Homoeopathy unveiled, or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines, and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb.

Date:
1852
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy unveiled, or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines, and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb. 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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    and Prussic acid in the same quantities as syrup of poppies or infusion of bark. A drop or two of croton oil does not represent the quantity necessary to be given of castor oil j nor does a grain of elaterium, or of a salt of morphia, produce as little effect as a like quantity of soda or common salt. Medical men do not believe all these remedies to be equally active and powerful, and therefore do not give them all in the same form and dose. But why not ? Because the Almighty Creator in his wisdom has endowed the different forms of matter with wonderfully diversified properties and powers. These it is man’s business to investigate, and by interrogating nature, to make himself acquainted with her laws, so far as he may be able ; and in the employment of her products as medicines, to avail himself of all the knowledge which inquiry and experience can furnish. But Hahnemann and his disciples put away from themselves all these responsibilities; and, disregarding the well-known fact that medicines vary in strength as well as in properties, by an uniform mode of preparation, they direct all their remedies to be made of the same dilutions and strength; so that arsenic and soda, strychnine and charcoal,—substances entirely inert, and others the most energetic,—are all given in precisely the same doses.* We know from experience that a few drops of lauda- * The following explanation of this subject is given in Jahr’s “ Ilomocepathic Pliarmacopaeia,” p. 54:—“It is not unreasonable “ to suppose that the more powerful the drug is in its crude state, “ the weaker will be, proportionally, the attenuations ; and, vice versa, ‘' the weaker the drug in its crude form, the more powerful will be, “ proportionally, the attenuations. So that we may expect more intense “ effects from the higher attenuations of Lycopodium, Coffee, Chamo- “ mile, and the like, than from the lower preparations of these
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