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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    Contagious malaria constitute a large class of agents whose power of injuriously acting upon our healthy body is so greatly dreaded, and no one has yet doubted that they are material. Who voluntarily crosses the Pontine marshes at certain seasons of the year, or exposes himself to the plague of Constantinople, or the yellow fever of the West Indies? The microscope cannot shew these terrible particles, nor can chemical analysis detect them. Ozone perhaps decomposes them. To come nearer home, a clergyman visits a patient in scarlet fever, but does not touch him, he afterwards calls upon a friend, and shakes the hand of one of the children as he passes her on the staircase. The next day this child sickens with the scarlet fever, and her brothers and sisters take it from her; no other connection can be traced. This is no uncommon occur- rence, and no one doubts the communication of infection in such a manner, neither is it doubted that the infection itself is something material. What is the weight of the particle of matter thus conveyed ? Is it heavier than the millionth of a grain of belladonna which, it is asserted by Homceopathists, is sufficient, when given at short intervals, to arrest the pro- gress of such a case ? These, then, are also instances of infinitesimally small quan- tities of matter actii:o upon the living body in health. There are numerous liquids which have the power of affecting the healthy body, and some of them of taking away life, and yet in each instance the quantity of the active ingredient is so exceedingly small that hitherto no means have been effectual in detecting it. The Vaccine matter has en so often mentioned that I will not allude to it further. Several animals are furnished with poisonous liquids, which, when injected into a wound, occasion the disease or death of the wounded animal. Ser] ents, bees, scorpions, and spiders, are well known examples. In the venomous serpents there is
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