Homoeopathy : its tenets and tendencies, theoretical, theological, and therapeutical / by James Y. Simpson.

Date:
1853
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy : its tenets and tendencies, theoretical, theological, and therapeutical / by James Y. Simpson. 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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    sical and moral world, are unhappy. We have ere now frequently exposed their fallacy.”—{British Journal of Homaiopatliy for 1852, p. 471.) The other allegation of Hahnemann, that the principle of similia similihus curantur is the curative principle which Nature herself follows in her own occasional successful treatment of diseases, is a proposition, the importance of which demands for it a more length- ened examination. 2. Alleged evidence in favour of Homoeopathy fy'om the study of the mode in which nature removes the Diseases of the body by the curative agency of other SIMILAR diseases. In various parts of his “ Organon,” Hahnemann anxiously at- tempts to show that the law of homoeopathy (similia similibus cur- antur') is the law of cure which Nature herself follows when she is successful in removing one disease by the occurrence of another. In other words, Hahnemann roundly and repeatedly avers, that the alleged universal law of cure which he supposed he had discovered —“ like is cured by like”—was a law exemplified by Nature in her curative removal of one similar disease by the supervention of another. He earnestly insists upon this pathological or rather therapeutical point as a natural groundwork, and great argument for the truth of his supposed universal law of artificial cure. Speaking of the alleged cure or removal of a previous disease in the body by the accidental supervention of any similar disease, he observes, “We can point to some beautiful homoeopathic cures effected by this lucky concur- rence, all so many incontrovertible proofs of the great, the sole therapeutic law of nature that obtains in them—cure by similarity of symptoms.”'^ “When two similar diseases (as he again states it) meet together in the same body, that is to say, when to the disease ali’eady present a stronger similar one is added, we see how a cure can be effected by the operations of Nature, and we get a Lesson as to how we ought to cm’e; ” 2 for the physician is in this way taught “ what kind of artificial morbific potency (or medicine) he ought to choose, in order to cure in a sure, rapid, and permanent manner, agreeably to the process that takes place in nature.”^ “ All (he avers) the rapid and perfect cures that Nature ever performed, were always effected by