creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give a cathartic
remedy in a cathartic dose for constipation; in that case the reaction, if
reaction follows, is not in the right direction, consequently the
constipation is often aggravated. I have hardly ever seen, excepting in
cases of mechanical obstruction, a severe and troublesome case of
constipation that had not been caused by the use of cathartic remedies. So
if we give an opiate, or an astringent, for a diarrhoea, we can see that it
is a direct effort to restrain the disease by force, as it were, and we
necessarily have to give large doses; and, if the vital forces react
against this medicinal intrusion, the reaction is not in the direction of
health. It is true that the vital forces sometimes overcome the diseased
action in spite of the medicinal action; but it does not always do this,
and subacute and chronic diarrhoeas are the result of the use of such
remedies in some cases. To create disease of a well organ for the sake of
curing disease in another organ, as is done when blisters are applied to
the skin for diseases of internal organs, and when cathartics are given for
diseases of the head or lungs, every one can see is a roundabout treatment;
and while patients may sometimes be benefited by this calling off, as it
were, the attention of the vital forces from the diseased action in other
organs, still it is not a very satisfactory treatment as a whole; for you
may lessen the vital power of resistance against diseased action, and may
even cause serious disease of the organ assailed. I repeat, one of the
great beauties of Homoeopathy lies in the fact that when remedies are given
in accordance with its law of cure, they do not have to be given in
disease-creating doses.

Hahnemann tells us that a single dose of the 30th dilution of Aconite,
which contains but the decillionth of a drop of the tincture of the remedy,
will cure acute pleurisy in twenty-four hours. I have thus treated patients
suffering from pleurisy with a single dose of that remedy (it should be