WILLIAM RADDE, I!Ri515P£EliE5.l?B?.'E3Bt ©©©BCSILILIEIE /hMB POD! LA § MIR, 322 SSromtlway, JYew-York, Importation of Books, Eaisjlish and Foreign, for Colleges, Public and JPiivate JL libraries, etc. etc. SINGLE BOOKS IMPORTED TO ORDER. W. R would invite attention to his facilities for procuring English and For- eign Books for Colleges, Public and Private Libraries, Booksellers, and the Public generally, on at least as good terms, and with greater despatch than they have ever before been imported into this country by any other establishments Books for Incorporated Institutions pay no duty. All the German Journals, Monthlies, Quarterlies and newspapers, received regularly by the steamers for subscribers, and the principal periodicals. JCJTST PUS^XSHSS, MYDRIATICS, OR MANUAL OF THE WATER CURE, Especially as practised by Vincent Priessnitz, in Graeffenberg ; compiled and translated from the writings of Charles Munde, Dr. Oertel, Dr. B. Hirschel, and other eye-witnesses and practitioners. By Francis Graeter. Retail price one-dollar. Neatly bound. This little neatly printed volume contains an exposition, in what manner and which cases this Simple agent has been found remedial. It has recently been revived, and is entitled to deserved credit; its use has become the fashion of the day among the higher classes of society in Ger- many and France, benefitting them in cases pronounced sometimes incurable by practitioners of medicine. ENCHIRIDION MEDICUM, OR MANUAL OF THE PRAC- TICE OF MEDICINE. THE RESULT Op FIFTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE. By C. W. Hufeland, M. D., Counsellor of State, Physician in ordinary to the late King of Prussia, Professor in the University of Berlin. From the Sixth German Edition. Translated by C. Bruchhausen, M. D. Revised by Robert Nelson, M. D. Price $3 full bound. This late work has met in its rapid and extensive circulalionin his own country with no more than its just claims to regard. As a body of the Practice of Physic, it abounds in factsand principles of substantial value, the results of close observation, patient discrimination, and sound judgment: its excellence is such as could have been secured only by long experience and freedom from the restraints of scholastic authority. Hufeland is eminently an eclectic philosopher, competent to discharge the responsible trust wilh impartiality and aDility, arising from the vast stores of his clinical knowledge, and the exercise of a mindof great self-reliance. JAHRS NEW MANUAL OF HOMOEOPATHIC PRACTICE, Edited with Annotations, by A. G. Hull, M. D., from the third Parisedition. This is the second American edition of a very celebrated work, written in French, by the eminent Homoeopathic Professor Jahr, and it is considered the best practical compendium of this extraordinary science that hasyet been composed. After a very judicious and instructive introduction, the work presents a table of the Homosopathic medicines, wilh their names in Latin, English, and German; the order in which they are to be studied, with their most im- portant distinctions, and clinical illustrations of their symptoms and effects upon the various organs and functions of the human system.—The second volume embraces an elaborate anal- ysis of the indications in disease, of the medicines adapted to pure, with a complete index, and a glossary of the technics used in the work, arranged so luminously as to form an admirable guide to every medical student. The whole system is here displayed with a modesty of pre- tension, and a scrupulosity in statement well calculated to bespeak candid investigation. This laborious work is indispensable to the students and practitioners of Homoeopathy, and highly interesting to medical and scientific men of all classes. Price in paper $6, full bound $7. THE HOMOEOPATHIC EXAMINER, By A. Gerald Hull, M. D., 2 vols, 1840 and 1841. $10. THE FAMILY GUIDE TO THE ADMINISTRATION OF HOMCEOPATHIC REMEDIES. Third edition, after the second London edition, with additions. Retail price twenty-five cents. ' £13- WM. RADDE, No. 322 Broadway, New-York, General Agent for the Central Homceo- patiiic Pharmacy at,Leipsic, for the United States, respectfully informs the Homoeopathic Phvsirians and the fri«nds of the system, that he has always on hand a good assortment of HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINES, in Tinctures, Dilutions and Triturations-, also Pocket Cases of Medic nes ; Physicians' and Family Medicine Chests; Refined Sugar of Milk, pure Glo- bules &c.; as well as Books, Pamphlets, and Standard Works ou the System, in the English, French and German languages. ORGANON OF HOMCEOPATHIC MEDICINE. SAMUEL IJ.AHNEMANN, _______ ST AUDE SAPERE //<>/$-, I SECOND AMERICAN, FROM THE BRITISH TRANSLATION OF THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION, With Improvements and Additions prom the Fifth, by the North American Aoadmst of the HoMEOPATnic Healing Art. NEW-YORK: WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. LONDON : JAMES LEATH, 5 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, Successor of J. Hurst. 1843. V W B K H /4-8ev 18.4 3 ADVERTISEMENT. One of the first occasions which led to the publica- tion of the present edition of the Organon, was the express desire of Hahnemann that an enlarged and improved English version of it, from the fifth German edition, might appear in the United States. With the view of fulfilling, as much as possible, every just de- mand, the Academy entrusted the revision of the fol- lowing work, to several gentlemen, and would here express their particular obligations to Constantine Bering, M. D., Chas. F. Matlack, M. D., of Philadel- phia, and to Messrs. J. Radcliffe and A. Bauer, for services rendered in its preparation. JNO. ROMIG, M. D.3 Chairman of the Board of Directors. Academy of the Homoeopathic Healing Art, Allentown, Pa. October, 1836. PREFACE TO THE BRITISH EDITION. An accidental interview with a Russian physician, in the year 1828, made me acquainted for the first time with the medical doctrine of homoeopathy ; the principle of which is, that certain medicines when administered internally in a healthy state of the system produce certain effects, and that the same medicines are to be used when symptoms similar to those which they give rise to occur in disease. This doctrine, directly opposite to that which hitherto formed the basis of medical practice in these countries, attracted my attention. I immediately procured Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura, in which the doctrine is partially explained, with the view of investigating the system experimentally, and reporting my observations thereon, free from theory, prejudice, or party. The first enquiry was, whe- ther the proposition similia similibus curentur was true. This investigation was confined to a single substance at a time. To ascertain the effects of sulphate of quinine, healthy individuals were selected, to whom grain doses of the medicine were admi- nistered three times a day. After using it for some days, sto- mach-sickness, loss of appetite, a sense of cold along the course of the spine, rigour, heat of skin, and general perspiration suc- ceeded. Effects similar to these are often observed when this medicine is injudiciously selected in the treatment of disease. It sometimes happens, that the symptoms of ague are aggravated by the prolonged use of sulphate of quinia, and soon after it is withdrawn the disease gradually subsides. The result of ex- periments and observations on this remedy elucidate its homoeo- pathic action. Mercurial preparations, when administered internally, pro- VI duce symptoms local and constitutional so closely resembling the poison of lues venerea that medical practitioners who have spent many years in the investigation of syphilis find it very difficult, nay, in some instances, impossible, (guided by the appearances,) to distinguish one disease from the other. Of all the medicines used in the treatment of lues, mercury is the only one that has stood the test of time and experience. Let us, then, compare the effects of syphilis with those of mercury:— The venereal poison produces on the skin, pustules, scales, and tubercles. Mercury produces directly the same defcedatiohs of the skin. Syphilis excites inflammation of the periosteum and caries of the bones. Mercury does the same. Inflammation of the iris from lues is an every-day occurrence; the same disease is a very frequent consequence of mercury. Ulceration of the throat is a common symptom in syphilis; the same affection results from mercury. Ulcers on the organs of reproduction are the result of both the poison and the remedy ; and furnish another proof of the doctrine similia similibus. Nitric acid is generally recommended in cutaneous diseases; the internal use of this remedy, in a very dilute form, produces scaly eruptions over the surface of the body; and the external application of a solution, in the proportion of one part acid to one hundred and twenty-eight parts of water, will produce inflammation and ulceration of the skin. These observations would lead to the conclusion, that nitric acid cures cutaneous diseases by the faculty it possesses of producing a similar disease of the skin. Nitrate of potash administered internally in small doses, produces a frequent desire to pass water, accompanied with pain and heat. When this state of the urinary system exists as a consequence of disease, or the application of a blister, a very dilute solution of the same remedy has been found bene- ficial. The ordinary effects of hyoscyamus niger are vertigo, deli- Vll rium, stupefaction, and somnolency. Where one or other of these diseased states exists, it yields to small doses of the tinc- ture of this plant. The internal use of hyoscyamus is followed by mental aberration, the leading features of which are jealousy, and irascibility. When these hallucinations exist, this remedy is indicated. Opium in general causes drowsiness, torpor, and deep sleep, and yet this remedy in small doses removes these symptoms when they occur in disease. Sulphur is a specific against itch ; notwithstanding which, when it is administered to healthy individuals it frequently ex- cites a pustular eruption resembling itch in every particular. These observations corroborate the statements of our author as to the value and importance of homoeopathy, and were not the limits of a preface too confined I could bring forward the actual experiments from which these deductions have been drawn. On the subject of small doses of medicines a few observations will suffice. A mixture composed of one drop of hydrocyanic acid and eight ounces of water, administered in a drachm dose, has pro- duced vertigo and anxious breathing. Vomiting has followed the use of the sixteenth of a grain of emetic tartar ; narcotism, the twentieth of a grain of muriate of morphia ; and spirit of ammonia, in doses of one drop, acts on the system as a stimu- lant. On the homoeopathic attenuation of medicines, many are sceptical, and presume that the quantity of the article extant in the dose, cannot produce a medicinal effect. I refer to the pages of the Organon for an elucidation of this proposition, viii and will relate an experiment which may serve to explain the degree of dilution substances are capable of. One grain of nitrate of silver dissolved in 1560 grains of distilled water, to which were added two grains of muriatic acid, a gray precipi- tate of chloride of silver was evident in every part of the liquor. One grain of iodine dissolved in a drachm of alcohol and mixed with the same quantity of water as in the preceding experiment, to which were added two grains of starch dissolved in an ounce of water, caused an evident blue tint in the solution. In these experiments the grain of the nitrate of silver and iodine must have been divided into Tj^a o °f a grain- A few particulars connected with the discoverer and founder of the homoeopathic system of medicine, cannot but prove inte- resting- to the readers of this volume. Samuel Hahnemann was born in 1755, at Misnia, in Upper Saxony. He exhibited at an early age traits of a superior genius ; his school education being completed, he applied himself to the study of natural phi- losophy and natural history, and afterwards prosecuted the study of medicine at Leipsic and other universities. A most accurate observer, a skilful experimenter, and an indefatigable searcher after truth, he appeared formed by nature for the investigation and improvement of medical science. On commencing the study of medicine he soon became disgusted with the mass of contradictory assertions and theories which then existed. He found every thing in this department obscure, hypothetical and vague, and resolved to abandon the medical profession. Hav- ing been previously engaged in the study of chemistry, he deter- mined on translating into his native language the best English and French works on the subject. Whilst engaged in translat- ing the Materia Medica of the illustrious Cullen, in 1790, in which the febrifuge virtues of cinchona bark are described, he became fired with the desire of ascertaining its mode of action. Whilst in the enjoyment of the most robust health, he com- menced the use of this substance, and in a short time was IX attacked with all the symptoms of intermittent fever, similar in every respect to those which that medicine is known to cure. being struck with the identity of the two diseases he immedi- ately divined the great truth which has become the foundation of the new medical doctrine of homoeopathy. Not contented with one experiment he tried the virtues of medicines on his own person, and on that of others. In his in- vestigations he arrived at this conclusion : that the substance employed possessed an inherent power of exciting in healthy subjects the same symptoms which it is said to cure in the sick. He compared the assertions of ancient and modern physicians upon the properties of poisonous substances with the result of his own experiments, and found them to coincide in every respect; and upon these deductions he brought forth his doc- trine of homoeopathy. Taking this law for a guide, he recom- menced the practice of medicine, with every prospect of his labours being ultimately crowned with success. In 1796 he published his first dissertation on homoeopathy in Hufeland's Journal. A treatise on the virtues of medicine appeared in 1805, and the "Organon" in 1810. Hahnemann commenced as a public medical teacher in Leipsic, in 1811, where, with his pupils, he zealously investigated the effects of medicines on the living body, which formed the basis of the Materia Medica Pura which appeared during the same year. Like many other discoverers in medicine, the author of the Organon has been persecuted with the utmost rigour ; and in 1820 he quitted his native country in disgust. In retirement he was joined by several of his pupils, who formed themselves into a society for the purpose of prosecuting the homoeopathic system of physic, and reporting their observations thereon. Several fasciculi detailing their labours have been since pub- lished. b In 1824 the homoeopathic doctrine was embraced by Rau, physician to the Duke of Hesse Darmstadt; by Bigelius, physi- cian to the Emperor of Russia; by Stegemann, and many other names celebiated in medicine. We find, from a published letter of Dr. Peschier of Geneva, that Hahnemann resides at Coethen, (capital of Anhalt-Coethen,) in the enjoyment of perfect health and spirits. He is consulted by patients from almost every nation, who have been attracted by his fame as a physician. Of the doctrine of homoeopathy generally, I have little more to add in this place; time will develope the truth or fallacy of the principle on which it is founded ; but in the mean time let us not lose sight of the fact, that this new system of physic is spreading throughout the continent of Europe with the rapidity of lightning. Germany, Austria, Russia, and Poland, have already done homage to the doctrine, and physicians have been appointed to make a specific trial of its effects, the results of which are unequivocally acknowledged to be of a favourable nature. The writings of the illustrious Hahnemann have ap- peared in five different languages, independent of the present version of his " Organon ;" and in France alone, a translation of this work, from the pen of A. J. L. Jourdan, member of the Academie Royale de Medecine, has reached a fourth edition. Convinced, from reflection and observation, of the value of homoeopathy, the first step in the propagation and dissemination of this doctrine, in Britain, was to obtain an English version of the " Organon." Samuel Stratten. Dublin, June 14th, 1833. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. First impressions commonly determine our judgment of books as well as men. If, on a first interview, a person be repulsive to us, and those who for years have had familiar intercourse with him, admit that we are excusable for first impressions, but nevertheless assure us that he is possessed of very valuable qualities, and that a nearer acquaintance with him may be use- ful to us,—when, in addition, our informants give us a key to a more correct judgment, we are no longer justifiable in main- taining our original impressions. Still more would our opinions be influenced, if, before seeing the person, we were furnished in advance with a short and impartial representation of his character by one who knew him intimately. If this rule of judgment be applicable to persons, wherefore should it not apply to books? The Organon contains much that is peculiar and different from the views hitherto entertained by the prevailing school of medicine. Most readers of the medical profession, therefore, conceive prejudices against it, and fall into the vulgar error of rejecting the whole, merely because they do not justly regard it as a whole,—they reject the main propositions, because they are offended at the subordinate. The reader needs no elaborate introduction to the following work, and it is requisite, perhaps, only to apprise him of the different classes into which its several paragraphs may be divided; and this being done, we shall submit each separate class to his own judgment. The entire contents of the Organon may be easily arranged under the four following divisions, which, indeed, do not occur in the order in which they are here given, but they might easily have been designated in accordance to it, by causing them to Xll be severally printed in a different type. They consist,—I. Of discoveries—experimental propositions, or the results of actual experiment. 2. Of directions or instructions. 3. Of theoreti- cal and philosophical illustration. 4. Of defences and accu- sations. I.—OF DISCOVERIES. Among men of deliberate and acute reflection, no difference of opinion can exist relative to the truth of a discovery which rests upon the basis of actual experiment. When the author appeals to such experiments, they must be led to a repetition of them, and not oppose their own opinions to the dictates of experience; in fine, they have no other way in forming a judg- ment, than that of accurate and careful experiment. It may be said that every charlatan in extolling his nostrums in like manner appeals to experience, and no one is required for that reason to investigate the merits of his compounds ; but it will not be denied that, although the person of the quack may deserve little forbearance, yet the remedy with which he dupes the public, may in some cases prove beneficial. The old school has received many remedies, mercury among others, from the hands of the quack. But, in the Organon, experience is not referred to for the pur- pose of lauding any individual remedy ; far more, it has rela- tion to an entire method of cure. None but a vulgar dealer in calumny of the grosser sort, would attempt to degrade Hahne- mann to a level with the charlatan; because he promulgates his views and the peculiarities of his method, as a learned physi- cian, and in a manner that is sanctioned by custom, and fully recognised in the history of medicine. But his method, as we have already intimated, appeals to experience. Not to mention the example of Brown, we need only refer to that of Broussais, and the reports received strik- ingly in favour of his doctrines, or even to the contra-stimulus of the Italians, which incessantly appeals to the same expe- rience as the test of its value. It is. indeed, desirable that every learned physician—profes- Xlll sors, hospital physicians, and others in prominent stations should carefully study, and so far as the experiments are inno- cuous, prove his new method; nay, Hahnemann and his adher- ents often and ardently desire that every physician would learn, investigate, and prove homoeopathy for himself. But homeopathy is not only a new method, but much more. This method does not rest upon new views, like every other hitherto promulgated, but upon nezo discoveries, which appertain to the departments of natural philosophy, the natural sciences, physiology and biology. The doctrine that every peculiar substance—every mineral, plant, animal, in fact every part of them, or every preparation derived from a preceding one, produces a series of peculiar effects upon the human organism, manifestly belongs to the natural sciences, and only so far to the materia medica as the latter calls these properties into requisition. But it is a science in itself,—a science which treats of the effect of a diversity of substances upon1 the human frame. Whether such a science, in point of fact, be capable of formation, and whether it have any value, can be determined only by experiment. It were equally foolish to deny this without trial, as it was formerly to deny, without exploring, the way which Columbus opened to the west. It would be inexcusable in the present condition of the materia medica, confessedly imperfect, and deficient in all the attributes of a science, to despise this new way of Hahnemann, before knowing, by careful experiment, that it conducts to no- thing better. The doctrine of the preparation of the remedies into the so called dilutions, belongs to natural philosophy, in common with the doctrines of magnetism, electricity, and galvanism. Nor is it more a subject of wonder than the latter—except that these sooner came under investigation by the natural philosopher. The repetition of the new electro-magnetic experiments requires great accuracy ; those concerning the operation of minute doses require just as much, nay even more. To deny the re- sults of the electro-magnetic experiments, previous to repeating them, were ridiculous, and it is equally so to deny the results of XIV these. But no hasty, superficial, partial, or wholly perverted experiments, must be instituted. The doctrine that such dilutions or potences are capable of curing diseases according to the law " similia similibus," is a proposition which belongs to biology, and there finds its con- firmation ; it likewise can only be investigated by experiment, and cannot be estimated without it. The cautious investigator will not pass judgment upon all these discoveries, until he shall have performed a series of rigorous experiments. Then only will he be prepared either to reject or accept the method founded thereon, or, at least, learn the useful part of it. II.—DIRECTIONS. These appertain to the method of cure, are derived from the long continued application of the law previously referred to, and acquire their principal value from its truth. No one can judge of them but he who has tested the truth of the experi- mental propositions, and in doing so, adhered to these directions. By this means only can he become convinced of their great value, which is entirely lost on those who deny the discoveries. We enumerate under this head, directions for the examina- tion of the sick, for the preparation of the medicines, for trying them on the healthy subject, for the selection of the remedies, dietetics, and directions for the psychical treatment. III.—ILLUSTRATIONS. Hahnemann has appended certain theories to the laws of nature discovered by him, by which these laws are illustrated and brought into unison with other laws already acknowledged, or with other theories received as true. This has never been reckoned a subject of reproach to any discoverer. Man will and must seek to illustrate the phenomena which he observes, and bring individual parts into co-aptation—the new into har- mony with that previously known. In this endeavour, not only is he liable to err, but actually Goes err in the great majority of cases; accordingly, few hypotheses and attempts at explanation XV have endured long, and it is a fact of daily acknowledgment, that one hypothesis gives place to another in all sciences. Columbus himself entertained numerous conjectures which time has verified or overthrown. Whether the theories of Hahnemann are destined to endure a longer or a shorter space, whether they be the best or not, time only can determine ; be it as it may, however, it is a matter of minor importance. For my- self, I am generally considered as a disciple and adherent of Hahnemann, and I do indeed declare that I am one among the most enthusiastic in doing homage to his greatness; but nevertheless I declare also, that since my first acquaintance with homoeopathy, (in the year 1821,) down to the present day, I have never yet accepted a single theory in the Organon as it is there promulgated. I feel no aversion to acknowledge this even to the venerable sage himself. It is the genuine Hahne- mannean spirit totally to disregard all theories, even those of one's own fabrication, when they are in opposition to the results of pure experience. All theories and hypotheses have no positive weight whatever, only so far as they lead to new experiments, and afford a better survey of the results of those already made. Whoever, therefore, will assail the theories of Hahnemann, or even altogether reject them, is at perfect liberty to do so; but let him not imagine that he has thereby accomplished a me- morable achievement. In every respect it is an affair of little importance. IV.—DEFENCES. Opinions upon this head are also things of secondary conside- ration, inasmuch as the entire polemical matter is of subordinate estimation in forming a judgment concerning new discoveries. Had Hahnemann the right to defend himself as he has done, and thereby promote the progress of his doctrine, or had he not ? We cannot judge concerning it, but justly commit the decision of the question to future history. The entire polemical part may be stricken out, without in the slightest degree changing the principal matters, or without-having any influence either to ratify or invalidate the doctrine itself. XVI Is there a physician who feels that individual expressions will apply to him, let him take heed to the truth ; but if they do not reach him, then is he unaffected by them. He who is offended at the polemical part, let him reflect that it is the first step towards an unjust estimate of the rest. A just judgment is all that we wish from every reader of the Organon, and to contribute something to this end was the de- sign of these preliminary remarks. Constantine Hering. Academy at Allentown, Perm., August 10,1836. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Page A view of the prevailing allceopathic and palliative medical treatment to the present time. ...........9 Examples of homoeopathic cures performed unintentionally by physicians of the old school of medicine. .......... 45 Persons ignorant of the science of medicine, discovered that the homoeopathic treatment was the most rational and efficacious......73 Some physicians of an early period suspected that this curative method was superior to every other. .........75 ORGANON OF MEDICINE. § 1, 2. The sole duty of a physician is, to restore health in a mild, prompt, and durable manner. Note. It does not pertain to his office to invent systems, or vainly attempt to account for the morbid phenomena in disease......79 § 3, 4. The physician ought to search after that which is to be cured in disease, and be acquainted with the curative virtues of medicines, in order to adapt the medicine to the disease. He must also be acquainted with the means of preserving health..........79,80 § 5. In the cure of disease it is necessary to regard the fundamental cause and other circumstances...........ib. § 6. For the physician, the totality of the symptoms alone constitutes the disease. ............ ib. Note. The fruitless endeavours of the old school to discover the essence of the disease, the prima causa morbi. § 7. To cure disease, it is merely requisite to remove the entire symptoms, duly regarding, at the same time, the circumstances enumerated in § 5. 81 Note 1. The cause which evidently occasions and maintains the disease must likewise be removed....... . , . . ib. Note 2. A symptomatic palliative method of treatment, or that directed against an individual symptom, ought to be rejected.....82 § 8. When all the symptoms are extinguished, the disease is at the same time internally cured......... ib, Note. This is ignorantly denied by (he old school. XV111 Page 6 9. During health, the system is animated by a spiritual, self-moved, vital power, which preserves it in harmonious order. . . . . • <->° § 10. Without this vital, dynamic power, the organism is dead. . . ib. § 11. In disease, the vital power only is primarily disturbed, and expresses its sufferings (internal changes) by abnormal alterations in the sensations and actions of the system. -.....•••• *»• Note. To know how the symptoms are produced by the vital power, is unne- cessary for the purposes of cure. § 12. By the extinction of the totality of the symptoms in the process of cure, the suffering of the vital power, that is, the entire morbid affection, inwardly and outwardly, is removed..........*"• § 13. To presume that disease (non-chirurgical) is a peculiar and distinct something, residing in man, is a conceit, which has rendered allceopathy so pernicious. ............ 84 § 14. Every curable disease is made known to the physician by its symptoms, ib. § 15. The sufferings of the deranged vital power, and the morbid symptoms produced thereby, as an invisible whole, one and the same. . . . ib. §16. It is only by means of the spiritual influence of a morbific agent, that our spiritual vital power can be diseased, and in like manner, only by the spi- ritual (dynamic) operation of medicine, that health can be restored. 85 § 17. The physician has only to remove the totality of the symptoms and he has cured the entire disease..........ib. Nole 1, 2. Explanatory examples. § 18. The totality of the symptoms is the sole indication in the choice of the remedy. ............ 86 § 19. Changes in the general state, in disease, (symptoms of disease) can be cured in no other way, by medicines, than in so far as the latter possess the power, likewise, of affecting changes in the system. ib. § 20. This faculty which medicines have of producing changes in the system, can only be known by observing their effects upon healthy individuals. ib. § 21. The morbid symptoms which medicines produce in healthy persons are the sole indications of their curative virtues in disease. ib. § 22. If experience prove that the medicines which produce symptoms similar to those of the disease, are the therapeutic agents that cure it in the most certain and permanent manner, we ought to select these medicines in the cure of the disease. If, on the contrary, it proves that the most certain and permanent cure is obtained by medicinal substances that produce symptoms directly opposite to those of the disease, then the latter agents ought to be selected for this purpose..........87 Note. The use of medicines, whose symptoms bear no peculiar (affective) relation to the morbid symptoms, but influence the body in a different way, is the exceptionable allasopathic mode of treatment. § 23. Morbid symptoms that are inveterate cannot be cured by medicinal symptoms of an opposite character (antipathic method). ... 88 § 24, 25. The homceopathic method, or that which employs medicines producing symptoms similar to those of the malady, is the only one of which experi- ence proves the certain efficacy. ....... ib, § 26. This is grounded upon the therapeutic law of nature, that a weaker dynamic affection in man is permanently extinguished by one that is simi- lar, of greater intensity, yet of a different origin......89 XIX Page Note. This law applies to physical as well moral affections. § 27. The curative virtues of medicines depend solely upon the resemblance that their symptoms bear to those of the disease......90 § 28, 29. Some explanation of this therapeutic law of nature. ib. Note. Illustration of it. § 30—33. The human body is much more prone to undergo derangement from the action of medicines than from that of natural disease. 91, 92 § 34, 35. The truth of the homoeopathic law is shown by the ineffieacy of non- homoeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases that are of long standing, and likewise by the fact that either of two natural dissimilar diseases co- existing in the body, cannot annihilate or cure the other. . . 92, 93 § 36, I. A disease, existing in the human body, prevents the accession of a new and dissimilar one, if the former be of equal intensity to, or greater, than the latter..............ib. § 37. Thus, non-homoeopathic treatment, which is not violent, leaves the chronic disease unaltered..........ib. § 38, II. Or, a new and more intense disease suspends a prior and dissimilar one, already existing in the body, only so long as the former continues, but it never cures it...........93—95 § 39. In the same manner, violent treatment with allceopathic remedies never cures a chronic disease, but merely suspends it during the continuance of the powerful action of a medicine incapable of exciting symptoms similar to those of the disease, but afterwards, the latter reappears even more intense than before............95—97 § 40, III. Or, the new disease, after having acted for a considerable time on the system, joins itself finally to the old one, which is dissimilar, and thence results a complication of two different maladies, either of which is incapable of annihilating or curing the other.......97,98 § 41. Much more frequently than a superadded natural disease, an artificial one, which is occasioned by the long continued use of violent and unsuitable allceopathic remedies, is combined with the dissimilar prior and natural disease (the dissimilarity consequently rendering it incurable by means of the artificial malady), and the patient becomes doubly diseased. . . 98 § 42. The diseases thus complicated by reason of their dissimilarity, assume different places in the organism to which they are severally adapted. 99 § 43, 44. But very different is the result, where a new disease that is similar and stronger is superadded to the old one, for in that case the former anni- hilates and cures the latter. .......100—101 § 45. This phenomenon explained. ........ ib. § 46. Examples of the cure of chronic diseases, by the accidental accession of another disease, similar and more intense......101—103 § 47—49. Of any two diseases, which occur in the ordinary course of nature, it is only that one whose symptoms are similar to the other, which can cure or destroy it. This faculty never belongs to a dissimilar disease. Hence the physician may learn what are the remedies with which he can effect a certain cure, that is to say, with none but such as are homoeopathic. 103, 104 § 50. Nature affords but few instances in which one disease can homceopathi- cally destroy another, and her remedial resources in this way are encum- bered by many inconveniences.........ib. XX Page & 51. On the other hand, the physician is possessed of innumerable curative -1 AC agents, greatly preferable to those. ....... luo § 52. From the process employed by nature, to which we have just adverted, the physician may deduce the doctrine of curing diseases by no other reme- dies than such as are homoeopathic, and not with those of another kind, (allceopathic), which never cure, but only injure the patient. . . ib. § 53, 54. There are only three possible methods of employing medicines in disease, viz. I. The homoeopathic, which only is salutary and efficacious. . . 106 § 55, II. The allaopalhic or heteropathic........*»• § 56, III. The antipathic or enantiopalhic, which is merely palliative. 107 Note. Remarks on Isopathy, so called. § 57. An exposition of the method of cure where a remedy producing a con- trary effect (contraria contrariis) is prescribed against a single symptom of the disease.—Examples..........ib- § 58. This antipathic method is not merely defective because it is directed against an individual symptom only, but also, because in chronic diseases after having apparently diminished the evil for a time, this temporary abate- ment is followed by a real aggravation of the symptoms. . . . 108 Note. Testimonies of different authors. § 59. Injurious consequences of some antipathic cures. . . . 109—111 § 60. Where a palliative is employed, the gradual increase of the dose never cures a chronic disease, but renders the state of the patient worse. ib. § 61. Wherefore, physicians ought to have inferred the utility of an opposite, and the only beneficial method, namely, that of homoeopathy. . . ib. § 62. The reason that the palliative method is so pernicious, and the homoeo- pathic alone salutary...........112 § 63. Is founded upon the difference which exists between the primary action of every medicine, and the reaction, or secondary effects, produced by the living organism (the vital power). .......ib. § 64. Explanation of the primitive and secondary effects.....ib. § 65. Examples of both...........113 § 66. It is only by the use of the minutest homoeopathic doses, that the reac- tion of the vital power shows itself simply by restoring the equilibrium of health.........., . . . ib. § 67. From these facts, the salutary tendency of the homoeopathic, as well as the adverse effects of the antipathic (palliative) method, become manifest. 