curable if not fatal the majority of diseases, those made chronic through ignorance by continually weakening and tormenting the already debilitated patient by the further addition of new destructive drug diseases. When this pernicious practice has become a habit and one is rendered insensible to the admonitions of conscience, this becomes a very easy business indeed. And yet for all these mischievous operations the ordinary physician of the old school can assign his reasons, which, however, rest only on foregone conclusions of his books and teachers, and on the authority of this or that distinguished physician of the old school. Even the most opposite and the most senseless modes of treatment find there their defence, their authority-let their disastrous effects speak ever so loudly against them. It is only under the old physician who has been at last gradually convinced, after many years of misdeeds, of the mischievous nature of his so-called art, and who no longer treats even the severest diseases with anything stronger than plantain water mixed with strawberry syrup (i. e., with nothing), that the smallest number are injured and die. This non-healing art, which for many centuries has been firmly established in full possession of the power to dispose of the life and death of patients according to its own good will and pleasure, and in that period has shortened the lives of ten times as many human beings as the most destructive wars, and rendered many millions of patients more diseased and wretched than they were originally this allopathy, I have, in the introduction to the former editions of this book, considered more in detail. Now I shall consider only its exact opposite, the true healing art, discovered by me and now somewhat more perfected. Examples are given to prove that striking cures performed in former times were always due to remedies basically homoeopathic and found by the physician accidentally and contrary to the then prevailing methods of therapeutics. As regards the latter (homœopathy) it is quite otherwise. It can easily convince every reflecting person that the diseases of man are not caused by any substance, any acridity, that is to say, any disease-matter, but that they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body. Homœopathy knows that a cure can only take place by the reaction of the vital force against the rightly chosen remedy that has been ingested, and that the cure will be certain and rapid in proportion to the strength with which the vital force still prevails in the patient. Hence homœopathy avoids everything in the slightest degree enfeebling, and as much as possible every excitation of pain, for pain also diminishes the strength, and hence it employs for the cure ONLY those medicines whose power for altering and deranging (dynamically) the health it knows accurately, and from these it selects one whose pathogenetic power (its medicinal disease) is 2 2 un Homœopathy sheds not a drop of blood, administers no emetics, purgatives, laxatives or diaphoretics, drives off no external affection by external means, prescribes no hot or known mineral baths or medicated clysters, applies no Spanish flies or mustard plasters, no setons, no issues, excites no ptyalism, burns not with moxa or red-hot iron to the very bone, and so forth, but gives with its own hand its own preparations of simple uncompounded medicines, which it is accurately acquainted with, never subdues pain by opium, etc. capable of removing the natural disease in question by similarity (similia similibus), and this it administers to the patient in simple form, but in rare and minute doses so small that, without occasioning pain or weakening, they just suffice to remove the natural malady whence this result: that without weakening, injuring or torturing him in the very least, the natural disease is extinguished, and the patient, even whilst he is getting better, gains in strength and thus is cured-an apparently easy but actually troublesome and difficult business, and one requiring much thought, but which restores the patient without suffering in a short time to perfect health,—and thus it is a salutary and blessed business. Thus homoeopathy is a perfectly simple system of medicine, remaining always fixed in its principles as in its practice, which, like the doctrine whereon it is based, if rightly apprehended will be found to be complete (and therefore serviceable). What is clearly pure in doctrine and practice should be self-evident, and all backward sliding to the pernicious routinism of the old school that is as much its antithesis as night is to day, should cease to vaunt itself with the honorable name of Homœopathy. SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. Hahnemann did not put in his manuscript the exact date, leaving this probably until the book would go to the printer, but Dr. Haehl suggests February, 1842, as the date according to a manuscript copy made by Madame Hahnemann. WM. B. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Examples of accidental homœopathic cures. Non-medical persons have also found the treatment on the Even some physicians of an earlier period suspected that this TEXT OF THE ORGANON. § 1, 2. The sole mission of the physician is to cure rapidly, NOTE. Not to construct theoretical systems, nor to attempt to explain phenomena. 3, 4. He must investigate what is to be cured in disease and know what is curative in the various medicines, in order to be able to adapt the latter to the former, and must also understand how to preserve the health of human 5. Attention to exciting and fundamental causes and other circumstances, as helps to cure. 6. For the physician, the disease consists only of the totality NOTE. The old school's futile attempts to discover the essential nature of disease (prima causa). 7. Whilst paying attention to those circumstances (§ 5) the physician needs only to remove the totality of the symp- toms in order to cure the disease. NOTE 1. The cause that manifestly produces and maintains the disease should be removed. NOTE 2.-The symptomatic palliative mode of treat- § 8. If all the symptoms be eradicated, the disease is always NOTE. This is stupidly denied by the old school. 9. During health a spiritual power (autocracy, vital force) animates the organism and keeps it in harmonious 10. Without this animating, spirit-like power the organism II. In disease, the vital force only is primarily morbidly de- 12. By the disappearance of the totality of the symptoms by the cure, the affection of the vital force, that is to say, the whole internal and external morbid state is also NOTE. It is unnecessary for the cure to know how the vital force produces the symptoms. 13. To regard those diseases that are not surgical as a pecu- liar distinct thing residing in the human frame is an absurdity which has rendered allopathy so pernicious. 14. Everything of a morbid nature that is curable makes itself known to the physician by disease-symptoms. 15. The affection of the diseased vital force and the disease- symptoms thereby produced constitute an inseparable whole-they are one and the same. 16. It is only by the spiritual influences of morbific noxæ that our spirit-like vital force can become ill; and in like manner, only by the spirit-like (dynamic) operation of medicines that it can be again restored to health. 17. The practitioner, therefore, only needs to take away the totality of the disease-signs, and he has removed the NOTES 1, 2.-Illustrative examples. 18. The totality of the symptoms is the only indication, the |