CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

manufacturer; and if the old school would only consent to learn the art of curing from
Hahnemann, its journals would have little cause to lament the success of unlicensed
medicine-men.
In another way homoeopathy is spreading – by the adoption of its remedies into the
practice of allopathic doctors, and their incorporation in allopathic text-books. This latter
kind of “conveying” has been carried on wholesale by the authors of several medical
works – almost invariably without acknowledgement of the source of their
appropriations.
A large number of these appropriations have been collected by Dr. Dyce Brown in a
pamphlet published by the British Homoeopathic Association. This pamphlet is entitled
“The Permeation of Present-day Medicine by Homoeopathy”.
But this method of spreading homoeopathy is of little use; the drugs may be
appropriated, but unless the principle is apprehended, no real progress is made. This the
British Homoeopathic Association is well aware of, and has set itself the task of
redeeming the situation. It aims at nothing less than the establishment and endowment of
a permanent College of Homoeopathy in the heart of the British Empire. In the
furtherance of this object it confidently relies on obtaining the moral and material support
of every homoeopath.
Some objections answered
In the course of conversion at a public dinner the subject of homoeopathy cropped up,
and my neighbour, a layman of intelligence, frankly stated the objections he had to the
system, looked at from the outside. He owned that he had no personal acquaintance with
homoeopathy, and had not studied it; but it seemed to him that a man who did not pin
himself to a system was more free to use any and every means of benefiting a patient than
one who did. Further, he thought that medicines which were of such an innocent nature
that they could be safely prescribed in domestic practice, must have very little power of
doing any good at all. I will take these two objections and discuss them in their order.
Homoeopathy trammels its adherents
This is a very natural view for any one not acquainted with the system to take. Really the
very opposite is the case. Homeopathy does not fetter its adherents : it sets them free. It
gives those who follow it a point of view from which they can discern clearly all remedial
means that are brought forward, and judge them at their proper worth. By its double-sided
method of studying drugs it can estimate their power and use them with a precision
unknown to allopathy. Further, it can take advantage and make good use of the mistakes
and over-dosings of the allopaths, which invariably occur with drugs newly brought out.
For example, when chloral was first launched upon the medical world, it was declared to
be perfectly harmless, and was given in large doses to numbers of patients. In some
instances severe attacks of nettle-rash followed its use. This at once showed to
homoeopaths its power over skin disease, and it has been used by them in certain cases of
nettle-rash ever since. Again, when salicylic acid and its salts were first given in cases of
rheumatism, it produced in many patients who were over-dosed with it, deafness, noises
in the ears, and vertigo. The hint was at once taken by homoeopathists, and salicylate of
soda in its homoeopathic form has cured many patients suffering from a disease which
presents this distressing set of symptoms, and is called after the man who first described
it; “Menière’s disease”. I may mention also the drug Thyroidin, lately brought forward as
a remedy for a disease called myxoedema. This drug (prepared from the thyroid gland of