organon of medicine

by Samuel Hahnemann

[ note: see also the pdf version and this introduction ]

Aude sapere.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FITH EDITION, WITH AN APPENDIX'

R E. DUDGEON, M. D.

Medical Advance Company, publishers,

CHICAGO.

1895.

WB K

press of the Eye Printing and Publishing Company,

In this new edition of my translation of the Organon I have completely revised the text, in order to make it a still more exact repi-oduction of the original. In the Appendix I have given all the more important variations of the previous editions. I have also indicated the corresponding views as set forth in the Essay on a Neio Principle and the Medicine of Experience, both of which essays may be regarded as the precursors of the Organon. I have added Hahnemann's later opinions on several subjects treated of in this work. In the growth of such a complex thing as a new system of medicine, it was inevitable that there should be considerable alterations and improvements effected in the course of forty-eight years, the time occupied by Hahnemann in the elaboration of his novel doctrine and practice. His first idea of the homoeopathic rule of practice occurred to him while translating Cullen's Materia Medica in 1790. The Essay on a New Principle, in which he propounded the homoeopathic therapeutic rule, as yet believed by him to be of only “partial application,” viz. to some chronic diseases, was published in 179G. Nine years after this, viz. in 1805, in the Medicine- of Experience, he enunciated the rule with no such limitations of its applicability. This essay contains much of what we find in the first and later editions of the Organon. The first edition of this latter work appeared in 1810. The second edition, differing very consid- erably from the first, was published in 1819. The third edition, which hardly differed at all from the previous one, appeared in 1824. The fourth edition, which offers some important variations from the text of its immediate predecessor (chiefly determined by the new theory of chronic diseases), bears the date of 1829. The fifth and last edition, published in 1833, contains several novelties, such as the theories of the “vital force” and “the dynamization of medicines.” In previous editions, Hahnemann had in several places spoken rather slightingly of the vital force and its influence on the production and cure of disease, but these expressions are either eliminated or greatly modified in the last edition, and the “vital force” occupies quite a different and a much more important position in regard to disease, its cause and cure. The doctrine of dynamization of medicines by the pharmaceuti- cal processes peculiar to homoeopathy, which had only been hinted at in previous editions, is in this edition distinctly stated. The directions as to the repetition of the dose are also different from those in previous editions. These two last-named points are still further modified in Hahnemann's later work on Chronic Diseases (1838), as will be seen b} r the quotations I have made from that work.

Thus while the body of this work contains the Organon precisely as it appears in the last edition, the Appendix gives a detailed history of the origin, growth and progress of the homoeopathic system of medicine in the mind of its author.

I have not presumed to criticise the views or statements of the author. His denunciations of the practice of the old school, though quite deserved when he wrote, are not applicable to the present condition of allopathic medicine. It is bevond all question that it was mainly owing to the treatment and practice of Hahnemann and his disciples that the disastrous methods in vogue for centuries previous to and far into his time have been abandoned. It remains, however, doubtful if the allopathic methods of the present day have any greater claim to scientific character or success than those they have superseded. Were Hahnemann alive now we can easily imagine how he would have inveighed against the old school-medicine of the present day. The tonic, stimulant, anti-pyretic and nar- cotic practice of modern medicine is as far removed from the scientific simplicity of homoeopathy as were the venesections, blisters, cauteries, purgatives and mercurial izations against which Hahnemann waged successful war. Hahnemann's vig- orous protest against the dominant medicine of his day is useful as showing the negative good effects of homoeopathy, for almost all the irrational practices he denounced have been abandoned; it remains for his followers to exhibit its positive effects in the victory of rational and scientific medicine.

I am indebted to Dr. Richard Hughes for several emenda- tions of my first translation, whereby the author's meaning has been rendered more exact and clearer; also for some rectifications of Hahnemann's quotations and for the idea of a comparative table or concordance of the aphorisms in the several editions, which he gave in the British Journal of Homoeopathy , vol. xxxix.

The references in the text to the notes in the Appendix are indicated by the sign <'(«),“ and some needful explanatory notes are enclosed in square brackets, or divided from the text by a line. The latter are confined to the quotations in the Appendix.

R. E. DUDGEON.

London, March, 1893.

According to the testimony of all ages, no occupation is more unanimously declared to be a conjectural art than medi- cine; consequently none has less right to refuse a searching enquiry as to whether it is well founded than it, on which man's health, his most precious possession on earth, depends.

I consider that it redounds to my honor that I am the only one in recent times who has subjected it to a serious, honest investigation, and has communicated to the world the results of his convictions in writings published, some with, some without my name.

In this investigation I found the way to the truth, but I had to tread it alone, very far from the common highway of medical routine. The farther I advanced from truth to truth, the more my conclusions (none of which I accepted unless confirmed by experience) led me away from the old edifice, which, being built up of opinions, was only maintained by opinions.

The results of my convictions are set forth in this book.

It remains to be seen whether physicians, who mean to act honestly by their conscience and by their fellow-creatures, will continue to stick to the pernicious tissue of conjectures and caprice, or can open their eyes to the salutary truth.

I must warn the reader that indolence, love of ease and obstinacy preclude effective service at the altar of truth, and only freedom from prejudice and untiring zeal qualify for the most sacred of all human occupations, the practice of the true system of medicine. The physician who enters on his work in this spirit becomes directly assimilated to the Divine Creator of the world, whose human creatures he helps to preserve, and whose approval renders him thrice blessed.

Physicians are my brethren; I have nothing against them personally. The medical art is my subject.

I have to enquire whether medicine as hitherto taught has, in all its parts, been merely developed out of the heads, the self-deception and the caprice of its professors, or whether it has been derived from nature.

If it be merely a product of speculative subtlety, arbitrary maxims, traditional practices and capricious deductions drawn from ambiguous premises, it is and remains a nullity, though it may reckon its age by thousands of years, and be decorated with the charters of all the kings and emperors of the earth.

The true healing art is in its nature a pure science of exper- ience, and can and must rest on clear facts and on the sensible phenomena pertaining to their sphere of action, for all the subjects it has to deal with are clearly and satisfactorily cog- nizable by the senses through experience. Knowledge of the disease to be treated, knowledge of the effects of the medicines, and how the ascertained effects of the medicines are to be em ployed for the removal of diseases, all this, experience alone teaches adequately. Its subjects can only be derived from pure experiences and observations, and it dares not take a single step out of the sphere of pure well-observed experience and experiment, if it would avoid becoming a nullity, a farce.

But that the whole art of medicine as hitherto practiced, though it has been, for want of something better, practiced for these 2500 years by millions of physicians, many of whom were earnest high-minded men, is yet in every respect an ex- tremely stupid, useless and thoroughly null affair, is proved by the following few incontrovertible considerations.

Unaided reason can know nothing of itself (a priori), can evolve out of itself alone no conception of the nature of things, of cause and effect; every one of its conclusions about the actual must always be based on sensible perceptions, facts and experiences if it would elicit the truth. If in its operations it should deviate by a single step from the guidance of percep- tion, it would lose itself in the illimitable region of phantasy and of arbitrary speculation, the mother of pernicious illusion and of absolute nullity.

In the pure sciences of experience, in physics, chemistry and medicine, merely speculative reason can consequently have no voice; there, when it acts alone, it degenerates into empty speculation and phantasy, and produces only hazardous hypo- theses, which in millions of instances are, and by their very nature must be, self-deception and falsehood.

Such has hitherto been the splendid juggling of so-called theoretical medicine, in which a priori conceptions and specu- lative subtleties raised a number of proud schools, which only showed what each of their founders had dreamed about things which could not be known, and which were of no use for the cure of diseases.

Out of these sublime systems, soaring far beyond all exper- ience, medical practice could obtain nothing available for actual treatment. So it pursued its course confidently at the patient's bedside in accord with the traditional prescriptions of its books telling how physicians had hitherto treated, and in conformity with the methods of its practical authorities, un- concerned, like them, about the teachings of nature-guided experience, unconcerned about the true reasons for its treat- ment, and quite content with the key to easy practice — the prescription book.

A healthy, unprejudiced, conscientious examination of this confused business shows plainly that what has hitherto gone by the name of “the art of medicine” was merely a pseudo- scientific fabrication, remodelled from time to time to meet the prevailing fashion in medical systems, like Gellert's hat in the fable, but, as regards the treatment of disease, ever the same blind, pernicious method.

A healing art conformable to nature and experience did not exist. Everything in traditional medicine was the outcome of art and imagination, having no foundation in experience, but pranked out in the habiliaments of probability.

The object of cure (the disease) was manufactured to order by pathology. It was arbitrarily settled what diseases, how many and what forms and kinds there should be. Just think! The whole range of diseases, produced in innumerable and always unforeseeable variety by infinite Nature in human beings exposed to thousands of different conditions, the pathologist cuts down so ruthlessly that a mere handful of cut and dry forms is the result!

The wiseacres defined diseases a priori, and attributed to them transcendental substrata not warranted by experience (how could plain pure experience ever sanction such fantastic dreams?); no! they pretended to possess an insight into the inner nature of things and the invisible vital processes, which no mortal can have.

Now, in order to decide on something positive with regard to the instruments of cure, the powers of the different medi- cines in the materia medica were inferred from their physical, chemical and other irrelevant qualities, also from their odor, taste and external aspect, but chiefly from impure experiences at the sick bed, where, in the tumult of the morbid symptoms, only mixtures of medicines were prescribed for imperfectly described cases of disease. Just think! the dynamic spiritual power of altering man's health hidden in the invisible interior of medicines, and never manifested purely and truly in any other way than by their effects on the healthy human body, was arbitrarily ascribed to them, without interrogating the medicines themselves in this only admissible way of pure experi- ment, and listening to their response when so questioned!

Then therapeutics taught how to apply the medicines, whose qualities had been thus inferred, ascribed or imagined, to the supposed fundamental cause or to single symptoms of disease, in conformity with the rule contraria contrariis of the hypo- thesis-framer Galen, and in direct opposition to nature; and this doctrine was held to be more than sufficiently established if eminent authorities could be adduced in support of it.

All these unnatural human doctrines, after being connected together by all sorts of illogical false deductions, were then welded into scholastic forms by the noble art that devotes itself to division, subdivision and tabulation, and lo! the manufactured article, the art of medicine, was ready for use, — a thing the most opposed to nature and experience it is possi ble to conceive, a structure built up entirely of the opinions of various kinds furnished by thousands of differently constituted minds. In all its parts this edifice is a pure nullity, a pitiable self-deception, eminently fitted to imperil human life by its methods of treatment, blindly counter to the end proposed, incessantly ridiculed by the wisest men of all ages, and labor- ing under the curse of not being what it professes to be, and not being able to perform what it promises.

Sober, unprejudiced reflection, on the other hand, can easily convince us that to hold correct views about every case of disease we have to cure, to obtain an accurate knowledge of the true powers of medicines, to employ them on a plan adapted to each morbid condition and to administer them in proper dose, — in a word, the complete true healing art, can never be the work of self-satisfied ratiocination and illusory opinions, but that the requisites for this, the materials as well as the rules for its exercise, are only to be discovered by due attention to nature by means of our senses, by careful honest observations and by experiments conducted with all possible purity, and in no other way; and, rejecting every falsifying admixture of arbitrary dicta, must be faithfully sought in this the only way commensurate to the high value of precious human life.

It remains to be seen if by my conscientious labors in this way the true healing art has been found.

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann

Leipzig, end of the year 1818.

In the five years since the publication of the Second Edition, the truth of the homoeopathic healing art has found so much acceptance from physicians far and near, that it can no longer be obscured, still less extinguished, by abusive writings, of which, however, there is no lack. I rejoice at the benefit it has already conferred on humanity, and look forward with - intense pleasure to the not distant time when, though I shall be no longer here below, a future generation of mankind will do justice to this gift of a gracious God, and will thankfully avail themselves of the blessed means He has provided for the alleviation of their bodily and mental sufferings.

A great help to the spread of the good cause in foreign lands is won by the good French translation of the last edition, recently brought out at great sacrifice, by that genuine philan- thropist, my learned friend, Baron von Brunnow.* He has enriched it with a preface which gives an exposition of the homoeopathic healing art and its history, and at the same time serves as an introduction to the study of the work itself.

In this third edition 1 have not refrained from making any alterations and emendations suggested by increased knowledge and necessitated by further experience. S. H.

Kothen; Easter, 1824.

• Organon de Vart guirir; traduit de Voriginal allemand du Dr. Samuel Hahne- mann, Conseiller de Son Altesse Ser6nissime le Due d'Anhalt-Kothen, par Erneste George de Brunnow; a Dresde. chez Arnold, libraire-editeur, 1824.

Were that nature whose self-help in diseases is believed by physicians of the traditional school to be the incomparable healing art, a close imitation of which should be the physician's highest aim, great Nature herself, i. e. the voice in ineffable wisdom of the great Artificer of the infinite universe, we should then feel constrained to be guided by this infallible voice, though we might be puzzled to understand why we physicians should, with our artificial interference by medicines, disturb or injuriously aggravate these presumably incomparable opera- tions of nature's self-help in diseases (vis medicatrix) ; but this is far from being the case! That nature, whose self-help was alleged by the traditional school of medicine to be the incom- parable healing art and the only thing worth imitating, is merely the individual nature of the organic man, is nothing but the instinctive, irrational, unreasoning vital force subject to the organic laws of our body, which is ordained by the Creator to maintain the functions and sensations of the organism in marvellously perfect condition so long as the man continues in good health, but was not intended nor adapted for the restoration in the best manner of deranged or lost health. For should our vital force have its integrity impaired by injurious influences from without, then this force strives instinctively and automatically to free itself from the adventi- tious derangement (disease) by revolutionary processes; but these very efforts are themselves disease; they are a second different malady substituted for the original one. The vital force, I say, produces, in accordance with the laws of the constitution of the organism to which it is a subject, a disease of a different sort, intended to expel the disease by which it was attacked, which it strives to accomplish by pain, metastases and so forth, but mainly by evacuations and the sacrifice of much of the fluid and solid constituents of the body, with difficult, often dubious, injurious, frequently even disastrous results.

Were it not that men in all ages were aware of this imper- fection, and the not infrequent inadequacy of these blind efforts of the instinctive unreasoning vital force in its attempts at self-help in diseases, they would not have longed so much nor so zealously striven to assist the suffering vital force, so pow- erless to help itself efficiently, by the employment of better remedial means in order to terminate the morbid process in a more speedy and sure manner, thereby restoring the wished-for health as speedily as possible, — in a word, they would not have exerted themselves to discover a healing art.

But as what has hitherto been termed “healing art” was a mere (imperfect) imitation of those unhelpful, useless, not in- frequently injurious efforts and operations of the instinctive, unreasoning vital force (misnamed nature) when left to itself in disease, it will, I think, be conceded that before me the true healing art was not discovered.

But that homoeopathy is this healing art, which had hitherto been sought for in vain, its fundamental principles teach, its performances prove.

Samuel Hahnemann.

Kothen, January, 1829.

In order to give a general notion of the treatment of diseases pursued by the old school of medicine (allopathy), I may ob- serve that it presupposes the existence sometimes of excess of blood (plethora — ichieh is never present), sometimes of morbid matters and acridities; hence it taps off the life's blood and exerts itself either to clear away the imaginary disease-matter or to conduct it elsewhere (by emetics, purgatives, sialogogues, diaphoretics, diuretics, drawing plasters, setons, issues, &c), in the vain belief that the disease will thereby be weakened and materially eradicated; in place of which, the patient's suf- ferings are thereby increased, and by such and other painful appliances the forces and nutritious juices indispensable to the curative process are abstracted from the organism. It assails the body with large doses of powerful medicines, often re- peated in rapid succession for a long time, whose long-enduring, not infrequently frightful effects, it knows not, and which it, purposely, it would almost seem, makes unrecognizable by its commingling of several such unknown substances in one pre- scription, and by their long-continued employment it develops in the body new and often ineradicable medicinal diseases. Whenever it can, too, it employs, in order to keep in favor with its patient, 1 remedies that immediately suppress and hide the morbid symptoms by opposition (contraria contrariis) for a short time (palliatives), but that leave the disposition to these symptoms (the disease itself) strengthened and aggravated. It considers affections on the exterior of the body as purely local and existing there independently, and vainly supposes that it

1 For the same object the experienced allopath delights to invent a fixed name, by preference a Greek one, for the malady, in order to make the patient believe that he lias long known this disease as an old acquaintance, and hence is the fittest person to cure it. has cured them when it has driven them away by means of external remedies, so that the internal affection is thereby compelled to break out on a nobler and more important part. When it knows not what else to do for the disease which will not yield or which grows worse, the old school of medicine undertakes to change it into something else, it knows not what, by means of an alterative, — for example, by the life-under- mining calomel, corrosive sublimate and other mercurial pre- parations in large doses.

To render, (through ignorance) if not fatal, at all events incurable, the vast majority ( T % 9 5 ) of all diseases, namely, those of a chronic character, by continually weakening and tormenting the debilitated patient, already suffering without that from his disease, and by adding new destructive drug diseases, this clearly seems to be the unhallowed main business of the old school of medicine (allopathy) — and a very easy business it is when once one has become an adept in this pernicious practice, and is sufficiently insensible to the stings of conscience!

And yet for all these mischievous operations the ordinary physician of the old school can assign his reasons, which, however, rest only on foregone conclusions of his books and teachers, and on the authority of this or that distinguished physician of the old school. Even the most opposite and the most senseless modes of treatment find there their defence, their authority — let their disastrous effects speak ever so loudly against them. It is only under the old physician who has been at last gradually convinced, after many years of misdeeds, of the mischievous nature of his so-called art, and who no longer treats even the severest diseases with anything stronger than plantain water mixed with strawberry syrup (i. e. with nothing), that the smallest number are injured and die.

This non-healing art. which for many centuries has been firmly established in full possession of the power to dispose of the life and death of patients according to its own good will and pleasure, and in that period has shortened the lives of ten times as many human beings as the most destructive wars, and rendered many millions of patients more diseased and wretched than they were originally — this allopathy, I shall first expose somewhat more minutely before teaching in detail its exact opposite, the newly discovered true healing art.

As regards the latter (homoeopathy) it is quite otherwise. It can easily convince every reflecting person that the diseases of man are not caused by any substance, any acridity, that is to say, any disease-matter, but that they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital force) that animates the human body. Homoeopathy knows that a cure can only take place by the reaction of the vital foi'ce against the rightly chosen remedy that has been ingested, and that the cure will be certain and rapid in proportion to the strength with which the -vital force still prevails in the patient. Hence Homoeopathy avoids everything in the slightest degree enfeebling, 1 and as much as possible every excitation of pain, for pain also diminishes the strength, and hence it employs for the cure only those medicines whose effects in altering anc 1 deranging (dynamicallj') the health it knows accurately, anc! from these it selects one whose pathogenetic power (its medi- cinal disease) is capable of removing the natural disease in question by similarity (similia similibus), and this it administers to the patient in simple form, but in rare and minute doses (so small that, without occasioning pain or weakening, they just suffice to remove the natural malady by means of the reacting energy of the vital force), with this result: that without weak- ening, injuring or torturing him in the very least, the natural disease is extinguished, and the patient, even whilst he is getting better, gains in strength and thus is cured — an appar- ently easy but actually troublesome and difficult business, and one requiring much thought, but which restores the patient without suffering in a short time to perfect health, — and thus it is a salutary and blessed business.

Thus homoeopathy is a perfectly simple system of medicine, remaining always fixed in its principles as in its practice, which, like the doctrine whereon it is based, if rightly appre-

1 Homoeopathy sheds not a drop of blood, administers no emetics, purga- tives, laxatives or diaphoretics, drives off no external affection by external means, prescribes no warm baths or medicated clysters, applies no Spanish flies or mustard plasters, no setons, no issues, excites no ptyalism, burns not with moxa or red-hot iron to the very bone, and so forth, but gives with its own hand its own preparations of simple uncompounded medicines, which it is accurately acquainted with, never subdues pain by opium, dc. hended will be found to be so exclusive (and only in that way serviceable), that as the doctrine must be accepted in its purity, so it must be purely practiced, and all backward straying 1 to the pernicious routine of the old school (whose opposite it is, as day to night) is totally inadmissible, otherwise it ceases to deserve the honorable name of homoeopathy.

That some misguided physicians who would wish to be con- sidered homoeopathists, engraft some, to them more familiar, allopathic malpractices upon their nominally homoeopathic treatment, is owing to ignorance of the doctrine, laziness, con- tempt for suffering humanity, and ridiculous conceit; and, besides showing unpardonable negligence in searching for the lest homoeopathic specific for each case of disease, has often a base love of gain and other sordid motives for its spring — and for its result? that they cannot cure all important and serious diseases (which pure and careful homoeopathy can), and that they send many of their patients to that place whence no one returns, whilst the friends console themselves with the reflec- tion that everything (including every hurtful allopathic pro- cess!) has been done for the departed.

Samuel Hahnemann.

Kothen, March 28th, 1833.

1 I am therefore sorry that I once gave the advice, savoring of allopathy, to apply to the back in psoric diseases a resinous plaster to cause itching, and to employ the finest electrical sparks in paralytic affections. For as both these appliances have seldom proved of service, and have furnished the mongrel homoeopathists with an excuse for their allopathic transgres- sions. I am grieved I should ever have proposed them, and I hereby solemnly retract them— tor this reason also, that, since then, our homoeopathic system has advanced so near to perfection that they are now no longer required.

Review of the therapeutics, allopathy, and palliative treatment that have hitherto been practiced in the old school of medicine.

As long as men have existed they have been liable, individu- ally or collectively, to diseases from physical or moral causes. In a rude state of nature but few remedial agents were required, as the simple mode of living admitted of but few diseases; with the civilization of mankind in the state, on the contrary, the occasions of diseases and the necessity for medical aid increased in equal proportion. But ever since that time (soon after Hippocrates, therefore, for 2500 years) men have occupied themselves with the treatment of the ever increasing multipli- city of diseases, who, led astray by their vanity, sought by reasoning and guessing to excogitate the mode of furnishing this aid. Innumerable and dissimilar ideas respecting the na- ture of diseases and their remedies sprang from so many dis- similar brains, and the theoretical views these gave rise to they called systems, each of which was at variance with the rest and self-contradictory. Each of these subtile expositions at first threw the readers into stupefied amazement at the incomprehen- sible wisdom contained in it, and attracted to the system- monger a number of followers, who re-echoed his unnatural sophistry, to none of whom, however, was it of the slightest use in enabling them to cure better, until a new system, often diametrically opposed to the first, thrust that aside, and in its turn gained a short-lived renown. None of them, however, was in consonance with nature and experience ; they were mere theoretical webs,, woven by cunning intellects out of pretended consequences, which could not be made use of in practice, in the treatment at the sick-bed, on account of their excessive subtilty and repugnance to nature, and only served for empty disputations.

Simultaneously, but quite independent of all these theories, there sprung up a mode of treatment with mixtures of unknown medicinal substances for forms of disease arbitrarily set up. and directed toward some material object completely at vari- ance with nature and experience, hence, as may be supposed, with a bad result — such is old medicine, allopathy as it is termed. < a )

Without disparaging the services which many physicians have rendered to the sciences auxiliary to medicine, to natural philosophy and chemistry, to natural history in its various branches, and to that of man in particular, to anthropology, physiology and anatomy, &c, I shall occupy myself here with the practical part of medicine only, with the healing art itself, in order to show how it is that diseases have hitherto been so imperfectly treated. Far beneath my notice is that mechanical routine of treating precious human life according to the pre- scription manuals, the continual publication of which shows, alas ! how frequently they are still used. I pass it by unnoticed, as a despicable practice of the lowest class of ordinary practi- tioners. I speak merely of the medical art as hitherto practiced, which, pluming itself on its antiquity, imagines itself to possess a scientific character.

The partisans of the old school of medicine flattered them- selves that they could justly claim for it alone the title of '■'■rational medicine” because they alone sought for and strove to remove the cause of disease, and folloioed the method em- ployed by nature in diseases.

Tolle causam! they cried incessantly. But they went no further than this empty exclamation. They only fancied that they could discover the cause of disease; they did not discover it, however, as it is not perceptible and not discoverable. For as far the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore not perceptible to the senses ; so they exerted themselves to im- agine one, and from a survey of the parts of the normal, inanimate human body (anatomy), compared with the visible changes of the same internal parts in persons who had died of diseases (pathological anatomy), as also from what they could deduce from a comparison of the phenomena and functions in healthy life (physiology) with their endless alterations in the innumerable morbid states (pathology, semeiotics), to draw conclusions relative to the invisible process whereby the changes which take place in the inward being of man in diseases are effected — a dim picture of the imagination, which theoretical medicine regarded as its prima causa morbi; 1 and thus it was at one and the same time the proximate cause of the disease, and the internal essence of the disease, the disease itself — al- though, as sound human reason teaches us, the cause of a thing or of an event, can never be at the same time the thing or the event itself. How could they then, without deceiving themselves, consider this imperceptible internal essence as the object to be treated, and prescribe for it medicines whose cura- tive powers were likewise generally unknown to them, and even give several such unknown medicines mixed together in what are termed prescriptions?

But this sublime problem, the discovery, namely, a priori, of an internal invisible cause of disease, resolved itself, at least with the more astute physicians of the old school, into a search, under the guidance of the symptoms it is true, for what might be supposed to be the probable general character of the case of disease before them; 1 whether it was spasm, or debility, or paralysis, or fever, or inflammation, or induration, or ob- struction of this or that part, or excess of blood (plethora), deficiency or excess of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen or nitrogen in the juices, exaltation or depression of the functions of the arterial, venous or capillary system, change in the relative proportion of the factors of sensibility, irritability or reproduc- tion? — conjectures that have been dignified by the followers of the old school with the title of causal indication, and considered to be the only possible rationality in medicine; but which were assumptions, too fallacious and hypothetical to prove of any practical utility — incapable, even had they been well grounded, of indicating the most appropriate remedy for a case of disease; nattering, indeed, to the vanity of the learned theorist, but usually leading astray when used as guides to practice, and wherein there was evidenced more of ostentation than of an earnest search for the curative indication.

1 It would have been much more consonant with sound human reason and with the nature of things, had they, in order to be able to cure a disease, regarded the originating cause as the causa morbi, and endeavored to dis- cover that, and thus been enabled successfully to employ the mode of treat- ment which had shown itself useful in maladies having the same exciting cause, in those also of a similar origin, as, for example, the same mercury is efficacious in an ulcer of the glans after impure coitus, as in all previous venereal chancres— if, I say, they had discovered the exciting cause of all other (non-venereal) chronic diseases to be an infection at one period or an- other with the itch miasm (psora), and had found for all these a common method of treatment, regard being had for the peculiarities of each indi- vidual case, whereby all and each of these chronic diseases might have been cured, then might they with justice have boasted that in the treatment of chronic diseases they had in view the only available, and useful causa mor- boram chronicorum (non vencreorvm), and with this as a basis they might have treated such diseases with the best results. But during these many centuries they were unable to cure the millions of chronic diseases, because they knew not their origin in the psoric miasm (which was first discovered and after- wards provided with a suitable plan of treatment by homoeopathy), and yet they vaunted that they alone kept in view the prima causa of these diseases in their treatment, and that they alone treated rationally, although they had not the slightest conception of the only useful knowledge of their psoric origin and consequently they bungled the treatment of all chronic diseases!

And how often has it happened that, for example, spasm or paralysis seemed to be in one part of the organism, while in another part inflammation was apparently present!

Or, on the other hand, whence are the certain remedies for each of these pretended general characters to be derived? Those that would certainly be of benefit could be none other than the specific medicines, that is, those whose action is homogeneous 2 to the morbid irritation; whose employment, however, is denounced and forbidden 3 by the old school as highly injurious, because observation has shown that in conse- quence of the receptivity for homogeneous irritation being so

1 Every physician who treats disease according to such general characters, however he may affect to claim the name of liomoeopatbist. is and ever will remain in fact a generalising allopath, for without the most minute indi- vidualisation, homoeopathy is not conceivable. (“)

2 Now termed homoeopathic.

3 “Where experience showed the curative power of homceopathically acting remedies, whose mode of action could not be explained, the difficulty was avoided by calling them specific, and further investigation was stifled by this actually unmeaning word. The homogeneous excitant remedies, the specific (homoeopathic) medicines, however, had long previously been pro- hibited as of very injurious influence.”— Rau, On the Value of the Homoeo- pathic Method of Treatment, Heidelberg, L824, pp. 101, 102.

highly increased in diseases, such medicines in the usual large closes are dangerous to life. The old school never dreamt of smaller, and of extremely small doses. Accordingly no at- tempt was made to cure, in the direct (the most natural) way. by means of homogeneous, specific medicines; nor could it be done, as the effects of most of medicines were, and continued to remain, unknown, and even had they been known it would have been impossible to hit on the right medicine with such generalising views as were entertained.

However, perceiving that it was more consistent with reason to seek for another path, a straight one if possible, rather than to take circuitous courses, the old school of medicine believed it might cure diseases in a direct manner, '<*) by the removal of the (imaginary) material cause of the disease — for to physicians of the ordinary school, while investigating and forming a judgment upon a disease, and not less while seeking for the curative indication, it was next to impossible to divest them- selves of these materialistic ideas, and to regard the nature of the spiritual-corporeal organism as such a highly potentialised entity, that its sensational and functional vital changes, which are called diseases, must be produced and effected chiefly, if not solely, by dynamic (spiritual^ ) influences, and could not be effected in any other way.

The old school regarded all those matters which were altered by the disease, those abnormal matters that occurred in con- gestions, as well as those that were excreted, as disease- producers, or at least on account of their supposed reacting power, as clisease-maintainers, and this latter notion prevails to this day.

Hence they dreamed of effecting causal cures by endeavor- ing to remove these imaginary and presumed material causes of the disease. Hence their assiduous evacuation of the bile by vomiting in bilious fevers; 1 their emetics in cases of so- called stomach derangements; 2 their diligent purging away of

1 The estimable Hofrath Dr. Kau (loc. cit., p. 17G). at a time when not per- fectly conversant with homoeopathy, but firmly convinced of the dynamic cause of these fevers, cured them without employing any evacuating remedy, by means of one or two small doses of homoeopathic remedies, two very re- markable cases of which he relates in his book.

2 In a case of sudden derangement of the stomach, with constant disgust- ing eructations with the taste of tho vitiated food, generally accompanied

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the mucus, the lumbrici and the ascarides in children who are pale-faced and who suffer from ravenous appetite, bellyache,

by depression of spirits, cold hands and feet, &c, the ordinary physician has hitherto been in the habit of attacking only the degenerated contents of the stomach ; a powerful emetic should clean it out completely. This object was generally attained by tartar emetic, with or without ipecacuanha. Does the patient, however, immediately after this become well, brisk and cheerful? Oh no! Such a derangement of the stomach is usually of dynamic origin, caused by mental disturbance (grief, fright, vexation), a chill, over-exertion of the mind or body immediately after eating, often after even a moderate meal. Those two remedies are not suitable for removing this dynamic de- rangement, and just as little is the revolutionary vomiting they produce. Moreover, tartar emetic and ipecacuanha, from their other peculiar patho- genetic powers, prove of further injury to the patient's health, and derange the biliary secretions; so that if the patient be not very robust, he must feel ill for teveral days from the effects of this pretended causal treatment, not- withstanding all this violent expulsion of the whole contents of the stomach. If the patient, however, in place of taking such violent and alwaysC) hurt- ful evacuant drugs, smell only a single time at a globule the size of a mus- tard seed, moistened with highly diluted Pulsatilla juice, whereby the de- rangement of his health in general and of his stomach in particular will certainly be removed, in two hours he is quite well; and if the eructation recur once more, it consists of tasteless and inodorous air; the contents of the stomach cease to be vitiated, and at the next meal he has regained his full usual appetite; he is quite well and lively. This is true causal medica- tion; the former is only an imaginary one and has an injurious effect on the patient.

Even a stomach overloaded with indigestible food never requires a medi- cinal emetic. In such a case nature is competent to rid herself of the excess in the best way through the oesophagus, by means of nausea, sickness and spontaneous vomiting, assisted, it may be, by mechanical irritation of the palate and fauces, and by this means the accessory medicinal effects of the emetic drugs are avoided; a small quantity of coffee expedites the passage downwards of what remains in the stomach.

But if, after excessive overloading of the stomach, the irritability of the stomach is not sufficient to promote spontaneous vomiting, or is lost alto- gether, so that the tendency thereto is extinguished, while there are at the same time great pains in the epigastrium, in such a paralyzed state of the stomach, an emetic medicine would only have the effect of producing a dangerous or fatal inflammation of the intestines ; whereas a small quantity of strong infusion of coffee, frequently administered, would dynamically exalt the sunken irritability of the stomach, and put it in a condition to expel its contents, be they ever so great, either upwards or downwards. So here also the pretended causal treatment is out of place.

Even the acrid gastric acid, to eructations of which patients with chronic diseases are not infrequently subject, may be today violently evacuated by means of an emetic, with great suffering, and yet all in vain, for tomor- row orsome days later it is replaced by similar acrid gastric acid, and then usually in larger quantities; whereas it goes away by itself when its dyna- mic cause is removed by a very small dose of a high dilution of sulphuric acid, or still better, if it is of frequent recurrence, by the employment of minutest doses of antipsoric remedies corresponding in similarity to the rest of the symptoms also. And of a similar character are many of the pretended causal cures of the old-school physicians, whose main effort it is, by means of tedious operations, troublesome to themselves and injurious to their pa- tients, to clear away the material product of the dynamic derangement- whereas if they perceived the dynamic source of the affection, and annihi-

7

and enlarged abdomen ; x their venesections in cases of haemor- rhage; 2 and more especially all their varieties of blood- lettings, 3 their main remedy in inflammations, which they now, following the example of a well-known bloodthirsty Parisian physician (as a flock of sheep follow the bell-wether even into the butcher's slaughter-house), imagine to encounter in almost every morbidly affected part of the body, and feel

lated it and its products homoeopathically, they would thereby effect a rational cure.

1 Conditions dependent solely on a psoric taint, and easily curable by mild (dynamic) antipsoric remedies without emetics or purgatives.

- Notwithstanding that almost all morbid haemorrhages depend on a dynamic derangement of the vital force (state of health), yet the old-school physicians consider their cause to be excess of blood, and cannot refrain from bleeding in order to draw off the supposed superabundance of this vital fluid; the palpable evil consequences of which procedure, however, such as prostration of the strength, and the tendency, or actual transition, to the typhoid state they ascribe to the malignancy of the disease, which they are then often unable to overcome— in fine, they imagine, even when the patient does not recover, that their treatment has been in conformity with their axiom, causam Utile, and that, according to their mode of speaking, they have done everything in their power for the patient, let the result be what it may.

3 Although there probably never was a drop of blood too much in the living human body, yet the old-school practitioners consider an imaginary excess of blood as the main material cause of all haemorrhages and inflammations, which they must remove and drain off by venesections, cupping and leeches. This they hold to be a rational mode of treatment, causal medication. In general inflammatory fevers, in acute pleurisy, they oven regard the coagu- lable lymph in the blood— the buffy coat, as it is termed— as the matirla peceans, which they endeavor to get rid of, if possible, by repeated venesec- tions, notwithstanding that this coat often becomes more consistent and thicker at every repetition of the bloodletting. They thus often bleed the pa- tient nearly to death, when the inflammatory fever will not subside, in order to remove this buffy coat, or the imaginary plethora, without suspect- ing that the inflammatory blood is only the product of the acute fever, of the morbid, immaterial (dynamic) inflammatory irritation, and that the latter is the sole cause of the great disturbance in the vascular system, and may be removed by the smallest dose of a homogeneous (homoeopathic) medi- cine, as, for instance, by a small globule of thedecillion-fold potentization of aconite juice, with abstinence from vegetable acids, so that the most violent plturltic fever, with all its alarming concomitants, is changed into health and cured, without the least abstraction of bhiod and without any antiphl gistic remedy, in a few— at the most in twenty -four— hours (a small quantity of blood drawn from a vein by way of experiment then shows no traces of buffy coat); whereas another patient similarly affected, and treated on the rational principles of the o'd school, if, after repeated bleedings, with great difficulty and unspeakable sufferings he escape for the nonce with life, he often has still many months to drag through before he can support his emaciated body on his legs, if in the mean time (as often happens from such maltreat- ment) he be not carried off by typhoid fever, leucophlegmasia or pulmonary phthisis.

Anyone who has felt the tranquil pulse of a man an hour before the occur- rence of the rigor that always precedes an attack of acute pleurisy, will not be able to restrain his amazsment if told two hours later, aftar the hot stage

8

themselves bound to remove by the application of often a fatal number of leeches, (a) They believe that by so doing they obey the true causal indications, and treat disease in a rational manner. The adherents of the old school, moreover, believe that by putting a ligature on polypi, by cutting out, or artifi- cially exciting suppuration by means of local irritants in, indo- lent glandular swellings, by enucleating encysted tumors (steatoma and meliceria) by their operations for aneurism and lachrymal and anal fistula, by removing with the knife scirrhus tumors of the breast, by amputating a limb affected with necrosis, &c. , they cure the patient radically, and that their treatment is directed against the cause of the disease; and they also think, when they employ their rejiellent remedies, dry up old running ulcers in the legs with astringent applica- tions of oxide of lead, copper or zinc (aided always by the simultaneous administration of purgatives, which merely de- bilitate, but have no effect on the fundamental dyscrasia), cau-

has commenced, that the enormous plethora present urgently requires re- peated venesections, and will naturally inquire by what magic power could the pounds of blood that must now be drawn off have been conjured into the blood-vessels of this man within these two hours, which but two hours previously he had felt beating in such a tranquil manner? Not a single drachm more of blood can now be circulating in those vessels than existed when ho was in good health, nor yet two hours ago!

Accordingly the allopathic physician with his venesections draws from the patient laboring under acute fever no oppressive superabundance of blood, as that cannot possibly be present; he only robs him of what is indis- pensable to life and recovery, the normal quantity of blood and consequently of strength— a great loss which no physician's power can replace!— and yet ho vainly imagines that he has conducted the treatment in conformity to his (misunderstood) axiom, causam tolle; whereas it is impossible that the causamorbi in this case can be an excess of blood, which is not present; but the solo true causa morbi was a morbid, dynamical, inflammatory irritation of the circulating system, as is proved by the rapid and permanent cure of this avd every similar case of general inflammatory fever by one or two in- conceivably minuto doses of aconite juice, which removes' such an irritation homoeopathically.

The old school errs equally in the treatment of local inflammation with the topical bloodlettings, more especially with the quantities of leeches which are now applied according to the maniacal principles of BroussaLs. The palliative amelioration that at first ensues from the treatment is far from being crowned by a rapid and perfect cure; on the contrary, the weak and ailing state of the parts thus t reated (frequent ly also of the whole body), which always remains, sufficiently shows the error that is committed in at- tributing the local inflammation to a local plethora, and how sad are the consequences of such abstractions of blood; whereas this purely dynamic, apparently local, inflammatory irritation, can be rapidly and permanently removed by an equally small dose of aconite, cr. according to circumstances, of belladonna, and the whole disease annihilated and cured, without such unjustifiable shedding of blood.

9

terize chancres, destroy condylomata locally, drive off itch from the skin with ointment of sulphur, oxide of lead, mercury or zinc, suppress ophthalmise with solutions of lead or zinc, and drive away tearing pains from the limbs by means of opodeldoc, hartshorn liniment or fumigations with cinnabar or amber; in every case they think they have removed the affection, con- quered the disease, and pursued a rational treatment directed towards the cause. But what is the result? The metastatic affections that sooner or later, but inevitably appear, caused by this mode of treatment (but which they pretend are entirely new diseases), which are always worse than the original malady, sufficiently prove their error, and might and should open their eyes to the deeper-seated, immaterial nature of the disease, and its dynamic (spiritual) origin, which can only be removed by dynamic means.

A favorite idea of the ordinary school of medicine, until re- cent (would that I could not say the most recent!) times, was that of morbific matters (and acridities) in diseases, excessively subtile though they might be thought to be, which must be ex- pelled from the blood-vessels and lymphatics, through the exhalents, skin, urinary apparatus or salivary glands, through the tracheal and bronchial glands in the form of expectoration, from the stomach and bowels by vomiting and purging, in order that the body might be freed from the material cause that produced the disease, and a radical causal treatment* 0 ) be thus carried out. (°)

By cutting holes in the diseased body, which were converted into chronic ulcers kept up for years by the introduction of foreign substances (issues, setons), they sought to draw off the materia peccans from the (always only dynamically) diseased body, just as one lets a dirty fluid run out of a barrel through the tap-hole. By means only of perpetual fly-blisters and the application of mezereum, they thought to draw away the bad humors and tc cleanse the diseased body from all morbific matters — but they only weakened it, so as generally to render it incurable, by all these senseless unnatural processes. (°)

I admit that it was more convenient for the weakness of hu- manity to assume that, in the diseases they were called on to cure, there existed some morbific material of which the mind

might form a conception (more particularly as the patients readily lent themselves to such a notion;, because in that case the practitioner had nothing further to care about than to pro- cure a good supply of remedies for purifying the blood and humors, exciting the diuresis and diaphoresis, promoting ex- pectoration, and scouring out the stomach and bowels. Hence, in all the works on Materia Medica, from Dloscorides clown to the latest books on this subject, there is almost nothing said about the special peculiar action of individual medicines; but, besides an account of their supposed utility in various nosologi- cal names of diseases, it is merely stated whether they are diuretic, diaphoretic, expectorant or emmenagogue, and more particularly whether they produce evacuation of the stomach and bowels upwards or downwards; because all the aspirations and efforts of the practitioner have ever been chiefly directed to cause the expulsion of a material morbific matter, and of sundry (fictitious) acridities, which it was imagined were the cause of diseases.

These were, however, all idle dreams, unfounded assump- tions and hypotheses, cunningly devised for the convenience of therapeutics, as it was expected the easiest way of perform- ing a cure would be to remove the material morbific matters (si modo essentf).

But the essential nature of diseases and their cure will not adapt themselves to such fantasies, nor to the convenience of medical men; to humor such stupid baseless hypotheses dis- eases will not cease to be (spiritual) dynamic derangements of our spirit-like vital principle in sensations and functions, that is to say, immaterial derangements of our state of health.

The causes of our maladies cannot be material, since the least foreign material substance, 1 however mild it may appear to us, if introduced into our blood- vessels, is promptly ejected by the vital force, as though it were a poison ; or when this does not happen, death ensues. If even the minutest splinter penetrates a sensitive part of our organism, the vital principle

1 Life was endangered by injecting a little pure water into a vein. (Vide Mullen, quoted by Birch in the History of the Royal Society.)

Atmospheric air injected into the blood-vessels caused death. ( Vide J. H. Voigt, Magazin fiir den ntuesten Zu&tand der Naturkunde, i, iii, p. 25. )

Even the mildest fluids introduced Into the veins endangered life. (Fid* Autenrieth. Physi ,U>gie, ii, § 784.)

everywhere present in our body never rests until it is removed by pain, fever, suppuration or gangrene. And can it be sup- posed that in a case of cutaneous disease of twenty years' standing, for instance, this indefatigably active vital principle will quietly endure the presence of such an injurious, foreign, material exanthematous substance, such as a herpetic, scroful- ous, a gouty acridity, &c. , in the fluids of the body? Did any nosologist ever see with corporeal eyes such a morbific matter, to warrant him in speaking so confidently about it, and in founding a system of medical treatment upon it? Has any one ever succeeded in displaying to view the matter of gout or the poison of scrofula?

Even when the application of a material substance to the skin, or to a wound, has propagated diseases by infection, who can prove (what is so often maintained in works on pathology) that some material portion of this substance has penetrated into our fluids or been absorbed? 1 The most careful and prompt washing of the genitals does not protect the system from infection with the venereal chancrous disease. The slightest breath of air emanating from the body of a person affected with smallpox will suffice to produce this horrible dis- ea3e in a healthy child.

What ponderable quantity of material substance could have been absorbed into the fluids, in order to develop, in the first of these instances, a tedious dyscrasia (syphilis), which when uncured is only extinguished with the remotest period of life, with death; in the last, a disease (smallpox) accompanied by almost general suppuration, 2 and often rapidly fatal? In these

1 A girl In Glasgow, eight years of age. having been bit by a mad dog, the surgeon immediately cut the piece clean out, and yet thirty-six days afterwards she was seized with hdyrophobia, which killed hei in two days. (Med. Com- ment, of Edinb., Dec. 2, vol. ii, 1793.)

