Excerpt from An Address Delivered at the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Homoeopathy: Held in the City of Philadelphia, June 6th, 1856 I start, here, with the incontrovertible fact, that medicines, in large quantities, have a poisonous or destructive effect, in smaller quantities, a curative one; and this is a very im portant matter in the subject of my discourse. Is it true? Let us examine the assertion by referring to the action of what is considered a very simple medicine, - Epsom Salts. Give a table-spoonful of it to a man in the best health does it not disturb the harmony of his system? Let the dose be repeated morning and evening for a week, and at the end of that time he may be really sick} and, if persisted in, instead of producing, as It at first does, a simple irritation of the mucous membrance, inflammation will ensue, and, perhaps, more fearful consequences. The drug I have selected is not a poisonous one, nor is the dose administered a very large one, nevertheless, its continuance might prove destructive; but, the destructive influence of numerous other drugs, in common use, would be far greater than that of Epsom Salts. I have stated that large doses of medicines have a poisonous or destructive effect, - small doses, at curative one. A very small dose of a medicinal substance produces an effect directly the reverse of that produced by an ordinarily large sized dose of the same medicine. A medicine, then, which will produce pur gation (diarrhoea) in a large dose, will produce a reversed action in a very minute dose; and, hence, such a minute dose will cure precisely similar symptoms in a sick man. How? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.