Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of homœopathic medicine.

  • Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755-1843.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of homœopathic medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    17/239 (page 13)
    First impressions commonly determine our judgment of books as well as men. If, on a first interview, a person be repulsive to us, and those v/ho for years have had familiar in- tercourse with him, admit that we are excusable for first im- pressions, but nevertheless assure us that he is possessed of very valuable qualities, and that a nearer acquaintance with him may be useful to us,—when, in addition, our informants give us a key to a more correct judgment,—we are no longer justifiable in maintaining our original impressions. Still more would our opinions be influenced, if, before seeing the person, we were furnished in advance with a short and impartial re- presentation of his character by one who knew him intimate- ly. If this rule of judgment be applicable to persons, where- fore should it not apply to books ? The Organon contains much that is peculiar and different from the views hitherto entertained by the prevailing school of medicine. Most readers of the medical profession, therefore, conceive prejudices against it, and fall into the vulgar error of rejecting the whole, merely because they do not justly re- gard it as a whole,—they reject the main propositions, be- cause they are offended at the subordinate. The reader needs no elaborate introduction to the following work, and it is requisite, perhaps, only to apprise him of the diff'erent classes into which its several paragraphs may be divided ; and this being done, we shall submit each separate class to his own judgment. The entire contents of the Organon may be easily arranged under the four following divisions, which, indeed, do not occur in the order in which they are here given, but they might