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.

    17/46 (page 13)
    Going upon their plan, (or rather going at random,) it would perhaps be advisable (although medicines are generally poisons) to give all the Pharmacopoeia together, in imminent cases, and then there might be a chance of the right medicine having some power if there was plenty of it, although choked by so many others; and indeed, I believe, that was their actual notion. Now,' these medicines were never at any time separately tried; and any one must see that eveii two could never be tried together; and that even if one was tried alone upon a disease, so might every medicine come in turn, before the best was found; and that, when believed at last that such a drug had cured such a disease (which might not be the cure after all, unless thought so in several cases) and therefore was recorded as the cure,—if another case came, a little different in combination of symptoms, they would wonder that it should fail. The Homoeopathic treatment does not affect any but the diseased part. Go to an Allopathist with a trifling ailment;— there is no plan for him but attacking the whole system;— purging, bleeding, blistering, calomel in abundance, &c., &c. From the Homoeopathic body could never spring forth your Morrisons, Holloways, and such like, who reckon to hold a cure for all diseases; for it decidedly gives the lie to any such pretence; the range of each medicine having been, by Homoeopathists, very carefully investigated and dis¬ covered. This fact, of the circumscribed power of each medi¬ cine, leads me to notice that the medicines employed by Al- lopathists, are, in comparison, very few. We employ all theirs, though for different purposes; and an immense number more, increasing continually. If then the range of each medi¬ cine is so limited, must there not be an innumerable list of symptoms, especially of combinations, not to be affected by these few? No medicine will cure a disease, but one that will produce similar symptoms in a healthy person. No medicine W'ill cure a pain in any limb, but one that will produce the selfsame pain in the selfsame limb. You may bleed and blister, sweat and salivate; you may give purges, emetics, and opiates, more and more; you may reduce the Patient to death’s door, but unless you give one of the few medicines in