Homoeopathy, allopathy, and "young physic" / by John Forbes.

  • Forbes, John, Sir, 1787-1861.
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy, allopathy, and "young physic" / by John Forbes. 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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    longer to consider as established, and to promulgate the grand and universal law, that every (dynamic) disease 1 s best cured by that medicine which is capable of producing in the healthy body similar symptoms, or a similar disease, (iV*™» *•«**;)* or, as it is usually stated more briefly, similia similibus curantur—Like are cured by like, i. e., homas- opathically. The doctrine was thence named homeopathy, and those who adopted it Homoeopathists, or Homeopaths. In contradistinction, the common medical doctrine was named, from employing in the treatment of disease, medi- cines producing an effect not like {o^om,) but different («*- a«s) from that produced by the disease, Allopathy (<*aa» *■«*««,) and its professors Allopathists or Allopaths. It is convenient for the sake of brevity, to make use occasionally of these terms. Possessed of this as he conceived, unfailing clue to all the mysteries of therapeutics, he and his disciples commenced an extensive and long-continued series of trials of the effects of various medicines on their own persons, and on the persons of others. The results of these experiments are recorded in Hahnemann's Fragmenta de viribus Med- icamentorum positivis, and Reine Arznei-mittcllehre, or Materia Medica Pura,—the former first published in 1805, the latter in 1811. The results of the whole of these proceedings were regarded by Hahnemann as confirming, in every case, his great primary law, and as extending its ap- plication practically to a vast number of diseases. All that was requisite, henceforth, lo the successful treatment of dis- eases, was the selecting the medicine whose effects on the healthy body came nearest the symptoms of the particular disease to be treated. This selection was rendered easy, as to numerous diseases,—i. e., so far as the experiments had gone,—by reference to the published records of the experi- ments; and the knowledge was to be extended by further trials of the same kind with other medicines. Hahnemann gave this as the rationale of the cures thus effected, viz., that of two similar actions developed in the same part, the stronger destroys the weaker; but he regard- ed his doctrine as substantially based on experience, and therefore as independent of any theoretical explanations. The curing of diseases homaeopathically, that is, with medi- cines producing similar symptoms in the healthy, was, he maintained, a fact which could not be disputed, whether the theory invented to explain it was true or false. * Ibid., p. vii.