isopathy

English

Etymology

From iso- +‎ -pathy.

Noun

isopathy (uncountable)

1. (medicine) The system that treats a disease by means of the virus of the same disease.
2. (medicine) The old theory of curing a diseased organ by eating the analogous organ of a healthy animal.
   • 1849, Water-cure Journal:

     if the hearing is affected, Isopathy makes you a night-cap trimmed with the ears of a calf!

3. The doctrine that the power of therapeutics is equal to that of the causes of disease.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “isopathy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)