CHAP.VIII. variety of causes. His very care to realize a scientific result, is made by men, who have not science in their practice, a means of attack upon his scientific result. Hahnemann adopted the scientific method not only in discovering the virtues of medicines, but also in the application of the medicines to the cure of disease; i. e. in the mode of ADMINISTERING medicines to the sick. Guided in the selection of the medicine by the correspondence between the effects produced by the medicine in experiments on persons in health, its pathogenetic effects, and the symptoms of the disease in which the medicine, in obedience to the homœopathic law, was administered, he sought to realize simplicity, a feature of science, by using only one medicine at a time. In fact, all the essentials necessary, according to Dr. Forbes, to the improvement of medicine, Hahnemann had practised.* This philosopher taught that every circumstance which may, in any way, tend to interfere with the operation of the one medicine, should be carefully avoided; so that, in addition to simplicity, in reference to the medicine itself, he ought to preserve that simplicity, by forbidding all external and internal interferences with its action. Homœopathy thus stands forth as presenting a scientific character. This view of the scientific character of Homœopathy, and the unscientific character of the old-system medicine, may be summed up thus: Science presents itself as the embodiment of law. The old system of medicine has no fixed universal law. * Dr. Forbes is a shrewd man. He puts forth as his own suggestions the particulars quoted, p. 77; whereas all these suggestions he derived from the works of Hahnemann, who exposes the unsatisfactoriness of the old-system practice, on account of the prevalence of the practices to which Dr. Forbes refers. Dr. Forbes has great power of appropriation; and the best of his suggestions are repetitions of what he read in Hahnemann's writings, and he puts them forth as his own. To the question, if put to Dr. Forbes, whether these suggestions necessary to be attended to in order for the improvement of medicine, were not derived from the perusal of Hahnemann's works, it may be predicted that his answer must be an acknowledgment that they were so derived. Would it not have been honourable to have acknowledged the source? Science produces certainty. The uncertainty of the old system of medicine has been pointed out. The certainty of homoeopathy has been clearly demonstrated. Science, founded upon a law, gives precision in the attempt to gain the object sought after. Homœopathy realizes this. Let a new disease appear. The old-system practitioners try this and that, these and those, without any fixed rule. The homoeopathist at once seeks out a remedy that has the power of producing phenomena similar: he applies this, and cures. Hence the steady and immediate success of the homoeopathic treatment of Asiatic cholera. Where one was cured under the old-system treatment, three to four were cured under the homoeopathic. Ho Science presents simplicity in the mode of using means, mœopathy presents simplicity, both in the mode of discovering remedies, and in the mode of using them, when discovered. Homœopathy tries medicines singly on the healthy to learn their power, and having found it, exhibits these medicines singly to the sick. Homœopathy in this particular justifies its claim to be scientific. The want of simplicity as exhibited in the old system, both in the ascertaining the powers of remedies and in the administration of these remedies in disease, has been exhibited. A third characteristic of science is its power to explain the phenomena having relation to it. The Newtonian theory of gravitation is received as true, as scientific, because by it all the facts connected with the influence and the motion of bodies are most satisfactorily explained. The atomic theory is received as true, because it explains most satisfactorily the phenomena connected with chemical attraction. So with other theories. May it not without hesitation be asked, Will not the homœopathic theory explain the facts connected with the curative action M CHAP. VIII. The CHAP. VIII. of medicines on diseases, better than any other theory? want of the old system as affording, by its theories, explanations of the curative action of medicines, is evidenced in the fact of the explanation that is resorted to by the advocates of that system. In the Lancet, (vol. 1, 1844, p. 165,) is contained the following statement: "One of the apparently strongest arguments, brought forward by unbelievers in the powers of medicine to prove their assertions, is the great diversity in the practice of medical men. But this argument is merely specious, and will not bear the slightest scrutiny. It is more especially in the treatment of inflammatory and febrile diseases that this diversity exists, and in these diseases, precisely, the indication is one which may be attained by a variety of means. DEPLETION is the indication, and depletion may be equally produced by the action of local bleeding, of large blisters, of purgatives, of diuretics, or of diaphoretics: thus we find, that the physicians who, in the treatment of pneumonia, in