If he have these qualities in a sufficient degree to obtain with certainty the requisite physical and rational signs on which to base a trustworthy diagnosis of pneumonia, his statement of this diagnosis will be sufficient without the details. If he have them not, no details which he might pretend to give would be deserving of the slightest confidence. These considerations annihilate the objection made by Dr. Watzke to cases published by Gross and boenninghausen in the Archiv.
In general, however, it were well to exclude, provisionally at least, all cases of doubtful diagnosis.
While cases demonstrating the value and efficacy of the high potencies were accumulating, a few cases were also published in which, the higher potencies having been used without effect, a lower potency or a crude dose of the same drug effected a cure. Dr. Black relates that in a case of headache Lachesis (30) only produced symptoms of nervous disturbance, while Lachesis (6) effected a cure. Dr. Trinks records a case which had been treated by Hahnemann for nearly two years with Rhus in a higher dilution without effect, and which he himself cured within a few months by repeated doses of the mother tincture of Rhus.
The angry controversy was brought to a temporary close by Dr. Trinks’ public letter to Dr. Stens, in which he states: “I was born a skeptic. As to the wonder cures (cures by the high potencies) published in the journals, I can only say, I do not believe a word of them” “Non credo quia impossible est,” seems to be the creed of Dr. Trinks-the impossibility consisting in a mere assumption, on his part, that such preparations cannot possess any power. This same argument- “non credo” may, with equal force, be urged by the allopathists against the first or third dilutions, which Dr. Trinks is in the habit of using.
The argument proves too much. If Dr. Trinks may dismiss with “I don’t believe it,” the testimony of those who advocate the high potencies, on the same grounds may these reject his accounts above referred to, of the cases in which he alleges that the lower potencies were efficacious where the higher had failed.
But the opponents of the high potencies were not content with seeking to invalidate the testimony of the advocates of these preparations. Some of them presented records of case in which they had made unsuccessful trails of the high potencies. Of these, many were no doubt made in good faith, and must be accepted as evidence that there are cases in which the high potencies fail of cure. But the majority of these records are like those of Dr. Watzke, referred to by him, in the Oesterreichische Zeitschrift, vol.ii., where he says, the patients on whom he tried the high potencies suffered for most part from diseases in which there was little reason to expect a favorable result from any remedy, in whatever dose, for, he says, they were cases of “dissolving pulmonary tubercle, of fungoid tumor of the brain, of cerebral and pulmonary apoplexy, of spinal paralysis, of chronic hydrocephalus, valvular insufficient of the heart, of fibrous tumor of the uterus, etc., etc.
Yet, no doubt, Dr. Watzke is one of those who would exclaim against the unfairness of Andral in pretending to test Homoeopathy in the Paris hospital, by giving a single dose of a homoeopathic remedy to a patient laboring under incurable disease!
Dr. Watzke himself, though so bitterly opposed to the advocates of high potencies, is constrained to state in his resume of the proving of Natrum muriaticum, in the fourth volume of the Austrian Journal, “I am, alas! I say, alas! for I would much rather have upheld the larger doses which accord with current have upheld the larger doses which accord with current views-I am compelled to declare myself for the higher dilutions. The physiological experiments made with Natrum muriaticum, as well as the great majority of the clinical results obtained therewith, speak decisively and distinctly for these preparations.” This is strong language from an avowedly unwilling witness!
The conclusion to which an impartial estimate of the evidence concerning the high potencies, up to the year 1850, would lead, is well and justly expressed by a writer in the British Journal of Homoeopathy, vol, v., p. 154:
“1. The high potencies do act. “2 They act sometimes very energetically. “3 They often act curatively with surprising rapidity. “4 They sometimes cure where the lower dilutions have failed-though the evidence on this point is scanty.”
The same writer gives the following points as still requiring to be proved:
“1. That the higher are always to be preferred to the lower dilutions; or that they are generally to be preferred to them.
“2. That they will oftener succeed in curing than the lower.”
To these points may be added the question which at that time was still an open questions, viz., whether the higher potencies were applicable and trustworthy in acute as well as in chronic diseases.
During the last twelve years a large mass of evidence of a most interesting and conclusive character has been accumulated on this subject. Of so much of this as was furnished by European observers, I proceed now to give a brief summary. Inasmuch as the question has been the subject of somewhat earnest personal controversy among ourselves, and “scars may yet be tender,” I prefer to pass by, for the present, with a few trifling exceptions, all that has been contributed by American practitioners. I shall pass over also all endeavors that have been made to explain or to limit by hypothetical reasoning on physiological premises, the action of the high potencies. The question in purely a practical and experimental one.
One assumed explanation, however, of the action of dynamized remedies should be noticed, inasmuch as it will enable us to state distinctly what we mean by a higher potency.
It has been alleged that, admitting that an apparent development of curative power does result from the potentizing process in the case of some drugs at least, such as Silex, Gold, Natrum muriaticum, etc., this is simply because this process renders soluble these substances which, in the crude state, are insoluble, or that it reduces the size of their particle to such an extent that these particle are capable of entering the smallest blood-vessels, and o thus coming into contact with the diseased tissue and of acting directly upon it. This curative power which is pretended to be developed by potentization is, they say, simply a facility of action produced by minute subdivision.
Hypothetical explanation does not alter facts. If, however, the above were the sole explanation of the action of potentized remedies, then it should result that the highest development of the curative power should be reached in that development of the curative power should be reached in that dilution in which the particles have been reduced to a size appreciably less than that of a blood corpuscle. And, indeed, this ground has been taken by some writers. Now, arithmetical calculation, as well as microscopic observation, fixes upon the third centesimal dilution as that in which the above degree of subdivision has unquestionably been attained. If this view were correct, then, dilutions higher than the third should not display a curative power; or if they do display such power, it should not be in any case superior to that of the third dilution.
Now, if it should chance to result from actual, incontrovertible experiment, that potencies higher than the third do display, with rare exceptions, a great curative power than the third or lower potencies, this superiority must be directly attributable to the process of potentization.
I deem it right, therefore, to call all those potencies above the grade of that of which the action admits a mechanical explanation “the higher potencies.” The term will apply, in this view, to all above the third centesimal.
In 1850 Drs. Wurmb and Kaspar took charge of the Leopoldstadt Hospital, in Vienna. Their views on the subject of the dose were no secret. They had no faith whatever in the higher potencies. They were physicians of much more than ordinary scientific attainments, and of great devolution; and Dr. Wurmb, at least, had few superiors in and exact and thorough knowledge of materia medica. In their “clinical Studies,” published in 1852, they thus express the posological views with which they entered on the charge of the Hospital:
“We have given almost always the thirtieth decimal dilution, and only exceptionally a higher or a lower dilution.** We propose to adhere to this dilution for two years longer, then to give another dilution for an equally long period, and finally to give for a similar period still another dilution. such experiments as these are indispensable to the solution of the question of the dose, but manifestly they are valid only in the case of disease with regard to which the preliminary question, What can Nature do, and what can Art? has already been definitely answered, and in favor of the latter?”
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'.