Therapeutics founded upon organopathy and antipraxy / by William Sharp.

  • Sharp, William, 1805-1896.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics founded upon organopathy and antipraxy / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    these, all being the results of experiments with drugs made in known doses on healthy persons. We have seen that this induction has been questioned, and has been declared to be a hypothesis only. I think it is worthy of a title of more certainty. Truth has reference to very different subjects, and has to be reached for each of these subjects in its own way. The truths of magnitude and number are reached by mathematics ; historical truths are taught us by testimony ; revealed truths are understood and accepted by faith ; scientific truths are arrived at partly by the evidence of our bodily senses, and partly by an operation of the mind. When the evidences are clear, and have been distinctly placed side by side by the mind, these scientific truths may be accepted as certain. This has been contended for suflficiently, and will now be taken for granted. Antipraxy is one of these truths of science. Experi- ments with drugs in different but known doses in health, give the evidence ; the mental process called induction makes known to us what we call a general or universal law-fact. All these different kinds of truth, when supported by their own appropriate evidence, are beyond mere proba- bilities. For all the practical purposes of life they may be accepted and relied upon as certainties. They differ greatly from hypotheses. A question will arise in the mind of every one who thinks about Antipraxy, which requires an answer. What about the dividing line—the line which separates the larger doses which have their action, from the smaller ones which have the contrary action ? Is the division a