CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

A drug’s power can be learned by studying the symptoms it has produced when given to
persons in health.
V.
Hahnemann was the first to systematically study the powers of medicines in this way;
taking them himself when in health, and giving them to his friends; observing and
recording the effects which followed.
VI.
This he called “proving” (or testing) medicines; those who allowed themselves to be
experimented on he called “provers”; and the records of the symptoms produced he
called “provings”.
VII.
Out of these provings he constructed his Materia Medica; so arranging the symptoms of
each drug as to present a picture of its disease-producing power.
VIII.
Drug diseases resemble natural diseases.
IX.
The Law of similars affirms that, in a given case of natural disease, that drug which has
produced symptoms most like the symptoms of the case, will be the most certain, when
administered, to work a cure.
X.
The practical Rule which is the outcome of this Law is formulated thus :
“Similia similibus curentur.”
“Let likes be treated (or cured) by likes.”
XI.
Homoeopathy is the art of selecting and administering medicines in accordance with this
Rule and the Principle on which it is founded.
XII.
A medicine is said to be homoeopathic to a given diseased condition when it has
produced in a healthy person symptoms similar to those which characteristic that
condition.
The dose
I.
The susceptibility to the action of medicines varies greatly in different persons.
II.
It also varies in the same person at different times according to the peculiar state of
health or disease the person may be in.
III.
In disease the human body is infinitely more susceptible to the action of a drug which is
homoeopathic to the morbid condition than it is to the action of the same drug in health :
it is also, in disease, infinitely more sensitive to the homoeopathic drug than it is to one
that is not homeopathic.
IV.
A drug which may have produced a morbid condition when given in large dose, will
remove a condition, presenting similar symptoms (if arising from another cause) when
given in a dose exceedingly small.
V.