ABSTRACT
The High DilutionistsBelieving that it was as hard for patients to rid themselves of their medicines as their maladies, homeopaths accused allopaths of forcing new acute and chronic drug-induced diseases upon their patients. Allopathy, so went the homeopaths’ argument, taught that unless a medicine “inflicted” itself on the patient, there was no assurance that it worked. The more violent the effect, the more convinced doctors and patients could be of certain cure. This rationalistic thinking led patients to expect harsh side effects as signs of a medicine’s power and efficiency. Thus, that a medicine caused purging, sweating, vomiting, or otherwise excited the secretions or excretions was a good indication that it could cure. But as homeopath Benjamin F. Joslin observed in 1850, “We might as well estimate the power of a steamengine by the jarring of the boat . . . as that of medicine by the evacuations. Every motion is not progression; every accident is not proper action.”1
