e. It is from
an analysis communicated by him to the "Gazette Medicale de Paris" that I
derive my acquaintance with the account of the trial at Naples by Dr.
Panvini, physician to the Hospital della Pace. This account seems to be
entirely deserving of credit. Ten patients were set apart, and not
allowed to take any medicine at all,--much against the wish of the
Homoeopathic physician. All of them got well, and of course all of them
would have been claimed as triumphs if they had been submitted to the
treatment. Six other slight cases (each of which is specified) got well
under the Homoeopathic treatment, none of its asserted specific effects
being manifested.
All the rest were cases of grave disease; and so far as the trial, which
was interrupted about the fortieth day, extended, the patients grew
worse, or received no benefit. A case is reported on the page before me
of a soldier affected with acute inflammation in the chest, who took
successively aconite, bryonia, nux vomica, and pulsatilla, and after
thirty-eight days of treatment remained without any important change in
his disease. The Homoeopathic physician who treated these patients was
M. de Horatiis, who had the previous year been announcing his wonderful
cures. And M. Esquirol asserted to the Academy of Medicine in 1835, that
this M. de Horatiis, who is one of the prominent personages in the
"Examiner's" Manifesto published in 1840, had subsequently renounced
Homoeopathy. I may remark, by the way, that this same periodical, which
is so very easy in explaining away the results of these trials, makes a
mistake of only six years or a little more as to the time when this at
Naples was instituted.
M. Andral, the "eminent and very enlightened allopathist" of the
"Homoeopathic Examiner," made the following statement in March, 1835, to
the Academy of Medicine: "I have submitted this doctrine to experiment; I
can reckon at this time from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and
forty cases, recorded with perfect fairness, in a great hospital, under
the eye of numerous witnesses; to avoid every objection--I obtained my
remedies of M. Guibourt, who keeps a Homoeopathic pharmacy, and whose
strict exactness is well known; the regimen has been scrupulously
observed, and I obtained from the sisters attached to the hospital a
special regimen, such as Hahnemann orders. I was told, however, some
months since, that I had not been faithful to all the rules of the
doctrine. I
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