It would indeed be hard enough to recognize a well known disease of fixed character, if all the symptoms were disunited from their natural connections, and the whole complex of symptoms arranged not according to the period of their occurrence, but according to a most artificial, topographical plan, commencing at the head and going down to the feet. Supposing the symptoms of such a common disease as scarlet fever thrown together in this way, who would recognize the disease? Would not every one be disposed to say that the list of symptoms was a confused jumble of contradictory symptoms? And can it be otherwise with medicinal diseases? Should not their description be analogous to that of natural disease? Common sense tells us it should. The symptoms that usher in the disease should first be noted, then the gradual or rapid increase of the disease, as exhibited in sensations and functions, in objective and subjective phenomena, and lastly, the symptoms of the decline of the malady and the after -effects it leaves behind it, if any. It is the extremely defective or rather unfortunate arrangement of the symptoms of the medicinal disease by Hahnemann that first led the Austrian Proving furnished us with life-like portraitures of medicinal diseases, by the aid of which we can perceive the meaning of much that was obscure in Hahnemann’s records. It is the same object that has guided the editors of the Hahnemann Materia Medica in the selection and arrangement of the symptoms of those medicines of the Materia Medica which have been elucidated by recent original provings; and though they are perfectly well aware that their labours will enable the student and practitioner to acquire a knowledge of the physiography of the medicinal disease much more easily than he could from a much more lengthened study of the bare records of Hahnemann’s Materia Medica. To give you an example of the complete pictures of medicinal diseases to be found in the new Materia Medica, I shall read at random one of the observations to be found under the section “chest,” in the pathogenesy of aconite.
“After twenty-four drops, burning on the sides of the tongue, dryness of the palate and constriction in the oesophagus, not relieved by drinking cold water. Constant flow of saliva into the mouth, frequent rising from the stomach, and no appetite. Vertigo when walking or driving; the tongue felt like leather; great prostration; heat of skin; flying shoots along her sternum and betwixt the ribs; sleep restless, broken, unrefreshing; though he drank much during the night he made no water; next morning he passed red urine, with burning along the urethra; he felt better after breakfast, but soon afterwards, when in the open air, he had a severe attack of rigor over the back and chest, followed by great hat (with headache), which the least movement brought back; there came on violent cough, with painful shooting in different parts of the chest, compelling him always to lie on the back, and preventing him lying on either side; the night was restless; perspiration after midnight. with relief; urine as before. The next day at three p.m. he had another attack of fever; pulse 96; frequent cough, with severe pains from the shock through the chest; expectoration sometimes brownish – red, rust colored. After this he got gradually better.”
Now this medicinal malady, as thus recorded, is intelligible enough, and gives us a perfectly comprehensible idea of he character of the disease produced; but how different would it have been had the various features of the disease been scattered asunder, and inextricably mixed up with other symptoms of totally different maladies (for every medicinal agent is capable of producing several distinct medicinal diseases). Would it not puzzle OEdipus himself to discover the different features of any one disease another among the confused and unconnected humble of several others? Thus in the medicine I have been just speaking of, to wit, aconite, we find the distinct and characteristic symptoms of many inflammatory and other acute disease. Inflammation and congestion of the brain and its membranes, inflammation of the eyes, of the throat, of the larynx, bronchiae, pulmonary tissue, pleura, peritoneum, liver, heart, etc.; besides fever, idiopathic and symptomatic, tic, and other neuralgic affections. If the symptoms of all these diseases are disconnected from their natural attachments, and arranged under the head of the several organs where they are observed, will they not present a hopeless jumble and a disheartening confusion? And yet such is a plan Hahnemann has adopted. He has given us the index only, but suppressed the book itself; for his arrangement is scarcely a bit more scientific, thought it may be more serviceable; than if he had arranged the symptoms according to the letters of the alphabet with which they commenced. No wonder we find contradictory symptoms occurring under each organ; for must not the symptoms, say of the urinary secretion, differ according as the main seat of the inflammatory affection is the liver or the kidneys, the brain or the bronchiae? And so it is with the other symptoms of the other organs. It is not only unscientific but absolutely false to call such contradictory symptoms either primary and secondary or alternating actions of the medicine. Each proving must be considered for itself as an individuality, and to me its is astonishing that Hahnemann, who insisted so much on individualizing diseases and of tracing each case most carefully through all its symptoms, not only of the present but of the past, even in the case of epidemic and other diseases of fixed or specific character, should have so far lost sight of his own principle as to have mixed up a random, as it were, all the symptoms of the several different disease producible by each medicine, without giving us any clue to the discovery of the individualities contained in this precious hotch-potch.
