In his most recent work on homoeopathy, (Homoeopathy Fairly Represented.) Professor Henderson endeavours to turn the tables on our opponents by showing that the doctrine of the itch-origin of chronic diseases is essentially an allopathic doctrine and was taught long before Hahnemann was born by some of the most illustrious lights of old medicine. He tries also to show that Hahnemann’s doctrine did not attribute the origin of chronic diseases to itch, but that his term psora included a large number of different cutaneous diseases, and that the whole doctrine is nearly identical with that modern revival of humoralism which is professed as their pathological creed by some of our most eminent modern authorities.
There is a paper in the sixth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, to which I would again call your attention, on the subject of psora. The author believes the itch to be caused by the acarus alone, and is opposed to the idea of that insect being the bearer of any itch-virus, for if it were so, and if the disease depended upon a virus, then we should expect to find that nearly the same length of time was required for its development in all individuals, which is far from being the case, as the period of “incubation” is from two to twelve or fourteen days. He might have added, as a further proof of the insect-origin of the itch, that the period of incubation is about double in winter what it is in summer. The experiments of Hebra are also, he thinks, conclusive on this point. As regards the driving-in of itch, it would be as impossible to do this as to drive lice from the outside to the inside of the head, or to drive in a flea- bite.
If, however, the irritation caused originally by the acari has become general and the whole surface of the skin become sympathetically affected, then it is likely that the sudden stoppage of the morbid cutaneous action may light up disease in organs with which the skin is connected by sympathy. This sympathetic union of the skin with other organs renders every important change in it apt to affect such organs. If for a length of time the skin has been the seat of certain morbid actions, which in some degree destroy its capacity for serving its pathological uses, to counteract the mischief that would arise from the non-performance of these actions, other organs must do its work vicariously. If now the integrity of the skin be suddenly restored, then the balance of functions will be as much deranged by the return of the proper cutaneous actions as it could have been originally by their sudden suppression of itch is not only possible but probable.
In September, 1851, Dr. L. Simon, jun., read a paper before the French Homoeopathic Congress on the subject of itch. (Journ. de la Soc.Gall.ii.44.) He believes that at the time Hahnemann thought of the psora-theory, Europe was infected with itch to an unprecedented extent; in consequence of the great military operations all over the Continent. He asserts that Hahnemann generalized too much in attributing all chronic diseases to only three miasms. He believes their number to be much greater; besides these three there is probably the gonorrhoea-miasm, the lepra-miasm, the tinea-favosa-miasm, and many others.
In a very well-written and well-thought-out essay, entitled Etude sur les Dartres, (Ibid., iii.6.) Dr. Leboucher gives us his notions of the psora-theory; but, whilst professing the strongest admiration for Hahnemann, he says nothing about the origin of chronic diseases from itch, and merely points out the great connection that often obtains betwixt herpetic and other eruptions and chronic diseases. Another point in which he decidedly, but apparently unconsciously, differs from Hahnemann, is in attributing to his herpetic (Hahnemann’s psoric) vice a great tendency to be transmitted hereditarily, and he cites several interesting examples in support of his views.
As the psora-theory, besides exercising an undoubted influence on Hahnemann’s practice and that many of his followers, not only with respect to the dose but even the selection of the remedy, has been confessedly a weak point of the Hahnemannic doctrines, which has been quickly perceived and eagerly attacked by our adversaries, it behoves us to make a most patient and critical inquiry into its truth or falsity, and if defensible to provide our-selves with the best arguments in its support; if indefensible, to disconnect it as speedily as may be from an unholy alliance with the irrefragable truths of the homoeopathic doctrine.
The days have long since passed when the feeling of pietas or veneration for the discoverer of the great therapeutic law should have any influence in inducing us to accept all or any of his best days have expected implicit credence to his doctrines without careful investigation on the part of his disciples. His system he first denominated the “Medicine of Experience,” as it emphatically to show that it rested solely on experiment and observation, and in many of his most vigorous and telling writings he appeals to experiment and observation, as the sole foundation for his novel doctrines. If we look for a moment at the number of postulates Hahnemann’s psora-theory involves, we shall perceive the full importance of the doctrine, and we shall find that in many of them it runs counter to received notions.
Thus we shall find that it requires us to believe-
1. That seven-eighths of all chronic diseases are the consequence of an infection with a skin disease, that has been driven off or removed by external treatment.
2. That this skin disease is identical with what we call itch, though it presents itself under many different forms.
3. That every infectious chronic skin disease is scabies, or a degeneration of it.
4. That none of these seven-eighths of all chronic diseases are curable, save by the use of a certain set of medicaments, that were mostly unknown or unused before Hahnemann’s time, consequently that no such chronic diseases were ever cured before the promulgation of his doctrine in 1828.
5. That itch, properly so called, and all the varieties of skin diseases Hahnemann includes under that term are only safely curable by internal remedies, and that their treatment by external remedies is fraught with the greatest danger to the patient.
There are many other strange and novel views involved in this remarkable theory, that must have struck you in the course of my observations upon it, which it were useless to recapitulate.
Let us now proceed to an examination of the doctrine itself, and at the same time let us bear in mind that it is not a doctrine coeval with the promulgation of the homoeopathic therapeutic principle, but an after-thought, not developed until thirty-two years later, and it differs not more in the date or its conception than it does in its essential character from the law of similia similibus, so that we may fairly examine it as a thing apart from homoeopathy; and as we might give credence to it, like Autenrieth, Schonlein and others, without being homoeopathists, so we might reject it without losing any of our claims to that title.
It would be easy to show from Hahnemann’s writings before he thought of the psora-theory, numerous cases of the cure of diseases that undoubtedly came under his later definition of psoric diseases, by what are termed apsoric medicines, and some without medicines at all. I need only refer you to his first essay, On a New Principle, for several such cases. The case of colicodynia he published in 1797, and which was permanently cured by a non-antipsoric, veratrum, was undoubtedly what would have been termed by him later a psoric disease. In the same year he published, in his essay entitled Are the obstacles to certainty and simplicity in practical medicine insurmountable? a case of well-marked so-called psoric disease, consisting mainly of what Professor Holloway would term “bad legs of forty years’ standing;” in other words, ulcers on the legs that had lasted for that period, in an old bon-vivant of a colonel, who was accustomed to take a monthly purge, and to wash down his full meals with considerable potations of spirits. In this case he made no alteration whatever in the diet, and did not even forbid the monthly purge. The sole treatment consisted in wrapping up the legs in a flannel roller, immersing them daily for a few minutes in cold water, and afterwards dressing them with a weak solution of corrosive sublimate. This old gentleman, whom the later lights shed on pathology by the psora-theory would have inevitably condemned to die of apoplexy or some other horrid disease, under such irrational treatment, wonderful to relate, got well, and still more wonderful, remained so for many years, during which Hahnemann, says he, had an opportunity of observing him.
Another case of chronic disease, paralysis of an arm “of five years’ hanging,” is stated by Hahnemann to have been cured by immersion in ice-cold water only.
It is a remarkable fact that Hahnemann, in his first essay, On a New Principle, published in 1796, proposes to apply his system, then innocent of any psora-theory and of all antipsorics, to the cure of chronic diseases, consequently, according to later lights, psoric diseases, only. From these and many other familiar instances it is obvious that diseases corresponding to Hahnemann’s psoric diseases were cured by Hahnemann before the psora-theory was thought of, and without the use of antipsorics.
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.