2 In order to account for the large quantity of putrid excrementitious mat- ter and foetid discharge often met with in diseases, and to be able to represent them as the material substance that excites and keeps up disease— although, when infection occurs, nothing perceptible in the shape of miasm, nothing material, could have penetrated into the body— recourse was had to the hypothesis, that the matterof infection, beiteverso minute, acts in the body like a ferment, bringing the fluids into a like state of corruption, and thus changing them into a similar morbific ferment which constantly increases with the disease and keeps it up. But by what all-potent and all-wise puri- fying draughts will you purge and cleanse the human fluids from this ever reproductive ferment, from this mass of imaginary morbific matter, and that so perfectly, that there shall not remain a particle of such morbific ferment,

and all similar cases is it possible to entertain the idea of a material morbific matter being introduced into tiie blood? A letter written in the sick-room at a great distance has often communicated the same contagious disease to the person who read it. In this instance, can the notion of a material morbific matter having penetrated into the fluids be admitted? But what need is there of all such proofs? How often has it hap- pened that an irritating word has brought on a dangerous bilious fever; a superstitious prediction of death has caused the fatal catastrophe at the very time announced; the abrupt communication of sad or excessively joyful news has occasioned sudden death? In these cases, where is the material morbific principle that entered in substance into the body, there to pro- duce and keep up the disease, and without the material expul- sion and ejection of which a radical cure were impossible?

The champions of this clumsy doctrine of morbific matters ought to be ashamed that they have so inconsiderately over- looked and failed to appreciate the spiritual nature of life, and the spiritual dynamic power of the exciting causes of dis- eases, ( a ) and that they have thereby degraded themselves into mere scavenger-doctors, who, in their efforts to expel from the diseased body morbific matters that never existed, in place of curing, destroy life.

Are, then, the foul, often disgusting excretions which occur in diseases the actual matter that produces and keeps them up? 1 Are they not rather always excretory products of the disease itself, that is, of the life which is only dynamically de- ranged and disordered?

With such false and materialistic views concerning the origin and essential nature of diseases, it was certainly not to be wondered at that in all ages the main endeavor of the most

which, according to this hypothesis, must ever again, as at first, transform and corrupt the fluids to new morbific matter? Were that so it would evi- dently be impossible to cure these diseases in your way !— See how all hype- theses, be they ever so ingeniously framed, lead to the most palpable absurd- ities when they are not founded on truth!— -The most deeply looted syphilis may be cured, after the removal of the psora with which it is often compli- cated, by one or two small doses of the decillionfold diluted and potentized solution of mercury, whereby the general syphilitic taint of the fluids is for ever (dynamically) annihilated and removed.

1 Were this the case, the most inveterate coryza should bo certainly and rapidly cured by merely blowing and wiping tho noso carefully.

obscure, as well as of the most distinguished practitioners, and even of the inventors of the sublimest medical systems, was always only to separate and expel an imaginary morbific matter, and the indication most frequently laid down was to break up and put in motion this morbific matter, to effect its expulsion by salivation, expectoration, diaphoresis and diuresis; to purify the blood from (acridities and impurities) morbific matters, which never existed^ by means of the intelligence of sundry obedient decoctions of roots and plants ; to draw off mechanical^ the imaginary matter of disease by setons, by issues, by portions of the skin kept open and discharging by means of perpetual blisters or mezereum bark, but chiefly to expel and purge away the materia peccans, or the injurious matters as they were termed, through the intestines, by means of laxative and purgative medicines, which, in order to give them a more profound meaning and a more prepossessing ap- pearance, were fondly denominated dissolvents and mild aperi- ents — all so man} r arrangements for the expulsion of inimical morbific matters, which never could be, and never were instru- mental in the production and maintenance of the diseases of the human organism, animated as it is by a spiritual principle — of diseases which never were anything else than spiritual dynamic derangements of the life altered in its sensations and functions. < a )

Let it be granted now, what cannot be doubted, that no dis- eases — if they do not result from the introduction of perfectly indigestible or otherwise injurious substances into the stomach, or into other orifices or cavities of the body, or from foreign bodies penetrating the skin, &c. — that no disease, in a word, is caused by any material substance, but that every one is only and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the health; how injudicious, in that case, must not a method of treatment directed towards the expulsion 1 of that imaginary

1 There is a semblanceof necessity in the expulsion by purgatives of worms, in so-called vermicular diseases. But even this semblance is false. A few lumbrici may be found in some children ; in many there exists ascarides. But the presence of these is always dependent on a general taint of the constitu- tion (the psoric), joined to an unhealthy mode of living. Let the latter be improved, and the former cured hornceopathically, which is most easily effected at this age, and none of the worms remain, and children cured in this manner are never troubled with them more; whereas after mere purga- tives, even when combined with cina seeds, they soon reappear iu quantities.

material substance appear to every rational man, since no good, but only monstrous harm, can result from its employ- ment in the principal diseases of mankind, namely, those of a chronic character !

In short, the degenerated substances and impurities that ap- pear in diseases are, undeniably, nothing more than products of the disease of the abnormally deranged organism, which are expelled by the latter, often violently enough — often much too violently — without requiring the aid of the evacuating art, and fresh products are always developed as long as it labors under that disease. These matters the true physician regards as actual symptoms of the disease, and they aid him to dis- cover the nature of the disease, and to form an accurate por-

“But the tapeworm.” methinks I hear some one exclaim, '“every effort should be made to expel that monster, which was created for the torment of mankind.”

Yes. sometimes it is expelled; but at the cost of what after-sufferings, and with what danger to life! I should not like to have on my conscience the deaths of so many hundreds of human beings as have fallen sacrifices to the horribly violent purgatives directed against the tapeworm, or the many years of indisposition of those who have escaped being purged to death. And how often does it happen that after all this health-and-life-destroying purgative treatment, frequently continued for several years, the animal is not expelled, or if so, that it is again produced!

What if there is not the slightest necessity for all these violent, cruel and dangerous efforts to expel and kill the worm?

The various species of tapeworm are only found along with the psoric taint, and always disappear when that is cured. But even before the cure is ac- complished, they live— the patient enjoying tolerable health the while— not exactly in the intestines, but in the residue of the food, the excrement of the bowels, as in their proper element, quite quietly, and without causing the least disturbance, and find in the excrement what suffices for their nourish- ment; they then do not touch the walls of the intestine, and are perfectly harmless. But if the patient happen to be affected with an acute disease of any kind, then the contents of the bowels become intolerable to the animal ; it twists about, comes in contact with, and irritates the sensitive walls of the intestines, causing a peculiar kind of spasmodic colic, which increases mate- rially the sufferingsof the patient. (So also the foetus of the womb becomes restless, turns about and kicks, only when the mother is ill; but when she is well, it swims quietly in its proper fluid without causing her any suffering).

Itiri worthy of remark, that the morbid symptoms of patients suffering from tapeworm are generally of such a kind, that they are rapidly relieved (homceopathically) by the smallest dose of tincture otmale-fern root; so that the ill-health of the patient, which causes this parasitic animal to be' restless, is thereby for the time removed ; the tapeworm thon feels at ease, and lives od quietly in the excrement of the bowels, without particularly distressing the patient or his intestines, until the antipsoric treatment is so far advanced that the worm, after the eradication of the psora, finds the contents of the bowels no longer suitable for its support, and therefore spontaneously dis- appears for ever from the now cured patient, without the least purgative medicine.(°)

trait of it, so as to enable him to cure it with a similar medi- cinal morbific agent. (°)

But the more modern adherents of the old school do not wish it to be supposed, that in their treatment they aim at the expulsion of material morbific substances. They allege that their multifarious evacuant processes are a mode of treatment by derivation, wherein they follow the example of nature which, in her efforts to assist the diseased organism,- resolves fever by perspiration and diuresis, pleurisy by epistaxis, sweat and mucous expectoration — other diseases by vomiting, diar- rhoea and bleeding from the anus, articular pains by suppura- ting ulcers on the legs, cynanche tonsillaris by salivation, &c. , or removes them by metastases and abscesses which she de- velops in parts at a distance from the seat of the disease.

Hence they thought the best thing to do was to imitate na- ture, by also going to work in the treatment of most diseases in a circuitous manner like the diseased vital force when left to itself, and thus in an indirect manner, 1 by means of stronger heterogeneous irritants applied to organs remote from the seat of disease, and totally dissimilar to the affected tissues, they produced evacuations, and generally kept them up, in order to draw, as it were, the disease thither.

This derivation, as it is called, was and continues to be one of the principal modes of treatment 0/ the old school of medi- cine.

In this imitation of the self-aiding operation of nature, as some call it, they endeavored to excite, by force, new symp- toms in the tissues that are least diseased and best able to bear the medicinal disease, which should draw away 2 the primary disease under the semblance of crises and under the form of excretions, in order to admit of a gradual lysis by the curative powers of nature. 3

1 In place of extinguishing the disease rapidly, without exhaustion of the strength and without going about the bush, with homogeneous, dynamic medicinal agents acting directly on the diseased points of the organism, as homoeopathy does.

2 Just as if anything immaterial could be drawn away! So that here too was the notion of a substance and a morbific matter, excessively subtile though it might be supposed to be! ( a )

3 It is only the slighter acute diseases that tend, when the natural period of their course has expired, to terminate quietly in resolution, as it is called, with or without the employment of not very aggressive allopathic remedies:

This they accomplished by means of diaphoretic and diuretic remedies, blood-lettings, setons and issues, but chiefly by irritant drugs to cause evacuation of the alimentary canal, sometimes upwards by means of emetics, sometimes (and this was the favorite plan) downwards by means of purgatives, which were termed aperient and dissolvent 1 remedies.

To assist this derivative method they employed the allied treatment by counter-irritants ; woolen garments to the bare skin, foot-baths, nauseants, inflicting on the stomach and bowels the pangs of hunger (the hunger treatment), substances to cause pain, inflammation, and suppuration in near or dis- tant parts, as the application of horseradish, mustard plasters, cantharides blisters, mezereum, setons, issues, tartar-emetic ointment, moxa, actual cauter}', acupuncture, &c. ; here also following the example of crude unassisted nature, which en- deavors to free herself from the dynamic disease (in the case of a chronic disease, unavailingly) by exciting pain in distant parts of the bod}*, by metastases and abscesses, by eruptions and suppurating ulcers.

It was evidently no rational principle, but merely imitation, with the view of making practice easy, that seduced the old school into those unhelpful and injurious indirect modes of treatment, the derivative as well as the counter-irritant; that led them to this inefficacious, debilitating and hurtful practice of apparently ameliorating diseases for a short time, or re- moving them in such a manner that another and a worse dis- ease was roused up to occupy the place of the first. Such a destructive plan cannot certainly be termed curing.

They merely followed the example of crude instinctive na- ture in her efforts, which are barely 2 successful even in the

the vital force, having regained its powers, then gradually substitutes the normal condition for the derangement of the health that has now ceased to exist. But in severe acute and in chronic diseases which constitute by far the greater portion of all human ailments, crude nature and the old school are equally powerless; in these, neither the vital force, with its self-aiding fac- ulty, nor allopathy in imitation of it, can effect a lysis, but at the most a mere temporary truce, during which the enemy fortifies himself, in order, sooner or later, to recommence the attack with still greater violence.

1 An expression which likewise betrays that they imagined and presup- posed a morbific substance, which had to be dissolved and expelled.

2 In the ordinary school of medicine, the efforts made by nature for the re- lief of the organism in diseases where no medicine was given, were regarded as models of treatment worthy of imitation. But this ivas a great error. The

slighter cases of acute disease; they merely imitated the un- reasoning life-preserving power when left to itself in diseases, which, entirely dependent as it is upon the organic laws of the body, is only capable of acting in conformity with these laws, and is not guided by reason and reflection — they copied na-

pitiable and highly imperfect efforts of the vital force to relieve itself in acute diseases is a spectacle that should excite our compassion, and command the aid of all the powers of our rational mind, to terminate the self-inflicted tor- ture by a real cure. If nature is unable to cure homneopathicilly a disease already existing in the organism, by the production of another fresh malady similar to it (§§ -13— 40), which very rarely lies in her power (§ 50), and if to the organism alone is left the task of overcoming, by its own forces and without external aid, a disease newly contracted (in cases of chronic miasms its power of resistance is quite inefficacious), we then witness naught but painful, often dangerous, efforts of nature to save the individual at whatever cost, which often terminate in extinction of the earthly existence, in death.

Little as we mortals know of the operations that take place in the interior economy in health— which must be hidden from us as certainly as they are patent to the eye of the all-seeing Creator and Preserver of his creatures- just as little can we perceive the operations that go on in the interior in dis- turbed conditions of life, in diseases. The internal operations in diseases are manifested only by the visible changes, the sufferings and the symptoms, whereby alone our life betrays the inward disturbance; so that in no given case can we ascertain which of the morbid symptoms are caused by the primary action of the morbific agent, which by the reaction of the vital force for its own relief. Both are inextricably mixed up together before our eyes, and only present to us an outwardly reflected picture of the entire internal malady, for the fruitless efforts of unassisted vitality to terminate the suffer- ings are themselves sufferings of the whole organism. Hence, even in those evacuations termed crise-\ which nature generally produces at the termina- tion of diseases which run a rapid course, there is frequently more of suffer- ing than of efficacious relief.

What the vital force does in these so-called crises, and how it does it, re- mains a mystery to us. like all the internal operations of the organic vital economy. One thing, however, is certain: that in all these efforts more or letsof the affecled parts are sacrificed and destroyed in orrler to save the rest. These self-aiding operations of the vital force for the removal of an acute disease, performed only in obedience to the laws of organic life and not guided by the reflection of an intellect, are mostly but a species of allopathy ; in order to relieve the primarily affected organ by a crisis, an increased, often violent, activity is excited in the excretory organs, to draw away the disease from the former to the latter; there ensue vomitings, purgings, diuresis, diaphoresis, abcesses. &c, in order, by this irritation of distant parts, to effect a sort of derivation from the primarily diseased parts, and the dynamically affected nervous power seems to unload itself in the material product.

It is only by the destruction and sacrifice of a portion of the organism itself that unaided nature can save the patient in acute diseases, and, if death do not ensue, restore, though only slowly and imperfectly,the harmony of life- health.

The great weakness of the parts which had been exposed to the disease, and even of the whole body, the emaciation, &c, remaining after spontane- ous cures, are convincing proofs of this.

In short, the whole operation of the self-aiding power of the organism when attacked by diseases displays to the observer nothing but suffering— nothing that ho could or ought to imitate if he wishes to cure disease in a truly artistic manner.

2

ture, which cannot, like an intelligent surgeon, bring together the gaping lips of a wound and by their union effect a cure; which knows not how to straighten and adjust the broken ends of a bone lying far apart and exuding much (often an excess of) new osseous matter; which cannot put a ligature on a wounded artery, but in its energy causes the patient to bleed to death; which does not understand how to replace a dislo- cated shoulder, but by the swelling it occasions round about it soon presents an obstacle to reduction; whicb, in order to re- move a foreign body from the cornea, destroys the whole eye by suppuration ; which, with all its efforts, can only liberate a strangulated hernia by gangrene of the bowel and death ; and which, by the metaschematisms it produces in dynamic dis- eases, often renders them much worse than they were origin- ally. But more, this irrational vital force receives into our body, without hesitation, the greatest plagues of our terrestrial existence, the spark that kindles the countless diseases be- neath which tortured mankind has groaned for hundreds and thousands of j'ears, the chronic miasms — psora, s} T philis, syco- sis — not one of which can it diminish in the slightest degree, far less expel single-handed from the organism ; on the con- trary, it allows them to rankle therein, until, often after a long life of misery, death at last closes the eyes of the sufferer.

In such an important affair as that of healing, which de- mands so much intelligence, reflection and judgment, how could the old school, which arrogates to itself the title of rational, choose as its best instructor, as its guide to be blindly .followed, the unintelligent vital force, inconsiderately copy its indirect and revolutionary operations in diseases, imagining these to be the non plus ultra, the best conceivable, when that greatest gift of God, reflective reason and unfettered judgment, was given us to enable us infinitely to surpass it in salutary help to suffering humanity?

When the old school practitioners, thoughtlessly imitating the crude, senseless, automatic vital energy, with their counter- irritant and derivative methods of treatment — by far their most usual plans — attack innocent parts and organs of the body, either inflicting on them excruciating pains, or, as is most fre- quently done, compelling them to perform evacuations, where-

by strength and fluids are wasted, their object is to direct the morbid vital action in the primarily affected parts away to those artificially attacked, and thus to effect the cure of the natural disease indirectly, by the production of a disease, much greater in intensity and of quite a different hind, in the healthy parts of the body, consequently by a circuitous way, at the cost of much loss of strength, and usually of great sufferings to the patient. 1

The disease, if it be acute, and consequently naturally of but short duration, may certainly disappear, even during these heterogeneous attacks on distant and dissimilar parts — but it is not cured. There is nothing that can merit the honorable name of cure in this revolutionary treatment, which has no direct, immediate, pathological relation to the tissues primarily affected. Often, indeed, without these serious attacks on the rest of the organism, would the acute disease have ceased of itself, sooner most likely, with fewer subsequent sufferings and less sacrifice of strength. But neither the mode of operation of the crude natural forces, nor the allopathic copy of that, can for a moment be compared to the dynamic (homoeopathic) treatment, which sustains the strength, while it extinguishes the disease in a direct and rapid manner.

In far the greatest number of cases of disease, however — I mean those of a chronic nature — these perturbing, debilitating, indirect modes of treatment of the old school are scarcely ever of the slightest use. They suspend, for a few days only, some troublesome symptom or other, which, however, returns when the system has become accustomed to the distant irritation, and the disease recurs worse than before, because by the an-

1 Daily experience shows the sad effects of this manoeuvre in chronic dis- eases. Anything but a cure is (ffected. Who would ever call that a victory if, in place of attacking the enemy in front in a hand-to-hand fight, and by his destruction terminating at once his hostile assaults, we should, in a cowardly manner and behind his back, lay an embargo on everything, cut off his sup- plies, burn down everything for a great way round him? By so doing we would at length deprive him of all courage to resist, but our object is not gained, the enemy is far from being destroyed,— he is still then;, and when he can again procure provisions and supplies, he once more rears his head, more exasperated than before— the enemy, I repeat, is far from being destroyed, but the poor innocent country is so completely ruined that it will be long be- fore it can recover itself. In like manner actsallopathy in chronic diseases, when, by its indirect attacks on innocent parts at a distance from the seat of the disease, instead of effecting a cure, it destroys the organism. Such is the result of its hurtful operations!

tagonistic pains 1 and the injudicious evacuations, the vital powers have been depressed.

Whilst most physicians of the old school, imitating in a general manner the efforts of crude, unaided nature for its own relief, carried out in tbeir practice these derivations of merely hypothetical utility, just as they judged expedient (guided by some imaginary indication) ; others, aiming at a higher object, undertook designedly to promote the efforts of the vital force to aid itself hy evacuation* and antagonistic metastases, as seen in dis- eases, and by way of lending it a helping hand, to increase still more these derivations and evacuations; and they believed that by this hurtful procedure they were acting dace natura, and might justly claim the title of ministri riaturoz.

As the evacuations effected by the natural powers of the patient in chronic diseases are not infrequently the precursors of alleviations — though only of a temporary character — of troublesome symptoms, violent pains, paralyses, spasms, &c. , so the old school imagined these derivations to be the true way of curing diseases, and endeavored to promote, maintain and even increase such evacuations. But they did not perceive that all these evacuations and excretions (pseudo-crises) pro- duced by nature when left to herself were, in chronic diseases, only palliative, transient alleviations, which, far from con- tributing to a real cure, on the contrary, rather aggravated the original, internal dyscrasia, by the waste of strength and juices they occasioned. No one ever saw a chronic patient recover his health permanently by such efforts of crude nature, nor an} T chronic disease cured by such evacuations effected by the organism. 2 On the contrary, in such cases the original dys- crasia is always perceptibly aggravated, after alleviations, whose duration always becomes shorter and shorter; the bad attacks recur more frequently and more severely in spite of the continuation of the evacuations. In like manner, on the

1 What good results have ever ensued from those foetid artificial ulcers, so much in vogue, called issues? If even during the first week or two, whilst they still cause pain, they appear somewhat to check by antagonism a chronic disease, yet by and by, whon the body has become accustomed to the pain, t hey have no other effect than that of weakening the patienl and giving still greater scope to the chronic m ffection. Or does anyone imagine, in this nineteenth century, thatthey serve as an outlet for the escape of the materia peccant? It almost appears as if this were the case!

2 Equally inefficacious are those produced artificially.

occurrence of symptoms excited by an internal chronic affec- tion that threaten to destroy life, when nature, left to its own resources, cannot help herself in any other way than by the production of external local s} T mptoms, in order to avert the danger from parts indispensable to life and direct it to tissues of less vital importance (metastasis), these operations of the energetic but unintelligent, unreasoning and improvident vital force conduce to anything but genuine relief or recovery, they only silence in a palliative manner, for a short time, the dan- gerous internal affection, at the cost of a large portion of the humors and of the strength, without diminishing the original disease by a hair's breadth ; they can, at the most, only retard the fatal termination which is inevitable without true hom- oeopathic treatment.

The allopathy of the old school not only greatly over-rated these efforts of the crude automatic power of nature, but com- pletely misjudged them, falsely considered them to be truly curative, and endeavored to increase and promote them, vainly imagining that thereby they might perhaps succeed in annihi- lating and radically curing the whole disease. When, in chronic diseases, the vital force seemed to silence this or that troublesome symptom of the internal affection by the produc- tion, for example, of some humid cutaneous eruption, then the servant of the crude power of nature (minister naturae) applied to the discharging surface a cantharides plaster or an exutory (mezereum), in order, duce natura, to draw still more moisture from the skin, and thus to promote and to assist nature's object — the cure (by the removal of the morbific matter from the body ?) ; but when the effect of the remedy was too violent, the eczema already of long standing, and the system too irritable, he in- creased the external affection to a great degree without the slightest advantage to tne original disease, and aggravated the pains, which deprived the patient of sleep and depressed his strength (and sometimes even developed a malignant febrile erysipelas); or if the effect upon the local affection (still recent, perhaps) was of a milder character, he thereby repelled from its seat, by a species of ill-applied external homoeopathy, the local symptoms which had been established by nature on the skin for the relief of the internal disease, thus renewing the

more dangerous internal malady, and by this repulsion of the local symptom compelling the vital force to effect a transfer- ence of a worse form of morbid action to other and more im- portant parts ; the patient became affected with dangerous oph- thalmia, or deafness, or spasms of the stomach, or epileptic convulsions, or attacks of asthma or apoplexy, or mental de- rangement, &c. , in place of the repelled local disease. 1

When the diseased natural force propelled blood into the veins of the rectum or anus (blind haemorrhoids), the minister natures, under the same delusive idea of assisting the vital force in its curative efforts, applied leeches, often in large numbers, in order to give an outlet to the blood there — with but brief, often scarcely noteworthy, relief, but thereby weak- ening the body and occasioning still greater congestions in those parts, without the slightest diminution of the original disease.

In almost all cases in which the diseased vital force endeav- ored to subdue the violence of a dangerous internal malady by evacuating blood by means of vomiting, coughing, &c. , the old school physician, duce natura, made haste to assist these supposed salutary efforts of nature, and performed a copious venesection, which was invariably productive of injurious con- sequences and palpable weakening of the body.

In cases of frequently occurring chronic nausea, he produced, with the view of furthering the intentions of nature, copious evacuations of the stomach, by means of powerful emetics — never with a good result, often with bad, not infrequently dan- gerous and even fatal consequences.

The vital force, in order to relieve the internal malady,

sometimes produces indolent enlargements of the external

glands, and he thinks to forward the intentions of nature, in

his assumed character of her servant, when, by the use of all

sorts of heating embrocations and plasters, he causes them to

inflame, so that, when the abscess is ripe, he may incise it and

let out the bad morbific matter (?). Experience has shown,

hundreds of times, that lasting evil almost invariably results

from such a plan.

1 Natural effects of the repulsion of these local symptoms— effects that are often regarded by the allopathic physician as fresh diseases of quite a differ- ent kind.

And having often noticed slight amelioration of the severe symptoms of chronic diseases to result from spontaneous night sweats or frequent liquid stools, he imagines himself bound to obey these hints of nature (duce natura), and to promote them, by instituting and maintaining a complete course of sweating treatment or by the employment of so-called gentle laxatives for years, in order to promote and increase these efforts of nature (of the vital force of the unintelligent organism), which he thinks tend to the cure of the whole chronic affection, and thus to free the patient more speedily and certainly from his disease (the matter of his disease?).

But he thereby always produces quite the contrary result: aggravation of the original disease.

In conformity with this preconceived but unfounded idea, the old school physician goes on thus promoting 1 the efforts of the diseased vital force and increasing those derivations and evacuations in the patient which never lead to the desired end, but are always disastrous, without being aware that all the local affections, evacuations, and seemingly derivative efforts, set up and continued by the unintelligent vital force when left to its own resources, for the relief of the original chronic dis- ease, are actually the disease itself, the phenomena of the whole disease, for the totality of which, properly speaking, the only efficacious remedy, and the one, moreover, that will act

1 In direct opposition to this treatment, the old school not infrequently in- dulged themselves in the very reverse of this: thus, when the efforts of the vital force for the relief of the internal disease by evacuations and the pro- duction of local symptoms on the exterior of the body became troublesome, they capriciously suppressed them by their repercutientx and repellent*; they subdued chronic pains, sleeplessness and diarrhoea of long standing by doses of opium pushed to a dangerous extent; vomitings by effervescent saline draughts; foetid perspiration of the feet by cold footbaths and astringent applications; eruptions on the skin by preparations of lead and zinc; they checked uterine hcemorrhage by injections of vinegar; colliquative perspira- tion by alum; nocturnal seminal emissions by the free use of camphor; fre- quent attacks of flushes of heat in the body and face by nitre, vegetable acids and sulphuric acid ; bleeding of the nose by plugging the nostrils with dossils of lint soaked in alcohol or astringent fluids ; they dried up discharging ulcers on the legs, established by the vital power for the relief of great internal suf- fering, with the oxides of lead and zinc, &c, with what sad results experience has shown in thousands of cases.

With tongue and with pen the old school physician brags that he is a rational practitioner, and that he investigates the cause of the disease so as always to make radical cures; but behold, his treatment is directed, in these cases, against a single symptom only, and always with injurious consequences to his patient.( a )

in the most direct manner, is a homoeopathic medicine, chosen on account of its similarity of action.

As everything that crude nature does to relieve itself in diseases, in those of an acute, but especially those of a chronic kind, is extremely imperfect and even actual disease, it may easily be conceived that the promotion by artificial means of this imperfection and disease must do still more harm; at least, it cannot improve the efforts of nature for its own relief, even in acute diseases, because medical art is not in a condition to follow the hidden paths by which the vital force effects its crises, but attempts to produce them from without, by violent means, which are still less beneficial than what the instinctive vital force left to its own resources does, but on the other hand are more perturbing and debilitating. For even the in- complete amelioration resulting from the natural derivations and crises cannot be obtained in a similar manner by allopathy; with all its endeavors it cannot procure anything like even that pitiful relief the vital force left to itself is able to afford.

It has been attempted to produce, by means of scarifying instruments, a bleeding at the nose, in imitation of that some- times occurring naturally, in order to mitigate, for example, the attacks of a chronic headache. By this means a large quantity of blood could be made to flow from the nostrils and weaken the patient, but the relief afforded was either nil, or much less than the instinctive vital force would procure at an- other time, when, of its own accord, it would cause but a few drops to flow.

A so-called critical perspiration or diarrhoea, produced by the ever active vital force after a sudden indisposition, excited by anger, fright, a sprain or a chill, will be much more suc- cessful, at least for the time, in relieving the acute disease, than all the sudorific or purgative drugs in the pharmacopoeia, which only make the patient worse, as daily experience shows.

But the vital force, which of itself can only act according to the physical constitution of our organism, and is not guided by reason, knowledge and reflection, was not given to man to be regarded as the best possible curative agent to restore those lamentable deviations from health to the normal condition, and still less that physicians should slavishly imitate its imperfect

morbid efforts (to free itself from disease), and that with oper- ations incontestably more inappropriate and severe than its own, and thereby conveniently spare themselves the expendi- ture of reasoning, reflection and judgment requisite for the discovery and for the practice of the noblest of human arts — the true healing art — while they allege theiv bad copy of the spontaneous efforts of doubtful utility made b} r the crude natural force for its relief, to be the healing art, the rational hi a ling art!

What sensible man would imitate the efforts of the organism for its own preservation? These efforts are in reality the dis- ease itself, and the morbidly affected vital force is the pro- ducer of the visible disease! It must, therefore, necessarily follow that all artificial imitation, and likewise the suppression of these efforts, must either increase the disease or render it dangerous by their suppression, and both of these allopathy does; these are its pernicious operations which it alleges to be the healing art, the rational healing art!(°>

Nd! that exquisite power innate in the human being, designed to direct in the most perfect manner the operations of life while it is in health, equally present in all parts of the organ- ism, in the fibres of sensibility as well as in those of irrita- bility, the unwearying spring of all the normal natural func- tions of the body, was not created for the purpose of affording itself aid in diseases, not for the purpose of exercising a heal- ing art worthy of imitation. No! the true healing a rt is that re- flective work, the attribute of the higher powers of human intel- lect, of unfettered judgment and of reason selecting and deter- in in in g on principle in order to effect an alteration in the instinct- ive, irrational and unintelligent, but energetic automatic vital force, when it has been diverted by disease into abnormal action, and by means of a similar affection developedby a homoeopathi- colly chosen remedy, to excite in it a medicinal disease somewhat greater in degree, so that the natural morbid affection can no lunger act upon the vital farce, which thus, freed from the natural disease, has nan- only the similar, somewhat stronger, medicinal

morbid affection to contend with, against which itnow directs its whole energy and which it soon overpowers, whereby the vital force is liberated and enabled to return to the normal standard

of health and to its proper function, 11 the maintenance of the life and health of the organism,” without having suffered, during this change, any painful or debilitating attacks. Homoeopathy teaches us how to effect this.

Under the methods of treatment of the old school I have just detailed, no small number of patients certainly got rid of their diseases, but not of those of a chronic (non- venereal) character; only such as were acute and unattended with danger; and even these they were only freed from by such circuitous and tedious ways, and often so incompletely, that the results of the treatment could never be termed cures effected by a gentle art. Acute diseases of a not very dangerous kind were, by venesections or suppression of one of the chief symptoms through the instrumentality of an enantiopathic palliative remedy (contraria contrariis), kept under, or by means of counter-irritant and derivative (antagonistic and revulsive) remedies, applied to other than the diseased spots, suspended, until the natural time for the duration of the short malady had expired. These methods were, consequently, indirect, and at- tended with loss of strength and humors, so much so that in patients so treated the greatest and most important measures for the complete removal of the disease and for the restoration of the lost strength and humors remained to be performed by Nature herself — by the life-preserving power which, besides the removal of the natural acute disease, had also to combat the effects of improper treatment, and thus it was able, in cases unattended by danger, gradually to restore the normal relation of the functions by means of its own energy, but often in a tedious, imperfect and painful manner.

It remains a very doubtful question whether the natural pro- cess of recovery in acute diseases is really, at all shortened or facilitated by this interference of the old school, as the latter cannot act otherwise than the vital force, namely, indirectly; but its derivative and counter-irritant treatment is much more injurious and much more debilitating.

The old school has yet another method of treatment, which is termed the stimulating and strengthening system 1 (by excitantia

It is, properly speaking, enantiopathic, and I shall again refer to it in the text of the Organon (§ 59).

-7

nervina, tonica, confortantia, roborantia). It is astonishing how it can boast of this method.

Has it ever succeeded in removing the physical weakness so often engendered and kept up or increased by a chronic disease with its prescriptions of etheric Rhine-wine or fiery Tokay? The strength gradually sank under this treatment, and all the lower, the greater the quantity of wine the patient was per- suaded to drink, because the source of the weakness, the chronic disease, was not cured by it, because artificial stimulation is followed by relaxation in the reaction of the vital force.

Or did its cinchona bark, or its amara, so misunderstood, so multifarious in their modes of action, and productive of quite different kinds of injury, give strength in these frequently oc- curring cases? Did not these vegetable substances, said to be tonic and strengthening under all circumstances, as also the preparations of iron, often add to the old disease new sufferings, by virtue of their peculiar pathogenetic effects, without reliev- ing the weakness proceeding from an unknown disease of long standing?

Has any one ever succeeded in diminishing in the very least the duration of the incipient paralysis of an arm or a leg, so often arising from a chronic dyscrasia, by means of the so- called unguenta nervina, or any other spirituous or balsamic embrocations, without curing the dyscrasia itself. Or have electric or galvanic shocks ever been attended with any other result in such cases, than a gradually increasing, and finally absolute, paralysis, and extinction of all muscular and nervous irritability in the affected limbs? 1

Did not the renowned excitantia and aphrodisiaca, ambergris, lacerta scincus, cantharides tincture, truffles, cardamoms, cin- namon and vanilla invariably bring about complete impotence when used for the purpose of restoring the gradually declining sexual power (which always depended on an unobserved chronic miasm)?

1 Those affected with hardness of hearing were relieved by moderate shocks from the voltaic pile of the apothecary of Jever only for a few hours— these moderate shocks soon lost their power. In order to produce the same result he had to make them stronger; until these stronger shocks had no effect; the very strongest would then at first excite the patients' hearing for a short time, but at length left them quite deaf.

How can credit be taken for the production of a stimulation and invigoration of but a few hours duration, when the result that must follow and which is permanent — according to the laws of all palliative action — is a directly opposite state, the rendering of the disease incurable?

The little good that the excitantia and roborantia did for re- covery from acute diseases (treated according to the old method) was a thousand times outweighed by their ill effects in chronic maladies.

When physicians of the old school do not know what to do in a chronic disease, they treat it blindly with their so-called alterative remedies (alterantia); among which the horrible mer- curial ia (calomel, corrosive sublimate and mercurial ointment) occupy the foremost place — which they allow to act in such large quantities and for so long a time on the diseased body (in non- venereal diseases!) that at last the health is by their de- structive effects completely undermined. They thus certainly produce great alterations, but invariably such as are not bene- ficial, and they always utterly ruin the health by their improper administration of this excessively injurious metal.

When they prescribe, in large doses, cinchona bark (which, as a homoeopathic febrifuge, is only specific in true marsh ague, uncomplicated with psora), for all epidemic intermittent fevers, which are often distributed over large tracts of country, the old school practitioners palpably manifest their stupidity, for these diseases assume a different character almost every year and hence demand for their cure, almost always, a different homoeo- pathic remedy, by means of one or a few very small doses of which they may always be radically cured in a few days. Now, because these epidemic fevers have periodical attacks (typus) and the adherents of the old school see nothing in all intermittent fevers but their typus [periodicity], and neither know nor care to know any other febrifuge but cinchona, these routine practitioners imagine, if they can but suppress the typus of the epidemic intermittent fever with enormous doses of cinchona and its costly alkaloid, quinine (an event which the unintelligent, but. in this instance, more sensible vital force endeavors to prevent often for months), that they have cured this epidemic ague. But the deluded patient, after such a

suppression of the periodicity (typus) of his fever, invariably becomes worse than he was during the fever itself: with sallow complexion, dyspnoea, constriction in the hypochondria, disor- dered bowels, unhealthy appetite, bi'oken sleep, feeble and desponding, often with great swelling of the legs, of the abdo- men and even of the face and hands, he creeps out of the hospital, dismissed as cared, and long years of homoeopathic treatment are not infrequently required, merely to rescue from death, let alone to cure and restore to health, such a profoundly injured (cured?), artificially cachectic patient.

The old school is happy when it can convert the dull stupor that occurs in typhus fevers, by means of valerian, which in this case acts antipathically, into a kind of liveliness of a few hours' duration; but as this does not continue, and to force a repetition of the auimation ever increasing doses of valerian are requisite, it is not long before the largest doses cease to have the desired effect. But as this palliative is only stimulant in its primary action, in its after effects the vital force is para- lyzed, and such a patient is certain of a speedy death from this rational treatment of the old school ; none can e.3cape. And yet the adherents of this routine art could not perceive that by these proceedings they most certainly killed their patients; they ascribed the death to the malignancy of the disease.

A palliative of a still more horrible character for chronic patients is the digitalis purpurea, with which the old school practitioners imagine they do such excellent service, when, by means of it, they compel the quick, irritated pulse in chronic diseases (purely symptomatic !) to become slower. True it is that this dreadful remedy, which is in such cases employed enantiopathically, strikingly diminishes the frequency of the quick, irritated pulse, and greatly reduces the number of the arterial pulsations, for a few hours, after the first dose; but the pulse soon becomes more rapid than before. In order again to diminish in some degree its frequency the dose is in- creased, and it has the effect, but for a still shorter period, until even these and still larger palliative doses cease to reduce the pulse, which at length, in the secondary action of the fox- glove which can no longer be restrained, becomes much more rapid than it was before the use of this drug, — it then becomes

uncountable; sleep, appetite and strength are lost — death is imminent; not one of the patients so treated escapes alive, unless to be a prey to incurable insanity! 1 ^)

Such was the treatment pursued by the allopathist. The patients, therefore, were obliged to yield to the sad necessity, because they could obtain no better aid from other allopathists, who had gained their knowledge from the same deceitful books.

As the fundamental cause of chronic (non- venereal) diseases, together with the remedies for them, remained unknown to these practitioners, who vainly boasted of their causal medica- tion of their diagnosis being directed to the investigation of the genesis of diseases f how could they hope to cure the im- mense numbers of chronic diseases by their indirect treatments, which were but hurtful imitations of the unintelligent vital force for its own relief, that never were intended to be models for practice?

The presumed character of the affection they regarded as the cause of the disease, and hence they directed their pretended causal treatment against spasm, inflammation (plethora), fever, general and partial debility, mucus, putridit} 7 , obstruc- tions, &c. , which they thought to remove by means of their antispasmodic, antiphlogistic, tonic, stimulant, antiseptic, dis- solvent, resolvent, derivative, evacuant, antagonistic remedies (of which they only possessed a superficial knowledge).

But from such general indications really serviceable medi- cines could not be discovered, most assuredly not in the materia medica of the old school, which, as I have elsewhere shown, 3 is founded mainly on conjecture and false deductions ab usu in morbis i mixed up with falsehood and fraud.

With equal rashness they attacked those still more h} r po-

1 And yet Hufeland, the chief of this old school (v. Rnmoopathie, p. 22). ex- tols with much satisfaction the employment of digitalis in such cases, in these words: “None will deny” (experience invariably does so!) “that too great rapidity of the circulation can be removed (?) by digitalis.” Permanent- ly removed? and by a heroic enantiopathic remedy? Poor Hufeland!

2 Which Hufeland in his pamphlet, Die Homoopathie, p. 20, makes a futile attempt to appropriate for his old pseudo-art. For since, as is well known, previous to the appearance of my book (Chronic Diseases), the 2500-years-old allopathy knew nothing about the source of most chronic diseases (psora), must it not have attributed a false source (genesis) to such maladies? (*)

8 See essay in the first volume of the Materia Medica Pura (English edit.), “Sources of the Common Materia Medica.”

thetical so-called indications — deficiency or excess of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, or hydrogen in the fluids, exaltation or diminution of the irritability, sensibility and reproduction, de- rangements of the arterial, venous and capillary systems, asthenia, &c. , without knowing a single remedy for effecting objects so visionary. All this was pure ostentation. It was a mode of treatment that did no good to the patients.

But all semblance of appropriate treatment of diseases was completely lost by a practice, introduced in the earliest times. and even made into a rule: I mean the mixture in a prescript ion of various medicinal substances, whose real action was, almost without an exception, unknown, and which, without any one exception, invariably differed so much among each other. One medicine (the sphere of whose medicinal effects was unknown) was placed foremost, as the principal remedy (basis), and was designed to subdue what the physician deemed the chief char- acter of the disease ; to this was added some other drug (equally unknown as regards the sphere of its medicinal action) for the removal of some accessory symptom, or to strengthen the action of the first (adjuvans) ; and besides these, yet another (likewise unknown as to the sphere of its medicinal powers), a pretended corrective remedy (corrigens) ; these were all mixed together (boiled, infused) — and along with them, some medicinal syrup, or distilled medicinal water, also with different proper- ties, would be included in the formula, and it was supposed that each of the ingredients of this mixture would perform, in the diseased body, the part alloted to it by the prescriber's imagin- ation, without suffering itself to be disturbed or led astray by the other things mixed up along with it; which, however, could not in reason be expected. One ingredient suspended wholly or partially the action of another, or communicated to it and to the others a mode of action and operation not anticipated nor conjecturable, so that it was impossible the expected effect could be obtained; there frequently occurred a new morbid de- rangement, which, from the incomprehensible changes imparted to substances by their admixture, was not and could not have been foreseen, which escaped observation amid the tumultuous symptoms of the disease, and which became permanent from a lengthened employment of the prescription — accordingly an

artificial disease was added to and complicated the original disease, causing an aggravation of the latter — or if the pre- scription were not often repeated, but superseded by one or more new prescriptions, composed of other ingredients, given in rapid succession, then the very hast that could happen was a further depression of the strength, for the substances adminis- tered in that way neither had, nor could have had, any direct pathological relation to the original malady, but only attacked, in a useless and injurious manner, parts that were least impli- cated in the disease.

The mixture of several medicines, even if the effects of each single medicine on the human body were accurately known r — the prescription writer, however, often knows not the thousandth part of their effects — ), the association, in one pre- scription, of several such ingredients, I repeat, many of which are themselves of a very compound nature, and the peculiar action of any one of which is as good as unknown, although in reality it always differs greatly from that of the others, and the administration of this incomprehensible mixture to the patient in large and frequently repeated doses, in order there- with to obtain some purposed, certain, curative effect, is a piece of folly repugnant to every reflecting and unprejudiced person. 1

1 The absurdity of medical mixtures was perceived even by adherents of the old school of medicine, although they still continued to follow this slovenly plan in their own practice, contrary to their own convictions. Thus Marcus Herz (in Hut eland's J uurnal, ii, p. 33) reveals the pricks of his con- science in the following words: '“When we wish to remove the inflammatory state, we do not employ either nitre or sal -ammoniac or vegetable acids alone, but we usually mix several, and often but too many, so-called antiphlogistics together, or give them in the same case in close succession. If we have to combat putridity, we are not content to look for the attainment of our ob- ject from the administration of large doses of one of the known antiseptic medicines, such as cinchona bark, mineral acids, arnica, serpeutaria, &c, alone; we prefer associating several of them together, and count upon their community of action; or from our uncertainty as to whose action is the most suitable for the case in question, we throw together a number of differ- ent substances, and almost leave it to chance to effect the end we have in view, by means of one of them. Thus we seldom excite perspiration, purify the blood, (V), overcome obstructions (?), promote expectoration, or even evacuate the prima? via?, by a single remedy; our prescriptions for these ob- jects are al ways composite, almost never simple and pure, consequently neither are our observations in reference to the action* of each individual substance con- tained in them. To be sure, we learnedly institute certain grades of rank among the remedies in our formulas; on the one to which we particularly commission the action, we confer the title of base (basis), the others we call helpers, supporters (adjuvantia), correctives (corrigentia), &c. But this classi- fication is evidently almost entirely arbitrary. The helpers and supporters

The result naturally belies every expectation that had been formed. There certainly ensue char~~s and results, but none of an appropriate character, none b( icial — all injurious, de- structive !

I should like to see any one who \ Id call the pur-blind in- roads of such prescriptions on the d sed human body a cure!

It is only by guiding what still remains of the vital principle in the patient to the proper performance of its functions, by means of a suitable medicine, that a cure can be expected, but not by enervating the body to death, secundum artem; and yet the old school knows not what else to do with patients suffering from chronic diseases, than to attack the sufferers with drugs that do nothing but torture them, waste their strength and fluids, and shorten their lives! Can it be said to save whilst it de- stroys? Does it deserve any other name than that of a mis- chievious [non-healing] art? It acts, lege artis, in the most in- appropriate manner, and it does (it would seem almost purpose- ly) aXXota, that is to say, the very opposite of what it should do. Can it be commended? Can it be any longer tolerated?

