A receipt has been given to the word, which proved so efficacious in Danauburg in the Asiatic Cholera, that of ten patients but one died. The chief ingredient is Camphor, which is in ten times the proportion of other ingredients. But not a tenth-nay, not one in a hundred of the patients would have died, had the other ingredients, which were but injurious and obstructing, and the venesection been left out, and the Camphor been given alone, and always at the very. commencement of the disease, for it is only when given lone, and at the chief invasion of the disease, that it is so marvellously useful.
It would then appear that Hahnemann was chiefly guided in his choice of Camphor by the fact that he knew it has proved itself curative, in other words he was guided by clinical experience, though it was no experience of his own. He had drug- knowledge enough to understand, that of all the ingredients of the Dunaburg receipt, Camphor was the only one which had physiological relation to choler; but it would appear, he could not venture to say, whether it was homoeopathic or allopathic to cholera, since he considered the action of the drug to be extremely problematic and difficult of definition, for the reason that its primary and secondary action alternate suddenly. Nor did it matter much, in the eyes of Hahnemann, by which mode of action it arrested the disease known as it was to him that it did arrest it. Had he not recommended only a few years before the very same Camphor in cases of coryza on strictly palliative principles? He never expected much, in the shape of cure from so unstable a drug as Camphor; but as a palliative, as a means to stave off a threatening attack, he had so much the more confidence in it, as it is prompt in its action. From what he wrote about the prevention of cholera, it is besides clear that Hahnemann had a vague idea, that Camphor is an antidote to the choleric miasm itself, that it kills, as we would express it to- day, the cholera germs. He had so often pointed out that Camphor is an antidote to most vegetable poisons, and there was no doubt in his mind, that the cholera miasm is of organic nature.
When we now, after all what has been said on the subject, remember that Hahnemann inclined to the belief, that of the two alternate actions of the drug, its depressent action is primary, genuine; while the stimulation which runs almost along with the depressing is secondary, partaking of the nature of a reaction- then we cannot help coming to the conclusion, that whatever good Camphor had done in the spasmodic variety of cholera-and this was the only variety it was known to Hahnemann to do good-must have been done in virtue of the sedative action of the drug, that is to say, in virtue of its antipathic action. And the comparatively large, massive dose in which the use o the drug was recommended, while he does not hesitate to recommended the 30 attenuation of Cuprum or Veratrum in the case of the failure of Camphor, apparently points again in the same direction. Anyhow, so much is sure, that Hahnemann did nowhere state that the action of Camphor is homoeopathic to cholera, and that, as far as we know about the views he held years before, concerning the toxicological action of the drug under discussion, the least we can say on the subject is, that it was left an open question by him,. whether its useful application in the first stage of the spasmodic variety of cholera is homoeopathic, or allopathic.
If we turn now to some of the authorities in our school of medicine who have studied the subject theoretically and practically, and tried to give an account of their doings, we shall find that they have all of them missed the point, in their attempt to establish the homoeopathicity of Camphor to cholera. I shall quote to you to that purpose, Dr. Rutherford Russell, who derived a large experience in cholera treatment during the epidemic of 1948/9, both from his private practice and his practice in connexion with the Edinburgh Homoeopathic Dispensary: and who has left his mark amongst us as a scholar and a physician. I shall then quote to you, what Dr. Hempel has to say on the subject in his Materia Medica and Therapeutics arranged upon a Physiological and Pathological Basis; and last, though not least, I shall lay before you the rationale of the beneficent action of Camphor in cholera, as given to us in the words of Dr. Richard Hughes, a man whom we all love and honor for the light he was shed upon many obscure points in the Theory and Practice of Homoeopathic Medicine.
