CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

eproach of unprincipledness lies only with that section of the profession which has
steadily refused to accept the gift he has offered to the world.
How long it will take to bring about the change none can tell; but sooner or later the
school of Sir Andrew Clark will have to open its eyes to the fact that medicine is not the
unprincipled, anarchic thing they delight in proclaiming it to be. Again and again in his
earlier writings, Hahnemann bewailed the “absence of any principle for discovering the
curative powers of medicines”. That in an ordered universe some law – some principle –
must exist, he could not doubt. How he set about the search which ended in his discovery
of the law of similars, on which he has built a real Science and Art of Cure, will be duly
set forth later in my sketch of Hahnemann’s career. But I will append to the remarks of
Sir Andrew Clark another utterance by one of his own school, recorded in Dr. Granier’s
Conferences on Homeopathy. Sir Andrew Clark’s predecessor, whilst giving a graphic
description of the anarchic state of traditional medicine, has the candour to admit that
homoeopathy stands on an entirely different footing.
In the course of a debate on “Revulsion”, which took place in the Academy of Medicine
of Paris about the year 1853, Dr. Marchal of Calvi contributed a paper in which, whilst
taking care to say “he did not constitute himself a defender of homeopathy”, he thus
described the want of principle in his own school, and the possession or principle or
doctrine by the homoeopathic.
“In medicine”, says Marchal, “there is not, nor has there been for some time, either
principle, faith, or law. We build a tower of Babel, or rather we are not so far advanced,
for we build nothing; we are in a vast plain where a multitude of people pass backwards
and forwards; some carry bricks, others pebbles, others grains of sand; but no one dreams
of the cement : the foundations of the edifice are not yet laid, and as to the general plan of
the words, medical literature swarms with facts, of which the most part are periodically
produced with most tiresome monotony; these are called observations and clinical facts, a
number of labourers consider and reconsider particular questions of pathology or
therapeutics – that is called original labour. The mass of such labour and facts is
enormous; no reader can wade through them – but no one has any general doctrine. The
most general doctrine that exists is the doctrine of Homeopathy. This is strange and
lamentable, a disgrace to medicine, but – such is the fact.”
The disgrace to old-school medicine in 1853 is very much greater when it is
unblushingly proclaimed by one of its leaders in 1893, and this time without any reserve
in favour of the only system that exists – the only system which has the principle of Cure
for its foundation – the System of Homoeopathy.
Allopathy or orthodox medicine has, however, this much to be said for it. Though it has
no rule, no “doxy”, no system, it has one fairly definite aim, namely, to palliate. It has
developed with a great deal of success many measures for relieving pain and for getting
rid of symptoms. That this is often a matter of very great importance and advantage, as in
the use of anaesthetics, will not be denied. But it is not without its dangers also; A writer
in the daily press has recently put this point very forcibly in the following passage :
“Where modern pharmacy works its wonders is in the treatment of symptoms, and herein
is its danger for an impatient and unthinking public. Who can tell how much of the
nervous and physical breakdown of modern life may not be due to the abundant means
which the chemist has provided for extinguishing the danger signals of nature?” 1
The answer to this question is, that very much mischief is most certainly due to this