Homoeopathy and its principles explained / [John Epps].

  • John Epps
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy and its principles explained / [John Epps]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/350 (page 4)
    opposition to applications of truth. CllAP. I. covery, that vaccination is a protection, appointed by heaven, against the devastator, small pox.* Inventors have had a similar opposition. How Franklin was denounced for his impiety in using lightning rods to draw away uninjuriously to the earth heaven’s lightning? How Arkwright was insulted and ridiculed when lie invented the spinning jenny ? How Windsor was denounced as a visionary when he exhibited V the plan of lighting London with gas ? And was not Fniton deemed almost insane when he asserted that he would navigate the ocean bv steam ? An opposition equally powerful has been raised against the dis- coverers of moral and religious truths. When the strong-minded, the profound-reasoning Paul, had declared at Ephesus the great principle, that to worship images is irrational and contrary to truth, so strong was the opposition of Demetrius and others, engaged in making silver shrines for the imaged goddess Diana, that “ they with one voice for about the space of two hours, cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” Acts xxiv. 34. Whateley, the logician, has expressed the state of matters in reference to this axiom very clearly:—“ In proportion as any branch of study leads to important and useful results—in pro- portion as it gains ground in public estimation—in proportion as it tends to overturn existing errors, in the same degree it may be expected to call forth angry declamation from those who are trying to despise what they will not learn, and wedded to preju- dices which they cannot defend.” In the contemplation of these struggles how encouraging is the third axiom, that truth has ultimately triumphed. * “ IIow was this still greater discovery of the immortal Jenner received— Vaccination ? Like every other discovery—with ridicule and contempt. By the Royal College of Physicians, not only was Jenner persecuted and oppressed ; hut long even after the benefits which his practice had conferred upon mankind had been universally admitted, the pedants of that most pedantic of bodies refused to give him their license to practice his profession in London ; because, with a proper feeling of self-respect, he declined to undergo at their hands a school-bov examination in Greek and Latin. Even religion and the Bible were made engines of attack against him. From these Errhman of Frankfort deduced his chief grounds of accusation against the new practice ; and ho gravely attempted to prove from quotations of the pro- phetical parts of Scripture, and the writings of the fathers of the church, that Vacci- nation was the real Anti-Christ.”—Dickson’s Fallacies of the Faculty.