In recent times the old school practitioners have quite sur- passed themselves in their cruelty towards their sick fellow- creatures, and in the unsuitableness of their operations, as every unprejudiced observer must admit, and as even physicians of their own school have been forced, by the pricks of their con- science (like Kruger Hansen), to confess before the world.

It was high time for the wise and benevolent Creator and

Preserver of mankind to put a stop to these abominations, to

command a cessation of these tortures, and to reveal a healing

have just as much part in the whole action as the chief ingredient, although, from want of a standard of measurement, we are unable to determine the degree of their participation in the result. In like manner the influence of the correctives on the powers of the other ingredients cannot bequite indiffer- ent; they must increase or diminish them, or give them quite another di- rection; and hence we must always regard the salutary (?) change which wo effect, by means of such a prescription, as the result of all its ingredients collectively, and we can never obtain from its action a pure experience of the in- dividual efficacy of any single ingredient of which it is composed In fact, our knowledge of what is essential to be known respecting all our remedies, as also re- specting the perhaps hundred-fold relationships among each other into which they enter when combined, is far too little to be relied upon to enable us to tell with cer- tainty the degree and entent of the action of a substance, seemingly ever so unim- portant, when introduced into the human body in combination ivith other substances. '

3

art the very opposite of all this, which should not waste the vital juices and powers by emetics, perennial scourings out of the bowels, warm baths, diaphoretics or salivation; nor shed the life's blood, nor torment and weaken with painful appli- ances; nor, in place of curing patients, suffering from diseases, render them incurable by the addition of new, chronic medicinal maladies by means of the prolonged use of wrong, powerful medicines of unknown properties ; nor yoke the horse behind the cart, by giving strong palliatives, according to the old favorite axiom, contraria contrariis curentur; nor, in short, in place of lending the patient aid, to guide him in the way to death, as is done by the merciless routine practitioner; — but which, on the contrary, should spare the patient's strength as much as possible, and should, rapidly and mildly, effect an unalloyed and permanent cure, and restore to health by means of smallest doses of few simple medicines carefully selected according to their proved effects, by the only therapeutic law conformable to nature: similia similibus curentur . It was high time that He should permit the discovery of homoeopathy. («>

By observation, reflection and experience, I discovered that, contrary to the old allopathic method, the true, the proper, the best mode of treatment is contained in the maxim S a ) To cure mildly, rapidly, certainly, and permanently, choose, in every case of disease, a medicine which can itself produce an affection similar (oixolov Trddos) to that sought to be cured!

Hitherto no one has ever taught this homoeopathic mode of cure, no one has 'carried it out in practice. But if the truth is only to be found in this method, as I can prove it to be, we might expect that, even though it remained unperceived for thousands of years, distinct traces of it would yet be discov- ered in every age. 1

And such is the fact. In all ages, the patients who have been really, rapidly, permanently and obviously cured by medi- cines, and who did not merely recover by some fortuitous cir- cumstance, or by the acute disease having run its allotted course, or by the powers of the system having, in the course

For the truth is co-eternal with the all-wise, benevolent Deity. It may

long escape the observation of man. until the time foreordained by Provi- dence arrives, when its rays shall irresistibly break through the clouds of prejudice and usher in the dawn of a day which shall shine with a bright and inextinguishable light for the weal of the human race.

of time, gradually attained the preponderance, under allopathic and antagonistic treatment—for being cured in a direct manner differs vastly from recovering in an indirect manner— such patients have been cured solely (although without the knowl- edge of the physician) by means of a (homoeopathic) medicine which possessed the power of producing a similar morbid state.

Even in real cures by means of mixtures of medicines— which were excessively rare— it will be found that the remedy whose action predominated was always of a homoeopathic character.

But this is observed much more strikingly in cases where physicians sometimes effected a rapid cure with one simple medicinal substance, contrary to the usual custom, that ad- mitted of none but mixtures of medicines in the form of a prescription. There we see, to our astonishment, that this always occurred by means of a medicine that is itself capable of producing an affection similar to the case of disease, al- though the physicians themselves knew not what they were doing, and acted in forgetfulness of the contrary doctrines of their own school. They prescribed a medicine the very reverse of that which they should have employed according to the traditional therapeutics, and it was only in consequence of so doing that the patients were rapidly cured.

If we deduct the cases in which the specific rem- edy for a disease of never varying character has been made known to physicians of the ordinary school (not by their own investigation, but) by the empirical practice of the common people, wherewith they are ena- bled to effect a direct cure, as for instance, of the venereal chancrous disease with mercury ; of the morbid state resulting from contusions with arnica; of marsh ague with cinchona bark; of recent cases of itch with flowers of sulphur, &c. — if we deduct these, we find, that without almost any exception, all the other treatment of the old school physician, in chronic diseases, consists in debilitating, teasing and tormenting the already afflicted patient, to the aggravation of his disease and to his destruction, with a great display of dignified gravity on the part of the doctor and at a ruinous expense to the pa- tient, (a)

Blind experience sometimes led them to a homoeopathic mode of treatment, 1 and yet they did not perceive the law of nature in obedience to which cures so effected did and must ensue.

Hence it is highly important, for the weal of mankind, to ascertain what really took place in these extremely rare but sin- gularly salutary treatments. The answer we obtain to this question is of the utmost significance. They were never per- formed in any other manner than by means of medicines of homoeopathic power, that is to say, capable of producing a disease similar to the morbid state sought to be cured; the cures were effected rapidly and permanently by medicines, the

1 Thus they imagined they could drive out through the skin the sudatory matter which they believed to stagnate there after a chill, if they gave the patient to drink, during the cold stage of the catarrhal fever, an infusion of elder flowers, which is capable of removing such a fever and curing the patient by its peculiar similarity of action (homoeopathically), and this it does most promptly and effectually, without causing perspiration, if but a small quantity of this infusion, and nothing else, be taken. To hard, acute swellings, in which the excessive violence of the inflammation presents their suppuration and causes intolerable pains, they apply very warm poultices, frequently renewed, and behold! the inflammation and the pains diminish rapidly, while the abscess is rapidly formed, as is known by the yellowish shining elevation and the perceptible softening. In this case they imagine that the hardness has been softened by the moisture of the poultice, whereas it is chiefly by the greater heat of the poultice that the excess of inflamma- tion has been homoeopathically subdued, and the rapid suppuration been enabled to take place.— Why do they employ with benefit in many ophthal- mise St. Yve's salve, the chief ingredients of which is red oxide of mercury, which can produce inflammation of the eyes, if anything can? Is it hard to see that they here act homoeopathically?— Or why should a little parsley juice produce such evident relief in those cases (by no means rare), where there are anxious, often ineffectual, efforts to urinate, in little children, and in ordinary gonorrhoea, which is well known by the very painful, frequent and almost ineffectual attempts to make water, if the fresh juice of this plant had not the power of causing, in healthy persons, a painful, almost fruitless, urging to urinate, consequently cures homoeopathically? With the pimpernel root, which causes great secretion of mucus in the bronchia and fauces, they successfully combated the so-called mucous angina— and quelled some kinds of metrorrhagia with the leaves of savine, which can itself cause metrorrhagia, without perceiving the homoeopathic curative law. In cases of constipation from incarcerated hernia and in ileus many medical men found the constipating opium, in small doses, to be the most excellent and certain remedy without having the most distant idea of the homoeopathic therapeutic law exemplified in this case. They cured non- venereal ulcers of the fauces with small doses of mercury, which is homoeo- pathic to such states— stopped some diarrhoeas with small doses of the pur- gative rhubarb— cured hydrophobia with belladonna, that causes a similar affection, and removed, as if by magic, the dangerous comatose state in acute fevers with a small dose of the heating, stupefying opium; and yet they abuse homoeopathy, and persecute it with a fury that can only arise from the stings of an evil conscience in a heart incapable of improvement.

medical prescribers of which made use of them as it were by accident, and even in opposition to the doctrines of all pre- vious systems and therapeutics (often without rightly knowing what they were doing and why they did it), and thus, against their will, they practically confirmed the necessity of the only therapeutic law consonant to nature, that of homoeopathy— a therapeutic law, which, despite the many facts and innumer- able hints that pointed to it, no physicians of past epochs have exerted themselves to discover, blinded as they all have been by medical prejudices.

For even the domestic practice of the non-medical classes of the community endowed with sound observant faculties has many times proved this mode of treatment to be the surest, the most radical and the least fallacious in practice.

In recent cases of frost-bitten limbs frozen sauer kraut is applied or frictions of snow are used. 1

i It is on such examples of domestic practice that Mr. M. Lux founds his so-called mode of cure by identical* and idem, which he calls Inopathy. which some eccentric-minded persons have already adopted as the non plus ultra of a therapeutic method, without knowing how they could carry it out.

But if we examine these instances attentively we find that they do not bear out these views.

The purely physical powers differ in the nature of their action on the living organism from those of a dynamic medicinal kind.

Heat or cold of the air that surrounds us, or of the water, or of our food and drink, occasion (as heat and cold) of themselves no absolute injury to a healthy body; heat and cold are in their alternations essential to the main- tenance of healthy life, consequently they are not of themselves medicine. Heat and cold, therefore, act as curative agents in affections of the body, not by virtue of their essential nature (not, therefore, as cold and heat per se, not as things hurtful in themselves, as are the drugs, rhubarb, china, &c, even in the smallest doses), but only by virtue of their greater or smaller quantity, that is, according to their degrees of temperature, just as (to take an example from purely physical powers) a great weight of lead will bruise my hand painfully, not by virtue of its essential nature as lead, for a thin plate of lead would not bruise me. but in consequence of its quantity and massive weight.

If. then, cold or heat be serviceable in bodily ailments like frost-bites or burns, they are so solely on account of their degree of temperature, just as they only inflict injury on the healthy body by their extreme degrees of temperature.

Thus we find in these examples of successful domestic practice, that it is not the prolonged application of the degree of cold in which the limb was frozen that restores it U.pathically (it would thereby be rendered quite life- less and dead), but a degree of cold that only approximates to that (/l moeo- pathy), and which gradually rises to a comfortable temperature, as frozen sauer kraut laid upon the frost-bitten hand in the temperature of the room soon melts, gradually growing warmer from 32° or 33° (Fahr.)to the tempera- ture of the room, supposing that to be only 55°, and thus the limb is recovered by physical homoeopathy. In like manner, a hand scalded with boiling

The experienced cook holds his hand, which he has scalded, at a certain distance from the fire, and does not heed the in- crease of pain that takes place at first, as he knows from ex- perience that he can thereby in a very short time, often in a few minutes, convert the burnt part into healthy painless skin. 1

Other intelligent non-meclical persons, as, for example, the manufacturers of lacquered ware, apply to a part scalded with the hot varnish a substance that causes a similar burning

water would not be cured isopathieally by the .application of boiling water, but only by a somewhat lower temperature, as, for example, by holding it in a vessel containing a fluid heated to 100°, which becomes every minute less hot, and finally descends to the temperature of the room, whereupon the scalded part is restored by homoeopathy. Water in the act of freezing cannot draw out the frost Isopathieally from potatoes and apples, but this is effected by water only near the freezing-point.

So, to give another example from physical action, the injury resulting from a blow on the forehead with a hard substance (a painful lump) is soon diminished in pain and swelling by pressing on the spot for a considerable time with the ball of the thumb, strongly at first, and then gradually less forcibly, homoeopathically, but not by an equally hard blow with an equally hard body, which would increase the evil isopathieally.

The examples of cures by isopathy given in the book alluded to— muscular contractions in human beings and spinal paralysis in a dog, which had been caused by a chill, being rapidly cured by cold bathing— these events are falsely explained by isopathy. What are called sufferings from a chill are only nominally connected with cold, and often arise, in the bodies of those predisposed to them, even from a draught of wind which was not at all cold. Moreover, the manifold effects of a cold bath on the living organism, in health and in disease, cannot be reduced to such a simple formula as to warrant the construction of a system of such pretensions! That serpents' bites, as is there stated, are most certainly cured by portions of the serpents, must remain a mere fable of a former age, until such an improbable asser- tion is authenticated by indubitable observations and experience, which it certainly never will be. That, in fine, the saliva of a mad dog given to a patient laboring under hydrophobia (in Russia), is mid to have cured him —that “fa said” would not seduce any conscientious physician to imitate such a hazardous experiment, or to construct a so-called isopathic system, so dangerous and so highly improbable in its extended application, as has been done (not by the modest author of the pamphlet entitled The Isopathy of Con tan ions, Leipzic: Kollmann), but by its eccentric supporters, especially Dr. Gross (v. AUg. h<,m. Ztg., ii, p. 72), who vaunts this isopathy (ozqualia azqualibus) as the only proper therapeutic rule, and sees nothing in the similia similibus but an indifferent substitute for it; ungratefully enough, as he is entirely indebted to the ximilia ximilihu* for all his fame a'nd fortune, (a)

1 So also Fernelius (Therap, lib. vi, cap. 20) considers that the best remedy for a burnt part is to bring it near the fire, whereby the pain is removed. John Hunter (On the Ulood. Inflammation, Ac., p. 218) mentions the Teat injury that results from treating burns with cold water, and gives a decided preference to approaching them to the fire, guided in this, not by tiie tra- ditional medical doctrines which(contraria contra iU) prescribe cool in <j things for inflammation, but by experience, which teaches that the application of a similar heat (similia ximilibux) is the most salutary.

sensation, such as strong heated spirits of wine, 1 or oil of turpentine* and by that means cure themselves in the course of a few hours, whereas cooling salves, as they are well aware,

i Sydenham (Opera, p. 271 [edit. Syd. Soc, p. 601]) says that spirits of ivine. repeatedly applied, is preferable to all other remedies in burns. Benjamin Bell, too (System of Surgery, 3rd edit., 1789), acknowledges that experience shows that homoeopathic remedies only are efficacious. He says: '“One of the best applications to every burn of this kind is strong brandy or any other ardent spirit; it seems to induce a momentary additional pain (see below, § 157), but this soon subsides, and is succeeded by an agreeable sooth- ing sensation. It proves most effectual when the parts can be kept im- mersed in it; but where this cannot be done, they should be kept constantly moist with pieces of old linen soaked in spirits.” To this I may add that warm, and indeed very warm, alcohol is much more rapidly and much more certainly efficacious, for it is much more homoeopathic than when not heated. And all experience confirms this in a most astonishing manner.

- Edward Kentish, having to treat the workers in coal pits, who were so often dreadfully burnt by the explosion of fire-damp, applied heated oil of turpentine or alcohol, as the best remedy in the most extensive and severest burns (Second Essay on Bums, London, 1798). No treatment can be more homoeopathic than this, nor is any more efficacious.

The estimable and experienced Heister (Institut. Chirurg., Tom. i, p. 33) confirms this from his own observation and extols the application of turpen- tine oil, of alcohol and of very hot poultices for this end, as hot as ever they can be borne.

But the amazing superiority of the application to burns of these remedies, which possess the power of exciting burning sensation and heat (and are consequently homoeopathic), over palliative refrigerant remedies, is most iiiroutestably shown by pure experimentation, in which the two opposite methods of treatment are employed for the sake of comparison, in burns of equal intensity in the same body.

Thus Benjamin Bell (Kiihn's Phys. Med. Journ., Leipzic, 1801, Jun., p. 428), in the case of a lady who had scalded both arms, caused one to be covered with oil of turpentine, and made her plunge the other into cold water. In half an hour the first arm was welt, but the other continued to bo painful for six hours longer ; when it was withdrawn one instant from the water she ex- perienced much greater pain in it, and it required a much longer time than the first for its cure

John Anderson (Kentish, op. cit., p. 43) treated in a similar manner a lady who had scalded herself with boiling grease. “The face which was very red and scalded and excessively painful was, a few minutes after the accident, covered with oil of turpentine; her arm she had, of her own accord, plunged into cold water, with which she desired to treat it for some hours. In the course of seven hours her fac>. looked much better,and the pain was relieved. She had frequently renewed the cold water for the arm, but whenever she withdrew it she complained of much pain, and, in truth, the inflammation in it had increased. The following morning I found that she had had during the night great pain in the arm; the inflammation had extended above the elbow; several large blisters had risen, and thick eschars had formed on the arm and hand; a warm poultice was then applied. The face was completely free from pain, but emollient applications had to bo used for the arm for a fortnight longer, before it was cured.”

pathic) treatment by means of remedies of similar action , over the wretched treat- ment hy opposites (contraria contrariis) of the antiquated ordinary school of medicine/

40 INTRODUCTION.

would not effect a cure in as many months, and cold water 1 would make matters worse.

The old experienced reaper, although he may not be in the habit of drinking brandy, will not touch cold water (contraria contrariis) when he has worked himself into a violent feverish state in the heat of the sun— he knows the danger of such a proceeding — but he takes a small quantity of a heating liquor, a mouthful of brandy; experience, the teacher of truth, has convinced him of the great superiority and efficacy of this homoeopathic procedure, whereby his heat and fatigue are speedily removed. 2 < a >

There have occasionally been physicians who vaguely sur- mised that medicines cure analogous morbid states by the power they possess of producing analogous morbid symptoms. 3

Thus the author of the book: 7rcpt tottwv tov kolt' av- 6>pw7Tov„ 4 which is among the writings attributed to Hippoc- rates, has the following remarkable words: 8ta ra o/jloul vowros yiWai, Kal Sia Ta o/xota irpocKptpofxtva ck voaevvruv vyiaivoirat, — 8ta to ifitciv 7rav£Tai. (a)

Later physicians have also felt and expressed the truth of the homoeopathic method of cure. Thus, for instance, Boulduc 5 perceived that the purgative property of rhubarb was the cause of its power to allay diarrhoea.

Detharding 6 ( a ) guessed that the infusion of senna leaves relieved colic in adults by virtue of its analogous action in causing colic in healthy persons.

1 John Hunter (loc. cit.) is not singular in asserting the great injury done by treating burns with cold water. W. Fabricius of Hilden, also (De Com- 7jU8tionihu* libellus, Basil, 1G0T, cap. 5. p. 11), alleges that cold applications in burns are highly injurious and productive of the most serious consequences; inflammation, ^suppuration and sometimes mortification are caused by them.

2 Zimmerman (Ueber die Erfahrung, ii. p. 318) informs us that the inhabi- tants of hot countries act in the same manner, with the best results, and that, after being very much heated, they swallow a small quantity of some spirituous liquor.

8 I do not bring forward the following passages from authors who had a presentiment of homoeopathy as proofs in support of this doctrine, which is firmly established by its own intrinsic merits, but in order to avoid the im- putation of having suppressed these foreshadowings with the view of claim- ing for myself the priority of the idea.

* Basil. Froben., 1538, p. 72.

s Memoires de V Academie Boyale, 1710.

c Eph Xat. Cur , cent, x, obs. 7ti.

Bertholon 1 confesses that in diseases electricity diminishes and removes pain very similar to that which itself produces.

Thoury 2 testifies that positive electricity possesses the power of quickening the pulse, but when that is already morbidly accelerated it diminishes its frequency.

Von Stoerk 3 makes the following suggestion: “If stra- monium disorders the mind and produces mania in healthy persons, ought we not to try if in cases of insanity it cannot restore reason by producing a revolution in the ideas?”

But a Danish army physician, of the name of Stahl, 4 has expressed his conviction on this point in the most unequivocal terms. “The rule generally acted on in medicine,” says he, “to treat by means of oppositely acting remedies (contraria contrariis) is quiie false and the reverse of what ought to be; I am, on the contrary, convinced that diseases will yield to, and be cured by, remedies that produce a similar affection (similia similibus), — burns by exposure to the fire, frost-bitten limbs by the application of snow and the coldest water, in- flammation and bruises by distilled spirits; and in like manner I have treated a tendency to acidity of the stomach by a very small dose of sulphuric acid with the most successful result, in cases where a number of absorbent remedies had been fruitlessly employed.”

How near was the great truth sometimes of being appre- hended! But it was dismissed with a mere passing thought, and thus the indispensable change of the antiquated medical treatment of disease, of the improper therapeutic system hitherto in vogue, into a real, true, and certain healing art, remained to be accomplished in our own times.

1 Medicin. Electrisitat.,u, pp. 15 and 282.

2 Memoire lu a V Academie de Caen.

3 Libell. de Stram., p. 8.

4 In Jo. Hammelii, Commentatio de Arthritide tarn tartarea, quam scorbutica, seu podagra et scorbuto, BudingEe, 1738, viii, pp. 40—42.

The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed. 1

The highest ideal of a cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles. (°>

If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease (knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine, (knoioledge of medicinal powers), and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly denned principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubt- edly morbid in the patient, so that recovery must ensue — to adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him (choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated), as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose), and the proper period for repeating the dose ; — if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent: then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing art,

1 His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by inter- weaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essen- tial nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases originate in the invisible interior of the organism (whereon so many physicians have hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time); nor is it to at- tempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant— whilst sick humanity sighs in vain for aid. Of such learned reveries (to which the name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who call themselves physicians should at length cease to deceive suffering man- kind with mere talk, and begin now, instead, for once to act, that is, really to help and to cure.

He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.

Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of the most probable exciting cause of the acute disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its funda- mental cause, which is generally due to a chronic miasm. In these investigations, the ascertainable physicial constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual func- tion, &c. , are to be taken into consideration. (<*)

The unprejudiced observer — well aware of the futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no confirmation from experience — be his powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every individual disease, except the changes in the health of the body and of the mind (morbid phenomena^ accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived ex- ternally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the deviations from the former healthy state of the now dis- eased individual, which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him and observed by the physician. All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceiv- able portrait of the disease. 1 <*)

Now, as in a disease, from which no manifest exciting or maintaining cause (causa occasionalis) has to be removed, 2 we can perceive nothing but the morbid symptoms, it must (regard being had to the possibility of a miasm, and attention paid to the accessory circumstances, I 5) be the symptoms alone by which the disease demands and points to the remedy suited to relieve it — and, moreover, the totality of these its symptoms, of this outwardly reflected picture of the internal essence of the disease, that is, of the affection of the vital force, (°) must be the principal, or the sole means, whereby the disease can make known what remedy it requires — the only thing that can determine the choice of the most appro- priate remedy — and thus, in a word, the totality 1 of the symptoms must be the principal, indeed the only thing the physician has to take note of in every case of disease and to remove by means of his art, in order that it shall be cured and transformed into health. («)

1 I know not, therefore, how it was possible for physicians at the sick-bed to allow themselves to suppose that, without most carefully attending to the symptoms and being guided by them in the treatment, they ought to seek and could discover, only in the hidden and unknown interior, what there was to be cured in the disease, arrogantly and ludicrously pretending that they could, without paying much attention to the symptoms, discover the alteration that had occurred in the invisible interior, and set it to rights with (unknown!) medicines, and that such a procedure as this could alone be called radical and rational treatment.

Is not. then, that which is cognizable by the senses in diseases through the phenomena it displays, the disease itself in the eyes of the physician, since he never can see the spiritual being that produces the disease, the vital force? nor is it necessary that he should see it. but only that he should as- certain its morbid actions, in order that he may thereby be enabled to cure the disease. What else will the old school search for in the bidden interior of the organism, as a prima causa nv>rhi. whilst they reject as an object of cure and contemptuously despise the sensible and manifest representation of the disease, the symptoms, that so plainly address themselves to us? What else do they wish to cure in diseases, but these?*

2 It is not necessary to say that every intelligent physician would first remove this where it exists; the indisposition thereupon generally ceases spontaneously. He will remove from the room strong-smelling flowers, which have a tendency to cause syncope and hysterical sufferings; extract from the cornea the foreign body that excites inflammation of the eye; loosen the over-tight bandage on a wounded limb that threatens to cause mortification, and apply a more suitable one, lay bare and put a ligature on the wounded artery that produces fainting; endeavor to promote the ex- pulsion by vomiting of belladonna berries. &c. that may have been swal-

* “The physician whose researches are directed towards the hidden rela- tions in the interior of the organism, may daily err; but the homoeopathist who grasps with requisite carefulness the whole group of symptoms, pos- sesses a sure guide; and if he succeed in removing the whole group of symptoms, he has likewise most assuredly destroyed the internal, hidden cause of the disease.” (Rau, op. cit., p. 103).

It is not conceivable, nor can it be proved by any experience in the world, that, after removal of all the symptoms of the disease and of the entire collection of the perceptible pheno- mena, there should or could remain anything else besides health, or that the morbid alteration in the interior could remain uneradicated. 2

lowed; extract foreign substances that may have got into the orifices of the body (the nose, gullet, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina); crush the vesical calculus; open the imperforate anus of the new-born infant. &c.

1 In all times, the old school physicians, not knowing how else to give re- lief, have sought to combat and if possible to suppress by medicines, here and there, a single symptom from among a number in diseases— a one-sided procedure, which, under the name of symptomatic treatment, has justly excited universal contempt, because by it, not only was nothing gained, but much harm was inflicted. A single one of the symptoms present is no more the disease itself than a single foot is the man himself. This procedure was so much the more reprehensible, that such a single symptom was only treated by an antagonistic remedy (therefore only in an enantiopathic and pallia- tive manner), whereby, after a slight alleviation, it was subsequently only rendered all the worse.

2 ( a ) When a patient has been cured of his disease by a true physician, in such a manner that no trace of the disease, no morbid symptom, remains, and all the signs of health have permanently returned, how can anyone, without offering an insult to common sense, affirm that in such an individual the whole bodily disease still remains in the interior? And yet the chief of the old school. Hufeland, asserts this in the following words: “Homoeo- pathy can remove the symptoms, but the disease remains.” (Vide Homoo- pathie, p. 27. 1.19). This he maintains partly from mortification at the prog- ress made by homoeopathy to the benefit of mankind, partly because he still holds thoroughly material notions respecting disease, which he is still unable to regard as a state of being of the organism wherein it is dynami- cally altered by the morbidly deranged vital force, as an altered state of health, but he views the disease as a something material, which, after the cure is completed, may still remain lurking in some corner in the interior of the body, in order, some day during the most vigorous health, to burst forth at its pleasure with its material presence! So dreadful is still the blindness of the old pathology! No wonder that it could only produce a system of therapeutics which is solely occupied with scouring out the poor patient.

In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital opera- tion, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.

The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no self-preservation; 1 it derives all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital force) which animates the material organism in health and in disease.

When a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual, self-acting (automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence upon it of a morbific agent inimical to life; it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by its effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician, that is, by morhid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known.

It is the morbidly affected vital force alone that produces diseases, 2 so that the morbid phenomena perceptible to our senses express at the same time all the internal change, that is to say, the whole morbid derangement of the internal dynamis; in a word, they reveal the whole disease; conse- quently, also, the disappearance under treatment of all the morbid phenomena and of all the morbid alterations that differ from the healthy vital operations, certainly effects and neces- sarily implies the restoration of the integrity of the vital force and, therefore, the recovered health of the whole organism.

1 It is dead, and now only subject to the power of the external physical world ; it decays; and is again resolved into its chemical constituents.

2 How the vital force causes the organism to display morbid phenomena, that is. how it produces disease, it would be of no practical utility to the' physician to know, and therefore it will forever remain concealed from him ; only what it is necessary for him to know of the disease and what is fully sufficient for enabling him to cure it, has the Lord of life revealed to his senses.

Therefore disease (that does not come within the province of manual surgery) considered, as it is by the allopathists, as a thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and its animating vital force, and hidden in the interior, be it of ever so subtile a character, is an absurdity, that could only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, and has for thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mis- chievous [non-healing] art.

There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is curable and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable which does not make itself known to the accurately observing physician by means of morbid signs and symptoms — an ar- rangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of human life.

The affection of the morbidly deranged, spirit- like dynamis (vital force) that animates our body in the invisible interior, and the totality of the outwardly cognizable symptoms pro- duced by it in the organism and representing the existing malady, constitute a whole; they are one and the same. The organism is indeed the material instrument of the life, but it is not conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and regulating vital force (just as the vital force is not conceivable without the organism), conse- quently the two together constitute a unity, although in thought our mind separates this unity into two distinct con- ceptions for the sake of facilitating the comprehension of it.

Our vital force, as a spirit-like dynamis, cannot be attacked and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the har- monious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic) way, and in like manner, all such morbid derangements (diseases) cannot be removed from it by the physician in any other way than by the spirit-like (dynamic, virtual) alterative powers of the serviceable medicines acting upon our spirit-like vital force, which perceives them through the medium of the sentient faculty of the nerves everywhere present in the or- ganism, so that it is only by their dynamic action on the vital force that remedies are able to re-establish and do actually re- establish health and vital harmony, after the changes in the health of the patient cognizable by our senses (the totality of the symptoms) have revealed the disease to the carefully observing and investigating physician as fully as was requisite in order to enable him to cure it.

Now, as in the cure effected by the removal of the whole of the perceptible signs and symptoms of the disease the internal alteration of the vital force to which the disease is due — con- sequently the whole of the disease — is at the same time removed, 1 it follows that the physician has only to remove the whole of the symptoms in order, at the same time, to abrogate and annihilate the internal change, that is to say, the morbid derangement of the vital force — consequently the totality of the disease, the disease itself. 2 But when the disease is an- nihilated the health is restored, and this is the highest, the sole aim of the physician who knows the true object of his mission, which consists not in learned-sounding prating, but in giving aid to the sick. («)

1 A warning dream, a superstitious fancy, or a solemn prediction that death would occur at a certain day or at a certain hour, has not unf requeut- ly produced all the signs of commencing and increasing disease, of approach- ing death and death itself at the hour announced, which could not happen without the simultaneous production of the inward change (corresponding to the state observed externally); and hence in such cases all the morbid signs indicative of approaching death have frequently been dissipated by an identical cause, by some cunning deception or persuasion to a belief in tbe contrary, and health suddenly restored, which could not have happened without tne removal, by means of this moral remedy, of the internal and external morbid change that threatened death.

2 It is only thus that God, the Preserver of mankind, could reveal His wisdom and goodness in reference to the cure of the diseases to which man is liable here below, by showing to the physician what he had to remove in diseases in order to annihilate them and thus re-establish health. But what

From this indubitable truth, that, besides the totality of the symptoms, nothing can by any means be discovered in diseases wherewith they could express their need of aid, it follows undeniably that the sum of all the symptoms in each individual case of disease must be the sole indication, the sole guide to direct us in the choice of a remedy.

Now, as diseases are nothing more than alterations in the state of health of the healthy individual which express them- selves by morbid signs, and the cure is also only possible by a change to the healthy condition of the state of health of the diseased individual, it is very evident that medicines could never cure diseases if they did not possess the power of altering man's state of health which depends on sensations and functions; indeed, that their curative power must be owing solely to this power they possess of altering man's state of health.

This spirit-like power to alter man's state of health (and hence to cure diseases) which lies hidden in the inner nature of medicines can never be discovered by us by a mere effort of reason; it is only by experience of the phenomena it displays when acting on the state of health of man that we can become clearly cognizant of it.

Now, as it is undeniable that the curative principle in medicines is not in itself perceptible, and as in pure experi- ments with medicines conducted by the most accurate ob- servers, nothing can be observed that can constitute them medicines or remedies except that power of causing distinct alterations in the state ot health of the human body, and particularly in that of the healthy individual, and of exciting in him various definite morbid symptoms; so it follows that when medicines act as remedies, they can only bring their curative property into play b} r means of this their power of altering man's state of health by the production of peculiar symptoms ; and that, therefore, we have only to rely on the morbid phenomena which the medicines produce in the health}' body as the sole possible revelation of their indwelling curative power, in order to learn what disease-producing power, and at the same time what disease-curing power, each individual medicine possesses.

would we think of His wisdom and goodness if He had shrouded in mysteri- ous obscurity that which was to be cured in diseases (as is asserted by the dominant school of medicine, which affects to possess a Supernatural in- sight into the inner nature of things), and shut it up in the hidden interior, and thus rendered it impossible for man to know the malady accurately, consequently impossible for him to cure it?

But as nothing is to be observed in diseases that must be removed in order to change them into health besides the totality of their signs and symptoms, and likewise medicines can show nothing curative besides their tendency to produce morbid symptoms in healthy persons*^ and to remove them in diseased persons; it follows, on the one hand, that medicines only become remedies and capable of annihilating diseases, because the medicinal substance, by exciting certain effects and symptoms, that is to say, by producing a certain artificial morbid state, removes and abrogates the symptoms already present, to-wit, the natural morbid state we wish to cure. On the other hand, it follows that, for the totality of the symp- toms of the disease to be cured, a medicine must be sought which (according as experience shall prove whether the morbid symptoms are most readily, certainly, and permanently re- moved and changed into health by similar or opposite medicinal symptoms 1 ) has a tendency to produce similar or opposite symptoms.

i Tho other possible mode of employing medicines for diseases besides these two (the allopathic method), in which medicines are given, whose symp- toms have no direct pathological relation to the morbid state.'consequeutly are neither similar nor opposite, but quite heterogeneous to the symptoms of the disease, is, as I have shown above, in the Introduction (Review of the therapeutics, allopathy and palliative treatment that have hitherto been prac- ticed in the old school of medicine), merely an imperfect and injurious imitation of the extremely imperfect efforts of the unintelligent, merely instinctive vital force which, when made ill by noxious agents, strives to save ittelf at whatever sacrifice by the production and continuance of morbid irritation in the organism— nu

All pure experience, however, and all accurate research convince us that persistent symptoms of disease are far from being removed and annihilated by opposite symptoms of medi- cines (as in the antipathic, enantiopathic or palliative method), that, on the contrary, after transient, apparent alleviation, they break forth again, only with increased intensity, and become manifestly aggravated (see 11 58 — 62 and 69).

There remains, therefore, no other mode of employing medicines in diseases that promises to be of service besides the homoeopathic, by means of which we seek, for the totality of the symptoms of the case of disease, a medicine which among all medicines (whose pathogenetic effects are known from having been tested in healthy individuals) has the power and tendency to produce an artificial morbid state most similar to that of the case of disease in question.

Now, however, in all careful trials, pure experience, 1 the sole and infallible oracle of the healing art, teaches us that

imitation, consequently, of the crude vital force which was implanted in our organism in order to preserve our life in health, in the most beautiful har- mony; but when deranged by disease, was so constituted as to admit of being again changed to health (homoeopathically) by the intelligent physi- cian, but not to cure itself, for which the little power it possesses is so far from being a pattern to be copied, that all the changes and symptoms it produces in the (morbidly deranged) organism are just the disease itself. But this injudicious system of therapeutics of the old school of medicine can no more be passed by unnoticed than can history omit to record the thousands of years of oppression to which mankind has been subjected under the irrational, despotic Governments.

1 I do not mean that sort of experience of which the ordinary practitioners of the old school boast, after they have for years worked away with a lot of complex prescriptions on a number of diseases which they never carefully investigated, but which, faithful to the tenets of their school, they consid- ered as already described in works of systematic pathology, and dreamed that they could detect in them some imaginary morbific matter, or ascribed to them some other hypothetical internal abnormality. They always saw something in them, but knew not what it was they saw, and they got results, from the complex forces acting on an unknown object, that no human being but only a God could have unravelled— results from which nothing can be learned, no experience gained. Fifty years' experience of this sort is like fifty years of looking into a kaleidoscope filled with unknown colored ob- jects, and perpetually turning round; thousands of ever-changing figures and no accounting for them !

actually that medicine which, in its action on the healthy human body, has demonstrated its power of producing the greatest number of symptoms similar to those observable in the case of disease under treatment, does also, in doses of suitable potency and attenuation, rapidly, radically and per- manently remove the totality of the symptoms of this morbid state, that is to say (11 6 — 16), the whole disease present, and change it into health; and that all medicines cure, without exception, those diseases whose symptoms most nearly re- semble their own, and leave none of them uncured.

This depends on the following homoeopathic law of nature which was sometimes, indeed, vaguely surmised but not hitherto fully recognized, and to which is due every real cure that has ever taken place.

A weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differ- ing in kind) is very similar to the former in its manifestations, 1

The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in strength (U 12 — 26), so that each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) in the most similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger than the disease.

1 Thus are cured both physical affections and moral maladies. (”) How is it that in the early dawn the brilliant Jupiter vanishes from the gaze of the beholder? By a stronger very similar power acting on his optic nerve, the brightness of approaching day!— In situations replete with foetid odors, wherewith is it usual to sooth effectually the offended olfactory nerves? With snuff, that affects the sense of smell in a similar but stronger manner! No music, no sugared cake, which act on the nerves of other senses, can cure this olfactory disgust. How does the soldier cunningly stifle the piteous cries of him who runs the gauntlet from the ears of the compassionate by- standers? By the shrill notes of the fife commingled with the roll of the noisy drum! And the distant roar of the enemy's cannon that inspires his army with fear? By the loud boom of the big drum! For neither the one nor the other would the distribution of a brilliant piece of uniform nor a reprimand to the regiment suffice.— In like manner, mourning and sorrow will be effaced from the mind by the account of another and still greater cause for sorrow happening to another, even though it be a mere fiction. The injurious consequences of too great joy will be removed by drinking coffee, which produces an excessively joyous state of mind. Nations like the Germans, who have for centuries been gradually sinking deeper and deeper in soulless apathy and degrading serfdom, must first be trodden still deeper in the dust by the Western Conqueror, until their situation became intolerable; their mean opinion of themselves was thereby overstrained and removed; they again became alive to their dignity as men, and then, for the first time, they raised their heads as Germans.

As this natural law of cure manifests itself in every pure experiment and every true observation in the world, the fact is consequently established; it matters little what may be the scientific explanation of how it takes place; and I do not attach much importance to the attempts made to explain it. But the following view seems to commend itself as the most probable one, as it is founded on premises derived from ex- perienced.

As every disease (not strictly belonging to the domain of sur- gery) depends only on a peculiar morbid derangement of our vital force in sensations and functions, when a homoeopathic cure of the vital force deranged by natural disease is accomplished by the administration of a medicinal agent selected on account of an accurate similarity of symptoms, a somewhat stronger, similar, artificial morbid affection is brought into contact with and, as it ivere, pushed into the place of the weaker, similar, natural morbid irritation, against which the instinctive vital force, now merely (though in a stronger degree) medicinally diseased, is then compelled to direct an increased amount oj energy, but, on account of the shorter duration of the action 1 oj the medicinal agent that now morhidly affects it, the vital force soon overcomes this, and as it was in the first instance relieved from the natural morbid affection, so it is now at last freed from the substituted artificial (medicinal) one, and hence is enabled again to carry on healthily the vital operations of the organ- ism, (a) This highly probable explanation of the process rests on the following axioms.

1 The short duration of the action of the artificial morbific forces, which we term medicines, makes it possible that, although they are stronger than the natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the vital force than can the weaker natural diseases, which, solely in conse- quence of the longer, generally lifelong, duration of their action (psora, syphilis, sycosis), can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone, until the physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent that produces a disease very similar, but stronger, to-wit, a homoeopathic medicine, which, when taken (or smelt), is. as it were, forced upon the unin- telligent, instinctive vital force, and substituted in the place of the former natural morbid affection, by which means the vital force then remains merely medicinally ill. but only for a short time, because the action of the medicine (the time in which the medicinal disease excited by it runs its course) does not last long. The cures of diseases of many years' duration (§ 4(i). by the occurrence of smallpox and measles (both of which run a course of only a few weeks), are processes of a similar character.(a)

The human body appears to admit of being much more powerfully affected in its health by medicines (partly because we have the regulation of the dose in our own power) than by natural morbid stimuli — for natural diseases are cured and overcome by suitable medicines.

The inimical forces, partly psychical, partly physical, to which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed morbific noxious agents, do not possess the power of morbidh“ deranging the health of man unconditionally ; 1 but we are made ill by them only when our organism is sufficiently dis- posed and susceptible to the attack of the morbific cause that may be present, and to be altered in its health, deranged and made to undergo abnormal sensations and functions — hence they do not produce disease in every one nor at all times.

But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific agents which we term medicines. Every real medicine, namely, acts at all times, under all circumstances, on every living human being, and produces in him its peculiar symptoms (distinctly perceptible, if the dose be large enough), so that evidently every living human organism is liable to be affected, and, as it were, inoculated with the medicinal disease at all times, and

When I call disease a derangement of man's state of health. I am far from

wishing thereby to give a hyperphysical explanation of the internal nature of diseases generally, or of any case of disease in particular. It is only in- tended by this expression to intimate, what it can be proved diseases are not and cannot be, that they are not mechanical or chemical alterations of the material substance of the body, and not dependent on a material mor- bific substance, but that they are merely spiritual dynamic derangements of the life.

absolutely (unconditionally), which, as before said, is by no means the case with the natural disease.

In accordance with this fact, it is undeniably shown by all experience 1 that the living human organism is much more disposed and has a greater liability to be acted on, and to have its health deranged by medicinal powers, than by mor- bific noxious agents and infectious miasms, or, in other words, that the morbific noxious agents possess a power of morbidly deranging mans liealtJi that is subordinate and conditional, often eery conditional . whilst medicinal agents have an absolute un- conditional power, greatly superior to the former.

The greater strength of the artificial diseases producible by medicines is, however, not the sole cause of their power to cure natural diseases. In order that they may effect a cure, it is before all things requisite that they should be capable of producing in the human body an artificial disease as similar as possible to the disease to be cured, in order, by means of this similarity, conjoined with its somewhat greater strength, to substitute themselves for the natural morbid affection, and thereby deprive the latter of all influence upon the vital force. This is so true, that no previously existing disease can be cured, even by Nature herself, by the accession of a new dissimilar disease, be it ever so strong, and just as little can it be cured by medical treatment with drugs which are in- capable of producing a similar morbid condition in the healthy body.

In order to illustrate this, we shall consider in three different

1 A striking fact in corroboration of this is, that whilst previously to the year 1601, when the smooth scarlatina of Sydenham still occasionally pre- vailed epidemically among children, it attacked without exception all children who had escaped it in a former epidemic; in a similar epidemic which I witnessed in Konigslutter, on the contrary, all the children who took in time a very small dose of belladonna remained unaffected by this highly infectious infantile disease. If medicines can protect from a disease that is raging around, they must possess a vastly superior power of affecting our vital force.

cases, as well what happens in nature when two dissimilar natural diseases meet together in one person, as also the result of the ordinary medical treatment of diseases with unsuit- able allopathic drugs, which are incapable of producing an artificial morbid condition similar to the disease to be cured, whereby it will appear that even Nature herself is unable to remove a dissimilar disease already present by one that is un- homceopathic, even though it be stronger, and just as little is the unhomceopathic employment of even the strongest medi- cines ever capable of curing any disease whatsoever.

I. If the two dissimilar diseases meeting together in the human being be of equal strength, or still more if the older one be the stronger, the new disease will be repelled by the old one from the body and not allowed to affect it. A patient suffering from a severe chronic disease will not be infected by a moderate autumnal dysentery or other epidemic disease. The plague of the Levant, according to Larry, 1 does not break out where scurvy is prevalent, and persons suffering from eczema are not infected by it. Rachitis, Jenner alleges, pre- vents vaccination from taking effect. Those suffering from pulmonary consumption are not liable to be attacked by epidemic fevers of a not very violent character, according to Von Hildenbrancl.

So, also, under ordinary medical treatment, an old chronic disease remains uncured and unaltered if it is treated accord- ing to the common allopathic method, that is to say, with medicines that are incapable of producing in healthy individuals a state of health similar to the disease, even though the treat- ment should last for years and is not of too violent character. This is daily witnessed in practice, it is therefore unnecessary to give any illustrative examples.

II. Or the new dissimilar disease is the stronger. In this i “Mernoires et Observations.” in the Description de V Egyptc, torn. i.

case the disease UDder which the patient originally labored, being the weaker, will be kept back and suspended by the accession of the stronger one, until the latter shall have run its course or been cured, and then the old one reappears uncured. Two children affected with a kind of epilepsy remained free from epileptic attacks after infection with ringworm (tinea); but as soon as the eruption on the head was gone the epilepsy returned just as before, as Tulpius 1 observed. The itch, as Schopf 2 saw, disappeared on the occurrence of the scurvy, but after the cure of the latter it again broke out. So also the pulmonary phthisis remained stationary when the patient was attacked by a violent typhus, but went on again after the latter had run its course. 3 If mania occur in a consumptive patient, the phthisis with all its symptoms is removed by the former; but if that go off, the phthisis returns immediately and proves fatal. 4 When measles and smallpox are prevalent at the same time, and both attack the same child, the measles that had already broken out is generally checked by the small- pox that came somewhat later; nor does the measles resume its course until after the cure of the smallpox; but it not infre- quently happens that the inoculated smallpox is suspended for four days by the supervention of the measles, as observed by Manget, 5 after the desquamation of which the smallpox com- pletes its course. Even when the inoculation of the smallpox had taken effect for six days, and the measles then broke out, the inflammation of the inoculation remained stationary and the smallpox did not ensue until the measles had completed its regular course of seven days. 6 In an epidemic of measles, that disease attacked many individuals on the fourth or fifth day after the inoculation of smallpox and prevented the de- velopment of the smallpox until it had completed its own course, whereupon the smallpox appeared and proceeded

1 Obs., lib. i, obs. 8.

- In Hut eland's Journal, xv. 2.

