Tracts on homoeopathy / by William Sharp.

  • William Sharp
Date:
1853-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tracts on homoeopathy / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ment of the germ, ot the entire plant, and of the ripening seed. How have all these wonderful changes been effected ? they are attributed to the vital force, but we know not in the least what that is, nor how it acts. We can examine the various tissues with our microscopes, and analyse them in our labora- tories, and thus become acquainted with many new and beauti- ful facts, which have presented ti jmselves in the course of the growth of our experimental plant. When we have reduced the mechanism to the simplest form, we find that it consists ot minute vesicles, formed by an elastic transparent membrane composed of a substance somewhat resembling starch, and called cellulose. When we have obtained the ultimate chemical analysis, we find certain proportions of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, with occasionally an addition of nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and a few metals or metallic oxides. We find nothing which reveals to us what vitality is, nor how the suc- cessive changes we have witnessed have been brought about. We take food and are nourished; we take medicines anc] are acted upon by them; we take poisons and die; but how these things act so as to produce such effects we know not. What is the cause of health? and the gendering of disease? Why should arsenic kdl * and whence is the potency of antidotes 1 Behold a morsel—eat and die ; the term of thy probation is expired ; Behold a potion—drink and be alive ; the limit of thy trial is enlarged. Tupper. If it be said that our food is converted into chyme in the stomach, and into chyle in the intestines, that this is absorbed by the lacteals and conveyed by the thoracic duct into the blood, and that thus we are nourished. I reply, all this is granted, but what then ? The question remains as it was, how is all this done ? No one can tell. Again, if it be said that medicines act on the nervous system, and stimulate the stomach, that they are sedatives and stimulants, emetics and purgatives, sudorifics and ex- pectorants; what of all this? What are these stimulating powers, how do they produce their effects, and how are these effects beneficial? No answer is given. The succession of events,—the steps by which an ultimate result is produced,—these, within the limits described, may be observed and experimented upon, but how each step is accom- plished is beyond our ken. Of the recesses of nature, of the secret chambers in which her operations are carried on, how forces are correlative, how they can be changed into each other, how they act upon matter, how matter acts upon them we are profoundly ignorant. Nevertheless we believe what we see without waiting until we can explain it. Such is the actual condition, the general character and
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