Organon §119
As certainly as each kind of plant is different in its outer form, in its own way of life and growth, in its taste and smell from every other plant species and genus; as certainly as each mineral and each salt in its outer as well as its inner physical and chemical properties (which alone should have prevented any and all confusion) differs from every other; just as certainly are they all different and divergent from one another in their morbific, thus also, in their curative actions. 158 Each of these substances works in its own different, but determinate way (which forbids all confusion), engendering modifications in the state of health and in the condition of human beings. 159
Comment
158 Anyone who knows precisely and understands the value of the so singularly different actions of each single substance upon the human condition from the actions of every other single substance also easily realizes that among them, from a medical point of view, there can be absolutely no equivalent means, no surrogates. Only those who do not know the pure, positive effects of different medicines can be so foolish as to try to persuade us that one medicine can, in the same disease, be just as serviceable as another. This is the way in which ignorant children confuse things which are essentially different, because they barely know them on the outside, much less by their worth, their true meaning, their inner, highly divergent properties.
159 If this is pure truth (which it is) then no physician who does not want to be regarded as devoid of intellect, and who does not want to violate his good conscience (the sole testimony of genuine human worth) could possibly treat a disease with any medicinal substance unless he exactly and completely knows it in its true meaning, unless he has sufficiently tested its virtual action on the condition of healthy people in order to be exactly aware of its ability to engender a disease state very similar to the one to be cured, more similar than that of any other medicine that has become known to him. As has been shown above, neither man nor great nature can completely, rapidly and permanently cure except with a homeopathic means. Henceforth no genuine physician can exclude himself from such tests, especially on himself, in order to attain this knowledge which most necessarily belongs to the curative purpose and which has hitherto been so disdainfully neglected by the doctors of all centuries. In all past centuries (future generations will hardly believe this) physicians contented themselves with blindly prescribing for diseases, unproven medicines whose importance was unknown as to their highly divergent, pure dynamic action on human conditions. Indeed, physicians generally mixed several of these unknown, so very different powers into one formula, leaving it to chance how the patient would fare afterwards. This is like a madman getting into an artist's studio and grabbing handfuls of very different tools which are unknown to him in order (he imagines) to work on the art objects standing about. Needless to say, these works of art would be ruined-probably quite irreparably ruined-by his senseless work.