114 Note. Cases in which only antipathic remedies are yet only useful. § 68. How far these facts prove the efficacy of the homoeopathic method. ib. § 69. How these facts confirm the injurious tendency of the antipathic method............115—117 Note 1. Contrary sensations cannot neutralise each other in the sensorium of man ; they do not react upon each other like chemical substances that are endowed with opposite properties. Note 2. Explanatory example. § 70. A short analysis of the homoeopathic method......117 § 71. The three necessary points in healing, are:—" 1 j ascertain the malady; 2. The action of the medicines; and 3. Their appropriate application. 118 § 72. A general view of acute and chronic diseases......ib. XXI Page § 73. Acute diseases which are isolated—sporadic, epidemic, acute miasms. 119 § 74. The worst species of chronic diseases are those produced by the unskil- ful treatment of allceopathic physicians. ......120 § 75. These are the most difficult of cure. ......ib. § 76. It is only as there is sufficient vital power yet remaining in the system, that the injury inflicted by the abuse of alloeopathic medicines can be re- paired ; to restore the patient often requires a long time, and the simulta- neous removal of the original malady........121 § 77. Diseases that are improperly termed chronic......ib. § 78. Diseases that properly claim that appellation, and which all arise from chronic miasms. ........... ib. § 79. Syphilis and sycosis..........122 § 80, 81. Psora is the parent of all chronic diseases, properly so called, with the exception of the syphilitic and sycosic......122—125 Note. The names given to diseases in ordinary pathology. § 82. Every case of chronic disease demands the careful selection of a remedy from among the specifics that have been discovered against chronic miasms, particularly against psora..........125 § 83. Qualifications necessary for comprehending the image of the disease. ib. § 84—99. Directions to the physician for discovering and tracing out an image of the disease...........126—132 §100—102. Investigation of epidemic diseases in particular. . . . 133 § 103. In like manner must the source of chronic dieases (not syphilitic) be investigated and the entire image of psora be brought into view. 134 § 104. The utility of noting down in manuscript the image of the disease at the commencement and during the progress of the treatment. . . 135 Note. How physicians of the old school proceed in their examination of the morbid symptoms. § 105—114. Preliminaries to be observed in investigating the pure effects of medicines in the healthy human subject. Primary effect. Secondary effect.............135—139 § ] 15. Alternative effects of medicines........ib. § 116, 117. Idiosyncrasies..........140 § 118,119. Every medicine produces effects different from others. . . 141 Note. One medicine cannot be substituted for another. § 120. Every medicine must therefore be carefully tried as to the peculiarities of its effects............142 § 121—140. Course to be adopted in trying medicines upon other indivi- duals.............142-149 § 141. The experiments which a physician in health makes in his own person are preferable to others..........*"■ § 142. The investigation of the pure effects of medicines by their administra- tion in disease, is difficult..........150 * 143__145. It is by investigating the pure effects of medicines in the healthy subject only, that a true materia medica can be framed. . . 150, 151 § 146. The most appropriate remedial employment of medicines whose pecu- liar effects are known. .........I52 6 147. That medicine which is the most homceopathically adapted, is the most beneficial, and is the specific remedy........ib- XX11 Page § 148. Intimation how a homoeopathic cure is probably effected. . . 153 § 149. The homoeopathic cure of a disease of rapid origin is quickly effected, but the cure of a chronic one requires proportionably a longer time. 153, 151 Note. The distinction between pure homoeopathy and the doctrines of the mongrel set. § 150. Slight indispositions..........I54 § 151. Severe diseases exhibit a variety of symptoms.....w. § 152. A disease with numerous and striking symptoms admits of finding the homoeopathic remedy with more certainty. .....155 § 153. What kind of symptoms ought chiefly to be regarded in selecting the remedy.............*"■ § 154. A remedy that is perfectly homoeopathic, cures the disease without any accompanying ill effects. ......••• ib. § 155. The reason why homoeopathic cures are thus effected. . 156 § 156. Reason of the few exceptions thereto.......ib. § 157—160. The medicinal disease, closely resembling, but rather more in- tense than the primitive one, called also homoeopathic aggravation. 156, 157 § 161. In chronic (psoric) diseases, the aggravation produced by homoeopathic remedies (anti-psorics), occurs from time to time, during several days. 158 § 162—171. Measures to be pursued in the treatment, when the number of known medicines is too small to admit of finding a remedy that is perfectly homoeopathic...........158—161 § 172—184. Measures to be taken in the treatment of diseases that have too few symptoms, (einseitige krankheiten). ..... 161—163 § 185—203. The treatment of diseases with local symptoms ; their cure by means of external applications is always injurious. . . . 163—169 § 204, 205. All diseases properly chronic, and not arising or being supported merely by bad modes of living, ought to be treated by homoeopathic reme- dies appropriate to their originating miasm, and solely by the internal ad- ministration of those remedies........170,171 § 206. Preliminary search after the simple miasm which forms the basis of the malady, or of its complication with a second (sometimes even with a third.).............ib. § 207. Enquiries to be made respecting the treatment previously adopted. 172 § 208, 209. Other enquiries necessary to be made, before a perfect image can be formed of a chronic disease........172,173 § 210—230. Treatment of mental diseases......173—180 § 231, 232. Intermittent and alternating diseases......ib. § 233, 234. Typical intermittent diseases.......181 § 235—244. Intermittent fevers........181—186 § 245—251. The mode of administering the remedies. . . . 186—192 Note. Repetition of doses. § 252—256. The signs of incipient amendment.....193—195 § 257, 258. Blind predilection for favourite remedies, and unjust aversion to others.............198 § 259—261. The regimen proper in chronic diseases. . . . 195__196 Note. Things that are prejudicial therein. § 262, 263. Regimen in acute diseases........196 4 264—266. On the choice of the purest and most energetic medicines. 197 XXU1 Page Note. Changes produced in some substances in the process of preparing them for food. § 267. The mode of preparing the most energetic and durable medicines from fresh herbs. ...........198 § 268. Dry vegetable substances......... 199 §269—271. The homoeopathic method of preparing crude medicinal sub- stances, in order to obtain their greatest medicinal power. . . 199, 200 Note. Preparation of powder for keeping. § 272—274. Only one simple medicine is to be administered at a time. 201 § 275—287. Strengthjof the doses used in homoeopathic treatment. The man- ner of graduating them, or of augmenting or diminishing their power. The developement of their powers.......202—208 § 288—292. What parts of the body are more or less sensible to the action of medicines.............ib. Note. Receiving the highly developed medicines by inhalation or smelling, is the preferable mode of using them. § 293, 294. Animal magnetism (Mesmerism). On the application of positive and negative mesmerism.........210, 211 INTRODUCTION. A VIEW OF THE PREVAILING MEDICAL TREATMENT, ALLCEO- PATHIC AND PALLIATIVE, TO THE PRESENT TIME. From the earliest period of time, mankind have been liable to disease, individually and collectively, arising from causes natural and moral. In the rude and simple forms of primitive life, few maladies appeared, and little skill was requisite to remove them; but as society became more dense, and men formed themselves into states, diseases multiplied, and medical aid became, in the same degree, necessary. Thenceforward, at least after the days of Hippocrates, during a lapse of nearly two thousand five hundred years, men have fondly supposed, that these multiplied and complicated mala- dies were to be removed by methods originating purely in scheming and conjecture. Innumerable opinions on the nature and cure of diseases, have successively been promulged ; each distinguishing his own theory with the title of system, though directly at variance with every other and inconsistent with itself. Each of these refined productions dazzled the reader at first with its unintelligible display of wisdom, and attracted to the system-builder crowds of adherents, echoing his unnatural sophistry, but from which none of them could derive any im- provement in the art of healing, until a new system, frequently in direct opposition to the former, appeared, supplanting it, and for a season acquiring celebrity. Yet none were in harmony with nature and experience—mere theories spun out of a refined imagination, from apparent consequences, which, on account of their subtilty and contradictions, were practically inapplica- ble at the bedside of the patient, and only fitted for idle dispu- tation. By the side of these theories, but unconnected with them all, a mode of cure was contrived, with medical substances of un- 2 to known quality compounded together, applied to diseases arbi- trarily classified, and arranged in reference to their materiality, called Allozopathia. The pernicious results of such a practice, at variance with nature and experience, may be easily imagined. Without seeking to detract from the reputation which many physicians have justly acquired by their skill in the sciences auxiliary to medicine, such as Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Natural History in all its branches, and that of man in particu- lar, Anthropology, Physiology, Anatomy, &c. &c, I shall occupy myself here with the practical part of Medicine only, in order to show the imperfect manner in which diseases have been treated till the present day. It is also far from my intention to pursue that mechanical routine by which the precious lives of our fellow creatures are treated according to pocket-book recipes, volumes of which are still daily appearing before the public, and show, alas ! how frequently, and to what extent, they are resorted to even at the present time. I turn from these, as undeserving of notice, and as a lasting reproach to the Faculty of Medicine. I shall merely speak of the Medi- cal Art, such as it has existed till the present day, and which, on account of its antiquity, is supposed to be founded upon scientific principles. It was the boast of the former schools of medicine, that their doctrine alone deserved the title of " rational art of healing," because it was pretended that they alone sought after and removed the morbid cause, and followed the traces of nature her- self in diseases. Tolle causam! cried they continually; but that was all: they seldom went farther than that vain exclamation. They talked of being able to discover the cause of disease, without succeed- ing in their pretended attempts; for, by far the greater number of diseases being of dynamic origin, as well as of a dynamic nature, and their cause, therefore, not admitting of discovery to the senses, they were reduced to the necessity of inventing one. By comparing, on the one hand, the normal state of the parts of the dead human body (anatomy) with the visible changes which those parts had undergone in subjects that had died°of disease, (pathological anatomy,) and on the other, the functions of the living body (physiology) with the endless aberrations to which they are subject in the various stages of disease, (semeiotics, 11 pathology,) and drawing from thence conclusions, relative to the invisible manner in which the changes are brought about in the interior of man, when in a diseased state, they succeeded in forming an obscure and imaginary picture, which theoretic medicine regarded as the prima causa morbi* which afterwards became the nearest cause, and, at the same time, the immediate essence of the disease, and even the disease itself; although com- mon sense tells us, that the cause of any thing can never be, at the same time, both the cause and the thing itself. How was it then possible, without deceiving themselves, to pretend to cure this yet undiscovered internal cause, or ven- ture to prescribe for it medicines, whose curative tendency was equally for the most part unknown to them, and more especially, to mix up several of those unknown substances in what we term prescriptions 1 However the sublime project, of discovering, a priori, some internal invisible cause of disease, resolved itself (at least among some self-conceited physicians of the old school) into a search, * It •would have been far more suitable to the good sense of mankind, and to the nature of the case, had they, in order to cure, attempted to discover as the causa morbi the originating cause of the disease itself, and had applied a method of treatment which they had found available for diseases springing from that originating cause, and for others of a like origin. For example, the same hydrargyrum is properly applied to every ulcer on the glans penis, after an impure coition, as hitherto with every venereal chancre—if they, I say, had discovered the originating cause of every other chronic (non-venereal) disease, either from a recent or a former infection in a psoric miasm; if for all these they had found a method of cure, with a therapeutic reference to each particular case, by which the whole and each separate chronic case could have been healed; then might they with justice have gained renown, that they in the treatment of chronic diseases were familiar with the only useful and successful causa morborum chronicorum (non venereorum,) and adopting it as a basis, were capable of treating such cases with the best results. But they were incapable of curing the numberless chronic diseases in ages past, as their psoric origin was unknown to them, (a discovery which the world owes to homoeopathia, as well as for an effec- tual method of treatment which it has provided,) and notwithstanding their vaunting that they alone had the primam causam in view in their proceeding; after all their boasted science they had not the remotest sus- picion of their psoric origin, and consequently every chronic disease has been mangled. Y> guided onward by the symptoms, after that which they might presume to be the generic character of the existing malady. They endeavoured to find out whether it was spasm, debility, or paralysis, fever or inflammation, induration or obstruc- tion, in some one of the parts ; excess of blood, (plethora,) or increase or deficiency of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, or nitrogen, in the fluids; exaltation or depression of vitality in the arterial, venous, or capillary system ; a defect of relative proportion in the factors of sensibility, of irritability, or of nutrition. These conjectures, honoured by the existing school with the name of Causal Indication, and regarded by them as the only rational part of medicine, were too hypothetical and fallacious, to be of any permanent utility in practice, and insufficient (even if they had any just foundation) to point out the best remedy in any particular case of disease. It is true, they were flattering to the self-love of the learned inventor, but acting on them only led him farther astray, and showed that there was more of ostentation in the pursuit than any reasonable hope of being able to profit by it, or arrive at the real curative indication. How often has it occurred, that spasm or paralysis appeared to be in one part of the system, while inflammation seemed to be in another? On the other hand, where should we be able to procure cer- tain remedies against each of these pretended general characters of diseases? There could be none, save those which are termed specifics, that is to say, medicines homogeneous to the morbid irritation, (now called homoeopathic,) and whose application has been prohibited by the old school of medicine, as being highly dangerous,t because experience proved that the use of them in * Every physician adopting a treatment of such a general character, however unblushingly he may affect to be an homoeopathist, is and will always remain a generalising allceopathist, as without the most special individualisation, homceopathia has no meaning. f " In cases where experience had revealed the homoeopathic efficacy of medicines, whose mode of operation, however, was inexplicable, the physicians made use of them, and relieved themselves from all further embarrassment by declaring them to be specific. Thus, by an unmean- ing name that was applied to them, all necessity for further reflection was superseded. But homogeneous excitements, that is to say, specifics or homoeopathies, had, for a long time previously, been forbidden, as exercising an extremely dangerous influence." Rau, Ueber das homceop. Heilverfahren Heidelberg, 1824. p. 101, 102. 13 such powerful doses as had been usually administered was pernicious in maladies where the aptitude to undergo homoeoge- neous irritation existed to a great extent. Besides this, the old school never once thought of administering those medicines in very small or in extremely minute doses. Thus, no one ven- tured to cure in the direct and most natural way, by using homogeneous and specific medicines, nor was it possible to do so, because the fullest extent of their effects was unknown, and in that state remained, and had it been otherwise, it would have been impossible to have guessed out remedies so very applica- ble by such generalising opinions. However, the old school of medicine, aware that it was more consistent with reason to pursue a straightforward path than attempt a circuitous one, still imagined they could arrest disease by a removal of the supposed morbid material cause. In the theo- retic researches after the image which they were to form to themselves of the disease, as well as in their pursuit of the curative indication, it was almost impossible for them to divest themselves of this idea of materiality, or be induced to consider the nature not only of material but spiritual organism, as being so potent in itself that the changes in its sensations and vital movements (which are called diseases) are principally, and almost solely, the result of dynamic influence, and could not be produced by any other cause. The old school regarded all the solids and fluids which had become changed by disease, (those in-normal substances, tur- gescent or secreted,) as the exciting cause of the disorder; or, at least, on account of their supposed reaction, they were con- sidered to be the cause which kept up disease, and this latter opinion is adhered to, even at the present day. This theory first inspired them with the idea of accomplish- ing causal cure, by using every means in their power to expel from the body that imaginary and supposed material cause of disease. Hence arises the continual practice of evacuating bile in cases of bilious fever* by emetics,—the system of prescribing * The Court Physician, Rau, (loc. cit. p. 176), at a time when he was not yet fully initiated into homoeopathic medicine, but when, however, he entertained a perfect conviction of the dynamic origin of these fevers, was in the habit of curing them without any evacuating medicines what- ever merely by one or two small doses of homoeopathic medicines. In his work, he relates two remarkable instances of cure. 14 vomits in the so-named foul stomach,*—the diligence in purging away mucus and intestinal worms, where there is paleness of the countenance, ravenous appetite, pains in the stomach, or intu- * In a sudden affection of the stomach, with frequent nauseous eructa- tions, as of spoiled food, (sulphuretted hydrogen,) accompanied with depression of mind, cold at the feet, hands, &c, physicians, till the pre- sent time, were in the habit of attending only to the degenerated con- tents of the stomach. A powerful emetic must fetch it out entirely. This object was usually effected by the use of tartrate of antimony, with or without a mixture of ipecacuanha. But did the patient recover his health as soon as he had vomited ? No! these gastric affections of dynamic origin are commonly produced by a disturbed state of mind, (grief, fright, anger,) cold, exertion of the mind or body immediately after eating, and sometimes even after a temperate enjoyment of food. Neither the tartrate of antimony, nor the ipecacuanha, are suited to the purpose of removing this dynamic aberration, and the revolutionary vomiting which they excite is equally unserviceable. Besides provoking a manifestation of the symptoms of disease, they strike one blow more at the health of the patient, and the secretion of bile becomes deranged; so that if the patient did not happen to be of a robust constitution before, he must feel greatly indisposed for several days after the pretended causal cure, notwithstanding the violent expulsion of the entire contents of the stomach. But if, instead of those powerful and oft injurious evacuating medicines, the patient should only smell once to a globule of sugar the size of a mustard seed, impregnated with the thirtieth dilution of Pulsatilla, which infallibly restores the order and harmony of the whole system, and that of the stomach in particular, then he is cured in the space of two hours. If any eructation* still take place, they are nothing more than air, without taste or smell; the contents of the stomach are no longer vitiated, and at the next meal the patient recovers his accustomed appetite, his health, and his air of repose. This is what ought to be denominated "real cure," because it has destroyed the cause. The other is an imaginary one, and only fatigues and does injury to the patient. Even a stomach overloaded with indigestible food never requires a medicinal emetic. In such a case, nature knows full well how to dis- encumber herself of the excess, by the spontaneous vomitings which she excites, and which may at all times be aided by mechanical provocation, such as tickling the fauces. By this means we avoid the accessary eflects which result from the operation of emetics, and a little coffee (without milk) afterwards suffices to hasten the passage of any matters into the intestines, which the stomach may still contain. But if, after having been filled beyond measure, the stomach does not possess, or has lost the irritability necessary to produce spontaneous vomiting; and the patient, tormented by acute pain of the epigastrium, does not experience the slightest desire to vomit, in such a state an 15 mescence of the belly in children,* the letting of blood in cases of hemorrhage,! and especially bleeding of all kinds,* as their chief indication in inflammatory cases, and, in imitation of a blood- emetic would only cause a dangerous or mortal inflammation of the intestines; whereas, slight and repeated doses of a strong infusion of coffee, would reanimate the depressed irritability of the stomach, and place it in a condition to evacuate of itself, either upwards or down- wards, the substances contained in its interior, however considerable the quantity may have been. Here, again, the treatment which ordinary physicians pretend to direct against the cause, is out of place. It is the custom, at the present day, when gastric acid becomes super- abundant, (which is frequently the case in chronic diseases,) to adminis- ter an emetic to relieve the stomach of its presence. But the following morning, or a few days after, the stomach contains just the same quantity, if not more. On the other hand the pains cease of themselves, when their dynamic cause is attacked by an extremely small dose of dilute sulphuric acid, or with another antipsoric remedy, homoeopathic with the various symptoms. It is thus that, in the plans of treatment, which the old school say are directed against the morbific cause, the favourite object is to expel with trouble, and to the great detriment of the patient, the material product of the dynamic disorder, without exerting them- selves in the least to find out the dynamic source of the evil, in order to vanquish it homoeopathically, as well as to annihilate every thing that might emanate from it, and thus treat the disease in a rational manner. * Symptoms that depend solely upon a psoric diathesis, and which easily yield to (dynamic) mild antipsoric remedies, without either emetics or purgatives. t Though most morbid hemorrhages depend solely on a dynamic change of the vital powers, still the old school assign a superabundance of blood as their cause, and never fail to prescribe bleeding, in order tr> relieve the body of this supposed excess of the juice of life. The dis- astrous consequences which frequently result from this mode of treat- ment, such as prostration of the powers, tendency to, and even typhoid state itself, they ascribe to the malignity of the disease, which they are- then often unable to subdue: in short, though the patient may fall a sacrifice, they, nevertheless, consider that they have acted in conformity to the adage, causam tolle, that is. according to their common remark, " we have done every thing that could possibly be done—let the conse- quence now be what it may !!" I Though the living human body may, perhaps, never have contained; one drop of blood too much, still the old school regard a supposed plethora, or superabundance of blood, as the principal material cause of hemorrhages and inflammations, and which ought to be attacked by bleeding, cupping, and leeches. This they call a treatment of the' cause, and a rational mode of proceeding. In fevers with an inflamma- tory character, as well as in acute pleurisy, they even go so far as to* 16 thirsty physician of Paris, the application to the parts affected, of a frequently fatal number of leeches. By this mode of proceed- ing, they think they pursue the causal indication, and treat the regard the coagulable lymph that exists in the blood, (and which they call the buffy coat,) as the peccant matter, which they do their best to evacuate, as much as possible, by repeated bleedings, although it often occurs that this crust becomes thicker and tougher in appearance, at every fresh emission of blood. In this manner, when inflammatory fever cannot be subdued, they often bleed the patient till he is near death, in order to remove this buffy coat, or the pretended plethora, with- out ever suspecting that the inflamed blood is nothing more than the pro- duct of the acute fever, the inflammatory immaterial (dynamic) irrita- tion ; and that this latter, the sole cause of the disturbance that has taken place in the vascular system, may be arrested by a homoeopathic remedy, such, for example, as a globule of sugar impregnated with the juice of aconite of the decillionth degree of dilution, avoiding the vegetable acids; so that the most violent pleuritic fever, with all its attendant alarming symptoms, is cured in the space of twenty-four hours at far- thest, without loss of blood, or any antiphlogistic whatever, (if a little blood, by way of experiment, be now taken from the vein, it will no longer exhibit any traces of inflammatory crust,) whereas, another patient, similar in every respect, and treated according to the pretended rational mode of the old school, if he escape death after numerous bleedings and unspeakable suffering, often languishes yet entire months, reduced and exhausted, before he can stand upright, if he is not taken off in the interval (as is frequently the case) by a typhus fever, a leucophlegmacy, or a pulmonary consumption, the common result of this mode of treatment. He who feels the steady pulse of a patient an hour before the shivering comes on, which always precedes acute pleurisy, will be much surprised when, two hours after, (the fever having set in,) they try to persuade him that the violent plethora which then exists, makes repeated bleed- ing necessary; and he asks himself, by what miracle could those pounds of blood, which are now to be taken away, and which he had, two hours before, felt beating with a tranquil movement, have effected an entrance into the arteries of the patient? There could not be an ounce of blood more in his veins than he possessed two hours before, when he was in good health. Thus, when the allceopathic physician prescribes venesec- tion, it is not at all superfluous blood that he draws from the patient attacked with acute fever, because this liquid could not possibly exist in too great quantity; but he deprives him of a portion of the normal blood necessary to his existence, and to the re-establishment of health;—a grievous loss, which it is no longer in his power to repair, and he thinks, notwithstanding, to have acted according to the axiom tolle causam, to which he gives so wrong an interpretation, whilst the sole and true cause of the malady was, not a superabundance of blood, which could 17 patient in a rational manner. They likewise suppose, that by removing a polypus by ligature, extirpating a tumefied gland, or destroying the same by suppuration, produced by local irritation, by dissecting out the insulated cyst of a steatomatous or meliceretous tumour, operating for aneurism, fistula lachry- malis, or fistula in ano. amputating a cancerous breast, or a limb where the bone had become carious, &c. &c. to have cured the maladies in a radical manner, and destroyed their cause. They imagine the same thing when they make use of their repellent remedies, and dry up old ulcers in the legs, by astringents, oxides of lead, copper and zinc, accompanied, it is true, with purgatives, which only weaken, without diminish- ing the fundamental evil; when they cauterise chancres, de- stroy condylomata locally, drive back itch from the skin, by sulphur ointment, lead, mercury, or zinc; and, finally, when they cure ophthalmy, with solutions of lead or zinc, and drive away pain from the members by the use of opodeldoc, volatile liniment, or fumigations of cinnabar and amber. In all such cases, they think they have annihilated the evil, triumphed over the disease, and performed a rational treatment directed against the cause. But mark what follows! New forms of diseases, which infallibly manifest themselves sooner or later, and which, when they appear, are taken for fresh maladies, being always worse than the primitive affection, evidently refute the theories of the old school. These ought to undeceive never exist, but a dynamic inflammatory irritation of the vascular system, as is proved by the permanent and speedy cure which may be effected in similar cases, by administering one or two incredibly minute doses of the juice of aconite, which is homoeopathic with this irritation. The old school err not less, in recommending partial bleedings, and still more so, in the application of leeches in great numbers, when treating local inflammation, after the manner of Broussais. The palliative relief which they afford at first, is not crowned by a rapid or perfect cure; the weakness and valetudinarian state to which the parts, that have been thus treated, remain a prey, and sometimes even the whole body, suffi- ciently prove how erroneous it is to attribute local inflammation to local plethora; and how deceitful are the consequences of such bleedings, when this inflammatory irritation, apparently local, can be destroyed in a prompt and permanent manner, by a small dose of aconite, or, accord- ing to circumstances, of belladonna, a mode by which the malady is speedily and effectively cured, without having recourse to bleedings, which nothing can justify. 3 18 them, and prove that the evil has an immaterial cause, the deeper concealed, because its origin is dynamic, and it cannot be destroyed but by dynamic power. An hypothesis, which the schools of medicine generally entertained until a recent date, (and, I might even say, until the present time,) is that of morbid or peccant matter in diseases, however subtile that matter may be supposed to be. The blood and lymphatic vessels were to be disencumbered of this matter by the exhalants, the skin, the kidneys, and the salivary glands ; the chest was to be freed from it by the trachial and bronchial glands; the stomach and the intestinal canal by vomiting and alvine dejections—to be able to say that the body was cleansed of the material cause which excited the disease, and that they had accomplished a radical cure accord- ing to the principle—tolle causam ! By incisions made in the diseased body, in which, for years together, foreign substances are inserted, producing tedious ulcers (issues and setons), they would draw off the materia peccans, from the (purely dynamically) diseased body, as dregs escape by a faucet from a filthy cask. By perpetual blisters (cantharides and mezereum), they also think to abstract this peccant matter, and thus thoroughly purify the system. By such inconsiderate and unnatural treatment, the exhausted patient is commonly brought into a condition totally incurable. I grant it was more convenient for human incapacity to sup- pose, that in the maladies which presented themselves for cure, there existed some morbid principle, of which the mind could conceive the materiality, especially as the patients willingly lent themselves to an hypothesis of this kind. By admitting this, they had nothing further to do than to administer a sufficient quantity of medicines capable of purifying the blood and the fluids, of exciting urine and perspiration, promoting expectora- tion, and scouring out the stomach and intestines. This is the reason that all the authors on materia medica, who have appeared since Dioscorides up to the present day, say nothing of the peculiar and special action of individual medicines, but content themselves, after enumerating their supposed virtues in 19 any particular case of disease, with saying, whether they pro- mote urine, perspiration, expectoration, or the menstrual flow, and particularly if they have the effect of emptying the ali- mentary canal upwards or downwards, because the principal tendency of the efforts of practitioners has, at all times, been the expulsion of a morbid material principle, and of a quantity of acrid matter, which they imagined to be the cause of disease. These, however, were vague dreams, gratuitous suppositions, hypotheses destitute of foundation, skilfully invented for the convenience of therapeutic medicine, which flattered itself that it would have an easier task to perform in contending against morbid material principles. (Si modo essent!) But the essence of diseases, and their cure, will not bend to our fancies and convenience ; diseases will not, out of deference to our stupidity, cease to be dynamic aberrations, which our spiritual existence undergoes in its mode of feeling and acting— that is to say, immaterial changes in the state of health. The causes of disease cannot possibly be material, since the least foreign substance* introduced into the blood vessels, how- ever mild it may appear to us, is suddenly repulsed by the vital power, as a poison ; or, where this does not take place, death itself ensues. Even when the smallest foreign particle chances to insinuate itself into any of the sensitive parts, the principle of life which is spread throughout our interior, does not rest until it has procured the expulsion of this body, by pain, fever, suppuration, or gangrene. And, in a skin disease of twenty years' standing, could this vital principle, whose activity is indefatigable, suffer patiently, during twenty years, an exan- themic material principle (the poison of tetter, scrofula, or gout) to exist in the fluids ? What nosologist has ever seen one of those morbid principles, of which he speaks with so much con- fidence, and upon which he presumes to found a plan of medical treatment ? Who has ever been able to exhibit to the view, the principle of gout, or the virus of scrofula ? * Life was suddenly endangered by injecting a little pure water into a vein. See Mullen, in Birch, History of the Royal Society, Vol. IV. Atmospheric air introduced iuto the veins has occasioned death. See J. H. Voigt, Magazin fur den neusten Zustand der Naturkunde, Vol. I. iii. p. 25. Even the mildest liquids, introduced into the veins, have placed life in danger. See Autenrieth, Physiologie, II. § 784. 20 Even when a material substance, applied to the skin, or introduced into a wound, has propagated disease by infection, who can prove (what has so often been affirmed in our Patho- geny) that the slightest particle of this material substance pene- trates into our liquids or becomes absorbed ?* It is in vain to wash the genitals with care and promptitude, such precaution will not protect the system from the venereal virus. The least breath of air emanating from a patient labouring under small- pox is sufficient to produce that formidable disease in a healthy child. How much of this material principle—what quantity in weight—would be requisite for the liquids to imbibe, in order to produce, in the first instance, syphilis, which will continue during the whole term of life ; and, in the second, the small- pox, which often rapidly destroys life amidst a suppurationt almost general ? * A young girl, of Glasgow, eight years of age, having been bitten by a mad dog, the surgeon immediately cut out the part, which, nevertheless, did not save the child from an attack of hydrophobia thirty-six days after, of which she died at the end of two days. Med. Comment, of Edinb. Dec. 2, vol. ii. 1793. t In order to account for the great quantity of putrid fecal matter, and fetid ichorous discharge, which arises in disease, and to represent these substances as the cause that calls forth, and keeps up, the morbid state, although, at the moment of infection, nothing material had been seen to enter into the body, they had recourse to another hypothesis, which ad- mitted, that certain very minute contagious principles act upon the body as a ferment, bringing the humours into the same degree of corruption with themselves, and converting them in this manner into a similar fer- ment, which keeps up the disease. But, by what purifying decoctions do they expect to free the body from a ferment that is constantly renewed, and expel it so completely from the mass of fluids, that not a single particle may remain, which, according to the admitted hypothesis, if any did remain, would infallibly corrupt the humours afresh, and re- produce, as at first, new morbific principles 1 Thus, according to the manner of the old school, it would be impossible ever to cure these diseases. Here we see to what absurd conclusions the most artful hypo- thesis will lead, if founded in error. The most firmly rooted syphilis, when the psoric affection, with which it is often complicated, has been removed, may be cured by one or two small doses of a solution of mer- cury, diluted to the decillionth potence, whereby the general syphilitic corruption of the humours is (dynamically) corrected in a permanent and constitutional manner. 