The Books of Homilies referred to in the 35th Article of the Church of England originated at a convocation in 1542, at which it was agreed "to make certain homilies for stay of such errors as were then by ignorant preachers sparkled among the people." Certain homilies accordingly, composed by dignitaries of the lower house, were in the following year produced by the prolocutor ; and after some delay a volume was published in 1547 entitled Certain sermons or homilies appointed by the King s Majesty to be declared and read by all parsons, vicars, or curates every Sunday in their churches ivhere they have cure. In 1563 a second Book of Homilies was submitted along with the 39 Articles to convocation ; it was issued the same year under the title The second Tome of Homilies of such matters as were promised and instituted in the former part of Homilies, set out by the authority of the Queen s Majesty, and to be read in every Parish Church agreeably. Of the twelve homilies contained in the first book, four (the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th) are probably to be attributed to Cranmer, and one (the 12th) possibly to Latimer; one (the 6th) is by Bonner ; another (the 2d) is by Harpsfield, archdeacon of London, and a third (the llth) by Becon, one of Cranmer s chap lains. The authorship of the 8th and 10th is quite unknown ; and Becon and Ridley have been only doubtfully conjectured as the authors of the 7th and 9th respectively. The second book consists of twenty-two homilies, of which the 1st, 2d, 3d, 7th, 8th, 9th, 16th, and 17th have been assigned to Jewel, the 4th to Grindal, the 5th and 6th to Pilkington, and the 18th to Parker. See the critical edition by Griffiths, Oxford, 1869. For The Clementine Homilies see Apostolic Fathers, vol. ii. p. 196.
HOMŒOPATHY (from opoioTraOua, a similarity of feel ing or condition) as a distinctive system of medicine owes its origin to Hahnemann, a German physician (see Hahnemann). It is customary to regard homoeopathy as a mere system of therapeutics, having reference only to the ques tion how and on what principle is disease to be treated. But a careful student of Hahnemann or of his Organon will soon discover that the system with which his name is fundamentally associated is one not merely of therapeutics but of pathology, and that any complete exposition of it must embrace an account of Hahnemann s views of the ultimate nature and cause of disease, as well as of the remedies by which it is to be combated, and the principles or principle on which these are to be selected.
Hahnemann taught that disease is to be regarded as consisting essentially of the symptoms of it as experienced and expressed by the patient, or as detected by the physi cian ; in other words, that the chief symptoms, or the "totality of the symptoms," constitute the disease, and that disease is in no case caused by any material substance, but is only and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derange ment of the health. " Diseases " (Introduction to the Organon, p. 17) "will not cease to be spiritual dynamic derangements of our spiritual vital principle." He says on page 3 of the Organon, " For as far the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore not perceptible to the senses;" and at page 18, referring "to small-pox, a disease accompanied by almost general suppuration," he asks, " is it possible to entertain the idea of a material morbific matter being introduced into the blood?" He held that the psoric miasm, of which the itch is the out ward aud visible and comparatively harmless sign, was at the root of nearly all chronic disease, viz., of all chronic disease that was not due to syphilis or sycosis. He tells us iu a note to the 80th section of the Organon that he spent twelve years in the investigations which led to the discovery of that great source of chronic disease and of its remedies (antipsoric remedies). It was a very essential part of Hahnemann s teaching that nature is a bad physician, and not to be much trusted ; that drugs are the real cura tive agents provided by the beneficence of the Almighty ; that drugs given to healthy persons have a power of producing symptoms of disease. The ascertainment of the symptoms produced by drugs in healthy persons is called technically " proving," and the record of such provings constitutes a large part of the literature of homoeopathy. This power of drugs he perpetually refers to as their "pathogenetic power." His great therapeutical doctrine, for formulating which his followers call him, with doubtful taste, " the Messiah of Medicine," was to this effect, that there is a correspondence between the symptoms produced by any given drug ad ministered to a healthy person and its power of curing any given disease, and that the remedy for any given disease, that is, for any set of symptoms " in their totality," is that drug which, given to any healthy person, will produce the most perfect imitation of the said set of symptoms ; in other words, Similia similibus curantur. Further, the dose of medicine is to be so attenuated as to cure the disease without hurting the patient. This attenuation of medicines constitutes, not only the most popular note of the system of Hahnemann, but that feature of it which is most characteristic of his own views and practice, and which in well-known words he declared to be established beyond the reach of cavil from future experience either of allopaths or of practitioners of the " new mongrel system made up of a mixture of allopathic and homoeopathic pro cesses." He gives minute directions as to the processes by which, this attenuation is to be achieved, the principal of which are trituration, succussiou, and dilution. These processes developed what he called the " spiritual power which lies hid in the inner nature of medicines" (20th section of the Organon). Hahnemann held that medicines became, for curative purposes, more powerful as they became more attenuated ; in his last edition of the Organon (1833), and in its last pages, he gave the most expressive evidence of his belief in the virtue of attenua tion by saying that he could scarcely name one disease which in the last year he and his assistants had not treated with the most happy results, solely by means of "olf action"; and he added that a patient even destitute of the sense of smell may expect an equally perfect action and cure from the medicine by olfaction. He condemned strongly the administration simultaneously of a number of medicines, and insisted that only one should be given at a time. Finally, it would be unjust to him not to bear in mind that he claimed to base his views and practice on experi ence and sound experiment. Some points of his system were borrowed by Hahnemann from previous writers as, indeed, he himself, though imperfectly, admits. Not to mention others, he was anticipated by Hippocrates, and especially by Paracelsus (1495–1541), in his doctrine of Similia similibus curantur, if not in its exclusive applica tion. These identical words occur in the Geneva edition (1658) of the works of Paracelsus, as a marginal heading to one of the paragraphs; and in the "Fragmenta Medica," Op. Omnia, vol. i. 168, 169, occurs the following passage:—
- ↑ An ancient English metrical liomiliarium exists in the library of the university of Cambridge, of which earlier versions have existed, and a portion of perhaps the earliest copy, dating from aboujt the middle of the 13th century, was published in 1862 by Mr J. Small, librarian to the university of Edinburgh.
