67     Only in the most urgent cases, where danger to life and imminent death allow no time for the action of a homœopathic remedy—not hours, sometimes not even quarter-hours, and scarcely minutes—in sudden accidents occurring to previously healthy individuals—for example, in asphyxia and suspended animation from lightning, from suffocation, freezing, drowning, etc.—is it admissible and judicious, at all events as a preliminary measure, to stimulate the irritability and sensibility (the physical life) with a palliative, as, for instance, with gentle electrical shocks, with clysters of strong coffee, with a stimulating odor, gradual application of heat, etc. When this stimulation is effected, the play of the vital organs again goes on in its former healthy manner, for there is here no disease* to be removed, but merely an obstruction and suppression of the healthy vital force. To this category belong various antidotes to sudden poisonings: alkalies for mineral acids, hepar sulphuris for metallic poisons, coffee and camphor (and ipecacuanha) for poisoning by opium, etc.      It does not follow that a homœopathic medicine has been ill selected for a case of disease because some of the medicinal symptoms are only antipathic to some of the less important and minor symptoms of the disease; if only the others, the stronger, well-marked (characteristic), and peculiar symptoms of the disease are covered and matched by the same medicine with similarity of symptoms—that is to say, overpowered, destroyed and extinguished; the few opposite symptoms also disappear of themselves after the expiry of the term of action of the medicament, without retarding the cure in the least.