DOES LIKE CURE LIKE ? 39 



the organism or any of its parts. The complex composition 

 and diverse functions of the bodies of the higher animals 

 are liable, however, to be altered and disturbed in many 

 different ways, and such alterations or aberrations cannot 

 be restored by any one curative system or formula. As 

 already indicated, medicines have special actions on different 

 organs or groups of cells, and affect them in very different 

 ways, and hence would seem to produce their curative 

 effects, not in one, but in many ways. There have been 

 from the very earliest times, before the causes of disease 

 were known or the actions of drugs understood, innumerable 

 systems of treatment. A very ancient one was ' the doc- 

 trine of signatures,' which taught among other things that 

 the external shape or contour, of a plant was suggestive of 

 its use in medicine, and so we still have such plant names 

 as liverwort and lungwort. Galen came later and enun- 

 ciated his celebrated hypothesis, but it was as fantastic 

 and unreasonable as the last. Then the doctrine ' Contraria 

 contraribus curantur ' came into vogue, and of course still 

 obtains to a considerable extent, e.g. constipation is cured 

 by a purgative, diarrhoea by an astringent. Two such 

 systems of counteraction have been propounded (1) the 

 antipathic, whereby medicines were believed to overcome 

 morbid conditions or symptoms by a superior and antago- 

 nistic force ; (2) the allopathic, whereby effects are produced 

 which, although they may sometimes be unnatural, over- 

 come the disease. But diseases, it has been affirmed, may 

 not only be cured by counteractions, but by similars. Upon 

 the old saying that ' like cures like,' Homoeopathy l is based, 



1 Homoeopathy (S/uoios, homoios, like or similar ; and 7rd0os, pathox) was 

 propounded by the German physician Hahnemann in his Organon der 

 rationelleni Heilkunde, published in 1810. This system teaches that the 

 cure of a disease is effected by infinitesimal doses of such medicines, as would 

 induce, if given to a healthy subject in large quantity, symptoms similar to 

 the disease. Cinchona is declared to cure such fevers as ague and inter - 

 mittents, because it produces some such febrile symptoms when given to 

 healthy individuals in considerable doses ; aconite is regarded as the appro- 

 priate remedy for reducing inflammatory fevers, because in large doses it 

 produces symptoms which are thought, by homosopathists, to resemble those 

 of inflammation ; while strychnine is selected as a remedy for paralysis, 

 because in large doses it appears to produce paralytic symptoms. This 

 doctrine, if sound, would stamp most disorders as hopelessly incurable ; for 



