Homoeopathy unveiled : or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb.

  • Brodribb, William Perrin.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy unveiled : or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    nation of them will enable us to judge of their real merits. Nothing less, however, than a perusal of his “ Organon of the Healing Art,53 can give any adequate idea of the speculative and hypothetical character of the whole system. In that work, he lays down as so many principles and laws, the wildest and most theoretical notions, and assumes as true, propositions, which no amount of experiment can ever verify and establish; while they afford ample scope for the credulity and ima- gination of his disciples to indulge in. The often-quoted maxim, “ Similia similibus curan- tur,35 has been made to justify and to include much more than belongs to it. Although it contains a truth, it is at best but a very partial truth ; yet Hahnemann has endeavoured to raise it to the rank of an immutable and universal law in medicine; and by a false general- ization, he has built upon it a superstructure entirely fictitious and imaginary. With certain exceptions, it is a mis-statement of facts to represent medicines as capable of producing symptoms corresponding to real diseases. It is equally incorrect to speak of them as specifics, i. e., as exerting any direct power over diseased actions. We have reason to believe that the great majority of medicines have certainly no specific power, and that their action is only subservient and auxiliary to the provisions of nature for the spontaneous decline of diseases, and to be dependent on the influence which they exert over the functions of the body. In a very few instances only, we can ascribe to certain remedies a specific power of counteracting certain morbid actions. The best examples are, the power of Cinchona over intermittent fevers, of Mercury in a certain form of *