Finally, we appeal to experiment (experience), in order ti determine what artificially sick-making powers (observed of medicines) should be applied successfully against certain natural diseases. We ask:-

1.      Whether they be such medicines as are capable of producing on the healthy organism different (allopathic) changes from those observed in the disease to be healed.

2.      Or such medicines as are capable of producing on the healthy organism opposite (enanthiopathic, antipathic) changes to those observed in the disease to be healed.

3.      Or, whether we can expect restoration to health (cure) with the greatest certainty, and in the most permanent manner, by such medicines as are capable of producing on the healthy similar (homoeopathic) changes to those observed in the natural disease (there are only these three modes of administering medicines possible); experience most emphatically and indubitably decides for the last.

It is even self-evident that medicines acting heterogeneously and allopathically, capable of producing different symptoms on the healthy organism to those then observed in the disease to be cured, are in the very nature of things incapable of being suitable to the cure, and cannot cure. Their effects consequently must be injurious; otherwise every disease would be cured by means of any imaginable, ever so differently acting, medicine, quickly, safely, and permanently. Whereas each medicine possesses effects differing from all other medicines; and so each disease causes on the human organism, under the eternal laws of nature, different and varying ailments and sufferings; this in itself would demonstrate a contradiction (contradictionem in adjecto), and would by itself demonstrate the impossibility of a beneficial result. Furthermore, each demonstrated change can only be produced by a cause especially belonging to it, but not per quam libet causam. And experience proves it daily that the common practice of prescribing for the cure of the sick a compound of medicines, the powers (effects) of each of these unknown, causes a variety of effects, but the least of all – a cure.

The second method of curing (treating diseases with medicines, is the application of means (a medicine acting as a palliative) changing and altering the observed disorder (disease, or the most prominent symptom of it) enanthiopathically, antipathically or contrarily. Such an application cannot, as is easily perceived, work a durable cure of the disease, because the disorder is sure to return again, and that in an aggravated form. This is the way it occurs:- It is a marvelous process of nature which orders that organic living bodies are not governed by the same laws by which inorganic substances of (inanimate) physical nature are governed. They do not accept the impressions passively, like the latter; do not follow, like them, external impressions, but they resist and endeavour to oppose these impressions by contraries. (Foot-note-6)

The living human body can be influenced at first by physical forces; but this impression is not as permanent and lasting as that which is produced on inorganic bodies – (and so it would necessarily be if the medicinal powers, acting by contraries on the disease, could produce a lasting and permanent relief). More than that, the human organism strives to  produce the reverse condition through antagonism against the effects of the forces brought to bear upon it from without. (Foot-note-7) For instance, a hand which has been held long enough in ice-water does not remain cold; nor does the hand only show the warmth of the surrounding atmosphere when taken out of the ice-water, which would be the effect on a stone (an inorganic body); neither does it return to the warmth of the body, - by no means, - for the colder the water was, and longer the hand has been kept in it, and thereby affected the healthy skin, the hotter and more inflamed will it become afterwards.

It cannot be otherwise than thus, that a symptom which yields to a remedy which acts contrarily on the disease does so but for a short time; (Foot-note-9) and it is bound to yield again, very soon, to the predominating antagonism of the living organism, which causes a contrary; that is, a contrary condition to the one which the palliative has created deceptively for a short time only (a condition corresponding with the original evil) – in fact, a true addition to the returning unextinguished original disease, the original disease in an aggravated form. The disorder is always and surely aggravated, as soon as the palliative (the contrary and enanthiopathic acting remedy) has exhausted its effects. (Foot-note-10)

In chronic diseases, the true test-stone of the genuine healing-art, we perceive the pernicious effects of contrary-acting (palliative) medicines in a high degree; inasmuch as a repetition necessary to cause an illusive effect (a sudden passing appearance of relief), implies a larger and increasingly larger dose, frequently endangering the life of the sick, and not infrequently causing death.

There remains, therefore, but a third method of administering medicines as a sure mode of relief and cure, and this is the application of a remedy which is capable of causing on the healthy organism an affection (an artificial diseased condition) which is similar, very similar, to the present case of sickness.

It is easy to prove, as has been seen in innumerable cases, and also by those who followed my teachings, by daily experience (foot-note-11) as well as by reasoning, that this method of administering medicine constitutes the most complete, the best, and only mode of cure.

It will, therefore, not be a difficult task to comprehend by what natural laws the only suitable homoeopathic healing-art is and must be governed.

