Homoeopathy unveiled, or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines, and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb.

Date:
1852
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy unveiled, or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines, and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb. 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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    the senses, but simply to the imagination, and so allows its disciples the liberty of multiplying and enlarging their impostures at pleasure, in proportion to the easi- ness and comprehension of that faculty. Nothing in the fictions of poetry or romance, or even in the lying wonders of a credulous superstition, can surpass the pretensions of these magical, wonder-working globules.* We talk of the millionth part of a drop or of a grain, and we may form some conception of it; but do we attach any right meaning to the term, the bil- lionth part of a drop ? or can we do so, when speaking of the higher numbers—trillionths, quintilhonths, decil- lionths, and so on ? By a very easy sum in multipli- cation, we may calculate what quantity of any liquid * For the information of those who are uninitiated into the mysteries of dynamizations, succussions, &c., I may be permitted to state that Hahnemann and his disciples believed that the original drug contains a spritual agent which is developed or set free by the triturating and shaking processes. These successive developments of the original substance are called dynamizations, potentizations, or attenuations. Hahnemann says,—“ Frequent observation has convinced me, that it “ is better to shake the vials twice only, in order to develop the “ medicinal virtue of the drug just enough to affect the disease in a “ proper manner. By shaking the vial ten times, as I was in the “ habit of doing, the proportion between the progressively developed “ intensity of action of the medicinal properties of the drug and the “ degree of the potency was destroyed in favour of the former. The “ object of the dynamizing process is to develop the intensity of “ action of the medicinal properties of the drug, at the same time as “ that action is reduced to a milder tone. Two shakes are sufficient “ to establish the true proportion between these two effects.” (“ Homoe- patliic Pharmacopoeia,” p. 9.) Hahnemann gravely informs us, that he purposely recommended two succussions, and that he had known practitioners who, taking medicines about in their pockets, had thus produced so large a number of succussions as frightfully to increase their potency and action on the system.