It will be remembered that Hahnemann states in his latest writing that large doses are apt to produced secondary actions, (Organon.(Aphorism cxii, cxxxvi) but that from small and moderate doses none but primary actions ensue.(Ibid., Aphorism Ixvi., cxiv., cxxxvi).
Now he defines primary action to be the product of the medicinal influence and vital force conjointly, but belonging principally to the former, and the secondary action is, he says, the reactions to the vital force against the medicinal influence. (Ibid, Aphorism Ixiii). Now, if such be the case, it is not at all apparent why there should be no reactions against the often (as is alleged) powerful action of the influencing agent, if given in a small dose, whereas such reaction occurs when the dose of the influencing agent happens to be rather large. Is it not evident that by this statement he wished particulate to shelve altogether his former theory regarding primary and secondary actions, while at the same time he sought to recommend the employment of small doses in preference to large for pathogenetic purposes?.
Though we might admit the occurrence of primary and secondary symptoms, in the sense of idiopathic and symptomatic, in the proving of one and the same individual, if would be obviously absurd to call the symptoms of one individual secondary to those of another, as Hahnemann has done. As an example of this I may refer you to the pathogenesy of cinchona, where he states that the symptom, “increase of the catamenial discharge, observed by himself, is primary action, and “suppression of the catamenia,” observed by Raulin, is secondary action. And in like manner it would be equally wrong to call the symptoms observed in two different provers alternating actions, though this too, Hahnemann has done occasionally. Thus, for instance, the symptoms “acceleration of the catamenia,” observed by Bergius, and “retardation of the catamenia,” observed by himself, are stated to be alternating actions. I will give only one other example of this from the pathogenesy of pulsatilla. There the symptom, “shuddering almost without rigor, so that the hair bristled, with anxiety and oppressed feeling,” observed by Hornburg, is stated to be an alternating action with “violent rigor, then a mingled sensation of internal heat and shuddering, followed by general burning heat, with very rapid pulse and very rapid, deathly, anxious respiration, “which was observed by Hahnemann himself. It seems to me that as, as I have above shown, the primary and secondary action of the medicine, inn Hahnemann’ s sense of the words, is a groundless distinction, so the employment of the term alternating actions is an unnecessary one. It is sufficient for our purpose that we know that the medicine, in its positive action, has the power of producing opposite symptoms. but I believe, if we knew the exact histories of these medicine disease as they occurred in. the provers, we should find that the opposite symptoms occurred in connection with totally different grounds of morbid action, or at different stages of the medicinal disease.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon practiced at the London Homeopathic Hospital and specialised in Optics.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon wrote Pathogenetic Cyclopaedia 1839, Cure of Pannus by Innoculation, London and Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science 1844, Hahnemann’s Organon, 1849, Lectures on the Theory & Practice of Homeopathy, 1853, Homeopathic Treatment and Prevention of Asiatic Cholera 1847, Hahnemann’s Therapeutic Hints 1847, On Subaqueous Vision, Philosophical Magazine, 1871, The Influence of Homeopathy on General Medical Practice Since the Death of Hahnemann 1874, Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, 2 vols 1878-81, The Human Eye Its Optical Construction, 1878, Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura, 1880, The Sphygmograph, 1882, Materia Medica: Physiological and Applied 1884, Hahnemann the Founder of Scientific Therapeutics 1882, Hahnemann’s Organon 1893 5th Edition, Prolongation of Life 1900, Hahnemann’s Lesser Writing.