2. We know of no clear distinction between acute and chronic disease on which to base a difference in treatment. Indeed no difference whatever, unless it be one analogous to that which Hahnemann laid down viz.: that chronic diseases are based on the awakening of miasms that had hitherto lain dormant in the system.
For instance, is scarlatina an acute disease? Assuredly it is so regarded. Yet, on the third day, scarlatina often shows that it has awakened and ingrafted itself upon the scrofulous (or psoric?) taint in the patient’s constitution and then, surely, it becomes typically chronic. This is an example of what we see happen in all forms of disease. It prevents an available distinction between acute and chronic diseases.
We can assure our correspondent that it is safe and advantageous to strictly follow the Hahnemannian rule about the repetition of the dose in acute no less than in chronic diseases. But let us anticipate a possible confusion in his mind. Some writers Dr. Drysdale we are surprised to see among them-seem to think that Hahnemann, when he said, “Wait till the first dose shall have exhausted its action,” meant to say, “Do not repeat the dose until that period shall have elapsed which I have indicated in the Materia Medica as the duration of action of each drug.” This period for some drugs is several days, for others several weeks or even months. We do not so understand him. The duration of action of a remedy on the healthy subject (prover) furnishes no criterion of the duration of its action on the sick. Again, the duration of its action on one sick person furnishes no criterion of the duration of its action on another sick person. Surely the vital processes are much more rapid in acute pneumonia than they are in tuberculosis. Is it not probable that the duration of action of a dose of medicine would be shorter in the former than in the latter?
We suppose Hahnemann meant as follows: “If amelioration follows a dose of medicine, do not repeat the dose until the amelioration ceases to progress, Then, if the symptoms be the same as before, though mitigated in severity, repeat the dose. If the symptoms be different, study the case anew and make another selection of remedy.” It is in this sense that we have understood and the we apply Hahnemann’s rule. Not pretending that we do not often, through errors of judgment, infringe it, we are sure that whenever we do so, misfortune follows, and that in proportion to our faithfulness, so is our success.
In respect of the repetition of doses, as well as the form of the prescription, we have no difficulty with our patients. Patients are like soldiers; they believe in a man who believes in himself. We say this in all humility, for, in a matter of science, belief in one’s self is faith in the laws one has under-taken to carry out in practice. And if the physician show confidence in his methods, his patients will yield themselves implicity to his guidance. The prejudice in favor of large and m any doses is a relic of past ages, when the practitioner was paid, not for his skill and personal services, but for the medicines he furnished, a barbarous usage, which, along with slavery, we received from our British progenitors. Unlike them, we have discarded the former but not the latter.
4. If you use pellets, do you consider them perfectly reliable? Assuredly, or else we would not use them. We medicate them ourselves.
And, how many constitute a dose? If, properly medicated, one is as good as one hundred. As there is a possibility that, in medicating several thousands at one operation, a pellet here and there may fail to get saturated, we usually give about four to six. We use the smallest pellets as most easily and surely medicated.
5. Do you alternate the high potencies, or do you rely upon the single remedy?
Here again our friend confounds a principle and quantity. If it be right and advantageous to alternate the low, it is right and advantageous to alternate the high potencies. But, in fact, we do not alternate at all. We always rely on the single remedy at one time. Dr. Drysdale says that everybody alternates, and, therefore, there must be some necessity for the practice. But his illustrations are so far fetched, and his definition of alternation is so contrary to the conceptions which all other homoeopathicians, from Hahnemann down, have had on the subject, that, notwithstanding our respect for Dr. Drysdale, we must repeat, in the very face of his learned paper, that we do not alternate.
Our understanding of the practice of alternation, and our objections to it were stated, as well as we are able to state them, in the American Homoeopathic Review, June, 1863, vol. iii., No. 12. (1 1See “Alternation of Remedies,” in this book.).
We are opposed to it in theory, and we adjure it in practice. It is an abominable heresy. As a shot-gun maims where the rifle would kill, so alternation may change and modify and main the disease, but it never does nor can effect the clean, direct and perfect cure that a single remedy, exactly homoeopathic, will accomplish. As a relic of the polypharmacy which has been the stumbling-block of the Old School, we loathe it. As a refuge of the careless prescriber and slothful student, we despise it. As an anomaly in homoeopathic practice, a fatal obstacle to progress in the clinical portion of our Materia Medica, we deplore it.
6. Do you believe that the high potencies, from your own experience in the use of them, and from what you have beheld in the practice of others, are far superior in all respects to the law preparations as remedial agents?
An affirmative answer is involved in the statement that we use the high in preference to the low preparations. For details we refer again to the article which prompted our correspondent’s letter. Personally we have suffered, and do now suffer, from chronic organic disease, and from occasional very violet acute attacks. We always use the high potencies in these cases, preferring them to the low. We use them in our family and among our friends. We use them in general practice. Many of our friends and patients, non-professional persons, know the fact and freely say that they and their children are more speedily cured by the high than by the low potencies.
N.B. The imaginations of our friends aforesaid are not more lively than those of the average of other people. Indeed, they are plain, matter-of-fact persons, possessing much common sense, but, for the most part, no genius. They prefer high potencies.
And now, having replied in detail to the queries of our correspondent, let us add a few remarks which we beg him to receive in good part.
To change the aspect of a case, to cause the original symptoms to be supplanted by other symptoms, this is no more a cure than “a strategic change of base” is a “victorious campaign.” Yet this may be effected by repeated doses of a drug in a low potency, whether the drug be strictly homoeopathic to the case or not. And a succession of such changes and supplantings may be effected, day after day, until finally the patient gets well or nearly so. Meanwhile the patient may be amused by the varieties which each day brings forth, and if he know nothing of a true homoeopathic cure, but have heretofore had only the heroic treatment, he may fancy he has been doing finely.
Now, in this way, with low potencies, a practitioner may do quite a business on a very slender capital of knowledge.
Not so if he use the high potencies. With these no change is effected in the case unless the remedy have been strictly homoeopathic to the case. They are like the rifle-ball if they hit, they kill; if not, there is no record of the shot. There can be no good luck from scattering.
Now it will be perceived that the question of cures with high and low potencies is not merely a question of potencies, and our friend’s trial will not be a fair one unless he make sure that his selection of the remedy in each case in which he tries the high potencies is strictly homoeopathic. If he make sure of this
and be correct in it, then let him go on in confidence with his experiment. We bid him God-speed.
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'.