During the last year of his residence in Konigslutter he witnessed a severe epidemic of scarlet fever, and, made this glorious discovery of the prophylactic power of the belladonna in this disease, which alone would have sufficed to make his make his name remembered with gratitude by posterity. The mode of his discovery of this prophylactic is a true specimen of inductive philosophy, much more so than Jenner’s somewhat similar discovery of the prophylactic power of vaccination. Knowing the power of belladonna to produce a state similar to the first stage of scarlet fever, he used it with great success at that period of the disease, and whilst his mind was occupied with the great remedial virtue he observed it to possess, a circumstance occurred which led him to believe that it was not only a curative, but a preventive medicine for that malady.
In a family of four children, three sickened with the disease, but the fourth, who was taking belladonna at the time for an affection of the finger-joints, escaped, though she ad heretofore been always the first to take any epidemic that was doing about. An opportunities soon presented itself of putting its prophylactic powers to the test. In a family of eight children, three wee seized with the epidemic and he immediately gave to the remaining five children belladonna in small doses, and, as he had anticipated, all these five escaped the disease, notwithstanding their constant exposure to the virulent emanations from their sick sisters. The epidemic presented him with numerous opportunities of verifying this protective power of belladonna.
The mode he adopted of drawing the attention of physicians to his newly discovered prophylactic was singular. He announced for publication a work on the subject, and advertised for subscribers, promising to publish the work which should reveal the name of the prophylactic, as soon as he got 300 subscribers, and in the mean time supplying to each subscriber a portion of he prophylactic, and demanding his opinion as to its efficacy. This unusual proceeding, which might be justified on the plea that Hahnemann wished to have the prophylactic tested more impartially than it would have been had he at once revealed the name of it, gave rise to a; shower of bitter calumnies from his colleagues, who made little or no response to his offer, but loaded him with accusations of avarice and selfishness. (See Hahnemann’s paper on Professional Liberality, Lesser Writings, p. 417.) Hahnemann revenged himself on his calumniators, by publishing his pamphlet on scarlatina, Lesser Writings, p. 425. wherein he revealed the name of the prophylactic, and the facts that led to its discovery.
I need not remind you that the united testimony of almost all Homoeopathic practitioners, and of the most distinguished of the allopaths, was favorable to the truth of Hahnemann’s discovery. Indeed, nearly twenty years afterwards, whilst Hahnemann was residing in Leipzic, some physicians of that town complacently recommended the employment of belladonna as a prophylactic for scarlet fever, as if they had just made the discovery, without alluding in the slightest way to the claims of the venerable sage in their midst, although they could scarcely fail to be known to them. (In 1826 Hufeland wrote a work entitled The prophylactic Power of Belladonna in Scarlet Fever, in which he justly assigns to Hahnemann the merit of its discovery, and brings an overwhelming mass of testimony in support of it.) But I am anticipating.
The hostility of the apothecaries and physicians of Konigslutter drove him from that town in 1799. He purchased a large carriage or wagon, in which he packed all his property and family, and with a heavy heart bade adieu to Konigslutter, where fortune had at length begun to smile open him, and where he had found leisure and opportunity to prosecute his interesting discoveries. Many of the inhabitants whose lives he had even saved by the discoveries of his genius during that fatal epidemic of scarlet fever,
accompanied him some distance on the road to Hamburg, whither he had resolved to proceed, and at length, with a blessing for his services, and a sigh fro his hard lot, they bade him God speed.
And thus the journeyed on with all his earthly possessions, and with all his family besides him. But a dreadful accident befell the melancholy cortege. Descending a precipitous part of the road, the wagon was overturned, the driver thrown off his seat, his infant son so injured that he died shortly afterwards, and the leg of one of his daughters fractured. He himself was considerably bruised, and his property much damaged by falling into a stream that ran at the bottom of the road. With the assistance of some peasants they were conveyed to the nearest village, where he was forced to remain upwards of six weeks on his daughter’s account, at an expense that greatly lightened his not very well-filled purse. At length he got in safety to Hamburg, but finding little or nothing to do here, he removed to the adjoining town of Altona. He did not, however, better himself by the change, and not long after removed to Mollen in Lauenburg; but the longing for his fatherland which he describes as being so strong in him, soon drew him once more to Saxony.
He planted himself in Eulenburg, but the persecution of the superintendent physician of that place drove him thence after a short sojourn. He wandered first to Machern, and thence to Dessau, where we find him in 1803 publishing a monograph on the effects of coffee; (Lesser Writings, p.450) which he considered as the source of many chronic diseases, and against the use of which, as a common beverage, he inveighed with much the same energy as our own first James did against tobacco. Previous to this, however, and during his wanderings, he had translated several books from the English, and written various articles on his favorite idea of medical reform in Hufeland’s Journal, denouncing ever more and more energetically the absurdities and errors of ordinary medical practice. One of the most remarkable articles in this style is his preface to a translation of a collection of medical prescriptions, (Ibid., p. 398), published in 1800, which preface is the best antidote to the contents of the work itself. We can imagine his great soul fretting and fuming when the publisher, on whom he then almost entirely depended for subsistence, put into his hands the English original of this notable work, which contained nought but a collection of the abdominal and nonsensical compounds which he had been inveighing against for the last five years.
We can fancy Hahnemann saying, ” Well, sir, if you have no more agreeable work to put me to than this, I will do it; but mark; I stipulate to be allowed to write what preface I choose.” And such a preface it is! the most, marvellous preface surely that was ever written for any book! It is as though he had said, “Reader! you have purchased this book thinking to find therein a royal road to the practice of physic, but you are miserably mistaken to believe there can be any such short cut; skill in practice can only be gained by careful unwearied, and honest study; by having a perfect knowledge of the curative instruments you have to wield, and by an acute observation of he characteristic symptoms of diseases. As for the contents of this book, they are the grossest imposition ever palmed upon man, a confused jumble of unknown drugs — mostly poisons — mixed together in what are called prescriptions, each ingredient of which is dignified by some imposing name that is meant to express the qualities it should possess and the part it should play, but none of which possesses the qualities attributed to it, nor will obey, even in the slightest degree, the orders that are given it. Every prescription contains in it a multitude of anarchical elements that totally disqualify it for any orderly action whatever.
The best counsel I can give you, my simple- minded reader, is to put the main body of this book into the fire; but by all means preserve the preface; it may serve you as a standard for judging of the pretensions of similar pretentious books, of which there be, I am sorry to think, many, in the market just now, but which we shall do our best, with God’s help, to rid the world of.” I do not believe the publisher of this “Arzneischatz,” or “Treasury of Medicines,” would wish to give Hahnemann many more jobs of this kind to do, or if h did, he would doubtless resolve to bargain that no preface should be inserted. Indeed, we find that Hahnemann’s translations came to rather an abrupt termination at this period, for, with the exception of a translation of the Materia Medica of the great Albert von Haller, which he executed in 1806, Hahnemann’s works were henceforward all originals.
The years 1805 and 1806 were eventful ones for the development of the doctrine, and whilst he demolished the time-honoured faith in the medicine of 3000 years, in his masterly little work entitles AEsculapius in the Balance, Lesser Writings, p. 470, the temple of his own system, of which he had hitherto been only laying the foundations, commenced to exhibit some of those fair proportions which we now admire, by the appearance of the first sketch of a Pure Materia Medica Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis, Leipzic, 1805. which he gave to the world in latin, and of that wonderful exposition of his whole doctrine, entitled The Medicine of Experience, Lesser Writings, p. 497. which was published in 1806 in Hufeland’s Journal.
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.