DR. WM. GARDINER,
Sir: You say, in your Journal, the last number, page 318, you “wish to deal justly” “nothing further to be published on that subject.” On the same page you allow your own name to be put at the head of a committee to examine the original manuscript of Dr. Hering’s preface, or as an alternative the mean treat of setting New-York pettiforggers upon the first one who has had ability and courage to awake the attention of American Homoeopaths to the danger to which monopolizing and book manufacturing leads our cause. I am willing to lay in the hands of any respectable committee meeting in Philadelphia, at any time.
1. My original manuscript.
2. The verbatim printed copy in the Allg. Hom. Zeitung.
3. The English translation of it as a preface to the Symptomen Codex.
4. A comparison of the translation with the original, pointing out the willful perversions and omissions.
Said committee, according to common sense and custom, cannot have any interested parties members of it, but ought to be appointed by them, and of course only of such physicians as understand the German language. You ought to be the umpire. Is not your Journal the proper organ in which such a report of such a committee ought to be published?
(Signed)
Yours,
CONSTANTINE HERING.
ANTAGONISM BETWEEN HOMOEOPATHY AND ALLOPATHY.
Address, delivered at the semi0annual meeting of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of the State of New-York, Albany, February 10, 1863.
Gentlemen of the Society:
By the request of your president and other officers, I appear before you to perform that duty which, on such an occasion as this, devolves upon the president of the Society, but which the special engagements of that officer, at this season of the year, in New-York, have prevented his fulfilling.
The session of this evening brings to a close the first regular meeting of the Homoeopathic Medical Society of the State of New-York.
The object of this Society is declared to be “the advancement of the science of medicine.”
In these days, when the value of associated labor is so well understood, one might certainly ask, with surprise, “Can it be that, prior to this year, there has existed in the State of New-York no central organization for the advancement of the science of medicine?”
The fact is, there has been a State Medical Society in active operation since 1806. Its object is the same as that of our Society; its organization and its mode of operation are identical with ours.
What, then, is necessity for a second Society? Why should men of the same profession, engaged in similar labors, for a common object, divide their forces, and thereby diminish their efficiency? What is the nature of the antagonism which this division implies, and what is the necessity for its perpetuation? Candid and exhaustive replies to these questions will explain and justify our position of separation from the Old School of medicine. They will, at the same time, sharply define the outlines of that branch of medical science to which we have especially devoted ourselves, and will give us a clear view of the labors which devolve upon us for its advancement and development.
I propose, therefore, to discus this antagonism- first from a historic and then from a philosophical point of view.
Samuel Hahnemann, the great reformer of medicine, was a regularly educated physician, of great learning and very uncommon general culture and literary attainments. In the words of Sir John Forbes, who surely cannot be accused of any partiality for the founder of Homoeopathy: “No candid observer of his actions, or candid reader of his writings, can hesitate for a moment to admit that he was a very extraordinary man, one- whose name will descend to posterity as the exclusive excogitator and founder of an original system of medicine, probably, to be the remote, if not the immediate, cause of more important fundamental changes in the practice of the healing art than have resulted from any promulgated since the days of Galen himself; ** he was undoubtedly a man of genius, and a scholar; a man of indefatigable industry and of dauntless energy.” (1 British and Foreign Medical Review, xli., 1846).
Hufeland, the Nestor of orthodox medicine in Germany, in calling attention to an essay published by Hahnemann, in his Journal, in 1801, speaks of him as “one of the most distinguished physicians in Germany.”
This being the estimate in which Hahnemann was held by his most distinguished contemporary (Hufeland) and by his most learned critic (Forbes), both of whom, be it observed, were opposed to the medical reform which he had instituted, let us glance at this professional career.
After practitioner in various localities and positions, with such success and acceptance as to acquire the reputation which Hufeland records of being “one of the most distinguished physicians in Germany,” Hahnemann tells the profession, in several essays on medical subjects, that he has become so deeply convinced of the uncertainty of medical practice, and of the positive injurious effects of many methods in common use among physicians at that day, that at length he really doubts whether his patients would not, in many cases, have thriven as well, or better, without his aid as with it.”
This conviction of the uncertainty of medicine, this suspicion of the injury which it sometimes inflict on the patients, were not peculiar to Hahnemann. Girtanner and several others, before his day, expressed them. Sir John Forbes, from whom we have already quoted, says, in 1846, of the medical method of our own time, “In a considerable proportion of diseases it would fare as well, or better, with patients, in the actual condition of the medical art, as more generally practiced, if all remedies, at least all active remedies, especially drugs, were abandoned.” “Things (in medicine( have arrived at such a pitch, that they cannot be worse; they must mend or end.” (1 British and Foreign Medical Review, xli, 1846.) Such views have been repeatedly expressed by members of the medical profession in this country.
Hahnemann has said nothing severe nor more sweeping than this condemnation of practical medicine, by the late head of the profession in England.
But what did Hahnemann do when the become convinced of the inutility and mischievousness of the current medical methods? Did he continue a routine practice for the sake of “making a living?” B\No! like a noble, honest man, he refused to make a pretense of curing where he believed he did not cure. He relinquished the practice of medicine and devoted himself to the collateral science of chemistry and to literary labors. But his mind was ever at work on the great question of the improvement of the practice of medicine, for he was “sure that the Creator had not left His creatures without a means of succour from the pangs and ravages of disease.”
Thus intent on this subject, he could not fail to remark that although the prevailing treatment of diseases was, in general, blind and at least ineffectual to cure, yet there were certain remedies which were used in the case of certain diseases with almost uniformly happy result-or at least with such results as left no room for doubting that in these cases, at least, real cures were effected. This he had observed to be the result of the use of mercury in certain cases, not unfrequently encountered by medical men; but his attention was especially called to the fact in connection with Peruvian bark, the febrifuge properties of which had, during the latter part of the preceding century, become well established and highly prized on the continent.
“If,” he thought to himself, “if the number of these specific remedies could be vastly increased, and if some system could be discovered in accordance with which we could ascertain their exact properties and could know before-hand in what cases of disease they would be applicable, then indeed would the uncertainties of medical practice be removed, then might we anticipate as great success in the treatment of all diseases as we not attain in the treatment of a few for which we have specifics.”
This desire for specific was not original with Hahnemann. It has been expressed before his day by Bacon and by Boyle. Sydenham had longed for them in expressions almost pathetic in their hopelessness. But Hahnemann, with his “dauntless energy and indefatigable industry,” went to work to discover this system.
A casual observation in Cullen’s Materia Medica gave him the clue to his discovery, as the falling apple did to Newton, and the swinging chandelier in the church at Pisa, to Galileo. From this observation it occurred to him that provings of drugs upon healthy persons might furnish a knowledge of their specific properties, and that the administration of drugs in cases presenting symptoms similar to those which the drug produces in the healthy, subject, might be the law of the application of specifics.
He sought throughout the whole medical literature of ancient and modern times for instances bearing upon this subject, and he collected a large mass of evidence corroborating his speculations.
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'.