A new and comprehensive system of materia medica and therapeutics, arranged upon a physiologico-pathological basis: for the use of practitioners and students of medicine (Volume 1).

  • Hempel, Charles J. (Charles Julius), 1811-1879.
Date:
1864-1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new and comprehensive system of materia medica and therapeutics, arranged upon a physiologico-pathological basis: for the use of practitioners and students of medicine (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    temple of the healing art is to be founded upon God's great law : that so far from a relation of antagonism existing between the disease and its remedial agent, this agent on the contrary unites itself with it, as it were, by some mysterious but inevitable process of attractive affi- nity, and gently hushes and removes the disturber, without leaving a trace of his painful presence. These are the objects of our endea- • pride is not centered in a creed; our interests are those ol suffering man; our worship is the love of truth: our school is bound- Mature; our teacher, Eeason, fortified by observation and expe- rience. If our aim is elevated, our responsibility is correspondingly great. We owe it to the public, and above all to our own consciences, that we should be right. If we claim the privilege of an unsparing criti- towards our opponents, we certainly should exercise the strictest watchfulness over the developments which are going on in our own midst, and are presented to the world as integral portions of the homoeopathic fabric. A candid, fearless and impartial examination of our own doings and teachings can only result in good to the cause of medical truth and of the sick; moreover, we have become a power in the land; we can afford to exhibit our weakness in broad day- light ; our strength will become the more apparent and formidable; and the sting of satire, which threatened to poison the very life- springs of homoeopathy, will seem as harmless as the prating of babes, or the vapid nonsense of learned sots. Let us then devote a few moments to an examination of the past, the present and the future of our cherished science. I beg the privilege of presenting my remarks under the respective heads of the Fossil, the Transition, and the Prophetic Periods of Homoeopathy. FOSSIL PERIOD. The old fable of Minerva starting out of Jupiter's brain a full- fledged goddess, armed and equipped for war, with spear, buckler and helmet, has never yet found, and is not likely to find, its reali- zation in the sciences or arts. The law of gradual growth seems to be a necessity inherent in the organization of all finite existences and discoveries. Homoeopathy is subject to this law. To suppose that a finite mind could have perceived at a single glance all the facts of the new science of therapeutics, and could have arm them into a faultless system of relations and applications for the use of succeeding generations, would be to suppose that God had dele- gated his infinite wisdom to mortal man, for the accomplishment of such a work. Homoeopathy, eternal in nature and reason, had to have a beginning and a development in time. In the midst of Cimerian darkness and chaotic confusion, the sun of medical truth shed his first rays over one of the small capitals of Germany. Frag- mentary essays were the first fruit of the new light; gradually a compact system of the new doctrine was given to the world, and it was not until several years had elapsed after the publication of the Organon, that the Materia Medica Pura was completed.