A letter to Professor J.Y. Simpson, President of the Royal College of Physicians ... concerning the resolutions recently passed by that body in reference to the therapeutic practice commonly called homoeopathy / by William MacLeod.

Date:
1851
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Professor J.Y. Simpson, President of the Royal College of Physicians ... concerning the resolutions recently passed by that body in reference to the therapeutic practice commonly called homoeopathy / by William MacLeod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    2fi and equally singular analogies with great processes in Nature. Who will venture to assert, for instance, that the really infectmg matter which produces disease in vaccination, is not an infinitesimal dose,—not the matter introduced, but the really influential or infecting part of it'{ Is it not the belief, too, that infection comes from the diseased body, or from malaria, through what we inhale? And yet who ever discovered, so as to lueigli it, the virus surrounding a patient stricken with the plague, or that issuing from the Pontine marshes and tainting all the atmosphere ? 1 grant, indeed, that it were well had we here any real physiological or positive light to guide us to conclusions, or to sustain our infer- ences from experience. But the deficiency characterises both systems alike. It were scarcely fair to brand the one because of an imperfection which avowedly inheres, and at least to an equal extent, in its opposite. I leave it to the thorough-going partisan to maintain that the theory of homoeopathy is in all respects what a final theory ought to be ; but it is surely enough, if, amid this, generally allowed, universal darkness, regarding the mode of the action of medicines of any kind, I can point to success in justification of my own principles of exhibition ; not certainly implying that success may not often also seem to attend an apparently op})Osite procedure. Facts which now appear conflicting will, no doubt, be eventually harmonised : until the period of full knowledge super- venes, liowcver, no man should be blamed for continuing that system of administration which experience shews