CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

cause; but homeopathy is a science which is able to make use of symptoms without
obscuring them; to take them for its guide and remove them by curing the patient.
Whereas allopathy seeks first of all to extinguish the signals of danger, homoeopathy by
means of the signals is able to reach and annihilate the danger itself.
Homoeopathy, by revealing the principle of cure, sheds a new light on all other methods
of using drugs. The homeopath can avail himself of any of their uses which may seem to
him to his patient’s advantage. Only, he does not delude himself with the idea that
palliating symptoms is equivalent to curing patients.
The word “homoeopathy”. advantages of the homeopathic method of studying drugs.
examples.
It may be well here to make it plain that the word “Homeopathy” in no way includes
“infinitesimally small” in its signification. It is of Greek origin, and means literally “like
suffering”. Those who like to have Scripture authority for all things may be interested to
know that, in its adjective form, it occurs twice in the New Testament, and is translated in
both instances “of like passions” (Acts XIV. 15; James V. 17). Curiously enough, St.
Luke, the physician among the Evangelists, is one of the two writers who used the word.
So far as I am aware, there is no Scripture for “allopathy”.
How the notion of infinitely little became attached to the word “Homeopathy” is not
difficult to trace; and the importance of Hahnemann’s discovery of the power of
infinitesimals will be dealt with later on, but Hahnemann chose “Homeopathy” as
embodying in a single word the “like to like” idea. Similia similibus curantur – likes are
cured by likes – expresses the same thing in Latin. This, and this only, is the etymological
signification of the word. The idea Hahnemann did not pretend to have originated; in fact,
be very laboriously collected from previous writers in all ages a mass of evidence to
show that others before himself had recognised a relation between the diseasing action of
drugs on the healthy and their curative action on the sick. What Hahnemann did that
others had not done before, was to study drugs systematically by testing them on the
healthy.
The other way of studying drugs is the one which has existed from earliest times – that
of trying them on the sick and seeing what will happen. And, I may say, a great deal of
very valuable information has been gained in this way; but until Hahnemann studied
medicines by systematically testing them on the healthy, this information was more or
less indefinite. Further, the old system had generated a sort of vicious circle in medical
thought. A drug “X” being found by experience to allay spasms in a case is called an
“antispasmodic”, and the word “antispasmodic” is imagined to explain its virtues.
Henceforward it is given in cases of “spasms” because it is an antispasmodic. But in
reality the dubbing of a drug “antispasmodic” tells us no more about its actual powers
than Moliere’s “Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva” tells us of the soporific properties of
opium. By his experiments Hahnemann supplemented the old knowledge in this way : he
showed that the drugs which have the power of relaxing spasms in the sick have also the
power of causing spasms in the healthy; and he also showed that each spasm-producing
drug has some peculiarity of its own which will be a guide to its selection in any case of
disease. There are no such things as “diseases” in the abstract to treat, only diseased
persons; and each case must be individualised and treated on its own merits, and not
according to the name of the disease by some drug that has been named the “anti” to it.
To take a concrete example, let us look at two drugs – Bryonia and Rhus toxicodendron.