§ 57
In order to carry into practice this antipathic method, the ordinary
physician gives, for a single troublesome symptom from among the many other symptoms of
the disease which he passes by unheeded, a medicine concerning which it is known that it
produces the exact opposite of the morbid symptom sought to be subdued, from which,
agreeably to the fifteen - centuries - old traditional rule of the antiquated medical
school (contraria contrariis) he can expect the speediest (palliative) relief. He gives
large doses of opium for pains of all sorts, because this drug soon benumbs the
sensibility, and administers the same remedy for diarrhoeas, because it speedily puts a
stop to the peristaltic motion of the intestinal canal and makes it insensible; and also
for sleeplessness, because opium rapidly produces a stupefied, comatose sleep; he gives
purgatives when the patient has suffered long from constipation and costiveness; he causes
the burnt hand to be plunged into cold water, which, from its low degree of temperature,
seems instantaneously to remove the burning pain, as if by magic; he puts the patient who
complains of chilliness and deficiency of vital heat into warm baths, which warm him
immediately; he makes him who is suffering from prolonged debility drink wine, whereby he
is instantly enlivened and refreshed; and in like manner he employs other opposite
(antipathic) remedial means, but he has very few besides those just mentioned, as it is
only of very few substances that some peculiar (primary) action is known to the ordinary
medical school.
If, in estimating the value of this mode of employing medicines, we should even pass over the circumstance that it is an extremely faulty symptomatic treatment (v. note to § 7), wherein the practitioner devotes his attention in a merely one-sided manner to a single symptom, consequently to only a small part of the whole, whereby relief for the totality of the disease, which is what the patient desires, cannot evidently be expected, - we must, on the other hand, demand of experience if, in one single case where such antipathic employment of medicine was made use of in a chronic or persisting affection, after the transient amelioration there did not ensue an increased aggravation of the symptom which was subdued at first in a palliative manner, an aggravation, indeed, of the whole disease? And every attentive observer will agree that, after such short antipathic amelioration, aggravation follows in every case without exception, although the ordinary physician is in the habit of giving his patient another explanation of this subsequent aggravation, and ascribes it to malignancy of the original disease, now for the first time showing itself, or to the occurrence of quite a new disease
1.1 Little as physicians have hitherto been in the habit of observing accurately, the aggravation that so certainly follows such palliative treatment could not altogether escape their notice. A striking example of this is to be found in J. H. Schulze’s Diss. qua corporis humani momentanearum alterationum specimina quoedam expenduntur, Halae, 1741, § 28. Willis bears testimony to something similar (Pharm. rat., § 7, cap. I, p.298): "Opiata dolores atroscissimos plerumque sedant atque indolentiam - procurant, camque - aliquamdiu et pro stato quodam tempore continuant, quo spatio elapso dolores mox recrusescunt et brevi ad sol itam ferociam augentur." And also at page 295: "Exactis opii viribus illico redeunt tormina, nec atrocitatem suam remittunt, nisi dum ab eodem pharmaco rursus incantuntur." In like manner J. Hunter (On the Venereal Disease, p.13) says that wine and cordials given to the weak increase the action without giving real strength, and the powers of the body are afterwards sunk proportionally as they have been raised, by which nothing can be gained, but a great deal may be lost.