To be a pathologist and not to have a careful knowledge of materia medica and of how to use it, is not being a physician. I have known some good prescribers who did excellent curing of sick people and had a limited knowledge of pathology. The thoroughly-rounded physician is one who adds to his knowledge of the art of selecting remedies according to the Law of Similars a knowledge of diagnosis and pathology. There are kinds of pathology most useful to the intelligent prescriber, but this knowledge never is useful in the mind of the man ignorant of the art of prescribing. Diseases and results are much the same in all beings, both man and lower animals, and no individualizing is possible by studying a disease or its pathology.
All people produce the same pathology when affected with the same disease.
What is common will never lead the physician to perceive what is peculiar in any individual.