of which .the heat  is so  great as to fuse
the metal, is caused only by the simple percussion of two very hard
bodies,  steel and  silex.  And why refuse to admit, that a similar
action,  when exercised upon various  substances, may,  in like
manner, develope their medicinal powers ? Do we not see a piece
of  amber, nearly inodorous  in its natural state, fill a room with its
perfume, if it is rubbed  a few moments with  the  hand.  Gold
and silver in bars, and generally all non-oxydized metals were
considered by the old  medicine  as entirely inert bodies,  and ex-
perience has demonstrated, that powerful medicinal properties were
developed in them by homoeopathic preparation; the same may be
said of a great number of earths : as silicea, calcarea, and vegetable
powders such as lycopodium,  Sic. 
72
ON HOMOEOPATHIC  MEDICINE.
   But docs  this development of the  medicinal  power  take place
 from the minute division of  the particles of the medicine, so that
 their mobility is increased  and placed more  in  affinity with the
 fibres on which they are to act;  or is  it caused by the real develop-
 ment of a  new  power by the trituration,  and is this power trans-
 mitted by successive infection to inert substances, with which  it is
 brought into  contact, so that the extreme dilutions contain no other
 part of the medicine, than the medicinal dynamism ? Both opinions
 have found advocates among the Homceopathists ;  we shall not be
 able to estimate  them  in a work like  the present, merely destined
 to give an outline of the Homoeopathic doctrine ; we incline, how-
 ever, to the latter opinion, when we consider the necessary affinities
 between the  two powers, which  must act reciprocally upon each
 other, the  vital  power  and the  power of the  medicine; under
 whatever relation we examine the first, we can never discover in
 the alleged minute particles  the qualities proper to matter, gravity
 and  extensibility.  Now, in order that the medicinal power may
 have a perfect affinity to the vital, the  former must also be divested
 of its properties of matter, and acquire the qualities of the general
 imponderable powers which  govern  all nature; what  renders us
 also favourably disposed towards  this opinion, is, that it is the
 immaterial  agents  which most profoundly  and sensibly affect  our
 organism.  The effects  of grief are much severer and  of  longer
 duration, than those arising from an injury received by  a material
 cause.—Joyful news, the impression of sweet melody, penetrating
 the organism, produce much more  agreeable sensations, than all
 the  physical  impressions on  the  senses.—A word of  Napoleon
 imparted more strength and courage to the  soldiers to support the
 fatigues, the privations and the dangers of war, than all the Eau de
 vie,  or the opium,  that could have been distributed to them.
  These abstract questions, which, as we  have  before remarked,
by no  means constitute Homoeopathia, (since its  founder wishes,
that  only the propositions, demonstrated by experience  should ba
admitted) we  have  brought forward for the purpose of proving, that
the physicians, cultivating"this doctrine, are far from meriting  the
epithet of empirics, which their  antagonists have applied to them, 
ON HOxMCEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
73
but on the contrary,  always having nature in view, they never
advance a step, without  being  enlightened by  her, and measure
their progress by her imprescriptible laws.
                       CHAPTER XI.

 On the Examination of the Sick, and the Choice of a Remedy.

