Here is the plan of an experiment which, if faithfully carried out, gives promise of some very conclusive data on the subject of the dose. Such questions as this require for their solution a multitude of instances such as can hardly be gathered in private practice. But a hospital affords an appropriate and sufficient field for their collection. The hospital of Dr. Wurmb is the only one which has been devoted to such uses.
Before the expiration of the three periods, of three years each, involved in the plan as above stated, Dr. Kaspar was succeeded by Dr. Martin Eidherr, who has published in the Oesterreichische Zeitschrift, for 1862, the result of the ten years’ experiment.
It seems that in 1860 the Austrian Homoeopathic Society of Vienna proposed as a subject for consideration the question of the dose, inviting all homoeopathists of all countries to take part in the discussion. A large number of responses, both verbal and written, were made to this invitation, some of which are published in the Austrian Journal, for 1862. Dr. Eidherr, the Editor of the Journal, remarks: “These discussions have, as is well known, led as yet to no positive result, because they rest exclusively on subjective grounds. While some record most brilliant cures effected only by the higher dilutions, others narrate similar cases cured only with the lower. Consequently, the society regards the question as still an open one and calls for further communications on the subject.”
At this point it was suggested that the material in the shape of clinical records which had been for ten years accumulating in the archives of the Leopoldstadt Hospital might, if collated, throw some further light on the subject.
Dr. Eidherr undertook the task. He resolved to confine his investigations to a single disease, pneumonia (which by the way is very prevalent in Vienna), for the reason that the diagnosis of this disease is easy, and that, by means of the physical sign, its course and progress and decline may be more accurately followed and observed than is the case with many other acute diseases.
During the ten years, from 1850 to 1859 inclusive, all cases in the Leopoldstadt Hospital had been treated for the first three years with the thirtieth decimal dilution, for the second period of three years with the sixth, and for the remaining four years with the fifteenth decimal dilution. It was proposed to compare the results of the treatment of pneumonia during these three periods.
But, in order to avoid a fallacy in drawing conclusions from this comparison, it was necessary, first, to inquire whether the Genius Epidemicus was the same for there three periods, or, if not the same, how great an influence, and in favor of which period, did the difference exert?
To meet this preliminary question, Dr. Eidherr made a study, first, of those conditions which favor the origin and spread of pneumonia: and, second, of the prevalence and course of pneumonia in the great General Hospital of Vienna during the same periods of time.
The first section of his treatise consists of tabular statements of the meteorological phenomena of the decennium in question, and of the relations of these phenomena to the prevalence of pneumonia as observed in the great General Hospital of Vienna.
The second section comprises short and succinct accounts of the cases of pneumonia treated in the Leopoldstadt Hospital during the three periods into which, as already stated, the decennium was divided.
The third section contains a statement of the results of the treatment by the different dilution used during the three periods in question, taking into account the modifying influence of the different atmospheric conditions of these periods.
The cases occurring during the three periods of time into which the whole period of ten years was divided, are called by Dr. Eidherr-Groups 1,2,3.
Group No.1, embracing the years 1850, 1851 and 1852 was treated exclusively with the thirtieth decimal potency.
Group No. 2, embracing the years 1853, 1854 and 1855, was treated exclusively with the sixth decimal potency.
A careful estimate of the different meteorological conditions of these epochs leads Dr. Eidherr to the conclusion that during the first epoch the atmospheric conditions were most favorable to the prevalence and severity of pneumonia, and therefore the least favorable for the treatment; during the second epoch least favorable for the spread and severity of pneumonia, and therefore the most favorable for the treatment.
In observing and recording cases of pneumonia in this hospital, the physical signs have always been carefully noted. and records have been made of the following points in the history of each case:
1. The seat of the infiltration.
2. Its duration, reckoned from the time at which it was first perceived to the time at which it was noticed that it began to be resolved (?).
