Homœopathy : its nature and relative value / by Archibald Reith ; with an appendix by D. Dyce Brown.

  • Reith, Archibald.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homœopathy : its nature and relative value / by Archibald Reith ; with an appendix by D. Dyce Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Acute diseases were far more speedily, safely, and plea¬ santly cured, and the mortality from them greatly dimi¬ nished. Chronic diseases, which had spread over many years, were cured in a few weeks. On all sides the testi¬ mony was overwhelming in favour of the Homoeopathic law. At first, Hahnemann encountered little or no opposition from his brethren. His doctrines were published in Hufe- land’s Journal in 1796, and commanded general attention. We find him quoted in several medical periodicals as an authority for the successful treatment and prevention of scarlet fever, according to the law of similars. So late as 1824, before the introduction of his peculiar system into this country, an English medical journal speaks of the same subject, and of Hahnemann as its originator. But, in the course of his investigations, Hahnemann found that many of his patients were made worse by the doses he pre¬ scribed—that, although a number were rapidly cured by material doses, a large projDortion had their symptons aggravated. This led him, by the mere force of experi¬ ment, to diminish the dose, doing so gradually until the point was reached where aggravation ceased, and the primary curative action of the drug became manifest. Thus arose the famous infinitesimal dose—not hatched in the fertile imagination of a visionary brain, but insensibly forced upon a man of genius by the irresistible evidence of practical observation. It is true that Hahnemann, in endeavouring to account for the action of the so-called infinitesimals, invested them with wild speculative theories ; but these apart, the fact remains that, in a large proportion of diseases where the law of similars is applicable, so-called infinitesimal doses are requisite to effect a cure, while in others it is unnecessary to go beyond more material doses, such as were given by Hahnemann in his earlier experi¬ ments. Of this more anon. True to its traditional instinct, the same which poured vials of AAo^ath on Harvey and Jenner, the medical profes-
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