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.

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    period of their duration. The physician is to read this report, immediately after it is finished, in tlie presence of the person on whom the experiment is made, or if it lasts several days, he then reads it over each day, in order that, by refreshing his memory, the person may be enabled to reply to the questions which it may be necessary to put to him relative to the precise nature of each symptom, and to give him an opportunity of adding fresh details, or making any necessary corrections.* • He who publishes to the medical world such experiments, is respon- sible for the credibility of the experimenter, as well as for the correct- ness of his statements, and very properly so, as the welfare of suffering humanity is at stake. § 140. If the individual cannot write, the physician must then interrogate him each day, in order to learn his sensations. But this examination ought, for the most part, to be confined to listening to his narrative. The physician must not indulge in any conjectures or suppositions, and he is to ask as few questions as possible, taking care to maintain the same circum- spection and reserve, which I have before recommended (§ 84—99), as an indispensable precaution in seeking the information requisite to form the image of the natural disease. § 141. But of all the pure experiments relative to the changes which simple medicines produce, and the morbid symptoms they excite in healthy persons, those are always the best which a physician (enjoying a good state of health, free from prejudice, and able to analyse his sensations) makes on his own person, observing, at the same time, the precautions that have just been prescribed. A thing is never more certain than when it has been tried on ourselves.* * The experiments that are made on our own persons have one advan- tage above all others. In the first place, they furnish a conviction of this great truth, that the curative virtues of medicines depend solely upon the power they possess of creating changes in the physical economy of man. In the second place, they teach us to understand our own sensations, mind, and disposition, which is the source of all true wisdom, (y,59, a-tavrop), and exercise our powers of observation, an indispensable talent in a physician. All our observations on others are by no means so interesting as those made on ourselves. In all the observations made on other individuals, it is continually to be feared