Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: How I became a homoeopath / by William H. Holcombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![]edged himself unable to read German, the only language ill which at that time a book existed which could have taught him how to use the above named drugs Homce- opathically. Of the ten cases in which a tolerably Homoe- opathic remedy was chosen, seven are reported as better the next day. Andral's experimentation was simply a farce, disgraceful to himself and his school, and one which looks like a trick of the trade, expressly gotten up to precipitate a verdict against Homoeopathy, and silence in future the questionings of the medical mind on the subject. Of all this, however, I sus- pected nothing, and I went on practicing one system and abusing the other with an easy conscience. But I was destined, under Providence, for better things than to play always the part of the blind horse in a tread-mill. In 1849 we were visited by that dreadful scourge, the Asiatic cholera. It loomed up like a black cloud in the East, and moved westward with frightful rapidity, spreading sorrow and death in its mighty shadow. We prepared for its visitation by earnest thought and study. We mastered the opinions and practice of those who had witnessed the previous epidemics. They were so discordant and unsatis- factory that we faced the great enemy with fearful mis- givings of our power to contend with him successfully. In our poor, blind, Allopathic superstition, that diseases are to be cured by their opposites, we exclaimed, What powerful astringents must be needed for such profuse evacuations !— what sedatives for such vomitings!—what antispasmodics for such cramps ! — what opiates for such horrible pains ! — what heat-producing remedies for such deathly coldness! — what rapid stimulants for such fearful prostration ! —what mighty specifics for such fatal congestions! Oh, the bewildering chaos of irrational theories and disgusting polypharmacy! So we went to work with all the resources at our com- mand. If there was no bile secreted, it was not for the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21129009_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
