An introduction to the study of homoeopathy / edited by J.J. Drysdale and J. Rutherford Russell.

Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of homoeopathy / edited by J.J. Drysdale and J. Rutherford Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    imagined a theory, and then proceeded to subject it to the test of facts: facts with him had the start of piinciples. He was dissatisfied with the science as it stood before him, but did not presume to find in the a priori concep- tions of his own brain how it should stand ; he had rather a misgiving that stand otherwise it could not, and, with equanimity enough, bade it a practitioner's farewell. His mind was more on the alert than in ferment, when he lighted upon facts which deeply told upon him, and ulti- mately, through a long, laborious, and most severe ordeal of experiments, led him to the enunciation of his well- known formula ' Similia similihus.' Waiving the question, whether the Hahnemannic for- mula be, or be not, the expression of a general curative law, we would ask in the abstract. Does the conception of such a law imply any thing unphilosophical 1 Is it unphiloso- phical to suppose that amongst the beautiful, providential, all-infolding laws of nature, there may be one applicable to the cure of diseases ? Is it philosophical to assume, in the teeth of so many provisions made by the All-wise for man, that there can be no greater, no safer provision made for the mitigation of the manifold distempers inci- dent to his bodily constitution, than what medicine, as a conjectural science, can afford 'i Medicine on every side borders upon inductive sciences; and yet shall it be doomed never to take rank amongst them ] Time and genius could work all but miracles, in every branch of human learning and industry; and shall it be declared hopeless for them to achieve any thing momentous in a science which is conversant with the greatest temporal interests of mankind 1
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