Antipathic treatment focuses on a single disease symptom, bringing forth a medicinal symptom which is opposite to the disease symptom.
In order to proceed antipathically, the ordinary physician focuses on a single troublesome symptom from among the many other symptoms of the disease which he does not regard. For this symptom, the physician gives a medicine that is known to bring forth the exact opposite of the disease symptom to be allayed, from which he can accordingly expect the speediest (palliative) relief. Age-old medicine has instructed him to do this for more than fifteen hundred years: contraria contrariis. For example, the physician:
Opium for pain, diarrhea and insomnia
1. gives strong doses of opium for pains of all sorts because opium rapidly benumbs sensibility. He administers the same means for diarrhea, because it rapidly inhibits the peristaltic action of the intestinal canal and makes it immediately insensible. He also gives opium for insomnia because it rapidly brings to pass an anesthetizing, vacuous sleep.
Purgatives for constipation
2. gives purgatives when the patient has suffered long from constipation.
Cold water for burns
3. has a burned hand immersed in cold water, which (because of the cold) seems to momentarily spirit away the burning pain.
Warm baths for coldness
4. puts the patient who complains of chilliness and lack of vital heat into warm baths, which, however, only warm him momentarily.
Wine for debilitation
5. has the person with protracted debilitation drink wine, whereby he becomes momentarily enlivened and refreshed. In like manner, the physician employs other antipathic relief measures, but he has only a few besides these, since the ordinary medical art only knows the peculiar initial action of a few means.