XI
DESIRING to explain why I prescribed the most diverse high dilutions for drunkenness, I am obliged to treat of the question of doses in which remedies may be used In order to solve this question, which divides not only the old and the new schools, but also homeopathic physicians among themselves, I most make use of general considerations, which shall gradually prepare the reader to understood what I am about to set forth.
In the experimental and the observational sciences me have usually, each a closed field in which they study, observe and experiments, nothing indisputable facts of which they hazard the most various interpretations. Unfortunately, as a rule, each individual limits his observations to his own field of investigation, looks constantly through one end of his spy-glass and refuses to look through the other end, by noting in the field of study of each of his neighbors other facts which are equally undeniable. As a result, men of education and learning, having their own minds filled with the facts observed or discovered by themselves listen only to themselves, will not listen to any one else, and in that way, become least inclined of all people to acquire new knowledge, and hence most likely to become the slaves of routine.
Prudent physicians, whose duty it is to use for the benefit of their patients all curative doses of the remedies, would act judiciously in imitating, to that end, the electric bee, which explores all fields, visits their numberless flowers, compares and judges-since judgment is only comparison-and gathers honey wherever it may. Unfortunately, that is, in the matter of doses, what those physicians do not do who remain fenced within the fields of their experiments, unwilling to see anything outside and therefore unable to judge, since they do not compare the diverse effects of different doses.
Thus allopathic physicians persistently prescribe remedies only in massive doses, while some homoeopathic physicians use only infinitesimal, low, medium or very high dilutions. The exclusiveness of both is often injurious both to the physicians and to their patients. I will explain why.
The remedies prepared by nature or art, like all other v, present the under for conditions-that is to say, in the solid, liquid, gaseous or radiant state. The latter, thus named by the English physicists, Faraday and Crookes, has been called subtle state by Aristotle, and infinitesimal state by Hahnemann.
According to Faraday and Crookes, when matter is in the solid state its constituent molecules touch and are adherent among themselves In the liquid its constituent molecules of matter still touch, but are not adherent. In the gaseous state, is the more molecules of matter are adherent and are more widely separated from all others. In the radiant state the molecules of matter are still more widely separated than they were in the gaseous state.
According to Wm. Crookes, radiant matter constitutes in reality the limit where matter and force seem to shade off into each other. This makes us understand that under certain conditions, if not under all, the less matter, remedies contain the more force they must have. This will be demonstrated to us by the observations which follow. to have had a glimpse or knowledge of similar facts when he describes to us as follows the preparation of his Arcana, which precede the alkaloids of allopathic physicians and the high dilutions of homoeopathic physicians-two preparations with which these ‘Arcana have an air of kinship: Twenty pounds of substance are reduced to one ounce of quintessence, which, however, is in the medicinal portion.
Paracelsus seems to have had a glimpse or knowledge of similar facts when he describes to us as follows the preparation of his : Arcana, which precede the alkaloids of allopathic physicians and the high dilutions of homoeopathic physicians=- two preparations with which these : Arcana have an air of kinship: Twenty pounds of substance are reduced to one ounce of quintessence, which, however, is the medicinal portion. Wherefore the less matter there is the more medicinal virtues-Quo minus corporis est, eo magis virtutis-in medicine. One thing only is necessary: make Arcana, and direct them against diseases. With them one cures apoplexy, paralysis, lethargy, epilepsy, mania and melancholia-diseases against which the drugs of the apothecaries have proved unavailing.
OBSERVATION I
An old man in the Charity Hospital of Lyons had for six months, every night, an attack of fever coincident with frequent calls to maturate. I cured this attack with Natr.mur. 25th-that is to say, with common table salt in the centesimal dilution. And yet during these six months this old man had swallowed in his victuals a quantity of common salt 100,000 times large. And, besides, this old man had taken sulfate of quinine and other febrifuge remedies, prescribed in massive doses by a very learned physician, who knew well the resources of allopathic therapeutics.
