Homopathy : an examination of its doctrines and evidences / By Worthington Hooker.

  • Hooker, Worthington, 1806-1867.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homopathy : an examination of its doctrines and evidences / By Worthington Hooker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    imagined to produce upon the system. And though Hahnemann, as the reader will recollect, lays great stress upon observing the group or totality of symp- toms presented by a disease, and the similar totality of effects of the remedy which cures it, yet in this incongruous detail in the Organon, he constantly bases his conclusions upon single symptoms, or upon groups so small, that they cannot with any propriety be called totalities. Some of his conclusions also are drawn from mere idiosyncrasies. Though it is obvious that no inferences can properly be made in regard to the ordinary effects of medicines, from any effects re- sulting from individual peculiarity, yet Hahnemann does not hesitate to make such inferences when they will suit his purpose, being careful, however, to avoid them when they will not. Such modes of reasoning are constantly leading Hahnemann into the grossest inconsistencies. I must be content, however, with giving a single example from this large collection of so-called experience. Satis- fying himself, as he does, with such loose resem- blances between diseases, and the effects of their remedies upon the healthy, he often makes the same remedy to be applicable to diseases of various and even opposite character. Thus he speaks of Bella- donna as the cure for hydrophobia, different kinds of madness and melancholy, scarlet fever, and amau- rosis with colored spots before the eyes. And I will not tax the patience of the reader with the long list of maladies to which he says that opium has a Homoeo-