The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers.

  • Chambers, Thomas King, 1818-1889.
Date:
1863
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    17/436 (page 5)
    business to preach truth as well as to pi active truth. Homceopathy.—This is a reaction against the former theory. You will observe that the strong argument, and therefore the favorite argument, of its adherents, is an exhibition of the inconsistencies displayed by wise, and of the frequently had treat- ment employed by foolish, Allopathists. It is infened by them, that if Allopathy is wrong, its converse must be right. And being able to show that suc- cessful treatment does not consist in administering drugs whose phenomena are the opposite of those manifested in the disease, they argue therefrom that it does consist in administering those whose phenomena are the same as those manifested in the disease. If there is Diarrhoea, Colocynth is to be given ; if in- flammation of the bladder, a drug that inflames the bladder—Cantliarides. For hectic fever and ema- ciation, the treatment is to be Mercury, Arsenic, Phosphoric Acid, Caustic Potash,—whose action in measurable doses is to augment emaciation and so to cause hectic.* To prevent evil results from carrying out the dogma in practice, the doses are commonly reduced to such immeasurable smallness as not to produce any of their usual pathogenetic effects; hut still this mode of prescribing is not looked upon as an essential, and the rule that similia similibus curantur is quite independent of it. * The examples are taken passim from Yeldham’s * Homoeopathy in Acute Diseases,’ which represents the current application of the laws made by Hahnemann. An exposition of the arguments and experiments on which the Homoeopathic dogmata are founded, may be found put in a very readable and elegant form in the ‘ History and Heroes of Medicine,’ by Dr. Russell. The author is evi- dently an “ almost persuaded ” convert to Rational Medicine, so clearly does he expose the fallacies which deceived Hahnemann.