A few more words in explanation of "My homœopathy and Hahnemann's" : with an entirely new diagram / by Æsculapius.

  • Aesculapius.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few more words in explanation of "My homœopathy and Hahnemann's" : with an entirely new diagram / by Æsculapius. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who are Homoeopaths, and tho prey of recurrent headaches, pause and contemplate Hahnemann. But there are Homoeopaths who smile both at 1 ‘ My Homoeopathy and Hahnemann’s.” Scepticism in Medicine, like scepticism in Religion, is still an inconvenient thing for those who are possessed by it. He is held to be a hard-hearted man, who professes to believe that there is nothing for the sick but time and nature. A euphonistic and mean¬ ingless term, to give expression to negative belief, is what politeness requires. Homoeopathy sounds well, and naturally enough, the un¬ believers “ cave-in here.” In conclusion, one word about experiments. I have said Dr. Reith calls for cruel and dangerous experiments. For the whole bulk of the profession to become experimentalists, in the way that Dr. Reith advises, could only result in mischief pure and simple. With¬ out saying anything derogatory to medical men, there is not one, per¬ haps, out of a thousand, who could break entirely with the past and tread no v and unknown paths with advantage either to science or his patients. Any one who knows the precautions required to give value to an expe¬ riment of any kind in order that every misleading circumstance maybe eliminated, will allow that the human body, presenting the greatest complexity of circumstances in nature, is certainly not a fit subject for every one experimenting on who is simply qualified for practising me¬ dicine. It only shews the utter ignorance of the conditions of an ex¬ periment in the man who asks for such a thing. If he will not treat disease until he can treat it with mathematical precision, it is much to be feared he is still a do-nothing. And if people in some quarters would cease their tail-talk about medicine being a science, when they are in good humour, and about its being everything but a science when they are in bad humour with themselves and everybody, they would do an infinite amount of good to their humbler brethren in the profession, who are content to do what they can for the relief of human misery, scientifi¬ cally or otherwise. There is some difference between being original and independent, and it is only a pity that the one virtue should be discredited by so much affectation of the other, which is indeed a “ rara avis in terrisDr. Reith and his Homoeopathy notwithstanding. His two years of experience is a sufficient warrant for any one to go by who is willing to risk it a little with his patients. One experiment, he thinks, will put an end to unbelief. Ex uno disce omnes. It is a very simple thing to give an infinitesimal dose of medicine to a patient who is labouring under a mental delusion. It has, perhaps, the negative virtue of doing no harm ; but if homoepathic medicines aro to be put to the test, they must be used when there is something to combat ; and a man’s reliance on the system will never be complete until he has proved its virtue in extreme cases. Dr. Reith began by applying it to a case of gangrene of tho lung—a very fair case for a
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