21 Is it possible in these two cases, or in others which are analogous, to admit that a morbific principle, in a material form, could have introduced itself into the blood ? It has often happened that a letter, written in the chamber of a patient, has communicated the same contagious disease to the person who read it. Can we entertain the opinion, that any thing material entered into the humours in this instance? But why all these proofs ? How often have we seen that an offensive or vexatious word has brought on a bilious fever which endangered life;—a superstitious prophecy of death, actually occasion death at the very epoch predicted ; afflicting news, or an agreeable surprise, suddenly suspend the vital powers ? Where is there, in any of these cases, the morbific material principle, which entered, in substance, into the body, which produced disease and kept it up, and, without the expul- sion or destruction of which, by medicines, all radical cure would be impossible ? The supporters of an hypothesis so gross, as that of morbific principles, ought to blush, that they have so thoughtlessly overlooked and disregarded the spiritual nature of our life, and the spiritual dynamic power of morbific agents, and have thus reduced themselves to mere scouring physicians, who, instead of curing, destroy life by their attempts to drive out of the body peccant matters which never had an existence there. In diseases, the excretions which are often so disgusting, could they be the actual material which produced the malady, and which kept it up ?* Are they not rather the product of the disease itself; that is to say, of the pure dynamic derangement which the constitution has undergone. With such erroneous ideas of the material origin and essence of disease, it is by no means surprising, that, in all ages, the obscure as well as the distinguished practitioner, together with the inventors of the most sublime theories, should have for their principal aim, the separation and expulsion of a supposed morbid material, and that the indication most frequently established, was that of dividing this material, rendering it movable, and expelling it by the saliva, the bronchial mucus, * If this were true, it would be sufficient to blow the nose, and wipe it clean, to effect a speedy and infallible cure of all species of coryza, even the most inveterate. 22 the urine, and perspiration ; purifying the blood by the action of herbal decoctions, (which are supposed to effect this process at the command of the physician,) thus unloading it of acrid matter and impurities which it never contained; drawing off the imaginary principle of the disease mechanically, by means of setons, cauteries, permanent blisters ; and above all, by the expulsion of the peccant matter, as they termed it, through the intestinal canal, by laxatives and purgatives, and to add to their importance they were dignified with the high sounding titles of aperients and dissolvents. All of these were so many attempts to remove a hostile material principle which never did and never could have existed. Now, if we admit that—which is an established fact; namely, that with the exception of those diseases brought on by the introduction of indigestible or hurtful substances, into the alimentary canal and other organs,—those produced by foreign bodies penetrating the skin, &c.,—there does not exist a single disease that can have a material principle for its cause—on the contrary, all of them are solely and always the special result . of an actual and dynamic derangement in the state of health; how contradictory, then, must that method of treatment, which depends upon the expulsion* of this imaginary principle, appear * There is, apparently, some necessity for the expulsion of worms in the so called worm-disease. But even this appearance is false. A few lumbrici are found in some children, and ascarides in a greater number. But the greater part of either one or the other is owing to a general affec- tion (psoric) connected with an unhealthy mode of living. If the' regi- men be ameliorated, and the psoric affection homceopathically cured, which is easier to be performed at this age than at any other period of life, there will remain but few or no worms at all, or at least, the children are no longer incommoded by them; whereas, on the other hand, they promptly appear again, in great numbers, after the administration of mere purgatives, even combined with worm seed. " But the tape-worm this monster, created for the torment of human nature, must certainly be driven out with all manner of force." Yes, at times, he will be driven out, but beneath what sufferings and danger ! I should not like to have upon my conscience the death of all those who have fallen sacrifices to the violence of purgatives directed against this worm, or the long years of debility, which they, who escaped death, must have dragged out. And how often does it not occur, that after having repeated these purga- tives, so destructive to life and health, during several years successively, the animal is either not driven out at all, or is re-produced ! How 23 to every reasonable man, since no good can result from it, in treating the principal diseases of mankind, viz. the chronic, but, on the contrary, much mischief? No one will deny that the degenerate and impure substances which appear in diseases, are any thing else than the mere pro- duct of disease itself, which the system can get rid of, in a forci- ble manner, frequently too forcible, without the aid of evacuating medicines, and that they are re-produced so long as the disease - continues. These substances often appear to the true physi- cian, in the shape of morbid symptoms, and aid him in dis- covering the nature and image of the disease, which he after- wards avails himself of, in performing a cure by means of homoeopathic agents. then, if there be no necessity at all for seeking to expel and destroy the taenia, by means so violent and cruel, and which place the life of the patient in such imminent danger ! The different species of taenia are only found in patients labouring under a psoric affection, and when the latter is cured, they instantly disappear. Until the cure is accom- plished, they live, without being a source of great inconvenience to the patient, not exactly in the intestines, but amid the residue of the aliments, where they exist without doing injury, and find what they require for their nourishment. As long as this state of things continues, they do not touch the coats of the intestines, or do any harm to the body that contains them; but the first moment that an acute disease attacks the patient, the contents of the intestines become insupportable to the animal, which turns itself about and irritates the sensitive part of the entrails, exciting a species of spasmodic cholic, which adds greatly to the sufferings of the invalid. In the same manner, the child is restless, turns and pushes, while the mother is sick, but floats quietly in the amniotic fluid, without inconvenience to her, when she is well. It may be observed here, that the symptoms which manifest themselves at this epoch, with persons who have the solitary worm within them, are of such a nature, that often the smallest dose of tincture of male-fern-root (filex mas.) speedily effects their eradication in a homoeopathic manner, because it puts an end to that part of the malady occasioned by the dis- turbed state of the animal: the tape-worm, finding itself once more at ease continues to exist upon the intestinal substances, without incom- moding the patient in any very painful degree, until the anti-psoric cure is so far advanced that the worm no longer finds the contents of the intestinal canal fit for his support, and he voluntarily quits it for ever, without any purgatives being employed. 24 But the most skilful among the present followers of the former school of medicine do not wish it to be known, that the chief aim of their mode of treatment, is the expulsion of material morbid principles. To the numerous evacuants which they employ, they apply the name of derivatives, and in so doing, pretend that they do nothing more than imitate the nature of the disordered system, which, in her efforts to re-establish health, distinguishes fever by sweats and urine; pleurisy by bleedings at the nose, perspiration, and mucous expectoration; other diseases by vomiting, diarrhoea, and hemorrhoidal flux ; articular pains, by ulcers on the legs ; angina by salivation, &c, or by metastasis and abscesses which she forms in parts distant from the seat of the disease. Accordingly, they think they can do nothing better than imitate nature, and thus they adopt an indirect mode of treat- ment in the majority of diseases. They follow the traces of the diseased vital power left to itself, and proceed in an indirect manner,* by applying stronger heterogeneous irritation to parts distant from the seat of the disease, exciting and keeping up evacuations by the organs dissimilar to the tissues affected, in order to turn the course of the evil, in some degree, towards this new position. This derivative system was, and still continues, one of the chief curative indications of the prevailing school. By this imitation of self-helping nature, vis medicatrix natures, as it is termed by others, they try to excite by forcible means (in the parts least affected, and which can best support the malady which the medicines provoke) fresh symptoms which extinguish the primitive disease,t by assuming the appearance of a crisis, and thus allow the powers of self-helping nature to operate a gradual resolution.}: * Instead of extinguishing the evil promptly, and without delay, as in the homoeopathic mode of treatment, by the application of dynamic medicinal powers directed against the diseased parts of the system. f As if any thing immaterial could be drawn off! Yet they suppose a morbid material, be it as subtile as it may. X Diseases that are moderately acute, are the only ones that terminate quietly, when they have reached the natural term of their career, whether weak allceopathic remedies be applied to them or otherwise : the vital powers, when reviving, gradually substitute the normal state in the place 25 They recommend diaphoretics, diuretics, venesection, setons, and cauteries, and above all, excite irritation of the alimentary canal, so as to produce evacuations from above and more espe- cially from below, all of which were irritatives, and to these they applied the names of aperients and dissolvents.* In aid of this derivative system they likewise employ another which bears great affinity to it, and which consists of counter- irritants : lambVwool applied to the bare skin, foot-baths, nauseants, the cure by infliction of the torments of hunger upon the intestinal canal, (abstinence,) applications that excite pains, inflammation, and suppuration in the neighbouring or distant parts, such as armoracia, sinapisms, blisters, mezereum, the seton, Autenrieth's ointment, (ointment of emetic tartar,) the moxa, actual cautery, the acupuncture, &c. And in this, they again follow the example of pure nature, which, left to herself, endeavours to get rid of the dynamic disease by pains which she causes to arise in the distant regions of the body, by metas- tasis, and abscesses : by cutaneous eruptions or suppurating ulcers ; but all her efforts, in this respect, are useless, where • »• the disease is of a chronic nature. Thus it is evident that it was no well-digested plan, but merely imitation, that led the old school to these helpless, per- nicious, and indirect methods of cure, both derivative and counter-irritant; and induced them to adopt plans of treatment so inefficacious, debilitating, and injurious, in ameliorating and dissipating disease, which arouse another and worse evil to - occupy the place of the former. Can we call that healing which rather deserves to be called destroying ? for the name of cure could never be applied to such a result. They were con- of the in-normal. But in every acute disease, and in those that are chronic, which constitute the great majority of diseases to which man is subject, this resource no longer comes to the aid of simple nature, and the old school of medicine. The efforts of the vital powers, and the imitative attempts of allceopathy, are not potent enough to effect a resolu- tion ; and all that results from them is a truce of short duration, during which the enemy gathers his forces to re-appear, sooner or later, in a more formidable shape than ever. * This very denomination likewise announces a supposition on their part of the presence of some morbific substance which was to be dissolved and expelled. 4 26 tented to follow nature in the efforts which she makes, and which are only crowned with partial success* in acute diseases of a mild form. * The ordinary school of medicine regarded the means which the organism employs to relieve itself, in those patients who make no use of medicines, as perfect models of imitation; but they were greatly mis- taken. The miserable and very imperfect attempts which the vital powers make to assist themselves in acute diseases, is a spectacle that ought to excite man to use all the resources of his learning and wisdom, to put an end, by a real cure, to this torment which nature herself in- flicts. If nature cannot cure, homceopathically, a disease already exist- ing in the system, by the production of a fresh malady similar to it, (sec. 43—46.) a thing not often in her power to effect, (sec. 50.) and if the system, deprived of all external succour, stands alone to triumph over a malady that has just broken out, (her resistance is totally power- less in chronic miasms) we see nothing but painful and often dangerous efforts of the constitution to save itself at all hazards, efforts of which death is most frequently the result. Just as little as we can witness what is passing in the interior of our bodies in a healthy condition, and as certainly as these processes remain concealed from us, as they lie open to the sight of Omniscience— just so little can we perceive the internal operations of the ainmal frame, when life is disturbed by disease. The action that takes place in diseases manifests itself only by external symptoms, through the me- dium of which alone, our system expresses the troubles that take place in the interior; so that, in each given case, we never once discover which are those among the morbid symptoms, that owe their origin to the primitive action of the disease, and those which are occasioned by the re-action of the vital powers endeavouring to rescue themselves from danger. Both are confounded before our eyes, and only present to us, (reflected on the exterior) an image of the entire malady within; since the fruitless efforts by which nature, abandoned to herself, makes, to put an end to the malady, are also sufferings which the whole frame under- goes. This is the reason why those evacuations which nature usually excites at the termination of diseases, that have been rapid in their attacks, and which are called crises, often do more harm than good. What the vital powers do in these pretended crises, and in what manner they are accomplished, are mysteries to us, as well as every other inter- nal action which takes place in the organic economy of life. One thing, however, is certain, which is, that in the course of these efforts, there are particular parts that suffer more or less, and which are sacrificed to the safety of others. These operations of the vital power proceeding to combat an acute disease, solely in conformity to the laws of the organic constitution, and not according to the inspirations of a reflecting mind, are, for the most part, merely a section of alloeopathy. In order to free 27 They did nothing more than imitate the preserving vital powers abandoned to their own resources, which depending solely upon the organic laws of the body, only act in virtue of these laws, without reasoning or reflecting upon their actions. They copied nature, who could not, like an intelligent surgeon, bring together the gaping lips of a wound, and reunite them by the first intention; who, in an oblique fracture, can do nothing, however great may be the quantity of osseous matter which exudes, to adjust and attach the two ends of the bone; who, not knowing how to tie up a wounded artery, suffers a man full of strength and health to bleed to death; who, igno- rant of the art of reducing a dislocation, renders its reduction in a very short time impossible, by reason of the swelling which she excites in all the neighbouring parts; who, in order to free herself from a foreign body that had penetrated the transparent cornea, destroys the whole eye by suppuration ; who, in a strangulated hernia, cannot break the obstacle but by gangrene and death; who, finally, in dynamic diseases, by changing their form, often renders the state of the patient worse than it was before. Besides, this unintelligent vital power admits into the body, without hesitation, the greatest scourge of our earthly existence, the source of countless diseases which have afflicted the human species for centuries past—that is to say, chronic the organs primitively affected, by means of a crisis, it increases the activity of the organs of secretion in order to lead off the evil from the former to the latter: thence result vomiting, diarrhoea, plentiful flow of urine, sweats, abscesses, &c, and the nervous powers, attacked dynami- cally, seek in some degree to unload themselves by matetial products. The animal economy, abandoned to its own resources, cannot save itself from acute diseases, but by the destruction and sacrifice of one part of the system itself; and even where death does not ensue, the har- mony of life and health is restored only in a slow and imperfect manner. The great debility of those organs which have been exposed to the attacks of the malady, as well as that of the entire body, after this spon- taneous cure, meagreness, &c, are sufficient testimonies of the truth of what we have asserted. In short, the whole proceedings by which the system delivers itself from the diseases with which it is attacked, only exhibit to the observer a tissue of sufferings, and show him nothing which he can, or ought to, imitate, if he truly exercises the art of healing. 28 miasms, such as psora, syphilis, and sycosis. And, far from being able to relieve the system of any one of these miasms, she does not even possess the power of ameliorating them; but, on the contrary, suffers them quietly to continue their ravages until death comes to close the eyes of the patient, after long years of grief and suffering. In a matter so important as that of healing,—in a profession that requires so much intelligence, judgment, and skill, how could the old school (which was accounted rational) blindly take the vital power for its best instructor and guide; how could it venture, without reflection, to imitate the indirect and revo- lutionary acts which the vital power performs in disease—and. finally, follow it as the best and most perfect of models, whilst reason, that magnificent gift of the Deity, has been granted to us, in order that we may go infinitely beyond it, in the aid which we are to bring to our fellow mortals? When the prevailing school of medicine, in the accustomed application of their repellent and derivative systems of cure, (which have no other basis than an inconsiderate imitation of the natural, automatic powers of life,) attack the healthy or- o-ans, and inflict on them pains more acute, than those of the disease itself against which they are directed—or, what hap- pens more frequently, force evacuations, which dissipate in pure loss the strength and the juices;—their aim is to direct towards the parts which they irritate, that morbid action which life developed in the organs that were primitively affected, and thus violently uproot the natural disease, by exciting a stronger heterogeneous disease in the more healthy parts—that is to say, by making use of indirect and circuitous means, which exhaust the powers and occasion great suffering.* * Daily experience shows us how unsuccessful these manoeuvres are in chronic diseases. In very few cases is a cure effected. But can they call that a victory, where instead of attacking the enemy in front, hand to hand, and terminating the difference by his death, they content them- selves with setting every part of the country behind him in flames, cut- ting off retreat and destroying all around. By such means they may certainly succeed in breaking the courage of their adversary, but their object is still unattained; the foe is not destroyed, he is still there; and when his magazines are replenished, he again rears his head, more fero- cious than he was before.—The enemy, I say, is not destroyed, but the 29 It is true, that by these heterogeneous attacks, the disease, when it is an acute one, (and consequently cannot be of long duration,) transports itself to parts distant and dissimilar to those which it at first occupied; but it is by no means cured. There is nothing in this revolutionary mode of treatment that has a direct or immediate connection with the organs primi- tively diseased, or which deserves to be called a cure. By abstaining from such grievous attacks upon the life of the other parts of the system, the acute disease would often dissipate itself even more rapidly, leaving less suffering behind, and without occasioning so great a consumption of the powers. Besides, neither the mode of proceeding which is followed by simple nature, nor its allceopathic imitation, will bear a compa- rison with the direct, dynamic, homoeopathic treatment, which, without wasting the vital powers, extinguishes the disease in a prompt and rapid manner. But in the great majority of diseases, and in chronic affec- tions, these stormy, debilitating, and indirect treatments of the old school scarcely ever produce any good. All that they can effect is, a suspension, for a few days, of some incommodious symptom or another, which returns immediately, when nature has become accustomed to the distant irritation; the disease then returns more grievous than before, because the repellent pains* and the ill-advised evacuations have lessened the energy of the vital powers. poor innocent country is so ruined that it will scarce recover itself in a long lapse of time. This is precisely what happens to allceopathy, in chronic diseases, when, without curing the malady, it undermines and destroys the system by indirect attacks against innocent organs, which are dis- tant from the seat of the latter. These are the results of such injurious attempts. * What favourable consequences have ever resulted from issues, so frequently established, diffusing their fetid odours around? Even though they appear during the first fortnight, by their irritating power, slightly to diminish a chronic disease as long as they continue to keep up con- siderable pain, they afterwards, when the body is accustomed to the pain, have no other effect than that of weakening the patient, and thus open- ing a still wider field to the chronic affection. Or, are there yet physi- cians in the nineteenth century who could regard these issues as outlets for the escape of the peccant matters ? It appears that some such prac- titioners do exist! 30 While the greater number of allceopathic physicians, in their general imitation of the salutary effects of nature, abandoned to her own resources, thus introduced into the practice of medi- cine those derivative systems which they termed useful, and which every one varied according to the fancied indications suggested by his own ideas; others, aiming at a still higher object, promoted with all their skill the tendency which the vital powers exhibit in diseases, to relieve themselves by evacua- tions, and opposing metastasis, and endeavoured in some degree to aid them, by promoting these derivations and evacuations, imagining that by this mode of treatment they might justly arrogate to themselves the names ministri naturce. Because it often happens, in chronic diseases, that the evacuations which nature excites, bring relief in cases where there are acute pains, paralysis, spasms, &c, the old school imagined that the true method of curing disease was by favouring, keeping up, or even increasing the evacuations. But they never discovered that all those pretended crises, those evacuations and deriva- tions produced by nature abandoned to her own exertions, only procure palliative relief for a short period, and, that far from contributing towards a real cure, they, on the contrary, aggra- vate the internal primitive evil, by consuming the strength and the juices. No one has ever seen those efforts of simple nature effect the durable recovery of a patient, nor have those evacua- tions, excited by the system,* ever cured a chronic disease. On the contrary, in all cases of this nature, after a short relief, (the duration of which gradually diminishes,) the primitive affec- tion is manifestly aggravated, and the attacks return stronger and more frequent than before, although the evacuations do not cease. In the same manner, nature, abandoned to her own resources in internal chronic diseases which threaten life, can only bring relief by exciting the appearance of external local symptoms, in order to turn away danger from the organs indispensable to existence, and transport it, by metastasis, to those which are not so: such attempts of an unintelligent, inconsiderate but energetic vital force, have a tendency towards any thing but a real cure; they are nothing more than palliatives, short stag- * Not more effectual are those artificially produced. 31 nations imposed on the internal disease, at the sacrifice of a great, portion of the liquids and strength, without the primitive affection losing any thing of its intensity. Without the aid of homoeopathic treatment, all they can do, at farthest, is to delay for a time that death which is inevitable. The Alloeopathy of the old school greatly exaggerated the efforts of pure nature. Falsely judging them to be truly salu- tary, they sought to promote and develop them still farther, hoping, by these means, to destroy the entire evil and effect a radical cure. When, in a chronic disease, the vital power appeared to improve this or that grievous symptom of the in- ternal state, for example, by means of a humid exanthema, then the self-styled minister of nature applied a blister, or some other exutory, upon the suppurating surface, to draw (duce natura) a still greater quantity of humour from the skin, and-thus assist nature in the cure, by removing from the body the morbific principle. But sometimes, when the action of the remedy was too violent, the humid tetter already old, and the body too sus- ceptible of irritation, the external affection increased consider- ably, without any advantage accruing to the primitive evil, and the pains, rendered still more acute, deprived the patient of sleep, diminished his strength, and often brought on a bad de- scription of feverish erysipelas. Sometimes, when the remedy acted with more gentleness upon the local disease, (which was perhaps yet recent,) it exercised a kind of external homoeopathy upon the local symptoms which nature had produced upon the skin, in order to relieve the internal malady; thus renewing the latter, to which still greater danger was attached, and exposing the vital powers by the suppression of the local symptoms, to the excitement of others of a graver nature, in other and more noble parts. The patient then was attacked with a dangerous ophthalmy, deafness, spasms in the stomach, epileptic convul- sions, suffocation, fits of apoplexy, mental derangement, &c* The same pretext of assisting the vital powers in their curative efforts, led the minister of nature, when the malady caused an afflux of blood into the veins of the rectum, or the anus, (blind piles,) * These are the natural results of repelling such local symptoms— results, which the allceopathic physician often regards as diseases that are perfectly new and of a different character. 32 to have recourse to the repeated application of leeches in great numbers, in order to open an issue to the blood in that quarter. The emission of blood procured an amendment, sometimes so slight, as to be scarce deserving of notice; but, at the same time, it weakened the body and gave rise to a yet stronger con- gestion towards the extremity of the intestinal canal, without effecting the slightest diminution of the primitive malady. In almost every case, where the diseased vital powers endeavoured to evacuate a little blood by vomiting, expectora- tion, &c, in order to diminish the severity of a dangerous interna] affection, they immediately hastened (duce natura) to give all the assistance in their power to these pretended salu- tary efforts of nature, and blood in abundance was extracted from the vein; which never failed to prove injurious in the end, and to weaken the body to a manifest extent. And still more frequently, with the intent of assisting nature, in chronic nausea, they excited powerful evacuations of the stomach and administered plentiful emetics; but never with any good result, and seldom without frightful and even dan- gerous consequences. To appease the internal malady in a slight degree, the vital powers sometimes excite indolent enlargements of the external glands. The minister of nature thinks he is serving the divinity to whom he is devoted, by bringing these tumours to a suppuration, by the use of frictions and warm applications, in order to plunge the knife into the abscess when it is arrived at maturity, and cause the peccant matter to flow externally.(?) But experience has a thousand times proved the interminable evils that always result from this mode of treatment. Because the alloeopathist has often seen severe sufferings, in chronic diseases, somewhat relieved by spontaneous nocturnal perspiration, or by certain natural dejections of liquid matter, he thinks himself bound to follow these indications of nature; he likewise thinks it his duty to second the labours which he sees carried on in his own presence, by prescribing a complete sudorific treatment, or the continued use, during several years, of what he calls gentle laxatives, in order to relieve the patient of the disease that torments him with more speed and certainty. But this mode of treatment never produces any thing but a 33 contrary result, that is to say, it always aggravates the primi- tive disease. Thus the alloeopathist, yielding to the force of this opinion, which he has embraced without scrutiny, notwithstanding the absence of all foundation, persists in seconding* the efforts of the diseased vital powers, and augmenting the derivations and evacuations, which never lead to the attainment of his object, but rather to the ruin of the patient. He never discovers that local affections, evacuations, and apparent derivations, (which are effects excited and kept up by the vital powers abandoned to their own resources, in order to afford some slight relief to the primitive disease,) are of themselves a constituent part of the ensemble of the signs of the malady, against the totality of which there could be no real, salutary, and curative remedy, save a medicine whose effects were analogous with the pheno- mena occasioned by its action upon man when in a state of health, or, in other terms, a homoeopathic remedy. As every thing that simple nature performs to relieve herself in acute, and more particularly, in chronic diseases, is highly imperfect, and is actually disease itself, it may readily be conceived that the efforts of art labouring to assist this imper- fection do still greater injury, and in acute maladies, at least, * The old school, however, often permitted themselves to follow an inverse method of treatment, that is, when the efforts of nature, tending to relieve the internal malady by evacuations, or by exciting local external symptoms, manifestly injured the patient, they employ against them all the powers of repellents; and thus combat chronic pains, insomnolency, and diarrhoea of long standing, with strong and hazardous doses of opium; vomitings, by effervescing mixtures; foetid perspiration of the feet, by cold foot-baths and astringent fomentations; eruptions of the skin, with preparations of lead and zinc; uterine hemorrhages, by injections of vine- gar; colliquative perspirations, by alum curd; nocturnal seminal emis- sions, by the use of camphor in large quantities; sudden glow of heat over the face and body, by nitric, sulphuric, and vegetable acids; bleed- ings at the nostrils, with dossils of lint dipped in alcohol or astringent liquids; ulcers on the lower extremities, by oxides of lead, zinc, &c. But thousands of facts attest the melancholy consequences that result from this mode of treatment. The alloeopathist, both in speaking and writing, boasts of being a rational physician, of searching out the latent cause of disease and always of effecting radical cures; but it is evident that a treatment founded on isolated symptoms must always be detrimental to the patient. 5 34 they cannot remedy that which is defective in the attempts of nature, because the physician, incapable of following the con- cealed paths by which the vital power accomplishes its crises, could only operate upon the exterior by means of energetic reme- dies, whose effects not only do less good than those of nature, abandoned to herself, but on the contrary, are more perturbating and destructive to the powers. Even this imperfect relief, which nature effects by means of derivations and crises, he cannot attain by following the same path; do what he will, even the miserable succour which the vital powers can procure, when abandoned to their own resources, is infinitely beyond the skill of the alloeopathist. By a scarification of the pituitary membrane, it has been tried to produce bleeding at the nose, in imitation of natural nasal hemorrhage, to relieve, for example, an attack of chronic cephalalgy. In such a case, a quantity of blood might be drawn from the nostrils sufficient to weaken the patient; but the relief would be far less than that afforded at another time, when the vital instinctive powers, of their own accord, caused only a few drops of blood to flow. One of those so called critical perspirations or diarrhoeas, which the incessant activity of the vital powers excites, after any sudden indisposition arising from vexation, fright, cold, or injury from improper lifting, is far more efficacious in allaying, momentarily at least, the acute suffering of the patient, than all the nauseous sudorifics or purgatives, contained in the shop of an apothecary. This is proved beyond a doubt by daily experience. However, the vital power, which is devoid of intelligence and judgment, and which cannot act of itself, but according to the organic disposition of our bodies, was not given to us, that we should follow it as our best guide in the cure of diseases, much less that we should imitate, in a servile manner, its imperfect attempts to restore health by joining to it a treatment more opposed than its own to the object it has in view, for no other purpose than that of sparing ourselves the study and reflection necessary to the discovery of the true art of healing, and finally to place a bad copy of the inefficacious aid which nature affords when abandoned to her own resources, in the room of the most noble of all human arts! What reflecting man 35 would copy the efforts of nature in curing disease ? These very efforts are the disease itself, and the morbidly affected vital en- ergy is evidently the source of the malady. It follows then, that to imitate or to suppress these efforts must in one case augment them, or in the other, render them dangerous by suppression, and the alloeopathist does both; these are their pernicious doings, who boast of following the rational plan of healing. No ; that innate power of man which directs life in the most perfect manner whilst in health, whose presence is alike felt in every part of the system, in the sensitive as in the irritable fibre, and which is the indefatigable spring of all the normal functions of the body, was not created for the purpose of aiding itself in disease. It does not exercise a system of cure that is worthy of imitation, that is to say, a work of refection and judg- ment, and which, when the automatic and unintelligent vital powers have been disordered by disease, and in-normal action produced, knows how to modify them by appropriate remedies, so that after the disappearance of the new disease produced by the medicine, (which soon takes place,) they return to their normal state, and to their appointed function of maintaining health in the system, without having undergone, during this conversion, any painful or debilitating attacks. Homceopathic medicine teaches us the mode by which we are to arrive at this result. A great number of patients treated according to the methods of the old school, which have just passed in review before us, escaped from diseases, not in chronic disorders, (non-venereal.) but in those maladies that were acute, and which are less dan- gerous. This, however, was effected by such painfully circuitous means, and frequently in a manner so imperfect, that no one could say the cure was performed by the influence of an art that acted mildly in its mode of treatment. In cases where there was no imminent danger, acute diseases were sometimes repressed by means of venesection, or sometimes by the sup- pression of one of the principal symptoms, by a palliative enantiopathic remedy (contraria contrariis), or sometimes sus- pended by irritants and revulsants applied to parts removed from the diseased organ, until the course of their natural revo- 36 lution was ended—that is to say, they opposed them by indirect means, exhausting the strength and the juices; so that the greater part of what was necessary to be done, in order to remove the disease and repair the losses which the patient had undergone, remained to be performed by the self-preserving vital power. The latter, then, had not only to subdue the acute natural disease, but also to overcome the results of an ill directed mode of treatment. In casual cases, this vital power was to exercise its own energies to bring back the functions to their normal rhythm, which could only be effected imperfectly and slowly, and with great difficulty. In acute diseases it is doubtful whether this treatment, of the existing school, really facilitates or abridges the cure by the aid' of nature, since neither of them act but in an indirect manner, and their derivative and counter irritating modes of cure, wound the system more profoundly, and lead to a still greater dissipation of the vital powers. The old school practise yet another method of cure, which they call " exciting and strengthening,"* (by excitantia, nervina, tonka, confortanlia, roborantia.) It is surprising that they should boast of this mode of treatment. Has it ever succeeded in removing the weakness which a chronic disease so often engenders, augments, and keeps up, by prescribing (as it has so frequently done) etheric Rhine wine, or spirituous Tokay ? As this treatment was not able to cure the chronic disease, (the source of the debility,) the strength of the patient decreased in proportion as they made him take more wine, because the vital powers, in their re-action, oppose relaxation to artificial excitements. Did cinchona, or any of the mistaken, ambiguous and perni- cious substances, which collectively bear the name of Amara, ever restore strength in these cases which are of such frequent occurrence ? These vegetable products, which they pretended were tonic and strengthening in all circumstances, together * This method is, properly speaking, enantiopathic, and I will again touch uponit in the course of the Organon, (sec. 59.) 