3 Chevalier, in Hufeland's Neuesten Annalen dtr franzdxuchen Heilkunde, ii p. 192.

* Mania phthisi superveniens earn cum omnibus suis phcenomenis auffert, verum mo.\ redit phthisis et occidit, abeunte mania. Reil, Mcmorab., fasc. jii, v, p. 171.

5 In the Edinb. Mtd. Comment, pt. i, 1.

6 John Hunter, On the Venereal Disease, p. 5.

regularly to its termination. 1 The true, smooth, erysipelatous- looking scarlatina of Sydenham, 2 with sore throat, was checked on the fourth day by the eruption of cow-pox, which ran its regular course, and not till it was ended did the scarlatina again establish itself; but on another occasion, as both dis- eases seem to be of equal strength, the cow-pox was suspended on the eighth day by the supervention of the true, smooth scarlatina of Sydenham, and the red areola of the former disappeared until the scarlatina was gone, whereon the cow- pox immediately resumed its course, and went on to its regular termination. 3 The measles suspended the cow-pox; on the eighth day, when the cow-pox had nearly attained its climax, the measles broke out; the cow-pox now remained stationary, and did not resume and complete its course until the desquamation of the measles had taken place, so that on the sixteenth day it presented the appearance it otherwise would have shown on the tenth day, as Kortum observed. 1

Even after the measles had broken out the cow-pox inocula- tion took effect, but did not run its course until the measles had disappeared, as Kortum likewise witnessed. 5

I myself saw the mumps (angina parotidea) immediately disappear when the cow-pox inoculation had taken effect and had nearly attained its height; it was not until the complete termination of the cow-pox and the disappearance of its red areola that this febrile tumefaction of the parotid and sub- maxillary glands, that is caused by a peculiar miasm, reap- peared and ran its regular course of seven days.

And thus it is with all dissimilar diseases; the stronger sus- pends the weaker (when they do not complicate one another which is seldom the case with acute diseases), but they never cure one another.

Now the adherents of the ordinary school of medicine saw

1 Rainey, in the Edinb. Med Comment., iii. p. 480. Very accurately described by Withering and Plenciz. but differing greatly from the purpura (or Roodvonk), which is often erroneously de- nominated scarlet fever. It is only of late years that the two, which were originally very different diseases, have come to resemble each other in their symptoms.

3 Jenner, in MedieinUche Annalen, August, 1800. p. 747.

4 In Huf eland's Journal der praktischen Arzeneikunde, xx. 3, p. 50.

5 Loc. cit.

all this for so many centuries ; they saw that Nature herself cannot cure any disease by the accession of another, be it ever so strong, if the new disease be dissimilar to that already present in the body. What shall we think of them, that they nevertheless went on treating chronic diseases with allopathic remedies, namely, with medicines and prescriptions capable of producing God .knows what morbid state — almost invariably, however, one dissimilar to the disease to be cured? And even though physicians did not hitherto observe nature attentively, the miserable results of their treatment should have taught them that they were pursuing an inappropriate, a false path. Did they not perceive when they employed, as was their custom, an aggressive allopathic treatment in a chronic dis- ease, that thereby they only created an artificial disease dissimilar to the original one, which, as long as it was kept up, merely held in abeyance, merely suppressed, merely sus- pended the original disease, which latter, however, always returned, and must return, as soon as the diminished strength of the patient no longer admitted of a continuance of the allopathic attacks on the life? Thus the itch exanthema certainly disappears very soon from the skin under the em- ployment of violent purgatives, frequently repeated ; but when the patient can no longer stand the factitious (dissimilar} disease of the bowels, and can take no more purgatives, then either the cutaneous eruption breaks out as before, or the internal psora displays itself in some bad symptom, and the patient, in addition to his undiminished original disease, has to endure the misery of a painful ruined digestion and im- paired strength to boot. So, also, when the ordinary physicians keep up artificial ulcerations of the skin and issues on the exterior of the body, with the view of thereby eradicating a chronic disease, they can never attain their object by so doing, they can never cure them by that means, as such artificial cutaneous ulcers are quite alien and allopathic to the internal affection; but inasmuch as the irritation produced by several issues is at least sometimes a stronger (dissimilar) disease than the indwelling malady, the latter is thereby sometimes silenced and suspended for a week or two. But it is only suspended,

and that for a very short time, whilst the patient's powers are gradually worn out. Epilepsy, suppressed for many years by means of issues, invariably recurred, and in an aggravated form, when they were allowed to heal up, as Pechlin 1 and others testify. But purgatives for itch, and issues for epilepsy, cannot be more heterogeneous, more dissimilar deranging agents — cannot be more allopathic, more exhausting modes of treatment — than are the customary prescriptions, composed of unknown ingredients, used in ordinary practice for the other nameless, innumerable forms of disease. These likewise do nothing but debilitate, and only suppress or sus- pend the malady for a short time without being able to cure it, and when used for a long time always add a new morbid state to the old disease.

III. Or the new disease, after having long acted on the organism, at length joins the old one that is dissimilar to it, and forms with it a complex disease, so that each of them occupies a particular locality in the organism, namely, the organs peculiarly adapted for it, and, as it were, only the place specially belonging to it, whilst it leaves the rest to the other disease that is dissimilar to it. Thus a syphilitic patient may become psoric, and vice versa. As tiro diseases dissimilar to each other, tliey cannot rtmove, cannot cure one another. At first the venereal symptoms are kept in abeyance and sus- pended when the psoric eruption begins to appear; in course of time, however (as the syphilis is at least as strong as the psora), the two join together, 2 that is, each involves those parts of the organism only which are most adapted for it. and the patient is thereby rendered more diseased and more diffi cult to cure.

When two dissimilar acute infectious diseases meet, as, for example, smallpox and measles, the one usually suspends the

1 Obs.phys. med.. lib. ii. obs. 30.

2 From careful experiments and cures of complex diseasesjof this kind, I am now firmly convinced that no real amalgamation of the two takes place, but that in such cases the one exists in the organism beside the other only, each in the parts that are adapted for it, and their cure will be completely effected by a judicious alternation of the best mercurial preparation, with the remedies specific for the psora, each given in the most suitable dose and form.

Ill

other, as has been before observed; yet there have also been severe epidemics of this kind, where, in rare cases, two dis- similar acute diseases occurred simultaneously in one and the same body, and for a short time combined, as it were, with each other. During an epidemic, in which smallpox and measles were prevalent at the same time, among three hundred cases (in which these diseases avoided or suspended one an- other, and the measles attacked patients twenty days after the smallpox broke -out, the smallpox, however, from seven- teen to eighteen days after the appearance of the measles, so that the first disease had previously completed its regular course) there was yet one single case in which P. Russell 1 met with both these similiar diseases in one person at the same time. Rainey 2 witnessed the simultaneous occurrence of smallpox and measles in two girls. J. Maurice, 3 in his whole practice, only observed two such cases. Similar cases are to be found in Ettmuller's 4 works, and in the writings of a few others.

Zencker 5 saw cow-pox run its regular course along with measles and along with purpura.

The cow-pox went on its course undisturbed during a mercurial treatment for syphilis, as Jenner saw.

Much more frequent than the natural diseases associating with and complicating one another in the same body are the morbid complications resulting from the art of the ordinary practitioner, which the inappropriate medical treatment (the allopathic method) is apt to produce by the long- continued employment of unsuitable drugs. To the natural disease, which it is proposed to cure, there are then added, by the constant repetition of the unsuitable medicinal agent, the new, often very tedious, morbid conditions which might be antici- pated from the peculiar powers of the drug ; these gradually coalesce with and complicate the chronic malady which is

1 Vide Transaction* of a Society for the Improvement of Med. and Chir. Knowledge, ii.

2 In the Edinb. Med Comment., iii, p. 480.

3 In Med. and Phys. Journ.. 1805.

4 Opera, ii, p. L, cap. 10.

5 In Huf eland's Journal, xvi'i.

dissimilar to them (which they were unable to cure by similarity of action, that is, homoeopathically), adding to the old disease a new, dissimilar, artificial malady of a chronic nature, and thus give the patient a double in place of a single disease, that is to say, render him much worse and more difficult to cure, often quite uncurable. Many of the cases for which advice is asked in medical journals, as also the records of other cases in medical writings, attest the truth of this. Of a similar character are the frequent cases in which the venereal chancrous disease, complicated especially with psora or with the dyscrasia of condylomatous gonorrhoea, is not cured by long-continued or frequently repeated treatment with large doses of unsuitable mercurial preparations, but assumes its place in the organism beside the chronic mercurial affection 1 that has been in the meantime gradually developed, and thus along with it often forms a hideous monster of complicated disease (under the general name of masked venereal disease), which then, when not quite incurable, can only be transformed into health with the greatest difficulty.

Nature herself permits, as has been stated, in some cases, the simultaneous occurrence of two (indeed, of three) natural diseases in one and the same body. This complication, how- ever, it must be remarked, happens only in the case of two dissimilar diseases, which according to the eternal laws of nature do not remove, do not annihilate and cannot cure one another, but, as it seems, both (or all three) remain, as it were, separate in the organism, and each takes possession of the parts and systems peculiarly appropriate to it, which, on account of the want of resemblance of these maladies to each other, can very well happen without disparagement to the unity of life.

Totally different, however, is the result when two similar diseases meet together in the organism, that is to say, when

' For mercury, besides the morbid symptoms which by virtue of similarity cau cure the venereal disease homoeopathically, has among its effects many others unlike these of syphilis, which, if it be employed in large doses, cause new maladies and commit great ravages in the body, especially when complicated with psora, as is so frequently the case.

to the disease already present, a stronger similar one is added. In such cases we see how a cure can be effected by the opera- tions of nature, and we get a lesson as to how man ought to cure .

Two diseases similar to each other can neither (as is asserted of dissimilar diseases in I) repel one another, nor (as has been shown of dissimilar diseases in II) suspend one another, so that the old one shall return after the new one has run its course; and just as little can two similar diseases (as has been demonstrated in III respecting dissimilar affections) exist beside each other in the same organism, or together form a double complex disease.

No! two diseases, differing, it is true, in kind, 1 but very similar in their phenomena and effects and in the sufferings and symptoms they severally produce, invariably annihilate one another whenever they meet together in the organism ; the stronger disease, namely, annihilates the weaker, and that for this simple reason, because the stronger morbific power when it invades the system, by reason of its similarity of action in- volves precisely the same parts of the organism that were previously affected by the weaker morbid irritation, which, consequently, can no longer act on these parts, but is extin- guished; 2 or (in other words) because, whenever the vital force, deranged by the primary disease, is more strongly attacked by the new, very similar, but stronger dynamic morbific power, it therefore now remains affected by the latter alone, whereby the original, similar but weaker disease must, as a mere dynamic power without material substratum, cease to exercise any further morbid influence on the vital force, consequently it must cease to exist.

Many examples might be adduced of diseases which, in the course of nature, have been homceopathically cured by other

1 Vide supra, § 20. note.

2 Just as the image of a lamp's flame is rapidly overpowered and effaced from our retina by the stronger sunbeam impinging on the eye.

diseases presenting similar symptoms, were it not necessary, as our object is to speak about something determinate and in- dubitable, to confine our attention solely to those (few) diseases which are invariably the same, arise from a fixed miasm, and hence merit a distinct name.

Among these the smallpox, so dreaded on account of the great number of its serious symptoms, occupies a prominent position, and it has removed and cured a number of maladies with similar symptoms.

How frequently does smallpox produce violent ophthalmia, sometimes even causing blindness! And see! by its inocula- tion, Dezoteux 1 cured a chronic ophthalmia permanently, and Leroy 2 another.

An amaurosis of two years' duration, consequent on sup- pressed scald-head, was perfectly cured by it, according to Klein. 3

How often does smallpox cause deafness and dyspnoea! And both these chronic diseases it removed on reaching its acme, as J. Fr. Closs 4 observed.

Swelling of the testicle, even of a very severe character, is a frequent symptom of smallpox, and on this account it was enabled, as Klein 5 observed, to cure, by virtue of similarity, a large hard swelling of the left testicle, consequent on a bruise. And another observer 6 saw a similar swelling of the testicle cured by it.

Among the troublesome symptoms of smallpox is a dysen- teric state of the bowels; and it subdued, as Fr. Wendt 7 ob- served, a case of dysentery, as a similar morbific agent.

Smallpox coming on after vaccination, as well on account of its greater strength as its great similarity, at once removes entirely the cow-pox homceopathically, and does not permit it to come to maturity; but, on the other hand, the cow-pox when near maturity does, on account of its great similarity, homceopathically diminish very much the supervening small-

1 Traitede V 'inoculation, p. 180.

2 Heilkunde fur Mutter, p. 384.

3 Interpret clinicus, p. 293.

* Neue Heilartder Kinder pocUen, Ulm, 1769, p. 08; and Specim., ohs. No. 18 '•> Op. cit.

0 Nov. Act. Nat. cur., vol. i, obs. 22.

' Nachricht von dem Kranktnimtitul zu Erlangcv^ 1783.

pox and make it much milder, as Muhry 1 and many others testify.

The inoculated coio-pox, whose lymph, besides the protective matter, contains the contagion of a general cutaneous eruption of another nature, consisting of usually small, dry (rarely large, pustular) pimples, resting on a small red areola, fre- quently conjoined with round red cutaneous spots and often accompanied by the most violent itching, which rash appears in not a few children several days he/ore, more frequently, however, after the red areola of the cow-pox, and goes off in a few days, leaving behind small, red, hard spots on the skin; — the inoculated cow-pox, I say, after it has taken, cures perfectly and permanently, in a homoeopathic manner, by the similarity of this accessory miasm, analogous cutaneous erup- tions of children, often of very long standing and of a very troublesome character, as a number of observers assert. 2

The cow-pox, a peculiar symptom of which is to cause tumefaction of the arm, 3 cured, after it broke out, a swollen half -paralyzed arm.*

The fever accompanying cow-pox, which occurs at the time of the production of the red areola, cured homceopathically intermittent fever in two individuals, as the younger Hardege 5 reports, confirming what J. Hunter 6 had already observed, that two fevers (similar diseases) cannot co-exist in the same body. 7

1 Willan. Ueber die Kuhpockenimpfung, aus dem Engl., mit Zuscitzen von G. P. Muhry, Gottingcn, 1S08.

2 Especially Clavier, Hurel and Desormeaux, in the Bulletin des sciences me'dicales, publie par les memhres du comite central de la Soc. de Me'decine du Departement de VEure, 1808; also in the Journal de medecine continue, vol. xv. p. 206.

3 Balhorn, in Hufeland's Journal, 10, ii.

4 Stevenson, in Duncan's Annals of Medicine, lustr. 2, vol. i, pt. 2. No. 9.

5 In Huf eland's Journal, xxiii.

6 On the Venereal Disease, p. 4.

7 The examples adduced in this place, in the former editions of the Or- ganon except the last, of chronic maladies cured hy the itch,( a ) can, accord- ing to the discoveries and explanations I have given in the first part of my book on Chronic Diseases, be looked upon as only in a certain degree homoeo- pathic cures. The great maladies which thereby disappeared (suffocative asthma of many years' standing and pulmonary phthisis) were themselves originally of psoric origin, widely spread, life-threatening symptoms of an ancient psora that had been fully developed in the interior of the system, which was again transformed into the simple form of the primitive itch dis- ease by the cutaneous eruption resulting from the new infection (as always

5

The measles bears a strong resemblance in the character of its fever and cough to the whooping-cough, and hence it was that Bosquillon 1 noticed, in an epidemic where both these affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles remained free from whooping-cough during that epidemic. They would all have been protected from, and rendered in- capable of being infected by, the whooping-cough in that and all subsequent epidemics, by the measles, if the whooping- cough were not a disease that has only a partial similarity to the measles, that is to say, if it had also a cutaneous eruption similar to what the latter possesses. As it is, however, the measles can but preserve a large number from whooping-cough homoeopathically, and that only in the epidemic prevailing at the time.

If, however, the measles come in contact with a disease re- sembling it in its chief symptom, the eruption, it can indis- putably remove, and effect a homoeopathic cure of the latter. Thus a chronic herpetic eruption was entirely and permanently (homoeopathically) cured 2 by the breaking out of the measles, as Kortum 3 observed. An excessively burning miliary rash on the face, neck and arms, that had lasted six years, and was aggravated by every change of weather, on the invasion of measles assumed the form of a swelling of the surface of the skin; after the measles had run its course the exanthem was cured, and returned no more. 4

Nothing could teach the physician in a plainer and more convincing manner than the above, what kind of artificial morbific agent (medicine) he ought to choose in order to cure in a sure, rapid and permanent manner, conformably with the process that takes place in nature.

happens in such cases), whereby the old malady and the dangerous symp- toms were made to disappear. Such a transformation into the primitive form is therefore only to be considered as a homoeopathic healer of these extensive symptoms of highly developed ancient psora, in so far as the new infection puts the patient in a much more favorable condition to be cured of th3 whole psora by anti-psoric medicines.

1 Cullen's Elements of Practical Medicine, pt. 2, i, 3, ch. vii.

2 Or at least that symptom was removed.

3 In Huf eland' x Journal, xx, 3, p. 50.

4 Rau, Ueber d. Werth des hom. Heilv., Heidelb., 1824. p. 85.

Neither in the course of nature, as we see from all the above examples, nor by the physician's art, can an existing affection or malady in any one instance be removed by a dissimilar morbific agent, be it ever so strong, but solely by one that is similar in symptoms and is somevhat stronger, according to eternal, irrevocable laws of nature, which have not hitherto been recognized.

We should have been able to meet with many more real natural homoeopathic cures of this kind if, on the one hand, the attention of observers had been more directed to them, and, on the other hand, if nature had not been so deficient in help- ful homoeopathic diseases.

Mighty Nature herself has, as we see, at her command, as instruments for effecting homoeopathic cures, little besides the miasmatic diseases o2 constant character, (the itch,) measles and smallpox, 1 morbific agents which, 2 as remedies, are either more dangerous to life and more to be dreaded than the dis- ease they are to cure, or of such a kind (like the itch) that, after they have effected the cure, they themselves require curing, in order to be eradicated in their turn — both circum- stances that make their employment, as homoeopathic remedies, difficult, uncertain and dangerous. And how few diseases are there to which man is subject that find their similar remedy in smallpox, measles or itch! Hence, in the course of nature, very few maladies can be cured by these uncertain and hazard- ous homoeopathic remedies, and the cure by their instrumen- tality is also attended with danger and much difficulty, for this reason that the doses of these morbific powers cannot be diminished according to circumstances, as doses of medicine can; but th oatient afflicted with an analogous malady of long standing m. ° subjected to the entire dangerous and tedious disease, to the ”~e disease of smallpox, measles (or itch),

1 And the exanthernatous contagious principle present in the cow-pox- lymph.

2 Namely, smallpox and measles.

C8

which in its turn has to be cured. And yet, as is seen, we can point to some striking homoeopathic cures effected by this lucky concurrence, all so many incontrovertible proofs ot the great, the sole therapeutic law of nature that obtains in them :

Cure by symptom similarity !

This therapeutic law is rendered obvious to all intelligent minds by these instances, and they are amply sufficient for this end. But, on the other hand, see what advnntages man has over crude Nature in her happy-go-lucky operations. How many thousands more of homoeopathic morbific agents has not man at his disposal for the relief of his suffering fellow- creatures in the medicinal substances universally distributed throughout creation! In them he has producers of disease of all possible varieties of action, for all the innumerable, for all conceivable and inconceivable natural diseases, to which the}' can render homoeopathic aid — morbific agents (medicinal sub- stances), whose power, when their remedial employment is completed, being overcome by the vital force, disappears spontaneously without requiring a second course of treatment for its extirpation, like the itch — artificial morbific agents, which the physician can attenuate, subdivide and potentize almost to an infinite extent, and the dose of which he can diminish to such a degree that they shall remain only slightly stronger than the similar natural disease they are employed to cure ; so that, in this incomparable method of cure, there is no necessity for any violent attack upon the organism for the eradication of even an inveterate disease of old standing ; the cure by this method takes place by only a gentle, impercepti- ble and yet often rapid transition from the tormenting natural disease to the desired state of permanent health.

Surely no intelligent physician, after these examples as clear as daylight, can still go on in the old ordinary system of medicine, attacking the body, as has hitherto been done, in its least diseased parts with (allopathic) medicines that have no direct pathological (homoeopathic) relation to the disease to

be cured, with purgatives, counter-irritants, derivatives, &C., 1 and thus at a sacrifice of the patient's strength, inducing a morbid state quite heterogeneous and dissimilar to the original one, to the ruin of his constitution, by large doses of mixtures of medicines generally of unknown qualities, the employment of which can have no other result, as is demonstrated by the eternal laws of nature in che above and all other cases in the world in which a dissimilar disease is added to the other in the human organism, for a cure is never thereby effected in diseases, but an aggravation is the invariable consequence, — therefore it can have no other result than that either (because, according to the process of nature described in I, the older disease in the body repels the dissimilar one wherewith the patient is assailed) the natural disease remains as it was, under mild allopathic treatment, be it ever so long continued, the patient being thereby weakened; or (because, according to the process of nature described in II, the new and stronger dis- ease merely obscures and suspends for a short time the original weaker dissimilar one), by the violent attack on the body with strong allopathic drugs, the original disease seems to yield for a time, to return in at least all its former strength; or (because, according to the process of nature described in III, two dis- similar diseases, when both are of a chronic character and of equal strength, take up a position beside one another in the organism and complicate each other) in those cases in which the physician employs for a long time morbific agents opposite and dissimilar to the natural chronic disease and allopathic medicines in large doses, such allopathic treatment, without ever being able to remove and to cure the original (dissimilar) chronic disease, only develops new artificial diseases beside it; and, as daily experience shows, only renders the patient much worse and more incurable than before. ( Q )

True, mild cures take place, as we see, only in a homoeo- pathic way — a way which, as we have also shown above (11 7 — 25) in a different manner, by experience and deductions,

1 Vide supra in the Introduction: A Review nf the. Therapeutics, <fcc, and my book, Die Ailoopathie, ein Wort der Warming fur Krankc jeder Art, Leipzig, bei Baumglirtner [translated in Hahnem mn's Lesser Writings'],

is also the true and the only one whereby diseases may be most surely, rapidly and permanently extinguished by art; for this mode of cure is founded on an eternal, infallible law of nature.

This, the homoeopathic way, must, moreover, as observed above (11 43 — 49) be the only proper one, because, of the three possible modes of employing medicines in diseases, it is the only direct way to a mild, sure, permanent cure without doing injury in another direction, and without weakening the patient. The pure homoeopathic mode of cure is the only proper way, the only direct way, the only way possible to human skill, as certainly as only one straight line can be drawn betwixt two given points.

The second mode of employing medicines in diseases, the allopathic or heteropathic, which, without any pathological relation to what is actually diseased in the body, attacks the parts most exempt from the disease, in order to draw away the disease through them and thus to expel it, as is imagined, has hitherto been the most general method. I have treated of it above in the Introduction, 1 and shall not dwell longer on it.

The third and only remaining method 2 of employing medi- cines in diseases, which, besides the other two just alluded to, is the only other possible one, is the antipathic (enantiopathic) or palliative method, wherewith the physician could hitherto appear to be most useful, and hoped most certainly to gain his patient's confidence by deluding him with momentary amelioration. But I shall now proceed to show how ineffica-

1 Review of the Therapeutics <&c.

- A fourth mode of employing medicines in diseases has been attempted to be created by means of lxopathy, as it is called— that is to say, a method of curing a given disease by the same contagious principle that produces it. But even granting this could be done, which would certainly be a most valuable discovery, yet. after all. seeing that the virus is given to the pa- tient highly potentized. and thereby, consequently, to a certain degree in an altered condition, the cure is effected only by opposing a simUUmum to a simillimum.( a )

cious and how injurious this third and sole remaining way was, in diseases of a not very rapid course. («) It is certainly the only one of the modes of treatment adopted by the allopaths that had any manifest relation to a portion of the sufferings caused by the natural disease; but what kind of relation? Of a truth the very one (the exact contrary of the right one) that ought most to be avoided if we would not delude and make a mockery of the patient affected with a chronic disease.

In order to carry into practice this antipathic method, the ordinary physician gives, for a single troublesome symptom from among the many other symptoms of the disease which he passes by unheeded, a medicine concerning which it is known that it produces the exact opposite of the morbid symptom sought to be subdued, from which, agreeably to the fifteen-centuries-old traditional rule of the antiquated medical school (contraria contrariis) he can expect the speediest (palli- ative) relief. He gives large doses of opium for pains of all sorts, because this drug soon benumbs the sensibility, and administers the same remedy for diarrhoeas, because it speedily puts a stop to the peristaltic motion of the intestinal canal and makes it insensible; and also for sleeplessness, because opium rapidly produces a stupefied, comatose sleep; he gives purga- tives when the patient has suffered long from constipation and costiveness; he causes the burnt hand to be plunged into cold water, which, from its low degree of temperature, seems in- stantaneously to remove the burning pain, as if by magic; he puts the patient who complains of chilliness and deficiency of vital heat into warm baths, which warm him immediately; he makes him who is suffering from prolonged debility drink wine, whereby he is instantly enlivened and refreshed; and in like manner he employs other opposite (antipathic) remedial means, but he has very few besides those just mentioned, as it is only of very few substances that some peculiar (primary) action is known to the ordinary medical school.

If, in estimating the value of this mode of employing medi-

oines, we should even pass over the circumstance that it is an extremely faulty symptomatic treatment (y. note to \ 7), wherein the practitioner devotes his attention in a merely one-sided manner to a siityle symptom, consequently to only a small part of the whole, whereby relief for the totality of the disease, which is what the patient desires, cannot evidently be ex- pected, — we must, on the other hand, demand of experience if, in one single case where such antipathic employment of medicine was made use of in a chronic or persisting affection, after the transient amelioration there did not ensue an in- creased aggravation of the symptom which was subdued at first in a palliative manner, an aggravation, indeed, of the whole disease? And every attentive observer will agree that, after such short antipathic amelioration, aggravation follows in every case icithout exception, although the ordinary physician is in the habit of giving his patient another explanation of this subsequent aggravation, and ascribes it to malignancy of the original disease, now for the first time showing itself, or to the occurrence of quite a new disease. 1

Important symptoms of persistent diseases have never yet been treated with such palliative, antagonistic remedies, with- out the opposite state, a relapse — indeed, a palpable aggrava- tion of the malady — occurring a few hours afterwards. For a persistent tendency to sleepiness during the day the physician prescribed coffee, whose primary action is to enliven ; and when it had exhausted its action the day-somnolence increased; —

1 Little as physicians have hitherto been In the habit of observing accu- rately, the aggravation that so certainly follows such palliative treatment could not altogether escape their notice. A striking example of this is to be found in J. H. Schulze's Diss, qua corporis humani momentanearum altera- tiohiim tpeclmina qucedam rxpenduntur. Hala?, 1741, §28. Willis bears testimony to something similar (Pharm. rat., §7. cap. i. p. 298: “Opiata dolores atro- cissimos plerumque sedant atque indolentiam — procurant, eamque— aliquamdiu et pro stato euodam tempore continuant, quo spatio elapso doiorcs mox recrudescunt et brevi ad solitam ferociam augentur.” And also at page 295: “Exactis opii viribus illico redeunt tormina, nec atrocita- tem suam remittunt. nisi dum ab eodem pharmaco rursus incantuntur ” In like manner J. Hunter (On the Venereal Disease, p. 13) says that wine and cordials given to the weak increase the action without giving real strength and the powers of the body are afterwards sunk proportionally as they have* been raised, by which nothing can be gained, but a great deal may be lost.

for frequent waking at night he gave in the evening, without heeding the other symptoms of the disease, opium, which by virtue of its primary action produced the same night (stupefied, dull) sleep, but the subsequent nights were still more sleepless than before; — to chronic diarrhoeas be opposed, without re- garding the other morbid signs, the same opium, whose primary action is to constipate the bowels, and after a transient stop- page of the diarrhoea it subsequently became all the worse; — violent and frequently recurring pains of all kinds he could suppress with opium for but a short time; they then always returned in greater, often intolerable severity, or some much worse affection came in their stead. For nocturnal cough of long standing the ordinary physician knew no better than to administer opium, whose primary action is to suppress every irritation; the cough would then perhaps cease the first night, but during the subsequent nights it would be still more severe, and if it were again and again suppressed by this palliative in increased doses, fever and nocturnal perspiration were added to the disease; — weakness of the bladder, with consequent retention of urine, was sought to be conquered by the anti- pathic power of cantharides to stimulate the urinary passages, whereby evacuation of the urine was certainly at first effected, but thereafter the bladder becomes less capable of stimulation and less able to contract, and paralysis of the bladder is im- minent; — with large doses of purgative drugs and laxative salts, which excite the bowels to frequent evacuation, it was sought to remove a chronic tendency to constipation, but in the secondary action the bowels became still more confined; — the ordinary physician seeks to remove chronic debility by the administration of wine, which, however, stimulates only in its primary action, and hence the forces sink all the lower in the secondary action; — by bitter substances and heating condi- ments he tries to strengthen and warm the chronically weak and cold stomach, but in the secondary action of these palli- atives, which are stimulating in their primary action only, the stomach becomes yet more inactive; — long-standing deficiency of vital heat and chilly disposition ought surely to yield to prescriptions of warm baths, but still more weak, cold, and chilly do the patients subsequently become; — severely burnt

parts feel instantaneous alleviation from the application of cold water, but the burning pain afterwards increases to an increditable degree, and the inflammation spreads and rises to a still greater height; 1 — by means of the sternutatory remedies that provoke a secretion of mucus, coryza with stoppage of the nose of long standing is sought to be removed, but it escapes observation that the disease is aggravated all the more by these antagonistic remedies (in their secondary action), and the nose becomes still more stopped; — by electricity and gal- vanism, which in their primary action greatly stimulate muscular action, chronically weak and almost paralytic limbs were soon excited to more active movements, but the conse- quence (the secondary action) was complete deadening of all muscular irritability and complete paralysis ; — by venesections it was attempted to remove chronic determination of blood to the head, but they were always followed by greater congestion ; — ordinary medical practitioners know nothing better with which to treat the paralytic torpor of the corporeal and mental organs, conjoined with unconsciousness, which prevails in many kinds of typhus, than with large doses of valerian, be- cause this is one of the most powerful medicinal agents for causing animation and increasing the motor faculty; in their ignorance, however, they knew not that this action is only a primary action, and that the organism, after that is passed, most certainly falls back, in the secondary (antagonistic) action, into still greater stupor and immobility, that is to say, into paralysis of the mental and corporeal organs (and death) ; they did not see, that the very diseases they supplied most plentifully with valerian, which is in such cases an oppositely acting, antipathic remedy, most infallibly terminated fatally The old school physician rejoices 2 that he is able to reduce for several hours the velocity of the small rapid pulse in cachectic patients with the very first dose of uncombined purple fox- glove (which in its primary action makes the pulse slower) ; its rapidity, however, soon returns; repeated, and now increased doses effect an ever smaller diminution of its rapidity, and at length none at all — indeed — in the secondary action the pulse

1 Vide Introduction, p. 43.

- Vide Huf eland, in his pamphlet. Die Homoopathie, p. 20.(“)

becomes uncountable; sleep, appetite and strength depart, and a speedy death is invariably the result, or else insanity ensues. How often, in one word, the disease is aggravated, or some- thing even worse is effected by the secondary action of such antagonistic (antipathic) remedies, the old school with its false theories does not perceive, but experience teaches it in a ter- rible manner.

If these ill effects are produced,, as may very naturally be expected from the antipathic employment of medicines, the ordinary physician imagines he can get over the difficulty by giving, at each renewed aggravation, a stronger dose of the remedy, whereby an equally transient suppression is effected; and as there then is a still greater necessity for giving ever- increasing quantities of the palliative, there ensues either an- other more serious disease or frequently even danger to life and death itself, but never a cure of a disease of considerable or of long standing.

Had physicians been capable of reflecting on the sad results of the antagonistic employment of medicines, they had long since discovered the grand truth, THAT THE TRUE RADICAL HEALING ART MUST BE FOUND IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF SUCH AN ANTI- PATHIC TREATMENT OF THE SYMPTOMS OF DISEASE; they Would

have become convinced, that as a medicinal action antagonistic to the symptoms of the disease (an antipathically employed medicine) is followed by only transient relief, and after that is passed, by invariable aggravation, the converse of that procedure, the homospathic employment of medicines according to similarity of symptoms, must effect a permanent and per- fect cure, if at the same time the opposite of their large doses, the most minute doses, are exhibited. But neither the ob- vious aggravation that ensued from their antipathic treatment, nor the fact that no physician ever effected a permanent cure of diseases of considerable or of long standing unless some homoeopathic medicinal agent was accidentally a chief ingred- ient in his prescription, nor yet the circumstances that all the rapid and perfect cures that nature ever performed (I 46), were

always affected by the supervention upon the old disease of one of a similar character, ever taught them, during such a long series of centuries, this truth, the knowledge of which can alone conduce to the benefit of the sick.

But on what this pernicious result of the palliative, anti- pathic treatment and the efficacy of the reverse, the homoeo- pathic treatment, depend, is explained by the following facts, deduced from manifold observations, which no one before me perceived, though they are so very palpable and so very evident, and are of such infinite importance to the healing art.

Every agent that acts upon the vitality, every medicine, deranges more or less the vital force, and causes a certain alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or a shorter period. This is termed primary action. Although a product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly, it is principally due to the former power. To its action our vital force endeavors to oppose its own energy. This resistent action is a property, is indeed an automatic action of our life- preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action or counteraction.

During the primary action of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) on our healthy body, our vital force seems to con- duct itself merely in a passive (receptive) manner, and appears, so to say, compelled to permit the impressions of the artificial power acting from without to take place in it and thereby alter its state of health; it then, however, appears to rouse itself again, as it were, and to develop (A) the exact opposite condi- tion of health (counteraction, secondary action) to this effect

and that in as great a degree as was the effect (primary action) of the artificial morbific or medicinal agent on it, and propor- tionate to its own energy; — or (b) if there be not in nature a state exactly the opposite of the primary action, it appears to endeavor to indifferentiate itself, that is, to make its superior

power available in the extinction of the change wrought in it from without (by the medicine), in the place of which it sub- stitutes its normal state (secondary action, curative action).

Examples of (a) are familiar to all. A hand bathed in hot water is at first much warmer than the other hand that has not been so treated (primary action); but when it is withdrawn from the hot water and again thoroughly dried, it becomes in a short time cold, and at length much colder than the other (secondary action). A person heated by violent exercise (primary action) is afterwards affected with chilliness and shivering (secondary action). To one who was yesterday heated by drinking much wine (primary action), today every breath of air feels too cold (counteraction of the organism, secondary action). An arm that has been kept long in very cold water is at first much paler and colder (primary action) than the other; but removed from the cold water and dried, it subsequently becomes not only warmer than the other, but even hot, red and inflamed (secondary action, reaction of the vital force). Excessive vivacity follows the use of strong coffee (primary action), but sluggishness and drowsiness re- main for a long time afterwards (reaction, secondary action), if this be not always again removed for a short time by im- bibing fresh supplies of coffee (palliative). After the profound stupefied sleep caused by opium (primary action), the following night will be all the more sleepless (reaction, secondary action). After the constipation produced by opium (primary action), diarrhoea ensues (secondary action) ; and after purgation with medicines that irritate the bowels, constipation of several days' duration ensues (secondary action). And in like manner it always happens, after the primary action of a medicine that produces in large doses a great change in the health of a healthy person, that its exact opposite, when, as has been observed, there is actually such a thing, is produced in the secondary action by our vital force.

An obvious antagonistic secondary action, however, is, as may readily be conceived, not to be noticed from the action

of quite minute homoeopathic doses of the deranging agents on the healthy body. A small dose of every one of them certainly produces a primary action that is perceptible to a sufficiently attentive observer; but the living organism employs against it only so much reaction (secondary action) as is neces- sary for the restoration of the normal condition.

These incontrovertible truths, which spontaneously offer themselves to our notice in nature and experience, explain to us the beneficial action that takes place under homoeopathic treatment; whilst, on the other hand, they demonstrate the perversity of the antipathic and palliative treatment of dis- eases with antagonistically acting medicines. 1

In homoeopathic cures they show us that from the uncom-

1 Only in the most urgent cases, where danger to life and imminent death allow no time for the action of a homoeopathic remedy— not hours, some- times not even quarter-hours, and scarcely minutes — in sudden accidents occurring to previously healthy individuals— for example, in asphyxia and suspended animation from lightning, from suffocation, freezing, drowning, &c. — it is admissible and judicious, at all events as a preliminary measure, to stimulate the irritability and sensibility (the physical life) with a pallia- tive, as, for instance, with gentle electrical shocks, with clysters of strong coffee, with a stimulating odor, gradual application of heat, &c. When this stimulation is effected, the play of the vital organs again goes on in its former healthy manner, for there is here no disease* to be removed, but merely an obstruction and suppression of the healthy vital force. To this category belong various antidotes to sudden poisonings: alkalies for min- eral acids, hepar sulphuris for metallic poisons, coffee and camphor (and ipecacuanha) for poisoning by opium, &c.

It does not follow that a homoeopathic medicine has been ill selected for a case of disease because some of the medicinal symptoms are only antipathic to some of the less important and minor symptoms of the disease; if only the others, the stronger, well-marked (characteristic), and peculiar symp- toms of the disease are covered and matched by the same medicine with similarity of symptoms— that is to say, overpowered, destroyed and extin- guished; the few opposite symptoms also disappear of themselves after the expiry of the term of action of the medicament, without retarding the cure in the least.

* And yet the new sect that mixes the two systems appeals (thou eh in vain) to this observation, in order that they may have an excuse for en- countering everywhere such exceptions to the general rule in diseases auc to justify their convenient employment of allopathic palliatives, and oi other injurious allopathic trash besides, solely for the sake of sparine them- selves the trouble of seeking for the suitable homoeopathic remedy for each case of disease— I might almost say for the sake of sparing themselves the trouble of being homoeopathic physicians, and yet wishing to aDnear a« such. But their performances are on a par with the system thev mirsne” they are nothing to boast of. J 1 nouc.

monly small doses of medicines (11 275 — 287) required in this method of treatment, which are just sufficient, by the similarity of their symptoms, to overpower and remove the similar natural disease, there certainly remains, after the destruction of the latter, at first a certain amount of medicinal disease alone in the organism, but, on account of the extraordinary minuteness of the dose, it is so transient, so slight, and dis- appears so rapidly of its own accord, that the vital force has no need to employ, against this small artificial derangement of its health, any more considerable reaction than will suffice to elevate its present state of health up to the healthy point — that is, than will suffice to effect complete recovery, for which, after the extinction of the previous morbid derange- ment, but little effort is required (I 64, b).

In the antipathic (palliative) mode of treatment, however, precisely the reverse of this takes place. The medicinal symp- tom which the physician opposes to the disease symptom (for example, the insensibility and stupefaction caused by opium in its primary action to acute pain) is certainly not alien, not allopathic to the latter; there is a manifest relation of the medicinal symptom to the disease symptom, but it is the reverse of what should be; it is here intended that the annihi- lation of the disease symptom shall be effected by an opposite medicinal symptom, which is impossible. No doubt the anti • pathically chosen medicine touches precisely the same diseased point in the organism as the homoeopathic medicine chosen on account of the similar affection it produces; but the former covers the opposite symptom of the disease only as an opposite, and makes it unobservable for a short time only, so that in the first period of the action of the antagonistic palliative the vital force perceives nothing disagreeable from either of the two (neither from the disease symptom nor from the medicinal symptom), as they seem both to have mutually removed and dynamically neutralized one another as it were (for example, the stupefying power of opium does this to the pain). In the first minutes the vital force feels quite well, and perceives neither the stupefaction of the opium nor the pain of the

so

disease. But as the antagonistic medicinal symptom cannot (as in the homoeopathic treatment) occupy the place of the morbid derangement present in the organism as a similar, stronger (artificial) disease, and cannot, therefore, like a homoeopathic medicine, affect the vital force with a similar artificial disease, so as to be able to step into the place of the original natural morbid derangement, the palliative medicine must, as a thing totally differing from, and the opposite of the disease derangement, leave the latter uneradicated ; it renders it, as before said, by a semblance of dynamic neutralization, 1 at first unfelt by the vital force, but, like every medicinal dis- ease, it is soon spontaneously extinguished, and not only leaves the disease behind, just as it was, but compels the vital force (as it must, like all palliatives, be given in large doses in order to effect the apparent removal) to produce an opposite condition (§§ 63, 64) to this palliative medicine, the reverse of the medicinal action, consequently the analogue of the still present, undestroyed, natural morbid derangement, which is necessarily strengthened and increased 2 by this addition (re- action against the palliative) produced by the vital force. The disease symptom (this single part of the disease) consequently becomes worse after the term of the action of the palliative has expired; worse in proportion to the magnitude of the dose of the palliative. Accordingly (to keep to the same example) the

1 In the living human being no permanent neutralization of contrary or antagonistic sensations can take place, as happens with substances of op- posite qualities in the chemical laboratory, where, for instance, sulphuric acid and potash unite to form a perfectly different substance, a neutral salt> which is now no longer either acid or alkali, and is not decomposed even by heat. Such amalgamations and thorough combinations to form something permanently neutral and indifferent do not, as has been said, ever take place with respect to dynamic impressions of an antagonistic nature in our sensific apparatus. Only a semblance of neutralization and mutual removal occurs in such cases at first, but the antagonistic sensations do not perma- nently remove one another. The tears of the mourner will be dried for but a short time by a laughable play; tho jokes are. however, soon forgotten, and his tears then flow still more abundantly than before.

2 Plain as this proposition is, it has been misunderstood, and in opposition to it some have asserted “that the palliative in its secondary action, which would then be similar to the disease present, must be capable of curing just as well as a homoeopathic modicine does by its primary action.” But they did not reflect that the secondary action is not a product of the medicine, but invariably of the antagonistically acting vital force of the organism; that thereforo this secondary action resulting from the vital force on the employment of a palliative is a state similar to the symptoms of the disease

SI

larger the dose of opium given to allay the pain, so much the more does the pain increase beyond its original intensity as soon as the opium has exhausted its action. 1

From what has been already adduced we cannot fail to draw the following inferences:

That everything of a really morbid character and which ought to be cured that the physician can discover in diseases, consist solely of the sufferings of the pa- tient, and the sensible alterations in his health, in a word, solely of the totality of the symptoms, by means of which the disease demands the medicine requisite for its relief; whilst, on the other hand, every internal cause attributed to it, every occult quality or imaginary material morbific principle, is nothing but an idle dream;

That this derangement of the state of health, which we term disease, can only be converted into health by another revolution effected in the state of health by means of medicines, whose sole curative power, con- sequently, can only consist in altering man's state of health — that is to say. in a peculiar excitation of morbid symptoms, and is learned with most distinct- ness and purity by testing them on the healthy body;

That, according to all experience, a natural disease can never be cured by medicines that possess the power of producing in the healthy individual an alien mor- bid state (dissimilar morbid symptoms) differing from that of the disease to be cured (never, therefore, by an allopathic mode of treatment), and that even in nature no cure ever takes place in which an inherent disease is removed, annihilated and cured by the ad-

which the palliative left uneradicated. and which the reaction of the vital force against the palliative consequently increased still more.

1 As when in a dark dungeon, where the prisoner could with difficulty rec- ognize objects close to him, alcohol is suddenly lighted, everything is in- stantly illuminated in a most consolatory manner to the unhappy wretch; but when it is extinguished, the brighter the flame was previously, the blacker is the night which now envelops him, and renders everything about him much more difficult to be seen than before.