3. The time at which resolution of the infiltration began.
4. The time at which resolution was completed.
5. The time at which all physical signs disappeared.
6. Duration of convalescence.
The comparison between the three groups is made with reference to all of these points.
The results are stated as follows:
Group 1, treated with the thirtieth decimal dilution; The average duration of the infiltration was three days.
The average date of commencing resolution was the third day.
The average date of complete resolution was 4.9 days from the beginning.
The average date of vanishing of the physical signs was, as concerns infiltration, 7.1 days; as concerns the exudation, 12.3 days from the beginning.
The average duration of convalescence was 4.4 days.
Group 2, treated with the sixth decimal dilution during the years 1853, 1854 and 1855.
The average duration of the infiltration was 4.1 days.
REsolution began, on the average, in 3.5 days and was complete in 6.9 days.
The physical signs disappeared, on the average, as concerns the infiltration, in 9.3 days; as concerns the exudation, in 20.5 days.
The duration of the convalescence was, on the average, 5.3 days.
Group 3, treated with the fifteenth decimal dilution, during the years 1856, 1857, 1858 and 1859;
The average duration of infiltration was 3.4 days.
Resolution began in 3.2 days.
It was complete in 6.3 days.
The physical signs disappeared, so far as the infiltration was concerned, in 10.3 days; so far as the exudation was concerned, in 18.1 days.
Average duration of convalescence, 4.8 days.
To recapitulate the above-
The average duration of the infiltration was:
For Group 1, 3.0 days.
For Group 2, 4.1 days.
For Group 3, 3.0 days.
Resolution began:
For Group 1, on the 3d days.
For Group 2, on the 6.9 days.
For Group 3, on the 6.3 days.
The physical signs of the infiltration vanished:
For Group 1, on the 7.1 day.
For Group 2, on the 9.3 days.
For Group 3, on the 10.3 days.
The physical signs of the exudation vanished:
For Group 1, on the 12.3 day.
For Group 2, on the 20.5 day.
For Group 3, on the 18.3 day.
Dr. Eidherr gives also a tabular statement of the average number of days during which each case of each group remained in hospital-that is, the total duration of each case from its reception to its dismissal, as follows:
Group 1, treated with the thirtieth decimal dilution; fifty-five cases were treated; their aggregate resident in the hospital amounted top 680 days; or an average of 11.3 days each.
Group 2, under the sixth decimal dilution; thirty-one cases, 606 days; an average of 19.5 days for each case.
Group 3, treated with the fifteenth decimal dilution; fifty-four cases, and 795 days; an average of 14.6 days for each case.
I now proceed to give as briefly as possible the conclusion to which Dr. Eidherr is led by this careful study of his statistics. He says: “This is the most extensive experiment that has ever been made, bearing on the question of the dose. Its subjects were 107 cases of pneumonia. Each case was the subject of careful investigation. Every imaginable care was taken to obviate every source of fallacy.” The experimenters were not radical homoeopathists. Their prepossessions were rather against the high potencies. I can bear personal testimony to the fact that, in 1851, while the thirtieth dilution was the standard used in the hospital, Dr., Wurmb frequently expressed himself as believing that statistics would decide in favor of lower dilutions. It was not known how statistics had decided until Dr. Eidherr made the analysis from which I have quoted, and which shows that in every point of view action of the thirtieth dilution, in so acute and dangerous a disease as pneumonia, is more certain and more rapid than that of the fifteenth or the sixth dilution, and that the fifteenth is preferable to the sixth dilution-or, to translate the decimal into the centesimal scale, the fifteenth is better than the seventh, the seventh than the third.
Against this record DR. Trinks would raise in vain his cry “non credo.”
If we refer now to the points which were stated in 1850 as still requiring to be proved in relation to the high potencies, we find the third question satisfactorily solved by this experiment in the Leopoldstadt Hospital. For the experiment proves beyond a doubt, that the higher potencies are applicable and trustworthy in acute as well as in chronic diseases.
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'.