Homoeopathy not 'the law of healing' / by John Spurgin.

  • Spurgin, John, 1797-1866.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy not 'the law of healing' / by John Spurgin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    been witnessed as to tbe point “ iiow they may be most safely as well as most efficaciously administered.” Dr. Sharp is by no means the first in this field of investigation ; his three cases which he has appended to his paper of enquiry, “ whether there is a law of healing ? ” subject him, as he says, “ to the evil of adverse criticism ”—to an evil that will be “ more than compensated for by the good of supplying information to those who will value it.” But his three cases are no more than.instances of self-recovery irrespective of drugs, which were administered in infinitesimal doses that' could not invalidate the law of self- recovery. I say, could not, for according to unbiased experience which comes even within the range of the wonders of idiosyncracy, inappreciable quantities of poisonous drugs, and therefore imagi- nary qualities of them may be thought of, to constitute an imagi- nary infiuence and a fictitious or apparent cause for a real and positive phenomenon. Dr. Sharp’s three cases have given me no information that I can conscientiously rely upon for the treatment of the like that may come imder my notice. I therefore unhesitatingly avow my impression that they could have been cured, according to the common acceptation of the process, in less than half the time by the administration of a few well-timed doses of Epsom salts and gum Arabic. In stating this, my impression, I am not guilty of an evil adver- sary’s action in the shape of adverse criticism upon the three cases, but I feel “I am supplying good information to the best of my ability,” whether “ others” will “value it ” or not. With regard to criticism, however adverse it may appear, I cer- tainly was reminded of the force of Sir Benjamin Brodie’s remark in his note to me, while perusing Dr. Sharp’s history of his “ three cases,” “that it is the surest way of exposing the real nature of homoeopathy to refer to the treatises on the subject.” Dr. Sharp refers to three fatal cases, as instanced by m3'’self— and this in contrast with his recovering ones; of course he intended this action as a dead set against my practice, and I am obliged to him for the “ eyil of his adverse criticism ” upon the fatal cases he woidd assign to me, it being a good opportunity to my hand for explaining the grounds of my mistrust in, and opposition to homoeopathy in, and under, its every aspect. The three fatal cases Dr. S. would assign to me are not assignable to me in fact. Dr. S. is therefore open to the charge of three false applications of my statements. I will repeat my statements, to substantiate what I say:—“ I have seen pleurisy as characterised by excitement and a good-coloured rash; and the latter state con- firmed after deaththis is one of the cases assigned to me. Again, “I have seen a patient who has been treated homoeopathi- caUy tor pleurisy, and was supposed to be cured by it, who died two years afterwards, veiy suddenly, of sheer prostration, to be at once accounted for by the condition of the pleura and pericardium winch were adherent, surface to surface, by reason of old (that is o sa}, 0 ong standing) iufiammation and its homoeopathic treat-