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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![the end we arrive at nothing satisfactory. They stand as ano- malies, under a species of provisory exceptional law recognized and admitted, rather than promulgated in the art. The common herd of physicians.find in them nothing but anomalies—singular cases; but thinkers perceive that so many similar facts cannot be the work of chance, and they feel the necessity of attributing them to some principle more elevated. Our first quotation from Dr. Sainte Marie, gives a sufficiently exact idea of the kind of perplexity with which true physicians contemplate these isolated cases, ask themselves where is their general law, and what place is reserved for it in medicine. Unfortunately, no powerful mind had as yet, made this law a special object of meditation and re- search ; and this question, so long rich in materials for its solu- tion, was still new, when Hahnemann appeared. Engaged in translating the Materia Medica of Cullen, and cloyed even to loathing with the hypotheses and learned reveries there huddled together to explain the action of remedies, he de- termined to try upon himself, then in full health, the powers of Cinchona. In his place we might have reasoned perhaps, and We might probably have reasoned till this time. Hahnemann experimented. Was this procedure wise] Was it praiseworthy'? Was it of a nature to be avowed by Hippocrates, by Galen, Boerhaave, Syden- ham, Baglivi; in short, by every physician the world has known 1 And if, from this experiment there results a fact however unex- pected it may be, is not this fact, with the inductions and other facts to which it may lead, a part of the domain of Medical sci- ence, and are they not fully authorised to produce their creden- tials? Rational medicine would indeed be but a barbarous and brutal folly if it would deny this right; and it is not thus, Gentlemen, that you understand and honor it. The truly rational medicine, that which you cherish, that which Hahnemann cultivates in common with you, the Medicine of Experience and Induction, can proscribe no fact. You applaud then, the experiment of Hahne- mann, you admit all its legitimate consequences, however strange they may appear to you—you accept them, though they should reiterate that which you but too well know, that which all your instructors continually say to you of the insufficiency and the inanity of the reigning theories, the imperfection and the poverty of therapeutical science, such as ages have left it with us, even at this day. Hahnemann discovered, in thus experimenting upon himself, that the Cinchona has the power of creating an intermittent fe- ver, analogous to that form of it which it cures most perfectly. This unforeseen result forced upon him the recollection that the sovereign antisyphilitic has also the property of producing syphi-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21114341_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
