I once heard Mrs. B. say to her husband, who was a local preacher, and who was relating some of his experiences: “Well, Brother B., you are not a preacher to hurt.” So I will say to you, my young doctor, until you can make such cures by “merely administering the indicated remedy, internally,” you will never be a homoeopathic physician to hurt!
I once sent for a dietetic work that I might know how to feed the sick. When it came I anxiously devoured its pages, only to learn that its author gave the desired information by telling what not to eat. So in a brief way I might give you an insight into pure Homoeopathy by telling you what you should not do.
You should not prescribe crude medicines. You should not prescribe for the name of the disease, but for the patient. You should not decide that any given drug will be the next indicated remedy a priori. You should not permit the diagnostic name to influence your prescription. In any given disorder, diarrhoea, say, you should not allow any medicine to fool you this time because it was successful in treating diarrhoea in another patient. You should not use a hypodermic. You should not prescribe mineral waters. You should not use local applications in inflammatory rheumatism. You should not prescribe salves and ointments in any form of skin eruption. You should not use local applications in treating haemorrhoids. You should not feign to practice Homoeopathy and at the same time appear to give large doses. You should not educate your patients to the idea that you are selling medicines, by giving them each a four-ounce bottle of colored water. You should not repeat the right medicine so continuously that the vital force has no opportunity to react. If the selected medicine fails to bring relief, you should not conclude that you can force Nature by giving it in a cruder form and larger quantities. You should not imagine that disease is some material thing which by heroic doses may be routed like a rabbit from a brush heap. You should not conclude that the curative power of a drug consists in its material elements, for the Father of Homoeopathy has distinctly told you that is not true. You should not prescribe a cathartic for constipation. You should not inject crude Strychnine to stimulate the heart. You should not prescribe coal tar preparations for headache. You should not recommend vegetable laxatives while treating a patient who suffers from constipation. You should not copy after old school methods thinking it will popularize you. You should not pretend to be one thing when you know you are something else. You should not forget that your high and only mission is to heal the sick. You should not fail to convince yourself that there is but one infallible way to cure – the homoeopathic way. You should not imagine that you can give the wrong medicine strong enough or in doses large enough to cure. You should not permit a patron who is able to pay for your services to owe you longer than three months – he may forget what he is paying for. You should not cauterize a chancre, but cure from within out. You should not use an injection in any case of gonorrhoea. You should not inject anti-toxin for diphtheria, but rely upon the indicated potency according to the expressed image of the disorder. You should not vaccinate any human being externally as if there were no better way. You should not treat leucorrhoea by injections or tampons. – Holloway, in the Critique.