(Note: In the living human being no permanent neutralisation of contrary or antagonistic sensations can take place, as happens with substances of opposite qualities in the chemical laboratory where, for instance, sulphuric acid and potash unite to form a perfectly different substance, a neutral salt, which is now no longer either acid or alkali, and is not decomposed even by heat. Such amalgamations and thorough combinations to form something permanently neutral and indifferent do not, as has been said ever take place with respect to dynamic impressions of an antagonistic nature in our sensific apparatus. Only a semblance of neutralisation and mutual removal occurs in such cases at first, but the antagonistic sensations do not permanently remove one another. The tears of the mourner will be dried for but a short time by a laughable play; the jokes are, however, soon forgotten, and his tears then flow still more abundantly than before.)
In the antipathic (palliative) mode of treatment, however, precisely the reverse of this takes place. The medicinal symptom which the physician opposes to the disease symptom (for example, the insensibility and stupefaction caused by opium in its primary action to acute pain) is certainly not alien, not allopathic to the latter; there is a manifest relation of the medicinal symptom to the disease symptom, but it is the reverse of what should be; is here intended that the annihilation of the disease symptom shall be affected by an opposite medicinal symptom, which is impossible. No doubt the antipathically chosen medicine touches precisely the same diseased point in the organism as the homoeopathic medicine chosen on account of the similar affection it produces; but the former covers the opposite symptom of the disease only as an opposite, and makes it unobservable for a short time only, so that in the first period of the action of the antagonistic palliative the vital force perceives nothing disagreeable from either of the two (neither from the disease symptom nor from the medicinal symptoms), as they seem both to have mutually removed and dynamically neutralised one another as it were (for example, the stupefying power opium does this to the pain). In the first minutes the vital force feels quite well, and perceives neither the stupefaction of the opium nor the pain of the disease. But as the antagonistic medicinal symptoms cannot (as in the homoeopathic treatment) occupy the place of the morbid derangement present in the organism as a similar, stronger artificial disease, and cannot, therefore, like a homoeopathic medicine, affect the vital force with a similar artificial disease, so as to be able to step into the place of the original natural morbid derangement, the palliative medicine must, as a thing totally differing from, and the opposite of the disease derangement, leave the latter uneradicated; it renders it, as before said, by a semblance of dynamic neutralisation,' at first unfelt by the vital force, but, like every medicinal disease, it is soon spontaneously extinguished, and not only leaves the disease behind, just as it was, but compels the vital force (as it must, like all palliatives, be given in large doses in order to effect the apparent removal) to produce an opposite condition (Aphorisms 63-64) to this palliative medicine, the reverse of the medicinal action, consequently the analogue of the still present, undestroyed, natural morbid derangement which is necessarily strengthened and increased(Note: Pain as this proposition is, it has been misunderstood, and in opposition to it some have asserted "that the palliative in its secondary action, which would then be similar to the disease present, must be capable of curing just as well as a homoeopathic medicine does by its primary action." But they did not reflect that the secondary action is not a product of the medicine, but invariably of the antagonistically acting vital force of the organism; that therefore this secondary action resulting from the vital force on the employment of a palliative is a state similar to the symptoms of the disease which the palliative left uneradicated, and which the reaction of the vital force against the palliative consequently increased still more) by this addition (reaction against the palliative) produced by the vital force. The disease symptoms (this single part of the disease) consequently becomes worse after the term of the action of the palliative has expired; worse in proportion to the magnitude of the dose of the palliative. Accordingly (to keep to the same example) the larger the dose of opium given to allay the pain, so much the more does the pain increase beyond its original intensity as soon as the opium has exhausted its action. (Note: As when in a dark dungeon where the prisoner could with difficulty recognise objects close to him, alcohol is suddenly lighted, everything is instantly illuminated in a most consolatory manner to the unhappy wretch; but when it is extinguished, the brighter the flame was previously the blacker is the night which now envelopes him, and renders everything about him much more difficult to be seen than before.).