The progress of homoeopathy: a series of papers, illustrative of the position and prospects of medical science / Published under the superintendence of the English Homoeopathic Association.
- English Homoeopathic Association
- Date:
- 1847
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The progress of homoeopathy: a series of papers, illustrative of the position and prospects of medical science / Published under the superintendence of the English Homoeopathic Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.
249/288 page 237
![formal shape cannot fail to be useful. The neutral treatment here illustrated is far from being universally followed ; the old system of impertinent interference with Nature in all her ways being that still adhered to by many practitioners. In the present medical crisis, we, moreover, reckon it of es- pecial importance that the attention of physicians should be directed to the curative activity of Nature in surgical cases, where the whole of the processes are subjected to the senses* If we find Nature capable of doing such great things, alone, or with that little help which scientific art deems it right to apply, on the sur- face of the body, we might reasonably infer that similar results would ensue under similar circumstances in the interior of the body ; and such, assuredly, is the fact. But we see also, in the one case as in the other, that, although she is the actual worker of the cure, Nature stands often in need of the assistance of art to put her in the right road, to remove obstacles from her path, and occasionally to supply instruments which she does not herself possess. And in doing this the physician and surgeon have their high and true calling, and may always find ample and legitimate employment. All that Nature demands in such cases is, that Art should not, like Dr. Johnson’s patron, “ encumber her with help.”] In Sir John Herschell’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, it is stated, that “ Art is the application of knowledge to a practical end. If the knowledge be merely accumulated ex- perience, the art is empirical; but if it be experience reasoned upon, and brought under general principles, it assumes a higher character, and becomes a scientific art. It is humiliating, indeed, to consider that, in this age of boasted scientific advancement, the practice of medicine and surgery must be allowed to belong more to the former than to the latter division of art. Has the progress of disease in the human body been studied in the same philosophical spirit as the processes observed in the external physical world ? Have we kept in view that the laws of Nature comprehend in their dominion the course of a fever and the reparation of a wound, as well as the fall of an apple ? Why have we long since ceased to struggle in the pursuit of the alchemists; and why do we exercise](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29342338_0249.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
