upon his own account. The other is Jahr, whose Manual is little more
than a catalogue of symptoms and remedies. If any persons choose to
reject Hahnemann as not in the main representing Homoeopathy, if they
strike at his authority, if they wink out of sight his deliberate and
formally announced results, it is an act of suicidal rashness; for upon
his sagacity and powers of observation, and experience, as embodied in
his works, and especially in his Materia Medica, repose the foundations
of Homoeopathy as a practical system.
So far as I can learn from the conflicting statements made upon the
subject, the following is the present condition of belief.
1. All of any note agree that the law Similia similibus is the only
fundamental principle in medicine. Of course if any man does not agree
to this the name Homoeopathist can no longer be applied to him with
propriety.
2. The belief in and employment of the infinitesimal doses is general,
and in some places universal, among the advocates of Homoeopathy; but a
distinct movement has been made in Germany to get rid of any restriction
to the use of these doses, and to employ medicines with the same license
as other practitioners.
3. The doctrine of the origin of most chronic diseases in Psora,
notwithstanding Hahnemann says it cost him twelve years of study and
research to establish the fact and its practical consequences, has
met with great neglect and even opposition from very many of his own
disciples.
It is true, notwithstanding, that, throughout most of their writings
which I have seen, there runs a prevailing tone of great deference to
Hahnemann's opinions, a constant reference to his authority, a general
agreement with the minor points of his belief, and a pretence of
harmonious union in a common faith. [Those who will take the trouble
to look over Hull's Translation of Jahr's Manual may observe how little
comparative space is given to remedies resting upon any other authority
than that of Hahnemann.]
Many persons, and most physicians and scientific men, would be satisfied
with the statement of these doctrines, and examine them no further.
They would consider it vastly more probable that any observer in so
fallacious and difficult a field of inquiry as medicine had been led
into error, or walked into it of his own accord, than that such numerous
and extraordinary facts had really just come to light. They would feel a
right to exercise the same obduracy towards
|