The homoeopathic materia medica : arranged systematically and practically / by A. Teste ; translated from the French and edited by Chas. J. Hempel.

  • Teste, Alph. (Alphonse), 1814-
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The homoeopathic materia medica : arranged systematically and practically / by A. Teste ; translated from the French and edited by Chas. J. Hempel. 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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    or hypersthenia, the irritability and contractility of the muscular fibre, as physiological and pathological facts, but they believe that Hoffmann, Brown, Rasori and Broussais, have each taken some particular and purely contingent manifestation of the vital force for a fundamental principle and the elementary basis of their respective systems. And, in this respect, they maintain, and justly too, that all those systems, which seem more or less specious, if judged with reference to each other and the consistent facts upon which they are primarily based, are nevertheless false in their totality, absurd before the tribunal of the searching reason, and disastrous in the treatment of disease. But, if Hahnemann, in order to avoid an useless bandying of theories, does not stop at denning the nature of disease, he gives us of diseases the correct and happy definition which we have cited as one of the corner-stones of his doctrine. Yes, this simple formula: diseases are dynamic and virtual alterations of health, contained within itself the programme of an immense revolution in the domain of medical phi- losophy. We have seen what Hahnemann understands by the dynamism of disease; we have now to agree about an understanding of the term virtuality or inherent force. By the virtuality of disease we have evidently to understand the special and totally distinct charac- ter of the disturbance which constitutes the malady. Since we have to admit that the symptoms, which are the only perceptible manifestations of diseases, are necessarily subordinate to their inmost nature,