Letter to the physicians of France on homoeopathy / by Count Des Guidi ; translated from the French, by William Channing.
- Sébastien Des Guidi
- Date:
- 1834
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Letter to the physicians of France on homoeopathy / by Count Des Guidi ; translated from the French, by William Channing. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![is less a new creation, than the development—the promulgation of a doctrine, which even as such, has always had an existence in our art, we do not see how the enlightened physician can dis- pense with the examination which it demands. If he can, we would humbly ask what object would be worthy of his attention % Two therapeutical methods, universally admitted, and capable according to circumstances, of lending to each other a mutual support, have up to this period, appeared to constitute the princi- pal power of the Healing Art. The one, the revulsive—the de- rivative method—displaces one malady by another ; it substitutes sweating for a diarrhoea, a diarrhoea for an ophthalmia, a cutane- ous rubefaction for an affection of the chest, &c. Whatever may be the ultimate results of these proceedings, it is enough for our purpose to admit that by them the malady is combatted by means of a different malady. This is what Hahnemann calls Allopa- thy* The other method—the direct method—the method of contra- ries, attacks the very front of the disease by an action believed to be directly opposite to its own, adopting as its principle the max- im Contraria contrariis curanlur. This method aims to arrest constipation by purgatives, certain diarrhoeas by astringents, sleeplessness by narcotics; it employs Cinchona by assigning to it a virtue opposed to periodical irritations; Mercury, by consider- ing it antisyphilitic, &c. This method is called by Hahnemann Antipathy. Now, by the side of these two methods—the reigning Queens of that science, the object of so many efforts, of so much discus- sion and research—there has existed from all antiquity, a third method, which enters very obviously into a share of the labors, if not of the honors, attributed to the two others. Every day we hear this language, we must give this ulcer or this catarrh ac- tivity in order to dissipate it: we must give to this disease a cer- tain degree of acuteness, &c. Who of us has not seen, in the works of authority, in the practice of able professors as well as in the hands of ignorance or chance, at one time Rhubarb or Aloes applied to the cure of diarrhoeas ; at another, sweats yielding to sudorifics, vomitings to emetics, and comatose paroxysms of per- nicious fevers to opium ] Pare removes an herpetic eruption, and Dupuytren an erysipelas, by applying to them blisters. ■£• Facts of this kind are numerous and of every day's occur- rence. They are known, they are cited at least as examples of a temerity sometimes fortunate; and it is perceived that, in the midst of their uncertainty and danger, they embrace an impor- tant truth. We even try to imitate them with caution, but in * General usage gives the name of Allopaths or Allopathists to all physicians who are not Homoeopaths or Homceopathists. >](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21114341_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
