Besides platina, there are still about ten medicines which are useful against very strong genital passion, consequently against libertinage.
In the homoeopathic hospital of London, the elements of our therapeutics are taught to the missionary women of the Anglican church so that, while accompanying their husbands who go for evangelising the uncivilised people, they may cure the latter from some of their diseases. One should also teach these women not only the remedies which cure the diseases, but also those which ameliorate the character and intelligence of man; by help of the last remedies they could do better to help the efforts of their husbands.
Some indigenous converts of Algeria have been sent to the Catholic school of medicine of Lille, in order to study there the art of medicine enough to practice among their compatriots. These young Algerians could have very well help, if, after having studied the useful medications against the corporeal diseases. They had learnt the medicines indicated against the moral and intelligential imperfections of their compatriots.
VIII. From the medical point of view alone, there are surely other means than the medicines in order to ameliorate the character and intelligence of man. These means were well known and very often applied by the ancients than the moderns. Thus, says Hoffmann,” I have always taken much pleasure to read what Xenophon related about Socrates”. This great man, he says, had the care to make known to his audience that they could not take much care for their health and adviced them to learn from experts what were advantageous for them, and to examine by themselves what were the foods, the drinks, that suit them, and this because the loss of memory, the grief, the anger, the hardness of the heart, have often no other origin but the bad condition of the body, and that the mind does not run any risk when the body is in good health. De ductis et factis socratis, p. 530.
St. Augustin, who, before his conversion, had given himself up to much to the study of literature and philosophy, should no doubt know the teachings of Socrates. It also seems to me that it is an echo when he writes: “The worst soul becomes better in an excellent body” Anima enim pessima, melior in optimo corpore. Civit. Dei, liv. IV.
“It is certain that our apprehension, our judgment and the faculties of our mind, generally suffer according to the movements and weakness of our body; the weaknesses are continual. It is not only the fever, the drinks and the big accidents which disturb our judgment; the least things of the world may turn it down “Essais, Bk.II, Ch.XII.”
“We have an other source of error, the diseases. They distorts the thinking or judgment and senses. And, if the grave diseases, weakens sensibly, I do not doubt at all that the simple diseases do impress proportionally.
Pensees, Fragments et letters de Btaise Pascal, published by M. Faugere, t. II. p. 53.
Descartes also seems to me to have the echo of the socratic tradition still more than his reflections and observations when he writes in Discours de la method: “The mind depends so strongly on the temperament and dispositions of the organs of the body, that if it is possible to find some means which may make generally men more wise and cunning as they were not up till now, I believe that it is in medical art one should search for it.
The five authors cited had certainly reason, when they accepted the necessity of ameliorating the body for developing the mind. But, to explain better and to motivate that necessity they should have taken recourse to the definition of man by Aristotle, whose doctrine, on this point, has been adopted, elucidated and popularised by Saint Thomas d’Aquin.
Aristotle teaches that man is a natural completeness of a body and of a soul. He compares their substantial union to a seal in which the figure is united immediately to the wax, there is not seal without the one or the other of its two composing elements without the wax. There is not the seal without the figure without the wax. Saint Thomas gives the same explanation.
That definition of man is conform to the truth, that one finds it adopted by man professing on other points the opinions which are different, even opposite. Thus by a pagan, Aristotle, afterwards Saint Thomas d’Aquin and the catholic church that teaches in the catechism, finally by tee Free Thinkers of the explains better the facts. The one of them, Emil Deschanel, writes as follows about that doctrine of the nature of man.
