While homoeopathic physicians are not insensible to the value of pathology as a branch of medical philosophy, they have long been assured that, next to their selection of remedies according to the law of similars, their practical success has been owing to their close attention to symptoms, as they arise and change in the progress of a disease.

The opponents of Homoeopathy have made it a ground of accusation against the followers of Hahnemann, that, ignorant of, or despising pathology. they have treated symptoms instead of disease as a whole. In making this accusation, they have forgotten that symptoms are the evidence of “the pathological states which constitute the disorders.”

Occasionally, men of genius and standing in the ranks of orthodox physic, discover (?) afresh that which Hahnemann plainly enunciated more than half a century ago. Thus:

In the sitting, of the 8th, of the Academy of Medicine, Dr. Piorry read a paper on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following propositions: 1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena, and not a morbid unity; 2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it; 3. Therefore neither Iodine nor its tincture, neither Chlorine nor sea-salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical remedies; 4. There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which constitute the disorders; 5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under which they labor must be studied and appreciated, and counteracted by appropriate means; 6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of any remedy, but good hygienic precautions may prevent lts development; 7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive patients is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to receive different names according to their nature; 8. Consumption thus treated has often been cured, and oftener still life has been considerably prolonged; 9 Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated above; 10. The old methods founded on the general idea of a single illness called phthisis are neither scientific nor rational, etc.; 11. The exact and methodical diagnosis of the various pathological states which constitute the malady, will dictate the most useful treatment for it.

Dr. Piorry is a man of note in the French Academy, and has made phthisis his especial study; and we are glad to find that he sets his face So decidedly against the treatment of that disease (or, indeed, of any other) except by counteracting “the pathological states which constitute the disorders” – or in other words, by studying and counteracting the symptoms as they arise.

[London Monthly Homoeopathic Review.]

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