Edward Bayard

“ It is an approved and well-known fact that a person of iron will will battle long and successfully with a disease which baffles the aid of the most skillful physician, and it is said that his will sustains him. By that is not meant that he leans upon his will as upon a staff, nor that the immaterial, the will, comes in actual contact with the material, the disease; but that the will, acting through the brain, rouses up in the system material resistance to the disease, and effects a cure or prolongs the fight. ”

“ As an abstract question, preference must be given to that method of cure which creates the least disturbance in the system, and, as a consequence, leaves it less liable to relapse or a second attack; which does not by antagonizing the vital forces reduce or destroy its economies; which does not work by rule of three; as the remedy is to the disease, so is the constitution to the condition of the patient when the disease shall have left it. ”

“ As there is but one nerve-center of a disease, so is there but one remedy.
The system has always a tendency to resist, by reaction, the morbific cause which disturbs it. The similar stimulates reaction. When you put your hot hand into hot water, and take it out and wipe it dry, by the law of reaction it becomes cool. So, if to the frost-bitten ear or hand you apply snow or ice, by the law of reaction the frozen part burns under its stimulus. The power of resistance, which is reaction, is the strength of the constitution, or is the constitution itself. ”

“ It is believed that as close a relation can be established between Nature's laws and those of homœopathy.
Vaccination, as the sole and sure preventive of small-pox, is one of the great, dominant, fixed facts of the old school. Here is the open and avowed application of the law of cure by similars, similia similibus curantur. If it be a law of cure in one case, by what logical process can it be demonstrated to fail in all others? Those most conversant with Nature's laws assert, and truly, that she makes no exceptions: the law of gravity; that water seeks its own level ”

“ The whole object of the homœopathic physician, who is true to the law, is to trace these symptoms to a common nerve-center, and then to select a remedy which, acting upon that nerve-center, will, on the line by which Nature cures, stimulate a reaction, and thus restore the equilibrium, which is perfect health.
The law of Nature's cure is, by rousing up reaction against disease, to restore the disturbed forces to their exact counterpoise, where action and reaction are equal. ”

“ How can a school, which has been a thousand years dissecting dead bodies to discover the vital principle, hope to free itself from its dogmas? As well might it be expected to discover the electric fluid by dissecting a yard of telegraph wire. Professor Calderwood, who is not a homœopathist, demonstrates, as a scientist, from the discoveries of the foremost physiologists and psychologists, that, by tracing up all of the group of symptoms along the nerve-fibers, we will reach a common nerve-center in the brain, differing in area and location with differing groups of symptoms. ”

“ The number of disease-germs does not matter, as is evidenced by the communication of disease by letter where the number must necessarily be limited. The atomic dose is but a stimulus to Nature. Nature cures, aided or unaided. The atomic dose but excites in a greater degree those powers of reaction and resistance of Nature already set in motion by disease—which is a disturbing cause. Nature always seeks to restore the equilibrium of her forces. ”

“ As in religion and politics, and in those departments of knowledge which are not of a positive or demonstrable kind, early and long continued education, comprising not merely direct instruction, properly so called, but the influence of habitual example, deference to seniority and superiority, unconscious imitation, etc., induce conventional belief of the strongest kind—strong as demonstrated truth itself—and create a sort of wizard circle of power, beyond which the mind of the disciple, however bold, scarcely ever dares to wander. ”

“ There is certainly no more reason, viewed from a logical standpoint, why the inducing of symptoms or sufferings different from those produced by disease should prove more efficacious in cure than a remedy which produces similar symptoms. ”

“ Subject one hundred persons of both sexes and various ages to a cold rain and then to a burning sun, and you will have as many different states as persons. The disturbance of the vital force has found expression in a hundred different forms. It is in the province of the homoeopathic physician to locate the center of disturbance, and then to select as the remedy, by a process of elision from the many similars in the materia medica, the one which most nearly coincides with the expression of the disease or symptoms. ”

