Organon of homœopathic medicine. / by Samuel Hahnemann.

  • Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755-1843.
Date:
1836
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Organon of homœopathic medicine. / by Samuel Hahnemann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    155/236 (page 135)
    § 104. The totality of the symptoms which characterise a given case—or, in other terms, the image of the disease—being once comniitted to writing, the most difficult part is accom- plished.* The physician ought ever after to have this image before his eyes to serve as a basis to the treatment, especially where the disease is chronic. He can then study it in all its parts, and draw from it the characteristic marks, in order to oppose to these symptoms—that is to say, to the disease itself— a remedy that is perfectly homoeopathic, whose choice has been decided on according to the nature of the morbid symptoms which it produces from its simple action on the body. And if, during the course of the treatment, he enquires after the effects of the remedy, and the changes that have taken place in the state of the patient, it only remains to obliterate from the group of primitive symptoms those which have entirely disappeared, to note down those of which there are still some remains, and add the new ones which have supervened. * The physicians of the old school in their treatment of the sick adopt an extremely convenient method. No accurate enquiries are heard from them concerning all the circumstances of the case, and the patients, during the recital of their individual symptoms, are not unfrequently interrupted by the physician to prevent disturbance in the rapid writing of his prescriptions, compounded of a medley of ingredients, the genuine ' effects of which are unknown to him. No allceopathic physician, as already observed, desires to know a full and accurate account of the symptoms, much less to commit them to writing. If after several days he re-visits his patient (numerous others having been seen in the inter- val), he will then have retained in his memory little or nothing of the minute circumstances of the case, as at first heard, and what had passed into one ear will have escaped from the other. In his succeeding visits, he does little more than ask a few general questions, feels the pulse, looks at the. tongue, and forthwith, without an intelligible reason, proceeds , to write another prescription, or directs the former (in large and fre- quently repeated portions through the day) to be continued. Then with mien polite he hastens to the fiftieth or sixtieth patient of those whom he has visited in the same thoughtless manner on the same day. Thus a profession which, of all others, properly requires the most reflection, the conscientious and careful examination of each and every case and the special cure founded thereon,—such a profession is thus practised by persons who call themselves rational physicians. § 105. The second point in the duty of the physician is to examine into the instruments destined to cure natural diseases, to