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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    CHAHACTEKISTICS OF UOSKEOl'ATUY, sliould light upon some very notable fact,—some very striking coincidence,—some very characteristic manifesta- tion—you would eagerly catch at it as at, perchance, a thread to lead you further on ; you would set about thoroughly investigating it, pui'suing it through all phases and analogies, spying it out under every diversity, and tracing it back, if possible, to its real source. All your experiments will, henceforward, point in one and the same direction ;—you strive, you pant after the solution of the ]>roblem ;—you can have no rest until you have conjured it into the hollow whisper of a meaningless phantom, or the liquid response of a prophetic reality. You must master it, you must know what it meant, what it was; —perchance nothing, perchance something;—perchance some very great thing. Are we trying the reader's patience through a series of gratuitous suppositions or fanciful representations'? All this is neither less nor more than a historical account of the Hahnemannic discovery, short of the synthetic ar- rangement of our exposition, which represents generalities as leading to experimental determinations, whereas, in reality, Hahnemann's course, as stated above, Avas wholly analytical, and gradually advancing ft*om particulai' facts to general conclusions. A keen and ever-vigilant ob- server, he was struck with the very remarkable coinci- dence that certain substances, appropriated to the cure of particular distempers, produced, in the healthy body, the same series of symptoms which they were known spe- cifically to remove. This circumstance might have passed imheeded before a spirit less inquisitive by nature, or, from stronger adherence to authority, more at ease upon the
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