6

82 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.

dition of another disease dissimilar to it, be the new one ever so strong ;

That, moreover, all experience proves that, by means of medicines which have a tendency to produce in the healthy individual an artificial morbid symptom, antagonistic to the single symptom of disease sought to be cured, the cure of a long-standing affection will never be effected, but merely a very transient allevi- ation, always followed by its aggravation ; and that, in a word, this antipathic and merely palliative treat- ment in long-standing diseases of a serious character is absolutely inefficacious;

That, however, the third and only other possible mode of treatment (the homoeopathic), in which there is employed for the totality of the symptoms of a natural disease a medicine capable of producing the most similar symptoms possible in the healthy in- dividual, given in suitable dose, is the only efficacious remedial method whereby diseases, which are purely dynamic deranging irritations of the vital force, are overpowered, and being thus easily, perfectly, and permanently extinguished, must necessarily cease to exist — and for this mode of procedure we have the example of unfettered Nature herself, when to an old disease there is added a new one similar to the first, whereby the old one is rapidly and for ever annihi- lated and cured.

As it is now no longer a matter of doubt that the diseases of mankind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms, and may be annihilated and transformed into health by medicinal substances, but only by such as are capable of artificially pro- ducing similar morbid symptoms (and such is the process in all genuine cures), hence the operation of curing is comprised in the three following points:

1. How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary

to be known in order to cure the disease? IT. How is he to gain a knowledge of the instruments

GRGANON OF MEDICINE.

S3

adapted for the cure of the natural disease, the pathogenetic powers of the medicines? III. What is the most suitable method of employing these artificial morbific agents (medicines) for the cure of natural diseases?

With respect to the first point, the following will serve as a general preliminary view. The diseases to which man is liable are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally deranged vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but always in a moderate time — these are termed acute diseases ; — or they are diseases of such a character that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings, dynamically derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner, and cause it gradually to deviate from the healthy condition, in such a way that the automatic life energy, called vital force, whose office is to preserve the health, only opposes to them at the commencement and during their progress imperfect, un- suitable, useless resistance, but is unable of itself to extinguish them, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and) itself to be ever more and more abnormally deranged, until at length the organism is destroyed; these are termed chronic diseases. They are caused by infection with a chronic miasm.

As regards acute diseases, they are either of such a kind as attack human beings individually, the exciting cause being in- jurious influences to which they were particularly exposed. Excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical impressions, chills, over-heatings, dissipation, strains, &c. , or psychical irritations, mental emotions, and the like, are excit- ing causes of such acute febrile affections ; in reality, however, they are generally only a transient explosion of latent psora, which spontaneously returns to its dormant state if the acute diseases were not of too violent a character and were soon quelled. Or they are of such a kind as attack several persons at the same time, here and there (sporadically), by means of meteoric or telluric influences and injurious agents, the susceptibility for being morbidly affected by which is possessed by only a few persons at one time. Allied to these are those diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar sufferings from the same cause (epidemically); these diseases generally become infectious (contagious) when they prevail among thickly congregated masses of human beings. Thence arise fevers, 1 in each instance of a peculiar nature, and, be- cause the cases of disease have an identical origin, they set up in all those they affect an identical morbid process, which when left to itself terminates in a moderate period of time in death or recovery. The calamities of war, inundations and famine are not infrequently their exciting causes and producers — sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms which recur in the same manner (hence known by some traditional name), which either attack persons but once in a lifetime, as the smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, the ancient smooth, bright red scarlet fever 2 of Sydenham, the mumps, &c. , or such as recur frequently in pretty much the same manner, the plague of the Levant, the yellow fever of the sea-coast, the Asiatic cholera, &c.

Among chronic diseases we must still, alas! reckon those so commonly met with, artificially produced in allopathic treat- ment by the prolonged use of violent heroic medicines in large and increasing doses, by the abuse of calomel, corrosive sub- limate, mercurial ointment, nitrate of silver, iodine and its ointments, opium, valerian, cinchona bark and quinine, fox- glove, prussic acid, sulphur and sulphuric acid, perennial purgatives, venesections, leeches, issues, setons, &c. , whereby the vital force is sometimes weakened to an unmerciful extent, sometimes, if it do not succumb, gradually abnormally de- ranged (by each substance in a peculiar manner) in such a way that, in order to maintain life against these inimical and de- structive attacks, it must produce a revolution in the organism, and either deprive some part of its irritability or sensibility, or exalt these to an excessive degree, cause dilatation or con- traction, relaxation or induration or even total destruction of certain parts, and develop faulty organic alterations here and there in the interior or the exterior, 1 (cripple the body inter- nally or externally) in order to preserve the organism from complete destruction of life by the ever-renewed, hostile as- saults of such destructive forces.

1 The homoeopathic physician, who does not entertain the foregone con- clusions devised by the ordinary school (who have fixed upon a few names of such fevers, besides which mighty nature dare not produce any others, so as to admit of their treating these diseases according to some fixed method), does not acknowledge the names gaol fever, bilious fever, typhus fever, putrid fever, nervous fever or mucous fever, but treats them each according to their several peculiarities.

2 Subsequently to the year 1801 a kind of purpura miliaris (roodvonk). which came from the West, was by physicians confounded with the scarlet fever, notwithstanding that they exhibited totally different symptoms, that the latter found its prophylactic and curative remedy in belladonna, the former in aconite, and that the former was generally merely sporadic, while the latter was invariably epidemic. Of late years it seems as if the two occas- ionally joined to form an eruptive feverof a peculiar kind, for which neither the one nor yet the other remedy, alone, will be found to be exactly homoeo- pathic.

These inroads on human health effected by the allopathic non-healing art (more particularly in recent times) are of all chronic diseases the most deplorable, the most incurable; and I regret to add that it is apparently impossible to discover or to hit upon any remedies for their cure when they have reached any considerable height.

Only for natural diseases has the beneficent Deity granted us. in Homoeopathy, the means of affording relief ; but those devastations and maimings of the human organism exteriorly and interiorly, effected by years, frequently, of the unsparing exercise of a false art, with its hurtful drugs and treatment, must he remedied by the vital force itself (appropriate aid being given for the eradication of any chronic miasm that may happen to be lurking in the background), if it have not already been too much weakened by such mischievous acts, and can

1 If the patient at length succumbs, the practicer of such a treatment is in t he habit of pointing out to the sorrowing relatives, at the post mortem ex- amination, these internal organic disfigurements, which are due to his pseudo-art, but which he artfully maintains to be the original incurable disease (see my book, Die Alloopathie. cin Wort der Warnung an Kranke jeder Art. Leipzig, bei Baumgartner [translated in Lesser Writings]). Those de- ceitful records, the illustrated works on pathological anatomy, exhibit the products of such lamentable bungling.

devote several years to this huge operation undisturbed. A human healing art, for the restoration to the normal state of those innumerable abnormal conditions so often produced by the allopathic non-healing art, there is not and cannot be.

0

Those diseases are appropriately named chronic, which persons incur who expose themselves continually to avoidable noxious influences, who are in the habit of indulging in in- jurious liquors or aliments, are addicted to dissipation of many kinds which undermine the health, who undergo prolonged abstinence from things that are necessary for the support of life, who reside in unhealthy localities, especially marshy dis- tricts, who are housed in cellars or other confined dwellings, who are deprived of exercise or of open air, who ruin their health by over-exertion of body or mind, who live in a con- stant state of worry, &c. These states of ill-health, which persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously, pro- vided no chronic miasm lurks in the body, under an improved mode of living, and they cannot be called chronic diseases.

The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic miasm, which when left to themselves and unchecked by the employment of those remedies that are specific for them, always go on increasing and growing worse, notwith- standing the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated suffer- ings. These are the most numerous and greatest scourges of the human race; for the most robust constitution, the best regulated mode of living and the most vigorous energy of the vital force are insufficient for their eradication.

Hitherto syphilis alone has been to some extent known as such a chronic miasmatic disease, which when uncured ceases only with the termination of life. Sycosis (the condylomatous disease), equally ineradicable by the vital force without proper medicinal treatment, was not recognized as a chronic miasmatic

disease of a peculiar character, which it nevertheless undoubt- edly is, and physicians imagined they had cured it when they had destroyed the growths upon the skin, but the persisting dyscrasia occasioned by it escaped their observation.

Incalculably greater and more important than the two chronic miasms just named, however, is the chronic miasm of psora, which, whilst those two reveal their specific internal dyscrasia, the one by the venereal chancre, the other by the cauliflower-like growths, does also, after the completion of the internal infection of the whole organism, announce by a pe- culiar cutaneous eruption, sometimes consisting only of a few vesicles accompanied by intolerable voluptuous tickling itching (and a peculiar odor), the monstrous internal chronic miasm — the psora, the only real fundamental cause and producer of all the other numerous, I may say innumerable, forms of disease, 1 which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypo- chondriasis, mania, melancholia, imbecility, madness, epilepsy and convulsions of all sorts, softening of the bones (rachitis), scoliosis and cy pilosis, caries, cancer, fungus hiematoides, neoplasms, gout, haemorrhoids, jaundice, cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhoea, haemorrhage from the stomach, nose, lungs, bladder and womb, of asthma and ulceration of the lungs, of impotence and barrenness, of megrim, deafness, cataract, amaurosis, urinary calculus, paralysis, defects of the senses and pains of thousands of kinds, &c. , figure in systematic works on pathology as peculiar, independent diseases.

1 I spent twelve years in investigating the source of this incredibly large number of chronic affections, in ascertaining and collecting certain proofs of this great truth, which had remained unknown to all former or contem- porary observers, and in discovering at the same time the principal (anti- psoric) remedies, which collectively aro nearly a match for this thousand- headed monster of disease in all its different developments and forms. I have published my observations on this subject in the book entitled The Chronic Diseases (4 vols., Dresden, Arnold. |_2nd edit., Dusseldorf, Schaub.1). Before I had obtained this knowledge I could only teach how to treat the whole number of chronic diseases as isolated, individual maladies, with those medicinal substances whose pure effects had been tested on healthy persons up to that period, so that every case of chronic disease was treated by my disciples according to the group of symptoms it presented, just like an idiopathic disease, and it was often so far cured that sick mankind re- joiced at the extensive remedial treasures already amassed by the new- healing art. How much greater cause is there now for rejoicing that the' desired goal has been so much more nearly attained, inasmuch as the re- cently discovered and far more specific homoeopathic remedies for chronic affections arising from psora (properly termed antipsoric remedies) and the special instructions for their preparation and employment have been pub- lished; and from among them the true physician can now select for his curative agents those whose medicinal symptoms correspond in the most similar (homoeopathic) manner to the chronic disease he has to cure; and thus, by the employment of (antipsoric) medicines more suitable for this miasm, he is enabled to render more essential service and almost invariably to effect perfect cures.

The fact that this extremely ancient infecting agent has gradually passed, in some hundreds of generations, through many millions of human organisms and has thus attained an incredible development, renders it in some measure conceivable how it can now display such innumerable morbid forms in the great family of mankind, particularly when we consider what a number of circumstances 1 contribute to the production of these great varieties of chronic diseases (secondary symptoms of psora), besides the indescribable diversity of men in respect of their congenital corporeal constitutions, so that it is no wonder if such a variety of injurious agencies, acting from within and from without and sometimes continually, on such a variety of organisms permeated with the psoric miasm, should produce an innumerable variety of defects, injuries, derange- ments and sufferings, which have hitherto been treated of in the old pathological works, 2 under a number of special names, as diseases of an independent character.

1 Some of these causes that exercise a modifying influence on the transfor- mation of psora into chronic diseases manifestly depend sometimes on the climate and the peculiar physical character of the place of abode, sometimes on the very great varieties in the physical and mental training of youth, both of which may have been neglected, delayed or carried to excess, or on their abuse in the business or conditions of life, in the matter of diet and regimen, passions, manners, habits and customs of various kinds.

'- How many improper, ambiguous names do not these works contain, un- der each of which are included excessively different morbid conditions, which often resemble each other in one single symptom only, as ague, jaundice, dropsy, consumption, leucoThaza. haemorrhoids, rheumntism, apoplexy, convulsions, hysteria, hypochondriasis milanchoUa, mania, qiitusy. palsy. &c, which are represented as diseases of a fixed and unvarying character, and are treated, on account of their name, according to a determinate plan! How can the bestowal of such a name justify an identical medical treat- ment'? And if the treatment is not always to be the same, why make use of an identical name which postulates an identity of treatment? “Nihil sane in artem medicam pestiferura magis unquarn irrepgit malum, quam generalia qutedam nomina morbis imponere iisque aptare velle generalem quandam

Although, by the discovery of that great source of chronic diseases, as also by the discovery of the specific homoeopathic remedies for the psora, mediciue has advanced some steps nearer to a knowledge of the nature of the majority of dis- eases it has to cure, yet, for settling the indication in each

medicinarn.” says Huxbam, a man as clear-sighted as he was estimable on account of his conscientiousness (Op.pliys. med., torn. i.). And in like man- ner Fritze laments (Amialen, i, p. 80) “that essentially different diseases are designated by the same name.” Even those epidemic diseases, which un- doubtedly may be propagated in every separate epidemic by a peculiar con- tagious principle which remains unknown to us, are designated, in the old school of medicine, by particular names, just as if they were well-known fixed diseases that invariably recurred under the same form, as hospital fever, gaol fever, camp fever, putrid fever, bilious fever, nervous lever, mucous fever, although each epidemic of such roving fevers exhibits itself at every occurrence as another, a new disease, such as it has never before appeared in exactly the same form, differing very much, in every instance, in its course, as well as in many of its most striking symptoms and its whole appearance. Each is so far dissimilar to all previous epidemics, whatever names they may bear, that it would be a dereliction of all logical accuracy in our ideas of things were we to give to these maladies, that differ so much among themselves, one of those names we meet with in pathological writings, and treat them all medicinally in conformity with this misused name. The candid Sydenham alone perceived this, when he (Obs. med., cap. ii, De morb. epid.) insists upon the necessity of not considering any epidemic disease as having occurred before and treating it in the same way as another, since all that occur successively, be they ever so numerous, differ from one another: “Nihil quicquam (opinor,) animum uni versos qua patet medicinas pomceria perlustrantem, tanta admiratione percellet, quam discolor ilia ot sui plane dissimilis morborum Epidemicorum facies; non tarn qua varias ejusdem anni tempestates. quam qua discrepantes diversorum ab invicem annorum constitutiones referunt, ab iisque dependent. Quae tarn aperta prasdictorum morborum diversitas turn propriis ac sibi peculiaribus symptomatis. turn etiam medeudi ratione, quam hi ab illis disparem prorsus sibi veudicant, satis illucescit. Ex quibus constat morbus hoscc, ut ut externa quadautenus specie, et symptomatis aliquot utrisque pariter supervenientibus, convenire paulo incautioribus videantur, re tamen ipsa (si bene advertoris animum,) alienae admodum esse indolis, et distare ut Eera lupinis.”(“)

From all this it is clear that these useless and misused names of diseases ought to have no influence on the practice of the true physician, who knows that he has to judge of and to cure diseases, not according to the similarity of tho name of a single one of their symptoms, but according to the totality of the signs of the individual state of each particular patient, whose affec- tion it is his duty carefully to investigate, but never to give a hypothetical guess at it.

If. however, it is deemed necessary sometimes to make use of names of diseases, in order, when talking about a patient to ordinary persons, to ren- der ourselves intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ them as col- lective names, and tell them. e. g. the patient lias a kind of St. Vitus' dance. a kind of dropsy, a kind of typhus, a kind of ague; but (in order to do away once for all with the mistaken notions these names give rise to) we should never say he has the St. Vitus' dance, the typhus, the dropsy, the ague, as there are certainly no diseases of theso and similar names of fixed, unvary- ing character.

9u

case of chronic (psoric) disease he is called on to cure, the duty of a careful apprehension of its ascertainable symptoms and characteristics is as indispensable for the homoeopathic physician as it was before that discovery, as no real cure of this or of other diseases can take place without a strict par- ticular treatment (individualization) of each case of disease — only that in this investigation some difference is to be made when the affection is an acute and rapidly developed disease, and when it is a chronic one; seeing that, in acute disease, the chief symptoms strike us and become evident to the senses more quickly, and hence much less time is requisite for tracing the picture of the disease and much fewer questions are re- quired to be asked, 1 as almost everything is self-evident, than in a chronic disease which has been gradually progressing for several years, in which the symptoms are much more difficult to be ascertained.

This individualizing examination of a case of disease, for which I shall only give in this place general directions, of which the practitioner will bear in mind only what is applicable for each individual case, demands of the physician nothing but freedom from prejudice and sound senses, attention in observing and fidelity in tracing the picture of the disease.

The patient details the history of his sufferings ; those about him tell what they have heard him complain of, how he has behaved and what they have noticed in him; the physician sees, hears, and remarks by his other senses what there is of an altered or unusual character about him. He writes down accurately all that the patient and his friends have told him in the very expressions used by them. Keeping silence him- self he allows them to say all they have to say, and refrains from interrupting them 2 unless they wander off to other mat-

1 Hence the following directions for investigating the symptoms are only partially applicable for acute diseases.

2 Every interruption breaks the train of thought of the narrators, and all they would have said at first does not again occur to them in precisely the same manner after that.

ters. The physician advises them at the beginning of the examination to speak slowly, in order that he may take down in writing the important parts of what the speakers say.

He begins a fresh line with every new circumstance men- tioned by the patient or his friends, so that the symptoms shall be all ranged separately one below the other. He can thus add to any one, that may at first have been related in too vague a manner, but subsequently more explicitly detailed.

When the narrators have finished what they would say of their own accord, the physician then reverts to each particular symptom and elicits more precise information respecting it in the following manner: he reads over the symptoms as they were related to him one by one, and about each of them he inquires for further particulars: e. g. at what period did this symptom occur? Was it previous to taking the medicine he had hitherto been using? Whilst taking the medicine? Or only some days after leaving off the medicine? What kind of pain, what sensation exactly, was it that occurred on this spot? Where was the precise spot? Did the pain occur in fits and by itself, at various times? Or was it continued, without in- termission? How long did it last? At what time of the day or night, and in what position of the body was it worst, or ceased entirely? What was the exact nature of this or that event or circumstance mentioned — discribed in plain words?

And thus the physician obtains more precise information respecting each particular detail, but without ever framing his questions so as to suggest the answer to the patient, 1 so that he shall only have to answer yes or no; else he will be misled to answer in the affirmative or negative something untrue, half true, or not strictly correct, either from indolence or in order

i For instance, the physician should not ask, Was not this or that circum- stance present? He should never be guilty of making such suggestions, which tend to seduce the patient into giving a false answer and a false ac- count of his symptoms.

to please his interrogator, from which a false picture of the disease and an unsuitable mode of treatment must result.

If in these voluntary details nothing has been mentioned respecting several parts or functions of the body or his mental state, the physician asks what more can be told in regard to these parts and these functions, or the state of his disposition or mind; 1 but in doing this he only makes use of general ex- pressions, in order that his informants may be obliged to enter into special details concerning them.

When the patient (for it is on him we have chiefly to rely for a description of his sensations, except in the case of feigned diseases) has by these details, given of his own accord and in answer to inquiries, furnished the requisite information and traced a tolerably perfect picture of the disease, the physician is at liberty and obliged (if he feels he has not yet gained all the information he needs) to ask more precise, more special questions. 2

1 For example, wbat is the character of his stools? How does he pass his water? How is it with his day and night sleep? What is the state of his dis- position, his humor, his memory? How about the thirst? What sort of taste has he in his mouth? What kinds of food and drink are most relished? What are most repugnant to him? Has each its full natural taste, or some other unnatural taste? How does he feel after eating or drinking? Has he any- thing to tell about the head, the limbs, or the abdomen?

'- For example, how often are his bowels moved? What is the exact char- acter of the stools? Did the whitish evacuation consist of mucus or fasces? Had he or had he not pains during the evacuation? What was their exact character, and where were they seated? What did the patient vomit? Is the bad taste in the mouth putrid, or bitter, or sour, or what? before or after eating, or during the repast? At what period of the day was it worst? What is the taste of what is eructated? Does the urine only become turbid on standing, or is it turbid when first discharged? What is its color when first emitted? Of what color is the sediment? How does he behave during sleep? Does he whine, moan, talk or cry out in his sleep? Docs ho start during sleep? Does he snore during inspiration, or during expiration? Does he lie only on his back, or on which side? Does he cover himself well up, or can he not bear the clothes on him? Does he easily awake, or does he sleep too soundly? How does he feel immediately after waking from sleep? How often does this or that symptom occur? what is the cause that produces it each time it occurs? does it come on whilst sitting, lying, standing, or when in motion? only when fasting, or in the morning, or only in the evening, or only after meal, or when does it usually appear? When did the rigor come on? was it merely a chilly sensation, or was he actually cold at the same

When the physician has finished writing down these particu- lars, he then makes a note of what he himself observes in the patient, 1 and ascertains how much of that was peculiar to the patient in his healthy state.

The symptoms and feelings of the patient during a previous course of medicine do not furnish the pure picture of the dis- ease; but, on the other hand, those symptoms and ailments which he suffered from before the use of the medicines, or after they had been discontinued for several days, give the true funda- mental idea of the original form of the disease, and these especially the physician must take note of. When the disease is of a chronic character, and the patient has been taking medicine up to the time he is seen, the physician may with advantage leave him some days quite without medicine, or in the meantime administer something of an unmedicinal nature and defer to a subsequent period the more precise scrutiny of the morbid symptoms, in order to be able to grasp in their purity the permanent uncontaminated symptoms of the old affection and to form a faithful picture of the disease.

time? if so. in what parts? or while feeling chilly, was he actually warm to the touch? was it merely a sensation of cold, without shivering? was he hot, without redness of the face? what parts of him were hot to the touch? or did he complain of heat without being hot to the touch? How long did the chilliness last? how long the hot stage? When did the hirst come on— dur- ing the cold stage? during the heat? or previous to it? or subsequently to it? How great was the thirst, and what was the beverage desired? When did the sweat come on— at the beginning or the end of the heat? or how many hours after the heat? when asleep or when awake? How great was the sweat? was it warm or cold? on what parts? how did it smell? What does he complain of before or during the cold stage? what during the hot stage? what after it? what during or after the sweating stage? &c.

i For example, how the patient behaved during the visit— whether he was morose, quarrelsome, hasty, lachrymose, anxious, despairing or sad, or hope- ful, calm, &c. Whether he was in a drowsy state or in any way dull of com- prehension; whether he spoke hoarsely, or in a low tone, or incoherently, or how otherwise did he talk? what was the color of his face and eyes, and of his skin generally? what degree of liveliness and power was there in his ex- pression and eyes? what was the state of his tongue, his breathing, the smell from his mouth, and his hearing? were his pupils dilated or contracted? how rapidly and to what extent did they alter in the dark and in the light? what was the character of the pulse? what the condition of the abdomen? how moist or hot. how cold or dry to the touch, was the skin of this or that part, or generally? whether ho lay with head thrown back, with mouth half or wholly open, with the arms placed above the head, on his back, or in what other position? whateffort did he make to raise himself? and anything else in him that may strike the physician as being remarkable.

But if it be a disease of a rapid course, and if its serious character admit of no delay, the physician must content him- self with observing the morbid condition, altered though it may be by medicines, if he cannot ascertain what symptoms were present before the employment of the medicines, — in order that he may at least form a just apprehension of the complete picture of the disease in its actual condition, that is to say, of the conjoint malady formed by the medicinal and original diseases, which from the use of inappropriate drugs is generally more serious and dangerous than was the original disease, and hence demands prompt and efficient aid; and by thus tracing out the complete picture of the disease he will be enabled to combat it with a suitable homoeopathic remedy, so that the patient shall not fall a sacrifice to the injurious drugs he has swallowed.

If the disease have been brought on a short time or, in the case of a chronic affection, a considerable time previously, by some obvious cause, then the patient — or his friends when questioned privately — will mention it either spontaneously or when carefully interrogated. 1

While inquiring into the state of chronic diseases, the par- ticular circumstances of the patient with regard to his ordinary occupations, his usual mode of living and diet, his domestic situation, and so forth, must be well considered and scrutinized, to ascertain what there is in them that may tend to produce or to maintain disease, in order that by their removal the recovery may be promoted. 1

1 Any causes of a disgraceful character, which the patient or his friends do not like to confess, at least not voluntarily, the physician must endoavor to elicit by skilfully framing his questions, or by private information. To these belong poisoning or attempted suicide, onanism, indulgence in ordin- ary or unnatural debauchery, excesses in wine, cordials, punch and other ardent beverages, or coffee,— over-indulgence in eating generally, or in some particular food of a hurtful character,— infection with venereal disease or itch, unfortunate lovo, jealousy, domestic infelicity, worry, grief on ac- count of some family misfortune, ill-usage, balked revenge, injured pride, embarrassment of a pecuniary nature, superstitious fear.— hunger.— or an imperfection in the private parts, a rupture, a prolapsus, and so forth.

In chronic diseases the investigation of the signs of disease above mentioned, and of all others, must be pursued as care- fully and circumstantially as possible, and the most minute peculiarities must be attended to, partly because in these diseases they are the most characteristic and least resemble those of acute diseases, and if a cure is to be effected they cannot be too accurately noted; partly because the patients become so used to their long sufferings that they pay little or no heed to the lesser accessory symptoms, which are often very pregnant with meaning (characteristics) — often very useful in determining the choice of the remedy — and regard them almost as a necessary part of their condition, almost as health, the real feeling of which they have well-nigh forgotten in their sometimes fifteen or twenty years of suffering, and they can scarcely bring themselves to believe that these acces- sory symptoms, these greater or lesser deviations from the healthy state, can have any connection with their principal malady.

■8 96.

Besides this, patients themselves differ so much in their dispositions, that some, especially the so-called hypochondriacs and other persons of great sensitiveness and impatient of suf- fering, portray their symptoms in too vivid colors and, in

1 In chronic diseases of females it is specially necessary to pay attention to pregnancy, sterility, sexual desire, accouchements, miscarriages, suck- ling, and the state of the menstrual discharge. With respect to the last- named more particularly, we should not neglect to ascertain if it recurs at too short intervals, or is delayed beyond the proper time, how many days it lasts, whether its flow is continuous or interrupted, what is its general quantity, how dark is its color, whether there is leucorrlioea (whites) before its appearances or after its termination, but especially by what bodily and mental ailments, what sensations and pains, it is preceded, accompanied or followed; if there is leucorrhcea. what is its nature, what sensations attend its flow, in what quantity it is, and what are the conditions and occasions under which it occurs?

order to induce the physician to give them relief, describe their ailments in exaggerated expressions. 1

Other individuals of an opposite character, however, partly from indolence, partly from false modesty, partly from a kind of mildness of disposition or weakness of mind, refrain from mentioning a number of their symptoms, describe them in vague terms, or allege some of them to be of no consequence.

Now, as certainly as we should listen particularly to the patient's description of his sufferings and sensations, and attach credence especially to his own expressions wherewith he endeavors to make us understand his ailments — because in the mouths of his friends and attendants they are usually altered and erroneously stated, — so certainly, on the other hand, in all diseases, but especially in the chronic ones, the investiga- tion of the true, complete picture and its peculiarities demand especial circumspection, tact, knowledge of human nature, caution in conducting the inquiry and patience in an eminent degree.

On the whole, the investigation of acute diseases, or of such as have existed but a short time, is much the easiest for the physician, because all the phenomena and deviations from the health that has been but recently lost are still fresh in the memory of the patient and his friends, still continue to be novel and striking. The physician certainly requires to know everything in such cases also; but he has much less to inquire into; they are for the most part spontaneously detailed to him.

1 A pure fabrication of symptoms and sufferings will never bo met with in hypochondriacs, even in the most impatient of them— a comparison of the sufferings they complain of at various times when the physician gives them nothing at all, or something quite unmedicinal, proves this plainly ;— but we must deduct something from their exaggeration, at all events ascribe the strong character of their expressions to their excessive sensibility, In which case this very exaggeration of their expressions when talking of their ail- ments becomes of itself an important symptom in the list of features of which the portrait of the disease is composed. The case is different with insane persons and rascally feigners of disease.

In investigating the totality of the symptoms of epidemic and sporadic diseases it is quite immaterial whether or no something similar has ever appeared in the world before under the same or any other name. The novelty or peculiarity of a disease of that kind makes no difference either in the mode of examining or of treating it, as the physician must any way regard the pure picture of every prevailing disease as if it were something new and unknown, and investigate it thor- oughly for itself, if he desire to practice medicine in a real and radical manner, never substituting conjecture for actual observation, never taking for granted that the case of disease before him is already wholly or partially known, but always carefully examining it in all its phases; and this mode of pro- cedure is all the more requisite in such cases, as a careful examination will show that every prevailing disease is in many respects a phenomenon of a unique character, differing vastly from all previous epidemics, to which certain names have been falsely applied— with the exception of those epi- demics resulting from a contagious principle that always remain the same, such as smallpox, measles, &c.

It may easily happen that in the first case of an epidemic disease that presents itself to the physician's notice he does not at once obtain a knowledge of its complete picture, as it is only by a close observation of several cases of every such collective disease that he can become conversant with the totality of its signs and symptoms. The carefully observing physician can, however, from the examination of even the first and second patients, often arrive so nearly at a knowledge of the true state as to have in his mind a characteristic portrait of it, and even to succeed in finding a suitable, homceopathic- ally adapted remedy for it.

In the course of writing down the symptoms of several cases of this kind the sketch of the disease picture becomes

ever more and more complete, not more spun out and verbose, but more significant (more characteristic), and including more of the peculiarities of this collective disease; on the one hand, the general symptom (e. g. loss of appetite, sleeplessness, &c. ) become precisely defined as to their peculiarities; and on the other, the more marked and special symptoms which are peculiar to but few diseases and of rarer occurrence, at least in the same combination, become prominent and constitute what is characteristic of this malady. 1 All those affected with the disease prevailing at a given time have certainly con- tracted it from one and the same source and hence are suffering from the same disease; but the whole extent of such an epi- demic disease and the totalitv of its symptoms (the knowledge whereof, which is essential for enabling us to choose the most suitable homoeopathic remedy for this array of symptoms, is obtained by a complete survey of the morbid picture) cannot be iearned from one single patient, but is only to be perfectly deduced (abstracted) and ascertained from the sufferings of several patients of different constitutions.

In the same manner as has here been taught relative to the epidemic diseases, which are generally of an acute character, the miasmatic chronic maladies, which, as I have shown, always remain the same in their essential nature, especially the psora, must be inA r estigated as the whole sphere of their symptoms, in a much more minute manner than has ever been done before, for in them also one patient only exhibits a por- tion of their symptoms, a second, a third, and so on, present some other symptoms, which also are but a (dissevered, as it were) portion of the totality of the symptoms which constitute the entire extent of this malady, so that the whole array of the symptoms belonging to such a miasmatic, chronic disease, and especially to the psora, can only be ascertained from the observation of very many single patients affected with such a

i The physician who has already, in the first cases, been able to choose a remedy approximating to the homoeopathic specific, will, from the subse- quent cases, be enabled either to verify the suitableness of the medicine chosen, or to discover a more appropriate, the most appropriate homoeo- pathic remedy.

chronic disease, and without a complete survey and collective picture of these symptoms the medicines capable of curing the whole malady homoeopathically (to-wit, the antipsorics) cannot be discovered; and these medicines are, at the same time, the true remedies of the several patients suffering from such chronic affections.

When the totality of the symptoms that specially mark and distinguish the case of disease or, in other words, when the picture of the disease, whatever be its kind, is once accurately sketched, 1 the most difficult part of the task is accomplished. The physician has then the picture of the disease, especially if it be a chronic one, always before him to guide him in his treatment; he can investigate it in all its parts and can pick out the characteristic symptoms, in order to oppose to these, that is to say, to the whole malady itself, a very similar artificial morbific force, in the shape of a homoeopathically chosen medicinal substance, selected from the lists of symp- toms of all the medicines whose pure effects have been as- certained. And when, during the treatment, he wishes to ascertain what has been the effect of the medicine, and what

1 The old school physician gave himself very little trouble in this matter in his mode of treatment. He would not listen to any minute detail of all the circumstances of his case by the patient; indeed, he frequently cut him short in his relation of his sufferings, in order that he might not be delayed in the rapid writing of his prescription, composed of a variety of ingredients unknown to him in their true effects. No allopathic physician, as has been said, sought to learn all the minute circumstances of the patient's case, and still let-sdid he make a note in wr iting of thru. On seeing the patient again several days afterwards, he recollected nothing concerning 'the few details he had heard at the first visit (having in the meantime seen so many other patients laboring under different affections); he had allowed everything to go in at one ear and out at the other. At subsequent visits ho only asked a few general questions, went through the ceremony of feeling the pulse at the wrist, looked at the tongue, and at the same moment wrote another pre- scription, on equally irrational principles, or ordered the first one to be con- tinued (in considerable quantities several times a day), and, with a graceful bow, he hurried off to the fiftieth or sixtieth patient he had to visit, in this thoughtless way, in the course of that forenoon. The profession which of all others requires actually the most reflection, a conscientious, careful ex- amination of the state of each individual patient and a special treatment founded thereon, was conducted in this manner by persons who called themselves physicians, rational practitioners. The result, as might natural ly be expected, was almost invariably bad ; and yet patients had to go to them for advice, partly because there were none better to be had, partly for fash- ion's sake.

change has taken place in the patient's state, at this fresh ex- amination of the patient he only needs to strike out of the list of the symptoms noted down at the first visit those that have become ameliorated, to mark what still remains, and add any new symptoms that may have supervened.

The second point of the business of a true physician relates to acquiring a knowledge of the instruments intended for the cure of the natural diseases, investigating the pathogenetic power of the medicines, in order, when called on to cure, to be able to select from among them one, from the list of whose symptoms an artificial disease may be constructed, as similar as possible to the totality of the principal symptoms of the natural disease sought to be cured.

The whole pathogenetic effects of the several medicines must be known; that is to say, all the morbid symptoms and alter- ations in the health, that each of them is specially capable of developing in the healthy individual must first have been ob- served as far as possible, before we can hope to be able to find among them, and to select, suitable homoeopathic remedies for most of the natural diseases.

If, in order to ascertain this, medicines be given to sick persons only, even though they be administered singly and alone, then little or nothing precise is seen of their pure effects, as those peculiar alterations of the health to be expected from the medicines are mixed up with the symptoms of the disease, and can seldom be distinctly observed.

There is, therefore, no other possible way in which the peculiar effects of medicines on the health of individuals can be accurately ascertained — there is no sure, no more natural way of accomplishing this object, than to administer the sev- eral medicines experimentally, in moderate doses, to healthy

persons, in order to ascertain what changes, symptoms and signs of their influence each individually produces on the health of the body and of the mind; that is to say, what dis- ease elements they are able and tend to produce, 1 since, as has been demonstrated (§§ 24 — 27), all the curative powers of medicines lies in this power they possess of changing the state of man's health, and is revealed by observation of the latter.

I was the first that opened up this path, which I have pur- sued with a perseverance that could only arise and be kept up by a perfect conviction of the great truth, fraught with such blessings to humanity, that it is only by the homoeopathic employment of medicines 2 that the certain cure of human maladies is possible. 3

1 Not one single pliysieian. as far as I know, during the previous two thou- sand five hundred years, thought of this so natural, so absolutely uecessary and only genuine mode of testing medicines for their pure and peculiar effects in deranging the health of man, in order to learn what morbid state each medicine is capable of curing, except the great and immortal Albrecht von Haller. He alone, besides myself, saw the necessity of this (aide the Preface to the Pharm ieopaein Helvet . Basil, 1771, fol.. p. 12): Nempe primum in corpore sano medela tentanda est. nine pereyrina utta mUcebi; odoreque et sapore ejus exploratis. exigua illius dosis ingerenda et ad omnes, quas iude coutingunt. affectiones. quis pulsus, qui calor. quifi respiratio, quaenam ex- cretiones. attendenduni. Inde ad ductum pbaenomenorum. in sano obviorum, transeas ad experimenta in corpore asgroto.” &c. But no one. not a single physician, attended to or followed up this invaluable hint.

2 It is impossible that there can be another true, best method of curing dynamic diseases (i. e. all diseases not strictly surgical) besides homoeo- pathy, just as it is impossible to draw more than one straight line betwixt two given points. He who imagines that there are other modes of curing diseases besides it could not have appreciated homoeopathy fundamentally nor practiced it with sufficient care, nor could he ever have seen or read cases of properly performed homoeopathic cures; nor, on the other hand, could he have discerned the baselessness of all allopathic modes of treating diseases and their bad or even dreadful effects, if. with such lax indifference, be places the only true healing art on an equality with those hurtful methods of treatment, or alleges the latter to be auxiliaries to homoeopathy which it could not do without! My true, conscientious followers, the pure homoeopathists, with their uccessful, almost never-failing treatment, might teach these persons bettor.(°)

3 The first fruits of these lafoorr,. as perfect as they could be at that time. I recorded in the Fragmcnta de riribus medicamentorum pOnUivis, sive in sano corpore hv mano observatix, pts. i. ii, Lipsiae, 8, 1805, up. .1. A. Barth; the more mature fruits in the Reine ArzntimilteUehre, I Th., dritte Ausg. ; II Th.. dritte Ausg.. 1833 ; III Th., zweite Ausg., 1825; IV Th., zw. Ausg., 1825; V Th.. zw. Ausg., 1826; VI Th., zw. Ausg., 1827 [English translation, Materia Medica Pura, vols, i and ii] ; and in the second, third and fourth parts of Die ehron- ischm Krankheiten, 1828, 1830, Dresden bei Arnold [2nd edit., with a fifth part. DUsseldorf bei Schaub, 1835, 1830].

I saw, moreover, that the morbid lesions which previous authors had observed to result from medicinal substances when taken into the stomach of healthy persons, either in large doses given by mistake or in order to produce death in themselves or others, or under other circumstances, accorded very much with my own observations when experimenting with the same substances on myself and other healthy individuals. These authors give details of what occurred as histories of poisoning and as proofs of the pernicious effects of these powerful sub- stances, chiefly in order to warn others from their use ; partly also for the sake of exalting their own skill, when, under the use of the remedies they employed to combat these dangerous accidents, health gradually returned; but partly also, when the persons so effected died under their treatment, in order to seek their own justification in the dangerous character of these substances, which they then termed poisons. None of these observers ever dreamed that the symptoms they recorded merely as proofs of the noxious and poisonous character of these substances were sure revelations of the power of these drugs to extinguish curatively similar symptoms occurring in natural diseases, that these their pathogenetic phenomena were intimations of their homoeopathic curative action, and that the only possible way to ascertain their medicinal powers is to observe those changes of health medicines are capable of producing in the healthy organism; for the pure, peculiar powers of medicines available for the cure of disease are to be learned neither by any ingenious a priori speculations, nor by the smell, taste or appearance of the drugs, nor by their chemical analysis, nor yet by the employment of Several of them at one time in a mixture (prescription) in diseases; it was never suspected that these histories of medicinal diseases would one day furnish the first rudiments of the true, pure materia medica, which from the earliest times until now has consisted solely of false conjectures and fictions of the im- agination — that is to say, did not exist at all. 1

1 See what I have said on this subject in the “Examination of the Sources of the Ordinary Materia Medica.” prefixed to the third part of my Rtint Arznevmitttllehre [translated in the Mat- ria Medica Pura, vol. ii].

The agreement of my observations on the pure effects of medicines with these older ones — although they were recorded without reference to any therapeutic object, — and the very concordance of these accounts with others of the same kind by different authors, must easily convince us that medicinal sub- stances act in the morbid changes they produce in the healthy human body according to fixed, eternal laws of nature, and by virtue of these are enabled to produce certain, reliable disease symptoms, each according to its own peculiar character.

In those older descriptions of the often dangerous effects of medicines ingested in excessively large doses we notice certain states that were produced, not at the commencement, but towards the termination of these sad events, and which were of an exactly opposite nature to. those that first appeared. These symptoms, the very reverse of the primary action {I 63) or proper action of the medicines on the vital force, are the reaction of the vital force of the organism, its secondary action (§1 62 — 67), of which, however, there is seldom or hardly ever the least trace from experiments with moderate doses on healthy bodies, and from small doses none whatever. In the homoeopathic curative operation the living organism reacts from these only so much as is requisite to raise the health again to the normal healthy state 67).

The only exceptions to this are the narcotic medicines. As- they, in their primary action, take away sometimes the sensi- bility and sensation, sometimes the irritability, it frequently happens that in their secondary action, even from moderate experimental doses on healthy bodies, an increased sensibility (and a greater irritability) is observable.

With the exception of these narcotic substances, in experi- ments with moderate doses of medicine of healthy bodies, we observe only their primary action, i. e. those symptoms where-

with the medicine deranges the health of the human being and develops in him a morbid state of longer or shorter duration.

Among these symptoms, there occur in the case of some medicines not a few which are partially, or under certain con- ditions, directly opposite to other symptoms that have pre- viously or subsequently appeared, but which are not therefore to be regarded as actual secondary action or the mere reaction of the vital force, but which only represent the alternating state of the various paroxysms of the primary action; they are termed alternating actions.

Some symptoms are produced by the medicines more fre- quently — that is to say, in many individuals, others more rarely or in few persons, some only in very few healthy bodies.

To the latter category belong the so-called idiosyncrasies, by •which are meant peculiar corporeal constitutions which, al- though otherwise healthy, possess a disposition to be brought into a more or less morbid state by certain things which seem to produce no impression and no change in many other in- dividuals. 1 But this inability to make an impression on every one is only apparent. For as two things are required for the production of these as well as all other morbid alterations in the health of man — to- wit, the inherent power of the influenc- ing substance, and the capability of the vital force that animates the organism to be influenced by it — the obvious de- rangements of health in the so-called idiosyncrasies cannot be laid to the account of these peculiar constitutions alone, but they must be also ascribed to these things that produce them, in which must lie the power of making the same impressions on all human bodies, yet in such a manner that but a small number of healthy constitutions have a tendency to allow

1 Som3 few persons are apt to faint from the smell of roses, and to fall into many other morbid, and sometimes dangerous states from partaking of mussels, crabs or the roe of the barbel, from touching the leaves of some kinds of sumach, &c.

themselves to be brought into such an obvious morbid con- dition by them. That these agents do actually make this impression on every healthy body is shown by this, that when employed as remedies they render effectual homoeopathic service 1 to all sick persons for morbid symptoms similar to those they seem to be only capable of producing in so-called idiosyncratic individuals.

Every medicine exhibits peculiar actions on the human frame, which are not produced in exactly the same manner by any other medicinal substance of a different kind. 2

As certainly as every species of plant differs in its external form, mode of life and growth, in its taste and smell from every other species and genus of plant, as certainly as every mineral and salt differs from all others, in its external as well as its internal physical and chemical, properties (which alone should have sufficed to prevent any confounding of one with another), so certainly do they all differ and diverge among themselves in their pathogenetic — consequently also in their therapeutic — effects. 3 Each of these substances produces al- terations in the health of human beings in a peculiar, different,

1 Thus the Princess Maria Porpbyrogenita restored her brother, the Em- peror Alexius, who suffered from fain tings, by sprinkling him with rose water (to tu)i> p66W o-raAay/xa) in the presence of his aunt Eudoxia (Hint byz. Alexias, lib. xv, p. 503, ed. Posser); and Horstius (Oper., iii, p. 59) saw great benefit from rose vinegar in cases of syncope. (“)

2 This fact was also perceived by the estimable A. v. Haller, who says (Preface to his Hist, stirp. helv.): “Latet immensa virium diversitas in iis ip>is plantis, quarum facies externas dudum novimus. aiiimas quasi et quod- cunque caMestius habent. nondum perspeximus.”

3 Anyone who has a thorough knowledge of, andean appreciate the re- markable difference of effects OB the health of man of every single substance from those of every other, will readily perceive that among them there can be. in a medicinal point of view, no equivalent remedies whatever, no surrogates. Only those who do not know the pure, positive effects of the different medicines can be so foolish as to try to persuade us that one can serve in the stead of the other, and can in the same disease prove just as serviceable as the other. Thus do ignorant children confound the most essentially different things, because they scarcely know their external ap- pearances, far less their real value, their true importance and their very dissimilar inherent properties.

yet determinate manner, so as to preclude the possibility of confounding one with the other. x («)

Therefore medicines, on which depend man's life and death, disease and health, must be thoroughly and most carefully distinguished from one another, and for this purpose tested by careful, pure experiments on the healthy body for the purpose of ascertaining their powers and real effects, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of them, and to enable us to avoid any mistake in their employment in diseases, for it is only by correct selection of them that the greatest of all earthly bless- ings, the health of the body and of the mind, can be rapidly and permanently restored.

