Correspondence between Professor Christison and Dr George E. Stewart on homoeopathy.

Date:
[1851]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence between Professor Christison and Dr George E. Stewart on homoeopathy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    have attempted to get facts either in support or disproof of Homoeopathy ? You might have got a ward set apart for cases to be treated by him, in accordance with the law u similia simi- libus,” under your own inspection, and that of as many Allo- pathists as chose to come. The cases at first given to him might have been selected from among those patients whose diseases were of a kind to admit of being left to nature for a time without danger, or from among the not usually inconsider- able number, in regard to the treatment of whom you and your other colleagues were quite at sea. If the results had been favourable, which I have no doubt would have happened, you could then, perhaps, have mustered courage to go a step farther, by allowing the next allotment to be cases of a different kind —those over whose complaints you were conscious of having some control. In your u Dispensatory,” in speaking of belladonna as a prophylactic against scarlatina, you say—u The alleged pro- perty [of preventing the invasion of scarlatina] has, however, been generally disbelieved in this country, mainly, perhaps, in consideration of the individual who first announced it, and who made use of the facts in his own way to support his wild theories respecting Homoeopathy. But, as the treatment is simple and safe, it seems irrational not to give it a fair trial, so long as there are hundreds of public institutions for children in Britain that every now and then are overrun and decimated by scarlatina.” In regard to your statement in the above extract, it is grati- fying to observe that you award to Hahnemann his due; for we have found several journalists denying his claim to the dis- covery, and thus, by the by, fulfilling one of the conditions of a true discovery which you gave us in your inaugural address, that it must be denied before being generally accepted, and also fulfilling the following prediction given in the u Introduc- tion to the Study of Homoeopathy,” edited by J. J. Drysdale, M.D., Ed., and J. Butherfurd Russell, M.D., Ed. 1845. P. 14:— “ This much, however, in connection with the point, may be pre-