Homœopathy : explained and illustrated / by T. Battye.

  • Battye, Thomas.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homœopathy : explained and illustrated / by T. Battye. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/46 (page 10)
    for Irish Emigrants, where the Patients were left to nature p and the deaths were 10 per cent; so we see that though na¬ ture is better than Alloeopathy, Homoeopathy is better than either; for the'deaths from Fever were,—Allopathy, above 13; Nature, 10; Homoeopathy, less than 2 per cent. Dr. Routh, who, it must be remembered, is an opponent, gives many statistics, in all varieties of cases, all immensely in favor of Homoeopathy; and, further, describes in full, dreadful cases, where, as he says, without even a Poultice, the patient recovered, and soon lost all sign of disease. But then, rather than draw the conclusion we expect, he cries, God forbid that we should assent to such heresy !” and takes refuge in the “ inert” globule:—so, like a good logician, assuming as settled, the point in actual dispute,—viz., the inertness of the globule. If his aim is only to prove that nature is better than the usual physic,—half the world thinks the same : Addison says that as a nation abounds in Doctors it grows thin of people : and, another writer, Some of them slay in chariots, and some on foot;” but I have already given one estimate of the comparative benefits of all three plans; and my object is to be as short as possible, and not so much to prove, as to induce inquiry. The continual trouble and vexation to us, incredible as it may seem, is an unaccountable and unreasonable idea in many of our Patients, that if Homoeopathy is anything at all, it ought to be altogether magic; for they generally act as if it were. I have found, myself, (and I know it is a general com¬ plaint,) and that continually, that when a Patient comes to me, even after months or even years of sufiering, and a little for¬ tune spent in Physic,—and comes, of course, with the disease more confirmed with long standing, and with the stomach per¬ haps almost ruined, I must cure him at once, or else I never shall. I had an almost idiot boy brought to me a short time since from a few miles out of Oxford, and brought also from a knowledge of the eifects of my treatment upon others;—yet, although after a few doses the child was not like the same, being able to speak more rationally, and anxious for more medi¬ cine in the consciousness of the comfort it had produced him, the mother actually thought it would be wiser to act upon the