  We have  said, that Homoeopathia endeavoured by  the examin-
ation  of the signs, accessible to our senses, to acquire the most
accurate possible knowledge of the  actual symptoms, in order to
be enabled to meet them with  the most appropriate  specific : to
obtain this knowledge, the physician  has patiently to hear, without
interruption, the narration made by the patient on the nature of his
sufferings, the  manner  in  which they succeed each  other, Sic,
which he writes down in the same order.  After the patient has
finished this relation, the physician in order to complete the portrait
of the disease,  will examine  the  condition of all the  organs from
head to  foot; and all the physical as well as the moral and intel-
lectual  functions; during this examination, the patient must ac-
curately describe  the  nature of these  sufferings and  abnormal
sensations in the different parts of his body ; whether the pain is
pressing, lancina'hig,  sticking, as  if by  a  pointed  instrument,
pricking, or throbbing  ; whether these sensations appear to come
from without and tend inwards, or from willdn and tend outward* ;
if they  resemble a cutting  or a compression as with  a string or
cord, a pinching, a continual pulling or by starts, a throbbing or
beating as  with a hammer, twistings in the  diseased part, an
internal  commotion like a rummaging or stirring, as if there was
something alive in the  body, or merely a tickling, scratching or
an itching,  or some of these symptoms united.
   The  patient  must relate  the circumstances  under which every
pain or troublesome sensation, or every morbid or isolated phe-
nomenon developes itself, or is aggravated, dissipated, or diminished; 
 74          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 whether by cold or heat, motion or rest, touching or compression;
 what position  of the body has influence upon it, whether it be
 increased or diminished in the sitting posture or by lying down,
 and on which side ; in the open air or in the room ; before, during,
 or after eating ; by sneezing or coughing, Sic At what time of the
 day, what season of the year, and during a dry, or moist, cold, hot,
 or  windy state of the atmosphere;  or during the  change of the
 moon, &c.
   In the examination of every particular part, besides the sensa-
 tions above  enumerated, we must investigate  the peculiar state of
 each of them.   In the head, the patient must say, if he has vertigo,
 if objects appear to revolve around him, if he feels as if he would
 fall  forwards,  sideways, or backwards, <fec.  He must state the
 condition of the memory and intellectual powers ; he must designate
 the region wherein the symptoms in the head are the most violent,
 if he has not a feeling like  the bouncing of water in the cranium,
 or of something falling at every motion of the  head.—He is asked,
 whether he  has scabs, pimples, or itching, or other sensations upon
 the scalp, if 1)6 haa a tailing off of the epidermis, or hair, if  he is
 bald, if the  head has irregular movements, &c.  In the ears: to
 state the nature of the sounds heard  in them, and what appears to
 prevent distinct hearing, whether the ear feels as if stopped up,
 Sic, the nature of the discharge, if there be any, the eruptions and
 the different sensations.
  The eyes : whether short or near-sighted,  the condition of the
 pupil, the eye-lid and the other parts of the eye, and the expression
 of the  eyes, whether they be  encompassed with a livid circle,
 whether there are alterations in the  sight,—if the patient has the
 appearance  before his  eyes of fire, coloured circles round the
light,—if he sees, as if through a veil or dimly,—if he sees better
during the day or night, &c.
  The face : its eolour, the  different eruptions, the sensations and
motions which  he feels  in  it,  the  seat  of these sensations, the
expression of the countenance, the  condition of the  lip, the chin
and sub-maxillary glands.
  The nose  ; its exterior, jf it has crusts, itching, or a running of 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           75
^  matter; the sense of smell, if it be too strong or two weak, or a bad
   odour be perceived, particularly as if of old cheese, wine, Sic
     The  teeth :  their colour, if they are covered  with tartar  or
   decayed, if they are  loose  or  drop out, from  whence  the  pains
   arise and where they terminate, the state of the gums, if they bleed,
   are retracted  from the teeth, eroded, swollen, &c, the causes and
   the circumstances under which  the pains arise, are more  or less
   violent, or dissipated.
     The mouth:  to examine the  state of its surface, the tongue, the
   sensations felt in it; the saliva, the  condition of the throat and the
   tonsils, deglutition, &c.
     The digestive organs : the condition of the taste, if it is obtuse,
   if the patient perceives. any extraordinary flavour, as bitter, salt,
   acid, earthy, &c. if the  aliments appear to him to  have a flavour
   improper to them;  if they leave a  bad  taste in  the  mouth ; the
   state of the patient's appetite, if food is repugnant to him, if he is
   soon satiated, what food or drink  he  prefers or has  an aversion
   to,—the thirst,  if he drinks much or little at a time,—if the patient
   seizes the cup with eagerness—if he pushes it back  as soon as it is
 ■  brought to his lips.
     If he has eructations,  if they have a taste  and  what—if he has
   hiccough—if the food rises into the throat  or mouth—if there is
   water-brash,  on what  occasions.
     If he has nausea—irclinations to  vomit—of what nature are the
   matters ejected, do they consist of food,  drink, green or yellow
   bile, slimy matter, &c. and on what  occassions.
     The symptoms  in  the stomach  and  other parts, produced by
   food, the different sensations in the stomach, and the abdomen, to
   describe accurately, in what particular region they are  seated—if
 " the abdomen is hard,  inflated, if there  are any tumours, dropsical
   effusions, borborygmi, if there is flatulency,  if there  are hernias,
   pains in the loins, and the condition of the groins.
     The nature and frequency of the stools, their colour, their con-
   sistence, if they contain  worms or blood, Sic, if they  are followed
   or accompanied by painful  sensations, or  not, and in what parts
   of the body.   At the  same time it is observed, if there are heuiorr- 
^6          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
hoids, their condition; if there are any eruptions, running, itching,
painful sensations, strictures, prolapsus of the rectum, Sic.
   The urinary organs:  the nature of the urine, its quality, the
sedimeat which it deposits, the manner  in which  it is  voided and
