A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine Page: 22 of 724
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PREFACE.
remedies will cure the disease which produce its symptoms in the
well person, and the medical world stood in astonishment at the
announcement of the new maxim: "1 similia similibus curantur."
Hahneman lacked not ingenuity to sustain, by plausible argu-
mnents, his new idea, and seconded his notion by the Hippo-
cratean doctrine of watching and assisting nature, and, as he
extended it, anticipating her action. Joined to this, he taught
that the nerves are the seat of all diseases, and this portion of
the human frame being the most susceptible, he came to the
conclusion that the remedies he recommended should be exhibited
in doses infinitesimally small. Like most other theories, his
system has not been without its use. In some maladies of a
chronic character, the former part of his theory may be bene-
ficially employed, his error consisting in applying it in both its
parts to all diseases. Any practical physician knows, that in
acute and inflammatory cases, in those diseases which so sud-
denly attack and so speedily and fatally terminate, such a prac-
tice would be worse than idle, for even the most active remedies,
and the most prompt in their operation, are sometimes and too
often inefficient. P
The second can be more summarily disposed of. Doctor
Stewart, of London, in a lecture before the classes of the Mid-
dlesex Hospital, has already done it to our hand. Ie thus
describes the Hydropathists, the enlightened and philosophical
followers of Doctor Pressnitz: "those who profess to cure every
disease by packing in a wet sheet, and flushing the sewers of the
animal microcosm twice a day with oceans of cold water."
From this review of the vagaries of the human mind, from
which so many and so great men have not been exempt, out of
these contradictions and conflicts of opinion, what lesson should22
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Massie, J. Cam. A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine, book, 1854; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143817/m1/22/?rotate=90: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.