It was my purpose to follow and analyze the statements and arguments of this writer on this important subject, but I find that I cannot do so. His premises consist of citations from allopathic writers, which seem to me to be statements based on observations of the action of drugs in large doses on he sick, and on theoretical deductions from these observations, and which certainly bear little or no resemblance to the pathogeneses of the Materia Medica Pura, on which I have been wont to rely for a knowledge of drug-effects, but to which my colleague rarely refers. His allusions to treatment seem to me to be of a very generic character, based on assumptions of the pathological nature of the disease in question, and consisting of an application of drugs according to a vague and general resemblance of assumed pathological conditions. In all of this I fail to see any allusion to, or any place for, the strict individualization of cases, which is the very essence of sound homoeopathic treatment. In studying these papers, in fact, I hardly realize that I am perusing the works of a practical homoeopathist, according to my conception of Hahnemann’s idea of homoeopathic practice, and I perceive, to my dismay, that I do stand on common ground with the author to the extent necessary to make possible a further discussion of his treatment of the questions at issue.
I must content myself, therefore, with the simple statement that my own observation and experience do not enable me to corroborate Dr. Hale’s statement of the “Law of the Dose,” based on the distinction of primary and secondary symptoms. Where Aconite has been truly indicated by the symptoms of the case, I have seen prompt relief follow the administration of a high potency, given when the patient was in the hot stage, and likewise when in the chilly stage; and in both the effect has appeared in a much shorter time than Dr. Hale’s remarks would lead one to anticipate.
In the treatment both of constipation and of dysenteric diarrhoea by Nux vomica in cases in which the characteristics of Nux vomica were present, the higher potencies have been equally efficient, leaving nothing to be desired, and the same may be said of Veratrum album in diarrhoea and in constipation, when the characteristics of that drug were present.
It may be, and I am inclined to believe, that the law proposed by Dr. Hering may be found to represent the facts; but for its demonstration and its general application in practice, we need a much more complete Materia Medica than has yet been furnished us.
In conclusion of this branch of the subject, I think that no law for the determination of the dose can be deduced from the relation of opposition of contrariety on the basis of which symptoms have been divided into series of primary and secondary.
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'.