the sensation by which its emission is  preceded, accompanied, or
followed, as well  in  the urethra, as in the adjoining parts.
   The sexual functions of man:  besides the enquiries in relation
to die different organs connected  with them, and the differenl
sensations the patient experiences in them, we inform ourselves of
other circumstances  in reference to these functions, not necessary
here to particularize. In the case of females, enquiries in relation
to the  condition  of menstruation in all its particulars are of tha
highest  importance, viz:  in  regard to  quantity, quality, and fro*
quency of  the discharge, and sensations preceding, accompanying,
or following.   If  the patient has leucorrhoea, what is its nature,
and what  the accompanying sensations, &c.   The state of preg-
nancy also merits  particular  enquiry with reference either to tha
symptoms,  with  which  it may be  accompanied, or the  morbid
phenomena, by which it may be followed; such  as  hemorrhoids,
premature  deliveries,  false  labour  pains,  and generally  all the
symptoms of pregnant women, which find no relief from the  ordi-
nary medicine, and in which Homoeopathia offers us such precious
remedies,  as  well  as  in  the diseases,  which  may occur  during
delivery, or the time of confinement and lactation.
  The respiratory organs;  if there is  sneezing, dry Or humid
coryza;  if the nose is stopped up ;  the nature of the nasal mucus ;
if diere is hoarseness, loss of voice ; tickling, pain in the trachea,
bronchia, or larynx, squeezing, contraction or suffocation.  The
different sounds in the respiratory Organs, rattling, whistling; the
state of the respiration, if it  is  difficult, what sensation or cause
seems to prevent the free exercise of it;  what is the posture of the
patient, the  hour  of the day, or  the circumstance  by which this
difficulty becomes most manifest, Sic  The condition of the cough,
if it is dry or accompanied  by expectoration, degree of  violence,
if it occurs  by fits or not, the time of the day and on what occasion
it is most violent;  the symptoms by which it is accompanied or 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           77
followed, the nature of the expectoration, its  taste, quantity, Sic
and what  relation the pains  of the  chest have to the respiration
or cough.
   The different symptoms  of the  external breast, particularly  in
the case of females; if there  are  hard glandular swellings, if the
areola is red, excoriated, or if it itches, &c. With regard to nurses
and women in child-bed, it is necessary to inquire concerning the
secretion and nature of the milk.
   On the  skin it is  noticed, if there are  glandular swellings,
if the veins are swollen, if the carotids beat violently, if there is a
goitre.
   The affections of the back and limbs : besides the different kinds
of pain, we have to take note  of the cramps, convulsions, dryness
or perspiration of these parts, and the eruptions, swellings, Sic,
chilblains and corns are also noted.
   We at last come to the  general sufferings, that is,  those which
affect the whole, or the greater part of the patient's body.
   If he  has spasms,  convulsions, what sensations  or other phe-
nomena  precede,  accompany or  follow them, whether they are
constant or changeable, Sic
   If the patient feels fatigue, or a general languor ; if he feels cold
or is very sensible to  cold ; if the skin is dry, or if  it is easily
excited to perspiration, if there are eruptions, what is their nature,
if there is itching or not, and what effects are produced by scratching.
  If there are ulcers, we must examine the nature of the sensations
produced by them, their appearance and the nature of the suppura-
tion.
  The state of the circulation:  the sensations  felt in the region  of
the heart, the state of the pulsations, if they are full, frequent, rapid,
small, intermittent, weak or strong.  If there is any fever, we must
examine the nature of the cold and sweating stage; whether these
symptoms are confined to  one  part of the body  or embrace the
whole system; their duration and order of succession ; if they are
accompanied by thirst or not, or other general or local affections.
  The state of sleep must never be forgotten, we will note, whether
there is sleeplessness; what is the cause of it;  if sleep takes place
                               G 
 78           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 in the evening, before, or after midnight, or in the morning; if there
 is an inclination to sleep during the day, if the sleep is heavy or
 easy; if there is a difficulty of falling  asleep, if in the morning
 on awakening the patient be fatigued or less refreshed,- than in the
 evening on retiring to rest; what is the position of the body dur-
 ing sleep; if the arms are  placed under the head, the limbs drawn
 up or extended, &c.;  if the patient had dreams and  of what kind,
 if they are easily recollected; if he  suddenly starts out of his sleep
 or has frightful images; if he has  sonnambulism, if the patient
 speaks  or cries out during sleep, if  he  has alvine or urinary dis-
 charges during sleep ?
   Finally, we have to notice his previous diseases.  If his parents
 have been subject to hereditary  diseases, the affections he had dur-
 ing childhood, crusta lactea, glandular swellings, biles, corns ; if he
 has had the itch ; at  the  period  of puberty in women, how the
 menses  have  commenced ;  if they have born children, what health
 they enjoyed ;  if they had abortions ; what medical treatment the
 patients have been subjected to, and what is their customary man-
 ner of living;  by what is  the  present  disease supposed to have
 originated; the temper of the patient, his  complexion, the colour of
 his hair and what was his temper before, or during the disease; if
 he  is cheerful or sad, choleric, lively, passionate, gentle, patient,
 phlegmatic, morose,  irritable,  a scolder, grumbler, melancholic,
 disposed to  suicide,  if he has  a fear of death, if  he is stupid,
gloomy, Sic
  After the physician  has made himself acquainted  with all these
 circumstances of  the disease, (which we have given in detail, in
 order to instruct the sick to  express  their sufferings fully, particu-
 larly such patients as are at a  distance from  their physician, and
 wish  to consult him  with  benefit,) he  next examines,  what are
 the principal  symptoms characterizing the disease, and then selects
 among the  medicines which have produced in  healthy individuals
 analogous  characteristic affections,  that  one,  the symptoms  of
 which correspond to the greatest part of the morbid phenomena of
 the disease to be treated; that is, the aggregate of whose symptoms 
             ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          79

