Letter to the physicians of France on homoeopathy / by Count Des Guidi ; translated from the French, by William Channing.

  • Sébastien Des Guidi
Date:
1834
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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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    extolled, especially in England; yet it differed from others only in this, that it was so pulverized that the moistened point of a knife would take up enough to destroy an intermittent fever. Facts of this kind, at once numerous and long well known, are in general, too much overlooked, too little examined; but has the physician who has thus neglected them, the right to deny in advance every inference which those may draw from them who have made them their special study 1 We confine ourselves to the exhibition of this injustice, and instead of our own, offer the testimony of a practitioner who will certainly not be denied a hearing, upon a question which here can be only glanced at. He writes thus: I will first mention a singular and scarcely noted effect, though it occur every day ;—it is the increased ac- tivity which certain substances acquire when they are mixed with water in certain proportions. This liquid, far from abating their virtue, as one would at first be led to suppose, only serves to develope it. Is it because the active principle is diluted—is rendered more penetrating, and by means of a subtile vehicle, is made to act upon a greater number of parts and tissues, which it would not reach but for this dilution 1 Cullen had already re- marked, that calves were better nourished and more easily fatted, when the milk with which they were fed, was diluted with an equal quantity of water, than when given to them without dilu- tion. I have often proved upon myself that a given quantity of wine, capable of producing a slight degree of intoxication, has more readily brought me to that state when mixed with an equal quantity of water. Many persons, very capable of self-observa- tion, have assured me that they were more stimulated by a cup of coffee, taken with as much or even twice as much milk, than by a cup of coffee pure. (Ibid. p. 56.) Let us now cursorily examine how far what we know, pre- sents any obstacles to our faith in the power of doses much smaller than ordinary, and authorizes us to reject without inqui- ry, every thing which may be said of that power. Is it in the facts that we see every day—or is it in fundamental facts, in the principles, in the spirit of medical science, that we shall find a priori evidence of the impotence of these doses ] Far from being thus influenced by the facts which fill our annals, we recognize among them, on the contrary, numberless precedents furnishing presumptive evidence of the power attri- buted by Hahnemann to these minute doses. There is no course of Elementary Physics, which has not commenced by proving to us the extreme divisibility of matter by the example of that everlasting grain of Musk, which has the power, without im- poverishing itself, of filling with its odour unmeasured space and time. In this common-place of the schools, it is not the fault of the fact, that we have scarcely thought of it only as a demonstra-