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.

    97/172 (page 85)
    This is both amusing and plausible. But is it true ? Look a little at the terms of the comparison, and see whether .Dr. Joslin had a due regard to relative quan- tities in making them. If you call to mind the Ho- moeopathic arithmetic developed in a former part of this essay, you will see that the difference between a ham- mer and such a needle as would be serviceable in getting out a splinter, is almost as nothing compared with that between an ordinary dose of medicine and an infinitesimal one. If the hammer is to be consi- dered as representing an Allopathic dose, then a needle, not only invisible, but so small as to defy all calculation or conception, must represent the Homoeo- pathic dose.* That such a needle can get out a splinter, is just about as incredible as that infinitesi- mal doses can cast out disease; and we should hardly be deemed unreasonable, if we refuse to believe it, except on evidence which is overwhelming. Be- sides, if the hammer represent medicine in its ordinary dose, almost all Homocopathists sometimes, not to say often, use the hammer, and Hahnemann himself used it in preference to the needle in the case of the cholera-splinter. Hahnemann, in his illustrations of his theory presses everything into service that has the merest; =* The same criticism could be made upon nearly all Dr. Joslin's illustrations, as to Ins disregard of relative quantities. For example, he speaks of the succussed preparations of Hahnemann having such curative power, that we can cure with them the most violent disease in a man by a dose which would not harm a mouse—he should have said a flea—nay more, an invisible mite.