presents the greatest  possible resemblance to the  disease, and he
exhibits it in the manner already indicated.
  In an acute disease, a medicine may be taken during every hour
of the day, as the urgency of the case requires it; in chronic  dis-
orders, Hahnemann advised (nux vomica excepted) that it should be
taken early in the morning, the patient to keep quiet, and not breakfast
for two hours afterwards ;  other Homceopathists prefer giving it in
the evening, before going to bed; they find, that the ten or twelve
hours passed in sleep and  repose, exempted from every foreign
impression, physical or moral, are very favourable for the  develop-
ment of the action of the  medicine in the organism, because the
more or less lively moral impressions, which persons (particularly
those occupied  with business^are subject to during  the day, may
disturb the action of a medici/e, which may have been taken some
moments  before.  We have for some time generally adopted tins
practice,  and are  convinced of its practical utility by experience.
y                     CHAPTER XII.

                   On Homoeopathic Diet.

  The  adversaries of  Homoeopathia  maintain, that the  greater
number of its cures are to be ascribed to the strictness of the regimen
prescribed to patients; we might answer, why do you not prescribe
this regimen rather, than  torment and  weaken  your patients by
hunger, or by aliments incapable of affording nourishment ?  The
dietetic precepts of Homoeopathia are by no means  severe ;  they
are comprehensive enough to satisfy any reasonable taste.  Bearing
in mind, that the.cure of diseases  is effected by the forces of nature,
the patient  must consequently receive sufficient nourishment to
sustain him; and as the suitable  doses of the medicines must be
very small and not be counteracted by other  medicinal substances,
or by strong impressions on the animal economy, which miglit
disturb their action and render  them ineffectual, we may easily 
SO          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
 form an idea of the precepts, wliich directs Homoeopathia in the
 prescription of its regimen, which may be summed up in these few
 words :
   Partake of purely nutritive and  easily digested  aliments, and
 of the most natural drink in quantities  necessary to satisfy your
 appetite and quench your thirst; perform all  other functions of
 life in the most simple manner, and the most  conformably to the
 laws of nature.
   In order to facilitate the application  of this general and simple
 rule to the sick  and to  prevent doubts  on the subject, we shall
 review the different functions and the  different wants of the sick,
 for the purpose of showing  them what particular means they have
 to pursue, that they may not overstep the limits  of moderation pre-
 scribed by Homoeopathia, which are like  all  its other  precepts,
 consonant with philosophy and morality.
   Food and drinks.—Nature  indicates  to man  the necessity of
 taking nourishment  by  the  internal sensation  of the appetite and
 thirst; every time, that  this sensation shows itself in the normal
state of the body, wc must  never omit to satisfy it within reason-
able bounds, always  avoiding substances  containing medicinal pro-
perties. In acute febrile diseases the appetite is generally wanting,
 we will consequently give the patient  something to eat only when
this  sensation recurs, and, as in such cases a small quantity is
sufficient, warm milk, bread and butter, or farinaceous aliment, very
ripe fruits of the season,  cooked or raw, or boiled vegetables should
be used.   In febrile diseases of long duration, we may add to these
aliments  fresh  meats,   if the  stomach  is  able  to  digest them;
Homoeopathia follows in this respect the precepts dictated by the
experience of Hippocrates and which  medicine  has entirely dis-
regarded.
   The thirst must also be the regulator of the drink in acute febrile
diseases;  if it does not  exist, we dare not  compel  the  patient to
drink under the pretext of refreshing him and calming the internal
heat; as every foreign body applied to  our organs always produces
 some kind of impression or  other, the  presence  of  a drink in the
 stomach, if not demanded by thirst,  causes irritation in it, disturbs 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          81
 its functions and augments the febrile heat more than  it diminishes
 it, (except the patient be deprived of consciousness.)   The most
 proper drink is pure water; which may be sweetened to the patient's
 taste with sugar, syrup of raspberry, oranges,  liquorice  root, the
 juice of fruits of little acidity or their decoctions,  as well  as that
 of oat-meal, rice, bread, marshmallow, or any other non-medicinal
 substance; pure boiled milk  is  also a very good  drink  in acute
 diseases.   We must avoid giving the drinks too hot, in general it
 is best to raise them  to the temperature of the room ;  sometimes
 it is useful, to cool  the  drink with  ice, or to  give it tepid,  in this
 respect, we must follow the instinct of the patient.
   In acute diseases, without fever, or chronic diseases, the appetite
 and thirst must m general also be the measure  of a supply of food
 and drink, bfit the  food may be of a more  substantial  quality ; it
 may eonsist of meat and vegetables in suitable proportions.  It is
 ■necessary, that the patient eat meat, if it agree with  him, (and in
 chronic diseases he can generally digest meat better than vegetables)
 at least once a day.  In the selection of food, we must  pay  regard
 to the habits and taste of the patient and choose such substances, as
 he can digest the most easily. All meats are good (except  pork, duck
 and geese too fat, particularly in diseases of the  skin,) all fresh fish
 •except salmon and eel, crabs and shell fish ;  all salt meats as well
 as smoked or salted fish, must be soaked in fresh water before being
 eaten.  All farinaeeous  and other vegetables are allowed, except
 those which are sour and possess medicinal properties., like garlick,
 onions, celery, asparagus, and the different aromatic plants, used as
 spices.
   Well baked  and stale bread, all farinaceous food including pastry
 not too fat, all ripe fruit not too  sour, or aromatic, preparations of
 milk of every kind, (except old cheese) and fresh  eggs are very
 wholesome.  The diseases of the stomach and the digestive organs
 often demand the greatest precaution in the choice of aliment;  be-
 sides those articles of food prohibited  generally,  patients with these
diseases  should  abstain from  all dried leguminous vegetables,
 (Mrs. * * otherwise very healthy, is attacked by the most violent
symptoms of cholera on taking the  least quantity  of these  vege- 
82           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

