Minutus

§ 30 Sixth Edition

The human body appears to admit of being much more powerfully affected in
its health by medicines (partly because we have the regulation of the dose
in our own power) than by natural morbid stimuli - for natural diseases are
cured and overcome by suitable medicines.1

FN
The short duration of the action of the artificial morbific forces, which we
term medicines, makes it possible that, although they are stronger than the
natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the vital
force than can the weaker natural diseases, which solely in consequence of
the longer, generally lifelong, duration of their action (psora, syphilis,
sycosis), can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone, until the
physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent that
produces a disease very similar, but stronger to wit a homœopathic medicine.
The cures of diseases of many years’ duration (§ 46), by the occurrence of
smallpox and measles (both of which run a course of only a few weeks), are
processes of a similar character.