In proving medicines to ascertain their effects on the health}' body, it must be borne in mind that the strong, heroic sub- stances, as they are termed, are liable even in small doses to produce changes in the health even of robust persons. Those of milder power must be given for these experiments in more

1 If this be pure truth, as it undoubtedly is, then no physician who would not be regarded as devoid of reason, and who would not act contrary to the dictates of his conscience, the sole arbiter of real worth, can employ in the treatment of diseases any medicinal substance but one with whose rea] significance he is thoroughly and perfectly conversant, i. e. whoso positive action on the health of heall hy individuals he has so accurately tested 1 hat he knows for certain that it is capable of producing a very similar morbid state, more similar than any other medicine with which he is perfectly ac- quainted, to that presented by the case of disease he intends to cure by means of it; for, as has been shown above, neither man, nor rnighty Nature herself, can effect a perfect, rapid and permanent cure otherwise than w it h a homoeopathic remedy. Henceforth no true physician can abstain from making such experiments, in order to obtain this most necessary and only knowledge of the medicines that are essential to cure, this knowledge which has hitherto been neglected by the physicians in all ages. In all former ages— posterity will scarcely believe it— physicians have hitherto contented themselves with blindly prescribing for diseases medicines whose value was unknown, and which had never been te*Ud relative to their highly Important, very various, pure, dynamic action on the health of man; and, moreover, they mingled several of these unknown medicines that differed so vastly, among each other in one formula, and left it to chance to determine what effect should thereby be produced on the patient. This is just as if a mad- man should force his way into the workshop of an artisan, seize upon hand- /ids of very different tools, with the Use of all of which he in quite unacquainted, in order, as he imagines, to work at the objects of art he sees around him. I need hardly remark that these would be destroyed, I may say utterly ruined, by his senseless operations.

considerable quantities; in order to observe the action of the very weakest, however, the subjects of experiment should be persons free from disease, and who are delicate, irritable and sensitive.

In these experiments — on which depends the exactitude of the whole medical art, and the weal of all future generations of mankind — no other medicines should be employed except such as are perfectly well known, and of whose purity, genu- ineness and energy we are thoroughly assured.

Each of these medicines must be taken in a perfectly simple, unadulterated form; the indigenous plants in the form of freshly expressed juice, mixed with a little alcohol to prevent it spoiling ; exotic vegetable substances, however, in the form of powder, or tincture prepared with alcohol when they were in the fresh state, and afterwards mingled with a certain pi'o- portion of water; salts and gums, however, should be dissolved in water just before being taken. If the plant can only be procured in its dry state, and if its powers are naturally weak, in that case there may be used for the experiment an infusion of it, made by cutting the herb into small pieces and pouring boiling water on it, so as to extract its medicinal parts; im- mediately after its preparation it must be swallowed whilst still warm, as all expressed vegetable juices and all aqueous infusions of herbs, without the addition of spirit, pass rapidly into fermentation and decomposition, whereby all their medic- inal properties are lost.

For these experiments every medicinal substance must be employed quite alone and perfectly pure, without the admix- ture of any foreign substance, and without taking anything else of a medicinal nature the same day, nor yet on the sub- sequent days, nor during all the time we wish to observe the effects of the medicine. «*)

During all the time the experiment lasts the diet must be

strictly regulated; it should be as much as possible destitute of spices, of a purely nutritious and simple character, green vegetables, 1 roots, and all salads and herb soups (which, even when most carefully prepared, possess some disturbing medi- cinal qualities) should be avoided. The drinks are to be those usually partaken of, as little stimulating as possible. 2

The person who is proving the medicine must during the whole time of the experiment avoid all over exertion of mind and body, all sorts of dissipation and disturbing passions; he should have no urgent business to detract his attention; he must devote himself to careful self -observation and not be disturbed whilst so engaged; his body must be in what is for him a good state of health, and ho must possess a sufficient amount of intelligence to be able to express and describe his sensations in accurate terms. W

The medicines must be tested on both males and females, in order also to reveal the alterations of the health they produce in the sexual sphere.

The most recent observations have shown that medicinal substances, when taken in their crude state by the experimenter for the purpose of testing their peculiar effects, do not exhibit nearly the full amount of the powers that lie hidden in them which they do when they are taken for the same object in high dilutions potentized by proper trituration and succession, by which simple operations the powers which in their crude state lay hidden and. as it were, dormant, are developed and roused into activity to an incredible extent. In this manner we now find it best to investigate the medicinal powers even of such substances as are deemed weak, and the plan we adopt is to

Young green peas, green French beans and in all cases carrots are allow-

able, as the least medicinal vegetables.

= The subject of experiment must either be not in the habit of taking pure wine, brandy, coffee or tea, or he must have totally abstained for a consid- erable time previously from the use of these injurious beverages, some of which are stimulating, others medicinal.

give to the experimenter, on an empty stomach, daily from four to six very small globules of the thirtieth potentized dilution of such a substance, moistened with a little water, and let him continue this for several days.

If the effects that result from such a dose are but slight, a few more globules may be taken daily, until they become more distinct and stronger and the alterations of the health more conspicuous ; for all persons are not affected by a medicine in an equally great degree ; on the contrary, there is a vast variety in this respect, so that sometimes an apparently weak indi- vidual may be scarcely at all affected by moderate doses of a medicine known to be of a powerful character, whilst he is strongly enough acted on by some others of a much weaker kind. And, on the other hand, there are very robust persons who experience very considerable morbid symptoms from an apparently mild medicine, and only slighter symptoms from stronger drugs. Now, as this cannot be known beforehand, it is advisable to commence in every instance with a small dose of the drug and, where suitable and requisite, to increase the dose more and more from day to day.< a >

If, at the very commencement, the first dose administered shall have been sufficiently strong, this advantage is gained, that the experimenter learns the order of succession of the symptoms and can note down accurately the period at which each occurs, which is very useful in leading to a knowledge of the genius of the medicine, for then the order of the primary actions, as also that of the alternating actions, is observed in the most unambiguous manner. A very moderate dose even, often suffices for the experiment, provided only the experi- menter is endowed with sufficiently delicate sensitiveness, and is very attentive to his sensations. The duration of the action of a drug can only be ascertained by a comparison of several experiments.

If however, in order to ascertain anything at all, the same

medicine must be given to the same person to test for several successive days in ever-increasing doses, we thereby learn, no doubt, the various morbid states this medicine is capable of producing in a general manner, but we do not ascertain their order of succession ; and the subsequent dose often removes, curatively, some one or other of the symptoms caused by the previous dose, or develops in its stead an opposite state ; such symptoms should be enclosed in brackets, to mark their am- biguity, until subsequent purer experiments show whether they are the reaction of the organism and secondary action or an alternating action of this medicine.

But when the object is, without reference to the sequential order of the phenomena and the duration of the action of the drug, only to ascertain the symptoms themselves, especially those of a weak medicinal substance, in that case the preferable course to pursue is to give it for several successive days, in- creasing the dose every day. ( a > In this manner the action of an unknown medicine, even of the mildest nature, will be revealed, especially if tested on sensitive persons.

On experiencing any particular sensation from the medicine, it is useful, indeed necessary, in order to determine the exact character of the symptom, to assume various positions while it lasts, and to observe whether, by moving the part affected, by walking in the room or the open air, by standing, sitting or lying, the symptom is increased, diminished or removed, and whether it returns on again assuming the position in which it was first observed, — whether it is altered by eating or drink- ing, or by any other condition, or by speaking, coughing, sneezing or any other action of the body, and at the same time to note at what time of the day or night it usually occurs in the most marked manner, whereby what is peculiar to and characteristic of each symptom will become apparent.

All external influences, and more especially medicines, possess the property of producing in the health of the living organism a particular kind of alteration peculiar to themselves; but all the symptoms peculiar to a medicine do not appear in one person, nor all at once, nor in the same experiment, but some occur in one person chiefly at one time, others again during a second or third trial ; in another person some other symptoms appear, but in such a manner that probably some of the phenomena are observed in the fourth, eighth or tenth person which had already appeared in the second, sixth or ninth person, and so forth; moreover, they may not recur at the same hour.

The whole of the elements of disease a medicine is capable of producing can only be brought to anything like complete- ness by numerous observations on suitable persons of both sexes and of various constitutions. We can only be assured that a medicine has been thoroughly proved in regard to the morbid states it can produce — that is to say, in regard to its pure powers of altering the health of man — when subsequent experimenters can notice little of a novel character from its action, and almost always only the same symptoms as had been already observed by others.

(Although, as has been said, a medicine, on being proved on healthy subjects, cannot develop in one person all the al- terations of health it is capable of causing, but can only do this when given to many different individuals, varying in their corporeal and mental constitution, yet the tendency to excite all these symptoms in every human being exists in it \_l 117], according to an eternal and immutable law of nature, by virtue of which all its effects, even those that are but rarely de- veloped in the healthy person, are brought into operation in the case of every individual if administered to him when he is in a morbid state presenting similar symptoms; it then, even in the smallest dose, being homoeopathically selected, silently produces in the patient an artificial state closely resembling the natural disease, which rapidly and permanently [homoeop- athically] frees and cures him of his original malady.)

The more moderate, within certain limits, the doses of the medicine used for such experiments are — provided we en- deavor to facilitate the observation by the selection of a person who is a lover of truth, temperate in all respects, of delicate feelings, and who can direct the most minute attention to his sensations — so much the more distinctly are the primary effects developed, and only these, which are most worth knowing, occur without any admixture of secondary effects or reactions of the vital force. When, however, excessively large doses are used there occur at the same time not only a number of secondary effects among the symptoms, but the primary effects also come on in such hurried confusion and with such im- petuosity that nothing can be accurately observed; let alone the danger attending them, which no one who has any regard for his fellow-creatures, and who looks on the meanest of mankind as his brother, will deem an indifferent matter.

All the sufferings, accidents and changes of the health of the experimenter during the action of a medicine (provided the above conditions [_U 124 — 127] essential to a good and pure experiment are complied with) are solely derived from this medicine, and must be regarded and registered as belonging peculiarly to this medicine, as symptoms of this medicine, even though the experimenter had observed, a considerable time previously, the spontaneous occurrence of similar phenom- ena in himself. The reappearance of these during the trial of the medicine only shows that this individual is, by virtue of his peculiar constitution, particularly disposed to have such symptoms excited in him. In this case they are the effect of the medicine; the symptoms do not arise spontaneously while the medicine that has been taken is exercising an influence over the health of the whole system, but are produced by the medicine.

When the physician does not make the trial of the medicine on himself, but gives it to another person, the latter must note down distinctly the sensations, sufferings, accidents and changes

of health he experiences at the time of their occurrence, men- tioning the time after the ingestion of the drug when each symptom arose and, if it lasts long, the period of its duration. The physician looks over the report in the presence of the experimenter immediately after the experiment is concluded, or if the trial lasts several days he does this every day, in order, whilst everything is still fresh in his memory, to question him about the exact nature of every one of these circum- stances, and to write down the more precise details so elicited, or to make such alterations as the experimenter may suggest. 1

8 140.

If the person cannot write, the physician must be informed by him every day of what has occurred to him, and how it took place. What is noted down as authentic information on this point, however, must be chiefly the voluntary narration of the person who makes the experiment, nothing conjectural and as little as possible derived from answers to leading questions should be admitted ; everything must be ascertained with the same caution as I have counselled above (U 84 — 99) for the investigation of the phenomena and for tracing the picture of natural diseases.

But the best provings of the pure effects of simple medicines in altering the human health, and of the artifioial diseases and symptoms they are capable of developing in the healthy in- dividual, are those which the healthy, unprejudiced and sensitive physician institutes on himself with all the caution and care here enjoined. He knows with the greatest certainty the things he has experienced in his own person. 2

1 He who makes known co the medical world the results of such experi- ments becomes thereby responsible for the trustworthiness of the person experimented on and his statements, and justly so, as the weal of suffering humanity is here at stake.

2 Those trials made by the physician on himself have for him other and inestimable advantages. In the first place, the great truth that the medi- cinal virtue of all drugs, whereon depends their curative power, lies in the changes of health he has himself undergone from the medicines he has proved, and the morbid states he has himself experienced from them, be- comes for him an incontrovertible fact. Again, by such noteworthy obser- vations on himself he will be brought to understand his own sensations, his mode of thinking and his disposition (the foundation of all true wisdom: yvudi. vtavrbv), and he will be also trained to be, what every physician ought

But how some symptoms 1 of the simple medicine employed for a curative purpose can be distinguished amongst the symptoms of the original malady, even in diseases, especially in those of a chronic character that usually remain unaltered, is a subject appertaining to the higher art of judgment, and must be left exclusively to masters in observation.

If we have thus tested on the healthy individual a consider- able number of simple medicines and carefully and faithfully registered all the disease elements and symptoms they are capable of developing as artificial disease-producers, then only have we a true materia medica — a collection of real, pure, reliable 2 modes of action of simple medicinal substances, a

to be, a good observer. All our observations on otbers are not nearly so in- teresting as those made on ourselves. The observer of others must always dread lest the experimenter did not feel exactly what he said, or lest he did not describe his sensations with the most appropriate expressions. He must always remain in doubt whether he has not been deceived, at least to some extent. These obstacles to the knowledge of the truth, which can never be thoroughly surmounted in our investigations of the artificial morbid symp- toms that occur in others from the ingestion of medicines, cease entirely when we make the trials on ourselves. He who makes these trials on him- self knows for certain what he has felt, and each trial is a new inducement for him to investigate the powers of other medicines. He thus becomes more and more practiced in the art of observing, of such importance to the phy- sician, by continuing to observe himself, the one on whom he can most rely and who will never deceive him; and this he will do all the more zealously as these experiments on himself promise to give him a reliable knowledge of the true value and significance of the instruments of cure that are still to a great degree unknown to our art. Let it not be imagined that such slight indispositions caused by taking medicines for the purpose of proving them can be in the main injurious to the health. Experience shows, on the con- trary, that the organism of theprover becomes, by these frequent attacks on his health, all the more expert in repelling all external influences inimical to his frame and all artificial and natural morbific noxious agents, and be- comes more hardened to resist everything of an injurious character, by means of these moderate “experiments on his own person with medicines. His health becomes more unalterable; he becomes more robust, as all 'ex- perience shows.C)

1 Symptoms which, during the whole course of the disease, might have been observed only a long time previously, or never before, consequently new ones, belonging to the medicine.

- Latterly it has been the habit to entrust the proving of medicines to un- known persons at a distance, who were paid for their work, and the infor- mation so obtained was printed. But by so doing, the work which is of all Others the most important, which is to form the basisof the only true heal- ing art. and which demands the greatest moral certainty and trustworthy

volume of the book of nature, wherein is recorded a consider- able array of the peculiar changes of the health and symptoms ascertained to belong to each of the powerful medicines, as they were revealed to the attention of the observer, in which the likeness of the (homoeopathic) disease elements of many natural diseases to be' hereafter cured by them are present, which, in a word, contain artificial morbid states, that furnish for the similar natural morbid states the only true, homoeop- athic, that is to say specific, therapeutic instruments for effecting their certain and permanent cure.

From such a materia medica everything that is conjectural, all that is mere assertion or imaginary should be strictly ex- cluded; everything should be the pure language of nature carefully and honestly interrogated.

Of a truth, it is only by a very considerable store of medi- cines accurately known in respect of these their pure modes of action in altering the health of man, that we can be placed in a position to discover a homoeopathic remedy, a suitable artificial (curative) morbific analogue for each of the infinitely numerous morbid states in nature, for every malady in the world. 1 In the meantime, even now — thanks to the truthful character of the symptoms, ( a ) and to the abundance of disease elements which everyone of the powerful medicinal substances has already shown in its action on the healthy body — but few diseases remain, for which a tolerably suitable homoeopathic remedy may not be met with among those now proved as to their pure action, 2 which, without much disturbance restores

ness, seems to me, I regret to say, to become doubtful and uncertain in its results, and to lose all value.(”)

1 At first I was the only person who made the proving of the pure powers of medicines the most important of his occupations. Since then 1 have been assisted in this by some young men, who instituted experiments on them- selves, and whose observations I have critically revised. But what shall we not be able to effect in the way of curing in the whole extent of the infinite- ly large domain of disease, when numbers of accurate and trustworthy ob- servers shall have rendered their services in enriching this, the only true materia medica, by careful experiment* on themselves! The healing art will then come near the mathematical sciences in certainty.

« See the second note to §109.

health in a gentle, sure and permanent manner — infinitely more surely and safely than can be effected by all the general and special therapeutics of the old allopathic medical art with its unknown composite remedies, which do but alter and ag- gravate but cannot cure chronic diseases, and rather retard than promote recovery from acute diseases. < a )

The third point of the business of a true physician relates to the judicious employment of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) that have been proved on healthy individuals to ascertain their pure action, in order to effect the homoeopathic cure of natural diseases.

Whichever of these medicines that have been investigated as to their power of altering man's health we find to contain in the symptoms observed from its use the greatest similarity to the totality of the symptoms of a given natural disease, this medicine will and must be the most suitable, the most certain homoeopathic remedy for the disease ; in it is found the specific remedy of this case of disease.

A medicine selected in this manner, which has the power and the tendency to produce symptoms the most similar possible to the disease to be cured, consequently a similar artificial disease, given in a suitable dose, affects, in its dynamic action on the morbidly deranged vital force of the individual, those very parts and points in the organism now suffering from the natural disease, and produces in them its own artificial disease, which, on account of its great similarity and preponderating strength, occupies precisely the seat hitherto occupied by the natural morbid derangement, so that the instinctive, automatic vital force is from that time forward no longer affected by the natural disease but solely by the stronger, similar medicinal disease; which in its turn, on account of the small dose of the remedy, being, like every moderate medicinal disease, overcome by the increased energy

of the vital force, soon spontaneously disappears, leaving the body free from all disease, that is to say, healthy and perma- nently cured.

When the suitable homoeopathic remedy has been thus selected 1 and rightly employed, the acute disease we wish to cure, even though it be of a grave character and attended by many sufferings, subsides insensibly, in a few hours if it be of recent date, in a few days if it be of somewhat longer standing, along with all traces of indisposition, and nothing or almost nothing more of the artificial medicinal disease is perceived; there occurs, by rapid, imperceptible transitions, nothing but restored health, recovery. Diseases of long standing (and especially such as are of a complicated character) require for their cure a proportionately longer time. More especially do

1 But this laborious, sometimes very laborious, search for and selection of the homoeopathic remedy most suitable in every respect to each morbid state, is an operation which, notwithstanding all the admirable books for facilitating it, still demands the study of the original sources themselves, and at the same time a great amount of circumspection and serious deliber- ation, which have their best reward in the consciousness of having faithfully discharged our duty. How could this laborious, care-demanding task, by which alone the best way of curing diseases is rendered possible, please the gentlemen of the new mongrel sect, who assume the honorable name of homoeopath ists, and even seem to employ medicines in form and appearance homoeopathic, but determined upon by them anyhow (quidquid in buccam venit), and who, when the unsuitable remedy does not immediately give re- lief, in place of laying the blame on their unpardonable ignorance and laxity in performing the most important and serious of all human affairs, ascribe it to homoeopathy, which they accuse of great imperfection (if the truth be told, its imperfection consists in this, that the most suitable homoeopathic remedy for each morbid condition does not spontaneously fly into their mouth like roasted pigeons, without any trouble on their own part). They know, however, from frequent practice, how to make up for the inefficiency of the scarcely half homoeopathic remedy by the employment of allopathic means, that come much more handy to them, among which one or more dozen of leeches applied to the affected part, or little harmless venesections to the extent of eight ounces, and so forth, play an important part; and should the patient, in spite of all this, recover, they extol tlfeir venesections, leeches, &c, alleging that, had it not been for these, the patient would not have been pulled through, and they give us to understand, in no doubtful language, that these operations, derived without much exercise of genius from the pernicious routine of the old school, in reality contributed the best share towards the cure. But if the patient die under the treatment, as not unf requently happens, they seek to console the friends by saying that “they themselves were witnesses that everything conceivable had been done for the lamented deceased.” Who would do this frivolous and pernicious tribe the honor to call them, after the name of the very laborious but salutary art, homoeopathic physicians? May the just recompense await them, that, when taken ill, they may be treated in the same manner!^)

the chronic medicinal dyscrasias so often produced by allo- pathic bungling, along with the natural disease left uncured by it, require a much longer time for their recovery ; often, indeed, are they incurable, in consequence of the shameful robbery of the patient's strength and juices, the principal feat performed by allopathy in its so-called methods of treatment.

If a patient complain of one or more trivial symptoms, that have been only observed a short time previously, the physician should not regard this as a fully developed disease that re- quires serious medical aid. A slight alteration in the diet and regimen will usually suffice to dispel such an indisposition.

But if the patient complain of a few violent sufferings, the physician will usually find, on investigation, several other symptoms besides, although of a slighter character, which furnish a complete picture of the disease.

The worse the acute disease is, of so much the more numer- ous and striking symptoms is it generally composed, but with so much the more certainty may a suitable remedy for it be found, if there be a sufficient number of medicines known with respect to their positive action, to choose from. Among the lists of symptoms of many medicines it will not be difficult to find one from whose separate disease elements an antitype of cura- tive artificial disease, very like the totality of the symptoms of the natural disease, may be constructed, and such a medicine is the desired remedy.

In this search for a homoeopathic specific remedy, that is to say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the natural disease with the lists of symptoms of known medicines, in order to find among these an artificial morbific agent cor- responding by similarity to the disease to be cured, the mon striking, singular, uncommon, and peculiar (characteristic) signs

and symptoms 1 of the case of disease are chiefly and almost solely to be kept in view; for it is more 'particularly these that very similar ones in the list of symptom* of the selected medicine must correspond to, in order to constitute it the most suitable for effecting the cure. The more general and undefined symp- toms: loss of appetite, headache, debility, restless sleep, discomfort, and so forth, demand but little attention when of that vague and indefinite character, if they cannot be more accurately described, as symptoms of such a general nature are observed in almost every disease and from almost every drug.

If the antitype constructed from the list of symptoms of the most suitable medicine contain those peculiar, uncommon, singular and distinguishing (characteristic) symptoms, which are to be met with in the disease to be cured in the greatest number and in the greatest similarity, this medicine is the most appropriate homoeopathic specific remedy for this morbid state ; the disease, if it be not one of very long standing, will generally be removed and extinguished by the first dose of it, without any considerable disturbance.

I say without any considerable disturbance. For in the em- ployment of this most appropriate homoeopathic remedy it is only the symptoms of the medicine that correspond to the symptoms of the disease that are called into play, the former occupying the place of the latter (weaker) in the organism, and thereby annihilating them by overpowering them; but the other symptoms of the homoeopathic medicine, which are often very numerous, being in no way applicable to the case of disease in question, are not called into play at all. The pa-

1 Dr. von Bonninghausen, who has already distinguished himself by his labors in connection with the new system of medicine, has lately increased our obligation to him by the publication of his important little book setting forth the characteristic symptoms, more particularly of the antipsoric med- icines, entitled Uebersicht der Hauptwirkungs-Sphlire der antips. Arz., Miinster, bei Coppenrath, 1833, and the appendix thereto (containing the antisyphilitic and antisycotic medicines) at the end of the second edition of his Systematisch-alphabetisches Hepertorium der antipsorischen Arzneiev, bei Coppenrath in Miinster.

tient, growing hourly better, feels almost nothing of them at all, because the excessively minute dose requisite for homoeop- athic use is much too weak to produce the other symptoms of the medicine that are not homoeopathic to the case, in those parts of the body that are free from disease, and consequently can allow only the homoeopathic symptoms to act on the parts of the organism that are already most irritated and excited by the similar symptoms of the disease, thus changing the morbid affection of the vital force into a similar but stronger medicinal disease, whereby the original malady is extinguished.

There is, however, almost no homoeopathic medicine, be it ever so suitably chosen, that, especially if it should be given in an insufficiently minute dose, will not produce, in very irritable and sensitive patients, at least one trifling, unusual disturbance, some slight new symptom whilst its action lasts; for it is next to impossible that medicine and disease should cover one another symptomatically as exactly as two triangles with equal sides and equal angles. But this (in ordinary cir- cumstances) unimportant difference will be easily done away with by the potential activity (energy) of the living organism, and is not perceptible by patients not excessively delicate ; the restoration goes forward, notwithstanding, to the goal of per- fect recovery, if it be not prevented by the action of hetero- geneous medicinal influences upon the patient, by errors of regimen or by excitement of the passions.

But though it is certain that a homceopathically selected remedy does, by reason of its appropriateness and the minute- ness of the dose, gently remove and annihilate the acute disease analogous to it, without manifesting its other, un- homoeopathic symptoms, that is to say, without the production of new, serious disturbances, yet it usually, immediately after ingestion — for the first hour, or for a few hours — causes a kind of slight aggravation (where the dose has been somewhat too large, however, for a considerable number of hours), which has so much resemblance to the original disease that it seems

to the patient to be an aggravation of his own disease. But it is, in reality, nothing more than an extremely similar medicinal disease, somewhat exceeding in strength the original affection.

This slight homoeopathic aggravation during the first hours — a very good prognostic that the acute disease will most prob- ably yield to the first dose — is quite as it ought to be, as the medicinal disease must naturally be somewhat stronger than the malady to be cured if it is to overpower and extinguish the latter, just as a natural disease can remove and annihilate an- other one similar to it only when it is stronger than the latter (21 43—48).

The smaller the dose of the homoeopathic remedy is, so much the slighter and shorter is this apparent increase of the disease during the first hours.

But as the dose of a homoeopathic remedy can scarcely ever be made so small that it shall not be able to relieve, over- power, indeed completely cure and annihilate the uncom- plicated natural disease of not long standing that is analogous to it (I 249, note), we can understand why a dose of an ap- propriate homoeopathic medicine, not the very smallest possible, does always, during the first hour after its ingestion, produce a perceptible homoeopathic aggravation of this kind. 1

1 This exaltation of the medicinal symptoms over those disease symptoms analogous to them, which looks like an aggravation, has been observed by other physicians also, when by accident they employed a homoeopathic remedy. When a patient suffering from itch complains of an increase of the eruption after sulphur, his physician, who knows not the cause of this, con- soles him with the assurance that the itch must first come out properly before it can bo cured; he knows not, however, that this is a sulphur eruption, that assumes the appearance of an increase of the itch.

“The facial eruption which the viola tricolor cured was aggravated by it at the commencement of its action,” Leroy tells us (Hi ilk. fur Mutter, p. 406). but he knew not that the apparent aggravation was owing to the somewhat too targe dose of the remedy, which in this instance was to a certain extent homoeopathic. Lysons says (Med. Transact., vol. ii, London, 1772), “The bark of the elm cures most certainly those skin diseases which it increases at the beginning of its action.'' Had he not given the bark in the monstrous doses usual in the allopathic system, but in the quite small doses requisite when the medicine shows similarity of symptoms, that is to say, when it is used

When I here limit the so-called homoeopathic aggravation, or rather the primary action of the homoeopathic medicine that seems to increase somewhat the symptoms of the original dis- ease, to the first or few first hours, this is certainly true with respect to diseases of a more acute character and of recent origin; 1 but where medicines of long action have to combat a malady of considerable or of very long standing, where one dose, consequently, must continue to act for many days, we then occasionally see, during the first six, eight or ten days, the occurrence of some such primary actions of the medicine, some such apparent increase of the symptoms of the original disease (lasting for one or several hours), whilst in the inter- vening hours amelioration of the whole malady is perceptible. After the lapse of these few days the amelioration resulting from such primary action of the medicine proceeds almost un- interruptedly for several days longer.

It sometimes happens, owing to the moderate number of medicines yet known with respect to their true, pure action, that but a portion of the symptoms of the disease under treatment are to be met with in the list of symptoms of the most appro- priate medicine, consequently this imperfect medicinal morbific agent must be employed for lack of a more perfect one.

In this case we cannot indeed expect from this medicine a complete, untroubled cure; for during its use some symptoms appear which were not previously observable in the disease, accessory symptoms of the not perfectly appropriate remedy. This does by no means prevent a considerable part of the dis- ease (the symptoms of the disease that resemble those of the

homceopathically. he would have effected a cure without, or almost without, seeing this apparent Increase of the disease (homoeopathic aggravation).

1 If the action of those medicines to which the longest duration of action is proper, quickly expires in acute diseases -most quickly in those that are most acute— it is proportionately long lasting in chronic diseases (of psoric origin), and hence it happens that the antipsoric medicines often do not show any such homoeopathic aggravation in the first hours, whilst they do so later and during various hours for the first eight or ten days.

medicine) from being eradicated by this medicine, thereby establishing a fair commencement of the cure, but still this does not take place without those accessory symptoms, which are, however, always moderate when the dose of the medicine is sufficiently minute.

The small number of homoeopathic symptoms present in the best selected medicine is no obstacle to the cure in cases where these few medicinal .symptoms are chiefly of an uncommon kind cud such as are peculiarly distinctive (characteristic) of the disease; the cure takes place under such circumstances without any particular disturbance.

If, however, among the symptoms of the remedy selected, there be none that accurately resemble the distinctive (charac- teristic), peculiar, uncommon symptoms of the case of disease, and if the remedy correspond to the disease only in the general, vaguely described, indefinite states (nausea, debility, headache, and so forth), and if there be among the known medicines none more homoeopathicaliy appropriate, in that case the physician cannot promise himself any immediate favorable re- sult from the employment of this unhomoeopathic medicine.

Such a case is, however, very rare, owing to the increased number of medicines whose pure effects are now known, and the bad effects resulting from it, when they do occur, are diminished whenever a subsequent medicine, of more accurate resemblance, can be selected.

Thus if there occur, during the use of this imperfectly homoeopathic remedy first employed, accessory symptoms of some moment, then, in the case of acute diseases, we do not allow this first dose to exhaust its action, nor leave the patient to the full duration of the action of the remedy, but we inves- tigate afresh the morbid state in its now altered condition, and

add the remainder of the original symptoms to those newly developed in tracing a new picture of the disease.

We shall then be able much more readily to discover, among the known medicines, an analogue to the morbid state before us, a single dose of which, if it do not entirely destroy the disease, will advance it considerably on the way to be cured. And thus we go on, if even this medicine be not quite suffi- cient to effect the restoration of health, examining again and again the morbid state that still remains, and selecting a homoeopathic medicine as suitable as possible for it, until our object, namely putting the patient in the possession of perfect health, is accomplished.

If, on the first examination of a disease and the first selec- tion of a medicine, we should find that the totality of the symptoms of the disease would not be effectually covered by the disease elements of a single medicine — owing to the in- sufficient number of known medicines, — but that two medicines contend for the preference in point of appropriateness, one of which is more homceopathically suitable for one part, the other for another part of the symptoms of the disease, it is not advisable, after the employment of the more suitable of the two medicines, to administer the other without fresh examina- tion, for the medicine that seemed to be the next best would not, under the change of circumstances that has in the mean- time taken place, be suitable for the rest of the symptoms that then remain; in which case, consequently, a more appro- priate homoeopathic remedy must by selected in place of the second medicine for the set of symptoms as they appear on a new inspection.

Hence in this as in every case where a change of the morbid state has occurred, the remaining set of symptoms now present must be inquired into, and (without paying any attention to the medicine which at first appeared to be the next in point of suitableness) anothor homoeopathic medicine, as appropriate as possible to the new state now before us, must be selected. If it should so happen, as is uot often the case, that the medicine which at first appeared to be the next best seems still to be well adapted for the morbid state that remains, so much the more will it merit our confidence, and deserve to be employed in preference to another.

In non-venereal chronic diseases, those, therefore, that arise from psora, we often require, in order to effect a cure, to give several antipsoric remedies in succession, every successive one being homoeopathically chosen in consonance with the group of symptoms remaining after the expiry of the action of the previous remedy (which may have been employed in a single dose or in several successive doses).

A similar difficulty in the way of the cure occurs from the symptoms of the disease being too few — a circumstance that de- serves our careful attention, for by its removal almost all the difficulties that can lie in the way of this most perfect of all possible modes of treatment (except that its apparatus of known homoeopathic medicines is still incomplete) are removed.

The only diseases that seem to have but few symptoms, and on that account to be less amenable to cure, are those which may be termed one-sided, because they display only one or two principal symptoms which obscure almost all the others. They belong chiefly to the class of chronic diseases.

Their principal symptom may be either an internal com- plaint (e. g. a headache of many years' duration, a diarrhoea of long standing, an ancient cardialgia, &c. ), or it may be an affection more of an external kind. Diseases of the latter character are generally distinguished by the name of local maladies.

In one-sided diseases of the first kind it is often to be at-

tributed to the medical observer's want of discernment that he does not fully discover the symptoms actually present which would enable him to complete the sketch of the portrait of the

disease.

There are, however, still a few diseases, which, after the most careful initial examination {11 84 — 98), present but one or two severe, violent symptoms, while all the others are but indistinctly perceptible.

In order to meet most successfully such a case as this, which is of very rare occurrence, we are in the first place to select, guided by these few symptoms, the medicine which in our judgment is the most homoeopathically indicated.

It will, no doubt, sometimes happen that this medicine, selected in strict observance of the homoeopathic law, fur- nishes the similar artificial disease suited for the annihilation of the malady present; and this is much more likely to happen when these few morbid symptoms are very striking, decided, uncommon and peculiarly distinctive (characteristic).

More frequently, however, the medicine first chosen in such a case will be only partially, that is to say, not exactly suitable, as there was no considerable number of symptoms to guide to an accurate selection.

In this case the medicine, which has been chosen as well as was possible, but which, for the reason above stated, is only imperfectly homoeopathic, will, in its action upon the disease that is only partially analogous to it — just as in the case mentioned above 162, et seq.), where the limited number of homoeopathic remedies renders the selection imperfect — pro- duce accessory symptoms, and several phenomena from its own array of symptoms are mixed up with the patient's state of health, which are, however, at the same time, symptoms •>/ tin-

disease itself, although they may have been hitherto never or very rarely perceived ; some symptoms which the patient had never previously experienced appear, or others he had only felt in- distinctly become more pronounced.

Let it not be objected that the accessory phenomena and new symptoms of this disease that now appear should be laid to the account of the medicament just employed. They owe their origin to it 1 certainly, but they are always only symptoms of such a nature as this disease was itself capable of pro- ducing in this organism, and which were summoned forth and induced to make their appearance by the medicine given, owing to its power to cause similar symptoms. In a word, we have to regard the whole collection of symptoms now perceptible as belonging to the disease itself, as the actual existing condition, and to direct our further treatment accordingly.

Thus the imperfect selection of the medicament, which was in this case almost inevitable owing to the too limited number of the symptoms present, serves to complete the display of the symptoms of the disease, and in this way facilitates the discovery of a second, more accurately suitable, homoeopathic medicine.

“\Vhenever, therefore, the dose of the first medicine ceases to have a beneficial effect (if the newly developed symptoms do not, by reason of their gravity, demand more speedy aid — which, however, from the minuteness of the dose of homoeop- athic medicine, and in very chronic diseases, is excessively rate), a new examination of the disease must be instituted, the stattis morhi as it now is must be noted down, and a second homoeopathic remedy selected in accordance with it, which shall exactly suit the present state, and one which shall be all

i When tbey were not caused by an important error in regimen, a violent emotion, or a tumultuous revolution in the organism, such as the occur- rence or cessation of tin- menses, conception, childbirth, and so forth.

the more appropriate can then be found, as the group of symptoms has become larger and more complete. 1

In like manner, after each new dose of medicine has ex- hausted its action, the state of the disease that still remains is to be noted anew with respect to its remaining symptoms, and another homoeopathic remedy sought for, as suitable as possi- ble for the group of symptoms now observed, and so on until the recovery is complete.

Among the one-sided diseases an important place is occupied by the so-called local maladies, by which term is signified those changes and ailments that appear on the external parts of the body. Till now the idea prevalent in the schools was that these parts were alone morbidly affected, and that the rest of the body did not participate in the disease — a theoret- ical, absurd doctrine, which has led to the most disastrous medical treatment.

Those so-called local maladies which have been produced a short time previously, solely by an external lesion, still appear at first sight to deserve the name of local diseases. But then the lesion must be very trivial, and in that case it would be of no great moment. For in the case of injuries accruing to the body from without, if they be at all severe, the whole living organism sympathizes; there occur fever, &c. The treatment of such diseases is relegated to surgery; but this is right only in so far as the affected parts require me- chanic al aid, whereby the external obstacles to the cure, which can only be expected to take place by the agency of the vital force, may be removed by mechanical means, e. g. by the re- duction of dislocations, by bandages to bring together the lips

In cases where the patient (which, however, happens excessively seldom

in chronic, but not infrequently in acute diseases) feels very ill. although his symptoms are very indistinct, so that this state may be attributed more to the benumbed state of the nerves, which does not permit the patient's pains and sufferings to be distinctly perceived, this torpor of the internal sensibility is removed by opium, and in its secondary action the symptoms of the disease become distinctly apparent. ( a )

of wounds, by the extraction of foreign bodies that have penetrated into the living parts, by making an opening into a cavity of the body in order to remove an irritating substance or to procure the evacuation of effusions or collections of fluids, by bringing into apposition the broken extremities of a fractured bone and retaining them in exact contact by an ap- propriate bandage, &c. But when in such injuries the whole living organism requires, as it always dors, active dynamic aid to put it in a position to accomplish the work of healing, c. g. when the violent fever resulting from extensive contusions, lacerated muscles, tendons and blood-vessels requires to be re- moved by medicine given internally, or when the external pain of scalded or burnt parts needs to be homoeopathically sub- dued, then the services of tlie dynamic physician and his helpful homoeopathy come into requisition.

But those affections, alterations and ailments appearing on the external parts, that do not arise from any external injury or that have only some slight external wound for their im- mediate exciting cause, are produced in quite another manner; their source lies in some internal malady. To consider them as mere local affections, and at the same time to treat them only, or almost only, as it were surgically, with topical ap- plications — as the old school have done from the remotest ages — is as absurd as it is pernicious in its results.

These affections were considered to be merely topical and were therefore called local diseases, as if they were maladies exclusively limited to those parts, wherein the organism took little or no part, or affections of these particular visible parts, of which the rest of the living organism, so to speak, knew nothing. 1

And yet very little reflection will suffice to convince us that no external malady (not occasioned by some important injury from without) can arise, persist or even grow worse without

l One of the many great and pernicious blunders of the old school.

some internal cause, without the co-operation of the whole or- ganism, which must consequently be in a diseased state. It could not make its appearance at all without the consent of the whole of the rest of the health, and without the participa- tion of the rest of the living whole (of the vital force that pervades all the other sensitive and irritable parts of the •organism) ;(«) indeed, it is impossible to conceive its produc- tion without the instrumentality of the whole (deranged) life; so intimately are all parts of the organism connected together to form an indivisible whole in sensations and functions. No eruption on the lips, no whitlow can occur without previous and simultaneous internal ill-health.

All true medical treatment of a disease on the external parts oT the body that has occurred from little or no injury from without must, therefore, be directed against the whole, must effect the annihilation and cure of the general malady by means of internal remedies, if it is wished that the treatment should be judicious, sure, efficacious and radical.

This is confirmed in the most unambiguous manner by ex- perience, which shows in all cases that every powerful internal medicine immediately after its ingestion causes important changes in the general health of such a patient, and particu- larly in the affected external parts (which the ordinary medical school regards as quite isolated), even in a so-called local •disease of the most external parts of the body, and the change it produces is most salutary, being the restoration to health of the entire body, along with the disappearance of the external affection (without the aid of any external remedy), provided tiie internal remedy directed towards the whole state was suitably chosen in a homoeopathic sense.

This is best effected when, in the investigation of the case «6f disease, along with the exact character of the local affection, all the changes, sufferings and symptoms observable in the

patient's health, and which may have been previously noticed when no medicines had been used, are taken in conjunction to form a complete picture of the disease, before searching among the medicines, whose peculiar pathogenetic effects are known, for a remedy corresponding to the totality of the symptoms, so that the selection may be truly homoeopathic.

By means of this medicine, employed only internally (and, if the disease be but of recent origin, often by the very first dose of it), the general morbid state o'f the body is removed along with the local affection, and the latter is cured at the same time as the former, proving that the local affection de- pended solely on a disease of the rest of the body, and should only be regarded as an inseparable part of the whole, as one of the most considerable and striking symptoms of the whole disease.

It is not useful, either in acute local diseases of recent origin or in local affections that have already existed a long time, to rub in or apply externally to the spot an external remedy, even though it be the specific and, when used inter- nally, salutary by reason of its homceopathicity, even although it should be at the same time administered internally ; for the acute topical affections (e. g. inflammations of individual parts, erysipelas, &c. ), which have not been caused by external injury of proportionate violence, but by dynamic or internal causes, yield most surely to internal remedies homoeopathically adapted to the perceptible state of the health present in the exterior and interior, selected from the general store of proved medicines, 1 and generally without any other aid; but if these diseases do not yield to them completely, and if there still re- main in the affected spot and in the whole state, notwithstand- ing good regimen, a relic of disease which the vital force is not competent to restore to the normal state, then the acute disease was (as not infrequently happens) a product of psora which had hitherto remained latent in the interior, but has

i As, for instance, aconite, rhus, belladonna, mercury, &c.

now burst forth and is on the point of developing into a pal- pable chronic disease.

In order to effect a radical cure in such cases, which are by no means rare, after the acute state has pretty well subsided, an appropriate antipsoric treatment (as is taught in my work on Chronic Diseases) must then be directed against the symp- toms that still remain and the morbid state of health to which the patient was previously subject. In chronic local maladies that are not obviously venereal, the antipsoric internal treat- ment is, moreover, alone requisite.

It might, indeed, seeing) as though the cure of such dis- eases would be hastened by employing the medicinal substance which is known to be truly homoeopathic to the totality of the symptoms, not only internally but also externally/ 0 ) because the action of a medicine applied to the seat of the local affec- tion might effect a more rapid change in it.

This treatment, however, is quite inadmissible, not only for the local symptoms arising from the miasm of psora, but also and especially for those originating in the miasm of syphilis or S}“cosis, for the simultaneous local application, along with tht internal employment, of the remedy in d iseases whose chief symp- tom is a constant local affection, has this great disadvantage, that, by such a topical application, this chief symptom (local affection) 1 will usually be annihilated sooner than the internal disease, and we shall now be deceived by the semblance of a perfect cure ; or at least it will be difficult, and in some cases impossible, to determine, from the premature disappearance of the local symptom, if the general disease is destroyed by the simultaneous employment of the internal medicine.

The mere topical employment of medicines, that are powerful for cure when given internally, to the local symptoms of

1 Recent itch eruption, chancre, condyloma.

chronic miasmatic diseases is for the same reason quite inad- missible ; for if the local affection of the chronic disease be only removed locally and in a one-sided manner, the internal treatment indispensable for the complete restoration of the health remains in dubious obscurity ; the chief symptom (the local affection) is gone, and there remain only the other, less distinguishable symptoms, which are less constant and less persistent than the local affection, and frequently not suffi- ciently peculiar and too slightly characteristic to display, after that, a picture of the disease in clear and perfect outlines.

If the remedy perfectly homoeopathic to the disease had not yet been discovered 1 at the time when the local symptoms were destroyed by a corrosive or desiccative external remedy or by the knife, then the case becomes much more difficult on account of the too indefinite (uncharacteristic) and inconstant appearance of the remaining symptoms; for what might have contributed most to determine the selection of the most suita- ble remedy, and its internal employment until the disease should have been completely annihilated, namely, the external principal symptom, has been removed from our observation.

Had it still been present to guide the internal treatment, the homoeopathic remedy for the whole disease might have been discovered, and had that been found, the persistence of the local affection during its internal employment would have shown that the cure was hot yet completed; but were it cured on its seat, this would be a convincing proof that the disease was completely eradicated, and the desired recovery from the entire disease was fully accomplished — an inestimable, indis- pensable advantage.