tables) from the flesh of very young animals, or eggs (particularly
in diarrhoea.)   In the last  case  preparations of milk  and fruits
should be used with great precaution.
  The best drinks in chronic diseases are the same as those which
v e have  recommended in acute febrile diseases, but patients accus-
tomed  to wine, may  continue its  use  by diluting it  with 10 parts
of water ; but children, females, and all those afflicted  with indiges-
tion, ought in general to abstain  from it.   There exists a universal
prejudice with  regard to wine, namely, that it aids digestion, that
it strengthens  the stomach,  and  that it is  therefore  necessary for
persons wdiose  digestion is disturbed or troublesome : an experience
of twenty years, for which we are indebted to the influence of the
physiological doctrine, proves, that persons in this condition, digest
much better by drinking pure water:   this is not the smallest ser-
vice, which we owe to Professor Broussais, in having delivered the
sick from the use of wines, which  physicians in former times, were
in the habit of prescribing to  their  patients.  In a treatise on diete-
lii:; according to the Homoeopathic doctrine, which we shall publish
forthwith, we shall  give a detailed account of the effects produced
by wine, and of the cases, in which its use may be beneficial;  we
will here  only  remark,  that the  cases wherein wine  is" necessary,
are very  few and  must be determined  by the physician.  Liuht
unadulterated beer and cider are also very good drinks,
  Coffee is a very active medicinal substance, the effects of which
are especially felt by the nervous  system, and by the gastric, uri-
nary and sexual organs.  Hahnemann has in a work devoted to
the  subject, forcibly described the ravages, produced by its daily
use.   Coffee is besides known to be an antidote to several Homoeo-
pathic  medicines; consequently the sick have to  refrain from it;
yet persons of advanced age, long accustomed to it  may continue
to use it. though in diminished quantity.
  Chinese tea is less  active than coffee, persons therefore, who are
habituated to it, may continue to use it by taking it very weak  and
mixed with milk.
  Alcohol and every kind of spirituous liquor, spiees aromatics,
oils and  acids are prohibited. 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          S3
  The  use  of every medicinal  substance or liquid, which, either
by washing or smelling, may counteract the effects of the medicines,
must be abstained from ; this precept refers  also to the habitual use
of enemata,  (except with  pure water or milk) smelling  bottles,
scent bags, and perfumes of every kind, above all to musk, amber
and camphor, to medicinal tooth-powders, soaps and aromatic pastes.
  Tobacco  is one  of  the most  active medicines; its action on
persons making use of it, is manifested in too  sensible a manner,
not to  consider  it  as hurtful  to the action of medicines ;  but the
effects of an old habit modify this  proscription ; in such cases we
have only to diminish the quantity and cause the patient to abstain
from it for several hours after taking the medicine.
  Air, light and heat.—It is very evident, that it is  difficult to
obtain a favourable  result  of the treatment, if the air in the  vicinity
of the patient be not kept in a state of purity ; fumigations  of chlo-
rine  gas, or  others which  may be used in  the room, will destroy
the action of the medicines.  The best means of purifying the air,
is to open the-windows at those hours, when the atmosphere is the
driest.  If the patient is capable of going  out,  he  must be freely
exposed to  the air: the air of  the country in an elevated and dry
spot, sheltered from the north-wind, is to be prefered.
  The light of the  sun, which  animates  all nature, is necessarily
also of great advantage to patients, and in all cases of disease, (ex-
cept hi inflammation of the brain and cerebral congestion.)  We
may procure its influence by selecting for the patient rooms, expo-
sed to the midday sun and sufficiently lighted by windows acces-
sible to the rays of  the sun.
  The temperature of the chamber must be moderated from 12 to
18 degrees, 11., in  the'chamber, a too grjat heat  debilitates the
patient and too little exposes him to colds.
  Clothing, attention to cleanliness.—Too warm clothes, and those
of a texture particularly apt to excite perspiration, must generally
not be  used ; for, besides the loss thereby sustained by excessive
transpiration, the skin becomes, debilitated and deprived  of the
power of counteracting external  agents, as the changes of the atmos-
phere, humidity, &c.  The wearing of linen next to the skin is to 
 84           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.

