Vol. VIII.

Institutes.

THE HOMOEOPATHIC LAW.

BY T. G. EDWARDS, M. D., BLANCO, TEXAS.

WE E are living in a world subject to natural law.

There is, as Huxley puts it, an order of nature that same events take place in regular order and that same causes always give rise to the same effects.

The sun always rises on one side and sets on the other side of the sky: the changes of the moon fall on one another in the same order and with similar intervals; some stars never sink below the horizon of the place in which we live; the seasons are more or less regular; water always flows down hill; fire always burns; plants grow up from seed and yield seed, from which like plants grow up again; animals are born, grow, reach maturity and die, age after age in the same way.

Thus, the notion of an order of nature and of a fixity in the relation of cause and effect between things, gradually entered the minds of men. So far as such order prevailed it was felt that things. were explained, while the things that could not be explained were said to have come about by chance, to happen by accident.

Read before the Texas Homœopathic Medical Association at Austin, May, 1890.

No. 3

But the more carefully nature has been studied the more widely has order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be nothing but com plexity, until at present no one is so foolish as to believe that anything happens by chance or that there are any real accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause. And if we say that anything happens by chance, everybody admits that all we really mean is that we do not know its cause or the reason why that particular thing happens. Chance and accident are only aliases for ignorance.

When we have made out by careful and repeated observation that something is always the cause of a certain effect, or that certain events always take place in the same order, we speak of the truth thus discovered as a law of nature.

Thus it is a law of nature that anything heavy falls to the ground if it is unsupported; it is a law of nature that, under certain conditions, lead is soft and heavy, while flint is hard and brittle; because experience shows as that heavy things always do fall if unsupported, that under ordinary conditions lead is always soft and that flint is always hard. In fact, everything that we know about the powers and properties of natural objects and about the order of nature may properly be termed a law of nature.

But it is desirable to remember that which is very often forgotten, that the

laws of nature are not the causes of the order of nature, but only one way of stating as much as we have made out of that order.

Stones do not fall to the ground in consequence of the law just stated, as people sometimes carelessly say, but the law is a way of asserting that which invariably happens when heavy bodies at the surface of the earth, stones among the rest, are free to move. The laws of nature are, in fact, in this respect, similar to the laws which men make for the guidance of their conduct towards one another.

There are laws about the payment of taxes, and there are laws against stealing and murder. But the law is not the cause of a man paying his taxes, nor is it the cause of his abstaining from theft and murder. The law is simply a statement of what will happen to a man if he does not pay his taxes and if he commits theft or murder, and the cause of his paying his taxes or abstaining from crime (in the absence of any better motive) is the fear of consequences which is the effect of his belief in that statement. A law of man tells us what we may expect society will do under certain circumstances; and a law of nature tells what we may expect natural objects will do under certain circumstances. A true natural law is an universal rule, and as such admits of no exception.

Now, in view of such high scientific authority, it might seem entirely out of place to raise the question as to whether there are any exceptions to these laws, any sphere whose orbit lies outside that of natural law.

Certainly such an inquiry would be altogether uncalled for were it not for the assumption of the dominant school of

medicine that there is no law in the domain of Therapeutics.. Now, the great founder of Homœopathy asserted that its principle is a law of nature--that it is the great underlying law in Homoopathic Therapeutics tersely expressed by our motto "Similia, Similibus Curantur.” The importance of a thorough understanding and conviction of the principles involved in any subject must be apparent to all. And nowhere is this recognition of principle of more importance than in the science of therapeutics. Amidst the conflicting medical theories, isms and pathies of our day, if you have doubts or misgivings as to the truth of the Homœopathic law, do not rest satisfied until you have solved those doubts and forever buried those misgivings.

Probe it to the very bottom; try it as you would a metal about whose genuineness you had your doubts. Let the examination be patient and thorough and, having once made it, you will have no limp convictions as to its truth. So in the coming years as you turn over the pages of recollection you will plainly discern this great truth: The principle "Similia" rests upon the rock of natural law.

Our opponents speak of Homœopathy as a theory or hypothesis, while to us it is a great truth or law of nature, defined as a system the principle of which is that certain medicines, when administered internally in a healthy state of the body, produce certain effects, and that the same medicines are to be used when symptoms similar to those which they give rise to occur in disease(first Eng. ed. of the Organon); or, as explained by Prof. Hempel as expressing that diseases can only be cured by reme

dial agents which produce in the animal economy, while in a state of health, conditions, resembling in all respects the natural disturbance. So Prof. Kent, in speaking of medicines, says: Drugs cure because of their ability to produce in the healthy system symptoms similar to those they cure in the sick. So the same authority, in referring to a drug, says: It would cure whenever the symptoms it produced were similar to the disease.

Now we propose to investigate the action of some of the best known and more commonly used drugs in order to discover if they furnish us with any proofs of the truth of the Homœopathic law.

The cases of poisoning, post mortem appearances and systematic provings of Aconite all go to establish the fact that it gives rise to all the symptoms of congestion, even going on to those of apoplexy; that it produces all the symptoms of inflammatory fever; that the congestions which Aconite occasions begin in the same organs or tissues and are characterized by the same physical phenomena and symptomated appearances as those of the natural malady.

Yet in such morbid conditions as above it is recommended by such eminent old school authorities as Bartholow, Phillips, Ringer and Fleming, to say nothing of a host of lesser old school luminaries.

Pereira affirms that Arsenic has been successfully employed in the cure of Lepra and Psoriasis. It is advised in Atrophy by Trouseau; in Ascites, Diabetes Mellitus, Lienteric Diarrhea, Emphysema and Enteritis by Bartholow. Some cases of Arsenical poisoning, says the latter, are not distinguishable from Cholera. The edematous appearance of the skin, so common a symptom in

many diseases that call for Arsenic as the appropriate remedy, is laid down in old school literature as one of the most marked symptoms produced by this drug when given in excess. In short, all the experiments, methodical provings and results of cases where Arsenic had been used as a poison go to show that it has produced all the morbid conditions and symptomatic appearances for which it has been successfully used in disease and this on the testimony of those who deny that Homœopathy is entitled to be ranked as a principle, a law of nature.

Let us now take the testimony of some few prominent old school authorities as to the effects produced by Mercury where administered to persons in health. Prof. Wood says that Mercury produces watery stools, also stools of mucus and blood, with violent tormina; that it affects the parotid and submaxillary glands, which become enlarged and painful, causing pain and difficulty in swallowing; that the gums, cheeks and tongue become ulcerated, and the odor of the breath insupportable.

Stille gives similar testimony, adding that it has caused caries of the teeth and maxillary bones.

The same authority, after giving a description of the disease known as "Cancrum Oris," remarks: If such a state ensues upon the administration of Mercury there appears to be nothing by which it can be distinguishable from the effects of this medicine unless it be the existence of a fetid odor which is different from that occasioned by Mercury.

Ringer affirms: "The phenomena produced by Mercury are singularly similar to those produced by Syphilis."