It is evident that man's vital force, when encumbered with a chronic disease which it is unable to overcome by its own powers, adopts the plan of developing a local malady on some

1 As was the case before my time with the remedies for the condylomatous disease (and the antipsorie medicines).

external part, solely for this object, that by making and keep- ing in a diseased state this part which is not indispensable to human life, it may thereby silence the internal disease, which otherwise threatens to destroy the vital organs (and to deprive the patient of life), and that it may thereby, so to speak, transfer the internal disease to the vicarious local affection and, as it were, draw it thither. The presence of the local affection thus silences, for a time, the internal disease, though without being able either to cure it or to diminish it mated ally. 1 The local affection, however, is never anything else than a part of the general disease, but a part of it increased all in one direction by the organic vital force, and trans- ferred to a less dangerous (external) part of the body, in order to allay the internal ailment. But (as has been said) by this local symptom that silences the internal disease, so far from anything being gained by the vital force towards diminishing or curing the whole malady, the internal disease, on the con- trary, continues, in spite of it, gradually to increase and Nature is constrained to enlarge and aggravate the local symptom always more and more, in order that it may still suffice as a substitute for the increased internal disease and may still keep it under. Old ulcers on the legs get worse as long as the internal psora is uncured, the chancre enlarges as long as the internal syphilis remains uncured, just as the general internal disease continues to increase as time goes on.

If the old-school physician should now destroy the local symptom by the topical application of external remedies, under the belief that he thereby cures the whole disease, Nature makes up for its loss by rousing the internal malady and the other symptoms that previously existed in a latent state side by side with the local affection; that is to say, she increases the internal disease. When this occurs it is usual to say, though incorrectly, that the local affection has been driven back

1 The issuesof the old-school practitioners do something similar; as arti- ficial ulcers on external parts, they silence some internal chronic diseases but only for a very short time, without being able to cure them; but, on the other hand, they weaken and destroy the general health much more than is done by most of the metastases effected by the distinctive vital force.(°)

into the system or upon the nerves by the external remedies.

Every external treatment of such local symptoms, the ob- ject of which is to remove them from the surface of the body, whilst the internal miasmatic disease is left uncured, as, for instance, driving off the skin the psoric eruption by all sorts of ointments, burning away the chancre by caustics and de- stroying the condylomata on their seat by the knife, the ligature or the actual cautery; this pernicious external mode of treatment, hitherto so universally practiced, has been the most prolific source of all .the innumerable named or unnamed chronic maladies under which mankind groans ; it is one of the most criminal procedures the medical world can be guilty of, and yet it has hitherto been the one generally adopted, and taught from the professorial chairs as the only one. Ma)

If we deduct all chronic affections, ailments and diseases that depeud on a persistent unhealthy mode of living, as also those innumerable medicinal maladies (v. I 74) caused by the irrational, persistent, harrassing and pernicious treatment of diseases often only of trivial character by physicians of the old school, all the remainder, without exception, result from the development of these three chronic miasms, internaL syphilis, internal sycosis, but chiefly and in infinitely greater proportion, internal psora, each of which was already in pos- session of the whole organism, and had penetrated it in all directions before the appearance of the primary, vicarious local symptom of each of them (in the case of psora the' scabious eruption, -in syphilis the chancre or the bubo, and in sycosis the condylomata) that prevented their outburst; and these chronic miasmatic diseases, if deprived of their local symptom, are inevitably destined by mighty Nature sooner or later to become developed and to burst forth, and thereby propagate all the nameless misery, the increditable number of

i For any medicines that might at the same time be given internally served but to aggravate the malady, as these remedies possessed no specific power of curing the whole disease, but assailed the organism, weakened it and inflicted on it, in addition, other chronic medicinal diseases.

13G

OROaNON of medicine.

chronic diseases which have plagued mankind for hundreds and thousands of years, none of which would so frequently have come into existence had physicians striven in a rational manner to cure radically and to extinguish in the organism these three miasms by the internal homoeopathic medicines suited for each of them, without employing topical remedies for their external symptoms.

The homoeopathic physician never treats one of these pri- mary symptoms of chronic miasms, nor yet one of their secondary affections that result from their further develop- ment, by local remedies (neither by those external agents that act dynamically, 1 nor yet by those that act mechanically), but he cures, in cases where the one or the other appears, only the great miasm on which they depend, whereupon it3 primary, as also its secondary symptoms disappear spontaneously; but as this was not the mode pursued by the old-school practitioners who preceded him in the treatment of the case, the homoeo- pathic physician generally, alas! finds that the primary symp- toms 2 have already been destroyed by them by means of external remedies, and that he has now to do more with the secondary ones, i. e. the affections resulting from the breaking forth and development of these inherent miasms, but especially

1 I cannot therefore advise, for instance, the local extirpation of the so- called cancer of tlie lips or face (the product, of highly developed psora?) by means of the arsenical remedy of Frere Cosmo, not only because it is exces- sively painful and often fails, but more for this reason, because, if this dynamic remedy should indeed succeed in freeing the affected part of the body from the malignant ulcer locally ; the basic malady is thereby not di- minished in the slightest, the preserving vital force is therefore necessitated to transfer t he Held of operation of the great interna] malady to some more important part (as it does in every case of meta schematism), and the conse- quence is blindness, deafness, insanity, suffocative asthma, dropsy, apo- plexy. &c. But this ambiguous local liberation of the part from the malig- nant ulcer by the topical arsenical remedy only succeeds, after all. in those cases where the ulcer has not yet attained any great size, and when the vital force is still very energetic; but it is just in such a state of t hings that the complete internal cure of the whole original disease is also still practicable.

The result is the same when cancer of t he face or breast is removed by the knife alone and when encysted tumors are enucleated; something worse ensues, or at any rat.- death is hastened. This has been the case times with- out number-, but the old school still goes blindly on in the same way in every new case, wit h the same disastrous results.

! Itch eruption, chancre (bubo), condylomata.

with the chronic diseases evolved from internal psora, the in- ternal treatment of which, as far as a single physician can elucidate it by many years of reflection, observation and ex- perience, I have endeavored to point out in my work on ('/ironic Diseases, to which I must refer the reader.

Before commencing the treatment of a chronic disease, it is necessary to make the most careful investigation 1 as to whether the patient has had a venereal infection (or an infection with condylomatous gonorrhoea) ; for then the treatment must be directed towards this alone, when only the signs of syphilis (or of the rarer condylomatous disease) are present, but this dis- ease is very seldom met with alone nowadays. If such in- fection have previously occurred, this must also be borne in mind in the treatment of those cases in which psora is present, because in them the latter is complicated with the former, as is always the case when the symptoms are not those of pure syphilis; for when the physician thinks he has a case of old venereal disease before him, he has always, or almost always, to treat a syphilitic affection accompanied mostly by (compli- cated with) psora, for the internal itch dyscrasia (the psora) is far the most frequent (most certain) fundamental cause of chronic diseases, either united (complicated) with syphilis (or with sycosis), if the latter infections have avowedly occurred; or, as is much more frequently the case, psora is the sole fun- damental cause of all other chronic maladies, whatever names they may bear, which are, moreover, •so often bungled, in- creased and disfigured to a monstrous extent by allopathic unskilfulness.

1 In investigations of this nature we must not allow ourselves to be de- ceived by the assertions of the patients or their, friends, who frequently assign as the cause of chronic, even of the severest and most inveterate dis- ease, either a cold caught (a thorough wetting, drinking cold water after beins heated) many years ago, or a former fright, a sprain, a vexation (sometimes even a bewitchment), &c. These causes are much too insignifi- cant to develop a chronic disease inn faalthy body, to keep it up for years, and to aggravate it year by year, as is the case with all chronic diseases from developed psora. Causes of a mucli more important character than these remembered noxious influences must lie at the root of the initiation and progress of a serious, obstinate disease of longstanding: the assigned causes could only rouse into activity the latent chronic miasm.

When the above information has been gained, it still remains for the homoeopathic physician to ascertain what kinds of allopathic treatment had up to that date been adopted for tbe chronic disease, what perturbing medicines had been chiefly and most frequently employed, also what mineral baths had been used and what effects these had produced, in order to understand in some measure tbe degeneration of the disease from its original state, and, where possible, to correct in part these pernicious artificial operations, or to enable him to avoid the employment of medicines that have already been impro- perly used.

The age of the patient, his mode of living and diet, his oc- cupation, his domestic position, his social relations and so forth, must next be taken into consideration, in order to as- certain whether these things have tended to increase his malady, or in how far they may favor or hinder the treatment. In like manner the state of his disposition and mind must be attended to, to learn whether that presents any obstacle to the treatment, or requires to be directed, encouraged or modified.

After this is done, the physician should endeavor in re- peated conversations with the patient to trace the picture of his disease as completely as possible, according to the direc- tions given above, in order to be able to elucidate the most striking and peculiar (characteristic) symptoms, in accordance with which he selects the first antipsoric or other remedy hav- ing the greatest symptomatic resemblance, for the commence- ment of the treatment, and so forth.

Of psoric origin are almost all those diseases that I have above termed one-sided, which appear to be more difficult to cure in consequence of this one-sidedness, all their other mor- bid symptoms disappearing, as it were, before the single, great, prominent symptom. Of this character are what are termed mental diseases. They do not, however, constitute a

class of disease sharply separated from all others, since in all other so-called corporeal diseases the condition of the dispo- sition and mind is always altered; 1 and in all cases of disease we are called on to cure, the state of the patient's disposition is to be particularly noted, along with the totality of the symptoms, if we would trace an accurate picture of the dis- ease, in order to be able therefrom to treat it homoeopathically with success.

This holds good to such an extent, that the state of the dis- position of the patient often chiefly determines the selection of the homoeopathic remedy, as being a decidedly characteristic symptom which can least of all remain concealed from the accurately observing physician.

The Creator of therapeutic agents has also had particular regard to this main feature of all diseases, tbe altered state of the disposition and mind, for there is no powerful medicinal substance in the world which does not very notably alter the state of the disposition and mind in the healthy individual who tests it, and every medicine does so in a different manner.

We shall, therefore, never be able to cure conformably to nature — that is to say, homoeopathically — if we do not, in every case of disease, even in such as are acute, observe, along with the other symptoms, those relating to the changes in the state of the mind and disposition, and if we do not select, for the patient's relief, from among the medicines a disease-force which, in addition to the similarity of its other symptoms to those of the disease, is also capable of producing a similar state of the disposition and mind. 1

1 How often, for instance, do we not meet with a mild, soft disposition in patients who have for years been afflicted with the most painful disease-,, so that the physician feels constrained to esteem and compassionate the suf- ferer! But if he subdue the disease and restore the patient to health— as is frequently done in homoeopathic practice— he is often astonished and horri- fied at the frightful alteration in his disposition. He often witnesses the occurrence of ingratitude, cruelty, refined malice and propensities most dis- graceful and degrading to humanity, which were precisely the qualities possessed by the patient before he grew ill.

Those who were patient when well often become obstinate, violent, hasty, or even intolerant and capricious, or impatient or desponding when ill; those formerly chaste and modest often become lascivious and shameless. A clear-headed person not infrequently becomes obtuse of intellect, while one ordinarily weak-minded becomes more prudent and thoughtful; and a man slow to make up his mind sometimes acquires great presence of mind and quickness of resolve. &c.

The instructions I have to give relative to the cure of mental distases may be confined to a very few remarks, as they are to be cured in the same way as all other diseases, namely, by a remedy which shows, by the symptoms it causes in the body and mind of a healthy individual, a power of producing a morbid state as similar as possible to the case of disease be- fore us, and in no other way can they be cured.

Almost all the so-called mental and emotional diseases are nothing more than corporeal diseases in which the symptom of derangement of the mind and disposition peculiar to each of them is increased, whilst the corporeal symptoms decline (more or less rapidly), till it at length attains the most strik- ing one-sidedness, almost as though it were a local disease in the invisible subtile organ of the mind or disposition.

The cases are not rare in which a so called corporeal disease that threatens to be fatal — a suppuration of the lungs, or the deterioration of some other important viscus, or some other disease of acute character, e. g. in childbed, &c. — becomes transformed into insanity, into a kind of melancholia or into mania by a rapid increase of the psychical symptoms that were previously present, whereupon the corporeal symptoms lose all their danger; these latter improve almost to perfect health, or rather they decrease to such a degree that their obscured presence can only be detected by the observation of a physician gifted with perseverance and penetration. In this

1 Thus aconite will seldom or never effect either a rapid or permanent cure in a patient of a quiet, calm, equable disposition ; and just as little will mix vomica be serviceable where the disposition is mild and phlegmatic, Pulsa- tilla where it is happy, fray and obstinate, or ignatia where it is imperturb- able and disposed neither to be frightened nor vexed.

manner they become transformed into a one-sided and, as it were, a local disease, in which the symptom of the mental disturbance, which was at first but slight, increases so as to be the chief symptom, and in a great measure occupies the place of the other (corporeal) symptoms, whose intensity it subdues in a palliative manner, so that, in short, the affections of the grosser corporeal organs become, as it were, transferred and conducted to the almost spiritual, mental and emotional organs, which the anatomist has never yet and never will reach with his scalpel.

In these diseases we must be very careful to make ourselves acquainted with the whole of the phenomena, both those be- longing to the corporeal symptoms, and also, and indeed particularly, those appertaining to the accurate apprehension of the precise character of the chief symptom, of the peculiar and always predominating state of the mind and disposition, in order to discover, for the purpose of extinguishing the en- tire disease, among the remedies whose pure effects are known, a homoeopathic medicinal pathogenetic force — that is to say, a remedy which in its list of symptoms displays, with the greatest possible similarity, not only the corporeal morbid symptoms present in the case of disease before us, but also especially this mental and emotional state.

To this collection of symptoms belongs in the first place the accurate description of all the phenomena of the previous so-called corporeal disease, before it degenerated into a one- sided increase of the psychical symptom, and became a disease of the mind and disposition. This may be learned from the report of the patient's friends.

A comparison of these previous symptoms of the corporeal disease with the traces of them that still remain, though they have become less perceptible (but which even now sometimes become prominent, when a lucid interval and a transient

alleviation of the psychical disease occurs), will serve to prove them to be still present, though obscured.

By adding to this the state of the mind and disposition ac- curately observed by the patient's friends and by the physician himself, we have thus constructed the complete picture of the disease, for which, in order to effect the homoeopathic cure of the disease, a medicine capable of producing strikingly similar symptoms, and especially an analogous disorder of the mind, must be sought for among the antipsoric remedies, if the psychical disease have already lasted some time.

If, however, insanity or mania (caused by fright, vexation, the abuse of spirituous liquors, &c.) have suddenly broken out as an acute disease in the patient's ordinary calm state, al- though it almost always arises from internal psora, like a flame bursting forth from it, yet when it occurs in this acute manner it should not be immediately treated with antipsorics, but in the first place with remedies indicated for it out of the other class of proved medicaments (e. g. aconite, belladonna, stramo- nium, hyoscyamus, mercury, &c.) in highly potentized, minute homoeopathic doses, in order to subdue it so far that the psora shall for the time revert to its former latent state, wherein the patient appears as if quite well.

But such a patient, who has recovered from an acute mental or emotional disease by the use of these non-antipsoric medi cines, should never be regarded as cured ; on the contrary, no time should be lost in attempting to free him completely, 1 by

1 It very rarely happens that a mental or emotional disease of long-stand- ing ceases spontaneously (for the internal dyscrasia transfers itself again to the grosser corporeal organs); such are the few cases met with now and then, where a former inmate of a madhouse has been dismissed apparent ly recovered. Hitherto, moreover, all madhouses have continued to be choke- full, so thai the multitude of other insane persons who seek for admission into such institutions could scarcely find room in them unless some of the insane in the house died. Not one is ever really and prrmanently cured in them! A Convincing proof, among many others, of the complete nullity of the non-healing art hitherto practiced, which has been ridiculously honored

means of a prolonged antipsoric treatment, from the chronic miasm of the psora, which, it is true, has now become once more latent but is quite ready to break out anew; if this be done, there is no fear of another similar attack, if he attend faithfully to the diet and regimen prescribed for him.

But if the antipsoric treatment be omitted, then we may almost assuredly expect, from a much slighter cause than brought on the first attack of the insanity, the speedy occur- rence of a new and more lasting and severe fit, during which the psora usually develops itself completely, and passes into either a periodic or continued mental derangement, which is then more difficult to be cured by antipsorics.

If the mental disease be not quite developed, and if it be still somewhat doubtful whether it really arose from a cor- poreal affection, or did not rather result from faults of educa- tion, bad practices, corrupt morals, neglect of the mind, superstition or ignorance; the mode of deciding this point will be, that if it proceed from one or the other of the latter causes it will diminish and be improved by sensible friendly exhorta- tions, consolatory arguments, serious representations and sensible advice; whereas a real moral or mental malady, de- pending on bodily disease, would be speedily aggravated by such a course, the melancholic would become still more de- jected, querulous, inconsolable and reserved, the spiteful maniac would thereby become still more exasperated, and the chattering fool would become manifestly more foolish. 1

by allopathic ostentation with the title of rational medicine. How often, on the other hand, has not the true healing art, genuine, pure homoeopathy, been able to restore sucli unfortunate beings to the possession of their men- tal and corporeal health, and give them bark again to their delighted friends and to the world '.{”)

1 It would seem as though the mind, in these cases, felt with uneasiness and grief the truth of these rational representations and acted upon the body as if it wished to restore the lost harmony, but that the body, by means of its disease, reacted upon the organs of the mind and disposition and put them in st ill greater disorder by a fresh transference of its sufferings on to them.

There are, however, as has just been stated, certainly a few emotional diseases which have not merely been developed into that form out of corporeal diseases, but which, in an inverse manner, the body being but slightly indisposed, originate and are kept up by emotional causes, such as continued anxiety, worry, vexation, wrongs and the frequent occurrence of great fear and fright. This kind of emotional diseases in time de- stroys the corporeal health, often to a great degree.

It is only such emotional diseases as these, which were first engendered and subsequently kept up by the mind itself, that, while ihry are yet recent and before they /tare made very great inroads on the corporeal state, may, by means of psychical remedies, such as a display of confidence, friendly exhorta- tions, sensible advice, and often by a well-disguised deception, be rapidly changed into a healthy state of the mind (and with appropriate diet and regimen, seemingly into a healthy state of the body also).

But the fundamental cause in these cases also is a psoric miasm, which was only not yet quite near its full development, and for security's sake, the seemingly cured patient should be subjected to a radical, antipsoric treatment, in order that he may not again, as might easily occur, fall into a similar state of mental disease.

In mental and emotional diseases resulting from corporeal maladies, which can only be cured by homoeopathic antipsoric medicine conjoined with carefully regulated mode of life, an appropriate psychical behavior towards the patient on the part of those about him and of the physician must be scrupulously observed, by way of an auxiliary mental regimen. To furious mania we must oppose calm intrepidity and cool, firm resolu- tion — to doleful, querulous lamentation, a mute display of commiseration in looks and gestures — to senseless chattering, a silence not wholly inattentive — to disgusting and abominable

conduct and to conversation of a similar character, total in- attention. We must merely endeavor to prevent the destruc- tion and injury of surrounding objects, without reproaching the patient for his acts, and everything must be arranged in such a way that the necessity for any corporal punishment and tor- tures 1 whatever may be avoided. This is so much the more

easily effected, because in the administration of the medicine

the only circumstance in which the employment of coercion could be justified — in the homoeopathic system the small doses of the appropriate medicine never offend the taste, and may consequently be given to the patient without his knowledge in his drink, so that all compulsion is unnecessary.

On the other hand, contradiction, eager explanations, rude corrections and invectives, as also weak, timorous yielding, are quite out of place with such patients; they are equally per- nicious modes of treating mental and emotional maladies. But such patients are most of all exasperated and their com- plaint aggravated by contumely, fraud, and deceptions that they can detect. The physician and Jceeper must always pre- tend to believe them to be possessed of reason.

All kinds of external disturbing influences on their senses and disposition should be if possible removed : there are no amusements for their clouded spirit, no salutary distractions, no means of instruction, no soothing effects from conversation, books or other things for the soul that pines or frets in the chains of the diseased body, no invigoration for it, but the cure; it is only when the bodily health is changed for the

1 ft is impossible not to marvel at the hard-hearteduess and indiscretion of the medical men in many establishments for patients of this kind, not only in England, but also in Germany, who. without attempting to discover the true and only efficacious mode of curing such diseases, which is by homoeopathic medicinal (antipsoric) means, content themselves with tortur- ing these most pitiable of all human beings with the most violent blows and other painful torments. By this unconscientious and revolting procedure they debase themselves beneath the level of the turnkeys in a house of cor- rect-ion, for the latter inflict such chastisements as the duty devolving on their office, and on criminals only, whilst the former appear, from a humili- ating consciousness of their uselessness as physicians, only to vent their spite at the apparent incurability of mental diseases in harshness towards the pitiable, innocent sufferers, for they are too ignorant to be of any use and too indolent to adopt a judicious mode of treatment.

better that tranquility and comfort again beam upon their mind.

If the antipsoric remedies selected for each particular case of mental or emotional disease (there are incredibly numerous varieties of them) be quite homceopathically suited for the faith- fully traced picture of the morbid state, which, if there be a suffi- cient number of this kind of medicines known in respect of their pure effects, is ascertained by an indefatigable search for the most appropriate homoeopathic remedy all the more easily, as the emotional and mental state, constituting the principal symptom of such a patient, is so unmistakably perceptible, — then the smallest possible doses are often sufficient to effect the most striking improvement in no very long time, which could not be brought about by physicing the patient to death with the largest oft-repeated doses of all other unsuitable (allopathic) medicines. Indeed, I can confidently assert, from great experience, that the vast superiority of the homoeopathic system over all other conceivable methods of treatment is nowhere displayed in a more triumphant light than in mental and emotional diseases of long standing, which originally sprang from the corporeal maladies or were developed simul- taneously with them.

The intermittent diseases deserve a special consideration, as well as those that recur at certain periods — like the great number of intermittent fevers, and the apparently non-febrile affections that recur at intervals like intermittent fevers— as also those in which certain morbid states alternate at uncer- tain intervals with morbid states of a different kind.

These latter, alternating diseases, are also very numerous, 1

1 Two or three st ates may alternate with one another. Thus, for instance, in the case of double alternating diseases, certain pains may occur persist- ently in the legs. &c. immediately on the disappearance of a kind of ophthalmia, which latter again appears as soon as t he pain in the limbs has gone off for the time— convulsions and spasms may alternate immediately -with any other affection of the body or some part of it— in a case of three- fold alternating states in a common indisposition, periods of apparent in- crease of health and unusual exaltation of the corporeal and mental powers

but all belong to the class of chronic diseases; they are gen- erally a manifestation of developed psora alone, sometimes, but seldom, complicated with a syphilitic miasm, and there- fore in the former case may be cured by antipsoric medicines; in the latter, however, in alternation with antisyphilitics as taught in my work on the Chronic Diseases,

The typical intermittent diseases are those where a morbid state of unvarying character returns at a tolerably fixed period, whilst the patient is apparently in good health, and takes its departure at an equally fixed period; this is observed in those apparently non-febrile morbid states that come and go in a periodical manner (at certain times), as well as in those of a febrile character, to-wit, the numerous varieties of intermit- tent fevers.

Those apparently non-febrile, typical, periodically recurring morbid states just alluded to observed in one single patient at a time (they do not usually appear sporadically or epidemically) always belong to the chronic diseases, mostly to those that are purely psoric, are but seldom complicated with syphilis, and are successfully treated b}* the same means; yet it is some- times necessary to employ as an intermediate remedy a small dose of a potentized solution of cinchona bark, in order to ex- tinguish completely their intermittent type.

(extravagant gaiety, extraordinary activity of the body, excess of comfort- able feeling, inordinate appetite. &c.) may occur, after which, and quite un- expectedly, gloomy, melancholy humor, intolerable hypochondriacal de- rangement of the disposition, with disorder of several of the vital operations, the digestion, sleep, &c, appear, which again, and just as suddenly, give place to the habitual moderate ill-health ; and so also several and very vari- ous alternating states. When the new state makes its appearance, there is often no perceptible trace of the former one. In other cases only slight trac es of tiie former alternating state remain when the new one occurs; few of the symptoms of the first state remain on the appearance and during the continuance of the second. Sometimes the morbid alternating states are quite of opposite natures, as. for instance, melancholy periodically alternat- ing with gay insanity or fren/.y.C)

With regard to the intermittent fevers^ that prevail sporadi- cally or epidemically (not those endemically located in marshy districts), we often find every paroxysm likewise composed of two opposite alternating states (cold, heat — heat, cold), more frequently still of three (cold, heat, sweat). Therefore the remedy selected for them from the general class of proved (common, not antipsoric) medicines must either (and remedies of this sort are the surest) be able likewise to produce in the healthy body two (or all three) similar alternating states, or else must correspond by similarity of symptoms, in the most

1 The pathology hitherto in vogue, which is still in the stage of irrational infancy, recognizes but one single intermittent fever, which it likewise termed ague, and admits Of no varieties but such as are constituted by the different intervals at which the paroxysms recur, quotidian, tertian, quartan, &C. But there a re much more important differences among t hem tha n what are marked by the periods of their recurrence; tin' re are innumerable varieties of these fevers, some of which cannot even be denominated ague, as t heir fits consist solely of heat; others, again, are characterized by cold alone, with or without subsequent perspiration ; yet others which exhibit general cold- ness of the surface, with a sensation of heat on the patient's part, or whilst the body feels externally hot, the patient feels cold; others, again, in which one paroxysm consists entirely of a rigor or simple chilliness, followed by an interval of health, while the next consists of heat alone, followed or not by perspiration; others, again, in which the heat comes first, and the cold stage not till that is gone; others, again, wherein after a cold and hot stage apyrexia ensues, and then perspiration comes on like a second fit. often many hours subsequently; others, again, in which no perspiration at all comes on, and yet others in which the whole attack consists of perspiration alone, without any cold or hot stage, or in which the perspiration is only present during the heat; and there are innumerable other differences, es- pecially in regard to the accessory symptoms, such as headache of a peculiar kind, bad taste in the mouth, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, want of or ex- cessive thirst, peculiar pains in the body or limbs, disturbed sleep, deliria, alterations of temper, spasms. &c, before, during or after the cold stage, before, during or after the hot stage, before, during or after the sweating stage, and countless other varieties. All these are manifestly intermittent fevers of very diflerent kinds, each of which, as might naturally be supposed, requires a special (homoeopathic) treatment. It must bo confessed that they can almost all be suppressed (as is often done) by enormous doses of bark and of its pharmaceutical prcpa.ral ion. the sulphate of quinine; that is to say. their periodical recurrence (their typus) may be extinguished by it. alt hough often only after increased and frequently repeated doses, but the patients who suffered from intermittent fevers for which cinchona bark Is not suit- able, as is the case with all those epidemic intermittent fevers that traverse whole countries and even mountainous districts, are not restored to healt h by the extinction of the typus; on the contrary, they now remain ill in an- other manner, and worse, often much worse, than before; they tire affected by peculiar, chronic bark dyscrasias. and can scarcely be restored to health even by a prolonged treatment by the true system of medicine— a nd yet that is what is called curing, forsooth!

homoeopathic manner possible, to the strongest, best marked, and most peculiar alternating state (either to the cold stage, or to the hot stage, or to the sweating stage, each with its accessory symptoms, according as the one or the other alter- nating state is the strongest and most peculiar); but the symptoms of the patient's health during the intervals when he is free from fever must be the chief guide to the most appro- priate homoeopathic remedy. 1

The most appropriate and efficacious time for administering the medicine in these cases is immediately or very soon after the termination of the paroxysm, as soon as the patient has in some degree recovered from its effects; it has then time to effect all the changes in the organism requisite for the restora- tion of health, without any great disturbance or violent com- motion; whereas the action of a medicine, be it ever so specifically appropriate, if given immediately before the paroxysm, coincides with the natural recurrence of the disease and causes such a reaction in the organism, such a violent contention, that an attack of that nature produces at the very least a great loss of strength, if it do not endanger life. 2 But if the medicine be given immediately after the termination of the fit, that is to say, at the period when the apyretic interval has commenced and a long time before there are any prepara- tions for the next paroxysm, then the vital force of the organism is in the best possible condition to allow itself to be quietly altered by the remedy , and thus restored to the healthy state.

But if the stage of apyrexia be very short, as happens in some very bad fevers, or if it be disturbed by some of the after sufferings of the previous paroxysm, the dose of homoeo- pathic medicine should be administered when the perspiration begins to abate, or the other subsequent phenomena of the expiring paroxysm begin to diminish.

1 Dr. von Bdnninghausen, who lias rendered more service to our beneficent system of medicine than any other of my disciples, has best elucidated this subject, which demands so much care, and has facilitated the choice of the efficient remedy for the various epidemics of fever, in his work entitled Vermch einer hnmoopathixchen Therapie dtr Wechaeljieher, 1833, Minister bei Regensberg.

a This is observed in the fatal cases, by no means rare in which » tnodera i e dose of opium given during the cold stage quickly deprived the patients of life.

It is only when the suitable medicine has with a single dose destroyed several fits and manifest health has ensued, but after some time indications of a new paroxysm appear, only then can and must the same medicine be given again, provided always the totality of the symptoms is still the same. This recurrence of the same fever after an interval of health is, however, only possible when the noxious influence that first excited the intermittent fever still continues to act upon the convalescent, as happens in marshy districts; in which case a permanent cure is often only possible by the removal of this exciting cause (as, for instance, a residence in a mountainous country if the case was one of marsh intermittent fever).

As almost every medicine causes in its pure action a special, peculiar fever, and even a kind of intermittent fever with its alternating states, differing from all other fevers that are caused by other medicines, homoeopathic remedies may be found in the extensive domain of medicines for all the numer- ous varieties of natural intermittent fevers and, for a great many of such fevers, even in the moderate collection of medi- cines already proved on the healthy individual.

But if the remedy found to be the homoeopathic specific for a prevalent epidemic of intermittent .fever do not effect a per- fect cure in some one or other patient, if it be not the influence of a marshy district that prevents the cure, it must always be the psoric miasm in the background, in which case antipsoric medicines must be employed until complete relief is obtained.

Epidemics of intermittent fever, in situations where none are endemic, are of the nature of chronic diseases, composed of single acute paroxysms; each single epidemy is of a peculiar, uniform character common to all the individuals attacked, and when this character is found in the totality of the symptoms common to all, it guides us to Hie discovery of the homoeo- pathic (specific) remedy suitable for all the cases, which is almost universally serviceable in those patients who enjoyed tolerable health before the occurrence of the epidemy, that is to say, who were not chronic sufferers from developed psora.

If, however, in such an epidemic intermittent fever the first paroxysms have been left uncured, or if the patients* have been weakened by improper allopathic treatment; then the in- herent psora that exists, alas! in so many persons, although in a latent state, becomes developed, takes on the type of inter- mittent fever, and to all appearance continues to play the part of the epidemic intermittent fever, so that the medicine, which would have been useful in the first paroxysms (rarely an anti- psoric), is now no longer suitable and cannot be of any service. We have now to do with a psoric intermittent fever only, and this will generally be subdued by minute and rarely repeated doses of sulphur or hepar sulphuris in a high potency.

In those often very pernicious intermittent fevers which at- tack a single person, not residing in a marshy district, we must also at first, as in the case of acute diseases generally, which they resemble in respect to their psoric origin, employ for some days, to render what service it may, a homoeopathic remedy selected for the special case from the other class of proved (not antipsoric) medicines; but if, notwithstanding this procedure, the recovery is deferred, we know that we have to do with psora on the point of its development, and that in this case antipsoric medicines alone can effect a radical cure.

The intermittent fevers endemic in marshy districts and tracts of country frequently exposed to inundations, give a

great deal of work to physicians of the old school, and yet a healthy man may in his youth become habituated even to marshy districts and remain in good health, provided he preserves a faultless regimen and his system is not lowered by want, fatigue or pernicious passions. The intermittent fevers endemic there would at the most only attack him on his first arrival; but one or two very small doses of a highly potentized solution of cinchona bark would conjointly with the well- regulated mode of living just alluded to, speedily free him from the disease. But persons who, while taking sufficient corporeal exercise and pursuing a healthy system of intellectual occupations and bodily regimen, cannot be cured of marsh in- termittent fever by one or a few of such small doses of cinchona — in such persons psora, striving to develop itself, always lies at the root of their malady, and their intermittent fever cannot lie cured in the marshy district without antipsoric treatment. 1 It sometimes happens that when these patients exchange, without delay, the marshy district for one that is dry and mountainous, recovery apparently ensues, (the fever leaves them) if they be not yet deeply sunk in disease, that is to say, if the psora was not completely developed in them and can consequently return to its latent state; but they will never regain perfect health without antipsoric treatment.

===== 245 ===== («)

Having thus seen what attention should, in the homoeopathic treatment, be paid to the chief varieties of diseases”, and to the peculiar circumstances connected with them, we now pass on to what we have to say respecting the remedies and the mode of employing them, together with the diet and regimen to he observed

(1 n ring their use.

Every perceptibly progressive and strikingly increasing amelioration in a transient (acute) or persistent (chronic) dis- ease, is a condition which, as long as it lasts, completely precludes every repetition of the administration of any medi-

1 Large, oft-repeated doses of cinchona bark, as also concentrated cin- clionic remedies, sucli as the sulphate ttf quinine, have certainly the power of freeing such patients from the periodical fits of the marsh ague; but those thus deceived into the belief that they are cured remain diseased in another way without antipsoric aid.

cine whatsoever, because all the good the medicine taken con- tinues to effect is now hastening towards its completion. Every new dose of any medicine whatsoever, even of the one last administered, that has hitherto shown itself to be salutary, would in this case disturb the work of amelioration.

On the other hand, the slowly progressive amelioration con- sequent on a very minute dose, whose selection has been accurately homoeopathic, when it has met with no hindrance to the duration of its action, sometimes accomplishes all the good the remedy in question is capable from its nature of per- forming in a given case, in periods of forty, fifty or a hundred days. This is, however, but rarely the case; and besides, it must be a matter of great importance to the physician as well as to the patient that, were it possible, this period should be diminished to one half, one quarter, and even still less, so that a much more rapid cure might be obtained. And this may be very happily effected, as recent and oft-repeated observations have shown, under three conditions: firstly, if the medicine selected with the utmost care was perfectly homoeopathic; secondly, if it was given in the minutest dose, so as to produce the least possible excitation of the vital force, and yet suffi- cient to effect the necessary change in it; and thirdly, if this minutest yet powerful dose of the best selected medicine be repeated at suitable intervals, 1 which experience shall have pronounced to be the best adapted for accelerating the cure to the utmost extent, yet without the vital force, which it is sought to influence to the production of a similar medicinal

1 In the former editions of the Organon I have advised that a single dose of a well -selected homoeopathic medicine should always be allowed first fully to expend its action before a new medicine is given orthe same one repeated —a doctrine which was the result of the positive experience that neither by alarger dose of the remedy, which may have been well chosen(as has been again recently proposed, but which would be very like a retrograde move- ment), nor. what amounts to the same thing, by several small doses of it given in quick succession, can the greatest possible good be effected in the treatment of diseases, more especially of chronic ones; and the reason of this is. 1 hat by such a procedure the vital force does not quietly adapt itself to the transition from the natural disease to the similar medicinal disease, bu1 is usually so violently excited and disturbed by a larger dose, or by smaller d,,s: s of even a homoeopathically chosen remedy given rapidly one after' t he other, that in most eases its reaction will be anything but salutary and will do more harm than good. As long as no more efficacious mode of

disease, being able to feel itself excited and roused to adveise reactions.

proceeding than that then taught by me \v;is discovered, the safe philan- thropic maxim of *i wmjtivat, modi) ne ruteeat, rendered it Imperative for the homoeopathic practitioner,' for whom the weal of his fellow-creatures was the highest object, to allow, as a general rule in diseases, but a single dose at a time, and that tbe very smallest, of the carefully selected remedy to act upon the patient and. moreover, to exhaust its action. The very small- est, I repeat, for it holds good and will continue to hold good as a homoeo- pa t hie therapeutic maxim nut bo be refuted by any experience in the world, that the best dose of the properly selected remedy is always the very small- est one in one of the high potencies (X), as well for chronic as for acute diseases— a truth that is t he ill est Lmable proper! y of pure honneopat by a nd Which, as long as allopathy (and the new mongrel sect, whose t real incut is a

mixture of allopathic and homoeopathic processes, is not much better) con- tinues to gnaw like a cancer at the lifeof sick human beings, and to ruin them by large and ever larger doses of drugs, will keep pure homoeopathy separated from these spurious arts as by an impassable gulf.

On the other hand, however, practice shows us that t hough a single one of these small doses may suffice to accomplish almost all that it was possible for this medicine to do under the circumstances, in some, and especially in slight cases of disease, particularly in those of young children and very delicate and excitable adults, yet that in many, indeed in most cases, not only of very chronic diseases that have already made greai progress and have Frequently been aggravated by a previous employment of inappropri- ate medicines, but also of serious acute diseases, one such smallest dose of medicine in our highly potentized dyuamization Is evidently insufficient to effect all the curative act ion that might be expected from that medicine, for It may unquestionably be requisite to administer several of them, in order that the vital force may be pathogenetically altered by them tosuch a de- gree and its salutary reaction stimulated to such a height, as to enable it to

c pletely extinguish, by its reaction, the whole of that portion of the

original disease.! hat it lay in the power of t he well-selected homoeopathic remedy to eradicate; the best chosen medicine in such asruall dose, given but- once, might certainly be of some service, but would not lie nearly suffi cien! .

Hut- the ca refill hoimeopathie physician would not vent u re soon to repeal tbe same dose of the same remedy again and again, as from such a practice he has frequently experienced no advantage, but most frequently, on close observation, decided disadvantage. He generally witnessed aggravation, from even the smallest doseof the most, suitable remedy, which he had given one day. when re pea ted the nex! day and the next.

Now. in cases where he was convinced of the correctness of his choice of the homoeopathic medicine, in order to obtain more benefit for the patient than he was able to get hitherto from prescribing a single small dose, t he idea often naturally struck him to i ncrease the dose, since, tec t he reasons given above, one single dose only should be given; and. for instance, in place of giving a single very minute globule moistened with the medicine in the highest dynamization, to administer six. seven or eight of them at once, and even a half or a whole drop. But the result was almost always less favora-

able than it should have been: it was often actually unfavorable, often even very bad— an injury that, in a patient so treated, it is difficult to repair.

The difficulty in this case is not solved by giving, instead, lower dynamiza- tion of the remedy in a large dose.

Thus, increasing the Strength of the single doses of the homopopal hie medicine with the view of effecting the degree of pathogenetic excitation of

Under these conditions, the smallest doses of the best selected homoeopathic medicine may be repeated with the best,

the vital force necessary to produce satisfactory salutary reaction, fails al- together, as experience teaches, to accomplish the desired object. The vital force is thereby too violently and too suddenly assailed and excited to allow it time to exercise a gradual, equable, salutary reaction, to adapt itself to the modification effected in it; hence it strives to repel, as if it were an enemy, the medicine attacking it in excessive force, by means of vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, perspiration, and so forth, and thus in a, great measure it diverts and renders nugatory the aim of the incautious physician.— little or no good towards curing the disease will be thereby accomplished; on the contrary, the patient will be thereby perceptibly weakened and, for a long time, the administration of even the smallest dose of the same remedy must not be thought of if we would not wish it to injure the patient.

But it happens, moreover, that a number of the smallest doses given for the same object in quick succession accumulate in the organism into a kind of excessively large dose, with (a few rare cases excepted) similar bad re- sults; in this case the vital force, not being able to recover itself betwixt every dose, though it bo but small, becomes oppressed and overwhelmed and thus, being incapable of reacting in a salutary manner, it is necessitated passively to allow involuntarily the continuance of the over-strong medi- cinal disease that has thus been forced upon it. just in the same manner as we may every day observe from tin' allopathic abuse of large cumulative doses of one and the same medicine, to the lasting Injury of the patient.

Now. therefore, in order, whilst avoiding the erroneous method I have here pointed out. to attain the desired object more certainly than hitherto, and to administer the medicine selected in such a manner that it must exercise all its efficacy without injury to the patient, that it may effect all the good it is capable of performing in a given case of disease. I have latterly adopted a peculiar method.

I perceived that, in order to discover this tru-j middle path, we must be guided as well by the nature of the different medicinal substances, as also by the corporeal constitution of the patient and the magnitude of his dis- ease, so that— to give an example from the use of *u phut in chronic (psoric) diseases— the smallest dose of it (tinct. sulph. X°) can seldom be repeated with advantage, even in robust patients and in fully developed psora, oftener than every seven days, a period of time which must )>:■ proportionally lengthened when we have to treat weaker and more excitable patients of this kind; in such cases we would do well to give such a dose only every nine, twelve, or fourteen days, and continue to repeat the medicine until it ceases to be of service. We thus find (to abide by the instance of sulphur) that in psoric diseases seldom fewer that four, often, however, six. eight and even ten such doses (tinct. xidph. X°) are required to be successi vely admin- istered at these intervals for the complete annihilation of the whole portion of the chronic disease that is eradicable by sulphur -provided always there had been no previous allopathic abuse of sulphur in the cast>. Tims cren a (primary) #eabiou» e, upti'tn of rcc. nt origin, though it may have spread all over the body, m in 1>c perfectly cured, in persons who are wit too weakly, hy a dose of tinct. sulph X° (jinn coiry xeven days, in the course of from ten to twelve weeks (accordingly with tenor twelve such globules), so that it will seldom be necessary to aid the cure with a few doses of carh. veg X° (also given at the rate of one dose per weeft), without the slightest external treatment besides frequent changes of linen and good regimen.

When for other serious chronic diseases also we may consider it requisite, as far as we can calculate, to give eight, nine or ten doses of tinct. sulph. (at

often with incredible results, at intervals of fourteen, twelve, ten, eight, seven days, and, where rapidity is requisite, in

X°), it is yet more expedient in such cases, instead of giving them in unin- terrupted succession, to interpose after every, or every second or third dose, a dose of another medicine, which in this case is next in point of homoeo- pathic suitableness to sulphur (usually hep. sulpli). and to allow this like- wise to act for eight, nine, twelve or fourteen days before again commencing a course of three doses of sulphur.

But it not infrequently happens that the vital force refuses to permit sev- eral dosjs of sulphur, even though they may ba essential for the cure of the chronic malady and are given at the intervals mentioned above, to act quietly on itself ; this refusal it reveals by some, though moderate, sulphur symptoms, which it allows to appear in the patient during the treatment. In suchjeases it is sometimes advisable to administer a small dose of mix torn X°. allowing it to act for eight or ten days, in order to dispose the system again to allow succeeding doses of the sulphur to act quietly and effed ually upon it. In those cases for which it is adaptsd, f»ix X° is preferable.

But the vital force shows the greatest resistance to the salutary action upon itself of the strongly indicated sulphur, and even exhibits manifest aggravation of the chronic disease, though the sulphur be given in t he very smallest dose, though only a globule of the size of a mustard seed moistened with Unci xuh'h X°besmelt,if the sulphur have formerly (it maybeyears since) been improperly given allopathically in large doses. This is one la- mentable circumstance that renders the best medical treatment of chronic diseases almost impossible, among the many that the ordinary bungling treatment of Chronic diseases by the old school would leave us nothing to do but to deplore, were there not some mode of get I Ing over the difficulty.

In such cases we have only to let the patient smell a single tijue strongly at a globule the size of a mustard seed moistened wit h mercur. me all. X, and allow this olfaction to act for about nine davs. in order to make t he vit al force again disposed to permit the sulphur (at least the olfaction of tuict. sulph. X°) to exercise a beneficial influence on itself— a discovery for which we are indebted to Dr. Griesselich. of < larlsruhe.

Of the other antipsoric remedies (except perhaps pho*ph. X) it is necessary to administer fewer doses at similar intervals (of sepia and ail. at longer in- tervals, without any intermediate remedy, where they are homoeopath Ically indicated), in order to cure all that is curable in a given case by the remedy indicated. Hep. sulph. calc. X can rarely be taken or smelt at shorter inter- vals than every fourteen or fifteen days.

Before making such a repetition of the dose the physician must of course be convinced that his selection is truly homoeopathic.

