On Medicine (De Medicina), Vol. 2

was believed to exist between the remedy and the disease, and they are “homoeopathic” in a much more fundamental sense than that in which the term is used by those who claim to practise homoeopathy to-day. Instances of such remedies are the black hellebore (a powerful aperient) supposed to be especially effective in the black bile disease (melancholia),ᵃ or the white hellebore given to reduce swollen glands in the neck because it tended to produce expectoration of white phlegm.ᵇ Ox spleen was given as a remedy for enlarged spleen,ᶜ a poultice of pole reed was applied to a gathering on the hand caused by a splinter, because the commonest source of such splinters was the pole reed;ᵈ a decoction of worms boiled in oil was poured into suppurating ears where there were maggots.ᵉ Other well known examples, not mentioned by Celsus, are the application of the roots of the lesser celandine (pilewort) as a remedy for piles, because small excrescences which grew on them resembled the disease, and the use of red light and red cloth in treating smallpox with the idea of bringing out the rash and so evacuating the disease, though here again the treatment has been thought to have a real value as excluding harmful rays from the skin.ᶠ

ᵃ II. 12. 1 B.
ᵇ V. 28. 7 B (vol. II., p. 140 note).
ᶜ IV. 16. 3. This no doubt originated in the idea that the remedy should resemble the disease; on the other hand the modern treatment of thyroid disease by thyroid extract or liver disease by liver, is at once brought to mind.
ᵈ V. 26. 35 C.
ᵉ VI. 7. 1 D.
ᶠ For many other instances see Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, The Magic Art, vol. I, p. 78.