England, rely partly on bleeding and partly on purgatives; in France, entirely on bleeding, or on the application of large blisters; in Germany, partly on bleeding and partly on critical evacuations, urinary or cutaneous ;—all arrive at the same end—the depletion of their patient, though by different methods.” DEPLETION is depletion, and as all practitioners deplete, all agree! The editor of a scientific medical journal declares that depletion of blood is virtually the same, in relation to its effects on disease, as depletion by an increased flow of urine, by an increased discharge of perspirable fluid: "Depletion may be equally produced," are the words. In other words, to remove a more than usual quantity of urine, secreted from the blood, is curative, upon the same principle as the removal of a given quantity of the blood itself; and that to draw away half a pint of serous fluid, by means of a blister, is curatively the same as drawing away half a pint of the blood itself. Shade of John Hunter!" the blood is the life thereof." If the old system is obliged thus (in a cutting Gordian knot style) to get rid of the difficulties, connected with the phenomena produced by the use of medicines in the cure of diseases, no one need hesitate to declare, that, if the power of satisfactorily explaining phenomena is a characteristic of a scientific theory, the absence of this power, if the views stated by the CHAP.VII. editor of the Lancet are legitimate, is irresistibly evident. But how easily applicable, and consequently how easily tested, is the homoeopathic law, in reference to the explanation of the curative activity of medicines. The homoeopathic law proclaims that medicines cure diseased states by the power they have of exciting in healthy persons symptoms, similar to those presented in the diseased. The fact that thousands have been and are being cured by the application of medicines in accordance with this law, is sufficient evidence that the law gives a satisfactory explanation of the effects realized. In fact, so much is this the case, that the homœopathist can prove that the cases of decided cure, which have been effected by medicines used in the old-system practice, have been so effected, because the medicines used have happened to be (without the knowledge of the old-system practitioner) homoopathic to the maladies in which they were successful. Taking Homœopathy into consideration, first, as presenting a means of curing disease by aiding life in its exertions-aiding it without exhausting it—aiding it in the way in which nature can be most efficiently aided: further, as presenting a simplicity in the treatment by giving the rule, that, to cure a natural disease, a medicinal disease exactly similar must be produced, the medicinal disease removing by its homœopathicity the natural disease: third, as giving the knowledge of the exact diseases that medicines do produce, ascertained by obtaining the effects on healthy persons: fourth, as giving the simplicity of using only one medicine at a time, thus enabling the practitioner to detect its real effects, and preventing the injuries resulting from administering many medicines together, that of complicating the effect, and that of establishing new diseases in the system, often a burden through life: taking Homœopathy thus into consideration, it must be allowed that Homœopathy is a noble system; that it is an addition to the healing art; that it establishes certainty where uncertainty hitherto prevailed; that it presents the quickest, the safest, the most agreeable way of curing disease; that it explains most easily the facts connected with the cure of disease; and that, on all these grounds, the rank of science is boldly claimed for Homœopathy. CHAPTER IX. On the injuries inflicted by the old-system medicine.—Statements from various medical authorities: Boerrhave, Stahl, Dr. Brown, Kieser, Rush, Sydenham.-Goethe's testimony. СНАР. ІХ. What is true, must be beneficial; what is untrue, must be injurious. These axioms exercise a powerful sway in every honest and well-constituted mind. Applied to the different methods of treating disease, they must find illustrations in the injuriousness of the untrue old system, and in the beneficialness of the true homoeopathic system. A short detail of some of the injuries inflicted by the old system will form an additional illustration of the want of science belonging to that system, and will serve to establish that, in leaving it, the person leaving leaves a system pregnant with destruction. The testimony of Boerrhave, the leading physician of his time, is thus embodied : "If we compare the good which a half dozen true sons of Esculapius have accomplished since the origin of their art, with the evil the innumerable multitude of doctors of this trade have done, we shall not hesitate to conclude, that it would have been far better, if there had never been physicians in the world." "The celebrated Stahl attributed the frequency of consumption to the introduction of the Peruvian bark. The equally celebrated Morton considered the bark an effectual cure. Reid ascribed its frequency to the use of mercury. Brillonet asserted that it is curable only by this mineral. Rush says that con |