Hahnemann wanted all the physicians to keep up to his high standards, so he wrote about the criteria's that determine the highest ideal of cure, which should make a physician really happy while treating the case.

By using the word rapid; Hahnemann stresses the need for speedy recovery of patient from illness, which during his time was quiet torture. It was also a torture in those days to take treatment, as medication in those days included blood letting, application of leeches, application of issues and setons, hence the use of word gentle.

The gentleness was required as in those days the patient used to dread the treatment more than the disease.

By permanent restoration of health, he means to prevent recurrence of illness. It also means that if the patient maintains proper diet and regimen as required and advised by his physician, he should not fall ill often.

Removal and annihilation of disease in its whole extent means; the physician should understand the totality of the illness rather than treating it part wise.

The word shortest demands simplicity in method of therapeutics. The use of complex procedures and drugs in order to hasten cure can make his path to cure a long winding one.

In Hahnemann's time most of the treatment would be based on either heresy or by some speculative thinking. There was no experimentation (with controlled testing) nor was there any consistency in results. Hence treatment would be a trial and error method based on the physician's gut feeling and not based on logical and scientific platform. Hence one could not depend on methods of treatment during Hahnemannian time.The treatment using large doses of crude drugs, singly or in combination and lot of unwanted surgical interventions prompted Hahnemann to write that an ideal cure should be most harmless. This all can be achieved, if the physician bases his treatment on principles that are easily understood and so he assimilates them for recurrent use. If the bases of therapeutics is complicated, it cannot be replicated by each and every practitioner and then each one would develop his variation according to his liking which would not be ideal.

The amount of side effects also ways heavily against the use of modern medicine especially in chronic disease.With so much scientific research going and especially in the field of immunophoresis, biotechnology, gene splicing, the principles of treatment are varied and difficult to comprehend. The use of gene replacement and the use of stem cells may have limited advantage in short period of time, but these being against the flow of nature will make human being pay a heavy price for the same in the long run.

The concept that homoeopathy is slow acting is prevalent due to the use of homoeopathy in chronic cases. If a patient suffering since 8yrs (inspite of so called fast acting drugs does not get cured) is treated by the homoeopath and is cured within a year or so. I would call it fast acting and not slow acting. Similarly medicines based on simila acts “magically” fast in acute diseases. Rather children insist on going to a homoeopath as they get cured with use of sweet pills, without going through a lot of bitter syrups and occasional injections.

Even today medicines like Alprazolam, Sildenafil are used for many other conditions, than for the ones for which experimental data was compiled, and that to in many cases without prior explanations.