To begin then with Dr. Russell. In his book on Epidemic Cholera, p.207. He says:- Admitting the great law of healing to be, that like cures like, now that we know Camphor to be the remedy for cholera, we are only surprised that it should have required Hahnemann to discover the fact. For nothing can be more similar than the effects of Camphor and the premonitory symptoms of choler. Professor Joerg of Leipzig under took a series of experiments to disprove Homoeopathy. The following are the effects he describes as resulting from Camphor, felt a sense of heat in the stomach; during the night severe pain in the region of the solar plexus. The next day h e had a dull headache; a whole grain caused heat of stomach; after two hours, perspiration, a quick pulse, thirst; rush of blood to the head. In the afternoon shaking of the hand for half an hour. In the evening, pressing pain in the solar plexus, which extended upwards to the lungs, and caused cough. The pulse was accelerated ten beats, and the night was uncomfortable.In the morning there was a dull sensation in the abdominal region, and torpidity of the colon. The grains caused warmth, perspiration, eructation, griping, enuresis, inclination to stool. In the evening, again pain in the plexus, slight thirst and a restless night. The observation of Joerg are fully confirmed by various experimentists. Among the morbid phenomena observed in the bodies of animals poisoned by Camphor, is one of special interest to us, which is, that the heart was no longer contractile, although examined immediately after death.(*Christison on Poisons, 4th Edition, P.910*) The operation of Camphor seems even too throw light upon the solar plexus, the lungs, hearts and intestines, exactly as we have suggested, as the probable action of the proximate causes of cholera. All that remains now to be done is to give the symptoms of Camphor, as observed by Hahnemann which vindicate his selection of it for the cure of cholera. Then follows a compilation of symptoms from Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura purporting to establish the similarity between the effects of Camphor and cholera.
Now as to Joerg’s provings, no unbiased man would take Joerg’s symptoms as resembling those of a cholera patient. As to the loss of cardiac contractility in animals poisoned by camphor, the fact in itself may be interesting enough: but it hardly helps to establish a similarity between the cardiac effects of Camphor and the state of the heart at the first stage of the spasmodic variety of cholera; for in that stage, as we have been in previous lectures, the heart contracts more forcibly than usual. It is in the stage of collapse that the heart is weakened and loses its irritability; but then it is nor for the stage of collapse, but for the first stage of the disease that Hahnemann did recommended Camphor. The suggestion that Camphor like cholera seems to act through the medium of the pneumogastric nerve upon the solar plexus, the lungs, heart etc., is no doubt valuable. But then, organopathy is not homoeopathy. Two poisons are not considered from a homoeopathic standpoint to be similarly acting, merely because their respective toxicological actions are shown to take the same anatomical route. In order to be considered as such, they must be shown besides to be capable of manifesting a similar mode of action; and, I can only repeat here, that no unbiased man would ever maintain that the mode how Professor Joerg was affected by his Camphor-provings has any striking similarity with the way how a man attacked by cholera of the spasmodic variety is affected. Professor Joerg’s case looks rather like a case of cardialgia of colicodynia, with which it has really been compared by some authors.
As to Dr. Russell’s compilation symptoms from Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura, purporting to establish the preconceived similarity, it need only be said, that Hahnemann himself, while publishing the full provings of the drug, was all along under the impression, as seen from his preface, that depression of nervous action is the true sphere of Camphor, and such being the case, Hahnemann must evidently have drawn conclusions from his provings quite opposite to those Dr. Russell wants us to draw from his compilation of the same provings. Please remember, gentlemen, Dr. Russell wants to establish by the aid of these very provings, the homoeopathicity of Camphor to spasmodic variety of cholera, while Hahnemann with the same provings before him, declares the drug to be a sedative, consequently antipathic to spasmodic cholera. There is, as I mentioned before, one case of genuine Camphor-poisoning amongst those provings (the case ascribed to Wislicenus) which has no doubt much similarity with a spasmodic attack of cholera at its first stage; and, it may be, that Dr. Russell, wise after the event, took the symptoms of this case to represent th genuine physiological action of Camphor. Nevertheless the fact remains, that Hahnemann never renounced his views regarding Camphor, as pronounced in his preface to the drug’s provings.