37 with the preparations of iron, did they not add fresh sufferings to the old ones, by reason of their peculiar morbific action, without being able to remove the debility which depended on an unknown malady of long standing ? The so called unguenia nervina, or the other spirituous and balsamic topical applications, did they ever diminish in a dura- ble manner, or even momentarily, incipient paralysis of an arm or leg, (which arises, as is frequently the case, from a chronic disease,) without curing the cause itself? Or have electric and galvanic shocks ever produced, in such cases, any other results than those of gradually increasing the paralysis of the muscular irritability and the nervous* susceptibility, and finally rendering the paralysis complete ? Have not the highly boasted excilaniia and aphrodisiaca, ambergris, smelts, tincture of cantharides, truffles, cardamoms, cinnamon, and vanilla, constantly ended with changing the gradually declining power of the virile faculties (which is always caused by some unobserved chronic miasm) into total impotence ? How could they boast of an acquisition of strength, and ex- citement, which lasts only a few hours, when the results that follow bring on an opposite state (which is lasting) according to the laws of all palliatives ? The little good that the excitantia and roborantia did to the patient treated for acute maladies, according to the old method, was a thousand times overbalanced by the ill effects which the use of them produced in chronic diseases. The alloeopathists not unfrequently commence the treatment of a chronic disease, by blindly administering their so called * An apothecary (in Jever) had a voltaic column, the gradual strokes of which gave temporary relief to persons afflicted with deafness. Soon these shocks caused no more effect, and it was necessary, in order to produce the same results, to render them yet stronger, until, in their turn they likewise became inefficacious: after this, the most powerful shocks only had the faculty, at the commencement, of restoring the hearing of the patient for a few hours, but finished by leaving him a prey to total deafness. 38 alterative remedies (alterantia), among which the mercurials (calomel, blue pill, corrosive sublimate, mercurial ointments) occupy a conspicuous place. These sovereign remedies of theirs, even in cases not venereal, are often given in large and long continued doses, until their deleterious tendency becomes manifest in the ruined health of the patient. Great alterations are certainly produced by the destructive operation of mercury upon improper parts, but they are such as finally exhaust the constitution of the patient. Cinchona, in all genuine marsh intermittents, is a homoeo- pathic remedy, and when not prevented by pre-existing psora, a specific. But by prescribing it in large and long continued doses in every epidemic intermittent, the ignorance of the old school is abundantly shown ; for, the disease almost every year assuming a different character, requires for its removal a dif- ferent homoeopathic remedy, which in a single dose, or, at most, a very few minute doses, effects a radical cure in the course of a few days. Now, because such epidemic fevers have their periodical attacks (type of the disease), while it is these which an alloeopathist chiefly regards in an intermittent, and while the bark is considered as the only remedy for its removal, if he can but suppress the type of the disease by means of enormous doses of that medicine, or its more costly extract, quinine, he supposes, forsooth, that the patient is cured. But he is really left in a worse condition after such suppression of the periodical returns of his fever, than before. We behold him moving slowly along, his countenance sallow, his breathing asthmatic, the hypochondres distended, the abdominal viscera diseased, frequently the abdomen itself and limbs in a bloated condi- tion,—without healthful appetite or refreshing sleep, weak and dispirited, he is discharged from the hospital in this state of complicated suffering—as cured! not unfrequently years of elaborate homoeopathic treatment are required, we will not say to restore his health, but to rescue this radically vitiated, this artificially cachectic patient from an untimely death. It is cause of gratification to the old school, when by the antipathic virtues of valerian, they can convert the stupor of nervous fever into a degree of exhilaration for a few hours. But this transient excitement being once over, it can be repro- duced only by a repetition of still larger doses of the same 39 medicine, and even the largest soon lose their effect. Their primary operation being that of a stimulating palliative, the entire vital energies, during the secondary effects of the medi- cine, become paralysed, and thus, by means of the rational treatment of the old school, the speedy dissolution of the patient is rendered inevitable. As certainly mortal as is the issue of the case, the followers of the old system do not perceive it, and the patient's death is ascribed by them to the malignity of his disease. Digitalis purpurea is a still more formidable palliative in chronic diseases, and its virtues are highly extolled by the old school for allaying the rapid and irritated pulse (purely symp- tomatic) in these maladies. Though the use of this potent enantiopathic medicine, may, at first, in many instances, abate the frequency of the pulse for some hours, yet it will shortly afterwards become more frequent than ever. To retard its velocity again, the medicine is repeated in a larger dose; it is again availing, yet for a shorter period; until by frequent repe- tition, even in augmented doses, it loses its effects altogether. The pulse not now being restrained by the secondary or con- secutive effects of digitalis, becomes more rampant than before its use, and too rapid to be reckoned. Among the train of con- sequences may also be observed, loss of sleep and appetite and diminution of strength, until, finally, if these disasters do not terminate in incurable mania, death becomes the patient's only refuge ! Such, then, was the treatment which the allceopathic physi- cian practised on his patients. The latter, therefore, were obliged to yield to necessity, since they could derive nothing better from the other physicians who had drawn their informa- tion from the same fallacious source. The fundamental cause of chronic diseases, (non vene- real) and the mode by which they could be cured, remained * Notwithstanding all this, Hufeland, the representative of the old school, with great self-complacency, in his pamphlet on homceopathia, p. 22, praises the digitalis for the purpose of repressing morbid fre- quency of the pulse: his words are, " None will deny" (but experience does) "that a too vehement circulation can be removed by digitalis" (?) permanently? does he mean removed? what! by the use of an heroic enantiopathic remedy 1 Poor Hufeland ! 40 unknown to these practitioners, who prided themselves on their own remedies, which they said were directed against the cause. How was it possible for them to cure the immense number of chronic diseases by their indirect methods, their im- perfect imitations of the efforts of an automatic vital power. which were never destined to become models of a treatment to be followed in medicine ? They regarded that which they believed to be the character of the malady, as the cause of the disease itself, and accordingly, directed their pretended radical cures against spasm, inflamma- tion (plethora), fever, general or partial debility, pituita, putridity, obstructions, &c. which they imagined they could remove with the aid of their antispasmodics, antiphlogistics, tonics, irritants, antiseptics, dissolvents, resolutives, derivatives, evacuants, and other repellent medicines, known to themselves only in a superficial manner. But indications of so vague a nature were insufficient to dis- cover those medicines which are of real utility, particularly so in the materia medica of the old school, which, as I have else- where shown,* depended mostly upon mere conjecture, and on false conclusions ab usu in morbis, mixed.up with fraud and falsehood. They continued to act with the same degree of coldness in matters that were still more hypothetical; against the deficiency or superabundance of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen in the fluids; against the exaltation or diminution of irritability, sensibility, nutrition, arterial congestion, venous congestion, capillary congestion, astheny, &c, without being acquainted with a single remedy by which they could reach so visionary an object. It was ostentation that induced them to attempt these cures which could not be advantageous to the patients. Every appearance of treating disease effectively and to the purpose, disappears in their manner of associating various medicinal substances to constitute what they call a prescription, and time has not only rendered this association sacred, but has converted it into a law. They place at the head of this recipe, under the name of basis, a medicine that is not at all known in * In the treatise " On the Sources of the Old Materia Medica," in the third part of my Materia Medica. 41 regard to the extent of its medicinal effects, but which they think ought to subdue the principal character of the disease admitted by the physician ; they add to this, one or two sub- stances equally unknown in respect of their operation on the system, and which they destine either to fulfil some accessory indication, or to increase the action of the basis ; they then add a pretended corrective, of whose special medicinal virtues they have no better knowledge ; they mix the whole together, some- times adding either a syrup, or a distilled water, which likewise possess distinct medicinal properties, and imagine that each ingredient of the mixture will perform, in the diseased body, the part that has been assigned to it by the imagination, with- out allowing itself to be disturbed or led astray by the other articles that accompany it:—a result which no one could reasonably expect. One of these ingredients destroys, either partly or wholly, the operation of the other, or gives to it, as well as to the remainder, a different mode of action altogether which had never been thought of, so that the effects calculated on could not possibly take place. This inexplicable enigma of mixtures often produces that which neither was nor could have been expected, a new modification of the disease, which is not observed amidst the tumult of symptoms, but which becomes permanent by the prolonged use of the prescription. Conse- quently, a factitious malady, joining itself to the original one, aggravates the primitive disease ; or if the patient does not use the same prescription for a long time, if one or several be crowded upon him successively, composed of different ingre- dients, greater debility will at least ensue, because the substances which are prescribed in such a case have generally little or no direct reference to the principal malady, and only make a use- less attack upon those points against which its assaults have been the least directed. Though the action of every medicine on the human body should already have been discovered, still the physician who writes the prescription does not often know the effect of one in an hundred. Mixing several drugs together, some of which are already compounds, and their separate effects imperfectly known, in order that such a confused mixture should be swallowed by the patient in large and frequent doses, and then 6 42 to expect from it a certain curative effect, is an absurdity evident to every unprejudiced* and reflecting individual. The * Even among the ordinary schools of medicine, there have been persons who discovered the absurdity of mixing medicines, although they themselves followed this eternal routine which their own reason condemned. Marcus Herz expresses himself (Hufeland's Journal, II. p. 33,) on this subject in the following terms:—"When we wish to remove inflammation, we do not employ either nitre, sal ammoniac, or vegetable acids, singly, but we usually mix up several antiphlogistics, or use them altogether at the same time. If we have to contend against putridity, we are not content with administering, in large quantities, one of the known antiseptics, cinchona, mineral acids, arnica, serpentaria, &c, to attain the object we have in view; but we prefer mixing up several of them together, having a greater reliance upon their combined action; or, not knowing which of them would act most suitably in the existing case, we accumulate a variety of incompatible substances, and abandon to chance the care of producing, by means of one or the other of them, the relief we designed to afford. Thus, it is rare that, by the aid of a single medicine, we excite perspiration, purify the blood, (?) dissolve obstructions, provoke expectoration, or even effect purgation. To arrive at these results, our prescriptions are always complicated ; they are scarcely ever simple and pure: consequently they cannot be regarded as experiments relative to the effects of the various substances that enter into their composition. In fact, we learnedly establish, among the medicines in our recipes, a hierarchy, and we call that one the basis to which we (properly speaking) confide the effect, giving to others the names of adjuvants, corrigents, &c. But it is evident that mere arbi- trary will has, for the most part, been the occasion of such a classifica- tion. The adjuvants contribute, as well as the basis, to the entire effect, although, in the absence of a scale of measurement, we cannot determine to what degree they may have participated. The influence of the cor- rigents over the virtues of the other medicines, likewise, cannot he wholly indifferent; they must either increase or diminish them, or give them another direction. The salutary change which we effect by the aid of such a prescription, ought then always to be considered as the result of its whole contents taken collectively, and we can never come to any certain conclusion upon the individual efficacy of any one of the ingredients of which it is composed. In short, we are but too slightly acquainted with that which is essential to be known of all medicines, and our knowledge with regard to the affinities which they enter into, when mixed up together, is too limited for us to be able to say, with any degree of certainty, what will be the mode or degree of action of a sub- stance even the most insignificant in appearance, when introduced into the human body, combined with other substances." 43 result is consequently the reverse of that which they expect to take place in so precise a manner; changes certainly take place, but not one among them is either good or conformable to the object that is to be attained. I should like very much to see that which is called a cure, by a man working thus blindly in the bodies of his fellow- creatures. The restoration of health is to be expected only by cherish- ing the due activity of the vital principle yet remaining with the patient, by means of remedies suitable for that purpose, and not by debilitating the system, secundum artem, almost to the extinction of life. This is a method, however, not unfrequent with the old school on commencing the treatment of chronic diseases : they operate by means of medicines which harass the patient, expend the animal fluids, exhaust the strength, and shorten life ! can they be said to save while they thus destroy ? and can they be said to exercise any other than a hurtful art ? They act, lege artis, as contrary to their professed aim as possi- ble, and practice «;\Wa, that is to say, the very reverse of what they ought to do. Can they deserve commendation ? In modern times, indeed, this school have gone to great excesses in frustrating the end of all true medical treatment, as every impartial observer must acknowledge, and as physicians of their own, (when their consciences are awakened, like that of Krueger Hansen,) will confess before the world. Observation, reflection, and experience, have unfolded to me, that, in opposition to the old allceopathic method, the best and true method of cure is founded on the principle, similia similibus curenlur. To cure in a mild, prompt, safe, and durable manner, it is necessary to choose in each case a medicine that will excite an affection similar (o/*o»o» w«0os) to that against which it is employed. Until the present time no person has ever inculcated this 44 homoeopathic mode of treatment, and yet more, no one has ever put it into practice. But if this is the only true method, (of which every one may be convinced with myself,) we ought to discover sensible traces of it in every epoch of the art, although its true character may have been unknown during thousands of years. And such has, in reality, been the case.* In all ages, the diseases which have been cured by medicines, in a prompt, perfect, durable, and manifest manner, and which were not indebted for their cure to any accidental circumstance, or to the accomplishment of the natural revolution of the acute disease, or to the circumstance of the bodily powers having gradually regained a preponderance by means of an allceopathic or antipathic treatment, (for being cured directly differs greatly from being cured indirectly;) these diseases, I say, have yielded, although without the knowledge of the physician, to a homoeo- pathic remedy, that is to say, to a remedy in itself capable of exciting a morbid state similar to that whose removal it effected. Even in an effectual cure that had been performed by the aid of mixed medicines, (of which there are but few examples,) it has been discovered, that the medicine whose action domi- nated over that of the others was always of a homoeopathic nature. But this fact presents itself to us still more evidently in certain cases, where physicians performed a speedy cure by the aid of a single remedy, in violation of the custom that admitted none other but mixed medicines in the form of a pre- scription. Here we see, to our astonishment, that the cure was always the effect of a single medicinal substance, capable of itself to produce an affection similar to that under which the patient laboured, although the physician did not know what he was doing, and only acted thus in forgetfulness of the precepts * For Truth, like the infinitely wise and gracious God, is eternal. Men may disregard it for a time, until the period arrives when its rays, according to the determination of Heaven, shall irresistibly break through the mists of prejudice, and, like Aurora and the opening day, shed a beneficent light, clear and inextinguishable, over the generations of men. 45 of his own school. He gave a medicine, where, according to the established laws of therapeutics, he should have adminis- tered exactly a contrary one, and by these means alone his patients were promptly cured. I shall here relate some examples of these homoeopathic cures, which find a clear and precise interpretation in the homoeopathic doctrine now discovered and acknowledged, but which we are by no means to regard as arguments in favour of the latter, because it stands firm without the aid of any such support.* The author of the treatise on epidemic diseases (Iwi^ujwv) (attributed to Hippocrates), at the commencement of lib. 5. mentions a case of cholera morbus that resisted every remedy, and which he cured by means of veratrum album alone, which, however, excites cholera of itself, as witnessed by Forestus, Ledelius. Reimann, and many others.t * If, in the cases which will be cited here, the doses of medicine exceeded those which the safe homoeopathic doctrine prescribes, they were, of course, very naturally attended with the same degree of danger which usually results from all homoeopathic agents when administered in large doses. However, it often happens from various causes which cannot at all times be discovered, that even very large doses of homoeo- pathic medicines effect a cure, without causing any notable injury; either from the vegetable substance having lost a part of its strength, or because abundant evacuations ensued which destroyed the greater part of the effects of the remedy; or, finally, because the stomach had received at the same time other substances, which, acting as an antidote, lessened the strength of the dose. f P. Forestus, xviii. obs. 44.—Leoelius, Misc. not. cur. dec. iii. ann. i. obs. 65.—Reimann, Brest. Samml. 1724, p. 535. In this, and in all the examples that follow, I have purposely abstained from reporting either my own observations or those of my adherents upon the special effects of each individual medicine, but merely those of the physicians of times past. My object for acting in this manner, is to show that the art of curing homoeopathically might have been discovered before my time. 4G The English sweating sickness, which first exhibited itself in the year 1485, and which, more murderous than the plague itself, carried off in the commencement, (as testified by Willis,) ninety-nine patients out of a hundred, could not be subdued until such time as they had learned to administer sudorifics to patients. Since that time, as Sennertus* observes, few persons died of it. A case of dysentery, which lasted several years, threatening the patient with inevitable death, and against which every other medicine had been tried without success, was, to the great surprise of Fischer,t (but not to mine,) cured in a speedy and permanent manner by a purgative administered by an empiric. Murray, (whom I selected from numerous other authorities,) together with daily experience, inform us, that among the symptoms produced by the use of tobacco, those of vertigo, nausea, and anxiety, are the principal. Whereas Diemerbroeck,i when attacked with those very symptoms of vertigo, nausea, and anxiety, in the course of his close attendance on the vic- tims of epidemic diseases in Holland, removed them by the use of the pipe. The hurtful effects which some writers (among others Georgi§) ascribe to the use of the agaricus muscarius, by the inhabitants of Kamtschatka, and which consist of tremors, convulsions, and epilepsy, became a salutary remedy in the hands of C. G. Whistlingll, who used this mushroom with suc- cess in cases of convulsions accompanied with tremor ; likewise in those of J. C. Bernhardt,** who used it with success in a species of epilepsy. * De Febribus, iv. cap. 15. t In Hufeland's Journal fur Practische Arzneikunde, vol. x. iv. p. 127. X Tract, de Peste, Amsterdam, 1665, p. 273. § Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs, (A Descrip- tion of all the Nations of the Russian Empire,) pp. 78, 267, 281, 321, 329, 352. || Diss, de Virt. Agaric. Muse. Jena, 1718, p. 13. ** Chym. Vers, und Erfahrungen, Leipzig, 1754, obs. 5. p. 324. Gru- ner, De Viribus Agar. Muse. Jena, 1778, p. 13. 47 The remark made by Murray,* that oil of aniseed allays pains of the stomach and flatulent colic caused by purga- tives, ought not to surprise us, knowing that J. P. Albrechtt has observed pains in the stomach produced by this liquid, and P. Forestust violent colic likewise caused by its adminis- tration. If F. Hoffman praises the efficacy of millefoil in various cases of hemorrhage; if G. E. Stahl, Buchwald and Loseke have found this plant useful in excessive hemorrhoidal flux; if Q,uarin and the editors of the Breslauer Sammlungen speak of the cure it has effected of hemoptysis ; and finally, if Thoma- sius (according to Haller) has used it successfully in uterine hemorrhage; these cures are evidently owing to the power possessed by the plant, of exciting of itself hemorrhage and hematuria, as observed by G. Hoffman,§ and more especially of producing epistaxis, as confirmed by Boeder. II Scovolo,** among many others, cured a case where the urinary discharge was purulent, by arbutus uva ursi; which never could have been performed if this plant had not the pro- perty of exciting heat in the urinary passage wilh discharge of a mucous urine, as seen by Sauvages.tt And though the frequent experience of Stoerck, Marges, Planchon, Du Monceau, F. C. Junker, Schinz, Ehrmann, and others had not already established the fact, that colchicum autumnale cures a species of dropsy, still this faculty was to have been expected from it, by reason of the particular power which it possesses of diminishing the urinary secretion, and of exciting at the same time a continual desire to pass water. It like- wise causes the flow of a small quantity of urine of a fiery red colour, as witnessed by Stoerck+t and de Berge.§§ The cure of * Appar. Medic, 2d edit. 1, p. 429, 430. f Misc. nat. cur. dec. ii. ann. 8, obs. 169. % Observat. et Curationes, lib. 21. § De Medicam. Officin. Leyden, 1738. || Cynosura Mat. Med. Cont. p. 552. ** In Girardi, de uva ursi. Padua, 1764. ft Nosolog., iii. p. 200. XX Libellus de Colchico. Vienna, 1763, p. 12.7 §§ Journal de Medecine, xxii. 48 an asthma attended with hypochondriasis, effected byGoritz by means of colchicum, and that of an asthma complicated with an apparent hydrothorax, performed by Stoerckt with the same substance, were evidently grounded upon the homoeo- pathic property which it possesses, of exciting by itself asthma and dyspnoea, as witnessed by de Berge.t Muralto§ has seen what we may witness every day, viz. that jalap, besides creating gripes of the stomach, also causes great uneasiness and agitation. Every physician acquainted with the facts upon which homoeopathy rests, will find it perfectly natural, that the power so justly ascribed to this medicine by G. W. Wedel,ll of allaying the gripes, restlessness, and scream- ing which are so frequent in*young children, and of restoring them to tranquil repose, arises from homoeopathic influence. It is also known and has been attested by Murray, Hillary, and Spielmann, that senna occasions a kind of colic, and pro- duces, according to C. Hoffmann** and F. Hoffmann Jt flatulency and agitation of the blood,\\ ordinary causes of insomnolency. It was this innate homoeopathic virtue of senna, which enabled Detharding§§ to cure with its aid patients afflicted with violent colic and insomnolency. Stoerck, who had so intimate a knowledge of medicines, was on the point of discovering that the bad effects of the dictamnus, which, as he observed himself, sometimes provokes a mucous discharge from the vagina,\\\\ arose from the very same properties in this root by virtue of which he cured a leucorrhea of long standing.*** * A. E. Biichner, Miscell. Phys. Med. Mathem. Ann. 1728, Jul. pp. 1212, 1213. Erfurt, 1732. t Ibid. cas. 11, 13. Cont. cas. 4, 9. X Ibid. loc. cit. § Misc. Nat. Cur. dec. ii. a. 7, obs. 112. || Opiolog. lib. 1, p. 1, cap. ii. p. 38. ** De Medicin. Officin. lib. 1, cap. 36. ft Diss, de Manna, § 16. XX Murray, loc. cit. ii. p. 507. 2d. edit. §§ Ephem. nat. cur. cent. 10, obs. 76. |||| Lib. de Flamm. Jovis. Vienna, 1769, cap. 2. *** Ibid. 49 Stoerck, in like manner, should not have been astonished when curing a general chronic eruption (humid, phagedenic and psoric) with the clematis* having himself ascertainedt that this plant has the power of producing a psoric eruption over the whole body. If, according to Murray,}: the euphrasia cures lippitudo and a certain form of ophthalmy, how could it otherwise have pro- . duced this effect, but by the faculty it possesses of exciting a kind of infiammation in the eyes, as has been remarked by Lobelius?§ According to J. H. Lange,ll the nutmeg has been found effica- cious in hysterical fainting fits. The sole natural cause of this phenomenon is homoeopathic, and can be attributed to no other circumstance, but that the nutmeg, when given in strong doses to a man in health, produces, according to J. Schmid** and Cullen,tt suspension of the senses and general insensibility. The old practice of applying rose-water externally in ophthal- mic diseases, looks like a tacit avowal, that there exists in the leaves of the rose some curative power for diseases of the eye. This is founded upon the homoeopathic virtue which the rose possesses, of exciting by itself a species of ophthalmia in per- sons who are in health, an effect which Echtius,H Ledelius,§§ and Rau,llll actually saw it produce. If, according to Pet. Rossi,*** Van Mons,W+ J. Monti,ttt Sybel,§§§ and others, the Rhus toxicodendron and radicans have the faculty of producing pimples which gradually cover the entire * Lib. de Flamm. Jovis. Vienna, 1769, cap. 13. f Ibid. p. 33. X Appar. Medic. 11, p. 221. 2d edit. § Stirp. Adversar. p. 219. || Domest. Brunsvic. p. 136. ** Misc. nat. cur. dec. ii. ann. 2, obs. 20. tf Arzneimittellehre, ii. p. 233. XX In Adami, Vita Medic, p. 72. §§ Misc. nat. curios, dec. ii. ann. 2, obs. 140. IHI Rau, iiber den Werth des Homceop. Heilverfahrens, p. 73. *** Observ. de Nonnullis Plantis, quae pro venenatis nabentur. Pisis, 1767. tft In Dufresnoy Ueber den wurzelnden Sumach, p. 206. XXX Acta Instit. Bonon. sc. et art. iii. p. 165. §§§ In Med. Annalen, 1811, July. 7 50 body, it may be easily perceived how it could effect an homoeo- pathic cure of various kinds of herpes, which it really has done, according to information furnished by Dufresnoy and Van Mons. What could have bestowed upon this plant (as in a case cited by Alderson*) the power of curing a paralysis of the lower extremities, attended with weakness of the intellectual organs, if it did not of itself evidently possess the faculty of depressing the muscular powers by acting on the imagination of the patient to such a degree as to make him believe that he is at the point of death, as in a case witnessed by Zadig.t The dulcamara, according to Carrere,t has cured the most violent diseases emanating from colds, which could result from no other cause but that this herb, in cold and damp weather, frequently produces similar affections to those which arise from colds, as Carrere himself has observed § and likewise Starcke.ll —Fritze** saw the dulcamara produce convulsions, and De Haentt witnessed the very same effects, attended with delirium j on the other hand, convulsions attended with delirium, have yielded to small doses of the dulcamara, administered by the latter physician.XX—It were vain to seek amid the vast empire of hypotheses the cause that renders the dulcamara so effica- cious in a species of herpes, as witnessed by Carrere, §§ Fouquet,|||| and Poupart.*** Nature, which requires the aid of homoeopathy to perform a safe cure, sufficiently explains the cause, in the faculty possessed by the dulcamara of producing a certain * In Samml. aus. Abh. f. pr. Aerzte, xviii. 1. f In Hufeland's Journal der Prakt. Arzneik. v. p. 3. X Carrere (and Starcke,) Abhandl. ueber die Eigenschaften des Nacht- schattens oder Bittersuesses. Jena, 1786, pp. 20-23. (Treatise on the Properties of the Woody Nightshade or Bitter-sweet.) § Ibid. || In Carrere, Ibid. p. 140, 249. ** Annalen des Klinischen Instituts, iii. p. 45. ft Ratio Medendi. Tom. iv. p. 228. XX Ibid, where he says: "Dulco-amarae stipites majori dosi convul- siones et deliria excitant, moderata vero spasmos, convulsionesque sol- vunt." How near was De Haen to the discovery of the law of healing the most conformable to nature ! §§ Ratio Medendi. Tom. iv. p. 92. |||| In Razouz, Tables Nosologiques, p. 275. *** Traite des Dartres. Paris, 1782, pp. 184, 192. 51 species of herpes. Carrere saw the use of this plant excite herpetic eruptions which covered the entire body during a fort- night;* and on another occasion where it produced the same on the hands,-\ and a third time where it fixed itself on the labia pudendi.X Rucker§ saw the solanum nigrum produce swelling of the entire body. This is the reason that Gatackerll and Cirillo** succeeded in curing with its aid (homoeopathically) a species of dropsy. Boerhaave,tt Sydenham,!* and Radcliffe§§ cured another spe- cies of dropsy with the aid of the sambucus niger, because, as Hallerll II informs us, this plant causes an ozdematous swelling when applied externally. De Haen,*** Sarcone,ttt and Pringle+U have rendered due homage to truth and experience, by declaring freely, that they cured pleurisy with the scilla maritima, a root, which on ac- count of its excessive acrid properties, ought to be forbidden in a disease of this nature, where, according to the received method, only sedative, relaxing, and refrigerant remedies are admissible. The disease in question subsided, nevertheless, under the influence of the squill, on homoeopathic principles; for T. C. Wagner§§§ formerly saw the action of this plant alone produce pleurisy and infiammation of the lungs. A great many practitioners, D. Crueger, Ray, Kellner, Kaaw Boerhaave, and others, IIIIII have observed that the datura stramo- * Traite des Dartres. Paris, 1782, pp. 96. t Ibid. p. 149. X Ibid. p. 164. § Commerc. Liter. Noric. 1731, p. 372. || Versuche & Bemerk. der Edinb. Gesellschaft, Altenburg, 1762, vii. pp. 95, 98. ** Consult. Medichi. Tom. iii. Naples, 1738, 4to. ft Historia Plantarum, P. I. p. 207. XX Opera, p. 496. §§ In Haller, Arzneimittellehre, p. 349. |||| In Vicat, Plantes veneneuses, p. 125. *** Ratio Medendi, P. I. p. 13. tft History of Diseases in Naples, vol. i. §. 175. +++ Obs. on the Diseases of the Army, ed. 7, §. 143. §§§ Observationes Clinicae. Lubec, 1737. IIIHI C. Crueger, in Misc. Nat. Cur., dec. iii. ann. 2, obs. 88.—Boerhaave, Impetum Faciens.—Leiden, 1745, p. 282.—Kellner, in the Bresl. Samml. 172. 52 nium excites a singular kind of delirium and convulsions. It is precisely this faculty that enabled physicians to cure with its aid, demonomania* (fantastic madness, attended with spasms of the limbs) and other convulsions, as performed by Sidrenf and Wedenberg.t If in the hands of Sidren§ it cured two cases of chorea, one of which had been occasioned by fright, and the other by mercurial vapour, it was because it possessed the faculty of exciting involuntary movements of the limbs, as observed by Kaaw Boerhaave, and Lobstein. Numerous observations, and among others those made by Schenk, have shown us that it can destroy consciousness and recollection in a very short time; therefore, it ought not to surprise us, if, according to the testimony of Sauvages and Schinz, it possesses the faculty of curing a weak memory. By the same rule, Schmalzll succeeded in curing with the aid of this plant a case of melancholy, alternating with madness, because, according to aCosta,** it has the power of exciting such alternate mental aberrations when administered to a person in health. Percival, Stahl, Q,uarin,tt and many other physicians, have observed that cinchona occasions oppression of the stomach. Others, (Morton, Friborg, Bauer, and Q,uarin,) have seen this substance produce vomiting and diarrhoea, (D. Crueger and Morton) syncope; some an excessive debility, many (Thomson, Richard, Stahl, and C. E. Fisher) a kind of jaundice; (Q,uarin and Fischer) bitterness of the mouth; and yet others, tension of the belly. And it is precisely when these complicated evils occur in intermittent fevers, that Torti and Cleghorn recom- mend the use of cinchona alone. The advantageous effects of this bark in cases of exhaustion, indigestion, and loss of appetite resulting from acute fevers, (particularly when the latter have been treated by venesection, evacuants and debilitants) are founded upon the faculty which it possesses of depressing exces- * Veckoskrift for Laekare, iv. p. 40, et seq. t Diss, de Stramonii Usu in Malis Convulsivis. Upsal. 