Volume 1

Organon of medicine ... / by Samuel Hahnemann.

  • Samuel Hahnemann
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Organon of medicine ... / by Samuel Hahnemann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    83/332 (page 77)
    ways differs greatly from that of the others, and the administration of this incomprehensible mixture to the patient in large and frequently repeated does, in order therewith to obtain some purposed, certain, curative effect, is a piece of folly repugnant to every reflecting and unprejudiced person.29 29 The absurdity of medicinal mixtures was perceived even by adherents of the old school of medicine, although they still con¬ tinued to follow this slovenly plan in their own practice, con¬ trary to their convictions. Thus Marcus Herz (in Hufeland’s Journal, ii, p. 33) reveals the pricks of his conscience in the fol¬ lowing words: “When we wish to remove the inflammatory state, we do not employ either nitre or sal-ammoniac or vegetable acids alone, but we usually mix several, and often but too many, so- called anti-phlogistics together, or give them in the same case in close succession. If we have to combat putridity, we are not- content to look for the attainment of our object from the ad¬ ministrations of large doses of one of the known antiseptic medi¬ cines, such as cinchona bark, mineral acids, arnica, serpentaria, etc., alone; we prefer associating several of them together, and count upon their community of action; or from our uncertainty as to whose action is the most suitable for the case in question, we throw together a number of different substances, and almost leave it to chance to effect the end we have in view, by means of one of them. Thus we seldom excite perspiration, purify the blood (?), overcome obstructions (?), promote expectoration, or even evacuate the primse vise, by a single remedy; our prescrip¬ tions for these objects are always composite, almost never simple and pure, consequently neither are our observations in reference to the actions of each indimdual substance contained in them. To be sure, we learnedly institute certain grades of rank among the remedies in our formulas; on the one to which we particularly commission the action, we confer the title of base (basis), the others we call helpers, supporters (adjuvantia), correctives (cor-