The violent attacks which have been made on the doses of homoeopathy, such as that the whole word had not sufficient water to form the thirtieth potency, but that a watery globe of a diameter reaching from the earth to the dog-star would be requisite are now unhesitating seen to be foolish, especially if it be considered that the system only requires an atom of medicine to be employed in order to cure and that many drugs which are taken appear again in the urine. It is further known that a measure of a milligram, the one-thousandth part of a gram, contains a number of molecules amounting to about sixteen trillion and that the diameter of a single molecule between the spaces, which are estimated to be similar amounts to the two and a half-millionth of a millimeter. The teaching of light, of electricity and of the internal movements of fluids and gases depend on this fact, and are taken as a chimera by no educated person. We know further that the body of no living creature is a chemical retort, in which masses alone are acted on, but that molecular actions is the basis of vital action.
The capacity fort movement increases if the molecules have a larger sphere for activity; the attenuation, the separation of molecules, thus acquires increased energy. This is seen daily in the similar action of steam, in the aggregate condition of freed atoms of water, of which eighty cubic inches suffice to draw a train of three hundred tons a distance of fifty miles in two hours. Besides this, the action of a medicament dissolved in water and its molecules separated, can easily be demonstrated by experiment. If, for example one part of common salt be dissolved in nine parts of water, the salt molecules extend over a space ten time larger than before, giving them ten times the area for movement, and the question in merely whether the molecules are put into movement or not. A vessel containing water only, and the molecules of slat in the one vessel will then travel to the other until the two fluids contain a solution of equal quantities of salt.
This procedure is termed the Process of Diffusion; and the same process is taking place continually in the body, for unless for example, the blood is supplied similarly with oxygen, & c., life cannot be maintained. From the above experiment it follows that a liquid remedy dissolved in a suitable medium possesses unlimited power of extensions; that the molecules of this material are proportionately distributed in solution; that this subdivision is not destruction, but the very pendulum movement and by axial movement. If a dense solution of salt be employed, the process of diffusion is obstructed, but if it be desired to increase the process, the weaker the solution the more effectual is the diffusion. For, in a ten per cent. solution of salt, one-tenth only of the space is occupied by the salt, and there are nine- tenths of the space remaining for the movements of the salt.
In a one per cent solution there is one part mass and ninety-nine parts of space are left for movement, and the precise proportions given by chemist are eleven times as much movement in weak as in concentrated solutions. What takes place with salt occurs also with all solutions and especially with the molecules of drugs which are subjected to the process;and it cannot therefore conceived that a diluted, really a potentized ” remedy should not develop extraordinary powers in the body if it is administered under the defined conditions of the law of similars. Rightly therefore Professor Jaeger, who has carried out a large number of experiments with medicinal solutions thus prepared, says ” If the official representatives of the old system would observe and study these simple and irrefutable matters of fact, they would make a great mark on the long standing difficulty between homoeopathy and allopathy.
When it is now considered what ignominy Hahnemann and his followers directly suffered from the potentizing of medicines, and how the master himself, owing to the entity of the druggist (who in Germany from a strong guild) tot he small dose, which produced so small a profit, was obliged to prepared and administered his own medicines, and was denounced and driven from place, it is difficult to express and adequate feeling of indignation at the treatment he experienced. He was thus finally expelled from Leipzig by the fury of the druggists, and willingly accepted an invitation from the Duke of Coethen, in the year 1821, to be his private physician.
Thus it was not till he was advanced in years that Hahnemann was freed from the struggle for his daily bread, and he was able by preference to devote himself to practice in a serene evening of life. The character also of Hahnemann was strong and he was born leader of men. After he had laid a solid foundation for re-constructing medicine as a science by the publication of his Organon of the Healing Art, and his Pure Materia Medica, he issued his valuable Chronic Disease. IN the year 1835 he married for the second time, and settled in Paris. Here he become prosperous and was held in high veneration by a large circle of patients. He died at Paris on the 2nd July 1843, and twenty years later his medical followers erected a monument to him at Leipzig.