1793 X Ibid. v ' § Diss. Morborum Casus, spec. i. Upsal, 1785. || Chir. und Medic. Vorfalle, Leipzig, 1784, p. 178. ** In P. Schenck, lib. 1, obs. 139. ft Quoted in my Mat. Med. iii. 53 sively the vital powers, producing mental and bodily exhaustion, indigestion, and loss of appetite, as observed by Cleghorn, Fri- borg, Crueger, Romberg, Stahl, Thomson, and others.* How would it have been possible to stop hemorrhages with ipecacuanha, as effected by Baglivi, Barbeyrac, Gianella, Dal- berg, Bergius, and others, if this medicine did not of itself possess the faculty of exciting hemorrhage homoeopathically?—as Mur- ray, Scott, and Geoffroyt have witnessed. How could it be so efficacious in asthma, and particularly in spasmodic asthma, as it is described to have been, by Akenside,t Meyer,§ Bang,ll Stoll,** Fouquet,tt and Ranoe,++ if it did not of itself produce (without exciting any evacuation) asthma, and spasmodic asthma in particular, as Murray,§§ Geoffroy,llll and Scott*** have seen it call forth ? Can any clearer hints be required, that medicines ought to be applied to the cure of diseases according to the morbid effects which they produce ? It would be impossible to conceive why the Faba Ignatia could be so efficacious in a kind of convulsions, as we are assured it is, by Hermann,ttt Valentin,XXt and an anonymous writer,§§§ if it did not possess the power of exciting similar convulsions, as witnessed by Bergius, IIIIII Camelli,**** and Du- rius.tttt Persons who have received a blow or a contusion, feel pains in the side, a desire to vomit, spasmodic, lancinating and burn- ing pain in the hypochondres, all of which are accompanied with anxiety, tremors, and involuntary starts, similar to those * Mat. Med. iii. t Ibid. pp. 184, 185. X Medic. Transact. I. No. 7. p. 39. § Diss, de Ipecac, refracta dosi usu, p. 34. || Praxis Medica, p. 346. ** Praelectiones, p. 221. ft Journal de Medecine, torn. 62, p. 137. XX In Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn., ii. p. 163, iii. p. 361. §§ Medic. Pract. Bibl., p. 237. |||| Traite de la Matiere Medicale, ii. p. 157. *** In Med. Comment, of Edinb. iv. p. 74. fft Cynosura Mat. Med. ii. p. 231. XXX Hist. Simplic. Reform, p. 194, § 4. §§§ In Act. Berol. dec. ii. vol. x. p. 12. || || || Materia Medica, p. 150. **** Philos. Trans, vol. xxi. No. 250. tttt Miscell. nat. cur. dec. iii. ann. 9,10. 54 produced by an electric shock, formication in the parts that have received the injury, &c. As the arnica montana produces similar symptoms, according to the observations of Meza, Vicat, Crichton, Collins, Aaskow, Stoll, and J. C. Lange,* it may be easily conceived on what account this plant cures the effects of a blow, fall, or contusion, and consequently the malady itself occasioned by such a contusion, as experienced by a host of physicians and even whole nations for centuries past. Among the effects which belladona excites when adminis- tered to a person in sound health, are symptoms, which, taken collectively, present an image greatly resembling that species of hydrophobia and rabies canina which Mayerne,t Miinch,+ Buchholz,§ and Neimike,l| cured in a perfect manner with this plant homoeopathically.** The patient in vain endeavours to sleep, the respiration is embarrassed, he is consumed by a burning thirst, attended with anxiety; the moment any liquids are presented to him, he rejects them with violence; his countenance becomes red, his eyes fixed and sparkling, (as observed by F. C. Grimm;) he experiences a feeling of suffocation while drinking, with excessive thirst, (according to E. Camerarius and Sauter;) for the most part he is incapable of swallowing any thing, (as affirmed by May, Lottinger, Sicelius, Buchave, D'Hermont, Manetti, * See my Mat. Medica, i. f Praxeos in Morbis internis Syntagma allerum. Augusta? Vindelico- rum, 1697, p. 136. X Beobachtungen bey angewendeter Belladonne bei den Menschen. Stendal, 1789. § Heilsame Wirkungen der Belladonne in ausgebrochener Wuth. Erfurt, 1785. || In J. H. Munch's Beobachtungen, Th. i, p. 74. ** If belladonna has frequently failed in cases of decided rabies, we ought to remember that it cannot cure in such instances, but by its faculty of producing effects similar to those of the malady itself, and that, consequently, it ought not to be administered but in the smallest possible doses, as will be shown in the Organon, (§ 275-283.) In gene- ral, it has been administered in very large doses, so that the patients necessarily died, not of the disease, but of the remedy. However, there may exist more than one degree or species of hydrophobia and rabies, and consequently (according to the diversity of the symptoms) the most suitable homoeopathic remedy may be sometimes hyosciamus, and some- times stramonium. 55 Vicat, and Cullen;) he is alternately actuated by terror and a desire to bite the persons who are near him, (as seen by Sauter, Dumoulin, Buchave, and Mardorf;) he. spits every where around him, (according to Sauter;) he endeavours to make his escape, (as we are informed by Dumoulin, E. Gmelin, and Buc'hoz;) and a continual agility of the body is predominant, (as wit- nessed by Boucher, E. Gmelin, and Sauter.)* Belladonna has also effected the cure of different kinds of madness and melan- choly, as in the cases reported by Evers, Schmucker, Schmalz, the two Munches, and many others, because it possesses the faculty of producing different kinds of insanity like those mental diseases caused by belladonna, which are noted by Rau, Grimm, Hasenest, Mardorf, Hoyer, Dillenius, and others.t Henning,J after vainly endeavouring, during three months, to cure a case of amaurosis with coloured spots before the eyes, by a variety of medicines, was at length struck with the idea that this malady might perhaps be occasioned by gout, although the patient had never experienced the slightest attack; and upon this supposition he was by chance induced to prescribe bella- donna^ which effected a speedy cure free from any incon- venience. He would undoubtedly have made choice of this remedy at the commencement, had he known that it was not possible to perform a cure but by the aid of a remedy which produces symptoms similar to those of the disease itself; and that, according to the infallible law of nature, belladonna could not fail to cure this case homoeopathically, since, by the testi- mony of Sauterll and Buchholz,** it excites, of itself, a species of amaurosis with coloured spots before the eyes. The hyosciamus has cured spasms which strongly resembled epilepsy; as witnessed by Mayerne.tt Stoerck, Collin, and others. It produces this effect by the very same power that it excites convulsions similar to those of epilepsy, as observed in the writings * The places from these authors are referred to in my Mat. Medica, i. f Ibid. X In Hufeland's Journal, xxv. iv. pp. 70, 74. § Mere conjecture alone has led physicians to rank belladonna among the remedies for gout. The disease which could, with justice, arrogate to itself the name of gout, never will nor can be cured by belladonna. || In Hufeland's Journal, xi. ** Ibid. vol. i. p. 252. ft Prax. Med. p. 23. 56 of E. Camerarius, C. Seliger, Hunerwolf, A. Hamilton, Plan- chon, Acosta, and others.* Fothergill,t Stoerck, Hellwig, and Ofterdinger, have used hyosciamus with success in certain kinds of mental derange- ment. But the use of it would have been attended with equal success in the hands of many other physicians, had they con- fined it to the cure of that species of mental alienation, which hyosciamus is capable of producing in its primitive effects, viz. a kind of derangement with stupefaction, that Van Helmont, Wedel, J. G. Gmelin, La Serre, Hunerwolf, A. Hamilton, Kier- nander, J. Stedmann, Tozzetti, J. Faber, and Wendt saw produced by the action of this plant.+ By taking the effects of hyosciamus collectively, which the latter observers have seen it produce, they present a picture of hysteria arrived at a considerable height. We also find in J. A. P. Gessner, Stoerck, and in the Act. Nat. Cur.§ that a case of hysteria, which bore great resemblance to the above men- tioned, was cured by the use of this plant. Schenkbecherll would never have succeeded in curing a vertigo of twenty years' standing, if this plant did not possess, in a very high degree, the power of creating generally an analogous state, as attested by Hunerwolf, Blom, Navier, Plan- chon, Sloane, Stedmann, Greding, Wepfer, Vicat, and Ber- nigau.** A man, who became deranged through jealousy, was for a long time tormented by Mayer Abramsonft with remedies that produced no effect on him, when, under the name of a sopo- rific, he one day administered hyosciamus, which cured him speedily. Had he known that this plant excites jealousy and madness in persons who are in health,U and had he been acquainted with the homoeopathic law, (the sole natural basis of therapeutics,) he would have been able to administer hyos- ciamus from the very commencement with perfect confidence, * See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv. t Memoirs of Med. Soc. of London, i. pp. 310, 314. X See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv. § IV. obs. 8. || Von der Kinkina, Schierling, Bilsenkraut, &c. Riga, 1769, p. 162. ** See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv. ft In Hufeland's Journal, xix. ii. p. 60. XX See my Mat. Medica, vol. iv. 57 and thus have avoided fatiguing the patient with remedies which (not being homoeopathic) could be of no manner of service to him. The mixed prescriptions which were employed for a long time with the greatest success by Hecker* in a case of spasmodic constriction of the eyelids, would have proved ineffectual, if some happy chance had not included hyosciamus, which, ac- cording to Wepfer,t excites a similar affection in persons who are in sound health. Neither did Withering}: succeed in curing a spasmodic con- striction of the pharynx, with inability to swallow, until he administered hyosciamus, whose special action consists of causing a spasmodic constriction of the throat, with the impossi- bility of swallowing, an effect which Tozzetti, Hamilton, Ber- nigau, Sauvages, and Hunerwolf§ have seen it produce in a very high degree. How could camphor produce such salutary effects as the veracious Huxhamll says it does, in the so-called slow nervous fevers, where the temperature of the body is decreased, where the sensibility is depressed, and the vital powers greatly dimin- ished, if the result of its immediate action upon the body did not produce a state similar in every respect to the latter, as observed by G. Alexander, Cullen, and F. Hoffman ?** Spirituous wines, administered in small doses, have cured, homoeopathically, fevers that were purely inflammatory. C. Crivellati,tt H. Augenius,t+ A. Mundella,§§ and two anonymous writers,l||| have afforded us the proofs. Asclepiades*** on one occasion cured an inflammation of the brain by administering a small quantity of wine. A case of feverish delirium like an * Hufeland's Journal, d. pr. Arzneik. i. p. 354. f De Cicuta Aquatica. Basil. 1716, p. 320. X Edinb. Med. Comment. Dec. ii. B. vi. p. 263. § See my Mat. Med., vol. iv. pp. 38, 39. || Opera, t. i. p. 172, t. ii. p. 84. ** See my Materia Medica, vol. iv. tf Trattato dell' uso e modo di dare il vino nelle febri acute. Rome, 1600. If Epist. t. ii. lib. 2. ep. 8. §§ Epist. 14. Basil, 1538. |||| Eph. nat. cur. dec. ii. ann. 2, obs. 53. Gazette de Sante, 1788* *** Coel. Aurelianus, Acut. lib. i. c. 16. 8 58 insensible drunkenness, attended with stertorous breathing, similar to that state of deep intoxication which wine produces, was cured in a single night by wine which Rademacher* ad- ministered to the patient. Can any one deny the power of a medicinal irritation analogous to the disease itself (similia simili- bus) in either of these cases ? A strong infusion of tea produces anxiety and palpitation of the heart in persons who are not in the habit of drinking it; on the other hand, if taken in small doses, it is an excellent remedy against such symptoms when produced by other causes, as testified by G. L. Rau.t A case resembling the agonies of death, in which the patient Qt , was convulsed to such a degree as to deprive him of his senses, '' alternating with attacks of spasmodic breathing, sometimes also sobbing and stertorous respiration, with icy coldness of the face and body, lividity of the feet and hands, and feebleness of the pulse, (a state perfectly analogous to the whole of the symptoms which Schweikert and others saw produced by the use of opium,)\ was at first treated unsuccessfully by Stutz§ with ammonia, but afterwards cured in a speedy and permanent manner with opium. "In this instance, could any one fail to discover the homoeopathic method brought into action without the know- ledge of the person who employed if ? According to Vicat, J. C. Grimm, and others, II opium also produces a powerful and almost irresistible tendency to sleep, accompanied by profuse per- spiration and delirium. This was the reason why Osthoff** was afraid to administer it in cases of epidemic fever which ex- hibited similar symptoms, for the principles of the system which he pursued prohibited the use of it under such circumstances. (The poor system !) However, after having exhausted in vain all the known remedies, and seeing his patients at the point of death, he resolved, at all hazards, to administer a small quantity of opium, whose effects proved salutary, as they always must, according to the unerring law of homoeopathy. * In Hufeland's Journal, xvi. i. p. 92. t Ueber den Werth des Homoeopathischen Heilverfahrens. Heidel- berg, 1824, p. 75. X See my Mat. Med., vol. i. § Tn Hufeland's Journal, x. iv. || See my Mat. Med., i. »* In the Salzburg Med. Chirurg. Journal, 1805, iii. p. 110. 59 J. Lind* likewise avows that "opium removes the complaints in the head, while the perspiration tediously breaks forth during the heat of the body; it relieves the head, destroys the burning febrile heat of the skin, softens it, and bathes its surface in a profuse perspiration. But Lind was not aware that this salutary effect of opium (contrary to the axioms of the school of medicine) is owing to the circum- stance of its producing analogous morbid symptoms, when administered to a person in health. There has, nevertheless, here and there been a physician, across whose mind this truth has passed like a flash of lightning, without ever giving birth to a suspicion of the laws of homoeopathy. For example, Alstont says that opium is a remedy that excites heat, notwithstanding which, it certainly diminishes heat where it already exists. De la Guerene* administered opium in a case of fever attended with violent head-ache, tension and hardness of the pulse, dryness and roughness of the skin, burn- ing heat, and hence difficult and debilitating perspirations, the exhalation of which was constantly interrupted by the extreme agitation of the patient; and was successful with it, because opium possesses the faculty of creating a feverish state in healthy persons, which is perfectly analogous, as asserted by many observers, § and of which he was ignorant. In a fever attended with coma, where the patient, deprived of speech, lay extended, the eyes open, the limbs stiff, the pulse small and intermittent, the respiration disturbed and stertorous, (all of which are symptoms perfectly similar to those which opium excites, according to the report of Delacroix, Rade- macher, Crumpe, Pyl, Vicat, Sauvages and many others, II) this was the only substance which C. L. Hoffman** saw produce any good effects, which were naturally a homoeopathic result. Wirthenson,tt Sydenham,*! and Marcus,§§ have even succeeded * Versuch iiber die Krankheiten denen die Europaer in heissen Kli- maten unterworfen sind. Riga and Leipzig, 1773. (Treatise on the Diseases to which Europeans are subject in Warm Climates.) f In Edinb. Versuchen, v. p. i. art. 12. X In Romer's Annalen der Arzneimittellehre, I. ii. p. 6. § See my Mat. Med., vol. i. || Ibid. ** Von Scharbock, Lustseuche, &c. Minister, 1787, p. 295. ft Opii vires fibras cordis debilitare, &c. Munster, 1775. XX Opera, p. 654. §§ Magazin fur Therapie, I. i. p. 7, 00 in curing lethargic fevers with opium. A case of lethargy of which De Meza* effected a cure, would yield only to this sub- stance, which, in such cases, acts homoeopathically, since it produces lethargy of itself. C. C. Matth&i,t in an obstinate case of nervous disease, where the principal symptoms were insensibility, and numbness of the arms, legs, and belly, after having for a long time treated it with inappropriate, that is to say, non-homoeopathic remedies, at length effected a cure by opium, which, according to Stiitz, J. Young, and others,* excites similar symptoms of a very intense nature, and which, as every one must perceive, only succeeded on this occasion by homoeopathic means. The cure of a case of lethargy which had already existed several days, and which Hufeland performed by the use of opium,§ by what other law could this have been effected, if not by that of homoeopathy, which has remained disregarded till the present time? In that peculiar species of epilepsy which never mani- fests itself but during sleep, De Haen discovered that it was not at all a sleep, but a lethargic stupor, with stertorous respiration, perfectly similar to that which opium produces in persons who are in health ; it was by the means of opium alone that he transformed it into a natural and healthy sleep, while at the same time he delivered the patient of his epilepsy. || How would it be possible that opium, which of all vegetable substances is the one whose administration, in small doses, produces the most powerful and obstinate constipation, as a primary effect, should notwithstanding be a remedy the most to be relied upon in cases of constipation which endanger life, if it was not in virtue of the homoeopathic law, so little known— that is to say, if nature had not decreed that medicines should subdue natural diseases by a special action on their part, which consists in producing an analogous affection ? Opium, whose first effects are so powerful in constipating the bowels, was dis- covered by Tralles** to be the only cure in a case of ileus, * Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn. iii. p. 202. f In Struve's Triumph der Heilk. iii. X See my Mat. Med. vol. i. § In Hufeland's Journal, xii. i. || Ratio Medendi, V. p. 126. ** Opii usus et abusus, sect. ii. p. 260. 61 which he had till then treated ineffectually with evacuants and other unappropriate remedies. Lentilius* and G. W. Wedel,t Wirthenson, Bell, Heister, and Richter,t have likewise con- firmed the efficacy of opium, even when administered alone in this disease. The candid Bohn§ was likewise convinced by experience that nothing but opiates would act as purgatives in the colic called miserere; and the celebrated Fr. Hoffman,II in the most dangerous cases of this nature, placed his sole reliance on opium, combined with the anodyne liquor called after his name. All the theories contained in the two hundred thousand volumes that have been written on medicine, would they be able to furnish us with a rational explanation of this and so many other similar facts, being ignorant of the thera- peutic law of homoeopathia. Have their doctrines conducted us to the discovery of this law of nature so clearly manifested in every perfect, speedy, and permanent cure—that is to say, have they taught us that when we use medicines in the treat- ment of diseases, it is necessary to take for a guide the resem- blance of their effects upon a person in health, to the symptoms of those very diseases ? Rave** and Wedekindtt have suppressed uterine hemorrhage <\ with the aid of sabina, which, as every one knows, causes uterine hemorrhage, and consequently abortion with women who are in health. Could any one, in this case, fail to perceive the homoeopathic law which ordains that we should cure similia similibus ? In that species of spasmodic asthma designated by the name of Millar, how could musk act almost specifically, if it did not of itself produce paroxysms of a spasmodic constriction of the chest without cough, as observed by F. Hoffman ?{+ * Eph. nat. cur. dec. iii. ann. i. app. p. 131. f Opiologia, p. 120. X Anfangsgriinde der Wundarzneikunde, V. §328.—Chronische Krank- heiten. Berlin, 1816, ii. p. 220. (Rudiments of Surgery, V. § 328.— Chronic Diseases. Berlin, 1816, ii. p. 220.) § De Officio Medici. || Medicin. rat. system. T. IV. p. ii. p. 297. ** Beobachtungen und Schlusse (Observations and Conclusions), ii. p. 7. ft In Hufeland's Journal, X. i. p. 77.; and in his " Aufsaetzen," p. 278. XX Med. ration, system, iii. p. 92. 62 Could vaccination protect us from the small-pox otherwise than homoeopathically ? Without mentioning any other traits of close resemblance which often exist between these two maladies, they have this in common—they generally appear but once during the course of a person's life; they leave behind cicatrices equally deep ; they both occasion tumefaction of the axillary glands ; a fever that is analogous ; an inflamed areola around each pock ; and finally, ophthalmia and convulsions. The cow-pock would even destroy the small-pox on its first appearance, that is to say, it would cure this already existing malady, if the intensity of the small-pox did not predominate over it. To produce this effect, then, it only wants that excess of power which, according to the law of nature, ought to cor- respond with the homoeopathic resemblance, in order to effect a cure (§. 158). Vaccination, considered as a homoeopathic remedy, cannot, therefore, prove efficacious except when employed previous to the appearance of the small-pox, which is the stronger of the two. In this manner it excites a disease very analogous (and con- sequently, homoeopathic,) to the small-pox, after whose course, the human body, which, according to custom, can only be attacked once with a disease of this nature, is henceforward protected against a similar contagion.* It is well known that retention of urine with ineffectual efforts to urinate is one of the most common and painful evils which the use of cantharides produces. This point has been suffi- ciently established by J. Camerarius, Baccius, Van Hilden, Forest, J. Lanzoni, Van der Wiel, and Werlhoff.t Cantharides, administered internally, and with precaution, ought, conse- quently, to be a very salutary homoeopathic remedy in similar cases of painful dysury. And this is in reality the case. For, without enumerating all the Greek physicians who, instead of * This mode of homoeopathic cure in antecessum (which is called preservation or prophylaxy,) also appears possible in many other cases. For example, by carrying on our persons sulphur, we think we are pre- served from the itch which is so common among wool-workers; and by taking as feeble a dose as possible of belladonna, that we are protected from scarlet fever. f See my Fragmenta de viribus medicamentoium positivis. Leipsic. 1805, i. p. 83. 63 our cantharides, made use of meloe cichorii, Fabricius ab Aqua- pendente, Capo di Vacca, Riedlin, Th. Bartholin,* Young,t Smith,? Raymond^ De Meza,ll Brisbane,** and others, per- formed perfect cures of very painful ischury that was not dependent upon any mechanical obstacle, with cantharides. Huxham has seen this remedy produce the best effects in cases of the same nature ; he praises it highly, and would willingly have made use of it had not the precepts of the old school of medicine (which, deeming itself wiser than nature herself, pre- scribes in such cases soothing and relaxing remedies,) prevented him, contrary to his own conviction, from using a remedy which, in such cases, is specific or homoeopathic.tt In cases of recent inflammatory gonorrhea, where Sachs von Lewenheim, Hannaeus, Bartholin, Lister, Mead, and chiefly Werlhoff, administered cantharides in very small doses with perfect success, this substance manifestly removed the most severe symptoms which began to declare themselves.^ It produced this effect by virtue of the faculty it possesses (according to the testimony of almost every observer) of exciting painful ischury, urinary heat, inflammation of the urethra (Wendt), and even, when applied only externally, a species of inflammatory gonorrhea (Wichman§§). The application of sulphur internally very often occasions, in persons of an irritable disposition, tenesmus, sometimes even * Epist. 4, p. 345. t Phil. Trans. No. 280. X Medic. Communications, ii. p. 505. § In Auserlesene Abhandl. fur pract. Aerzte (Select Treatises for Practical Physicians), iii. p. 460. || Act. Reg. Soc. Med. Hafn. ii. p. 302. ** Auserlesene Falle (Selected cases), Altenburg, 1777. ft Opera, edit. Reichel, t. ii. p. 124. XX I say " the most severe symptoms which began to declare them- selves," because the subsequent treatment demands other considerations ; for, although there may have been cases of gonorrhea so slight as to dis- appear very soon of themselves, and almost without any assistance what- ever, still there are others of a graver nature, especially that which is become so common since the time of the French campaigns, which might be called gonorrhea sycotica, and which is communicated by coition, like the chancrous disease, although of a very different nature. §§ Auswahl aus den Niirnberger gelehrten Unterhaltungen, i. p. 249, note. 64 attended with vomiting and griping, as attested by Walther.* It is by virtue of this property which sulphur exhibits, that physicians have been ablet to cure with its aid, dysenteric attacks, and hemorrhoidal diseases attended with tenesmus, as observed by Werlhoff,{ and according to Rave,§ hemorrhoidal colics. It is well known that the waters at Toeplitz, like all other warm sulphurous mineral waters, frequently excite the appear- ance of an exanthema, which strongly resembles the itch, so prevalent among persons employed in wool-working. It is pre- cisely this homoeopathic virtue which they possess that removes various kinds of psoric eruptions. Can there be any thing more suffocating than sulphurous fumes ? Yet it is the vapour arising from the combustion of sulphur that Bucquetll disco- vered to be the best means of reanimating persons in a state of asphyxia produced by another cause. From the writings of Beddoes and others, we learn that the English physicians found nitric acid of great utility in salivation and ulceration of the mouth, occasioned by the use of mercury. This acid could never have proved useful in such cases, if it did not of itself excite salivation and ulceration of the mouth. To produce these effects, it is only necessary to bathe the sur- face of the body with it, as Scott** and Blairtt observe, and the same will occur if administered internally, according to the testimony of Aloyn,tt Luke,§§ Ferriar,|||| and G. Kelly.*** Fritzettt saw a species of tetanus produced by a bath impreg- nated with carbonate of potash, and A. von HumboldtUt by the * Progr. de Sulphure et Marte, Lips. 1743, p. 5. f Medic. National-Zeitung, (National Med. Gazette), 1798, p. 153. X Observat. de Febribus, p. 3, § 6. § In Hufeland's Journal, VII. ii. p. 168. || Edinb. Med. Comment. IX. ** In Hufeland's Journal, IV. p. 353. ft Neueste Erfahrungen, (Most recent discoveries), Glogau, 1801. XX In the Memoires de la Soc. Med. d'Emulation, I. p. 195. §§ In Beddoes. |||| In the Sammlung auserles. Abhandl. fur pract. Aertze, (Select Treatises for Practical Physicians), XIX. ii. *** Ibid. XIX. i. ttt In Hufeland's Journal, XII. i. p. 116. XXX Versuch iiber die gereizte Muskel—und Nervenfascr, (Treatise on the Irritability of the Muscles and Nerves,) Posen and Berlin, 1797. 65 application of a solution of salt of tartar increased the irritability of the muscles to such a degree as to excite tetanic spasm. The curative power which caustic potash exercises in all kinds of tetanus, in which Stiitz and others have found it so useful, could it be accounted for in a more simple or rational manner than by the faculty which this alkali possesses of producing homoeopathic effects ? Arsenic, whose effects are so powerful upon the human economy that we cannot decide whether it is more hurtful in the hands of the fool-hardy than it is salutary in those of the wise,—arsenic could never have effected so many remarkable cures of cancer in the face, as witnessed by numerous physi- cians, among whom I will only cite Fallopius,* Bernhardt,t and Roennow,t if this metallic oxide did not possess the homoeopathic power of producing, in healthy persons, very painful tubercles, which are cured with difficulty, as witnessed by Amatus Lusitanus ;§ very deep and malignant ulcerations, according to the testimony of Heinreichll and Knape ;** and cancerous ulcers, as testified by Heinze.tt The ancients would not have been unanimous in the praise which they bestowed on the magnetic arsenical plaster of Angelus Sala+t against pestilential buboes and carbuncles, if arsenic did not, according to the report of Degner§§ and Pfann,l||| give rise to inflammatory tumours which quickly turn to gangrene, and to carbuncles or malignant pustules, as observed by Verzascha*** and Pfann.ttt And whence could arise that curative power which it exhibits in certain species of intermittent fevers (a virtue attested by so * De Ulceribus et Tumoribus, lib. 2. Venice, 1563. t In the Journal de Medecine, chirurg. et pharm. LVII. March, 1782. + Konigl. Vetensk. Acad. Handl. f. a. 1776. § Obs. et. Cur., cent. ii. cur. 34. II Act. Nat. Cur. ii. obs. 10. ** Annalen der Staatsarzneikunde, I. i. tf In Hufeland's Journal for September, 1813, p. 48. XX Anatom. Vitrioli, t. ii. in Opera Med. Chym. Frankfort, 1647, pp. 381, 463. §§ Act. Nat. Cur. VI. |||| Annalen der Staatsarzneykunde, loc. cit. *** Obs. med. cent. Basil, 1677, obs. 66. tft Samml. Merkwurd. F&lle. (Collection of remarkable cases.) Nuremberg, 1750, pp. 119, 130. 9 66 many thousands of examples, but in the practical application of which, sufficient precaution has not yet been observed, and which virtue was asserted centuries ago by Nicholas Myrepsus, and subsequently placed beyond a doubt by the testimony of Slevogt, Molitor, Jacobi, J. C. Bernhardt, Jungken, Fauve, Brera, Darwin, May, Jackson, and Fowler,) if it did not proceed from its peculiar faculty of exciting fever, as almost every observer of the evils resulting from this substance has remarked, particularly Amatus Lusitanus, Degner, Buchholz, Heun, and Knape.* We may confidently believe E. Alexan- der^ when he tells us that arsenic is a sovereign remedy in some cases of angina pectoris, since Tachenius, Guilbert, Preussius, Thilenius, and Pyl, have seen it give rise to very strong oppression of the chest; Greselius,t to a dyspnoea approach- ing even to suffocation; and Majault,§ in particular, saw it pro- duce sudden attacks of asthma excited by walking, attended with great depression of the vital powers. The convulsions which are caused by the administration of copper, and those observed by Tondi, Ramsay, Fabas, Pyl, and Cosmier, as proceeding from the use of aliments impregnated with copper; the reiterated attacks of epilepsy, which J. Lazermell saw result from the accidental introduction of a copper coin into the stomach, and which PfundeP* saw pro- duced by the ingestion of a compound of sal ammoniac and copper into the digestive canal, sufficiently explain, to those physicians who will take the trouble to reflect upon it, how copper has been able to cure a case of chorea, as reported by R. Willan,tt Walcker,U Thesussink,§§ and Delarive,|||| and why preparations of copper have so frequently effected the cure of epilepsy, as attested by Batty, Baumes, Bierling, Boerhaave, * See my Mat. Med. vol. ii. f Med. Coram, of Edinb. Dec. t. i. p. 85. X Misc. Nat. Cur. dec. I. ann. 2, p. 149. § In the Sammlung Auserles. Abhandl. fur Aerzte, VII. 1. || De morbis internis capitis. Amsterdam, 1748, p. 253. ** In Hufeland's Journal, II. p. 264; and according to the testimony of Burdach, in his System of Medicine, i. Leip. 1807, p. 284. ft Sammlung Auserles. Abhandl. XII. p. 62. XX Ibid. XI. iii. p. 672. §§ Waarnemingen, No. 18. IHI In Kuhn's phys. med. Journal, January, 1800, p. 58. 67 Causland, Cullen, Duncan, Feuerstein, Helvetius, Lieb, Ma- gennis, C. F. Michaelis, Reil, Russel, Stisser, Thilenius, Weissmann, Weizenbreyer, Whithers, and others. If Poterius, Wepfer, Wedel, F. Hoffmann, R. A. Vogel, Thierry, and Albrecht, have cured a species of phthisis, hectic fever, chronic catarrh, and mucous asthma, with stannum, it is because this metal possesses the faculty of producing a species of phthisis, as Stahl* has observed. And how could it cure pains of the stomach, as Geischlager says it does, if it was not capable of exciting a similar malady. Geischlager himself,t and Stahlt before him, have proved that it does possess this power. The evil effects of lead, which produces the most obstinate constipation, and even the iliac passion, (as Thunberg, Wilson, Lazuriaga, and others, inform us), do they not also give us to understand that this metal possesses likewise the virtue of curing these two affections? Like every other medicine, it ought to subdue and cure, in a permanent manner, the natural diseases which bear a resemblance to those which it engenders, by reason of the faculty which it possesses of exciting morbid symptoms. Angelus Sala§ cured a species of ileus, and J. Agricolall another kind of constipation which endangered the life of the patient, by administering lead internally. The saturnine pills with which many physicians (Chirac, Van Helmont, Naudeau, Pererius, Rivinus, Sydenham, Zacutus Lusitanus, Block, and others) cured the iliac passion and obstinate constipation, did not operate merely in a mechanical manner by reason of their weight; for, if such had been the sources of their efficacy, gold, whose weight is greater than that of lead, would have been preferable in such a case; but the pills acted particularly as a saturnine internal remedy and cured homoeopathically. If Otto Tachenius and Saxtorph formerly cured cases of obstinate hypochondriasis with the aid ,■.■■ of lead, we ought to bear in mind that this metal tends of itself to excite hypochondriasis, as may be seen in the description of its ill effects given by Lazuriaga.** * Mat. Med., cap. 6. p. 83. . t In Hufeland's Journal, X. iif. p. 165. X Mat. Med. loc. cit. § Opera, p. 213. || Comment, in J. Poppii chym. med. Lips. 1638, p. 223. ** Recueil period, de Litterature, i. p. 20. 68 We ought not to be surprised that Marcus* speedily cured an inflammatory swelling of the tongue and of the pharynx with a remedy (mercury) which, according to the daily expe- rience of physicians, has a specific tendency to produce infiammation and tumefaction of the internal parts of the mouth, phenomena to which it gives rise when merely applied to the surface of the body in the form of ointment or plaster, as experienced by Degner,t Friese,t Alberti,§ Engel,ll and many others. The weakening of the intellectual faculties (Swediauer**), imbecility (Degnertt), and mental alienation (Larry++), which have been seen to result from the use of mercury, joined to the almost specific faculty which this metal is known to possess of exciting salivation, explain how W. Perfect§§ was enabled, with the use of mercury, to cure in a permanent manner, a case of melancholy alternating with increased secre- tion of saliva. How does it happen that preparations of mer- cury proved so successful in the hands of Seelig,|||| in the treatment of angina, accompanied with purpura; in those of Hamilton,*** Hoffman,ttt Marcus,JU Rush,§§§ Colden,|||||| Bailey, and Michaelis,**** in the treatment of other kinds of malignant quinsy ? It is evidently because this metal brings on of itself a species of angina of the worst description.tttt It * Magazin, II. ii. f Act. Nat, Cur. VI. app. X Geschichte und Versuche einer chirurg. Gesellschaft. (History and Experiments of a Chirurg. Soc.) Copenhagen, 1774. § Jurisprudentia Medica, V. p. 600. || Specimina Medica. Berlin, 1781, p. 99. ** Traite des Malad. Vener. II. p. 368. ff Loc. cit. XX Memoirs and Observations in the Description of Egypt, vol. i. §§ Annalen einer Anstalt fur Wahnsinnige. (Annals of 'an Institute for Mad Persons.) Hanover, 1804. |||| In Hufeland's Journal, XVI. 1. p. 24. *** Edinb. Med. Comment. IX. 1, p. 8. ttt Medic. Wochenblatt, 1787, No. 1. %XX Magazin fur Specielle Therapie, II. p. 334. §§§ Medic. Inquir. and Observ. No. 6. Illlll Medic. Observ. and Inquir. 1, No. 19, p. 211. **** In Richter's Chirurg. BibHoth. V. p'p. 737J.739. tttt Physicians have likewise endeavoured to cure the croup by means of mercury; but they generally failed in the attempt, because this metal .cannot produce (of itself) in the mucous membrane of the trachea a 69 is certainly by homoeopathic means that Sauter* cured an ulcerous inflammation of the mouth, accompanied with aphthae and fcetor of the breath, similar to that which occurs in saliva- tion, when he prescribed a solution of corrosive sublimate as a gargle, and that Blockt removed aphthae by the use of mercurial preparations, since, among other ulcerations of the mouth, this substance particularly produces a species of aphthce, as we are informed by Schlegelt and Th. Acrey.§ Heckerll used various medicinal compounds successfully in a case of caries succeeding small pox. Fortunately, a portion of mercury was contained in each of these mixtures, to which it may be imagined that this malady will yield (homoeo- pathically) because mercury is one of the few medicinal agents which excites of itself caries, as proved by the many excessive mercurial courses used against syphilis, or even against other diseases, among which are those related by G. P. Michaelis.** This metal, which becomes so formidable when its use is pro- longed, on account of the caries of which it then becomes the exciting cause, exercises, notwithstanding, a very salutary homoeopathic influence in the caries which follows mechanical injuries of the bones, some very remarkable instances of which have been transmitted to us by J. Schlegel,tt Joerdens,U and J. M. Muller.