In theory and practice, allopathy considers the first effect only and ignores the lasting aftereffects of drugs and surgical operations. It administers remedies whose first effect is contrary to the disease condition. Therefore, in accordance with the Law of Action and Reaction, the secondary, lasting effect of such remedies must be similar to or like the disease condition.
Common, everyday experience should teach us that this is so, for laxatives and cathartics always tend to produce chronic constipation.
The secondary effect of stimulants and tonics of any kind is increased weakness, and their continued use often results in complete exhaustion and paralysis of mental and physical powers.
Headache powders, pain killers, opiates, sedatives and hypnotics may paralyze brain and nerves into temporary insensibility; but, if due to constitutional causes, the pain, nervousness and insomnia will always return with redoubled force. If taken habitually, these agents invariably tend to create heart disease and paralysis, and ultimately develop the patient into a dope fiend.
Cold and catarrh cures (?), such as quinine, coal-tar products, etc., suppress Nature's efforts to eliminate waste and morbid matter through the mucous linings of the respiratory tract, and drive the disease matter back into the lungs, thus breeding pneumonia, chronic catarrhs, asthma and consumption.
Mercury, iodine and all other alteratives, by suppression of external elimination, create internal chronic diseases of the most dreadful types, such as locomotor ataxy, paresis, etc.
So the recital might be continued all through orthodox materia medica. Each drug breeds new disease symptoms which are in their turn cured (?) by other poisons, until the insane asylum or merciful death rings down the curtain on the tragedy of a ruined life.
The teaching and practice of homeopathy, as explained in Chapter Twenty-Six, is fully in harmony with the Law of Action and Reaction. Acting upon the basic principle of homeopathy: ~Similia similibus curantur,~ or like cures like, it administers remedies whose first, temporary effect is similar to the disease conditions. In accordance with the Law of Dual Effect, then, the secondary effect of these remedies must be contrary to the disease conditions, that is, curative.
Chapter VII
Suppression Versus Elimination