Aphorism 1
The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.
Aphorism 2
The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most
harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.
Aphorism 3
If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease(knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly perceives what
is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine(knowledge of medicinal powers), and
if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has
discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient, so that the recovery must ensue-to adapt it, as well in respect
to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him(choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated),
as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose), and the proper
perion for repeating the dose:-if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove
them, so that the restoration may be permanent, then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally,
and he is a true practitioner of the healing art.
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Aphorism 4
He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them, from persons in health.
Aphorism 5
Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of the most probable exciting cause of the acute
disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its fundamental cause,which
is generally due to a chronic miasm. In these investigations, the ascertainable physical constitution of the patient
(especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and
habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function, etc, are to be taken into consideration.
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Aphorism 6
The unprejudiced observer-well aware of the futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no confirmation
from experience-be his powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every individual disease, expect
the changes in the health of the body and of the mind(morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can
be perceived externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the deviations from the former healthy
state of the now diseased individual, which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him and
observed by the physician. All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that is, together they
form the true and only conceivable portrait of the disease.
Aphorism 7
Now, as in a disease, from which no manifest exciting or maintaining cause (causa occasionalis) has to be
removed, we can perceive nothing but the morbid symptoms, it must (regard being had to the possibility of a miasm,
and attention paid to the accessory circumstances,aph.5) be the symptoms alone by which the disease demands
and points to the remedy suited to relieve it and, moreover, the totality of these its symptoms, of this outwardly
reflected picture of the internal essence of the disease, that is, of the affection of the vital force, must be the
principal, or the sole means, whereby the disease can make known what remedy it requires-the only thing that
can make known what remedy it requires-the only thing that can determine the choice of the most appropriate
remedy-and thus, in a word, the totality of the symptoms must be the principal, indeed the only, thing the physician
has to take note of in every case of disease and to remove by means of his art, in order that the disease shall be cured and
transformed into health.
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Aphorism 8
It is not conceivable, nor can it be proved by any experience in the world, that, after removal of all the symptoms
of the disease and of the entire collection of the perceptible phenomena, there should or could remain anything
else besides health, or that the morbid alternation in the interior could remain uneradicated.
Aphorism 9
In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body
(organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital
operation, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our indwelling, reson-gifted mind can freely employ
this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.
Aphorism 10
The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no self preservation, it derives
all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital principle) which
animates the material organism in health and in disease.
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