§§ The cure of caries (not venereal) of another kind, which has likewise been effected by means of mercury by J. F. G. Neullll and J. D. Metzger,*** furnishes a fresh proof of the homoeopathic curative virtue with which this substance is endowed. change similar to that particular modification which this disease en- genders. Sulphuretum calcis, which excites cough by impeding respi- ration, and still more so, the tincture of sponga tosta, act more homoeo- pathically in their special effects, and are consequently much more efficacious, particularly when administered in the smallest possible doses. (See my Mat. Med. vi.) * In Hufeland's Journal, XII. ii. t Medic. Bemerkungen, (Med. Observations), p. 161. X In Hufeland's Journal, VII. iv. § Lond. Med. Journal, 1788. || In Hufeland's Journal, i. p. 362. ** Ibid. June, 1809, vi. p. 57. ft Hufeland's Journal, v. pp. 605, 610. XX Ibid. X. ii. §§ Obs. Med. Chirur. ii. cas. 10. IHI Diss. Med. Pract. Goettingae, 1776. *** Adversaria, p. ii. sect. 4. 70 In perusing the works which have been published on the subject of medical electricity, it is surprising to see what analogy exists between the morbid symptoms sometimes pro- duced by this agent, and the natural diseases which it has cured in a durable manner by homoeopathic influence. Innu- merable are the authors who have observed that acceleration of the pulse is among the first effects of positive electricity; but Sauvages,* Delas,t and Barillon,t have seen febrile paroxysms excited by electricity. The faculty it has of producing fever, is the cause to which we may attribute the circumstance of Gardini,§ Wilkinson,II Syme,** and Wesley,tt curing with it alone a tertian fever, and likewise the removal of quartan fevers by ZetzelU and Willermoz.§§ It is also known that electricity occasions a contraction of the muscles which resem- bles a convulsive movement. De Sansllll was enabled to excite even continued convulsions in the arm of a young girl as often as he pleased to make the experiment. It is by virtue of this power which electricity develops, that De Sans*** and Franklinttt applied it successfully in convulsions, and that ThedenUt cured with its aid a little girl ten years of age who lost her speech and partially the use of her left arm by light- ning, yet kept up a constant involuntary movement of the arms and legs, accompanied by a spasmodic contraction of the fingers of the left hand. Electricity likewise produced a kind of ischias, as observed by Jallobert§§§ and another; IIIIII it has also cured this affection by similarity of effect, (homoeopa- thically,) as confirmed by Hiortberg, Lovet, Arrigoni, Daboueix, Manduyt, Syme, and Wesley. Several physicians have cured a species of ophthalmia by electricity, that is to say, by means of the power which it has of exciting of itself inflammation of the * In Bertholon de St. Lazare, Medicinische Electrisitat, von Kiihn. (Medical Electricity.) Leip. 1788, t. i. pp. 239, 240. t Ibid. p. 232. + Ibid. p. 233. § Ibid. p. 232. || Ibid. p. 251. ** Ibid. p. 250. ft Ibid. p. 249. XX Ibid. p. 52. §§ Ibid. p. 250. |||| Ibid. p. 274. *** Ibid. p. 274. ftf Recueil sur l'Electr. Medic, ii. p. 386. XXX Neue Bemerkungen und Erfahrungen, iii. (Recent Observations and Experiments.) §§§ Experiences et Observations sur 1'Electricite. || ||II Philos. Trans, vol. 63. 71 eyes, as observed by P. Dickson* and Bertholon.t Finally, it has in the hands of Fushel cured varices ; and it owes this sanative virtue to the faculty which JallobertJ ascribes to it of producing varicose tumours. Albers relates, that a warm bath at one hundred degrees of the thermometer of Fahrenheit greatly reduced the burning of an acute fever, in which the pulse beat one hundred and thirty to the minute, and that it brought back the pulsation to the number of one hundred and ten. Loffler found hot fomenta- j tions very useful in encephalitis occasioned by insulation or the /'" action of the heat of stoves,§ and Callisenll regards affusions of ', warm water on the head as the most efficacious of all remedies in cases of inflammation of the brain. If we except those cases where ordinary physicians have dis- covered (not by their own research but by vulgar empiricism) the specific remedy for a disease which always retained its identity, and by whose aid they could consequently cure it in a direct manner; such, for example, as mercury in the chancrous venereal disease, arnica in a malady resulting from contusions, cinchona in intermittent fevers arising from marsh miasmata, sulphur in a recent development of itch, &c.;—I say, if we except all these cases, we shall find that those which they have cured promptly and permanently by the bounty of Providence alone, are to the mass of their other irrational cures in the proportion of one to a thousand. Sometimes they were conducted by mere chance to a homoeo- pathic mode of treatment ;** but yet they did not perceive the * Bertholon, loc. cit. p. 406. t Loc. cit. ii. p. 296. X Loc. cit. § In Hufeland's Journal, iii. p. 630. || Act. Soc. Med. Hafn. iv. p. 419. ** Thus, for example, they always imagine they can drive out the per- spiration through the skin (which they say stops up the pores after catch- ing cold) by administering, in the cold stage of the fever, an infusion of the flowers of the sambucus niger, which is capable of subduing such fevers homoeopathically, and restores the patient to health. The cure is most effectually and speedily performed, without transpiration, when the patient drinks but little of this liquor and abstains from all other rnedj- 72 law of nature by which cures of this kind are and ever must be performed. It is therefore highly important to the welfare of the human race, that we should examine how these cures, which are as remark- able for their rare occurrence as they are surprising in their effects, are performed. The result is one of the deepest interest. The examples which we have cited, sufficiently prove, that these cures have never taken place but by homoeopathic means, that is to say, by the faculty of exciting a morbid state similar to cines. They often apply repeated warm cataplasms to acute tumours whose excessive inflammation, attended with insupportable pain, pre- vents suppuration taking place. Under the influence of this treatment the inflammation soon diminishes, the pain decreases, and the abscess is quickly formed, as may be discovered by the fluctuation and appearance of the surface. They imagine that they have softened the tumour by the moisture of the cataplasm, while they have done nothing more than destroy the excess of inflammation homoeopathically by the stronger heat of the cataplasm, and promoted suppuration. Why is the red oxide of mercury (which forms the basis of the ointment of St. Ives) of such utility in cer- tain cases of ophthalmia, when of all substances there is none more capa- ble of producing inflammation of the eyes ? Is it difficult to perceive that in this case its action is homoeopathic ? How could the juice of parsley procure instantaneous relief in cases of dysury so frequent among children, or in ordinary cases of gonorrhea, which are principally distinguished by painful and vain attempts to pass water, if this juice did not cure homoeo- pathically by the faculty which it possesses of exciting painful dysury in healthy persons 1 The saxifrage, which excites an abundant mucous secretion in the bronchia? and pharynx, is a salutary remedy for the so- called mucous angina; and certain kinds of uterine hemorrhage are stopped by small doses of the leaves of sabina, which has the property of exciting metrorhagia: in both instances these remedies are applied with- out any knowledge of the therapeutic law of homoeopathy. Opium, which produces costiveness, has been found, in small doses, to be one of the principal and most certain remedies in constipation from incarcerated hernia and ileus, without ever leading to a discovery of the homoeopathic law which is evident in such cases. Ulcers in the throat (not venereal) have been cured homoeopathically by small doses of mercury. Diarrhoea has frequently been stopped by the use of rhubarb which produces alvine evacuations; rabies has been removed by means of belladonna, which excites a species of hydrophobia; and finally, coma, which is so danger- ous in acute fevers, has been cured, as if by enchantment, by a small dose of opium, a substance which occasions heat and stupefaction. And after all these examples, which speak loudly for themselves, there are still physicians who repulse homceopathy with disdain! 73 the disease that was to be cured. They have been performed in a prompt and permanent manner by medicines, upon which, those who prescribed them (contrary to all the existing systems of therapeutics) have fallen as it were by chance, without well knowing what they were doing or why they acted in this man- ner. Contrary to their inclinations, they by this fact confirmed the necessity of the sole law of nature in therapeutics, that of homoeopathy ; a law, which medical prejudices, till now, would not permit us to search after, notwithstanding the infinite num- ber of facts and visible signs which ought to have pointed towards its discovery. Even in the practice of domestic medicine by persons igno- rant of our profession, but who were gifted with sound judgment and discerning minds, it was discovered that the homoeopathic method of cure was the safest, the most rational, and the least subject to failure. Frozen sourcrout is frequently applied to a limb that is recently frozen, or sometimes it is rubbed with snow. A cook who has scalded his hand, exposes it to the fire at a certain distance, without heeding the increase of pain which it at first occasions, because experience has taught him that by acting thus, he can in a very short time perfectly cure the burn, and remove every feeling of pain.* Other intelligent individuals, equally strangers to medical science—such, for example, as the lacker-workers, apply a substance to burns which excites of itself a similar feeling of heat, that is to say, hot alcohol or the oil of iurpeniine,\ and by * Fernel (in his Therapeutics, book vi. cap. 20,) considered that the best means to allay pain, was to expose the part that was burnt to the fire. John Hunter (in his work on the blood, p. 218) mentions the great inconvenience that results from the application of cold water to burns, and prefers the method of exposing the parts to the fire. In this he departs from the traditional doctrines of medicine, which prescribe cool- ing remedies in cases of inflammation (contraria contrariis); but expe- rience proved to him that a homoeopathic heat (similia similibus) would be most salutary. f Sydenham (Opera, p. 271) says that repeated applications of alcohol are preferable to all other remedies in burns. B. Bell (System of Sur- gery, 1789) expresses himself equally favourable with regard to the effi- cacy of homoeopathic remedies. These are his words: " Alcohol is one of the best remedies for burns of every description: on the first 10 74 these means cure themselves in a few hours, well knowing that the so-called cooling ointments would not produce the same application it appears to increase the pain, (see § 160), but the latter is soon allayed and gives place to an agreeable sensation of calm and tran- quillity. This method is never more efficacious than when the whole part is plunged into alcohol; but where the immersion is not practicable, it is requisite to keep the burn continually covered with pledgets imbibed with this liquid." I further add, that warm, and even very hot alcohol, affords still more prompt and certain relief, because it is far more homoeopathic than.alcohol that is cold. This is confirmed by every experience. Edward Kentish treated several men who were often dreadfully burned in the coal mines by the explosion of fire-damp ; he made them apply hot oil of turpentine or alcohol, as being the best remedies that could be used in severe burns. (Second Essay on Burns, London, 1798.) No treatment is more homoeopathic than this, nor can there be any more efficacious. The worthy and skilful physician Heister also recommends this practice from his own personal experience, (Instit. Chirurg. Tom. I. p. 333); he praises the application of the oil of turpen- tine, of alcohol, and of cataplasms as hot as the patient can bear them. But nothing can more strongly exhibit the surprising superiority of the homoeopathic method (that is to say of the application of substances that excite a sensation of heat and burning, to parts that are burned) over the palliative, (which consists of cold applications), than those simple experiments, where, in order to compare the results of these two oppo- site proceedings, they have been simultaneously tried upon the same patient, and on parts that were burned in an equal degree. Thus J. Bell (Kiihn's Phys. Med. Journal for June, 1801, p. 428) having to treat a lady who had scalded both arms with boiling liquid, covered one with the oil of turpentine, and plunged the other into cold water. The first was no longer painful at the expiration of half an hour, while the other continued so during six hours: the moment it was withdrawn from the cold water the patient experienced far greater pain, and it required much longer time to cure this arm than it did to heal the other. J. Anderson (Kentish, loc. cit. p. 43) likewise treated a woman who had scalded her face and arm with boiling fat. " The face, which was very red and painful, was covered with oil of turpentine a few minutes after the accident: as for the arm, the patient had already plunged it of her own accord into cold water, and expressed a desire to await the result of this treatment for a few hours. At the expiration of seven hours the face was better, and the patient relieved in this part. With regard to the arm, around which the water had been several times renewed, it became exceedingly painful whenever it was withdrawn from the water, and the inflammation had manifestly increased. The next day I found that the patient had suffered extreme pain in the arm; 75 result in an equal number of months, and that cold water* would only make the evil worse. An experienced reaper, however little he may be accustomed to the use of strong liquors, will not drink cold water (contraria contrariis) when the heat of the sun or the fatigue of hard labour have brought him into a feverish state : he is well aware of the danger that would ensue, and therefore takes a small quantity of some heating liquor—viz. a mouthful of brandy. Experi- ence, the source of all truth, has convinced him of the advan- tage and efficacy of this homoeopathic mode of proceeding. The heat and lassitude which oppressed him, soon diminish.t Occasionally there have been certain physicians who guessed that medicines might cure diseases by the faculty which they possessed of exciting morbid symptoms that resembled the dis- ease itself. X inflammation had extended above the elbow, several large blisters had burst, and a thick eschar had formed itself upon the arm and hand, which were then covered with a warm cataplasm. The face was no longer pain- ful, but it was necessary to apply emollients a fortnight longer to cure the arm." Who does not perceive, in this instance, the great superiority of the homozopathic mode of treatment (that is to say, of the application of agents which produce effects resembling the evil itself) over the antipa- thic prescribed by the ordinary physicians of the old school of medicine? * J. Hunter is not the only one who has pointed out the evil results that attend the treatment of burns with cold water. Fabricius de Hilden, (De Combustionibus Libellus. Basil, 1607, cap. V. p. 11) likewise assures us that cold applications are very hurtful in such cases, that they produce the most disastrous effects—that inflammation, suppuration, and sometimes gangrene are the consequences. t Zimmerman (Ueber die Erfahrung, II. p. 318) tells us that the inhabitants of warm countries act in the same manner, with the most beneficial results, and that they usually drink a small quantity of spiritu- ous liquors when they are much heated. X In citing the following passages of writers who have had some pre- sentiment of homoeopathy, I do not mean to prove the excellence of the method, (which establishes itself without further proof), but I wish to free myself from a reproach of having passed them over in silence to arrogate to myself the merit of the discovery. 76 Thus the author of the book iti£ tqwuv tv» x«t' avfyairov, which forms a part of the works attributed to Hippocrates, ex- presses himself in the following remarkable words : 2»« t« opota vovcros yUsreih x») cliot, r» opoix vrgoo-tpBgofji.svec. ix. voa-evvruv vyixivovrcti,— J \ V » / w / OKU TO E^CEEtf SfltTOi WatlETflSI. Physicians of a later period have likewise known and pro- claimed the truths of homoeopathy. Thus B. BoulducJ for example, discovered that the purgative properties of rhubarb were the faculty by which this plant cured diarrhoea. Detharding guessed* that the infusion of senna would cure the colick in adults by virtue of the faculty which it possesses of exciting that malady in healthy persons. Bertholonk informs us that in diseases, electricity diminishes and finally removes a pain which is very similar to one which it also produces. ThouryW affirms that positive electricity accelerates arterial pulsation, also that it renders the same slower where it is already quickened by disease. Stoerck** was struck with the idea that if stramonium dis- turbs the senses and produces mental derangement in persons who are healthy, it might very easily be administered to maniacs for the purpose of restoring the senses by effecting a change of ideas. The Danish physician Stahltt has, above all other writers, expressed his conviction on this head most unequivocally. He speaks in the following terms:—" The received method in medicine, of treating diseases by opposite remedies—that is to say, by medicines which are opposed to the effects they pro- duce, (contraria contrariis),—is completely false and absurd. I am convinced on the contrary, that diseases are subdued by agents which produce a similar affection, (similia similibus):— burns, by the heat of a fire to which the parts are exposed; the * Basil, Froben, 1538, p. 72. fMem. de l'Acad. Royale, 1710. X Eph. Nat. Cur. cent. x. obs. 76. § Medic. Electricit. II. pp. 15, 282. || Mem. lu a l'Acad. de Caen. **Libell. de Stramon. p. 8. 11 In J. Hummel, Comment, de Arthritide tam tartarea, quam scor- butica, seu podagra et scorbutico. Budingse, 1738—in 8, pp. 40, 42. 77 frost-bite, by snow or icy cold water; and inflammation and contusions, by spirituous applications. It is by these means I have succeeded in curing a disposition to acidity of the stomach, by using very small doses of sulphuric acid in cases where a multitude of absorbing powders had been administered to no purpose." Thus far the great truth has more than once been approached by physicians. But a transitory idea was all that presented itself to them; consequently, the indispensable reform which ought to have taken place in the old school of therapeutics to make room for the true curative method and a system of medi- cine at once simple and certain, has, till the present day, not been effected. ORGANON OF MEDICINE. § 1. The first and sole duty of the physician is to restore health to the sick.* This is the true art of healing. * His mission is not, as many physicians (who wasting their time and powers in the pursuit of fame) have imagined it to be, that of inventing systems by stringing together empty ideas and hypotheses upon the immediate essence of life and the origin of disease in the interior of the" human economy; nor is it that of continually endeavouring to account for the morbid phenomena with their nearest cause (which must for ever remain concealed) and confounding the whole in unintelligible words and pompous observations which make a deep impression on the minds of the ignorant, while the patients are left to sigh in vain for relief. We have already too many of these learned reveries which bear the name of medical theories, and for the inculcation of which, even special pro- fessorships have been established. It is high time that all those who call themselves physicians should cease to deceive suffering humanity with words that have no meaning, and begin to act—that is to say, to afford relief, and cure the sick in reality. § 2. The perfection of a cure consists in restoring health in a prompt, mild, and permanent manner; in removing and annihilating disease by the shortest, safest, and most certain means upon principles that are at once plain and intelligible. § 3. When the physician clearly perceives the curative indi- ' cation in each particular case of disease—when he is acquainted with the therapeutic effects of medicines individually—when, guided by evident reasons, he knows how to make such an application of that which is curative in medicine to that which is indubitably diseased in the patient (both in regard to the choice of the substances, the precise dose to be administered, 80 and the time of repeating it) that a cure may necessarily follow —and finally when he knows what are the obstacles to the cure, and can render the latter permanent by removing them;— then only can he accomplish his purpose in a rational manner— then only can he merit the title of a genuine physician, or a man skilled in the art of healing. § 4. The physician is likewise the guardian of health when he knows what are the objects that disturb it, which produce and keep up disease, and can remove them from persons who are in health. § 5. When a cure is to be performed, the physician must avail himself of all the particulars he can learn, both respect- ing the probable origin of the acute malady and the most signifi- cant points in the history of the chronic disease, to aid him in the discovery of their fundamental cause, which is commonly due to some chronic miasm. In all researches of this nature, he must take into consideration the apparent state of the phy- sical constitution of the patient, (particularly when the affection is chronic,) the disposition, occupation, mode of life, habits, social relations, age, sexual functions, etc. etc. § 6. The unprejudiced observer, (however great may be his powers of penetration,) aware of the futility of all elaborate speculations that are not confirmed by experience, perceives in each individual affection nothing, but changes of the state of the body and mind, (traces of disease, casualties, symptoms,) that are discoverable by the senses alone,—that is to say, devia- tions from the former sound state of health, which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by the individuals around him, and observed by the physician. The ensemble of these avail- able signs represents, in its full extent, the disease itself—that is, they constitute the true and only form of it which the mind is capable of conceiving.* * 1 cannot, therefore, comprehend how it was possible for physicians, without heeding the symptoms or taking them as a guide in the treat- ment, to imagine that they ought to search the interior of the human economy (which is inaccessible and concealed from our view), and that they could there alone discover that which was to be cured in 81 disease. I cannot conceive how they could entertain so ridiculous a pretension as that of being able to discover the internal invisible change that had taken place, and restore the same to the order of its normal condition by the aid of medicines, without ever troubling themselves very much about the symptoms, and that they should have regarded such a method as the only means of performing a radical and rational cure. Is not that which manifests itself in disease, by symp- toms, identified with the change itself which has taken place in the human economy, and which it is impossible to discover without their aid 1 Do not the symptoms of disease, which are sensibly cognizable, represent to the physician the disease itself? When he can neither see the spiritual essence, the vital power which produces the disease, nor yet the disease itself, but simply perceive and learn its morbid effects, that he may be able to treat it accordingly 1 What would the old school search out farther from the hidden interior for a prima causa morbi, whilst they reject and superciliously despise the palpable and intelligible representation of the disease, the symptoms which clearly announce themselves to us as the object of cure 1 What is there besides these in disease which they have to cure?** ** The physician who engages in a search after the hidden springs of the inter- nal economy will hourly be deceived; but the homceopathist, who with due atten- tion seizes upon the faithful image of the entire group of symptoms, possesses himself of a guide that may be depended on, and when he has succeeded in destroying the whole of them, he may be certain that he has likewise annihilated the internal and hidden cause of disease." (Rau, loc. cit. p. 103.) § 7. As in a disease where no manifest or exciting cause presents itself for removal, (causa occasionalis1) we can perceive nothing but the symptoms, then must these symptoms alone (with due attention to the accessory circumstances, and the possibility of the existence of a miasm) (§ 5) guide the physician in the choice of a fit remedy to combat the disease. The totality of the symptoms, this image of the immediate essence of the malady reflected externally, ought to be the principal or sole object by which the latter could make known the medicines it stands in need of—the only agent to determine the choice of a remedy that would be most appropriate. In short, the ensem- ble2 of the symptoms is the principal and sole object that a physician ought to have in view in every case of disease—the power of his art is to be directed against that alone in order to cure and transform it into health. 1 It is taken for granted that every intelligent physician will com- mence by removing this causa occasionalis; then the indisposition usually yields of itself. Thus it is necessary to remove flowers from the 11 82 room when their odours occasion paroxysms of fainting and hysteria, to extract from the eye the foreign substance which occasions ophthalmia; remove the tight bandages from a wounded limb which threatens gan- grene, and apply others more suitable; lay bare and tie up a wounded artery where hemorrhage produces fainting; evacuate the berries of bel- ladonna, &c. which may have been swallowed, by vomiting; extract the foreign particles which have introduced themselves into the openings of the body, (the nose, pharynx, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina) ; grind down a stone in the bladder; open the imperforate anus of the new born infant, &c. 2 Not knowing at times what plan to adopt in disease, physicians have till now endeavoured to suppress or annihilate some one of the various symptoms which appeared. This method which is known by the name of the symptomatic, has very justly excited universal contempt, not only because no advantage is derived from it, but because it gives rise to many bad consequences. A single existing symptom is no more the disease itself, than a single leg constitutes the entire of the human body. This method is so much the more hurtful in its effects, that in attacking an isolated symptom, they make use solely of an opposite remedy, (that is to say, of antipathies or palliatives,) so that after an amendment of short duration the evil bursts forth again worse than before. § 8. It is not possible to conceive or prove by any ex- perience, after the cure of the whole of the symptoms of a disease, together with all its perceptible changes, that there remains or possibly can remain any other than a healthy state, or that the morbid alteration which has taken place in the inte- rior of the economy has not been annihilated.* * In one who has thus been restored from sickness by a genuine phy- sician, so that no trace of disease, no morbid symptom any longer remains and every token of health has again durably returned, can it for a moment be supposed, without offering an insult to common sense, that the entire corporeal disease still resides in such an individual? and yet Hufeland, at the head of the old school, makes this identical assertion (in his work on Homoeopathy, p. 27, 1. 19) in the following words, viz. " The homceopathist may remove the symptoms, but the disease will still remain." He affirms this partly out of mortification at the progress and salutary effects of homoeopathy, and partly because he entertains wholly material ideas of disease, which he is unable to regard as an immaterial change in the organism, produced by the morbid derangement of the vital power; he does not consider it as a changed condition of the organism, but as a material something, which, after the cure is com- pleted, may yet continue to lurk in some internal corner of the body, in order one day or other, at pleasure, and during a period of bloom- ing health, once more to burst forth with its material presence ! So 83 shocking is still the delusion of the old pathology ! That such a one only could produce a therapeutica, solely intent upon cleansing out the poor patient, is not surprising. § 9. In the healthy condition of man, the immaterial vital principle which animates the material body, exercises an abso- lute sway and maintains all its parts in the most admirable order and harmony, both of sensation and action, so that our indwelling rational spirit may freely employ these living, healthy organs for the superior purposes of our existence. § 10. The material organism deprived of its vital principle, is incapable of sensation, action, or self-preservation* ; it is the immaterial vital principle only, animating the former in its healthy and morbid condition, that imparts to it all sensation and enables it to perform its functions. * It is then dead and subjected to the physical laws of the external world; it suffers decay and is again resolved into its constituent ele- ments. §11. In disease this spontaneous and immaterial vital prin- ciple pervading the physical organism, is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence of a morbific agent which is inimical to life. Only the vital principle thus disturbed, can give to the organism its abnormal sensations and incline it to the irregular actions which we call disease; for as an invisible principle only cognizable through its operations in the organism, its mor- bid disturbances can be perceived solely by means of the ex- pression of disease in the sensations and actions of that side of the organism exposed to the senses of the physician and by- standers, in other words, by the morbid symptoms, and can be indicated in no other manner. § 12. It is solely the morbidly affected vital principle which brings forth diseases,* so that the expression of disease, percepti- ble by the senses, announces at the same time all the internal change, that is, all the morbid perturbations of the vital prin- ciple; in short, it displays the entire disease. Consequently, after a cure is effected, the cessation of all morbid expression, and of all sensible changes which are inconsistent with the 84 healthy performance of the functions, necessarily pre-supposes, with an equal degree of certainty, a restoration of the vital principle to its state of integrity and the recovered health of the whole organism. * In what manner the vital principle produces morbid indications in the system, that is, how it produces disease, is to the physician a use- less question, and therefore will ever remain unanswered. Only that which is necessary for him to know of the disease, and which is fully sufficient for the purpose of cure, has the Lord of life rendered evident to his senses. § 13. Disease, therefore, (those forms of it not belonging to manual surgery,) considered as it is by the allceopathists as something separate from the living organism and the vital prin- ciple which animates it, as something hidden internally, and material, how subtile soever its nature may be supposed, is a non-entity, which could only be conceived in heads of material mould, and which for ages, hitherto, has given to medicine all those pernicious deviations which constitute it a mischievous art. § 14. There is no curable malady, nor any invisible morbid change, in the interior of man, which admits of cure, that is not made known by morbid indications or symptoms to the physician of accurate observation—a provision entirely in con- formity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of men. § 15. The sufferings of the immaterial vital principle which animates the interior of our bodies, when it is morbidly dis- turbed, and the mass of symptoms produced by it in the organism, which are externally manifested, and represent the actual malady, constitute a whole—they are one and the same. The organism is, indeed, the material instrument of life; but without that animation which is derived from the instinctive sensibility and control of the vital principle, its existence is as inconceivable as that of a vital principle without an organism; consequently, both constitute a unit—although, for the sake of ease in comprehension, our minds may separate this unity into two ideas. 85 § 16. By the operation of injurious influences, from without, upon the healthy organism, influences which disturb the har- monious play of the functions, the vital principle, as a spiritual dynamis, cannot otherwise be assailed and affected than in a (dynamic) spiritual manner ; neither can such morbid disturb- ances, or in other words, such diseases, be removed by the physi- cian, except in like manner, by means of the spiritual (dynamic virtual) countervailing agency of the suitable medicines acting upon the same vital principle, and this action is communicated by the sentient nerves every where distributed in the organism; so that curative medicines possess the faculty of restoring, and do actually restore health, with concomitant functional harmony, by a dynamic influence only, acting upon the vital energies, after the morbid alterations in the health of the patient which are evident to the senses (the totality of the symptoms) have represented the disease to the attentive and observant physician as fully as may be requisite to effect a cure. § 17. As the cure which is effected by the annihilation of all the symptoms of a disease removes at the same time the internal change upon which the disease is founded—that is to say, destroys it in its totality1—it is acccordingly clear, that the physician has nothing more to do than destroy the totality of the symptoms in order to effect a simultaneous removal of the internal change—that is, to annihilate the disease itself. But by destroying disease we restore health, the first and sole duty of the physician who is sensible of the importance of his calling, which consists in affording relief to his fellow mortals, and not in discoursing dogmatically.2 i A dream, a presentiment resulting from a superstitious imagination, a solemn prediction, impressing a person with the belief that he will in- fallibly die on a certain day and at a certain hour, have often produced the embryo of the growing disease, the signs of approaching death, and even death itself at the hour prognosticated. Such effects could never take place without some change having been operated in the interior of the body, corresponding with the state which manifested itself externally. In cases of this nature, it has also sometimes happened, that by deceiving the patient or insinuating a contrary belief, it has succeeded in dissipating all the morbid appearances which announced the approach of death, and suddenly restored him to health: circumstances that never could have 86 taken place without annihilating at the same time, by this moral remedy, the internal morbid change of which death was to be the result. 2 The wisdom and goodness of the Creator in the cure of disease to which man is subject, could not be more manifest than in developing to the physician the incidents, in the malady to be removed, openly to the observation of the physician in order for their removal and the conse- quent restoration of health. But what would be thought of those divine attributes if (as the prevalent school of medicine, hitherto affecting a supernatural insight of the internal nature of things, have pretended,) he had veiled what is to be cured in disease in mystic darkness, wrapt it in concealment within, and thus rendered it impossible for man to know distinctly the malady, and the cure equally impossible. § 18. From this incontrovertible truth, that beyond the totality of the symptoms there is nothing discoverable in diseases by which they could make known the nature of the medicines they stand in need of, we ought naturally to conclude that there can be no other indication whatever than the ensemble of the symptoms in each individual case to guide us in the choice of a remedy. § 19. As diseases are nothing more than changes in the general state of the human economy which declare themselves by symptoms, and the cure being impossible except by the conver- sion of the diseased state into one of health, it may be readily con- ceived that medicines could never cure disease if they did not possess the faculty of changing the general state of the system, which consists of sensation and action, and that their curative virtues are owing to this faculty alone. § 20. By a mere effort of the mind we could never discover this innate and hidden faculty of medicines—this spiritual virtue by which they can modify the state of the human body and even cure disease. It is by experience only, and observa- tion of the effects produced by their influence on the general state of the economy, that we can either discover or form to ourselves any clear conception of it. § 21. The curative powers of medicines being nowise discoverable in themselves, a fact which few will venture to dispute, and the pure experiments which have been made even by the most skilful observers not exhibiting any thing to our 87 view which could be capable of rendering them medicines or curative remedies, except the faculty which they possess of pioducing manifest changes in the general state of the human economy, particularly with persons in health, in whom they excite morbid symptoms of a very decided character; we ought to conclude from this, that when medicines act as remedies' they cannot exercise their curative virtue but by the faculty which they possess of modifying the general state of the economy, and giving birth to peculiar symptoms. Conse- quently, we ought to rely solely upon the morbid appearances which medicines excite in healthy persons, the only possible manifestation of the curative virtues which they possess, in order to learn what malady each of them produces individually, and at the same time what diseases they are capable of curing. § 22. But, as we can discover nothing to remove in disease in order to change it into health, except the ensemble of the symptoms ; as we also perceive nothing curative in medicines but their faculty of producing morbid symptoms in persons who are healthy, and of removing them from those who are diseased, it very naturally follows that medicines assume the character of remedies, and become capable of annihilating disease in no other manner than by exciting particular appear- ances and symptoms ; or to express it more clearly, a certain artificial disease which destroys the previous symptoms—that is to say, the natural disease which they intend to cure. On the other hand, if we wish to destroy the entire symptoms of a disease, we ought to choose a medicine which has a tendency to excite similar or opposite symptoms, according to that which experience may point out to us as the easiest, safest, and most permanent means of removing the symptoms of the disease, and of restoring health, whether it be by opposing to the latter medicinal symptoms that are similar or contrary.