CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

improvements in surgical methods have shown that it is possible to save many limbs
which were formerly condemned. This is what is called conservative surgery. But there is
room for much improvement yet. Many operations which are now performed would be
spared to the patient if only the conservative powers of homoeopathic medicine were
widely known.
It is true the ways of homoeopathy are very gentle and unobtrusive, whilst surgical
methods are attended with much pomp and circumstance – and expense. To cut off a
breast for tumour, and leave a patient mutilated for life, is only the work of half an hour;
to cure the patient of her diseased state, and leave her sound and healthy, may be the
work of months or years. Many patients, who fancy the tumour is the whole of their
disease, prefer the shorter plan, as they think it; and in the majority of cases it is the
shorter plan, for it materially shortens the patient’s life. Homeopathy, rightly understood
and practised, saves the operating surgeon a vast amount of work.
Gentleness of homoeopathy
There is a motto which has come down to us from the medical world of antiquity which,
until homoeopathy came, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The
motto runs : “Primum non nocere”; and may be translated : “Whatever you do, don’t
damage your patient in your attempt to help him.” If this motto had always bee respected,
the patient-world would never have had to undergo the wholesale bleedings and
mercurialisings of the past; nor should we now encounter patients made deaf by quinine
or salicylates, or damaged in some way or other by the fashionable drugs of the day.
The action of homoeopathic remedies is essentially gentle. There is no compelling of the
organs to act in certain ways at all costs. The dynamised homoeopathic remedy is freed
from all crude, poisonous drug effects, and if it fails to help a patient it will not leave a
residue of a crude drug in the blood.
The working of a homoeopathic remedy is like the working of nature itself – it is often
imperceptible. The patient finds himself cured, and does not know how it took place. As
Hahnemann described the effects of drugs on the healthy as “positive effects”, the action
of homoeopathic remedies on the sick be described as “negative effects”. They do not
force the organism, but they relieve the organism from the influence which hindering the
return to health, and induce the vital force to resume its normal healthful reaction and
vibrations. The gentle action of homeopathic remedies is, therefore, the true fulfilment of
the ancient motto, “Primum non nocere”.
Conclusion : homoeopathy in aphorisms
I will conclude this treatise by summing up the elements of Homoeopathy in a series of
Aphorisms.
The law
I.
All medicinal substances have the power of causing disease when given to persons in
health.
II.
Each medicinal substance has a power of producing peculiar to itself.
III.
Symptoms are the natural language of disease, and symptoms are also the natural
language of drug-action.
IV.