 be prefered, the  other  clothes  must accord with the state of the
 temperature, and large  enough,  not  to interrupt the circulation or
 the other functions ;  persons accustomed to the use of flannel may
 generally dispense with it after an honncopathic treatment  which
 lasts long enough to render the system less sensible to cold.
   The best means of preserving the cleanliness  of the skin  is by
 simple ablutions with pure water  and  soap, or sweet almond flour.
 In acute diseases of every kind, the hands and face are washed at
 least once a  day with tepid water  and the  other parts of the body
 every  three  or  four hours, exanthematous diseases  excepted.  In
 chronic diseases daily cold  ablutions of the whole body have the
 advantage of powerfully assisting the beneficial action of the homoeo-
 pathic medicines, especially in  debilitated subjects or  scrophulous
 children, and females ;  we have sometimes seen the medicines act
 only after the patients were subjected  to this practice.*
  The teeth  must be cleaned with tepid water, or with the powder
 of burned bread and a light brush.
  The too frequent and long continued use of hot baths, generally
debilitates the constitution and the  dermoid  system particularly.
 Cold baths produce a vigorous and strong impression on the whole
organism, consequently the physician  only ought to determine the
cases,  in which  these hygieinic  means may be useful.  We do not
   * The free external and internal use of cold water has been found parti-
cularly useful in gout, rheumatism, scrophula, haemorrhoids, paralysis,
mercurial diseases, hypochondriasis, &c, and  also diseases, brought on
by excesses of any kind. Indeed, by these means alone we are often ena.
bled  to effect a permanent  cure.  The  astonishing cures  performed at
some  celebrated watering places in Europe, where the pure cold spring
water alone is made use of, sufficiently attest its immense utility.  The
proprietor of one of those establishments (Graefenberg in Austrian Silesia)
bjy the astonishing cures he has performed  in  the most hopeless cases,
has even acquired an Europocan reputation, and has been several times
called to Vienna to treat members of the  Imperial family. This celebrated
establishment is frequented  every year by more than  400 visitors from
ail parts of Europe.                                          Tr. 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.           85
 mention the mineral or other medicated baths applied by means of
 vapour, pumping, &c. because being very powerful remedies, they
 ought only to be employed in particular diseases.   Baths for the
 purposes of  cleanliness  of an  agreeable  temperature  and used
 sufficiently long to wash the body (for ten  or fifteen minutes) will
 be very useful,  and we cannot too highly recommend them.
   Clean linnen is  of great advantage  in diseases ; the patient will
 be less subject  to cold, if it is often changed.   This precaution is
 especially useful during the critical diaphoresis, by which the cura-
 tive effect of medicines in acute diseases is  often manifested.
   Exercise, repose and  sleep.—The  exercise  of the body ought
 never to  be neglected in  the  treatment of diseases.  Of all species
 of exercise, that of walking in the open air is to be prefered ;  an
 hour's walk, once or twice during the day, is indispensable in the
 eure of all chronic diseases ; if the patients cannot walk, riding in a
 carriage must be resorted to.   The vertigo, nausea,  and other dis-
 agreeable effects often produced by swinging, sufficiently demon-
 strate that exercise of this  kind may sometimes be hurtful and ought,
 therefore,  to be avoided during the treatment.   Dry frictions must
 be employed, if no other exercise can be borne.   Singing and con-
 versation, or loud reading are also very useful exercises in many
 cases. If the patient cannot leave the house, he  must take exercise
 as much as possible in his chamber, taking  care to let in the fresh
 air, by keeping the  windows open;  it is  understood that  these
 precepts chiefly relate to the  non-febrile diseases:  in febrile dis-
 eases absolute repose is often  indispensable.
   The advantages of sleep cannot be too much appreciated in dis-
 eases ; it is by a  natural sleep more  or less prolonged, that  the
 beneficial effects of the Homoeopathic medicines ordinarily com-
 mence, and manifest themselves  in diseases,  and that  the  crisis
 often takes place;  the persons  waiting upon the sick  must do every
 thing in  their power not  to interrupt it.  In order to satisfy pro-
 perly this want of  nature, the  patient  ought to retire soon  to bed
 and rise early.  Reading in bed upon interesting subjects,  which
 occupy the imagination is generally  a  bad  habit for  persons sub-
ject to sleeplessness and sometimes the only cause of it, owing  to 
86           ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
the effect it produces on the cerebral organs.   Vigils too long pro-
tracted and the habit of converting night into day are very hurtful:
this proscription does not extend to the practice of sleeping a few
minutes after dinner, which may be very useful to  debilitated per-
sons, they need therefore make no  effort to conquer it, if they feel
the want of it.
   Sexual functions.—If nature be in the plenitude of her power,
cverv function may be exercised within the  limits  of moderation
and morality, provided the   medical treatment be not disturbed by
it ; we have met with cases, where amelioration was not manifest,
until the  sick  had resolved on absolute continence, which they
believed indispensable for their cure.
   Violent emotions, caused by the passion of happy or illrequited
love, are  detrimental to the homoeopathic  treatment, as  well  as
every artificial excitement: this function serves only for satisfying
the natural wants.
   Sensations.   Intellectual and moral functions.—In order that
a living organ may acquire  or preserve the plenitude of its develop-
ment, it is necessary  that  it should be exercised; the  organs of
sense are subject to the same law ; but, as in a state of disease, they
become generally more  sensible to their  natural stimulants, these
stimulants must be applied  according to the nature  of the disease ;
consequently light, sounds, or odours must be proportionate  to the
sensibility of the organs of vision, hearing, or smell.  The moder-
ate use of these senses is indispensable in chronic  diseases.   The
