Acquiring knowledge of our remedies - Constantine Hering MD

"We would remind him who has had no experience of the comparative method, either on himself or others, that acquiring knowledge of the symptoms of remedies is exactly similar to the mode in which the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, and the zoologist acquire knowledge of the objects connected with their respective sciences. We should, therefore, set about it in a similar manner. Let it be considered what a multitude of signs are so perfectly at the command of the zoologist, that he can easily recall them to his recollection. Although no one is capable of giving a complete description of all animals, a repetition of all their characteristics “off the book,” as the saying is, yet the zoologist can at once tell a new animal when he sees it; can instantly determine to what class it belongs, and point out its particular characteristics. By merely looking at each animal, he already knows its characteristic peculiarities, or at least has no difficulty in discovering them.

The homeopathic physician must do just the same with his remedies. Let it not be alleged that zoology and the other branches of natural sciences are things quite different from our science. It must be regarded and dealt with in exactly the same manner as the natural sciences. Let it not be said that those sciences are so far advanced, and the system so perfect, that every thing connected with them is much easier: suppose that our materia medica were at present as little advanced as a natural science—as zoology in the time of Aristotle—this should not deter us from regarding it as such, working it out as such, and studying it as such; by this means we should make as much progress in it as was then made in zoology; and that is a good deal, in comparison with knowing nothing at all, or wandering in benighted ignorance amidst a profusion of every thing."