Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson.

  • William Henderson
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the deliberate and oft-repeated experiments of Hahnemann and his friends. “No unprejudiced person,7’ you affirm, “who examines these records ever so superficially, can for a moment believe that one-half, or one-tenth of the symptoms recorded, were, or could be, produced by the medicaments swallowed.77— P. 234. Then Hahnemann and his friends have told false- hoods regarding the more severe symptoms, and recorded many that were trivial and accidental. I will not accuse you of making the imputation of false- hood, for you have already allowed the integrity of Hahne- mann. But that Hahnemann did err in recording trivial occurrences among the symptoms that followed the taking of the medicines, no Homoeopathist denies ; nay, the provers in Vienna, who “have expressed their admiration,” &c., pro- claim the fact, and reject many of these symptoms. But does his error in the smallest degree effect the practical use of his provings—supposing, for a moment, the Homoeopathic principle to be correct, that regulates the selection of a rem- edy ? No, certainly. That principle requires that the symp- toms of the disease to be treated, should find in the provings of the remedy, phenomena that correspond with them—with all of them if possible, with the chief and most characteris- tic of them at least. It matters nothing that there should be in the proving many more, truly medicinal, phenomena than there are symptoms in the disease ; and, of course, it matters as little that there should be as many more trivial jottings, that neither correspond with the disease, nor are due to the medicine. Hahnemann himself anticipated your objection, but he thought it best to err on the safe side,—to note down phenomena that might be accidental and unimportant, rather than run the risk of excluding what might be of consequence. If the line must be drawn nicely between the genuine and the false phenomena, who was to decide on the precise qualifica- tions that entitled a symptom to be retained, or marked it for oblivion ? Surely not the first prover,—nor the first few provers. It must be the prerogative of the many, who, hav- ing summed up their own experiments and those of their predecessors, thus ascertain what bears the characters of con- stancy and genuineness, and what seems to be inconstant and accidental. The risk in all provings is rather from genuine symptoms being excluded, than from accidental ones being admitted. At least the Homoeopathist feels so, who knows of what importance sometimes are seemingly inconsiderable particulars.
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