HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINES. IX 



promulgated by Hahnemann, is simply and forcibly 

 expressed in the following maxim : Similia similibus 

 curantur, which simply means that diseases are cured 

 most quickly, safely, and effectually, by medicines which 

 are capable of producing symptoms SIMILAR to those 

 existing in the patient, and which characterize his 

 disease ; for in accordance with the therapeutic law of 

 similarity, medicines cure affections similar, or like 

 unto those they produce. The immortal bard of Aron 

 has well expressed this law in the following lines. 



"Tut, man ! one fire burns out another's burning 

 One pain is lessened by another's anguish. 



Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning ; 

 One desperate grief cures with another's languish : 



Take thou some new infection to the eye, 

 And the rank poison of the old will die." 



Homosopathy, then, proceeds upon the great incontro 

 vertible truth, that as the phenomena of chemistry 

 depend upon positive laws as the movements and 

 instincts of the brute creation are regulated in the most 

 orderly manner as the physiological functions of the 

 human organism constitute an harmonious play of beauti- 

 fully co-ordinate forces, so nature . has ordained a 

 definite relation between remedial agents and disease?. 

 In the discoveries of such relationship, extending over a 

 field co-extensive with Nature herself, ever fresh, ever 

 increasing in interest, consists the study of homoeo- 

 pathy in its application as well as its practice. The 

 treatment of disease henceforth must rest on positive and 

 unerring laws, it cannot possibly depend on chance, but 

 must be regulated in a manner commensurate with the 

 unchanging principles of nature and philosophy. 



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