impression from melodious or cheerful music is sometimes a useful
auxiliary means in  nervous disorders, Sic  The fragrance emana-
ting from a  luxurient vegetation in spring and the aspect  of  a fine
landscape, by recreating and  reanimating the mind, contribute to
make a residence in the country so salutary ; the odours of different
flowers, blooming in  the fields or  gardens, by being diffused in a
great vehicle (the atmospheric air) lose much of  their medicinal
properties, and are in consequence incapable of disturbing the action
of the homoeopathic medicines, which are much  more penetrating,
 and much more in harmony with the vital forces.
   The intellectual and moral functions (the passions) require par* 
ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.          87
   ticular attention during the homoeopathic treatment, because they
   are chiefly exercised in the system of organs, on which the homoeo-
   pathic medicines exercise their principal action.  The patient must
   avoid  too serious study, severe mental contests (particularly after
   taking the medicine) and  too  long continued  application,  but  a
   moderate exercise of the mental functions is as useful as  that of
   the physical; these  precepts are particularly important in  mental
   diseases.  The patient must besides  avoid  all  violent emotions,
   anger, sadness, envy, jealousy, fear, &c.  The too great severity
   of parents or  instructors to children is very pernicious. Hahne-
f  mann  has very truly remarked that persons, who  are  continually
   subjected to the influence of one of these moral causes, can no more
   be relieved by Homoeopathia than by any other treatment; it is such
   sorrowful cases, wherein  the medicines remain without effect, or
   the results obtained are but short and  ephemeral.  Our practice
   has  offered  us such anomalous cases ; the first care to be taken
   under  these circumstances, is  to  remove  the  patient  from  the
   objects  perpetuating the  causes  of the disorder,  by means of a
   journey, change of air and location, and agreeable  diversions.
     Dramatic  spectacles, besides the injury  arising from the bad
   quality of the  atmosphere  changed by the  crowd, the lights and
   the great heat,  are  also  improper on account of their sometimes
   producing too violent emotions.   We have seen very severe symp-
   toms, whichhad disappeared for some time during the action of the
   homoeopathic  medicines,  reappear  after an  evening passed,  in
   attending a dramatic representation.
     The ball  may prove inconvenient  on account of its  causing the
   patient to retire to bed too late, and by its exposing him to sudden
   changes of  temperature;  this  applies  especially to females, who
   uncover parts of their body, which are usually  well protected by
I  clothing, and respire an  atmosphere corrupted  by the crowd and
   the odours.   Small private balls, which are not too much prolonged
r  at nights, balls  in the open air during the day and in summer, afford
   very useful exercise during the homoeopathic treatment.
     Animal Magnetism.—By means of the magnetic fluid man acts
[  on his fellow man at a greater or less  distance: the cheerfulness 
S*          ON HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINE.
which we feel, when  surrounded by truly good persons, the calm
peacefulness which the  new born child experiences in the arms of
its mother, Sic, are in a great measure  produced by the effects of
this fluid and we may refer to its pernicious action, the decay, be-
falling children, confided to certain nurses, who  seem to possess
every necessary quality, except  goodness  of heart.  The instinc-
tive aversion which we feel towards certain persons, without know-
ing them, may be attributed to  the effects of this fluid,  as well as
to the pre-occupied  imagination.   Hence it is of great importance
to surround the sick with good and benevolent persons, and remove
those to whom they show an antipathy, if we wish to  treat them
with success, because  the deleterious magnetic action incessantly
operating in this case, will prove an invincible obstacle to the action
of homoeopathic medicines. 
89
SUM MARY.
  After the  details,  whicli  we  have given of  the  Old Medical
Doctrines and  Homoeopathia, we  may  sum  up  their reciprocal
advantages in the following manner:
  h—The Homoeopathic physi-
cian investigates most accurately
every circumstance calculated to
throw light on the nature of the
disease, in order to seize its par-
ticular  characteristics,  and   he
does not permit his imagination
to mislead him  by suppositions.
  2.—He always employs agents
which have been previously tried,
and with  whose  effects  on  the
healthy body he  is perfectly fami-
liar.
  3.—He always exhibits  medi-
cines  without  any  admixture,
which might disturb their action.
  4.—He  employs medicines in
the smallest  doses, and at pro-
longed intervals.
  5.—He does not spill the blood
and animal fluids; nor does  he
torment the patient  with blisters,
moxa, &c.
   6.—He  prescribes  a  simple
regimen conformable to the laws
of nature, endeavouring to pre-
serve  the strength of the patient,
so as  to make no period of con-
valescence necessary, or to render
it  very short.
  1—The Allceopathist is satisfied
with the investigation of the ge-
neral character and species of the
disease and of its nature accord-
ing to the prevailing theory.
  2.—He only employs remedies,
with which chance has furnished
him,  or  which have  been  tried
merely in diseases  of the same
name, or  according to  virtues
which his  imagination  suggests
to him.
   3.—He  exhibits several sub-
stances at the same time, which
will reciprocally destroy one an-
other, or produce an uncertain
and irregular effect.
   4.—He  uses  them  in  very
strong doses  and at  short  inter-
vals.
   5.—He spills  the  blood and
the other animal fluids, and tor-
ments the sick by painful irritants
which enfeeble and  retard  the
healing power of nature and ex-
haust it.
   6.—He prescribes  total absti-
nence from  food, or a choice of
aliments little appropriate  to the
function of the stomach, enfeeb-
ling the patient and rendering the
cure very slow  and  difficult, and
the convalescence endless.
   The Homovopathist attains therefore as nearly as possible all the
conditions prescribed by Celsus for a good cure : tuto, cito et jucunde
(with safetv, celerity and gentleness.) 
                  CONTENTS.

