Our own experience has led us to very different conclusions, and we have on our side the names of colleagues who, not having deviated from the modes of practice observed by Hahnemann’s early disciples, do not feel compelled to acknowledged and lament, as DR. Drysdale does, that their practice is “not proportionally so successful as was that of Hahnemann’s early followers. (2 New Repertory, Introduction).
How can this direct contrariety of inferences from observation be explained? We have altogether too profound a respect for the observing and reasoning powers of our dissentient friends, to set them a particle below our own! There must be an opposition in some of our methods of observation, or principles of inference. It will be found, we think, in the fact that to the word “disease” we respectively attach very different ideas. We mean by disease the aggregate of those symptoms presented by the sick man, which are characteristic of his particular deviation from a healthy state. The colleagues from whom we differ speak of disease as denoting a definite pathological and pathologico-anatomical change of the function and tissues of some definite organ or system of organs.
In this latter view the patient might present evidence of those pathological changes in the organs and functions of respiration, to which he name pneumonia has been attached. Here then is one disease, pneumonia.
He may also present evidences of those pathological changes of function and tissue in the liver which give rise to the name hepatitis. And here would be another, co-existent disease, hepatitis; and there two pathological and pathologico-anatomical conditions might, we freely admit, from the pathological and nosological stand-point, run their course to resolution or to destruction without so modifying each other at to coalesce or in any way blend or be confounded; for the lungs and the liver can never collide.
But, let it be borne in mind, we are discussing a question of practical medicine and not one of pathology or of nosology.
How would this case look from our stand-point? The patient has, we suppose, dyspnoea, stitching pain in the thorax, hard, dry cough from tickling behind the sternum, scanty and occasionally bloody sputa-headache on the vertex, and sharp fever. He is worse at night; his pains are much aggravated by motion, and are relieved by repose and by warmth.
We have selected Bryonia for him-had previously diagnosticated pneumonia (physical sings aiding or confirming our diagnosis). Now he gets, in the hepatic region, sticking pains, fullness and tenderness; he has bilious vomiting and bitter taste. Aided again by physical signs, we diagnosticate hepatitis, complicating the pneumonia; but the symptoms still indicate Bryonia, and so we continue that remedy.
But, we shall be asked, suppose the new symptoms do not indicate Bryonia, but, on the contrary, some other drug, will you no give that other drug for the liver and continue the Bryonia for the pneumonia?
To this we reply that in so far as our observation has taught, us, in such a case the supervening of these new symptoms (of the live, namely) will have so modified the whole organism, including the diseased respiratory organs, that Bryonia will no longer be indicated by any symptoms; but the aggregate of characteristic symptoms of the entire sickness will now indicate some other remedy which will apply to and will cover the whole morbid state of that individual.
Here we are again at issue. Dr. Drysdale and his friends appeal to certain
observation which we will now briefly discuss.
In the discussion which followed the reading of Dr. Drysdale’s paper in the British Homoeopathic Society, Dr. Russell took the same ground as Dr. Drysdale. He said: “That two morbid specific actions could occur simultaneously in the human body, and each pursue its course without arresting or modifying the other, is a proposition entirely at variance with the opinions of the old pathologists who flourished before the time of Hahnemann. ** It is of great importance to us to know whether this pathological doctrine be in accordance with the larger experience and observation to which we now have access.”
We could hardly have two diseases more specifically distinct than typhus and small-pox, yet, in the following narrative, we have a description of the two running their course, side by side, without either interfering with the other”. The case occurred in the London Fever Hospital, and is quoted by Dr. Murchison.
Dr. Russell proceeded to say: “There are many instances of a similar kind on record, and we must frame our theories so that they shall embrace this new category of cases. Suppose we encounter a case, and there are such on record, of a combination of scarlet fever and of typhus, how are we to deal with it? Are we to engage only one of the two destroying agents, and let the other alone until the first be entirely subdued? If we believe it is impossible for two medicinal actions to proceed pari passu in the animal economy, this is the rational course to pursue, and the one recommended by Hahnemann!” (This is an inexcusably lax statement. Hahnemann nowhere ever recommended that we should make only a part of the patient’s ailment the basis of our choice of a remedy; he always strongly insisted on our considering the “totality of the symptoms,” and this would include both scarlet fever and typhus).
But, if two entirely different natural morbid processes can co-exist in the human body without the one affecting the development of the other, what reason is there why there may not be two artificial simultaneous series of morbid phenomena, each equally independent of the other? If scarlet fever, if if small- pox, can each run its course, while at the same time typhus is doing so likewise, why may not Belladonna and Arsenicum each run their course when given in alternation.” (1 Annals British Homoeopathic Society, xvii., p. 399 et seq.)
In reference to this last question, we may ask, would Dr. Russell expect to get pure symptoms of any drug if it were proved simultaneously with another drug; would be believe that the two drug-diseases would run an independent, simultaneous course in a prover? Would he practically believe it by consenting to rely upon a materia medica pura made up in this way? Or, which is the same thing, would he trust to a materia medica composed of the results of an artificial (drug) disease running “an independent course simultaneously” with ” a natural disease?” In other words, would he trust provings made on sick persons?
We know he would not; for he is one of those who reject or suspect the provings of many of our most valuable drugs, because symptoms observed on the sick are included in the list, or because the proves were not careful enough to exclude other morbific or toxic agents while proving.
But this inconsistency aside, let us take notice that in these remarks, and in this citation of a case of the co-existence of two diseases, DR. Russell speaks altogether from the stand-point of the pathologist and nosologist, and not at all from that of the practical physician-the stand-point of therapeutics. He thinks he has proved his case if he has established, what nobody is disposed to deny, viz., that two nosological abstractions, called by distinct names (to wit, scarlet fever and typhus), may co-exist.
Does he forget that nothing is more firmly established in homoeopathic practice than that he “name” which we may feel authorized to give to a sickness in no wise determines our treatment of the sickness? Because we call the sickness typhus, we do not therefore, of necessity, give Arsenicum, or scarlet fever Belladonna! We may as often have to give Arsenic in a case that we should call scarlet fever, and Belladonna in a typhus.
What, then, guides us in selecting a remedy? Nothing save the aggregate of the characteristic symptoms. We might divide and subdivide the symptoms and signs that the sick man presents (including under the designation “symptoms and signs” everything that distinguishes that sick man from himself when not sick) into a dozen nosological groups, each having a distinct name, and yet the aggregate of these symptoms might (and we think it always would) point to one single remedy as corresponding to, and indicated by, the entire morbid state of the sick man.
To prove his case by the argument and instances quoted, Dr. Russell must show that the symptoms of the scarlet fever and of the typhus, respectively, were incompatible in the case cited by him, and they did not combine to present the characteristics of one common remedy.
For this is the point of the whole discussion. No matter how many of the pathological groups which are dignified by the names of distinct diseases may co-exist in a patient, if they be so blended and mutually modified as to indicate, in the aggregate, one single remedy, there can be no call for alternation.
Inasmuch as DR. Russell rests his arguments for alternation on the possible and frequent co-existence of distinct, specific forms of disease, it is incumbent on him to show that these co-existent, distinct forms of disease do not, by their co-existence, modify each other and blend into one harmonious aggregate of symptoms, the characteristics ones of which may be covered by a single remedy. In our experience this has always seemed to be the base, and we shall adduce other evidence to the same effect.
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.