An objection may be made that a man will not be poisoned, so as to die, by n infinitesimal dose of Nux vomica, and will be poisoned by a given ponderable dose of that remedy. That is true. But the same ponderable dose, diddle poison for one person will be for another, who has great powers of reaction, and remedy that will cure constipation, sick-headache, paralysis. In the latter case, the curative action of this only ponderable dose of Nux vomica will often last but a short time, while a single dose of his remedy, in the 30th dilution or the 200th, and more still in the 10,000th, will have a much more prolonged curative action. Thus, for example, this single ponderable dose of Nux vomica will be able to cure constipation so as to provoke a few diarrhoeic stools during twenty-six or thirty hours, while a single dose of this remedy, in the 10,000th dilution, in one of my patients, treated without his knowledge, provoked similar stools for eleven days in succession, and might have acted still longer if on the eleventh day there had not, been administered to him Veratr., 3x as an antidote. Even among the high dilutions, the higher they are the more prolonged their action.
For instance, a lady who had an attack of sick-headache every morning was cured for one or two weeks by a single dose of Nux vomica 200th, and for six, eight or twelve months by taking another dose of Nux vomica 10,000th.
The following facts also demonstrate the prolonged action of high dilutions.
A lady, 28 years old, who had for four years been suffering from acne rosacea and whose face had from her infancy, been covered with freckles, took a single dose of Graphites 600th, which at the end of five months caused both the acne and freckles to disappear. Would one ponderable dose of Graph have produced a similar effect
One might consider the curative action of remedies as a movement communicated to the organism upon a given direction. this communicated movement mat be brief, like that impressed upon the intestines by purgatives, during from twelve to twenty-four hours., or very prolonged as in the afore mentioned case, by Graphites 600th, which took five months to transform the skin of the face of this young lady. The duration and consequently the strength of the movement.
Analogous comparative facts may be observed in other cases of communicated motion. For instance, before the invention of gunpowder the besieged had large machines for throwing stones upon the besiegers, who were thus able to slay their enemies at a distance of one hundred yards at the utmost. Nowadays the besieged, with good rifles, could, with a little bullet and a few grams of gunpowder, kill the besieged a thousand yards away. It is here again that the duration and the effect of the communicated motion are in proportion not to the mass of the motor, but to its quality. In the same way that different carbines throw the projectile to a distance of from 50 to 1,200 yards, a single dose of the same remedy, differently prepared, prolongs its action during one, two, four, eight, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty or sixty days.
It seems that the 200th and 10,000th’ dilutions of the remedy act not only much longer, but also more deeply upon the organism than the third or sixth dilutions one same remedy. Hence for the lighter, accidentally morbid states one may administer to the sick person diverse remedies in the third or sixth dilution, and then these lower dilutions will not interrupt the long duration of the action of the 200th or 10,000th dilution. And strange as it may seem, the third or sixth dilution of the remedy is sometimes the best antidote to the 200th or 10,000th dilution of the same remedy, which has acted too strongly upon the impressionable organism.
Still one cannot affirm that the curative action of the remedy s always the more efficacious as it is prescribed in the more infinitesimal dose, or in a more radiant state. To so affirm would be to uphold an error that might be very dangerous for the sick. In many diseases it is better to use remedies not in the 200th or 1000th dilution, but in the third, sixth or twelfth, and at times even in massive nor ponderable doses. Thus I do not know that cases of congestive fever have ever been cured with the 200th dilution of sulphate of quinine, but many have been cured by this remedy administered in doses of one or two grams.
Gallavardin set up a homeopathic Dispensary for the cure of alcoholics, often working in conjunction with priests, and he wrote several books on this subject.
Jean Pierre Gallavardin wrote Psychism and Homeopathy, The Homoeopathic Treatment of Alcoholism, How to Cure Alcoholism the Non-toxic Homoeopathic Way, Repertory of Psychic Medicines with Materia Medica, Plastic Medicine, and articles for The British Journal of Homeopathy, On Phosphoric Paralysis, and he collated the statistics on pneumonia and other cases for the United States Journal of Homeopathy, and he contributed widely to homeopathic publications.