There have occasionally been physicians who vaguely surmised that medicines cure analogous morbid states by the power they possess of producing analogous morbid symptoms.39
Thus the author of the book: peri topwn kat’ anqrwpon,40 which is among the writings attributed to ippocrates, has the following remarkable words: dia ta dmoia nousos ginetai, kai dia to omoia rosferomena ek noseuntwn ugiainontai, – dia to emeein emetos pauetai.
Later physicians have also felt and expressed the truth of the homÃopathic method of cure. Thus, for instance, Boulduc41 perceived that the purgative property of rhubarb was the cause of its power to allay diarrhoea.
Detharding42 guessed that the infusion of senna leaves relieved colic in adults by virtue of its analogous action in causing colic in healthy persons.
Bertholon43 confesses that in diseases electricity diminishes and removes pain very similar to that which itself produces.
Thoury44 testifies that positive electricity possesses the power of quickening the pulse, but when that is already morbidly accelerated it diminishes its frequency.
Von Stoerk45 makes the following suggestion: ‘If stramonium disorders the mind and produces mania in healthy persons, ought we not to try if in cases of insanity it cannot restore reason by producing a revolution in the ideas?’
But a Danish army physician, of the name of Stahl,46 has expressed his conviction on this point in the most unequivocal terms. ‘The rule generally acted on in medicine,’ says he, ‘to treat by means of oppositely acting remedies (contraria contrariis), is quite false and the reverse of what ought to be; I am, on the contrary, convinced that diseases will yield to, and be cured by, remedies that produce a similar affection (similia similibus), – burns by exposure to the fire, frost-bitten limbs by the application of snow and the coldest water, inflammation and bruises by distilled spirits; and in like manner I have treated a tendency to acidity of the stomach by a very small dose of sulphuric acid with the most successful result, in cases where a number of absorbent remedies had been fruitlessly employed.’
How near was the great truth sometimes of being apprehended! But it was dismissed with a mere passing thought, and thus the indispensable change of the antiquated medical treatment of disease, of the improper therapeutic system hitherto in vogue, into a real, true, and certain healing art, remained to be accomplished in our own times.
38. Zimmerman (Ueber die Erfahrung, ii, p. 318) informs us that the inhabitants of hot countries act in the same manner, with the best results, and that, after being very much heated, they swallow a small quantity of some spirituous liquor.
39. I do not bring forward the following passages from authors who had a presentiment of homÃopath, as proofs in support of this doctrine, which is firmly established by its own intrinsic merits, but in order to avoid the imputation of having suppressed these foreshadowings with the view of claiming for myself the priority of the idea.
40. Basil. Froben., 1538, p. 72.
41. Memoirs de là Academie Royale, 1710.
42. Eph. Nat. Cur., cent. x, obs. 76.
43. Medicin. Electrisitat., ii, pp. I5 and 282.
44. Memoir lu a l’ Academie de Caen.
45. Libell. de Stramonium, p. 8.
46. In Jo. Hammelii, Commentatio de Arthritide tam tartarea, quam scorbutica, seu podagra et scorbuto, Budingae, 1738, viii, pp. 40 42.
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.