Homœopathy; its nature and evidence; : with a few words on small doses, / by Thomas Hayle, M.D.

  • Hayle, Thomas.
Date:
[1850?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homœopathy; its nature and evidence; : with a few words on small doses, / by Thomas Hayle, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    If1 * Superior efficacy statistically demonstrated; the publication of myriads of cases, in the tone of which, the philosophic observer recognizes truth ; the adoption of its practice by established practitioners, who had nothing in a pecuniary point to gain, but all to lose, by the change; the con¬ fessions of old men, who, after fifty years’ practice, blessed God for the knowledge of Homoeopathy; the admissions of opponents, sometimes, we fear, suppressed, half uttered; the influence it has had in the simplification and improvement of the ordinary practice; the discreditable attempts to account for the action of small closes. They are, we are told, not what they seem, not the medicines whose names they bear, but violent poisons— we work cures by Beelzebub ! We cannot stoop to the Augean task of expos¬ ing the depravity of the position. Our worst wish is, a speedy return to com¬ mon sense and right feeling. In all this, who does not see the cloud as big as a man’s hand ? Verily there will be a great rain. Four objections may be made to the preceding evidence. 1st, It maybe said, that the natural tendency of disease is towards cure ; that cures therefore take place under all treatment, and cannot fairly be adduced in evidence for the success of any. Such cures as we have adduced, however, do not take place of themselves, or under any treatment, but the Homoeopathic : at least they cannot be looked for under any other. They are too sudden. 2nd, The cures may be referred to the imagination. They are too frequent: who relies on imagination, as a means of cure, or expects to relieve in general by that means ? What, too, becomes of children ; and animals ; and of those who are cheated ; and of the cases in which one—two medicines are tried and fail, and another succeeds ; all having had equal aid from the imagination, as, for instance, in the third case cited ? 3rd, Is it diet ? Most of the cures are too sudden for the diet (the objection provokes a good-humoured smile) ; many of the patients cannot eat, and others make no change. 4th, Your statistics are certainly more favourable than the Allopathic; but this may only prove that you do nothing, and they—harm. There is, I must confess, more in this objection than I can answer in so small a space. I can only protest that we do positive good ; and that the other half of the objection must be allowed. Large doses of arsenic, iodine, mercury, Peruvian bark, depletion, &c. do vastly aggravate and prolong the cases of chronic disease from natural causes. It is needless to say much about the dose in which the remedies are given. Every practitioner gives such a dose as will produce a sufficient curative effect; but the dose is not the principle on which the medicine is given. It is, in tact, only the result of observation; not deduced from any known facts by reasoning. The ridicule, therefore, which attacks the smallness of the dose after its neces¬ sity has been established by observation, is a ridicule of the Creator, who estab¬ lished such a relation between the quantity and its effects on the living body; and if the ridicule be manifested before the experiment is tried, it is prema¬ ture; for no one can know in an experimental matter what is absurd, until he has tried it. If they will have their laugh, let them earn it by a trial; and if they won’t try, let our laughing friends cease to laugh, and reflect at least on some facts which they know, namely, that every man in passing over a hill side leaves something on the ground or in the air, which no chemistry can detect, and no microscope can perceive; but which has its existence, nevertheless, and its value, for his faithful hound. Let them remember, too, that the causes of the most virulent plagues, which occasionally decimate, and may one day de¬ populate our globe, are equally imponderable, intangible, and invisible ; and that there is no great absurdity in attempting to meet agents of so subtle a nature by agencies, as subtle as their own.