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CHAP. XI. specific relationship between the medicine and the disease is the cause of more powerful action. Dr. Jörg remarks:

“On the other hand, medicines operate most powerfully upon the sick, when the symptoms correspond with those of the disease. A very small quantity of medicinal arnica will produce a violent effect upon persons who have an irritable state of the œsophagus and stomach. Mercurial preparations have, in very small doses, given rise to pains and loose stools, when administered in an inflammatory state of the intestines. Yet why," exclaims he, "should I occupy time by adducing more examples of a similar operation of medicines, since it is in the very nature of the thing that a medicine must produce a much greater effect, when it is applied to a body already suffering under an affection similar to that which the medicine itself is capable of producing."*

The proposition under demonstration is, that medicines act curatively in infinitesimal quantities, when exhibited in diseases to which they are homœopathic.

In maintaining this proposition, it is not maintained, that a millionth part of a grain or of a drop (to take a given, though a large quantity in homoeopathic administration,) will produce any visible action on the man in health; nor is it maintained, that a millionth part of a grain or of a drop will act on the man in disease but it is maintained that the millionth part of a grain or of a drop will act on the man in disease, if between the diseased state of the man and the medicine, infinitesimally administered, there is a homœopathic relationship. In other words, the homœopathists do not vaguely say, that medicines in infinitesimal doses cure diseases, but they do say that medicines given for the cure of diseases to which they are homœopathic, do cure these diseases when administered in infinitesimal quantities; to repeat, the homœopathist, in maintaining the efficacy of medicines in infinitesimal quantities, regards three requirements as necessary:— First, the development of virtues in medicines by the process of preparation; second, the increased receptivity to impression produced by disease; and third, the selection of the right remedy.

* Materiellen zu einer künftigen heilmittelehre durch Versuche der Arzneien an gesunden Menschen gewonnen und gesammelt von Dr Johan C. G. Jorg. p. 16.

Those opponents, then, who argue, that medicines in infini- CHAP. XI. tesimal quantities do not act upon persons in health, waste much time and expend uselessly much trouble. No homœopathist maintains that they do. These opponents, too, who make a boast that they will swallow the entire quantity of globules in a bottle, show only, in what they think to be a most potent and most courageous argument, their ignorance of what homoeopathy teaches; and demonstrate, by the very argument which they deem so potent, their total powerlessness, because of their total ignorance, to argue rightly on the subject.

Any apparent force in their argument is in the idea sought to be conveyed, that if a medicine in an infinitesimal dose does not produce any effect on the healthy man, it cannot produce any effect on the diseased man. But this inference is not justified.

The millionth part of a grain or of a drop is A POWER; but in order that the power should be medicinal, a condition of application is necessary; and that is, that it be applied in accordance with the homoeopathic law.

It is a truth, in reference to the development of vegetable life, that each stigma is receptive only to its specific pollen, so that the pollen of one plant has no effect on the stigma or the seeds of another of a different family. It is true, that the pollen of a rose modifies the seed of another rose; it is true, that the pollen of one tulip affects the seed of another tulip, so much so, as often to produce an entirely different colour and form; but if the pollen of the rose be carried to the lily, or that of the lily to the rose, no effect is produced by either, on either. So that-while the pollen of the rose is to the seeds of the rose a specific stimulant, and the pollen of the lily to the seeds of the lily; and the stigma of the rose and the stigma of the lily have their receptivities to the impression of each one's pollen developed in each at the appropriate time-the pollen of the rose has not a specificity to the seeds of the lily, or the pollen of the lily to the seeds of the rose.

Equally correctly might the objector maintain, that because the pollen of the rose has no effect on the lily, that it has no action at all, as the objector against infinitesimal medicines, that because an infinitesimal dose of medicine does not act on a healthy man, or even on a diseased man to whose disease it is

CHAP. XI. not homœopathic, it does not act on a diseased man to whose disease it is homœopathic.

One who had lost the sense of smell, maintained that the action of infinitesimal portions of musk, so as to produce an impression on the nose, is a delusion. Others smile at his simplicity; they perceive that he, being without the power of smell, has not the condition of receptivity to the impressions produced by the musk. They would pity him, but they feel his conceit destroy their pity, when he dogmatically maintains that for others to maintain these infinitesimal particles of musk act upon them, is all nonsense, is, as the editor of the Lancet maintains, a fraud."

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The increased susceptibility of impression existing under disease is evidenced in the well-known fact, that if a person having burned one of his fingers, holds his hand to the fire, the pain produced in the burned finger is intense, whereas no pain is felt in the other fingers of the same hand. The action of the fire on the burned finger is felt by the sufferer.