The first unmistakable natural law is, that the living organism is comparatively much more easily affected by medicine than by natural diseases. Many sick-making causes affect us every day, every hour of the day, but they are not able to disturb the equilibrium of our condition, the healthy are not made sick; the activity of our life-preserving principle within us generally resists the most of them, and the individual remains well.  If external noxious influences, increased to a high degree, affect us, and if we expose ourselves to them too much, then we sicken, and only to any great degree if our organism, just at that time, shows a weak side (a predisposition), which makes us more liable to be affected by the present (simple or complex) cause of the disease. Did the inimical, partly psychical, partly physical forces of nature, called noxious disease-influences, have unlimited power to affect and change our condition, then nobody would be well. Inasmuch as they are found everywhere, everybody would be sick, and would not even have a conception what health is. But, as in general, diseases are only the exception to the condition of men; and as it is necessary that a combination of so many and various circumstances and conditions – partly by the disease-causing forces, partly by the condition of the individual to be made sick – must exist before a disease really follows the effects of the sick-making forces, it becomes evident that man is not easily affected by these noxious influences; that they do not necessarily make him sick, and that the organism can only be affected by them under certain predisposing influences.

Quite different are the relations of the artificial dynamic forces, which call medicines. Every true medicine affects every living organic body under all circumstances, at all times, and causes on it its characteristic symptoms (clearly enough perceivable through the senses, provided the dose is large enough), so that it becomes obvious that each and every living human organism must become thoroughly affected and seemingly infected by the medicinal disease; this, as is well know, is not the case with natural diseases (Foot-note 12).

Foot-note-6: As simple, as true, and as natural as this proposition is, - and therefore it would seem as if it should have been made the fundamental means of ascertaining the curative powers of medicines, - it is evident that, in fact, up to this time this proposition has not been approached even distantly. During these thousands of years, and as far as the history of medicine is know, not one person conceived, a priori, the source of ascertaining in so natural a manner the healing properties of medicines before they were applied for the cure of the sick. For hundreds of years, up to the present time, it was surmised that the curative powers of medicines could only be ascertained by the effects they produced on disease (ab usu in morbis). It was attempted to ascertain them in cases in which a certain medicine (and then most frequently a compound of different medicinal substances) has been beneficial in a named given case of disease. It is impossible to learn from the curative effect of a single medicinal substance, even (which often happened) in an accurately described case of disease, in what case of disease this remedy might again become curative; because (with the exception of diseases caused by fixed miasms, small-pox, measles, lues, the itch, etc., or those consequent on the same disturbing element, as the gout) all other cases of diseases are single cases, that is, they appear under varying and different symptom-combinations, have never appeared in just the same  manner; it is on that account that we can not draw the conclusion that the same remedy will also cure another (different) case. The forcible combination of such cases of disease (which nature produces in her wisdom in such an endless variety) under certain named forms, as is done arbitrarily by Pathology, is leading to continuous illusions, and a temptation to a mistaking of various conditions one with another – human guess-work without any reality. Equally seductive and inadmissible, although from times immemorial introduced, is the establishment of general (curative) effects, based on occasional results in diseases, which the Material Medical does when, for instance, in some cases of diseases occasionally during the use of (generally compounded) medicines, increased urinary secretions, perspiration, appearance of the menstruation, cessation of convulsions, a kind of sleep, or expectoration appeared; the medicine (which among the rest was honoured with being charged with this effect) was credited with possessing the virtue of being diuretic or sudorific, or capable of restoring menstration, or anti-spasmodic, or soporific, or expectorant, thereby committing a fallacium causae by confounding the terms with and of. But there was likewise drawn a wrong conclusion, a particulari ad universale, in contravention of all the laws of reason, even changing the conditional into the unconditional. Because that which is not capable of causing, in every case of disease, an increase of urinary secretions, or perspiration, or menstruation, or sleep; which can not allay, in all cases, convulsions, or loosen the cough, cannot, without violating common sense, be pronounced unconditionally and absolutely diuretic or sudorific, or emmenagogue, or soporific, or anti-spasmodic, or expectorant. Furthermore, it is impossible that a medicine in these compound phenomena of our conditions, in such multiplied combinations of a variety of symptoms as are the nameless varieties of the diseases of men, can possibly reveal its original medicinal effects, and that which we expect to know with certainty of the sick-making, sensation-changing properties.

