HOMILIUS HONDEKOETER. 



785 



of great atrocity, is a subject of capital punishment 

 murder in the second degree, or of a less aggravatet 

 character, being punished by imprisonment in th< 

 public penitentiary for a longer or shorter period 

 Manslaughter is punished by imprisonment only, or 

 by imprisonment and fine. 



HOMILIUS, GODFREY AUGUSTUS, music director 

 in the three principal churches at Dresden, one of the 

 greatest organists and composers of church music o 

 nis time, born February 2, 1714, at Rosenthal, on the 

 Bohemian frontiers, was made, in 1742, organist al 

 a church in Dresden. He died June 1, 1785. Few 

 of his compositions have been printed. 



HOMMEL; the name of several great jurists in 

 Saxony. 



1. FERDINAND AUGUSTUS HOMMEL was born at 

 Leipsic, in 1697, was professor of law and a member 

 of the supreme court in the same place. He died, 

 after a life devoted industriously to the science oi 

 law and the administration of justice, in 1766. Hii 

 works show his philosophical mind and great legal 

 erudition. 



2. CHARLES FERDINAND HOMMEL,SOH of the preced- 

 ing, was born in 1722; in 1750, taught law at Leip- 

 sic, and, in 1756, was made professor of the decretals. 

 After having received many honours and titles, he 

 died in 1781. He was one of the greatest jurists of 

 his age. Besides his labours in the science of law, 

 he contributed to introduce a better and purer lan- 

 guage in the German courts. Besides the law, he 

 was well versed in many other branches of science, 

 as his Bibliotheca Juris Rabbinica et Saracenorum 

 Arabica, his Jurisprudentia Numismatibus illustrata, 

 and his many academical writings prove. Among 

 his works are his German Flavius, that is, directions 

 for drawing up sentences, both in civil and criminal 

 cases (4th edit., augmented and corrected by doctor 

 Klein, Bayreuth, 1800, 2 vols.); Rhapsodia Qutes- 

 tionum in Foro quotidie obvenientium (7 vols., 4th 

 edit., Leipsic, 178387, 4to), of which the seventh 

 volume, edited by Rossig, contains Hommel's Life; 

 his Oblcctamenta Juris Feudalis (Leipsic, 1755, 4to); 

 his work on Rewards and Punishments, according to 

 the Turkish Laws (2d edit., 1772), &c. 



HOMO NOVUS (Latin, a new man); in ancient 

 Rome, a person of plebeian birth, and the first of his fa- 

 mily that held a curule office, with the right of putting 

 a wnx image of himself in the atrium of his house (jus 

 imaginum), which placed him in the class of nob'iles. 

 The dignity thus acquired descended to his children. 

 HOMOEOPATHY; the name of a system of me- 

 dicine, introduced by Samuel Hahnemann, and which, 

 for about twenty years, has attracted much attention 

 in Germany, and, of late, in other countries also. 

 The name expresses the essential character of the 

 new system, which consists in this that such reme- 

 dies should be employed against any disease as, in a 

 healthy person, would produce a similar, but not 

 precisely the same disease (from opou* *&>,-). The 

 fundamental principle of this system is, therefore, 

 similia similibus curantur. To find such medicines 

 against any given disease, experiments are made on 

 healthy persons, in order to determine the effect on 

 them. In the conviction that every disease carries 

 with it a great susceptibility for the proper medicine, 

 and that the power of medicine increases by minute 

 division, the homoeopathist gives but one drug at a 

 time, and does not administer another dose, or a new 

 medicine, until the former has taken effect. At the 

 same time, a strict diet is prescribed, that the opera- 

 tion of the medicine may not be disturbed. Homoeo- 

 pathy directs the attention chiefly to the symptoms of 

 the disease, which are followed up and observed with 

 much greater accuracy than formerly. Disease is 

 considered by it as only an aggregate of symptoms ; 



and therefore the business of the physician is to ex- 

 tinguish the symptoms. The disciples of this system 

 care little about the customary names and divisions of 

 diseases ; they only regard the particular pains and 

 debilities of which the varieties of sickness are com- 

 posed. The proximate causes of diseases, therefore, 

 are little regarded, though the more remote causes 

 are studied, at least in relation to diet. Every dis- 

 ease is considered as requiring a specific remedy. 

 Homoeopathy is thus in opposition to the Hippocratic 

 system, which has existed, under various forms, for 

 twenty-two centuries ; and it has been exposed to 

 numerous attacks on this account. We will mention 

 some of the points in dispute. 



Homoeopathy objects to the Hippocratic system, 

 that it acts on the maxim contraria contrariis curan- 

 tur, and therefore effects merely a palliative cure. 

 This reproach is unjust, because the judicious physi 

 cian endeavours to restore the diseased organs by the 

 influence of the healthy organs, and the merest em- 

 piric alone attempts to cure by absolute contraries. 

 The Hippocratic medicine does not even reject the 

 homoeopathic principle, as the treatment of nervous 

 diseases proves. Secondly, the homoeopathists ac- 

 cuse their opponents of directing their etlbrts against 

 what cannot be known, the proximate cause of the 

 disease ; while, in turn, the homoeopathist may be 

 reproached with attaching himself merely to the 

 superficial, external appearance of the disease, and 

 with a pedantic minuteness in regard to those symp- 

 toms which disease assumes in a given case. Thirdly, 

 the homoeopathist accuses the others of administering 

 remedies of which they do not know the effects ; to 

 which it may be replied, that the effect of a medicine 

 becomes perfectly known only through a patient, 

 never by a healthy person. Fourthly, the minuteness 

 of the dose prescribed by the homoeopathists is ob- 

 jected to by other physicians, who, however, should 

 not forget that they constantly order a solution of 

 one grain of tartar-emetic in eight ounces of water. 

 The unnecessary or injudicious mixture of medicines 

 has become much less common than formerly among 

 the Hippocratic physicians. The Hippocratic school 

 cannot reconcile itself to the idea that all classifica- 

 tion of diseases under generic names is, in itself, 

 without meaning, and that the course of acute dis- 

 eases, the doctrine of the crisis, &c. (the basis of the 

 Hippocratic medicine), is imaginary, since it rests on 

 a faithful observation of nature. The old system, 

 therefore, reproaches homoeopathy not only with not 

 knowing, but with disdaining to know, the nature of 

 diseases. Since the knowledge of the nature and the 

 course of diseases is the indisputable basis of the 

 Hippocratic medicine, a great revolution in medicine 

 is not to be expected from homoeopathy. If its 

 principles should prove true, it will result in a 

 cnowledge of specific means of cure, and thus make 

 valuable addition to medicine, as other systems 

 lave done. 



The works on homoeopathy are already numerous, 

 [lahnemann's Organon der rationellen Heilkunsi 

 appeared first at Dresden (1810), and has reached a 

 burth edition (1829); a French translation in Dresden 

 jy Brunow (1824), an English by Ahner, an Italian 

 jy professor Bernardo Quaranta, and Russian in 

 ~asan by Petersen. The Reine Arzneimittellehre 

 von Hahnemann appeared, in six volumes, Dresden, 

 1811 to 1821. The Archives of Homoeopathic Me- 

 dicine, under the direction of Stapf, has been pub- 

 ished at Leipsic, since 1821. Other works on 

 lomoeopathy, some of which are against it, have been 

 written by A . J. Hecker, Bischoff, Puchelt, Ran, 

 :Jeinroth, &c. 



HONDEKOETER, OR HONDEKOTTER. There 

 were three Flemish artists of this name. 

 3 D 



