Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/135

ted to active treatment, and physicians often gloried in their heroic exploits, whilst abused nature shook, and faltered, under the severity of their measures. Diseases which have been found to be self-limited in their course and duration, as well as those of a different character, were indiscriminately attacked in the same ruthless manner, and serious mischief often followed as the consequence. This was the state of things when Hahnemann came upon the stage. Heroic medication had arrived at its culminating point. Perhaps Hahnemann looked upon this state of things with disgust, and this may have been the cause of that hostility which he ever afterwards manifested towards the regular profession. However this may be, he made no attempt, by any rational means, to reform existing abuses, but instead of endeavoring by such means as common sense would suggest to correct the most obvious abuses, and at the same time to preserve every useful measure, and every important truth, he cast the whole aside at a single dash, and set up in its stead a scheme of practice quite as irrational, and quite as useless, as that which had