Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson.

  • Henderson, William, 1810-1872.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/78 (page 42)
    searches of Louis and others ? Is it not that patients recover as well, or nearly as well, without it 1 Could it have been believed possible by the practitioners of a century since, that syphilis could be safely treated, and successfully cured, without mercury 1 Or that it could even be question- ed that mercury was not specific in the cure of this disease? And yet what are the opinions and the practices of the surgeons of the present day, and the indubitable facts brought to light during the last thirty years ? Are they not, that mercury is not necessary (speaking generally) to the cure of any case, and that it is often most injurious, in place of being beneficial 1 The medical god, Mercury, however, seems as unwill- ing to be baulked of his dues as the mythological. If he has lost the domain of syphilis, he has gained that of inflammation; and many of our best practitioners might possibly be startled and shocked at the sup- position that their successors should renounce allegiance to him in the latter domain, as they themselves had done in the former. And yet such a result is more than probable, seeing that there exists not a shadow of more positive proof (if so much) of the efficacy of the medicine in the latter than in the former case. “ The same truth, as to the uncertainty of practical medicine generally, and the utter insufficiency of the ordinary evidence to establish the effi- cacy of many of our remedies, as was stated above, has been almost al- ways attained to by philosophical physicians of experience in the course of long practice, and has resulted, in general, in a mild, tentative, or ex- pectant mode of practice in their old age, whatever may have been the vigorous or heroic doings of their youth.”—P. 258-9. The general testimony of millions of physicians for two thousand years amounts, then,but to a very small matter; and if you prefer Allopathy on evidence of that kind, you may, on as good, prefer believing in ghosts too. It was precisely on such testimony that Johnson did so. “ This opinion, says the sage, “ which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth.” One word more and I have done with this question of an- tiquity. You never once advert to the notorious and admit- ted fact, that some of the medicines long used in the old school act Homceop alkie ally. Nor do you hint that, so far back as the time of Stahl, at least, that is, about 150 years ago, the Homoeopathic principles, similia similibus, was ex- pressly enforced as the proper rule for the prescription of remedies !* * In the following terms, “ The rule admitted in medicine, to treat diseases by remedies contrary or opposite to the effects which they produce, is completely false and absurd. I am persuaded, on the contrary, that diseases yield to agents which produce a similar disorder {similia similibus.) This passage is quoted in Hahnemann’s Organon ; for Hahnemann does not lay claim to the discovery of the Homoeopathic law by which remedies act, but to the merit of having de- termined the methods by which it may be carried out into full practical effect ; as the proving of medicines on the healthy body more carefully, and the dimi- nution of the doses—two desiderata which had rendered the law, before his time, of very limited use in practice.