Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.

Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.
lips of the press, or the living ones of his female acquaintances,—­does that make the impression a less erroneous one?  But so it is that in Homoeopathic works and journals and gossip one can never, or next to never, find anything but successful cases, which might do very well as a proof of superior skill, did it not prove as much for the swindling advertisers whose certificates disgrace so many of our newspapers.  How long will it take mankind to learn that while they listen to “the speaking hundreds and units,” who make the world ring with the pretended triumphs they have witnessed, the “dumb millions” of deluded and injured victims are paying the daily forfeit of their misplaced confidence!

I am sorry to see, also, that a degree of ignorance as to the natural course of diseases is often shown in these published cases, which, although it may not be detected by the unprofessional reader, conveys an unpleasant impression to those who are acquainted with the subject.  Thus a young woman affected with jaundice is mentioned in the German “Annals of Clinical Homoeopathy” as having been cured in twenty-nine days by pulsatilla and nux vomica.  Rummel, a well-known writer of the same school, speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by Homoeopathic doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona.  I happened to have a case in my own household, a few weeks since, which lasted about ten days, and this was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital practice, so that it was nothing to boast of.

Dr. Munneche of Lichtenburg in Saxony is called to a patient with sprained ankle who had been a fortnight under the common treatment.  The patient gets well by the use of arnica in a little more than a month longer, and this extraordinary fact is published in the French “Archives of Homoeopathic Medicine.”

In the same Journal is recorded the case of a patient who with nothing more, so far as any proof goes, than inluenza, gets down to her shop upon the sixth day.

And again, the cool way in which everything favorable in a case is set down by these people entirely to their treatment, may be seen in a case of croup reported in the “Homoeopathic Gazette” of Leipsic, in which leeches, blistering, inhalation of hot vapor, and powerful internal medicine had been employed, and yet the merit was all attributed to one drop of some Homoeopathic fluid.

I need not multiply these quotations, which illustrate the grounds of an opinion which the time does not allow me to justify more at length; other such cases are lying open before me; there is no end to them if more were wanted; for nothing is necessary but to look into any of the numerous broken-down Journals of Homoeopathy, the volumes of which may be found on the shelves of those curious in such matters.

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