What is homoeopathy? : a new exposition of a great truth / by Wm. H. Holcombe.

  • Holcombe, William H. (William Henry), 1825-1893.
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What is homoeopathy? : a new exposition of a great truth / by Wm. H. Holcombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    effect is merely a popular superstition. Every drug is a poison, and it cures by means of its poisonous or disease- producing properties. Every dose of medicine occasions, beyond all dispute, an artificial disease. This artificial disease is the secret of the cure. Every dose of medicine given by an Allopathist to cure a sick man, would, if he were well, make him sick. Let this great truth, so ignored by the profession, so unknown to the public, be kept con- stantly in mind. The idea is very ancient. An old Sanscrit poem declares that poison is the remedy for poison. The homoeopathic law peeps out even in Hip- pocrates, the father of medical literature. It is hinted at, or sometimes openly declared, in the saws and axioms of almost all the nations. Shakspeare, who caught up every thing which was true and beautiful by a kind of divine instinct, thus teaches us Homoeopathy : In poison there is physic: and this news, Having been well, that would have made me sick, Being sick, has in some measure made me well. [Henry IV, Part 2, Act 1, Scene 1. Never forget it. Drugs always produce artificial dis- eases. These artificial diseases are the mediums of the cure. Where shall they be produced and to what extent ? These are the only vital questions. The Allopathist, in accordance with certain theories of disease and its cure, employs the poisonous properties of drugs to produce certain physiological perturbations, vomiting, purging, sweating, increased or diminished secretions, narcosis, depletion, stimulation, etc , etc., which he believes will effect his object. His general idea is to produce a state opposite to that already existing. The Homceopathist repudiates all this theory and practice, and affirms that diseases are cured by those drugs which produce similar