Enquire within upon everything by Robert Kemp Philp

As homoeopathy is now practised so widely and, indeed, preferred to the older system in many families, the Domestic Pharmacopoeia could scarcely lay claim to be considered complete without a brief mention of the principal remedies used and recommended by homoeopathic practitioners, and the disorders for which these remedies are specially applicable. The principle of homoeopathy is set forth in the Latin words "_similia similibus curantur_," the meaning of which is "likes are cured by likes." The meaning of this is simply that the homoeopathist in order to cure a disease, administers a medicine which would produce in a perfectly healthy subject, symptoms _like_, but not _identical_ with or the _same_ as, the symptoms to counteract which the medicine is given. The homoeopathic practitioner, therefore, first makes himself thoroughly acquainted with the symptoms that are exhibited by the sufferer; having ascertained these, in order to neutralize them and restore the state of the patient's health to a state of equilibrium, so to speak, he administers preparations that would produce symptoms of a like character in persons in good health. It is not said, be it remembered, that the drug can produce in a healthy person the disease from which the patient is suffering: it is only advanced by homoeopathists that the drug given has the power of producing in a person in health, symptoms similar to those of the disease under which the patient is languishing, and that the correct mode of treatment is to counteract the disease symptoms by the artificial production of similar symptoms by medicinal means, or in other words, to suit the medicine to the disorder, by a previously acquired knowledge of the effects of the drug, by experiment on a healthy person.