Foot-note-7: The green juice of the plant obtained by expressing, no longer an animated organic substance, if spread on linen, soon fades under the rays of the sun, and is destroyed; while the plant bleaching in a cellar for want of daylight soon regains its green colour when exposed to the same rays of the sun. A root which has been dug up, and has been dried, will soon become entirely decomposed and destroyed if laid in warm and moist earth; while a fresh root laid in the same earth will forth hopeful sprouts. The foaming fresh beer, while in full fermentation, will soon be changed, when bottled, into vinegar, if exposed to a heat of 96 degrees (Fahrenheit). But in the healthy human stomach the same degree of heat will check the fermentation and soon change it into a mild nutriment. Half putrid, already badly-smelling game, and other meats when eaten by healthy persons produce the least smelling evacuations (excrements); while the bark of Cinchona Officinalis, which possesses the property of checking putrefaction in inanimate animal substances, is affected by the healthy intestine in a contrary manner, so as to cause very offensive flatus. Carbonate of lime destroys all acids in inorganic substances; but when taken into the healthy stomach, is apt to putrefaction with certainty by Tannin, healthy ulcers of the living man, if frequently treated with Tannin, become impure, green, and putrid. A hand bathed in warm water becomes afterwards colder than the hand which was not bathed; and proportionately colder the warmer the water used for bathing was.

Foot-note-8: This is a law of nature according to which the administration of each medicine causes, at first, certain dynamic changes and abnormal symptoms in the living human body (primary effects of medicines), but afterwards, by means of a peculiar antagonism (which in many cases might be termed an effort of self-preservation), it causes a condition entirely the opposite of the first effect (secondary symptoms); for instance, narcotic substances produce primarily insensibility, and secondarily painfulness.

Foot-note-9: Just as a scalded hand remains cold and painless not much longer than while it is held in cold water; it afterwards burns and pains much more

Foot-note-10: Thus the pain in a scaled hand subsides suddenly, but only for a few minutes, by applying cold water; but afterwards the inflammation and pain become much worse than before (the inflammation, as a secondary effect of the cold water, is an addition to the original inflammation caused by the scalding which the cold water is unable to remove). The painful fullness in the abdomen caused by constipation seems to disappear, as if by magic, after the administration of a purgative; but as early as the next day this painful fullness and tension of the abdomen returns with the constipation, and increases the following days, becoming worse than it was before. The stupor-like sleep after opium causes a much greater sleeplessness the following night. It becomes evident that this secondary condition constitutes a true aggravation, and is shown by the fact that if the palliative is to be repeated (for instance, opium for habitual sleeplessness or chronic diarrhoea), it must be administered in increased doses, as against an aggravated disease, if even then it can be forced to produce, but for a short time, its seeming palliation.

Foot-note-11: We will mention only a few every-day experiences. The burning pain which boiling water causes on the skin is cured by the cook’s holding the burned hand near the fire, or by uninterruptedly moistening it with heated alcohol (or turpentine), which causes a still more intense burning sensation. This specific treatment has been followed by varnishers and similar artisans, and has been found reliable. The burning pain caused by these strong and heated spirits remains only for a few minutes, while the organism is homoeopathically relieved of the inflammation caused by the burn. The destruction of the skin is soon repaired by the formation of a thin cuticle, through which no more alcohol penetrates. In this manner a burn is cured in a few hours by the remedy causing a similar burning pain (by highly heated alcohol or heated oil of turpentine); but if such a burn is treated by cooling palliatives or with ointments, a malignant ulceration follows, which is apt to last many weeks, and even months, causing much suffering. Professional dancers know from long experience that they are momentarily very much refreshed by drinking very cold water, and by taking off their clothing when extremely heated from dancing; but they know also that afterwards they will surely have to suffer from severe, often fatal, diseases. Wisdom has taught such extremely heated persons, without allowing themselves to go into the cool air or remove their clothing, to take a drink which is also heating, either punch or hot tea with arrack or brandy; and under its effects, while slowly walking up and down the room, they are very soon relieved of the hot fever caused by dancing. So even the old and experienced mower never takes any other drink to cool himself from the excessive thirst of labour under a hot sun than a glass of whisky; in an hour’s time he is relieved from thirst and heat, and feels well. An experienced person will not expose a frozen limb to the fire, or to a hot stove, or put it in hot water, in order to restore it; covering it with snow, or rubbing it with ice-water, is the well-known homoeopathic remedy for it. The disorders caused by excessive joy (the fantastic mirth, the trembling restlessness, the excessive motion , the palpitation of the heart, the sleeplessness) are soon and permanently removed by coffee, which causes a similar ailment in those not used to take it.  There thus exist many daily confirmations of the great truth, that men are relieved from long-lasting sufferings by other short-lasting evils, by a process of nature. Nations, for centuries fallen into apathy and slavishness, elevated their spirits, began to feel the dignity of men, and became again free men, after they had been crushed to the dust by the western tyrants.

Foot-note-12: Even the plague-like diseases do not necessarily infect every person; and other diseases leave many more persons unaffected, even if they expose themselves to the changes of the weather, the seasons of the year, and many other pernicious influences.
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