So far from that being a matter of wonder, it is astonishing what a mighty work has been accomplished in so short a time. And this is the object of my paper; to arouse a spirit of investigation which will result in the recognition of “Similia” as the Law of Cure for this very sick world. Also, to show that the electron is very far from being the ultimate division of matter. Either this is true, or we have sublimated drugs beyond the realm of matter and have laid hold upon the spiritual. I do not offer this last hypothesis as an opinion, or even as a suggestion.
It is too wonderful for me to speak of ex cathedra, and I do not care particularly what it is. What we need is orientation. We must have a complete revision of the Materia medica. All this will come when the medical world comes to a recognition of the law of cure. Then will occur the most wonderful renaissance ever know in the history of medicine. There will be complete over-turning of our idols, and from being chasers after specifics, a thing which never was and never was and never will carry with us into the sick chamber an aura of confidence and hope.
When it comes to the matter of therapeutics, there is not a pessimistic man than the average physician. Lack of vision is the trouble. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” The sick are dying by thousands, who should be cured. Tens of thousands are being handed over to the knife, who are amenable to quick and permanent cure by the potentiated drug, indicated by the symptoms.
Another explanatory word. The one who reads this paper casually, may wonder how such bulks of menstrum as have been mentioned can be obtained and handled. But ten drops of liquid are used with each potency up to the thirtieth, so that we have used ten drops thirty times, or five drachms to make the thirtieth potency.
I am not interested in the building up of any particular school of medicine, but in the one great scientific school which shall have a law to govern it in the selection of the remedy. Nothing can be scientific which is not governed by natural law. You have no law to guide you in the selection of the remedy; therefore, as the Texas congressman propounded, “Where are you at?”
Chasing specifics will never get you anywhere! Tell me of one you have discovered in your thousands of year of history. there is but one specific, and that is the remedy indicated by the totality of symptoms; and this-mirabile dictu-regardless of diagnosis or pathology. I mean by this, that when you have settled the matter of pathology and diagnosis in a given case (which you do not always do) you must come back to symptomatology before you can find the indicated remedy.
One feature of potentizing should not be forgotten by the critical reader, and this is the succussion to which each potency is subjected. It is not as though a drop or grain of the drug were dropped into a vast sea of menstrum and stirred or shaken.
The result would be nil. But by some mysterious means the characteristics of the drug are carried along from potency to potency and, more wonderful still, they are astonishingly developed during the step-by-step series of succussions. And further, substances which in their crude state are positively inert, by this process of potentiation are developed into remedial agents which laugh at the pathology of any case, where the indications are clear-cut, and the prescriber knows his lesson.