“Let us therefore admit that hypothesis, since it seems to be generally accepted, and which seems to be less hazardous than those consisting in suppressing one of the conditions for the benefit of the other, either in suppressing both and not to consider any of them any more but as the modes or manners of being of the Unity substantial and infinite. Let us admit, I say, that these elements are but a natural whole, according to the strong and deep expression of that great savant (Bossouet whom he has just cited), who without suppressing neither the one nor the other, tried however not to pour into the platonic duality. After that, it is useless to research if the mind, according to the different philosophers, is a simple inhabitant, lodged in some parts of the body, in a more or less favourable situation to the exercises of its functions; or an associate taking part from time to time to the common affairs, while doing at the sometime his own; or rather, a prisoner, chained in a cavern where it sees only the shadows of realities of the outside, and where it always aspired to go out in order to enjoy the liberty and real life; or rather a sovereign whose organs are sometimes the ministers who are experts, or sometimes troublesome servants; or finally a simple collective name, designating and ensemble of phenomena operated by the brain” (Essai de critique naturelle in Revue Germanique, t. XXV, p. 101-102. No, of May, 1863).
It is really useless, in fact, to build all these hypotheses on the role and the situation of the soul. Because it i sufficient to know that man is a living compound of a body and a soul, a living compound which manifests it life by some somatic and psychic acts. When I therefore wish, by the help of medicines to modify the moral and intellectual condition of man, I do not give them neither to the body nor to the soul as it will be presumed by some materialists, not to the soul alone, as I may be reproached by thoughtless spiritualists, but I use these medicines to the living compound, i.e., to say to man, I am able to modify, by these material agents, as well the psychic condition, as the somatic condition. I have shown the possibility of this result by the help of clinical observations related in this article and I would still be able to show by other cases that I have in my manuscripts or in memoires.
I have told higher up that, alone from the medical point of view there are many other ways, than the medicine, to develop the intelligence and the character of man. These ways and means, I add, were better known by the ancients than the moderns, and it is probable that the moderners would not have been able to use them because in our present social condition, we have not the leisure that Servitude procured to men of antiquity who gave themselves up to the moral and intellectual culture.
But, besides the medicines of which they did not know the use of their powerful utility, we have numerous agents of modern alimentary regimes that we may use to the end of modifying moral and intellectual conditions of man. When I say “We may use”, I affirm the possibility and not the fact, because our daily experience teaches us that, out of hundred patients, hardly one is disposed to give up completely his habit, or his tasted in case of regimen, with the end of making better his somatic and psychic conditions. In order to ameliorate the latter we have at least the resource to administer to each person, without his knowledge, it he has the need for it, some medicines not at all disagreeable. Also it does not seem to me very urgent to expose the psychic properties of different agents of alimentary regimen, what I can give here only very briefly. This is why I intend to give sufficient developments in this regard in my work on food which I hope to publish shortly.
IX. When they have read this memoire, to homoeopathic doctors will be, no doubt, brought to formulate themselves their practical conclusions. After having, in fact, treated successfully, since a half century, may somatic or corporeal diseases, they will presume, following the above mentioned cases, that they would be able to treat with similar success the psychic conditions of man i.e., to say his moral and intellectual defects.
They will even be brought to treat man having simple defect of character having a certain gravity, when they will know that these defects precede and forebode a weakness which may appear soon or even ruin his intelligence. This is what teaches us an English specialist in mental diseases. In fact, in a lecture on “Moral and the Folly” which he gave in the Congress of the Medical Association of Britain, which held in Birmingham, Mr. Mandsley, very clearly explained the intimate existence of relation of the one had, between the health of the body and the mental and intellectual troubles and on the other hand, between genes, the former preceding the later.
Gallavardin set up a homeopathic Dispensary for the cure of alcoholics, often working in conjunction with priests, and he wrote several books on this subject.
Jean Pierre Gallavardin wrote Psychism and Homeopathy, The Homoeopathic Treatment of Alcoholism, How to Cure Alcoholism the Non-toxic Homoeopathic Way, Repertory of Psychic Medicines with Materia Medica, Plastic Medicine, and articles for The British Journal of Homeopathy, On Phosphoric Paralysis, and he collated the statistics on pneumonia and other cases for the United States Journal of Homeopathy, and he contributed widely to homeopathic publications.