Sequel to Outlines of medical proof / [Thomas Mayo].

  • Thomas Mayo
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sequel to Outlines of medical proof / [Thomas Mayo]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hacknied argument be accepted in excuse for such non¬ performance of a duty, that we are unwilling to give importance to empiricism by making it the subject of our deliberate inquiry. There are cases in which the refusing inquiry is more readily attributed to prejudice than to contempt. The subjects to which these remarks are most appli¬ cable, are homoeopathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism. I shall venture some suggestions in regard to each, in the hope that they may stimulate investigation. Those circumstances in the homoeopathic system, which have most tended to discredit it, and which have naturally indisposed us to look farther into it, in spite of its prevalence, are,—first, the singular gratuitousness of its hypothesis, both pathological and therapeutical; secondly, the strangeness of the infinitesimal doses ; thirdly, the presumptuousness with which it advances exclusive pretensions. Tor instance, if we admit the demands of homoeopathy upon our assent, we must grant, either that venesection, combined with calomel and antimony, does not cure pneumonia, or that this combination of remedies possesses the power of produc¬ ing pneumonia in a healthy person. But neither this therapeutical assumption, nor their pathology, which finds a cause for all chronic disease in psora, syphilis, or sycosis, have so much indisposed us to inquire into the claims of homoeopathy, or so much excited a derisive feeling, as the intense dilution of their medicines; and yet it is in relation to the effect of these very infinitesimal doses that the attention of the normal body of physicians is most directly applicable to the
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