In acute diseases, the time for repeating t he tit [y chosen medicine is regu- lated by the greater or less rapidity of the course of the disease we have to combat, so that, when necessary, it should be repeated after twenty-four, sixteen, twelve, eight, fourand even fewer hours, if the medicine continue to prove beneficial without interruption— without producing new symptoms —but is not sufficiently rapid in its action for the excessively quick and dangerous course of the acute disease, so that in cholera, the most speedily fatal disease we know, at the commencement of the disease, one or two drops of a mild solution of camphor must be given every five minutes, in order to procure speedy and certain relief, and in the more developed cholera, doses of cuprum, veratrmn. phospho if, &c. (X°), frequently require to be given every two or -three hours, and also arsenic, cat ho vegetalnlis. &c. at similar short intervals.

in the treatment of so-called typhus fevers and other continued fevers, the repetition, in smallest doses, of the medicines that proves itself of ser- vice, must be regulated by the above directions.

chronic diseases resembling cases of acute disease, at still shorter intervals, but in acute diseases at very much shorter periods — every twenty-four, twelve, eight, four hours, in the very acutest, every hour, up to as often as every five minutes, — in every case in proportion to the more or less rapid course of the disease and of the action of the medicine employed, as is more distinctly explained in the last note.

The dose of the same medicine may be repeated several times according to circumstances, but only so long as until either recovery ensues, or the same remedy ceases to do good and the rest of the disease, presenting a different group of symp- toms, demands a different homoeopathic medicine.

Every medicine prescribed for a case of disease which, in the course of its action, produces new and troublesome symp- toms not appertaining to the disease to be cured, is not capa- ble of effecting real improvement, 1 and cannot be considered as homoeopathically selected; it must, therefore, either, if the aggravation be considerable, be first partially neutralized as

In pure syphilitic diseases I have generally found a single doseof metallic mercury (X”) sufficient; and yet not infrequently two or three such doses were requisite, given at intervals of six or eight days, when the slightest complication with psora was perceptible.

In cases where some particular medicine is urgently indicated, but where the patient is very excitable and weak, a more efficient and certain proced- ure than giving more substantial, though ever so small doses of the highly potentized medicine, is a single olfaction of a dry globule the size of a must- ard seed that has been impregnated with the same medicine; this is effected by holding the mouth of the phial that contains it first in one and then (if it is wished to give a stronger dose) in the other nostril and making a momen- tary inspiration ; the action of this medicine, thus administered, lasts just as long as that of the medicine that has been taken in substance, hence even this olfaction ought not to be repeated at shorter intervals.(”)

1 As all experience shows that the dose of the specifically suited homoeo- pathic medicine can scarcely be prepared too small to effect perceptible amelioration in the disease for which it is appropriate (88 275—270), we should act injudiciously and hurtfully were we. when no improvement, or some, though it be even slight, aggravation ensues, to repeat or even to increase the dose of the same medicine, as is done in the old system, under the delu- sion that it was not efficacious on account of itssmall quantity (its too small dose). Every fqaravation by the production of new symptoms — when nothing untoward has occurred in the mental or physical regimen— invariably proves unsuitablenesx on the part of the medicine formerly given in the case of disease before us, but never indicates that the dose has been too weak.

soon as possible by an antidote before giving the next remedy chosen more accurately according to similarity of action; or if the troublesome symptoms be not very violent, the next remedy must be given immediately, in order to take the place of the improperly selected one. («)

When, to the observant practitioner who accurately investi- gates the state of the disease, it is evident, in urgent cases after the lapse of only six, eight or twelve hours, that he has made a bad selection in the medicine last given, in that the patient's state is growing perceptibly, however slightly, worse from hour to hour, by the occurrence of new symptoms and sufferings, it is not only allowable for him, but it is his duty to remedy his mistake, by the selection and administration of a homoeopathic medicine not merely tolerably suitable, but the most appropriate possible for the existing state of the dis- ease (J 167). («)

There are some medicines (e. g. ignatia, also bryonia and rhus, and sometimes belladonna) whose power of altering man's health consists chiefly in alternating actions — a kind of pri- mary-action symptoms that are in part opposed to each other. Should the practitioner find, on prescribing one of these, se- lected on strict homoeopathic principles, that no improvement follows, he will in most cases soon effect his object by giving (in acute diseases, even within a few hours) a fresh and equally small dose of the same medicine. 1

But should we find, during the employment of the other medicines in chronic (psoric) diseases, that the best selected homoeopathic (antipsoric) medicine in the suitable (minutest) dose does not effect an improvement, this is a sure sign that the cause that keeps up the disease still persists, and that there is some circumstance in the mode of life of the patient

1 As I have more particularly described in the introduction to “Tgnatia” (in the first voluftie of the Materia Medica Pura).

or in the situation in which he is placed, that must be re- moved in order that a permanent cure may ensue.

Among the signs that, in all diseases, especially in such as are of an acute nature, inform us of a slight commencement of amelioration or aggravation that is not perceptible to every one. the state of mind and the whole demeanor of the patient are the most certain and instructive. In the case of ever so slight an improvement we observe a greater degree of comfort, increased calmness and freedom of the mind, higher spirits — a kind of return of the natural state. In the case of ever so small a commencement of aggravation we have, on the con- trary, the exact opposite of this: a constrained, helpless, pitiable state of the disposition, of the mind, of the whole de- meanor, and of all gestures, postures and actions, which may be easil}' perceived on close observation, but cannot be de- scribed in words. 1

The other new or increased symptoms, or, on the contrary, the diminution of the original ones without any addition of new ones, will soon dispel all doubts from the mind of the at- tentively observing and investigating practitioner with regard to the aggravation or amelioration; though there are among patients persons who are eituer incapable of giving an account of this amelioration or aggravation, or are unwilling to con- fess it.

But even with such individuals we may convince ourselves

1 The signs of improvement in the disposition and mind, however, may be expected only soon after the medicine, lias been taken when the dose has been sufficiently minute (i. e. as small as possible); an unnecessarily larger dose of even the most suitable homoeopathic medicine acts too violently, and at first produces too great and too lasting a disturbance of the mind and disposition, to allow us soon to perceive the improvement in them. T must here observe that this so essential rule is chiefly transgressed by pre- sumptuous tyros in homoeopathy, and by physicians who are converted to homoeopathy from the ranks of the old school. From old prejudices these persons abhor the smallest doses of the lowest/“) dilution of medicine in such cases, and hence they fail to experience the great advantages and blessings of that mode of proceeding which a thousandfold experience has shown to be the most salutary; they cannot effect all that homoeopathy is capable of doing, and hence t hey have no claim to be considered its adherents.

on this point by going with them through all the symptoms enumerated in our notes of the disease one by one, and finding that they complain of no new unusual sj^mptoms in addition to these, and that none of the old symptoms are worse. If this be the case, and if an improvement in the disposition and mind have already been observed, the medicine must have effected positive diminution of the disease, or, if sufficient time have not yet elapsed for this, it will soon effect it. Now, supposing the remedy is perfectly appropriate, if the improve- ment delay too long in making its appearance, this depends either on some error of conduct on the part of the patient, or on the homoeopathic aggravation produced by the medicine lasting too long (§ 157), consequently on the dose not being small enough.

On the other hand, if the patient mention the occurrence of some fresh accidents and symptoms of importance — signs that the medicine chosen has not been strictly homoeopathic — even though he should good-naturedly assure us that he feels better, we must not believe this assurance, but regard his state as aggravated, as it will soon be perfectly apparent it is.

The true< n ) physician will take care to avoid making favor- ite remedies of medicines, the employment of which he has, by chance, perhaps found often useful, and which he has had opportunities of using with good effect. If he do so, some remedies of rarer use, which would have been more homceo- pathically suitable, consequently more serviceable, will often be neglected.

The true practitioner, moreover, will not in his practice with mistrustful weakness neglect the employment of those remedies that he may now and tben have employed with bad effects, owing to an erroneous selection (from his own fault, there- fore), or avoid them for other (false) reasons, as that they were unhomceopathic for the case of disease before him ; he must bear in mind the truth, that of medicinal agents that

one alone invariably deserves the preference in every case of disease which corresponds most accurately by similarity to the totality of the characteristic symptoms, and that no paltry prejudices should interfere with this serious choice.

Considering the minuteness of the doses necessary and prop- er in homoeopathic treatment, we can easily understand that during the treatment everything must be removed from the diet and regimen which can have any medicinal action, in order that the small dose may not be overwhelmed and extinguished or disturbed by any foreign medicinal irritant. 1

Hence the careful investigation into such obstacles to cure ie so much the more necessary in the case of patients affected by chronic diseases, as their diseases are usually aggravated by such noxious influences and other disease-causing errors in the diet and regimen, which often pass unnoticed. 2

' The softest tones of a distant flute that in the still midnight hours would inspire a tender heart with exalted feelings and dissolve it in religious ecstasy, are inaudible and powerless amid discordant cries and the noise of day.

» Coffee; fine Chinese and other herb teas; beer prepared with medicinal vegetable substances unsuitable for the patient's state; so-called fine liquors made with medicinal spices; all kindsof punch; spiced chocolate- odorous waters and perfumes of many kinds; strong-scented flowers in the apartment; tooth powders and essences and perfumed sachets compounded of drugs; highly spiced dishes and sauces; spiced cakes and ices; crude medicinal vegetables for soups; dishes of herbs, roots and stalks of plants possessing medicinal qualities; old cheese, and meats that are in a state of decomposition, or that possess medicinal properties (as the flesh and fat of pork, ducks and geese, or veal that is too young and sour viands), ought just as certainly to be kept from patients as they should avoid all excesses in

rooms'woo.en SlJST °' W ™ a,S ° * heated

we le^Trst for ' It” “T th ° ^ ^ich should be exchanged in warm

ridlne driving ,J * indulgence in mere passive exercise (such as

nTtnral debSZ >- SUt ' n * up ,on “ at niffht - ^cleanliness, **-

Sef or ex a it T; enerVat f i0n by rP!l(li ”“°hscene books, subjects of anger, gnef or jexation a passion for play, over-exertion of mind or body dwell- ing in marshy districts, damp rooms, penurious living. Ac. All these thTngs must be as far as possible avoided or removed, in order that the cur 1

Jessiy to increase the difficulties of the patient's dietary by forbidding the mended”“^ m ° r6 ' indiffe ™<> things. whicfcisU to be “com!

162 ORUANON OF MEDICINE.

The most appropriate regimen during the employment of medicine in chronic diseases consists in the removal of such obstacles to recovery, and in supplying where necessary the reverse: innocent moral and intellectual recreation, active exercise in the open air in almost all kinds of weather (daily walks, slight manual labor), suitable, nutritious, uumedicinal food and drink, &c.

In acute diseases, on the other hand — except in cases of mental alienation — the subtile, unerring internal sense of the awakened life-preserving faculty determine so clearly and pre- cisely, that the physician only requires to counsel the friends and attendants to put no obstacles in the way of this voice of nature by refusing anything the patient urgently desires in the way of food, or by trying to persuade him to partake of any- thing injurious.

The desire of the patient affected by an acute disease with regard to food and drink is certainly chiefly for things that give palliative relief ; they are, however, not strictly speaking of a medicinal character, and merely supply a sort of want. The slight hindrances that the gratification of this desire, within moderate bounds, could oppose to the radical removal of the disease 1 will be amply counteracted and overcome by the power of the homoeopathically suited medicine and the vital force set free by it, as also by the refreshment that follows from taking what has been so ardently longed for. In like manner, in acute diseases the temperature of the room and the heat or coolness of the bed-coverings must also be arranged entirely in conformity with the patient's wish. He must be kept free from all over-exertion of mind and exciting emo- tions.

The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines

1 This is. however, rare. Thus, for instance, in pure inflammatory dis- eases, where aconite is so indispensable, whose action would be destroyed by partaking of vegetable acids, the desire of the patient is almost always for pure cold water only.

of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to reiy upon their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of their genuineness.

It should be a matter of conscience with him to be thor- oughly convinced in every case that the patient always takes the right medicine.

Substances belonging to the animal and vegetable kingdoms possess their medicinal qualities most perfectly in their raw state. 1

We gain possession of the powers of indigenous plants and of such as may be had in a fresh state in the most complete and certain manner by mixing their freshly expressed juice immediately with the equal parts of spirits of wine of a strength sufficient to burn in a lamp. After this has stood a day and a night in a close stoppered bottle and deposited the fibrinous and albuminous matters, the clear superincumbent fluid is then to be decanted off for medicinal use. 1 All fer- mentation of the vegetable juice will be at once checked by the spirits of wine mixed with it and rendered, impossible for the future, and the entire medicinal power of the vegetable juice is thus retained (perfect and uninjured) for ever by keeping the preparation in well-corked bottles and excluded from the sun's light. 3

1 All crude animal and vegetable substances have a greater or less amount of medicinal power, and are capableof altering man's health, each in itsown peculiar way. Those plants and animals used by the most enlightened na- tions as food have this advantage over all others, that they contain a larger amount of nutritious constituents; and they differ from the others in this, that their medicinal powers in their raw state are either not very great in themselves, or are diminished by the culinary processes they are subjected to in cooking for domestic use, by the expression of the pernicious juice (like the cassava root of South America), by fermentation (of the rye-flour in the dough for making bread, sour-crout prepared without vinegar and pickled gherkins), by smoking and by the action of heat (in boiling, stewing, toasting, roasting, baking), whereby the medicinal parts of many of these substances are in part destroyed and dissipated. By the addition of salt (pickling) and vinegar (sauces, salads) animal and vegetable substances certainly lose much of their injurious medicinal qualities, but other disad- vantages result from these additions.

But even those plants that possess most medicinal power lose that in part or completely by such processes. By perfect desiccation all the roots of the various kinds of iris, of the horseradish, of the different species of arum and of the peonies lose almost all their medicinal virtue. The juice of the most virulent plants often becomes an inert, pitch-like mass, from the heat em- ployed in preparing the ordinary extracts By merely standing a long time, theexpressed juice of the most deadly plants becomes quite powerless; even at a moderate atmospheric temperature it rapidly takes on the vinous fer- mentation (and thereby loses much of its medicinal power), and immediately thereafter the acetous and putrid fermentation, whereby it is deprived of all its peculiar medicinal properties; the fecula that is then deposited, if well washed, is quite innocuous, like ordinary starch. By the transudation that takes place when a number of green plants are laid one above the other, the greatest part of their medicinal properties is lost.

The other exotic plants, barks, seeds and roots that cannot be obtained in the fresh state the sensible practitioner will aever take in the pulverized form on trust, but will first con- vince himself of their genuineness in their crude, entire state before making any medicinal employment of them. 3 ' 0 )

1 Buchholz (Tii'chr.nh f. Schetdek. u. Ap' th a. d. J . 1815. Weimar. Abth. 1, vi) assures his readers (and his reviewer iti the Leipziyer LileraturzcUuny, IsHi, No. 82, does not contradict him) that for this excellent mode of prepar- Lng medicine we have to thank the campaign in Russia, whence it was (in 1*12) imported into Germany. According to the noble practice of Germans to bo unjust towards their own count rymen, he conceals i be fact that this discovery and those directions, which he quotes in my very words from the first edition of the Organonof Rational Medicine, § 230 and note, proceed from me, and that I first published them to the world two years before the Russian campaign (the Urganon appeared in 1810). Pome folks would rather assign the origin of a discovery to the deserts of Asia than to a German to whom the honor belongs. O temporal O mores!

Alcohol has certainly been sometimes before this used for mixing with vegetable juice, e. g. to preserve them some time before making extracts oi them, but never with t he view of administering them in this form.

- Although equal parts of alcohol and freshly expressed juice are usually the most suitable proportion for effecting the deposition of the fibrinous and albuminous ma tters, yet for plants that contain much thick mucus (e. p. Symphytum officinale, Viola tricolor, &c.) or an excess of albumen (e.g.JEUiusa ?ynapium, Solatium niy rum, &c), a double proportion of alcohol is generally required for this object. Plants that are very deficient in juice, as oleander. Bums, Ta.m<, Ledum, Sabina, &c, must first be pounded up alone into a moist, fine mass, and then stirred up with a double quantity of alcohol, in order that the juice may combine with it, and being thus extracted by the alcohol, may be pressed out; these latter may also when dried bo brought with milk-sugar to the millionfold trituration, and then be further diluted and potentized (v. § 271).

3 In order to preserve them in thoform of powder, a precaution is requisite that has hitherto been usually neglected by druggists, and hence powders even of well-dried animal and vegetable substances could not be preserved uninjured even in well-corked bottles. The entire crude vegetable sub- stances, though perfectly dry, yet contain, as an indispensable condition oi.' the cohesion of their texture, a certain quantity of moisture, which does not indeed prevent the unpul verized drug from remaining in as dry a state as is requisite to preserve it from corruption, but which is quite too much for the

The homoeopathic system of medicine develops for its use, to a hitherto unheard-of degree, the spirit-like medicinal pow- ers of the crude substances by means of a process peculiar to it and which has hitherto never been tried, whereby only they all become penetratingly efficacious and remedial, even those that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medi- cinal power on the human body.

Thus two drops of the fresh vegetable juice mingled with equal parts of alcohol are diluted with ninety-eight drops of alcohol and potentized by means of two succussions, whereby the first development of power is formed, and this process is repeated through twenty-nine more phials, each of which is filled three quarters full with ninety-nine drops of alcohol, and each succeeding phial is to be provided with one drop from the preceding phial (which has already been shaken twice) and is in its turn twice shaken, 1 and in the same manner at last the

finely pulverized state. The animal or vegetable substance which in its en- tire state was perfectly dry, furnishes therefore, when finely pulverized, a somewhat moist powder, which, without rapidly becoming spoilt and mouldy, can yet not be preserved in corked bottles if not previously freed from this superfluous moisture. This is best effected by spreading out the powder in a flat tin saucer with a raised edge, which floats in a vessel full of boiling water (i. >■ a water-bath), and, by means of stirring it about, drying it to such a degree that all the small atoms of it (no longer stick together in lumps, but) like dry. fine sand, are easily separated from each other, and are readily converted into dust. In this dry stale the fine powders may be kept for ever uninjured in well-corked and sealed bottles, in all their original compjete medicinal power, without ever being injured bij.mites or mould ; and they are best preserved when the bottles are kept protected from the day- -ight (in covered boxes, chests, cases). If not shut up in air-tight vessels, and not preserved from the access of the light of thesun and day, all animal and vegetable substances in time gradually lose their medicinal power more and more, even in the entire state, but still more in the form of powder.

1 In order to maintain a fixed and measured standard for developing t he power of liquid medicines, multiplied experience and careful observation have led me to adopt two succussions for each phial, in preference to the greater number formerly employed (by which the medicines were too highly potentized). There are, however, homoeopathists who carry about with them on their visits to patients the homoeopathic medicines in the fluid state, and who yet assert that they do not become more highly potentized in the course of time, but they thereby show their want of ability to observe correctly. 1 dissolved a grain of soda in half an ounce of water mixed with alcohol in a phial, which was thereby filled two-thirds full, and shook this solution continuously for half an hour, and this fluid was in potency and energy equal to the thirtieth development of po\ver.(”)

1C6

thirtieth development of power (potentized decillionth dilution X), which is the one most generally used.

All other substances adapted for medicinal use — except sulphur, which has of late years been only employed in the form of highly diluted (X) tinctured) — as pure or oxydized and sulphuretted metals and other minerals, petroleum, phos- phorus, as also parts and juices of plants that can only be obtained in the dry state, animal substances, neutral salts, &c. , all these are first to be potentized by trituration for three hours, up to the millionfold pulverulent attenuation, and of this one grain is to be dissolved, and brought to the thirtieth development of power through twenty-seven attenuating phials, in the same manner as the vegetable juices. 1

In no case is it requisite to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time. 2 (°0

It is not conceivable how the slightest dubiety could exist as to whether it was more consistent with nature and more rational to prescribe a single, well-known medicine at one time in a disease, or a mixture of several differently acting drugs.

As the true physician finds in simple medicines, adminis- tered singly and uncombined, all that he can possibly desire (artificial disease-forces which are able by homoeopathic power completely to overpower, extinguish, and permanently cure natural diseases), he will, mindful of the wise maxim that “it is wrong to attempt to employ complex means when simple

J As is still more circumstantially described in the prefaces to Arsenic and Pulsatilla in the Mate/ ia Medica Pura (”)

2 Some homceopathists have made the experiment, in cases where they deemed one remedy homoeopathically suitable for one portion of the symp- toms of a case of disease, and a second for another portion, of administering; both remedies at the same or at almost the same time; but T earnestly de- precate such a hazardous experiment, which can never be necessary, though it may sometimes seem to be of use.

means suffice,” never think of giving as a remedy any but a single, simple medicinal substance; for these reasons also, be- cause even though the simple medicines were thoroughly proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unim- paired healthy state of man, it is yet impossible to foresee how two and more medicinal substances might, when com- pounded, hinder and alter each other's actions on the human body; and because, on the other hand, a simple medicinal substance when used in diseases, the totality of whose symp- toms is accurately known, renders efficient aid by itself alone, if it be homoeopathically selected; and supposing the worst case to happen, that it was not chosen in strict conformity to similarity of symptoms, and therefore does no good, it is yet so far useful that it promotes our knowledge of therapeutic agents, because, by the new symptoms excited by it in such a case, those symptoms which this medicinal substance had already shown in experiments on the healthy human body are confirmed, an advantage that is lost by the employment of all compound remedies. 1

The suitableness of a medicine for any given case of dis- ease does not depend on its accurate homoeopathic selection alone, but likewise on the proper size, or rather smallness, of the dose. If we give too strong a dose of a medicine which may have been even quite homoeopathically chosen for the morbid state before us, it must, notwithstanding the inherent beneficial character of its nature, prove injurious by its mere magnitude, and by the unnecessary, too strong impression which, by virtue of its homoeopathic similarity of action, it makes upon the vital force which it attacks and, through the vital force, upon those parts of the organism which are the most sensitive, and are already most affected by the natural disease. ( a >

1 When the rational physician has chosen the perfectly homoeopathic medicine for the well-considered case of disease and administered it intern- ally, he will leave to irrational allopathic routine the practice of giving; drinks composed of other medicinal substances, of applying compresses of herbs or fomentations with various plants, of injecting medicated glysters and of rubbing in this or the other ointment.

For this reason, a medicine, even though it may be hornceo- pathically suited to the case of disease, does harm in every dose that is too large, the more harm the larger the dose, and by the magnitude of the dose it does more harm the greater its homoeopathicity and the higher the potency 1 selected, and it does much more injury than any equally large dose of a medi- cine that is unhomceopathic, and in no respect adapted (allo- pathic) to the morbid state; for in the former case the so-called homoeopathic aggravation 157 — 160) — that is to say, the very analogous medicinal disease produced by the vital force stirred up by the excessively large dose of medicine, in the parts of the organism that are most suffering and most irritated by the original disease — which medicinal disease, had it been of appropriate intensity, would have gently effected a cure — rises to an injurious height; 2 the patient, to be sure, no longer suffers from the original disease, for that has been homceo- pathically eradicated, but he suffers all the more from the excessive medicinal disease and from useless exhaustion of his strength.

For the same reason, and because a medicine, provided the dose of it was sufficiently small, is all the more salutary and almost marvellously efficacious the more accurately homoeo- pathic its selection has been, a medicine whose selection has been accurately homoeopathic must be all the more salutary the more its dose is reduced to the degree of minuteness appro- priate for a gentle remedial effect.

Here the question arises, what is this most suitable degree of minuteness for sure and gentle remedial effect; how small, in other words, must be the dose of each individual medicine, homceopathically selected for a case of disease, to effect the

1 The praise bestowed of late years by some few homo?opathists on the larger doses is owing to this, either that they chose low dynamizations of die medicine to be administered, as I myself used to do twenty years ago, from not knowing any better, or that the medicines selected were not per- fectly homoeopathic.

2 See note to S ~'4(i.

best cure? To solve this problem, and to determine for every particular medicine, what dose of it will suffice for homoeo- pathic therapeutic purposes and yet be so minute that the gentlest and most rapid care may be thereby obtained — to solve this problem is, as may easily be conceived, not the work of theoretical speculation; not by fine-spun reasoning, not by specious sophistry can we expect to obtain the solution of this problem. Pure experiment, careful observation, and accurate experience can alone determine this; and it were absurd to adduce the large doses of unsuitable (allopathic) medicines of the old system, which do not touch the diseased side of the organism homoeopathically, but only attack the parts unaffected by the disease, in opposition to what pure ex- perience pronounces respecting the smallness of the doses re- quired for homoeopathic cures.

This pure experience shows universally, that if the dis- ease do not manifestly depend on a considerable deterioration of an important viscus (even though it belong to the chronic and complicated diseases), and if during the treatment all other alien medicinal influences are kept away from the patient, the dose of the homoeopathically selected remedy can never be pre- pared so small that it shall not be, stronger than the natural disease, and shall not be able to overpower, extinguish and cure it, at least in part, as long as it is capable of causing some, though but a slight preponderance of its own symptoms over those of the disease resembling it (slight homoeopathic aggrava- tion.
157 — 160) immediately after its ingestion S a )

This incontrovertible axiom of experience is the standard of measurement by which the doses of all homoeopathic medicines , without exception, are to be reduced to such an extent that, after their ingestion, they shall excite a scarcely observable homoeo- pathic aggravation, W let the diminutive of the dose go ever so far, and appear ever so incredible to the materialistic ideas of ordinary physicians; 1 their idle declamations must cease before the verdict of unerring experience.

Every patient is, especially in his diseased points, capable of beiug influenced in an incredible degree by medicinal agents corresponding by similarity of action; and there is no person, be he ever so robust, and even though he be atf'ccted only with a chronic or so-called local disease, who will not soon ex- perience the desired change in the affected part, if he take the salutary, homoeopathically suited medicine in the smallest conceivable dose, who, in a word, will not thereby be much more altered in his health than a healthy infant of but a day old would be. How insignificant and ridiculous is mere theoret- ical scepticism in opposition to this unerring, infallible ex- perimental proof K°)

1 Let them learn from the mathematicians how t rue/ it is that a substance divided into ever so many parts must still contain in its smallest conceiva- ble parts always some of tins substance, and that the smallest conceivable pa r1 s docs not cease to be .some of this substance and can not possibly become nothing;— let them, if they are capable of being taught, hear from natural philosophers that there are enormously powerful things (forces) which are perfectly destitute of weight, as. for example, caloric, light. &c. consequent- ly infinitely lighter than the medicine contained in the smallest doses used in homoeopathy ;— let them, if they can, weigh the irritating words that bring on a bilious fever, or the mournful intelligence respecting her only- son that kills the mother; let them touch, for a quarter of an hour, a mag- netcapableof lifting a hundred pound weight, and learn from the pain it excites that even imponderable agencies can produce the most A-iolent med- icinal effects upon man;— and let the weak ones among them allow the pit of their stomach to be slightly touched by the thumb's point of a strong-willed mesmeriser for a few minutes, and the disagreeable sensations they then suffer will make them repent of attempting to set limits to the boundless activity of nature; the weak-minded creatures!

If the allopathist who is trying the homoeopathic system imagine he can- not biing himself to give such small and profoundly attenuated doses, let him only ask himself what risk he runs by so doing? If the scepticism which holds what is ponderable only to be real, and al I that is imponderable to be nothing, be right, nothing vvorse could result from a dose that appears to him to be nothing, than that no effect would ensue— and consequently this would be always much more innocuous than what must result from his too large doses of allopathic medicine. Why will he consider his Inexperience, coupled with prejudice, more reliable than an experience of many years corroborated by facts? And. moreover, the homoeopathic medicine becomes potentizeet at every division and diminution by tritu ration or succession!- a development of the inherent powers of medicinal substances which was never dreamed of before my time, and which is of so powerful acharactei that of late year s I have been compelled by convincing experience to reduo the ten successions formerly directed to be given after each attenuation, tc two.

The smallest possible dose of homoeopathic medicine, capa- ble of producing only the very slightest homoeopathic aggrava- tion, will, because it has the power of exciting symptoms bearing the greatest possible resemblance to the original dis- ease (but yet stronger even in the minute dose), attack principally and almost solely the parts in the organism that are already affected, highly irritated, and rendered, excessively susceptible to such a similar stimulus, and will alter the vital force that rules in them to a state of very similar artificial disease, somewhat greater in degree than the natural one was; this artificial disease will substitute itself for the natural (the original) disease, so that the living organism now suffers from the artificial medicinal disease alone, which, from its nature and owing to the minuteness of the dose, will soon be ex- tinguished by the vital force that is striving to return to the normal state, and (if the disease were only an acute one) the body is left perfectly free from disease — that is to say, quite well.

Now, in order to act really in conformity with nature, the true physician will prescribe his well selected homoeopathic medicine only in exactly as small a dose as will just suffice to overpower and annihilate the disease before him — in a dose of such minuteness, that if human fallibility should betray him into administering an inappropriate medicine, the injury ac- cruing from its nature being unsuited to the disease will be diminished to a mere trifle ; moreover the harm done by the smallest possible dose is so slight, that it may be immediately extinguished and repaired by the natural vital powers, and by the speedy administration of a remedy more suitably se- lected according to similarity of action, and given also in tlie smallest dose. ?a )

The action of a dose, moreover, dees not diminish in the direct ratio of the quantity of material medicine contained in the dilutions used in homoeopathic practice. Eight drops of the tincture of a medicine to the dose do not produce four times as much effect on the human body as two drops, but only about twice the effect that is produced by two drops to the dose. In like manner, one drop of a mixture of a drop of the tincture with ten drops of some unmedicinal fluid, when taken, will not produce ten times more effect than one drop of a mixture ten times more attenuated, but only about (scarcely) twice as strong an effect, and so on. in the same ratio — so that a drop of the lowest(«) dilution must, and really does, display still a very considerable action. 1

The diminution of the dose essential for homeopathic use, will also be promoted by diminishing its volume, so that, if, instead of a drop of a medicinal dilution, we take but quite a small part 2 of such a drop for a dose, the object of diminish- ing the effect still further will be very effectually attained; and that this will be the case may be readily conceived for this reason, because with the smaller volume of the dose but few nerves of the living organism can be touched, whereby the power of the medicine is certainly also communicated to the whole organism, but it is a weaker power.

For the same reason the effect of a homo?opathic dose of

1 Supposing one drop of a mixture that contains 1 th of a grain of medi-

1 o

cine produces an effect = a,

one drop of a more diluted mixture containing 1 th of a grain of the

1 o o

medicine will only produce an effect —a 2 ;

if it contain 1 tb of a grain of medicine, about … . = a 4 ;

1 0,000

if it contain 1 th of a grain of medicine, it will produce an effect = a 8 ;

100.000,000

and thus it goes on, the volume of the doses being equal, wit h every (perhaps more t ha a) quadratic diminution of the quantity of medicine, t be action on the human body will be diminished each time to only about one half. I have very often seen a drop of the dicillion-fold dilution of tincture of uux vomica produce pretty nearly just half as much effect as a drop of the cpjintillion- fold dilution, under the same circumstances and in the same individual.

- For this purpose it is most convenient to employ fine sugar globules of the size of poppy seeds, one of which imbibed with the medicine and put into the dispensing vehicle constitutes a medicinal dose, which contains about the three hundretb pari of :i (hop. for three hundred such small globules will be adequately moistened by one drop of alcohol. The dose is vastly diminished by laying one such globule alone upon the tongue and giving nothing to drink. If it be necessary, in the case of a very sensitive patient, to employ the smallest possible dose and to bring about the most rapid re- sult, one single olfaction merely will suffice (see note to § 288).

medicine increases, the greater the quantity of liquid in which it is dissolved when administered to the patient, although the actual amount of medicine it contains remains the same. For in this case, when the medicine is taken, it comes in contact with a much larger surface of sensitive nerves responsive to the medicinal action. Although theorists may imagine there should be a weakening of the action of a dose of medicine by its dilution with a large quantity of liquid, experience asserts exactly the opposite, at all events when the medicines are employed homoeopath ically. 1

But in this increase of action by the mixture of the dose of medicine with a larger quantity of liquid (before its ingestion), the result is vastly different whether the mixture of the dose of medicine with a certain quantity of liquid is performed merely superficially and imperfectly, or so uniformly and in- timately 2 that the smallest portion of the diluting fluid receives the same quantity of medicine in proportion as all the rest; for

1 It is only the most simple of all stimulants, wine and alcohol, that have their heating and intoxicating action diminished hy dilution with much water.

2 By the word intimately 1 mean this: that when, for instance, the drop of a medicinal fluid has heen shaken up once with one hundred drops of spir its of wine; that is to sav, the phial containing hoth, held in the hand, has been radidly moved from above downward with a single smart jerk of the arm, there certainly ensues a thorough mixture of the whole, but with two. three, ten and more such strokes, this mixture becomes much more intimate; that is to say. the medicinal power becomes much more potentized, and the spirit of this medicine, so to speak, becomes much more unfolded, developed, and rendered much more penetrating in its action on the nerves. If, then, the required object we wish to attain with the low dilutions be the diminution of the doses for the purpose of moderating their powers upon the organism, we would do well to give no more than two such succussion- jerks to each of the twenty, thirty, &c. dilution phials, and thus to develop the medicinal power only moderately. It is also advisable, in attenuating the medicine in the state of dry powder by trituration in a porcelain mortar, to keep within certain limits, and, for example, to triturate strongly, for one hour only, one grain of the crude entire medicinal substance, mixed with the first hun- dred grains of milk-sugar, and to triturate the attenuation of one grain of this mixture with another hundred grains of milk-sugar (to the l tli at-

10,000

tenuation) likewise only for one hour, and to make the third attenuation (to l ) also by one hour of strong trituration of one grain of the previous 1,000,000

mixture with one hundred grains of milk-sugar, in order to bring the medi- cine to such an attenuation that its development of power shall remain moderate. A more exact description of this process will be found in the prefaces to Arsenic and Pulsatilla in the Materia Medica Pura.( a )

the latter becomes much more medicinally powerful by the diluting mixture than the former. From this every one will be able to judge for himself how to proceed with the regula- tion of the homoeopathic medicinal doses when he desires to diminish their medicinal action as much as possible, in order to make them suitable for the most sensitive patients. 1

The action of medicines in the liquid form 8 upon the living

1 The higher we carry the attenuation accompanied by dynamization (by two suceussion-strokes) with so much the more rapid and penetrating action does the preparation seem to affect the vital force and to alter the health, with but slight diminution of strength even when this operation is carried very fai — in place, asjs usual (and generally sufficient) to X~ when it is car- ried up toXX, L, C. and higher; only that then the action always ap- pears to last a shorter time.(“\

s It is especially in the form of vapor, by olfaction and inhalation of the medicinal aura that is always emanating from a globule impregnated with a medicinal fluid in a high development of power, and placed, dry, in a small phial, that the homoeopathic remedies act mostsurely and most powerfully- The homoeopathic physician allows the patient to hold the open mouth of the phial first in one nostril, and in the act of inspiration draw the air out of it into himself and then, if it is wished to give a stronger dose, smell in the same manner with the other nostril, more or less strongly, according to the strength it is intended the dose should be; he then corks up the phial and replaces it in his pocket case, to prevent any misuse of it, and Unless he U)Uh it, he has no occasion for an apothecary'* assistance in his practice. A ”-lo- bule, of which ten, twenty or one hundred weigh one grain, impregnated with the thirtieth potentized dilution, and then dried, retains for this pur- pose all its power undiminished for at least eighteen or twenty years (my ex- perience extends this length of time), even though the phial be opened a thousand times during that period, if it be but protected from heat and the sun's light. Should both nostrils be stopped up by coryza or polypus, the patient should inhale by the mouth, holding the orifice of the phial betwixt his lips. In little children it may be applied close to their nostrils whilst they are asleep, with the certainty of producing an effect. The medicinal aura thus inhaled comes in contact with the nerves in the walls of the spac- ious cavities it traverses without obstruction, and thus produces a salutary influence on the vital force, in the mildest yet most powerful manner, and this is much preferable to every other mode of administering the medica- ment in substance by the mouth. All that homoeopathy is capable of curing (and what can it not cure beyond the domain of mere manual surgical affec- tions?) among the most severe chronic diseases that have not been quite ruined by allopathy, as also among acute diseases, will be most safely and certainly cured by this olfaction. I can scarcely name one in a hundred out of the many patients that have sought the advice of myself and my assistant dur- ing the past year, whose chronic or acute disease we have not treated with the most happy results, solely by means of this olfaction ; during the latter half of this year, moreover, I have become convinced (of what I never could previously have believed) that by this olfactiou the power of the medicine is exercised upon the patient In, at least, the same degree of strength, and that more quietly and yet just as long as when the dose of medicine is taken by the mouth, and that, consequently, the intervals at which the olfaction

human body takes place in such a penetrating manner, spreads out from the point of the sensitive fibres provided with nerves whereto the medicine is first applied with such inconceivable rapidity and so universally through all parts of the living body, that this action of the medicine must be denominated a spirit-like (a dynamic, virtual) action.

Every part of our body that possesses the sense of touch, is also capable of receiving the influence of medicines, and of propagating their power to all other parts. 1

Besides the stomacb, the tongue and the mouth are the parts most susceptible to the medicinal influences; but the in- terior of the nose is more especially so, and the rectum, the genitals, as also all particularly sensitive parts of our body are almost equally capable of receiving the medicinal action; hence also, parts that are destitute of skin, wounded or ulcer- ated spots permit tue powers of medicines to exercise almost as penetrating an action upon the organism as if the medicine had been taken by the mouth or still better by olfaction and inhalation.

Even those organs which have lost their peculiar sense, e. g. a tongue and palate that have lost the facult}^ of tasting, or a nose that has lost the faculty of smelling, communicate the power of the medicine that acts first on them alone not less perfectly to all the other organs of the body.

Even the external surface of the body, covered as it is with skin and epidermis, is not unsusceptible of the powers of

should be repeated should not bo shorter than in the Ingestion of the ma- terial dose by the mouth. (°)

1 A patient even destitute of the sense of smell may expect an equally perfect action and cure from the medicine by olfaction.

176 O EG ANON OF MEDICINE.

medicine, especially those in a liquid form, but the most sensitive parts are also the most susceptible. U«)

I find it necessary to allude here to animal magnetism, as it is termed, or rather mesmerism (as it should be called, out of gratitude to Mesmer, its first founder), which differs so much in its nature from all other therapeutic agents. This curative power, often so stupidly denied, which streams upon a patient by the contact of a well-intentioned person powerfully exerting his will, either acts homoeopathically, by the production of symptoms similar to those of the diseased state to be cured; and for this purpose a single pass made, without much exer- tion of the will, with the palms of the hands not too slowly from the top of the head downwards over the body to the tips of the toes, 2 is serviceable in, for instance, uterine haemor- rhages, even in the last stage when death seems approaching; or it is useful by distributing the vital force uniformly through- out the organism, when it is in abnormal excess in one part and deficient in other parts, tor example, in rush of blood to the head and sleepless, anxious restlessness of weakly persons, &c. , by means of a similar, single, but somewhat stronger

1 Rubbing-in appears to favor the action of the medicines only in this way, that tbe friction makes the skin more sensitive, and the living fibres there- by more capable of feeling, as it were, the medicinal power and of communi- cating to the whole organism this health-affecting sensation. The previous employment of friction to the inside of the thigh makes the mere laying on of the mercurial ointment afterwards quite as powerfully medicinal as if the ointment itself had been rubbed upon that part, a process which is termed rubbing-in, but it is very doubtful whether the metal itself can pene- trate in substance into the interior of the body, or be taken up by the absor- bent vessels by means of this so-called rubbing-in.(“) Homoeopathy, how- ever, hardly ever requires for its cures the rubbing-in of any medicine, nor does it need any mercurial ointment.

- The smallest homoeopathic dose.(”) which, however, often effects wonders when used on proper occasions. Imperfect hoinoeopathists. who think them- selves monstrously clever, not infrequently deluge their patients in difficult diseases with doses of different medicines, given rapidly one after the other which, although they may have been homoeopathically selected and given in highly potentized attenuation, bring the patients into such an over- excited state that life and death are struggling for the mastery, and the least additional quantity of medicine would infallibly kill them. In such cases a mere gentle mesmeric pass and the frequent application, for a short time, of the hand of a well-intentioned person to the part that is particular- ly affected, produce the harmonious uniform distribution of the vital force throughout the organism, and therewith rest, sleep and recovery.

pass; or for the immediate communication and restoration of the vital force to some one weakened part or to the whole or- ganism, — an object that cannot be attained so certainly and with so little interference with the other medicinal treatment by any other agent besides mc oierism. If it is wished to supply a particular part with the vital force, this is effected by concentrating a very powerful and well-intentioned will for the purpose, and placing the hands or tips of the fingers on the chronically weakened parts, whither an internal chronic dyscrasia has transferred its important local symptom, as, for example, in the case of old ulcers, amaurosis, paralysis of certain limbs, &c. 1 Many rapid apparent cures performed in all ages, by mesmerisers endowed with great natural power belong to this class. The effect of communicated human power upon the whole human organism was most brilliantly shown, in the resuscitation of persons who had lain some time apparently dead, by the most powerful, sympathetic will of a man in full vigor of vital force,' 2 and of this kind of resurrec- tion history records many undeniable examples.

All the above-mentioned methods of practicing mesmerism depend upon an influx of more or less vital force into the patient, and hence are termed positive mesmerism. 3 An op- posite mode of employing mesmerism, however, as it produces

1 Although by this restoration of tho vital force, which ought to he re- peated from tirno to time, no permanent cure can be effected in cases where- as has been taught above, a general internal dyscrasia lies at the root of the old local affection, as it always does, yet this positive strengthening and im- mediate saturation with the vital force (which no more belongs to the cate- gory of palliatives than does eating and drinking when hunger and thirst are present) is no mean auxiliary to tho actual treatment of the whole dis- easo by homoeopathic medicines.

2 Especially of one of those persons, of whom there are not many, who. along with great kindness of disposition and perfect bodily powers, possesses but a very moderate desire for sexual intercourse, which it would give him very little trouble wholly to suppress, in whom, consequently, all tho fine vital spirits that would otherwise bo employed in the preparation of the semen, are ready to bo communicated to others, by touching them and powerfully exerting the will. Some powerful mesmerisers, with whom I had become ac- quainted, had all this peculiar character.

:t When I here speak of the decided and certain curative power of positive mesmerism. T most assuredly do not moan that abuse of it, where, by re- peated passes of this kind, continued for half an hour or a whole hour at a time, and. even day after day, performed on weak, nervous patients, that

To this belong the passes which are used to rouse

mensm.

from the somnambulic sleep, as also all the manual processes known by the names of soothing and ventilating. This an- chor™ by means of negative mesmerism of the vital force accumulated to excess in individual parts of the system ot un- debilitated persons is most surely and simply performed by making a very rapid motion of the flat extended hand, held parallel to, and about an inch distant from the body, from the top of the head to the tips of the toes.* The more rapidly this pass is made, so much the more effectually will the dis- charge be effected. Thus, for instance, in the case where a previously healthy woman, 2 from the sudden suppression of her catamenia by a violent mental shock, lies to all appearance dead, the vital force which is probably accumulated in the precordial region, will, by such a rapid negative pass, be dis- charged and its equilibrium throughout the whole organism restored, so that the resuscitation generally follows immedi- ately. 3 In like manner, a gentle, less rapid, negative pass diminishes the excessive restlessness and sleeplessness accom- panied with anxiety sometimes produced in very irritable persons by a too powerful- positive pass, &c.

moustrous revolution of the whole human system is effected which is termed somnambulism, wherein the human being is ravished from the world of sei se and seems to belong more to the world of spirits— a highly unnatural and dangerous state, by means of which it has not infrequently been at- tempted to cure chronic diseases.

1 It is a well known rule that a person who is either to be positively or negatively mesmerised, should not wear silk on any part of the body.

2 Hence a negative pass, especially if it be very rapid, is extremely injur- ious to a delicate person affected with a chronic ailment and deficient in vitul force.

3 A strong country lad, ten years of age, received in the morning on ac- count of slight indisposition, from a professed female mesmeriser, several very powerful passes with the points of both thumbs, from the pit of the stomach along the lower edge of the ribs, and ho instantly grew deathly pale, and fell into such a state of unconsciousness and immobility that no effort could arouse him, and he was almost given up for dead. I made his eldest brother give him a very rapid negative pass from the crown of the bead over the body to the feet, and in one instant he recovered his con- sciousness and became lively and well.