The great stumbling-block to Veterinary Homoeopathy is the smallness of the doses. How can such small doses do any good? Why there is not enough to swallow, therefore how is it possible for it to produce any effect? These and similar questions are continually being asked, by persons who wish for information on the subject; and the answer they usually get is, “Oh! it’s all humbug;” but “facts are stubborn things,” and fact is evidence of the power of these minute doses are continually being brought to light, if people would only look at them; but I find a great many shut their eyes, and then say they cannot see. People in general have formed an erroneous opinion respecting disease; they imagine that it is a separate distinct something that has somehow or other got into the body, and that it requires a large quantity of medicine to kill it, and that the more dangerous the disease is, the larger the quantity of medicine which ought to be used. They say the blood is got foul, you must open a vein and cleanse it; that would do very well if the foulness would get all together, in readiness to run out at a moment’s notice; but such is not the case, for if there is anything in the blood that should not be there, it is distributed through the whole mass; therefore by taking a small quantity of blood away, you only take a small quantity of the foreign matter with it, and the rest is left as foul as every it was.
We will just take an illustration or two, to show how infinitesimal particles of matter exercise a powerful influence, and produce the most disastrous diseases; here is a horse that is perfectly healthy, lead him into this stable and allow him to remain a short time; watch him closely to see that he does not swallow anything, for if he swallows nothing no effect can be produced we shall see. The last horse that was in this stable was glandered, and probably in a few weeks, or it may be months, this horse will be glandered also; there will be a fetid, green- looking discharge running from one or both nostrils; the glands under the jaw will become enlarged and indurated, the membrane of the nose will become ulcerated, small hard pimples will come out on different parts of the body, by degrees they will get larger, and at last open and form deep-seated, disgusting looking ulcers; and if the disease is left to take its own course, it will ultimately cause the death of the animal. (How large a quantity of matter was it that produced such fatal results?)
Take another case. Look at that horse standing there with a staring dead-looking coat; a watery discharge is running from the eyes, which are half-closed; there is a thick, dark-coloured, disgusting discharge from the nose; he is very restless, and keeps shifting off one leg on to another; he staggers and reels about like a drunken man; sometimes he falls down upon his haunches and sits like a dog; the glands under the jaw are swollen, pulse accelerated, heaving at the flanks; he has a care- worn wretched appearance; he looks like “misery stepped in vinegar;” it is painful to look at him. What is the matter with him? What can have caused all these alarming symptoms? He has got the influenza, brought on by a miasma that has been lately floating in the air, but in such minute particles that is not apparent to any of the senses, but yet it is all powerful to prostrate the strongest horse in a few hours. It may be said, these horses were not in perfect health, there was a predisposition to be affected by these small quantities; well, granted they were not perfectly healthy, and that there was a predisposition to be affected by these small quantities, we only give medicine when there is a diseased state or a predisposition to be affected by it.