“ By operation of the will a strong man liberates from a nerve-center of his brain nerve-energy which, acting along the motor nerves, liberates in its turn sufficient muscular energy to fell an ox. Here the immaterial, the will, has produced a most powerful material result. Suppose for a moment that the nerve-energy had been misdirected, as in case of shock from mental causes, and had all been expended within the man, who would answer for the result? ”

“ Besides leading their minds to the most important of all medical studies, that of the natural history of diseases, it has tended directly to improve their practice by augmenting their confidence in Nature's powers, and proportionately diminishing their belief in the universal necessity of art, thus checking that unnecessary interference with the natural processes by the employment of heroic means, always so prevalent and so injurious. ”

“ The allopathic method of creating a new disease to cure the old one is a violation of this law, and at the very outset the regular school must begin by an apology or an excuse, either that Nature has denied to men the means of executing her laws, or that man is ignorant of the means she has placed at his disposal. ”

“ Convalescence in homœopathy commences when the correct remedy begins to act. In allopathy, when the remedy and disease have left the patient prostrate, then Nature takes the matter in hand. It is a common error with the ignorant traducers of homœopathy that the higher the potencies or its remedies the weaker they become, as one weakens wine by adding water. ”

“ So in medicine, the great majority of practitioners retain the same doctrines and pursue the same practice which they learned in the schools, or, if changing both doctrine and practice, as time and fashion dictate, hold fast, at least, the great fundamental doctrine impressed upon the very core of their professional hearts—viz., that the interference of Art is essential in all cases, and therefore never to be foregone. ”

“ In the heroic struggle which Nature, unaided, makes against disease, the assistance from Art necessary to speed the cure may in a great majority of cases be set down in decimals, as follows:
and it will be pretty safe to say that, whenever the proportion is against Nature, there will be no cure.
It is the 11000 which Art is called upon to throw into the scales and make them equal. If she adds more, she destroys the balance.
The atomic dose is adjusted to restore the balance. It is the infinitesimal fraction Nature needs to make the unit health. ”

“ That in a chemical laboratory there is no appliance so sensitive as a diseased nerve, does not argue the inefficacy of the atomic dose, but proves the want of adaptation of the chemical apparatus to deal with the subject. ”

“ However absurd the theory of one school may appear to a disciple of the other, the question remains, Which system cures?
It is asserted that infinitesimal doses, a decillionth part of a grain, can not cure. ”

“ In a word, almost every drug in our overflowing materia medica, whether inert or active, has been on one ground or another copiously prescribed in every variety of disease under the supposed sanction of this pseudo-specific on empirical indication. ”

“ The number of cases that recover and would have died had Art not interfered is extremely small."
These trenchant words from Sir John Forbes carry great weight as a commanding critic in his own profession. Had his strictures upon his brethren and their practices come from an alien pen, they would undoubtedly have been attributed by the allopathic school to malevolence and ignorance; and, doubtless, Sir John Forbes will not escape the same fate, because, if his statements are true, those of whom they are spoken are incapable of perceiving or admitting their truth. ”

“ When this process sometimes involves the most experienced and skillful physician in a profound study of one, two, and three hours and of re-examination as the expression changes, requiring due weight to be given to each symptom, both relatively and positively, and then to assume the grave responsibility of administering a single remedy and awaiting the result, it will be readily seen that those who are faithful to the law, and able to administer it, will be few. ”

“ It may well be doubted whether homœopathy will ever have enrolled under its banners the same number of practitioners as the regular school. The nearer we approach to an exact science, the fewer are its votaries. The conditions admit fewer. In it there are no formulated diseases nor formulas for prescriptions. It is differentiation as opposed to classification or generalization. The effect, expression, or impression of disease, is not mistaken for disease as a cause. ”

“ The favorable results obtained by the homœopaths—or, to speak more accurately, the wonderful powers possessed by the natural restorative agencies of the living body—demonstrated under their imaginary treatment, have led to several other practical results of value to the practitioners of ordinary medicine. ”

“ The stench contained in a few drops distilled by a skunk attains a potential existence in the air for not less than five hundred feet in every direction. Taking one thousand feet cubed as a minimum, we have one billion cubic feet of air saturated with the smell. ”