Common sense versus homoeopathy / by Samuel Knaggs.

  • Samuel Knaggs
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Common sense versus homoeopathy / by Samuel Knaggs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    14/52 page 12
    In no science, perhaps, has so much false logic been dis- played as in that of medicine; and thus it is that the history of medicine records so many varying schools of practice : at one time all diseases are regarded as blood diseases, at another as nervous; with one party they all originate in the stomach, with another in the liver; at one period we find a system curing by contraries, —contraria contrariis, &c.: what wonder, then, that in our day a similia similibus system should exist ? All these different theories are based upon some truth: some diseases are immediately connected with the cir- culatory, others with the nervous system ; some origi- nate in the stomach, and others in a torpid liver; some may he cured on the doctrine of contraries, and others on that of similia similibus. The fallacy lies not in the assertion that such condi- tions do prevail, nor that diseases may be cured by one system or the other—indeed, this is all granted;—but in the universal application of each theory. The argu- ment is, that medicines selected in accordance with the doctrine “ like cures like” will cure disease, ergo, disease can only be cured by medicines so administered, —an inference which the premises do not warrant. The same applies equally to all systems of medicine, which hug themselves in the possession of laws of universal applicability: they claim more than they can prove their claim to, and by so doing excite an opposition to, or at least a suspicion of, even the elements of truth they embody. Practically, I do not see the objection to the law of “ like cures like” being acted upon by the homoeopathic practitioner, because, although it is a very one-sided way of regarding disease, still, by the great varieties of symptoms which medicines will pro- duce, according to the homoeopathic statements, aiid the numerous symptoms apparent in all cases of
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3