G18 
JACOB HELMER. 
only guide to the physician in the administration of remedies. 
To meet this ever-varying totality of symptoms and to find their 
correspondences it has been found necessary to conduct extensive 
provings. The homeopathic encyclopedia of pure materia med- 
ica is an evidence. It consists of ten large octavo volumes of 
about 700 pages each ; but if only the objective symptoms of 
the proven were necessary to establish the system of homeopa¬ 
thy such extensive provings would not have been made. But the 
subjective symptoms have been considered indispensable both to 
better fulfil the law of similia and to find remedies that will do 
better work. 
But limitation to the intelligent and successful practice of 
veterinary medicine may be shown in another way, and this di¬ 
rectly attacks the integrity of the therapeutic law upon which 
homeopathy is based. In my experience, the infinitesimal dose 
does not appreciably affect animals either in health or disease, but 
doses large enough to cause appreciable symptoms in the pulse, 
pupils, muscles and mucous membranes, if administered in a dis¬ 
ease characterized by the same or similar symptoms, will inten¬ 
sify those symptoms instead of relieving them. This you have 
observed in the use of belladonna, aconite, mix vomica, etc. 
Therefore, the law of similia similibus curantur , practically fol¬ 
lowed, as we must follow it in veterinary practice, becomes null 
and void. 
A consideration of the breadth and scope of the rational sys¬ 
tem applied to the practice of veterinary medicine, when com¬ 
pared with the limitations naturally imposed upon the homeo¬ 
pathic system, when it deals with the maladies of the lower 
animals, ought to weigh in favor of the former method, and, 
unless it can be shown that success is more common and certain 
in homeopathy, ought of itself alone to deter one from adopting 
a circumscribed method. 
Homeopathy in veterinary practice, finally, means to become a 
merely routine practitioner. To rely for success upon a supposed 
specific judgment, discrimination and skill can only be exercised 
in the selection of the remedy. Symptoms are everything. 
