Homoeopathy : reasons for adopting the rational system of medicine : being a letter to the Governors of the Hull General Infirmary / by Fewster Robert Horner.

  • Horner, Fewster Robert, -1862.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy : reasons for adopting the rational system of medicine : being a letter to the Governors of the Hull General Infirmary / by Fewster Robert Horner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    I have ever diseouraged what is called the active or heroic treatment of disease; a sort of treatment which oft may aptly be described as that which does the most mischief in the shortest space of time. Both in my course of lectures on “ Materia Medica,” (the properties of drugs), at the Hull School of Medicine, and in my occasional remarks made to students in the Infirmary, at the bedside of the sick, I have given the caution to avoid the evil of prescribing too much medicine ; but so inveterate is this evil, and one so early imbibed, of drugging patients, and especi- ally that of putting a variety of medicine into one mixture, “ to fight together in the dark,” as the late President of the Royal College of Physicians ^o truly observed, that T know how little orthodox my senti- ments have been held by many. Nay, I have been roundly spoken of as one by whom neither surgeons nor druggists could live, and have suffered accordingly in the estimation of many. As my patients, however, not only lived but were cured, and that at least as quickly and as thoroughly as the patients of others, it was enough—or rather much better. I had the satisfaction of knowing, that I was sup- ported in my opinions and practice by the example of the wisest and most experienced among Physicians ; for it is ever found, that such trust less and less to active and powerful drugs, bleeding, &c. &c., as experience and long observation of disease ripens knowledge into wisdom ; and they use that know- ledge rather in assisting nature, than in weakening