Personal Experience of a Physician | Page 8

do so without being convinced. Can a man, with eyes open, on a clear day, go out at noon time and declare that the sun does not shine? He may make such a declaration while shut up in a cellar or cavern, or if he never opens his eyes. As one who has patiently and diligently studied and practiced both systems, I say without the slightest hesitation that Homoeopathy, as a system of practice, is as superior to Allopathy as the direct light of the sun is to the reflected light of the moon; in fact, much of the allopathic practice of to-day is but a reflection of the homoeopathic light. What intelligent physician to-day bleeds, blisters, salivates, or vomits his patients, as students were taught to do by preceptors, professors, and books fifty years ago? And why is such treatment so frequently, to say the least, discarded now by Allopathic physicians? Is it not largely because the success which results from the Homoeopathic treatment of diseases, has convinced Allopathic physicians and their patients that such violent disease-creating measures and remedies are unnecessary?
Homoeopathy is strictly a scientific system of medicine. It is based upon a law of nature--"Similia similibus curantur," or the law that remedies will cure symptoms and diseases similar to those which they will cause when taken by healthy persons. It is wonderful with what care, skill, and perseverance the new Materia Medica has been developed, mostly by intelligent physicians, commencing with Hahnemann, taking the different remedies in varying doses, and carefully and patiently watching the symptoms that follow, and writing them down day after day; and then, when similar symptoms occur in case of disease, giving the remedies and carefully watching and writing down the results. Allopathic physicians, as a rule, have not the slightest conception of the vast amount of patient and persevering labor in this direction which has been done by physicians as well educated as they are, and most of whom have graduated in the same schools, who have devoted their lives to this work. Are not these facts worthy of the consideration of every physician in the world who desires the highest good of his fellow men? It is well known to every intelligent physician that there is some truth in the homoeopathic law of cure, and that it has to some extent been recognized from the earliest periods of medical history. A cathartic remedy, even in Allopathic doses, will sometimes cure a diarrhoea, and an emetic will sometimes cure a nauseated stomach; but such remedies when given in large doses do not always cure, or they would generally be used by Allopathists; they sometimes seriously and even dangerously aggravate the disease, so that the vital forces do not react and thus effect a cure. Nitrate of silver and acetate of zinc, which applied to well eyes will cause irritation and inflammation, are often applied to inflamed eyes. The kine pox, which is a similar disease, is well known to either prevent or materially modify smallpox; and so I could go on enumerating cases where Allopathic physicians treat their patients in accordance with the Homoeopathic law of cure. The great discovery of Hahnemann was not so much the Homoeopathic law of cure, for some knowledge of that was possessed before his day, but the practical application of that law to the cure of disease. He found by careful experiments that diseases can be cured by remedies, which when given to the well will produce similar symptoms or diseases, in doses so small as not to seriously aggravate the existing disease or symptoms; and that all diseases may be thus treated with a success hitherto unknown. This discovery was accompanied by the most careful experiments by him and his followers upon themselves, to ascertain with the greatest possible care the effects of various remedies upon the healthy, so as to be able to make accurate prescriptions for the sick. Here you have most careful scientific investigation and experiments as to the action of remedies upon the well and sick, made, not by pretenders or quacks, but by well educated physicians, that should command the admiration and respect of every intelligent man and educated physician.
As to the doses given to the sick, which have been such a stumbling-block to our Allopathic brethren, their size is simply the result of the most careful experiments. Everyone can understand that if we give an Allopathic dose of Ipecac to a patient already sick and vomiting, or of Veratrum album to a patient suffering from Asiatic cholera or cholera morbus, we will almost certainly aggravate the disease, perhaps to a fatal extent; for it is the reaction of the vital forces of the system against the new excitement caused by the remedy, which overcomes this new excitement and the