Health and Beauty

1883

Medical Essays - Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions

Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other
methods of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of
mankind and womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as a curious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago, we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are "cured" by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every form of drugging and put their whole trust in "nature." Thus experience,

"From seeming evil still educing good,"

has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of pseudo-
therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of practitioners in
breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging which has
been one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While.
keeping up the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be
"cured" by drugging, Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they would very generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean time the newer doctrines of the "mind cure," the "faith cure," and the rest are encroaching on the territory so long
monopolized by that most ingenious of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its whole ground should be taken possession of by these new claimants with their flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to such attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-born rivals.

It takes a very moderate amount of erudition to unearth a charlatan
like the supposed father of the infinitesimal dosing system. The
real inventor of that specious trickery was an Irishman by the name
of Butler. The whole story is to be found in the "Ortus Medicinm" of
Van Helmont. I have given some account of his chapter "Butler" in
different articles, but I would refer the students of our Homoeopathic educational institutions to the original, which they will find very interesting and curious.