IN all diseases which the so-called practical glance, which pretends to be able to see everything, even the inner processes of morbid nature, could make nothing of, as also in all those that would not fit in with any name in pathology, it was theoretically assumed that there were present viscid, inspissated humours and obstructions of the minute nameless vessels in the interior of the body which nobody could see, in order that the favourite dandelion might be prescribed in accordance with this fantastic assumption.
On account of its milky juice it was theoretically assumed that it must act like a soap, and as soap chemically dissolve in the interior of the living body whatever the practitioner was pleased to imagine existed in the diseased human system of a viscid, inspissated and obstructive character.
Had the pure powers of dandelion to effect changes in the human health been ever tested, and had it thus been experimentally ascertained what peculiar morbid states it was able characteristically to produce, and had then a pure therapeutic trial been made of this plant, administered alone, in any case of disease, and it had been found to effect a rapid and permanent cure, it would have been seen convincingly on comparing the totality of the symptoms of the disease cured by this remedy with the morbid symptoms dandelion can produce in the healthy body, that this plant can only cure in virtue of its symptoms being similar to those of the case off disease, and that it could not fail to cure it in accordance with the eternal homoeopathic law of nature and that, for that very reason, it could not be of use in those morbid states the like of which dandelion is not able to produce. HAHNEMANN, Materia Medica Pura.
“A fundamental principle which distinguishes the homoeopathic physician from every physician of all older schools, is this: that he never gives a medicine whose effect has not been previously proved and thus made known to him.
“To prescribe for the sick on some mere conjecture of some possible usefulness in some similar disease, or from hearsay that a remedy has helped in such and such a disease, is a conscientious venture that the philanthropic homoeopath will leave to the allopath.” HAHNEMANN.
“Neither in my practice, nor in a lunatic asylum, have I ever met a patient attacked by melancholy, madness, or frenzy, in whom these diseases were not based upon psora, sometimes complicated with syphilis.” HAHNEMANN, Chronic Diseases.
Hahnemann's three major publications chart the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine, we see the fundamentals laid out. Materia Medica Pura records the exact symptoms of the remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he showed us how natural diseases become chronic in nature when suppressed by improper treatment.