To assert that the disease does not render the system more susceptible to the action of the medicine homoeopathic to it, would not be more absurd, than to tell the man with the burned finger, that it was all delusion to assert that the burned finger felt the fire more than the fingers not burned. And further, for a man who had not burned his finger, and having held his hand to the fire and not feeling any effect on any finger, to maintain that no pain is felt by a person who has burned his finger on so holding his hand to the fire, would not be more absurd than is the assertion of the allopathic boaster, that a medicine in infinitesimal doses to a case of disease homoeopathic to it could have no effect, because he had tried the same medicine in a case which was not homœopathic to it, and it produced no effect.

Of late years some experiments by persons not influenced by homoeopathy established, that quantity is not the chief point to be considered in the production of actions and of results, in fact, the peculiar character which modern philosophy has assumed is that connected with the recognition of the spiritualism in forces.

The following remarks are very apposite.

"The very DIRECTION in which a power is applied, or (to CHAP. XI. state it after the manner of the men of measurable quantities,) a weight allowed to operate, is so immensely more significant than the weight itself, that Archimedes, who shot quite imponderable arrows of sun-fire at the enemies of Syracuse, and burned up their vessels of war, wanted but a point to plant his lever, in order with his puny arm to move the world. What is the weight of water with which Watt clips thick iron like paper into shreads, and sends his huge leviathans, throbbing in their irresistible struggle, over the Atlantic? Are not a few pounds of terrestrial weight transformed into tons by the mere disposition of them by Bramah, on the principle of the old hydrostatic paradox? Paradox! One had thought the day of paradoxes was over for ever now, every thing great is a paradox at first; for our ignorance and vulgar mistake of knowledge for truth make it strange."

Davy fearlessly following the principle of electrical induction by contact, discovered that half a dozen square feet of the copper sheathing of the British fleet, are rendered electro-negative, (that is, the polarities of all the innumerable particles which make up that extent of surface, are reversed), by a zinc nail driven through the centre of the space, and are thereby protected from the corrosive action of the sea with its stores of oxygen, chlorine and iodine, everywhere ready to be let loose upon metallic substances.

Nay, Sir John Herschel finds that the relation to electricity, of a mass of mercury, for instance, is such that it may be reversed by the admixture of an almost infinitesimal proportion of a body, as potassium, in an opposite electrical condition: and with such electrical conditions are all chemical actions whatsoever inseparably connected; while every one is aware that physiological are complicated, as well as chemical, with mechanical phenomena. So impressed is Herschel with this class of observations, as to observe, "That such minute proportions of extraneous matter should be found capable of communicating sensible mechanical motions and properties, of a definite character, to the body that they are mixed with, is perhaps one of the most extraordinary facts that has appeared in chemistry."

Q

CHAP. XI. Dr. Daubeny having, in a memoir read before the Royal Society in 1830, on the saline and purgative springs of Britain, expressed his doubt of the possibility of any medical action being exercised by so insignificant a quantity as one grain of iodine spread through ten gallons of water (the largest proportion he had ever found), felt himself constrained to announce in 1831, that the considerations above stated, the influence of the potassium on the mercury, now induce him to attach more importance to the circumstance of its presence; for it is just as possible à priori, that this quantity of iodine should infuse new properties into the salts which accompany it, and cause them to act in a different manner upon the system, as that less than a millionth part of potassium should create so entire a change in the relations of a mass of mercury to electricity.*

It is not the power-it is the mode of applying the power. Let the infinitesimal quantity of medicine be applied rightly, that is, in accordance with the homœopathic law, and the sought for effect, the cure of disease, will be gained.

Notwithstanding all these facts, some are bold enough to maintain that it is impossible that infinitesimal quantities of medicinal substances, prescribed homœopathically, can act.

To what does this assertion of the impossibility of the action. of infinitesimal quantities amount? To this-that the utterer of the impossibility puts his judgment of what ought to be against what is.

If not in medicine, at least in other departments of science, too much information has been accumulated to permit the searcher after truth to allow any man to shelve a proposition by placing his what ought to be against what is. So many previously declared impossibilities have become, notwithstanding the declaration that such was their character, possibilities, that all such talk is now deemed nugatory. Navigation by steam across the Atlantic is now to be seen, despite of Lardner, who said that it was an impossibility. Travelling by steam on railways has made Stephenson immortal, and those who called him

British Journal of Homeopathy, vol. I., article "Theory of Small Doses."

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