In the announcement of a Chicago medical college for 1910- 11, one, too, which probably teaches more Homoeopathy than any other in all this country, we find the following motto: “The Homoeopathy of Samuel Hahnemann our guiding law of therapeutics. Neither a high potency or a low potency college, but a homoeopathic college. There is no law of potency, but there is a law of cure.”
That is just what mongrels have maintained lo! these many years; namely, that “there is no law of potency;” and hence, that one can administer the medicine in any form he chooses and still be a homoeopath. Now, is that a fact? No. It is one of those bald-headed assertions without any foundation whatever in the ORGANON or CHRONIC DISEASES. I have just cited Hahnemanns pointed statement that when he chose low dynamizations it was at a time in his career when he did not know any better.
That is his open confession in the last edition of his Organon. He did not hide behind the assertion that “there is no law of potency;” that he was neither a high nor a low potency man, but just a practitioner of homoeopathy; but admitting that he used to choose low dynamizations, he gave as the reason for having done so that at that time he did not know any better.
The doctrine here, by the strongest implication, is that the physician who does know better, who is up to the minute in the homoeopathic philosophy, does not use low dynamizations. I submit that there is a law of potency. It may be found in paragraph 269, which reads as follows:
“The homoeopathic system of medicine develops for its use”–note that expression, “for its use,”–“to a hitherto unheard of degree, the spirit-like medicinal powers of the crude substances.” Now I submit that the spirit-like medicinal powers which he says the homoeopathic system of medicine develops “for its use,” are necessarily immaterial powers. No material medicine can possibly have a “spirit-like” action, but a physiological.
These medicinal powers developed by the homoeopathic system of medicine by a process peculiar to it, add “for its use,” are “spirit-like” because they are immaterial, and low dynamizations are never immaterial. Therefore, I affirm–and challenge contradiction from Hahnemanns pen–that no man can be a homoeopathic physician and administer material medicines, and that no college can be a homoeopathic college, inculcate the homoeopathy of Samuel Hahnemann, and teach the doctrine that “there is no law of potency.”
There is a law of potency, and that law requires that the material elements of the crude substances shall be wholly eliminated in order that the medicinal powers thus developed may be “spirit-like.” The law of potency is again defined in para- graphs 277-280, as follows: “A medicine whose selection has been accurately homoeopathic must be all the more salutary the more its dose is reduced to the degree of minuteness appropriate for gentle, remedial effect.
Here the question arises, what is the most suitable degree of minuteness for sure and gentle remedial effect; how small, in other words, must be the dose of each individual medicine, homoeopathically selected for a case of disease, to effect the best cure?” And he answers this question in the following words: “This incontrovertible axiom of experience is the STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT BY WHICH THE DOSES OF ALL HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINES, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ARE TO BE REDUCED TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT AFTER THEIR INGESTION THEY SHALL EXCITE A SCARCELY OBSERVABLE HOMOEOPATHIC AGGRAVATION, let the dynamization of the dose go ever so far, and appear ever so incredible to the materialistic ideas of ordinary physicians, their idle declamations must cease before the verdict of unerring experience.”
Notice, please: “They shall excite a scarcely observable homoeopathic aggravation.” This, the master says, is the “STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT–the law,” wrought out by experience. And he says this is the “STANDARD” by which the doses of all homoeopathic medicines, without exception, are to be reduced.
