Truths and their reception, considered in relation to the doctrine of homoeopathy / [By M.B. Sampson] ; to which are added various essays on the principles and statistics of homoeopathic practice.

  • British Homoeopathic Association
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Truths and their reception, considered in relation to the doctrine of homoeopathy / [By M.B. Sampson] ; to which are added various essays on the principles and statistics of homoeopathic practice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of any emotion at all, but who derives from the pur- suit of novelty all that he knows of life. It urges the wanderer to the summit of the hill, to look at the prospect beyond, and sends the aboriginal savage up the tree, to gather a new fruit that may catch his eye. The undiscovered good is the temptation that carries us all upon our road, and when we cease to desire what is new—or, in other words, when we lose the wish to improve—we become mere dead lumber, waiting to be removed. There is no disposition, therefore, generally on the part of the wmrld to reject what is new, but, on the contrary, novelty is the highest recommendation any- thing can possess. But although it is instinctively recognized that every new thing, that is to say, every addition to our knowledge, is an increase of our power, it is possible that a novelty may be so repug- nantly introduced, as to cause us for a moment to overlook this fact, and to feel nothing but dismay. A cutler, for instance, might invent some new instru- ment, skilfully conceived to render surgical operations less painful, but if it were first shown to us as an instrument of torture, the mere impulse of the mo- ment would be to wish that it could be destroyed. We may therefore be led to offer opposition to a new truth, simply by the faulty manner of its introduction, and, consequently, wdien we are about to present a discovery to the world, before we assume that it will be generally and instantaneously welcomed, on the principle that everything new is a gain^ we must ask
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