616 
JACOB HELMER 
ience to the principles of any founder, and appropriate the good 
of all in order to save its very life. It does not owe its success 
to credulity and superstition. It has been the most successful. 
It has not been driven by time and discovery to the humiliating 
spectacle of modifying and eliminating itself until scarcely any¬ 
thing remains but its flag. 
On the threshold of experience with any method of treat¬ 
ment we must first learn its principles, conform to its rules and 
accept the conditions it imposes upon us. The work announc¬ 
ing and elucidating the principles of homeopathy was published 
by its founder, Samuel Hahnemann, in 1810. He named it 
“ The Organon of the Healing Art A 
On page 103 of the u Organon ” he says : 1. Similia similibus 
eurantur (likes are cured by likes) is the only therapeutic law— 
that is to say, the only salutary treatment is that method ac¬ 
cording to which a disease is combatted by a medicine capable 
of creating in the healthy body symptoms most similar to those 
of the disease. 2. The totality of the symptoms is the only 
guide to the physician in the administration of remedies—that 
is to say, every drug, before it may be properly employed in 
treating disease, must first have been administered to a person 
in health, and the symptoms produced thereby recorded in order 
that their similarity or dissimilarity may be compared with 
those from which a patient may be suffering for whose relief 
a drug is sought to be administered. All that the physician 
may regard as curable in disease consists entirely in the com¬ 
plaints of the patient and the morbid changes in his health 
perceptible to the senses. 3. The only true method enabling 
the physician to select the proper remedies in disease is to prove 
them upon persons in health. That is to say, every drug be¬ 
fore it may be properly employed in treating disease must first 
have been administered to a person in health and the symptoms 
produced thereby recorded in order that their similarity or dis¬ 
similarity may be compared with those from which a patient 
may be suffering, for whose relief a drug is sought to be admin¬ 
istered. 
