Ruoff's repertory of homoeopathic medicine : nosologically arranged / translated from the German by A. Howard Okie, with additions and improvements by Gideon Humphrey.

  • Ruoff, A. J. Friedrich.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ruoff's repertory of homoeopathic medicine : nosologically arranged / translated from the German by A. Howard Okie, with additions and improvements by Gideon Humphrey. 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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    is a prelude to convalescence, as though nature were endeavour- ing to annihilate the focus of disease. In this way we often so nheurnatie pains in the head or extremities, which have long distressed the sufferer, disappear altogether after an unusually violent paroxj'sm ; and when arthritic tumours and lymphatic swellings are pierced with lancinating pains, their resolution may often be predicted. In conformity with these remarkable phenomena, an explanation of the action of Homoeopathic medi- cines has been founded upon the supposition, that a disease once established in the system, cannot at once be cut short, though it may be much hastened in its development toward a crisis by an increased activity of the organic process—hence the various morbid phenomena are but the effects of the vis medicatrix na- turae to effect this purpose. If this be true, it necessarily follows that the most rational method of treating diseases must be to imitate nature, and at the same time to aid and support the vis medicatrix in its curative efforts. For this purpose a Homoeo- pathic remedy must be sought, which will act directly on the diseased oryan, and correspond in its pathogenetic properties to the altered functions of the part or parts affected. There is undoubtedly much plausibility in this theory, and it satisfactorily accounts for the minute doses of medicines required to produce a slight Homoeopathic aggravation of the di which will soon subside and be followed by a restoration of healthy action. Hahnemann, however, offers a different explanation of the Homoeopathic process ; he sets at nought the vis medicatrix, and proceeds upon the undeniable fact, that two diseases meeting together in any individual, the more readily give way to other as the}' are the more similar to each other in their n: the weaker giving way to the stronger. Hence he maintains, that in the treatment of disease, we have only to imitati proceedings of nature, and substitute a stronger medicinal dis- ease for that which has arisen from common causes, and this end is to be eifected by the Homoeopathic remedy. The discovery and application of the law of similia similibus curantur to the treatment of diseases would necessarily lead to ;ic\v views relative to their nature and causes. The remote cause, which in ordinary medicine is almost, to- tally neglected, is eagerly sought after by the Homoeopathist, as he considers if a morbid state, deserving the whole attention of the physician. The remote causes determine the derelo] of the disease, and consequently require to be strictly inquired into, because experience has taught the practitioner of the new school, that symptoms apparently similar, produced by different causes, demand peculiar treatment; for instance, a diarrhoea arising from cold ought not to be treated in the same main that produced by a fit of colic or by eating unwholesome food. An inflammation of the brain resulting from a repelled erysipelas,
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