 Preface.                                               v.
                     CHAPTER 1.
 On health and disease.                                  13
                    CHAPTER. II.
 Origin of Homoeopathia.                                17
                    CHAPTER. III.
 Division  of diseases.    „                               22
                   CHAPTER. IV.
 On the causes of diseases.                              30
                    CHAPTER. V.
 Diagnosis of diseases.                                  43
                   CHAPTER.  VI.
 Prognosis of diseases.                                  45
                   CHAPTER. VII.
 Treatment.                                           48
                  CHAPTER VIII.
 On HomoEopathic Medicines.                            54
                   CHAPTER IX.
 On the doses of  Homoeopathic  Medicines and the  manner
         of administering them.                         65
                    CHAPTER X.
 On the preparation of Homoeopathic Medicines.            68
                   CHAPTER XI.
On the examination of the sick and the choice of remedies.  73
                   CHAPTER XII.
 On Homoeopathic Diet.                                 79 
/
*•     •»    * 
ON   1I031CEOPATHIC   MEDICINE,
              ILLUSTRATING  ITS  SUPERIORITY         **


    OVER  THE'OTHER  MEDICAL  DOCTRINES,


 WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE REGIMEN*  TO BE FOLLOWED DURINO THE"
                  TREATMENT OF  DISEASES,


,v     „     ^  M.  CRfSERIO,-

Doctor of Medicine, President of the Homoeopathic  Society of Paris, Member
  of the French Homoeopathic Society,' Physician to the Sardinian Embassy at
  Paris, de l'Etablissement de Uharite de Saint-Vincent de Paule, de la Socii u
  Protestante dc Secours Mutuels, &c.
*«*■
     £cl) xetst aus IZifatjrunfi.

BTfRSI              9 a I) n« m a n n.
/ speak from experience,
           v*'Ha.hnem*J(n.
TRANSLATED FHOM THE FRENCH, WITH NOTES, CONTAINING THE OPINIONS

     of B R E R A, BROUSSAIS, &c, on homceopathia.


               By C.  NEIDHARD,  M. D.
        PHILADELPHIA:

PUBLISHED  BY KIDERLEN Si STOLLMEYER,

   No. 86. Arch Street, below Third.
1837.
 
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