Kenosha tribune & telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1856-1859, 1857-09-17

tract from the celebrated ALPH TEsTE, on
Homeopathy.
What Homeopathy Is.
Samuel Hahueman, TO whom we are indebted
for the fundamental laws of Homeopathy is
notwithstanding the insults that folly and igno-
rance still offer to his memory, one of the finest
geniuses the world has ever produced
Among all the benefactors of humanity, no
one, perhaps has larger claim upon its graft
| tude. We may safely predict that his reputation
will increase with time, and that generations yet
unborn will bless his name.
More than sixty have passed since Homoeo-
pathy made its appearance in the world. In
| consequence of the obstacles which, in the be-
ginning, it encountered from the folly of some,
and the envy of others, its progress was at first
slow; it shared in this respect, the fate of all
great discoveries. AT present, however, it has
ceased to be novelty; no medical school counts
more adherents. 1t is practiced in all civilized
countries 1T has its representatives in Turkey,
in India, in the two Americas, its dispensaries
and its hospitals, in most of the capitos of Eu-
rope. The books which treat of it would already
ill libraries. These works many of which testi.
ty to the great mental superiority of their au-
thors, possess this remarkable feature in con-
trast with the medical books of the Old School,
that they are all devoted to the development of
the same principle. 1t is in fact the unity and
invariabllity of this principle which constitutes
the strength of Homeopathy and which so forci-
bly, distinguishes it from those deceptive utopias
which, under the usurped name OF medical sci
ence, have reigned in the schools from Emped-
ocies to Broussais that is to say, for more than
twenty centuries.
The history of medicine, during this long Pc
Rod, is a compendium of all the Dreams ali the
oxtravagances, and all the absurdities which it
is possible for the human mind to elaborate.
when 1t strays without an opinion in the do
mains OF abstraction.
To judge it by its history we must believe
that the medical art, which ceased to be any.
thing when il endeavored to become science,
claimed always ito ally itself to metaphysics
If by this ambitious alliance, it escaped the in
convenience OF remaining within reach of the
vulgar, it incurred the still greater one of losing
itself in the clouds.
This strange substitution of sophistry for the
pure and simple observation of nature, has its
root in an almost invincible tendency Of the hu-
man mind. Man" says Brouassias ais tor
mented by desire to know the first cause of
what he sees, and when the impossibility of dis
corning it is demonstrated TO him he takes refuge
IN n supposition.
We need not then be too much astonished if,
from the most remote ages, physicians supposed
the hrst causes of disease; and it, this first step
made proceeding from hypothesis to hypothesis,
they have supposed, even to the virtues of the
remedies they prescribed.
The exposition of the system of Gaen, whose
sterile branches reach even to the present gene
ration, IS a summary of all the systems which
have succeeded each other, from the infancy of
Tatlonalism down to the too famous so-called
Physiological School,
distractions of the closet chimerical hypotli-
eslS, tantastica intervention of three spirits and
jour Rum0fS, whose harmony produces health,
and disagreement disease;mysterious connection
OF these spirits and these humors with the four
elements of Aristotle in short, empiric expedi-
ents taken at hazard, to equalize, correct and
purify at need, these imaginary principles: such
was humorism in its cradle, and such the HUI
moralism which was the favorte practice Of our
ancestors, and of which the grossest errors are
perpetuated in the medical practice of the pres
ent day
Thank Heaven, Homeopathy has nothing in
common with these fated extravagances which
have so long made medicine subject of laugh
ter to the philosopher and of deception and dread
to mankind in general
homeopathy is not a creation but discov-
cry
1t IS not system but method It has no
other theory than certain law of nature as evil
dent as an axiom in geometry--as certain as
graVltatlon and the rotation of the earth
1t the honor of being the first to signalize this
law, whose incidental manifestations had struck
from time to time some of his predecessors may
be contested with Hahneman, his glory, his great
glory consists in having proved that it was not
an exceptional phenomenon, as was believed be-
fore him. but general and constant physiolog-
ical fact.