Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of homœopathic medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![INTRODUCTION. who can prove (what has so often been afllrmed in our Pa- thogeny) that the slightest particle of this material substance penetrates into our liquids or becomes absorbed ?* It is in vain to wash the genitals with care and promptitude, such precaution will not protect the system from the venereal virus. The least breath of air emanating from a patient labouring under small-pox is sufficient to produce that formidable disease in a healthy child. How much of this material pi-inciple—what quantity in weight—would be requisite for the liquids to imbibe, in order to produce, in the first instance, syphilis, which will continue during the whole term of life ; and, in the second, the small- pox, which often rapidly destroys life amidst a suppuration f almost general 1 Is it possible in these two cases, or in others which are analogous, to admit that a morbific principle, in a matei-ial form, could have introduced itself into the blood? It has * A young girl, of Glasgow, eight years of age, having been bitten by a mad dog, the surgeon immediately cut out the part, which, nevertheless, did not save the child from an attack of hydrophobia thirty-six days after, of which she died at the end of two days. Med. Comment, of Edinb. Dec. 2, vol. ii. 1793. f In order to account for the great quantity of putrid fcecal matter, and fetid ichorous discharge, which arises in disease, and to represent these sub- stances as the cause that calls forth, and keeps up, the morbid state, although, at the moment of infection, nothing material had been seen to enter into the body, they had recourse to another hypothesis, which admitted, that certain very minute contagious principles act upon the body as a ferment, bringing the humours into the same degree of corruption with themselves, and converting them in this manner into a similar ferment, which keeps up the disease. But, by what purifying decoctions do they expect to free the body from a ferment that is constantly renewed, and expel it so complete^ from the mass of fluids, that not a single particle may remain, which, according to the admitted hypothesis, if any did remain, would infallibly corrupt the humours afresh, and reproduce, as at first, new morbific principles ] Thus, according to the manner of the old school, it would be impossible ever to cure these diseases. Here we see to what absurd conclusions the most artful hypothesis will lead, if founded in error. The most firmly rooted syphilis, when the psoric affec- tion with which .it is often complicated, has been removed, may be cured by one or two small doses of a solution of mercury, diluted to the decillionth potence, whereby the general syphilitic corruption of the humours is (dy- namically) corrected in a permanent and constitutional manner.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21469337_0040.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
