Homœopathy : report of the speeches on irregular practice delivered at the nineteenth anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Brighton, August 13 & 14, 1851.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homœopathy : report of the speeches on irregular practice delivered at the nineteenth anniversary meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Brighton, August 13 & 14, 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a brain in discordant working, not a gentle convert but a hardened criminal, a perverse unbeliever, a furious fanatic, or an eccentric, unreasoning lunatic. But old things are passed away, behold all things are new made unto us. Let us now see what the new system proposes to do for the human race.” That is to say, let us see how homoeopathy is to render available the hitherto almost useless Gospel of Jesus Christ—till Hahnemann appeared, unable to make head against “ large doses of powerful medicines”, [pp. 40, 41.] The preacher traces all the diseases and vices of the human race to our “ frantic medicines”: and this he brings out in many parts of the Sermon : and, as an example, I quote one paragraph—it is his appeal to the pockets of his audience on behalf of the Hahnemann Hospital~ “ Mothers ! do you wish to see your children washed clean of that leprous tendency to disease which fills our grave yards with sweet young flowers cut off untimely, and which, to those who survive, transmits a legacy of pain, sin, and sorrow ? Then aid us! Fathers! do you wish to see your sons grow up faithful Christians, and sensible men, with a normal allowance of health, able to use calmly the reason which God has given to man for his comfort here, far from all extravagance, and all eccentricity, holding a course of life steady, reasonable, religious—such a course as man, healed, God-fearing, and intellectual, should hold ? Then aid us ! Governors of God’s heritage, monarchs, parliaments, magistrates ! There is a gloomy thunder-cloud collecting on the horizon, rolling its deep masses over the face of day, threatening, lurid, portentous ; but no man knows exactly of what. It is called Socialism, Communism, the Bights of Man, the Rights of Labour, the Bed Republic. It is earnest, dark, sombre, avenging. It has been lashed up by hunger, low wages, glaring inequality, wicked passions of psoric origin, roused by alcohol and medicines, mad¬ dened by burning eloquence. It has no strain of gentleness in it. It is arrested by neither ridicule nor menace. There is not one smile, or one jest hidden beneath its fantastic Swirls. The sword has cleft it, but it re-unites more baleful than before. The cannon has poured its hail against it, but it rolls on as dense and as red as ever. The priest has cursed it; society trembles to hear of it; but there it hangs, in the calm that precedes the earthquake ; baffled, perhaps, but biding its time till the f hour come, and the man’. Shall I teach you to draw the lightning quietly from it ere it bursts