But
the chief advantage which the system will derive from Dr. Russell's book
will spring, it seems to us, from his attempt--a successful one it must
be confessed--to prove _that homoeopathy is a development, and not a
mere reaction_; that it has its roots far down in the history of
science. The first mention of it in the book, however, is made for the
purpose of disavowing the claim, advanced by many homoeopathists, to
Hippocrates as one of their order. Not to mention the curious story
about Galen and the patient ill from an overdose of theriacum, who was
cured by another dose of the same substance, nor the ridicule of the
doctrine of contraries by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, nor the fact that
the _contraries_ of Boerhaave, by his own explanation, merely signify
whatever substances prove their contrariety to the disease by curing
it--to pass by these, we find one of the main objects of homoeopathy,
the discovery of specifics, insisted upon by Lord Bacon in his words
already quoted. Not that homoeopaths, while they depend upon specifics,
believe that there is any such thing as a specific for a disease--a
disease being as various as the individuality of the human beings whom
it may attack; but that an approximate specific may be found for every
well-defined stage in every individual disease; a disease having its
process of change, development, and decline, like a vegetable or animal
life.
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