Now, as regards the origin of chronic diseases from itch, I think it must be obvious to all who have carefully studied the evidence Hahnemann adduces in support of this his doctrine, that he fails most signally in proving his point. In the first place, his diagnosis of the disease is of the loosest. He treats with contempt the division of skin diseases into different species, so carefully drawn by the dermatologists; and in the ninety-seven instances he takes from allopathic writers of the production of a serious disease after externally treated psora, he includes all manner of skin diseases, many of which have not the slightest claim to be considered of a scabious character. Every cutaneous disease that itches, and when scratched burns, more especially if it can be suspected of being contagious, is identical with itch, according to Hahnemann. I need scarcely point out to you how erroneous this assertion is, and after what I have previously stated, I need scarcely reiterate my belief that itch is essentially a parasitical disease, depending on the acarus scabiei, and the irritation direct and sympathetic it causes in the skin. (In addition to the evidence already alluded to in favour of this opinion, I may refer you to the observations of M. Albin Gras (Journ. des Conn. Medorrhinum, Dec. 1836; Brit. and For. Medorrhinum Rev., vol. iv. p. 513).
He states that he has never found the acarus elsewhere than in cases of itch. He inoculated himself, a fellow-student, and a young woman, by placing acari on the skin, and he states that his own experiments and those of MM. Mouronval and Lugol proved the futility of inoculation from the itch- vesicles. He is, however, of opinion that the acarus exerts its action on the skin by means of a virus, defining that word as “an unknown agent producing great effects by trifling visible action.” On the other hand, Dr. Pentzlin of Wismar regards the acarus as a mere parasite, owing its existence to a generatio oequivoca, and he ascribes the contagious property of the insect not to the animal itself, but to adhering virus. The facts and experiments in the contrary sense, by Drs. Hebra, Gras, Lugol, etc., above cited, are worth any number of theories unsupported by facts, such as this of Dr. Pentzlin’s (Grafe’s and Walther’s Jour., xxiv. 1836; Brit. and For. Medorrhinum Rev., vol. iv. p.514)).
Would I then deny the possibility of the production of secondary diseases of important internal organs from the sudden suppression of itch by ointments and the like external applications? By no means. On the contrary, I have, I believe, witnessed such accidents. In the tenth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy I have detailed a case of acute bronchitis, which I believe to have been brought on by the sudden removal of the itch-eruption. Nor does it tax our credulity too much to suppose that such secondary diseases may occur. An itch of long standing is attended by a great efflorescence, and vesicular and often pustular eruptions over the whole body, how produced it does not in the least signify. By this eruption–1, the normal functions of the skin are in part or wholly interrupted, and other internal organs have to perform its functions vicariously; 2, an extensive morbid screening action is going forward.
When, then, the skin is suddenly restored to its integrity, these two circumstances may each or both conjointly be the cause of derangement of the health of internal organs, and there is a third circumstances that may also contribute to the same event, and that is, the pathogenetic action of the drug contained in the unguent or lotion employed. Thus, then, there are three modes in which the health may be deranged by the ordinary treatment of itch, to which we may add a fourth, viz., the irritation excited in organs connected sympathetically with the skin, by what John Fletcher calls the positive irritation of the return of a diseased part to the healthy state. The observations I have here made with regard to the itch are obviously applicable with equal if not still greater force to all other chronic skin diseases, and we know that the rapid healing up of ulcers and extensive burns is likewise attended with peculiar irritations in internal organs.
A case presented itself to my observation which seems to show that not only natural but artificial skin diseases, even although quite recent, will not bear to be suddenly checked. A party of school- boys were walking away to bathe in a river at some distance from school, and, schoolboy like, some of them began taking off their clothes as they approached the river. One of them, who had stripped himself entirely naked, was pushed by a companion, and fell into a ditch filled with nettles. He was of course stung over from head to foot. Smarting under the pain thus occasioned, he plunged into the cold river, which gave him instant relief, and after staying in a considerable time he was gratified to observe when he came out that all the nettle-stings were gone. However, he soon perceived that his eyesight was much weakened, though it had previously been quite sharp, and this weakness continued to increase, until he has become hopelessly amaurotic. It is a question if the nettle-stinging and its suppression had not something to do with the amaurosis.
