The study of morbid anatomy can never reveal the remedy to correct the ills of man, no more than the study of the bark of the poison oak will reveal the cause of its life force being such a disease producer or poison. As well to study the root of aconite under the lens to see what it will produce upon the animal force, as to study pathology to ascertain what entity will subdue it and drive it from the human body. The curative principle is not found in that way.
Two negatives make an affirmation.
Take it for granted that there is minus state that we call susceptibility. If we apply the drug power we shall see, that much of the drug makes sick, a small amount of the drug still makes sick; so small an amount that people ordinarily are not disturbed, yet this sensitive one is made sick; extreme reduction of the quantity still makes sick until a plane is reached similar in quality to that of the dynamis of the sick-making cause, then it is, that the two minus states or conditions are fulfilled and sickness does not follow and the susceptibility has been unconsciously removed. This has been observed in seeking cure by change of atmosphere, and cures have been known to be cures when consumptives have fattened in malarial swamps.
When the curative power of the corrective agent is observed, it may be said that two negatives have met and a positive is the result, or health or cure. Similars have sustained the great law.
The sensitive state has been produced by a peculiar atmosphere and cholera is the result, or small-pox is the result. If it be the latter disease that is prevailing all people not protected become susceptible, and the poison or noxious influence takes life in the negative condition of the medium. If the poison or cause be attenuated to such a plane that the most sensitive person is only slightly disturbed by proving it, the terrible disease can be prevented. It would seem better to protect from small-pox in this way than to vaccinate. Either by vaccination or neutral contagion there is a monster poison in the economy. Who dare talk of filth and ignore the fact that the natural contagion is more than the charge If the small-pox virus is so subtle that even when diluted with millions of volumes of atmospheric air is yet a poison, who can say what attenuation may not produce the disease until faithfully tried on sensitive persons. The trial in a season when small-pox does not prevail would not satisfy the enquiry, as the sensitive ones are not manufactured so frequently. The trial then of a single person could not better the matter. The proving of all attenuations of variolinum would be a great gain to our philosophy, as the provings of the morbific products have helped the study of our chronic miasms. Dr. Fincke has made a good beginning toward finding out what the variolinum will do.
The wise ones who stand off and sneer in after the truth has been discovered at great and say, “I told you so.” These people are often as they create opposition enough to stimulate search after facts. They have a place in the they do not know it; and often cover up the that they have been born by sneers at decent people.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.