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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"Medical Essays, 1842-1882"


I have no quibbles to utter, and I shall stoop to answer none; but, with
full faith in the sufficiency of a plain statement of facts and reasons,
I submit the subject to the discernment of my audience.
The question may be asked in the outset,--Have you submitted the
doctrines you are professing to examine to the test of long-repeated and
careful experiment; have you tried to see whether they were true or not?
To this I answer, that it is abundantly evident, from what has often
happened, that it would be of no manner of use for me to allege the
results of any experiments I might have instituted. Again and again have
the most explicit statements been made by the most competent persons of
the utter failure of all their trials, and there were the same abundant
explanations offered as used to be for the Unguentum Armarium and the
Metallic Tractors. I could by no possibility perform any experiments the
result of which could not be easily explained away so as to be of no
conclusive significance. Besides, as arguments in favor of Homoeopathy
are constantly addressed to the public in journals, pamphlets, and even
lectures, by inexperienced dilettanti, the same channel must be open to
all its opponents.
It is necessary, for the sake of those to whom the whole subject may be
new, to give in the smallest possible compass the substance of the
Homoeopathic Doctrine.


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