as indicated in case of headaches,
etc. At the present time such a theory seems crude enough, but in the
latter part of the eighteenth century almost any theory was as good as
the ones propounded by Animists, Vitalists, and other such schools. It
certainly had the very commendable feature of introducing simplicity
in the use of drugs in place of the complicated prescriptions then in
vogue. Had Hahnemann stopped at this point he could not have been
held up to the indefensible ridicule that was brought upon him, with
considerable justice, by his later theories. But he lived onto propound
his extraordinary theory of "potentiality"--that medicines gained
strength by being diluted--and his even more extraordinary theory
that all chronic diseases are caused either by the itch, syphilis, or
fig-wart disease, or are brought on by medicines.

At the time that his theory of potentialities was promulgated, the
medical world had gone mad in its administration of huge doses of
compound mixtures of drugs, and any reaction against this was surely
an improvement. In short, no medicine at all was much better than the
heaping doses used in common practice; and hence one advantage, at
least, of Hahnemann's methods. Stated briefly, his theory was that if a
tincture be reduced to one-fiftieth in strength, and this again reduced
to one-fiftieth, and this process repeated up to thirty such dilutions,
the potency of such a medicine will be increased by each dilution,
Hahnemann himself preferring the weakest, or, as he would call it, the
strongest dilution. The absurdity of such a theory is apparent when it
is understood that long before any drug has been raised to its thirtieth
dilution it has been so reduced in quantity that it cannot be weighed,
measured, or recognized as being present in the solution at all by
any means known to chemists. It is but just to modern followers of
homoeopathy to say that while most of them advocate small dosage, they
do not necessarily follow the teachings of Hahnemann in this respect,
believing that the theory of the dose "has nothing more to do with the
original law of cure than the psora (itch) theory has; and that it was
one of the later creations of Hahnemann's mind."

Hahnemann's theory that all chronic diseases are derived from either
itch, syphilis, or fig-wart disease is no longer advocated by his
followers, because it is so easily disproved, particularly in the case
of itch. Hahnemann taught that full