* * Besides these two, there is no other mode of applying medicines in disease but the allceopathic, and in this latter, remedies are administered which produce symptoms that bear no reference whatever to those of the disease itself, being neither similar nor contrary, but wholly heteroge- neous. I have already shown, in the Introduction, that this method is an imperfect imitation of the still more imperfect attempts made by the unintelligent vital powers (when abandoned to their own resources) to 88 save themselves at all hazards, a power to which the organism was confided merely to preserve its harmony so long as health continued. However inapplicable this method may be, it has for so long a time been practised by the existing school of medicine, that the physician can no more pass over it unnoticed, than the historian can be silent on the oppression to which mankind has been subject for thousands of years beneath the absurd rule of despotic governments. § 23. From pure experience and the most careful experi- ments that have been tried, we learn that the existing morbid symptoms, far from being effaced or destroyed by contrary medicinal symptoms like those excited by the antipathic, enantiopathic, or palliative methods, they, on the contrary, re-appear more intense than ever, after having for a short space of time undergone apparent amendment. (Vide § 58— 62, and 69.) § 24. There remains, accordingly, no other method of applying medicines profitably in diseases than the homoeo- pathic, by means of which we select from all others that medicine (in order to direct it against the entire symptoms of the individual morbid case) whose manner of acting upon persons in health is known, and which has the power of producing an artificial malady the nearest in resemblance to the natural disease before our eyes. § 25. Plain experience,* an infallible oracle in the art of healing, proves to us, in every careful experiment, that the particular medicine whose action upon persons in health produces the greatest number of symptoms resembling those of the disease which it is intended to cure, possesses, also, in reality, (when administered in convenient doses,) the power of suppressing, in a radical, prompt, and permanent manner, the totality of these morbid symptoms—that is to say, (§ 6—16.) the whole of the existing disease ; it also teaches us that all medicines cure the diseases whose symptoms approach nearest to their own, and that among the latter none admit of exception. * I do not mean that kind of experience acquired by our ordinary practitioners after having long combated, with a heap of complicated prescriptions, a multitude of diseases which they never examined with care, and which (true to the errors of the old school) they regarded as 89 being already included in our pathology, thinking that they perceived in them some imaginary morbific principle, or some internal anomaly not less hypothetical. In fact, they were in the habit of seeing something, but they knew not what they saw, and they arrived at conclusions which a deity alone could unravel in the midst of so great a concourse of diverse powers acting upon an unknown subject, a result from which no information was to be gained. Fifty years of such experience are like fifty years passed in looking through a kaleidoscope, which, full of unknown things of varied colours, revolves continually upon itself: there would be seen thousands of figures changing their forms every instant without a possibility of accounting for any one of them. § 26. This phenomenon is founded on the natural law of homoeopathy—a law unknown till the present time, although it has on all occasions formed the basis of every visible cure— that is to say, a dynamic disease in the living economy of man is extinguished in a permanent manner by another that is more powerful, when the latter, (without being of the same species,) bears a strong resemblance to it in its mode of manifesting itself* * Physical and moral diseases are cured in the same manner. Why does the brilliant planet Jupiter disappear in the twilight from the eyes of him who gazes at it ? Because a similar but more potent power, the light of breaking day, then acts upon these organs. With what are we in the habit of flattering the olfactory nerves when offended by disagree- able odours? With snuff, which affects the nose in a similar manner but more powerfully. Neither music nor confectionery will overcome the disgust of smelling, because these objects have affinity with the nerves of other senses. By what means does the soldier cunningly remove from the ears of the compassionate spectator the cries of him who runs the gauntlet ? By the piercing tones of the fife, coupled with the noise of the drum. By what means do they drown the distant roar of the enemy's cannon, which carries terror to the heart of the soldier? By the deep-mouthed clamour of the big drum. Neither the compassion nor the terror could be suppressed by reprimands or a distribution of brilliant uniforms. In the same manner, mourning and sadness are extinguished in the soul when the news reach us (even though they were false) of a still greater misfortune occurring to another. The evils resulting from an excess of joy are mitigated by coffee, which, of itself, disposes the mind to impressions that are happy. The Germans, a nation which had for centuries been plunged in apathy and slavery by their princes—it was not till after they had been bowed to the dust by the tyranny of the French invader, that a sentiment of the dignity of man could be awakened within them, or that they could once more arise from their abject condition. 12 90 § 27. The curative powers of medicines are therefore grounded upon the faculty which they possess of creating symptoms similar to those of the disease itself, but which are of a more intense nature. (§ 12—26.) It necessarily follows, that disease cannot be destroyed or cured in a certain, radical, prompt and permanent manner, but by the aid of a medicine which is capable of exciting the entire group of symptoms which bear the closest resemblance to those of the disease, but which possess a still greater degree of energy. § 28. As this therapeutic law of nature clearly manifests itself in every accurate experiment and research, it conse- quently becomes an established fact, however unsatisfactory may be the scientific theory of the manner in which it takes place. I attach no value whatever to any explanation that could be given on this head; yet the following view of the subject appears to me to be the most reasonable, because it is founded upon experimental premises. § 29. Every disease (which does not belong exclusively to surgery,) being a purely dynamic and peculiar change of the vital powers in regard to the manner in zohich they accomplish sensation and action, a change that expresses itself by symptoms which are perceptible to the senses, it therefore follows, that the homoeopathic medicinal agent, selected by a skilful physician, zvill convert it into another medicinal disease which is analogous, but rather more intense* By this means, the natural morbific power which had previously existed, and which was nothing more than a dynamic power without substance, terminates, while the medicinal disease which usurps its place being of such a nature as to be easily sub- dued by the vital powers, is likewise extinguished in its turn, leav- ing in its primitive state of integrity and health the essence or sub- stance which animates and preserves the body. This hypothesis, which is highly probable, rests upon the following facts. * The brief operation of the artificial morbific powers, which are denominated medicinal, although they are stronger than natural diseases, renders it possible that they may, nevertheless, be more easily over- powered by the vital energies than the latter, which are weaker. Natural diseases, simply because of their more tedious and burthensome operation (as psora, syphilis, sycosis), cannot be overcome or extin- 91 guished by the unaided vital energies, until these are more strongly aroused by the physician, through the medium of a very similar yet more powerful morbific agent (a homoeopathic medicine). Such an agent, upon its administration, urges, as it were, the insensate, instinc- tive vital energies, and is substituted for the natural morbid affection hitherto existing. The vital energies now become affected by the medi- cine alone, yet transiently; because its effect (that is to say, the natural course of the medicinal disease thereby excited,) is of short duration. Those chronic diseases which (according to § 46) are destroyed on the appearance of small-pox and measles, (both of which run a course of a few weeks only,) furnish similar instances of cure. § 30. Medicines (particularly as it depends on us to vary the doses according to our own will), appear to have greater power in affecting the state of health than the natural morbific irritation; for natural diseases are cured and subdued by appropriate medicines. § 31. The physical and moral powers, which are called morbific agents, do not possess the faculty of changing the state of health unconditionally ;* we do not fall sick beneath their influence before the economy is sufficiently disposed and laid open to the attack of morbific causes, and will allow itself to be placed by them in a state where the sensations which they undergo, and the actions which they perform, are different from those which belong to it in the normal state. These powers, therefore, do not excite disease in all men, nor are they at all times the cause of it in the same individual. * When I say that disease is an aberration or a discord in the state of health, I do not pretend by that to give a metaphysical explanation of the immediate essence of diseases generally, or of any morbid case in particular. In making use of this term, I merely intend to point at that which diseases are not, and cannot be ; or to express what I have just proved, that they are not mechanical or chemical changes of the material substance of the body, that they do not depend upon a morbific material principle, and that they are solely spiritual and dynamic changes pf the animal economy. § 32. But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific powers which we call medicines. Every real medicine will at all times, and under every circumstance, work upon every living individual, and excite in him the symptoms that are 92 peculiar to it, (so as to be clearly manifest to the senses when the dose is powerful enough,) to such a degree, that the whole of the system is always (unconditionally) attacked, and, in a manner, infected by the medicinal disease, which, as I have before said, is not at all the case in natural diseases. § 33. It is therefore fully proved by every experiment,* and observation, that the state of health is far more susceptible of derangement from the effects of medicinal powers than from the influence of morbific principles and contagious miasms; or what is the same thing, the ordinary morbific principles have only a conditional and often very subordinate influence, while the medi- cinal powers exercise one that is absolute, direct, and greatly supe- rior to that of the former. * The following is a striking observation of the kind directly in point: previously to the year 1801, the genuine smooth scarlet fever of Syden- ham prevailed epidemically among children, and attacked all, without exception, who had not escaped the disease in a former epidemic; whereas, every child who was exposed to one of the kind which came under my observation in Konigslutter, remained exempt from this highly infectious disease, if it had timely taken a very small dose of belladonna. When a medicine can thus evince a prophylactic property against the infection of a prevalent disease, it must exercise a predominating influ- ence over the vital power. § 34. In artificial diseases produced by medicines, it is not the greater degree of intensity that imparts to them the power they possess of curing those which are natural. In order that the cure may be effected, it is indispensable that the medicines be able to produce in the human body an artificial disease, similar to that which is to be cured; for it is this resem- blance alone, joined to the greater degree of intensity of the artificial disease, that gives to the latter the faculty of substi- tuting itself in the place of the former, and thus obliterating it. This is so far a fact, that even nature herself cannot cure an existing disease by the excitement of a new one that is dissimi- lar, be the intensity of the latter ever so great; in the same manner the physician is incapable of effecting a cure when he applies medicines that have not the power of creating in healthy persons a morbid state, resembling the disease which is before him. 93 § 35. In order to illustrate these facts, we will examine successively in three different cases the proceedings of nature where two natural diseases that are dissimilar meet together in the same patient, and also the results of the ordinary treatment of disease with allceopathic medicines which are incapable of exciting an artificial morbid state, similar to that of the disease which is to be cured. This examination will fully prove, on the one hand, that it is not even in the power of nature herself to cure an existing disease by one that is dissimilar, be the intensity of the latter ever so great, and on the other, that even the most energetic medicines, when not homoeopathic, are inca- pable of effecting a cure. §. 36 I. If the two dissimilar diseases which meet together in the human body have an unequal power, or if the oldest of them is stronger than the other, the new disease will be repulsed from the body by that which existed before it, and will not be able to establish itself there. Thus a person already afflicted with a severe chronic disease, will never be subject to an attack of slight autumnal dysentery or any other epidemic. Accord- ing to Larry,* the plague peculiar to the Levant never breaks out in places where scurvy prevails, nor does it ever infect those who labour under herpetic diseases. According to Jenner, the rickets prevent vaccination from taking effect, and Hildebrand informs us that persons suffering under phthisis are never attacked with epidemic fevers, except when the latter are extremely violent. * Mem. and Observ. in the Description of Egypt, torn. i. § 37. In the same manner, a chronic disease, of long stand- ing, will not yield to the ordinary mode of cure by allceopathic remedies, that is to say, by medicines which are incapable of producing in healthy persons a state analogous to that by which it is characterised. It resists a treatment of this kind, provided it be not too violent, even prolonged during several years. Practice verifies this assertion, it therefore requires no examples to support it. § 38. II. If the new disease, which is dissimilar to the old, foe more powerful than the latter, it will then cause its suspension 94 until the new disease has either performed its own course or is cured ; but then the old disease reappears. We are informed by Tulpius1 that two children having contracted tinea, ceased to experience any further attacks of epilepsy to which they had till then been subject; but as soon as the eruption of the head was removed, they were again attacked as before. Schoepf saw the itch disappear when scurvy manifested itself, and return again after the cure of the latter disease.2 A violent typhus has suspended the progress of ulcerous phthisis, which resumed its march immediately after the cessation of the typhoid disease.3 When madness manifests itself during a pulmonary disease, it effaces the phthisis with all its symptoms; but when the mental alienation ceases, the pulmonary disease again rears its head and kills the patient.4 Where the measles and the small-pox exist together, and have both attacked the same infant, it is usual for the measles, which have already declared themselves, to be arrested by the small-pox which bursts forth, and not to resume their course until after the cure of the latter; on the other hand, Manget5 has also seen the small-pox, which had fully developed itself after inoculation, suspended during four days by the measles which intervened, and after the desquamation of which, it revived again to run its course. The eruption of measles on the sixth day after inoculation has been known to arrest the inflammatory opera- tion of the latter, and the small-pox did not break out until the other exanthema had accomplished its seven days' course.6 In an epidemic, the measles broke out among several patients four or five days after inoculation, and retarded until their entire disappearance the eruption of the small-pox, which subsequently proceeded in a regular manner.7 The true scarlet fever of Sydenham,8 with angina, was arrested on the fourth day by the manifestation of the cow-pock, which went through its natural course ; and not before its termination did the scarlet fever manifest itself again. But as these two diseases appear to be of equal force, the cow-pock has likewise been seen to suspend itself on the eighth day by the eruption of genuine scarlatina, and the red areola was effaced until the scarlatina had terminated its career, at which moment the cow-pock resumed its course, and terminated regularly.9 The cow-pock was on the point of attaining to its state of perfection on the 95 eighth day when measles broke out, which immediately rendered it stationary, and not before the desquamation of which did it resume and finish its course ; so that, according to the report of Kortum,10 it presented on the sixteenth day the aspect which it usually wears on the tenth. The vaccine virus has been known to infect the system even where the measles had already made their appearance, but it did not pursue its course until the measles had passed away ; for this we have also the authority of Kortum.11 I have myself had an opportunity of seeing a parotid angina disappear immediately after the development of the cow-pock. It was not till after the cow-pock had terminated, and the disappearance of the red areola of the vesicles, that a great swelling, attended with fever, manifested itself in the parotid and sub-maxillary glands, which ran its ordinary course of seven days. It is the same in all diseases that are dissimilar ; the stronger one suspends the weaker, (except in cases where they blend together, which rarely occurs in acute diseases); but they never cure each other reciprocally. 1 Obs. lib. i. obs. 8. * In Hufeland's Journal, XV. ii. 3 Chevalier, in Hufeland's neuesten Annalen der franz. Heilkunde. ii. p. 192. 4 Mania phthisi superveniens earn cum omnibus suis phaenomenis aufert, verum mox redit phthisis et occidit, abeunte mania. Reil, Memorabilia Fasc. III. v. p. 171. 5 Edinb. Med. Comment. T. I. i. 6 J. Hunter on the Venereal Disease. 7 Rainey, Edinb. Med. Comment, iii. p. 480. 8 It has also been very accurately described by Withering and Plenciz, and differs greatly from purpura, to which they often give the name of scarlet fever. Only within the last few years have both, originally very different diseases, approached more or less to each other in their symptoms. s Jenner, in the Annals of Medicine for August, 1800, p. 747. io In Hufeland's Journal, XX. iii. p. 50. » Loc. cit. § 39. The ordinary schools of medicine have witnessed all these effects during whole centuries. They have seen that nature was never in any instance capable of curing a disease by adding another, whatever degree of intensity the latter 96 might possess, if it was not similar to the pre-existing disease. What opinion, then, ought we to form of these schools of medicine, which continued, notwithstanding, to treat chronic diseases with allceopathic remedies—that is to say, with sub- stances which were scarcely ever able to excite any thing else but a disease dissimilar to the affection that was to be cured ? And though physicians had never before regarded nature with a due share of attention, would it not still have been possible for them to discover, from the miserable results of their mode of treatment, that they were pursuing a wrong path, which could only lead them still farther from their purpose 1 Could they not see that in having recourse (according to their usual practice) to violent allceopathic remedies in chronic diseases, they did nothing more than provoke an artificial malady dissimilar to the primitive disease, which certainly had the effect of extinguishing the latter so long as the other continued to exist, but which suffered it to reappear as soon as the diminished powers of the patient could no longer support the vigorous attacks of alloeopathy on the vital principle ? It is in this manner that strong purgatives, frequently repeated, cause eruptions of the skin to disappear pretty quickly; but when the patient can no longer endure the dissimilar disease that has been violently kindled in the vitals, and is compelled to discon- tinue the purgatives, then the cutaneous eruption either flourishes again in its former vigour, or the internal psoric affection manifests itself by some bad symptom or another, while, in addition to the primitive malady, (which is not in the least degree diminished,) indigestion ensues, and the vital powers are exhausted. Thus, also, when ordinary physicians insert setons, and excite ulceration of the surface of the body, for the purpose of destroying chronic diseases, they never accomplish the object they have in view—that is to say, they never perform a cure, because those factitious cutaneous ulcers are perfectly foreign and allceopathic to the internal disease; but the irritation produced by many cauteries being often a more powerful disease than the primitive morbid state, (although at the same time dissimilar,) it frequently has the power of silencing the latter for a short time, which is nothing more than a suspension of the disease obtained at the expense of the patient, whose powers are thereby gradually diminished. 97 An epilepsy which had been suppressed during several years by issues, constantly re-appeared more violent than before whenever the exuditories were allowed to heal up, as attested by Pechlin* and others. But purgatives are no more allceo- pathic in regard to psora, or issues in respect of epilepsy, than the compounds of unknown ingredients employed till the present time in ordinary practice are so in relation to the other innumerable forms of disease. These mixtures do nothing more than weaken the patient, and suspend the evil for a very short space of time without being able to cure it, while their continued and repeated use, as it frequently happens, adds a new disease to the old one. * Obs. Phys. Med. lib. 2, obs. 30. § 40. III. Or it sometimes occurs that the new disease, after having acted for a considerable period upon the system, joins itself finally to the old dissimilar one, presenting together a complicated form of disease, but in such a manner that each of them, notwithstanding, occupies a particular region of the economy, installing itself in those organs with which it sympa- thises, and abandoning the others to the diseases that are dissimilar. Thus a venereal affection may turn to one that is psoric, and vice versa. These two diseases being dissimilar, they are incapable of annihilating or curing each other. Venereal symptoms are effaced and suspended, in the first instance, as soon as a psoric eruption commences; but, in the progress of time, the venereal affection being at least quite as powerful as the psoric, the two unite together1—that is to say, each seizes merely upon those parts of the organism that are appropriate to it individually, by which the patient is rendered worse, and the cure more difficult than before. In a case where two con- tagious acute diseases meet together, bearing no analogy to each other, (such as, for example, the small-pox and the measles,) one of them ordinarily suspends the other, as before stated. However, there have been some extraordinary instances in violent epidemic diseases, where two dissimilar acute maladies have simultaneously attacked the body of the same individual, and become, so to express it, complicated for a short time. In an epidemic where the small-pox and the measles 13 98 reigned together, there were about three hundred cases in which one of these maladies suspended the other, and in which the measles did not break forth until twenty days after the eruption of the small-pox, and the latter till from seventeen to eighteen days after that of the measles—that is to say, until after the first disease had run its entire course ; but there was a single instance in which P. Russell2 met with these two dissimilar maladies simultaneously in the same patient. Rainey3 saw the small-pox and the measles together in two little girls; and J. Maurice4 remarks that he never met with more than two instances of this kind in the whole course of his practice. Similar examples may be found in Ettmiiller,5 and a few other writers. Zencker6 saw the cow-pock pursue its course in a regular manner conjointly with measles and purpura; and Jenner likewise observed it pursue its course tranquilly in the midst of a mercurial treatment directed against the venereal disease. » The cures which I performed of these kinds of complicated diseases, together with the accurate experiments which I have made, have con- vinced me that they do not arise from an amalgamation of two diseases ; but that the latter exist separately in the organism, each occupying the parts that are most in harmony with it. In short, the cure is effected in a very complete manner by administering alternately, and at the proper time, mercurials and antipsoiics, each according to its approriate dose and preparation. 2 Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Med. and Chir. Knowledge, vol. ii. s Med. Comment, of Edinb. iii. p. 480. * Med. and Phys. Journal, 1805. 5 Opera, ii. p. i. cap. 10. 6 In Hufeland's Journal, xvii. § 41. The complication or co-existence of several diseases in the same patient, resulting from a long use of medicines that were not homoeopathic, is far more frequent than those to which nature herself has given birth. The continued applica- tion of inappropriate medicines finishes by adding to the natural disease which it is intended to cure, such fresh morbid symptoms as those remedies are capable of exciting according to the nature of their special properties. These symptoms not being capable of curing by analogous counter irritation, (that is to say, homoeopathically,) a chronic disease to which they 99 bear no similitude, gradually associate themselves to the latter, and thus add a new factitious disease to the old one, so that the patient becomes considerably worse, and far more difficult to cure. There are many observations and cases cited in the medical journals and treatises that support this assertion. One proof of it is also to be met with in the frequent cases of the venereal chancrous disease, especially when complicated with psora, and even with gonorrhea sycotica, which, far from being cured by considerable and repeated doses of inappropriate mercurial preparations, station themselves in the organism alongside of the chronic mercurial disease which developes itself gradually,* and form together a monstrous complication generally designated by the name of masked syphilis (pseudo-syphilis), a state of disease which, if not absolutely incurable, cannot at least but with the greatest difficulty be changed to that of health. * For besides the morbid symptoms analogous to those of the venereal disease, which would be capable of curing the same homoeopathically, mercury produces a crowd of others which bear no resemblance what- ever to those of syphilis, and which, when administered in large doses, especially where there is a complication with psora, as is frequently the case, engenders fresh evils, and commits terrible ravages on the body. § 42. Nature, as I have before said, sometimes permits the coincidence of two and even three spontaneous diseases in one and the same body ; but it must be observed, that this compli- cation never takes place but in diseases that are dissimilar, and which, according to the eternal laws of nature, cannot anni- hilate or cure each other reciprocally. Apparently this is executed in such a manner that the two or three diseases divide, if we may so express it, the organism between them, and each takes possession of the parts that are best suited to it individually; a division which, in consequence of the want of similitude between them, can very well take place without doing injury to the unity of the vital principle. § 43. But the result is very different when two diseases that are similar meet together in the organism—that is to say, when an analogous but more powerful disease joins itself to the pre- existing malady. It is true that we here see how a cure is 100 performed according to nature, and how man is to proceed in effecting the same object. § 44. Two diseases that resemble each other closely can neither repel (as in the first of the three preceding hypotheses, I.), nor suspend each other (as in the second, II.), so that the old one re-appears after the cessation of the new one ; nor, finally, (as in the third, III.), can they exist beside each other in the same organism, and form a double or complicated disease. § 45. No ! Two diseases that differ greatly in their species,1 but which bear a strong resemblance in their develop- ment and effects—that is to say, in the symptoms which they produce, always mutually destroy each other when they meet together in the system. The stronger annihilates the weaker ; nor is it difficult to conceive how this is performed. Two dissimilar diseases may co-exist in the body, because their dissimilitude would allow of their occupying two distinct regions. But, in the present case, the stronger disease which makes its appearance, exercises an influence upon the same parts as the old one, and even throws itself, in preference, upon those which have till now been attacked by the latter, so that the old disease finding no other organ to act upon, is necessarily extinguished.2 Or to express it in other terms, as soon as the vital powers, which have till then been deranged by a morbific cause, are attacked with greater energy by a new power very analogous to the former, but more intense, they no longer receive any impression but from the latter, while the preceding one, reduced to a state of mere dynamic power without matter, must cease to exist. 1 See the note attached to § 26. 2 In the same way that the light of a lamp is rapidly effaced from the retina by a sunbeam which strikes the eye with greater force. § 46. Many examples might be adduced where nature has cured diseases homoeopathically by other diseases which excited similar symptoms. But if precise and indisputable facts alone be required, it will be necessary to confine our- selves to the few diseases which arise from some permanent 101 miasm, and constantly preserve their identity, for which reason they ought to receive a distinct appellation. The foremost that presents itself among these affections is the small-pox, so famous for the violence and number of its symptoms, and which has cured a multitude of diseases that were characterised by symptoms similar to its own. Violent ophthalmia, extending even to the loss of sight, is one of the most ordinary occurrences in the small-pox; whereas Dezoteux1 and Leroy2 have each reported cases of chronic ophthalmia which were cured in a perfect and perma- nent manner by inoculation. A case of blindness of two years' standing brought on by the metastasis of tinea, was, according to Klein,3 perfectly cured by the small-pox. How often has the small-pox cured deafness and oppressed respiration ? J. F. Closs4 has seen it cure both these affections when it had reached its highest state of intensity. Considerable enlargement of the testicle is a frequent symptom in small-pox, and, according to Klein,5 it has been known to cure homoeopathically a large hard swelling of the left testicle, the consequence of a contusion. Another observer6 has seen it cure a similar swelling of the testicle. Dysentery is one of the bad symptoms which occur in small-pox—for this reason it cures the former disease homoeo- pathically, as in a case reported by F. Wendt.7 The small-pox which comes on after vaccination destroys the latter immediately, and does not permit it to arrive at per- fection, both because it is more powerful than the cow-pock, and bears a close resemblance to it. By the same reason, when the cow-pock approaches to its term of maturity, it diminishes and softens, in a very great degree, the small-pox which has just broken out, and causes it to assume a milder form, as witnessed by Miihry8 and many others. The cow-pock, in addition to the vesicles which protect from small-pox, excites also a general cutaneous eruption of another kind. This exanthema consists of sharp-pointed pimples, usually small, seldom large and suppurating, dry, resting upon a small red areola, frequently interspersed with small round spots of a red colour, and sometimes attended with severe itching. In many children it precedes by several days 102 the appearance of the red areola of the cow-pock. But most often it manifests itself afterwards, and disappears in a few days, leaving small hard red spots on the skin. It is by reason of this other exanthema, and the analogy which it bears to the same, that the cow-pock, the moment it takes, removes in a permanent manner those cutaneous eruptions which exist in some children, and which are often troublesome and of long standing. This has been attested by numerous observers.9 Vaccination, whose special symptom is a swelling of the arm,10 cured, after its eruption, the tumefaction of an arm that was half paralysed.11 The vaccine fever, which takes place at the period of the formation of the red areola, has, according to the information of Hardege,12 cured two cases of intermittent fever homoeo- pathically ; which confirms the remark formerly made by J. Hunter,13 that two fevers (or diseases that are similar) can never exist together in the body.t The measles and hooping cough resemble each other both in regard to the fever and the character of the cough. This was the reason that Bosquillon14 observed, during an epidemic of measles and hooping-cough, that among the children who had the former there were many entirely free from the latter. All of them would have been exempt from hooping-cough for ever after, and also beyond the reach of the contagion of measles, if the hooping-cough was not a disease that only resembled the measles partially—that is, if it produced an eruption of the skin analogous to that of the latter ; thus the measles are able to preserve but a certain number of children homoeo- pathically from the hooping-cough, nor can they do this for a longer period than during the continuance of the reigning epidemic. But when the measles come in contact with a disease that resembles them in the principal symptom, viz. the eruption, they can beyond a doubt annihilate and cure it homoeopa- thically. It was under such circumstances that the eruption of measles cured a chronic tetter15 in a prompt, durable, and perfect manner, as observed by Kortum.16 A miliary eruption that covered the neck, face, and arms, during a period of six years, attended with insupportable heat, and which returned at every change of weather, was reduced to a simple swelling of 103 the skin on the appearance of measles ; after the cessation of the latter, the miliary eruption was cured and never re- appeared.17 i Traite de l'Inoculation, p. 189. 2 Heilkunde fur Mutter (Medical Treatise for the use of Mothers), p. 384. 3 Interpres Clinicus, p. 293. 4 Neue Heilart der Kinderpocken (New System for the Cure of Small-pox), Ulm, 1769, p. 68. and Specim. Obs. No. 18. 5 Loc. cit. s nov> Act. Nat. Cur. vol. i. obs. 22. 7 Nachricht von dem Krankeninstitut (Directions of the Medical Board) at Erlangen, 1783. s In R. Willan on Vaccination. 9 Particularly Clavier, Hurel, and Desormeaux, in the Bulletin des Sc. Med. de l'Eure, 1808. Journal de Medecine continue, xv. 206. 10 Balhorn, in Hufeland's Journal, X. ii. 11 Stevenson, in Duncan, Annals of Med. Lustr. ii. vol. i. sect. 2. No. 9. 12 In Hufeland's Journal, xxiii. 