Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The repetition of the same dose / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![method of experimenting on the sick. This is the plain English of what is called learning ah usu in morhis. The difference between the two schools is that the one tries experiments with large doses^ the other with small ones. The new has the advantage that the good done by small doses is incomparably greater than by the large ones^ and is accompanied by much less harm; but to call this homoeopathy is absurd. There is no similarity in it; it is as much contrariety as the old practice; it is Anti- praxy not Homoeopathy. 4. It must be evident now why orthodox physicians^ during so many centuries, have succeeded so little in curing diseases by medicines. They have so muddled the data of the problem, and have added so many unknown quantities to it, that its solution has been rendered impos- sible. And it must also be evident why homoeopathists have not succeeded even better than they have. One known element, whicb ought to have been constant, has been allowed to be variable ; and another element which ought to have been recognised and constant, was neither recognised nor constant; so that the attempt to solve the problem has only partially succeeded. It may be asked. How, then, did Hahnemann arrive at the small doses, wbich has given Homoeopathy the success it has had ? Homoeopathists reply :—Hahnemann for many years employed the ordinary doses of drugs, whicb he gave as specifics in accordance with his therapeutic rule. Then, to avoid physiological action [i. e. aggravation of the disease that necessarily followed the giving of these large doses], he gradually reduced the dose. (Dr. Black, Address at York, 1872). The dose is the out- come of experience.'^ (Dr. Dudgeon, see Essay, LII). Hahnemann discovered his rule for the choice of the drug as a remedy by experiments on the healthy, but he left the dose in the condition it was in before him, to be settled by the old familiar mode of experiments on the sick, and there it remains with homoeopathists, as with the orthodox, to this day. 5. The experiments I have the privilege of recording in this Essay will be found to be examples of the problem as represented in the preceding paragraphs. The ele- ments or data are one person, one drug, and one dose; and the unknown quantity sought is the action of the same dose when it is repeated. The answer is unequi-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21970269_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
