The homoeopathic materia medica : arranged systematically and practically / by A. Teste ; translated from the French and edited by Chas. J. Hempel.

  • Teste, Alph. (Alphonse), 1814-
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homoeopathic materia medica : arranged systematically and practically / by A. Teste ; translated from the French and edited by Chas. J. Hempel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    INTRODUCTION. accidents in thousands of individuals; whence the conclusion is derived that the odor of musk is a purely dynamic substance. Such a proof, however, to men who, like us, are used to prescribe day after day, as efficacious agents, the millionth, trillionth, decillionth, portion of a grain, seems really puerile. Admitting that a grain of musk loses every day a decillionth, or, if you please, a thousand decillionth portion of its weight, that is to say, a thousand medium homoeopathic doses, must it not be evident to every one who has some idea of numbers, that the total loss which this grain of musk would undergo in the course of a thousand years, would still remain inappreciable by the most delicate of our instruments of weight ? As regards homoeopathic attenuations, which, for want of a better term, we have agreed to call dyna- misations, no matter to what an extent they may be continued, even the highest must still contain some material portion of the original drug, unless we assume that matter ceases to be divisible beyond a certain point. I assert even that there exists an undeniable relation between the dynamic activity of a drug and its material quantity. If this were not so, we should have to admit, which we happily need not, that a poison which, like arsenious acid, for instance, is capable of causing death dynamically} 1 I say dynamically, for the symptoms which are produced by certain poisons when given in massive doses, are evidently of the same nature as those which are produced by their dilutions, and differ from the latter only by their greater intensity. Thi* is so true that even the traces of the chemical action of arsenic are often inappreciable in the organs of individuals which had been poisoned by this metal. ■ J