Two sides to a question : a few observations on Mr. Braithwaite's "Temperate examination on homœopathy" / by William Bayes.

  • Bayes, William.
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two sides to a question : a few observations on Mr. Braithwaite's "Temperate examination on homœopathy" / by William Bayes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    f from lieat and sunlight, preserves the medicine from all chance of decomposition. In this state of extreme atomic divi¬ sion, substances are ready for rapid chemical change; this may partly account for the extraordinary powers they possess, while it enforces the necessity for great caution in guarding them from casual harm, from impurities in the media with which they are prepared, and from exposure to heat or sunlight. Possibly you may say, ^ How do you know that matter is capable of division into millionths, or billionths, or decillionths of a grain? and how do you know that your trituration or dilution contains the medicine by whose name it is called ?’ Dr. Taylor chose, on one occasion, to say that Homoeopathic globules contain no medicine, for though he had analysed them on many occasions, he never could detect any medicinal sub¬ stance in them. I cannot therefore but allow that such a question from you would be a fair one. {En passant^ I would remark that Dr. Taylor’s opinion has a negative value, as it proves the falsity of the accusation, brought by some opponents against Homoeopathy, that the physicians who practise it use concentrated drugs.) Dr. Taylor could not detect medicine in the Homoeopathic preparations, simply because his tests were not fine enough to detect such small quantities of medi¬ cine as were contained in the globules. Dr. Taylor’s observa¬ tion would have told against the honesty of the Homoeopathic chemist, if he had been able to say, ‘ 1 can detect the decil- lionth part of a grain of arsenic in a drop of water ^ but I have' analysed a tube full of the globules of the 30th dilution of arsenic, and they failed to respond to my tests.’ But if Dr. Taylor says, ^ I can detect the 10,000th of a grain of arsenic in a wine-glassful of water, therefore when your bottleful of globules, which professes to contain the decillionth, does not respond to my tests, I know there is no arsenic in them;’ then Dr. Taylor is arguing most illogically, and his assertion that
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