Homoeopathy : reasons for adopting the rational system of medicine : being a letter to the Governors of the Hull General Infirmary.

  • Horner, Fewster Robert, 1803-1862.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy : reasons for adopting the rational system of medicine : being a letter to the Governors of the Hull General Infirmary. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    spinal marrow is acted upon;—cantharides (blis- tering fly), and the kidneys are irritated.’* I wish now to make a statement of the utmost importance,—so important that it should ensure the conversion to Homoeopathy of no less a personage than one of Her Majesty’s court physicians, and certainly a most able and clever man, Sir John Porbes. In his latest work, published I think this year, he admits and honestly declares his evidence, that Homoeopathists do indisputably cure their patients. But he affirms that it is by the effect on the imagination, and by the strict regulation of the diet, that all the good is done; and leaves us to infer that, if the diet and imagination were not really the only curative powers in Homoeopathic practice, he should then think well of this new system, and as he repudiates old physic,” as commonly prac- tised, he would doubtless adopt Homoeopathy. I will now show that neither the diet nor the imagination could have any influence whatever in the cures I performed in the first 600 cases. I stated previously that I determined to test Homoeopathy, though stringently and jealously, yet honestly and fairly; hence, in every instance, I gave the Homoeo- pathic medicines myself, and either in the form of mixture or in powders,—sometimes in pills; but I never gave globules in the simple form of globules, nor did the patients know that they were treated Homoeopathically. Besides, a great portion of my patients were very young children, and some even infants at the breast; so that imagination could not,