Homoeopathy unveiled : or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb.

  • Brodribb, William Perrin.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy unveiled : or, Observations on Hahnemann, his doctrines and treatment of disease / by William Perrin Brodribb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    thirty-three gallons of a liquid to represent a billion of drops. If therefore a single drop of laudanum or of any other tincture, be perfectly mixed with that number of gallons of alcohol, it will represent the sixth attenu- ation ; and a drop of such dilution will contain the bil- lionth part of the primitive drop.* But this is one of the lower dilutions only. What shall we say of the higher ones? when billions are multiplied by billions, decillions by decillions, and far higher numbers than are to be found in any books of arithmetic ? Figures may be multiplied by any given numbers, and the process may be repeated to any extent, but it is impossible afterwards to enumerate them; still less pos- sible is it to conceive what they represent. Yet in all these visions and mockeries Homoeopathy deals, and calls upon its disciples to practise, and the public in their disease and suffering to submit to and trust in. May we not adopt here the language of a critic, used on a very different occasion, and say of such speculations, “ That they are unnatural and absurd : that they sur- pass all bounds not of truth only, but of probability; and look more like the dreams of children, than the manly inventions of a sober mind ? ” But homoeopathic practitioners appeal to the fact of the recovery of persons from disease while taking their medicines, and regard these events as cause and effect. It would be well if these gentlemen would study the * The degree of dilution, if carried to the fifth attenuation only, would be that of one gallon in more than the whole quantity of water furnished by the New River, East London, and Southwark companies in an entire year ; and the sixth attenuation, in more than the whole quantity of water furnished by those three companies in a century.