Volume 1

Materia medica pura / by Samuel Hahnemann, translated from the latest German editions by R.E. Dudgeon, with annotations by Richard Hughes.

  • Samuel Hahnemann
Date:
1880-1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Materia medica pura / by Samuel Hahnemann, translated from the latest German editions by R.E. Dudgeon, with annotations by Richard Hughes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SPIRIT OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICAL DOCTRINE * It is impossible to divine the internal essential nature of diseases and the changes they effect in the hidden parts of the body, and it is absurd to frame a system of treatment on such hypothetical surmises and assumptions : it is impossible to divine the medicinal properties of remedies from any chemical hypotheses or from their smell, colour, or taste, and it is absurd to attempt, from such hypothetical surmises and assumptions, to apply to the treatment of diseases these substances, which are so hurtful when wrongly administered. And even were such practice ever so customary and ever so generally in use, were it even the only one in vogue for thousands of years, it would nevertheless continue to be a senseless and pernicious practice to found on empty surmises our idea of the morbid condition of the interior, and to attempt to combat this with equally imaginary properties of medicines. Appreciable, distinctly appreciable to our senses must that be, which is to be removed in each disease in order to transform it into health, and right clearly must each remedy express what it can positively cure, if medical art is to cease to be a wanton game of hazard with human life, and to commence to be the sure deliverer from diseases. I shall show what there is undeniably curable in diseases, and how the curative properties of medicines are to be distinctly perceived and employed for curative purposes. * * * * What life is can only be known empirically from its phenomena and manifestations, but no conception of it can be formed by any meta- physical speculations a priori; what life is, in its actual essential nature, can never be ascertained or even guessed at, by mortals. To the explanation of human life, as also its two-fold conditions, health and disease, the principles by which we explain other pheno- mena are quite inapplicable. With nought in the world can we compare it save with itself alone ; neither with a piece of clockwork, * This essay appeared in a journal twenty years ago, in those momentous days (March, 1813) when the Germans had no leisure to read and still less to reflect upon scientific matters. The consequence of this was that these words were not listened to. It may now have more chance of being perused, particularly in its present less imperfect form. [From vol. ii, 3rd edition, 1833.]
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