I am, then, prepared to go a certain length with Hahnemann, in his psora-theory, in the widest sense of that term, i.e., not confined to the mere disease itch; and I will readily admit that the sudden suppression of many cutaneous diseases will produce derangement of greater or less gravity of internal organs. But this admission does not go nearly the length of Hahnemann’s psora-theory, which would derive all non-venereal chronic diseases from psora. I think one other great error in Hahnemann’s doctrine of chronic diseases is his non-recognition of hereditary maladies. It is a noteworthy fact that many of the homoeopathic writers in this country, and some abroad, are so little acquainted with those doctrines of Hahnemann on which they write, as to state over and over again that Hahnemann’s psora-theory was a recognition of the hereditary nature of many diseases, and they would make it appear that Hahnemann speaks of the psoric taint being transmitted from parent to child, whereas nothing can be farther from Hahnemann’s statements.
Not only does he never in any place speak of hereditary diseases, but he distinctly alleges that every person affected with a non-venereal chronic disease must, at one period of his life, have had the itch at one time or another, however slightly; (Stapf alleges that an individual may contract a chronic psoric internal malady, by touching a person affected with itch, without ever exhibiting the slightest external trace of an eruption! (Arch., x. l, 85, note.) and he argues in a most vicious circle on this point. Certain medicines, he says, cure those chronic diseases that we meet with in persons who have avowedly had the itch, these medicines we term antipsorics; if we succeed in curing chronic diseases with these medicines, in persons whom we cannot ascertain to have ever had the itch, we may, nevertheless, infer that they have at one time had the itch, because we can cure them with antipsorics. What wonder, after such a style of argument on the part of the master, that the disciple Attomyr should say, “We don’t need to ask if the patient has ever had itch; psora is self-evident.”
Few therefore, I think, will dispute the statement that Hahnemann did wrong to overlook hereditary diseases; for it not only stands to reason, but is borne out by innumerable facts, that the faulty organization of the parent will often be transmitted to the child. This is so notorious, that it was perceived in all ages of the world. As in the moral world the sins of the fathers were visited upon their children in the third or fourth generation, so the diseases and defects of the parents were observed to be transmitted to their descendants of as many removes. Thus Aristotle (History of Animals, lib. vii., chap.6.) says:-“From parents who have some part of their bodies defective, children are born deprived of the same parts; for instance, lame children from lame parents; blind children from blind parents.
In general, children are born with the abnormal defects or marks to be found on the bodies of their parents, such as warts and maculae.” Again, Fernel says:- “Parentibus liberi succedunt, non minus morborum quam possessionum haeredes.” In still more recent times- in fact, in our own day-M. Piorry wrote a work On the Hereditary Principle in Diseases. In this work he thus defines the hereditary principle. “It is,” says he, “a disposition, in virtue of which certain physiological or pathological states of the parents are transmitted to the children by the act of generation” (page 6). And again; “To constitute the hereditariness (if I may be allowed to coin a word), it is requisite that the parents communicate to the children an organic state with which they are themselves affected” (page 11). M. Micheal Linz (Traite d’ Hygiene pub.et. privee, vol.i.p. 143.) gives the following definition:- “By hereditariness we understand not the disease itself which the parents have presented, but the disposition to contract it: it is a tendency of the organism to realize, according to the opportunity of age, with the concurrence of exciting causes, the morbid affection, whose principle or virtuality has been communicated to it in the very act of fecundation.” I shall not enter further here on the question of hereditary taints, and the transmission of diseases and tendencies to disease from parent of offspring; the fact has been, as I before observed, noticed and admitted in all ages and by the best observers.
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.