13 Ueber die venerische Krankheit, (on the Venereal Disease), p. 4. t In the former editions of the Organon, I have cited cases where chronic diseases have been cured by psora, which, according to the dis- coveries I have made known in the first part of my Treatise on Chronic Diseases, can only be partially regarded as homoeopathic cures. The great affections which were thus obliterated (such as suffocating asthma and phthisis of many years'standing,) already owed their origin to some psoric cause. The symptoms of a psoric eruption of long standing, which were completely developed in the system, and threatened the life of the patient, were reduced by the appearance of a psoric eruption caused by a new infection, to the simple form of primitive psora, by which means the old disease, with its alarming symptoms, were removed. This return to the primitive form cannot, therefore, be re- garded as a homoeopathic cure of the old psora but in this sense, that the new infection places the patient in a much more favourable way of being subsequently cured of the entire psora by antipsoric medicines. 14 Cullen's Elements of Pract. Med. part. ii. 1. 3, ch. 7. 15 Or at least this symptom was removed. 16 In Hufeland's Journal, XX. ii. p. 50. » Rau, loc. cit. p. 85. § 47. No instructions can be more simple and persuasive than these, to direct the physician in the choice of the sub- stances (medicines) which are capable of exciting artificial diseases, in order that he may be enabled to cure in a prompt and durable manner according to the course of nature. § 48. All the preceding examples prove to us that neither 104 the efforts of nature, nor the skill of the physician, have ever been able to cure a disease by a dissimilar morbific power, whatever energy the latter may have possessed; also, that a cure is not to be obtained but by a morbific power capable of producing symptoms that are similar, and, at the same time, a little stronger. The cause of this rests with the eternal and irrevocable law of nature, which was hitherto not understood. § 49. We should have met with a much greater number of those truly natural homoeopathic cures, if, on the one hand, observers had been more attentive to the subject, and, on the other, nature had at her disposal more diseases capable of effecting homoeopathic cures. § 50. Even nature herself has no other homoeopathic agents at her command than the miasmatic diseases which always retain their identity, such as itch, measles, and small- pox.* But of these morbific powers, the small-pox and the measles are more dangerous and terrific than the maladies which they cure; and the other, psora, demands itself, after the performance of a cure, the application of a remedy that is capable of annihilating it in its turn: both of these are circum- stances that render their use as homoeopathic remedies difficult, uncertain, and dangerous. And how few are the diseases to which man is subject, that would find their homoeopathic cure in psora, measles, or small-pox! Nature can, therefore, cure but a very limited number of diseases with those hazardous remedies. Their use is attended with considerable danger to the patient, because the doses of these morbific agents cannot be varied according to circumstances, as in the case with doses of medicine, and in curing an analogous disease of long standing, they weigh down the patient with the dangerous burden of psora, measles, and small-pox. Notwithstanding this, we have many examples where their favourable junction has produced the most perfect homoeopathic cures, which are a living commentary upon the sole therapeutic law of nature— cure with medicines that are capable of exciting symptoms ana- logous to those of the disease itself. * And the exanthematic miasm which is contained in the cow-pock lymph. 105 § 51. These facts will more than suffice to reveal to the understandings of men the great law which has just been declared. And behold the advantage which man has here over rude nature, whose acts are not guided by reflection! How are the homoeopathic morbific powers multiplied in the various medicines which are spread over the creation, all of which are at his disposal, and may be brought to the relief of his suffering fellow-mortals ! With these, he can create morbid symptoms as varied as the countless natural diseases which they are to cure. With such precious resources at his command, there can be no necessity for those violent attacks upon the organism to extirpate an old and obstinate disease, and the transition from the state of suffering to that of durable health is effected in a gentle, imperceptible, and often speedy manner. § 52. After such evidence and examples, it is impossible for any reasonable physician to persevere in the ordinary allceopathic treatment, or continue to apply remedies whose effects have no direct or homoeopathic relation with the chronic disease that is to be cured, and which attack the body in the parts that are least diseased, by exciting evacuations, counter- irritation, derivations, &c* It is impossible that he can persist in the adoption of a method which consists in exciting, at the expense of the powers of the patient, the appearance of a morbid state entirely different from the primitive affection, by administering strong doses of mixtures which are for the most part composed of drugs whose effects are unknown. The use of such mixtures can have no other result but that which pro- ceeds from the general law of nature when one dissimilar disease joins itself to another in the animal economy—that is to say, the chronic affection, far from being cured, is, on the con- trary, always aggravated. Three different effects may then take place:—1st. If the allceopathic treatment, though of long duration, be gentle, the natural disease remains unchanged, and the patient will only have lost a portion of his strength, because, as we have seen before, the disease which already exists in the body will not permit a new dissimilar one that is weaker to establish itself there likewise. 2d. When the 14 106 economy is attacked with violence by allceopathic medicines, the primitive disease will yield for a time ; but it re-appears, with at least the same degree of vigour as before, the moment this treatment is interrupted, because, as before stated, of two concurrent diseases, the new one, which is the stronger, destroys and suspends for a time that which existed, before it, which is weaker and dissimilar. 3d. Finally, if large doses of allceopathic medicines be continued for a length of time, this treatment only adds a new factitious disease without ever curing the primitive one, and renders the cure still more difficult, because, as we have already seen, when two dissimilar chronic affections of equal intensity meet together, one takes up its station beside the other in the system, and both are simultaneously established. * See the introduction, " A View," etc., and my book—Die Allceopa- thie, ein Wort der Warnung an Kranke jeder Art.—Leipzig, bei Baum- gartner. § 53. These cures are, as we see, performed solely by means of homoeopathy, which we have at length attained to, by consulting reason and taking experience for our guide (§ 7—25). By this method alone can we cure disease in the most speedy, certain, and permanent manner, because it is grounded upon an eternal and unerring law of nature. § 54. I have before remarked (§ 43—49) that there is no true method but the homoeopathic; because, of the only three modes of employing medicines in disease, this alone leads in a direct line to a mild, safe, and durable cure, without either injuring the patient or diminishing his strength. § 55. The second mode of employing medicines in disease, is that which I term the allazopathic, or heteropathic, which has been in general use till the present time. Without ever regarding that which is really diseased in the body, it attacks those parts which are sound, in order to draw off the malady from another quarter, and direct it towards the latter. I have 107 already treated of this method in the Introduction, and therefore will not speak of it farther. § 56. The third and last mode of employing medicines in disease is the antipathic, enantiopathic, or palliative. By this method, physicians have, till the present time, succeeded in affording apparent relief, and gained the confidence of their patients by deluding them with a temporary suspension of their sufferings. We will now show its inefficacy, and to what extent it is even injurious in diseases that run their course rapidly. In fact, this is the only feature, in the treatment employed by allceopathists, that has any direct'reference to the sufferings occasioned by the natural disease. But in what does this reference consist? In precisely that which ought most to be avoided if we would not delude and mock the patient. § 57. An ordinary physician who proceeds upon the anti- pathic method, pays attention to one symptom only—that of which the patient complains loudest, and neglects all the others, however numerous. He prescribes against this symp- tom a medicine that is known to produce the very opposite effect; for, according to the axiom contraria contrariis laid down fifteen hundred years ago by the old schools of medicine, it is from this remedy that he expects the most speedy relief (palliative). Accordingly, he administers strong doses of opium in pains of every description, because this substance rapidly benumbs the feeling. He prescribes the same drug in diarrhoea, because in a short time it stops the peristaltic move- ment of the intestinal canal, and renders it insensible. He administers it likewise in cases of insomnolence, because it produces a state of hebetude and stupor. He employs purga- tives when the patient has for a long time been tormented with constipation. He plunges a hand that has received a burn into cold water, because its icy quality appears suddenly to remove the pain as if by enchantment. When a patient com- plains of a sense of cold and loss of vital heat, he places him in a warm bath, whereby heat is immediately restored. Any one complaining of habitual weakness, is advised to take wine, which immediately re-animates and appears to refresh him. 108 Some other antipathies—that is to say, medicines opposed to the symptoms—are likewise employed ; but independent of those I have just enumerated there are not many, because ordinary physicians are only acquainted with the peculiar and primitive effects of a very small number of medicines. § 58. I will pass over the defect (see the note to § 7) which this method has in attaching itself to but one of the symptoms, and consequently but to a small part of the whole, a circum- stance from which nothing could evidently be expected for the amelioration of the entire disease, which is the only thing the patient aspires to. I will now ask, if experience can show me a single case where the application of these antipathic remedies in chronic or permanent diseases, and the short relief which they have procured, has not been followed by a manifest aggravation, not only of the symptoms thus palliated in the first instance, but what is more, of the entire disease ? Every one who has paid attention to the subject will concur in saying, that after this slight antipathic amendment which lasts only for a short time, the condition of the patient invariably becomes worse, although the ordinary physician endeavours to account for this too palpable augmentation, by attributing it to the malignity of the primitive disease, which, according to his account, only then began to manifest itself.* * However unaccustomed physicians may have been till the present time to make correct observations, it could not have escaped their notice, that disease infallibly increases after the use of palliatives. A striking example of this nature is found in J. H. Schulze, (Diss, qua corporis humani momentanearum alterationum spedmina quoedam expenduntur. Halle, 1741, § 28). Something similar to this is attested by Willis (Pharm. rat. sec. 7. cap. i. p. 298) -.— Opiata dolores atrocis- simos plerumque sedant atque indolentiam.....procurant, eamque___ aliquamdiu et pro stato quodam tempore continuant, quo spatio elapso, dolores mox recrudescunt et brevi ad solitam ferociam augentur. And p. 295:—Exactis opii viribus illico redeunt tormina, nee atroci- tatem suam remittunt, nisi dum ab eodem pharmaco rursus incantan- tur. J. Hunter (in his Treatise on the Venereal Disease, p. 13) says that wine increases the energy of persons who are weak without bestow- ing on them any real vigour; and that the vital powers sink afterwards in the same proportion as they have been stimulated, so that the patient gains nothing by it, but, on the contrary, loses the greater part of his strength. 109 § 59. No severe symptom of a permanent disease has ever been treated by these opposite remedies and palliatives, where the evil did not re-appear after a few hours, more aggravated than before. Thus, to cure an habitual tendency to sleep during the day, coffee was administered, the first effects of which are excitement and insomnolence ; but the moment that its first action was exhausted, the propensity to sleep returned stronger than ever. When a person was subject to frequent waking at night, without any regard being paid to the other symptoms of the disease, opium was administered at bed-time, which, by virtue of its primitive action, produces sleep, stupor, and hebetude ; but on the following night the evil only became still more aggravated in consequence. Alike regardless of the other symptoms, opium was administered in chronic diarrhoea, because its primitive effect is to constipate the bowels ; but the alvine flux, after having been suspended for some time, re-appeared more grievous than before. Acute and frequent pains of all descriptions were momentarily calmed beneath the influence of opium, which blunts and benumbs the feeling; but they never failed to return with greater violence than before, or they were even sometimes replaced by another disease of a worse description. The ordinary physician knows no better remedy for a cough of long standing, which becomes worse at night, than opium, whose first effects remove all kinds of irritation ; for the first night it may very well happen that the patient experiences some relief, but on the succeeding nights the cough returns more distressing than ever; and if the physician persists in combating it with the same palliative by gradually increasing the dose, nocturnal perspirations and fever will then be added to the previous complaint. It has been imagined, that tincture of cantharides, which stimulates the urinary passages, would remedy a weakness of the bladder, and the retention of urine which results from it; it may, indeed, effeet some forced emissions of urine, but in the end the bladder is only rendered less irritable and less susceptible of contraction, while paralysis of the bladder is likely to follow. Physicians have flattered themselves that they could subdue an inveterate tendency to constipation by purgatives administered in large doses, which provoke frequent and abundant alvine evacua- tions ; but the secondary effect of this treatment is generally 110 that of constipating the bowels in a still greater degree. An ordinary physician prescribes wine as a remedy in chronic debility ; but it is only the primitive action of this agent that is stimulating, and its definitive results are those of reducing the powers still more. It has been imagined that bitters and spices would warm and strengthen the cold and inactive stomach ; but the secondary effect of these heating palliatives is to increase the inactivity of the gastric viscera. Warm baths have been prescribed in cases of rigors and an habitual deficiency of the vital heat; but on coming out of the water the patients are still weaker, more incapable of receiving warmth, and more subject to rigors than they were before. Immersion in cold water instantly relieves the pain occasioned by a severe burn ; subsequently, however, this pain is increased to an insupportable degree, and the inflammation extends to the neighbouring parts.* To cure gravedo of long standing, sternutatories are prescribed, which excite the pituitary secretion; and it has not been perceived that the final result t)f this method was always that of aggra- vating the evil which it was intended to cure. Electricity and galvanism, which at first exercise great influence upon the muscular system, quickly restore activity to members that have for a long time been feeble and nearly paralysed; but the secondary effect is absolute annihilation of all muscular irrita- bility and entire paralysis. It has been said that venesection is a fit remedy to stop long continued congestions of blood in the head; but this mode is always succeeded by a still greater deter- mination of blood to the upper parts of the body. The sole remedy that physicians in ordinary know to apply in cases where the moral and physical powers are inactive and half paralysed, which are predominant symptoms in different kinds of typhus, is valerian, administered in strong doses, because this plant is one of the most powerful excitants they are acquainted with; but it escaped their notice, that the excitement which vale- rian produces is merely its primitive effect, and after the re-action of the organism, the stupor and the incapability of motion—that is to say, the paralysis of the body, and the debility of the mind, increase—they have not observed that the patients on whom they lavished doses of the antipathic valerian, are precisely those who have suffered the greatest mortality. In short, the Ill former schools of medicine have never calculated how often the secondary effects of antipathic medicines have tended to increase the malady, or even bring on something that was still worse, of which experience has given us examples that are enough to inspire the soul with terror. * See the close of the Introduction. § 60. When these grievous consequences (which naturally might have been expected from the use of antipathic remedies) begin to manifest themselves, the ordinary physician imagines that he will be delivered from his embarrassment if he adminis- ters a stronger dose each time that the evil grows worse. But from this also, there results nothing but momentary relief, while from the necessity in which he sees himself of constantly augmenting the dose of the palliative, it sometimes follows that a still severer malady declares itself—sometimes that life is endangered, and even that the patient falls a sacrifice. A disease of long standing or of inveteracy has never been cured by such means. § 61. If physicians had been capable of reflecting upon the sad results of the application of antipathic remedies, they would long ago have arrived at the great truth, that a path directly opposite would lead them to a method of treatment by which they might cure disease perfectly and permanently. They would then have discovered, that if a medicinal effect, contrary to the symptoms of the malady (antipathic treatment), only procures momentary relief, at the expiration of which the evil constantly grows worse; by the same rule the inverse method—that is to say, the homoeopathic application of medicines, administered according to the analogy existing between the symptoms they excite and those of the disease itself, substituting, at the same time, for the enormous doses that were in use, the smallest that could possi- bly be applied—must necessarily bring about a perfect and permanent cure. But notwithstanding all these arguments— notwithstanding the positive fact, that no physician ever per- formed a permanent cure in chronic diseases but in proportion as the prescriptions included some predominant homoeopathic medicine—notwithstanding another fact no less clear, that 112 nature never accomplished a speedy and perfect cure but by means of a similar disease which she added to the old one (§ 46); notwithstanding all this, physicians have, during so many centuries, never arrived at a truth on which alone depended the safety of the patient. § 62. The source of all these pernicious results of palliative antipathic treatment, and the salutary effects proceeding from the reverse method, the homoeopathic, will be sufficiently explained in the following observations, which are drawn from experience, and a number of facts that have hitherto escaped the notice of every other physician, although they were imme- diately before the view, perfectly evident in their nature, and of the deepest importance to the medical art. § 63. Every agent that acts upon the human economy, every medicine produces more or less some notable change in the existing state of the vital powers, or creates a certain modification in the health of man for a period of shorter or longer duration: this change is called the primitive effect. Although this is the joint effect of both a medicinal and a vital power, it belongs, notwithstanding, more particularly to the former, whose action is exercised upon the body. But our vital powers tend always to oppose their energy to this influence or impression. The effect that results from this, and which belongs to our conservative vital powers and their automatic force, bears the name of secondary effect or re-action. § 64. So long as the primitive effects of artificial morbific agents (medicines) continue their influence upon a healthy body, the vital power appears to play merely a passive part, as if it were compelled to undergo the impression of the medicine that is acting upon it from without. But, subsequently, this also appears, in a manner, to rouse itself. Then, if there exists any state directly contrary to the primitive effect, (a) the vital power manifests a tendency to produce one (b) that is proportionate to its own energy, and the degree of influence exercised by the morbid or medicinal agent; and if there exists no state in nature that is directly contrary to this primi- tive effect, the vital power then seeks to gain the ascendency 113 by destroying the change that has been operated upon it from without (by the action of the medicine), for which it substitutes its own natural state (re-action). § 65. Examples of (a) are before the eyes of every one. A hand that has been bathed in hot water has, at first, a much greater share of heat than the other that has not undergone the immersion (primitive effect); but shortly after it is withdrawn from the water, and well dried, it becomes cold again, and in the end much colder than that on the opposite side (secondary effect). The great degree of heat that accrues from violent exercise (primitive effect), is followed by shivering and cold (secondary effect). A man who has overheated him- self by drinking copiously of wine (primitive effect) finds, on the next day, even the slightest current of air too cold for him (secondary effect). An arm that has been immersed for any length of time in freezing water, is at first much paler and colder than the other (primitive effect); but let it be withdrawn from the water, and carefully dried, it will not only become warmer than the other, but even burning hot, red, and inflamed (secondary effect). Strong coffee in the first instance stimulates the faculties (primitive effect), but it leaves behind a sensation of heaviness and drowsiness (secondary effect) which continues a long time if we do not again have recourse to the same liquid (palliative). After exciting somnolence, or rather a deep stupor, by the aid of opium (primitive effect), it is much more difficult to fall asleep on the succeeding night (secondary effect). Constipation excited by opium (primitive effect) is followed by diarrhoea (secondary effect); and evacuations pro- duced by purgatives (primitive effect) are succeeded by costive- ness which lasts several days (secondary effect). It is thus that the vital power, in its re-action, opposes to the primitive effects of strong doses of medicine which operate powerfully on the healthy state of the body, a condition that is directly oppo- site, whenever it is able to do so. § 66. But it may be readily conceived that the healthy state will make no perceptible re-action in an opposite sense, after weak and homoeopathic doses of agents that modify and change its vitality. On due attention, it is true that even small doses 15 114 produce primitive effects that are perceptible ; but the re-action made by the living organism never exceeds the degree that is requisite for the re-establishment of health. § 67. These incontrovertible and self-evident truths which nature and experience have laid before us, explain, on the one hand, why the homoeopathic method is so beneficial in its results, and prove, on the other, the absurdity of that Avhich consists in treating diseases by antipathic and palliative remedies.* * It is merely in urgent and dangerous cases, or in diseases that have just broken out in persons who were previously in health, such, for example, as in asphyxia, especially from lightning, suffocation, freezing, drowning, &c, that it is either admissible or proper, in the first instance at least, to re-animate the feeling and irritability by the aid of palliatives, such as slight electric shocks, injections of strong coffee, stimulating odours, gradual warmth, &c.** As soon as physical life is re-animated, the action of the organs that support it resumes its regular course, as is to be expected from a body that was in the full enjoyment of health pre- vious to the accident. Under this head are also included the antidotes to several poisons, such as alkalis against mineral acids, liver of sulphur against metallic poisons, coffee, camphor (and ipecacuanha) against poison by opium, &c. We must not imagine that a homoeopathic medicine has been badly selected in a case of disease, because a few of the symptoms of this remedy correspond antipathically with some morbid symptoms of minor or less importance. Provided the other symptoms of the disease, those which are the strongest and the most developed, and finally those which characterise it, find in the remedy similar symptoms which cover, extin- guish, and destroy them, the small number of antipathic symptoms that are visible disappear of themselves after the remedy has expended its action, without retarding the recovery in the slightest degree. ** And yet the new mongrel sect appeal to these remarks, though in vain, in order to find a pretext every where for such exceptions to the general rule, and very conveniently to introduce their alloeopathic palliatives, accompanied with other mischief of a like character, merely to spare themselves the trouble of search- ing for suitable homoeopathic remedies for every case of disease,—one might say, to save themselves the trouble of being homoeopathic physicians, though they wish to be considered such. But their deeds will follow them—they are of little moment. § 68. We find, it is true, in homoeopathic cures, that the very minute doses of medicine (§ 275—287) which they require to subdue and destroy natural diseases by analogy to 115 the symptoms produced by the latter, leave in the organism a slight medicinal disease which outlives the primitive affection. But the extreme minuteness of the dose renders this disease so slight and susceptible of dissipating itself, that the organism has no need to oppose to it any greater re-action than that which is requisite to raise the existing state to the habitual degree of health—that is to say, to establish the latter. And all the symptoms of the primitive disease being now extinct, a very slight effort will suffice to accomplish this (§ 65. 6.) § 69. But precisely the reverse of this takes place in the antipathic or palliative method. The medicinal symptom which the physician opposes to the morbid symptom (such as, for example, stupefaction, which constitutes the primitive effect of opium, opposed to an acute pain,) is not wholly foreign and allceopathic to this latter. There is an evident affinity between the two symptoms, but it is inverse. The morbid symptom is to be annihilated here by a medicinal symptom opposed to it. This cannot possibly be accomplished. It is true the anti- pathic remedy acts precisely on the diseased part of the organism, just as certain as the homoeopathic ; but it confines itself to covering, in a certain degree, the natural morbid symptom, and rendering it insensible for a certain length of time. During the first moments of the action of the palliative, the organism undergoes no disagreeable sensation, neither on the part of the morbid symptom, nor on that of the medicinal one, which appear to be reciprocally annihilated and neutralised, as it were, in a dynamic manner. This, for example, is what takes place in regard to pain and the stupifying powers of opium, for, during the first moments, the organism feels as if it were in health, alike free from the painful sensation and the stupefaction. But as the medicinal symptom that is opposed cannot occupy in the organism the place of the pre-existing disease, (as is the case in the homoeopathic method, where the remedy excites an artificial disease similar to the natural one, but merely stronger,) the vital power consequently not being affected, by the remedy employed, with a disease similar to that which had previously tormented it, the latter does not become extinguished. The new disease, it is true, keeps the organism insensible, during the first moments, by a kind of 116 dynamic neutralisation,1 if we may so express it, but it soon dies away of itself, like all medicinal affections; and then it not only leaves the malady in its former state, but still more (as palliatives can never be administered but in large doses to afford apparent relief) it compels the organism to produce a state contrary to that excited by the palliative medicine, and creates an effect opposite to that of the remedy—that is to say, gives birth to a condition analogous to the natural disease which is not yet destroyed. This addition, then, which proceeds from the organism itself, (the re-action against the palliative), does not fail to increase the intensity and severity of the disease.2 Thus the morbid symptom (this single part of the disease) becomes worse the moment the effect of the palliative ceases, and that, too, in a degree proportionate to the extent of the dose of the palliative. And, to continue with the same example, the greater the quantity of the opium administered to suspend the pain, in the same degree does the pain increase beyond its primitive intensity when the opium has ceased to act.3 1 Contrary or opposite sensations in the living economy of man cannot be permanently neutralised like substances of opposite qualities in the laboratory of the chemist, where we may see, for example, sulphuric acid and potash form, by their union, a substance that is entirely different, a neutral salt that is no longer acid or alkali, and which not even fire will decompose. Combinations like these, producing something that is neutral and durable, can never take place in the organs of sensation with regard to impressions of an opposite nature. There is, indeed, some appearance of neutralisation or of reciprocal destruction, but this phenomenon is of short duration. The tears of the mourner may cease for a moment when there is some merry spectacle before his eyes, but soon the mirth is forgotten, and the tears begin to flow again more freely than ever. 2 However intelligible this proposition may be, it has nevertheless been misinterpreted and an objection made to it, that a palliative would be just as well able to cure by its consecutive effect, which resembles the existing disease, as a homoeopathic remedy by its primitive effect. But in raising this obstacle, it has never been considered that the consecutive effect is by no means a product of the remedy, that it always arises from the re-action exercised by the vital powers of the organism, and that consequently this re-action of the vital powers, by reason of the applica- tion of a palliative, is a state similar to the symptom of the disease which this remedy failed to annihilate, and which consequently was aggravated by the re-action of the vital power against the palliative. 3 As in a dungeon where the prisoner scarce distinguishes the objects 117 that are immediately before him, the flame of alcohol spreads around a consolatory light; but when the flame is extinguished, the obscurity is then greater in the same proportion as the flame was brilliant, and now the darkness that envelops him is still more impenetrable, and he has greater difficulty than before in distinguishing the objects around him. § 70. From all that has been here stated, the following truths must be admitted :— 1st. There is nothing for the physician to cure in disease but the sufferings of the patient; and the changes in his state of health which are perceptible to the senses—that is to say, the totality or mass of symptoms by which the disease points out the remedy it stands in need of; every internal cause that could be attributed to it, every occult character that man might be tempted to bestow, are nothing more than so many idle dreams and vain imaginings. 2d. That state of the organism which we call disease, cannot be converted into health but by the aid of another affection of the organism, excited by means of medicines. The experi- ments made upon healthy individuals are the best and purest means that could be adopted to discover this virtue. 3d. According to every known fact, it is impossible to cure a natural disease by the aid of medicines which have the faculty of producing a dissimilar artificial state or symptom in healthy persons. Therefore the allceopathic method can never effect a real cure. Even nature never performs a cure, or annihilates one disease by adding to it another that is dis- similar, be the intensity of the latter ever so great. 4th. Every fact serves to prove, that a medicine capable of exciting in healthy persons a morbid symptom opposite to the disease that is to be cured, never effects any other than momentary relief in disease of long standing, without curing it, and suffers it to re-appear, after a certain interval, more aggravated than ever. The antipathic and purely palliative method is, therefore, wholly opposed to the object that is to be attained, where the disease is an important one, and of long standing. 5th. The third method, the only one to which we can still have recourse (the homoeopathic), which employs against the totality of the symptoms of a natural disease, a medicine that is capable of exciting in healthy persons symptoms that closely 118 resemble those of the disease itself, is the only one that is really salutary, and which always annihilates disease, or the purely dynamic aberrations of the vital powers, in an easy, prompt, and perfect manner. In this respect, nature herself furnishes the example when, by adding to an existing disease a new one that resembles it, she cures it promptly and effectually. § 71. As it is no longer doubted that the diseases of man- kind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms which cannot be destroyed but by the aid of medicines, and the inherent faculty which those substances possess of exciting morbid symptoms similar to those of the natural disease, the points to be considered in the mode of treatment are the three following:— 1st. By what means is the physician to arrive at the neces- sary information relative to a disease, in order to be able to undertake the cure ? 2d. How is he to discover the morbific powers of medicines— that is to say, of the instruments destined to cure natural diseases ? 3d. What is the best mode of applying these artificial morbific powers (medicines) in the cure of disease? § 72. Relative to the first point, it will be necessary for us to enter here into some general considerations. The diseases of mankind resolve themselves into two classes. The first are rapid operations of the vital power departed from its natural condition, which terminate in a shorter or longer period of time, but are always of moderate duration. These are called acute diseases. The others, which are less distinct and often almost imperceptible on their first appearance, seize upon the organism, each according to his own peculiar manner, and remove it by degrees so far from the state of health that the automatic vital energy which is destined to support the latter, and which is called vital power, cannot resist but in a useless and imperfect manner; and not being potent enough to extinguish them her- self, she is compelled to allow them to grow until, in the end, they destroy the organism. The latter are known by the appellation of chronic diseases, and are produced by infection from a chronic miasm. 119 § 73. As to acute diseases, they may be classed under two distinct heads. The first attack single individuals, and arise from some pernicious cause to which they have been exposed. Immoderate excess in either eating or drinking, a want of neces- sary aliment, violent impressions of physical agents, cold, heat, fatigue, &c, or mental excitement, are the most frequent causes. But for the most part they depend upon the occasional aggra- vation of a latent psoric affection, which returns to its former sleep and insensibility when the acute affection is not too violent, or when it has been cured in a prompt manner. The others attack a plurality of individuals at once, and develope themselves here and there (sporadically) beneath the sway of meteoric and telluric influence, of whose action but few persons are at the moment susceptible. Nearly approaching to these are those which attack many individuals at the same time, arising from similar causes, and exhibiting symptoms that are analogous (epidemics); and usually become contagious when they act upon close and compact masses of human beings. These maladies or fevers1 are each of a distinct nature, and the individual cases which manifest themselves being all of the same origin, they invariably place the patients every where in one identical morbid state, but which, if abandoned to them- selves, terminate in a very short space of time, either by a cure or death. War, inundations, and famine, frequently give rise to these diseases, but they may likewise result from acute miasms, which always re-appear beneath the same form, for which reason they are designated by particular names ; some of which attack man but once during life, such as the small- pox, measles, hooping-cough, the scarlet2 fever of Sydenham, mumps,