Our old friend Dr. Gross, whose cacoethes scribendi played him many a scurvy trick, conjoined as it was with a thirst for novelty that induced him to lend the sanction of his pen by turns to every innovation that was ever introduced into the homoeopathic theory and practice, and whose mystic mind led him to prefer the recondite and mysterious to the palpable and the practical-Dr. Gross, I say, could scarcely fail to deliver many oracular utterances on the subject of the dynamization-theory, and in doing so to contradict himself and darken counsel with his would-be explanations, as effectually as though he had occupied the Delphic tripod. I cannot be expected to give you even an outline of all this hero has said upon the subject, so I shall content myself with merely calling your attention to his chief performances in relation to our subject. At first starting, (Arch., ix. 3,8.) Dr. Gross declared his belief that Hahnemann’s dynamization-theory was correct; he bids us beware of the apothecaries, for these gentlemen, by shaking the bottles too strongly, are apt to produce an inconveniently high dynamization; he declares that he himself has found the dilutions, from the shaking to which they are necessarily exposed in a long-continued use, grow ever stronger and stronger, and at length so excessively powerful that no patient could bear the very smallest globule, and it was found requisite at length to dilute still more, whereby, he pathetically remarks, we shall most likely have to go on diluting ad infinitum.
Later, Dr. Gross (Allg. h. Ztg., xxii. 324.) seems to have fallen away from his first love for Hahnemann’s doctrine, for he declares that the dynamization-theory, in the sense attached to it by Hahnemann, is not tenable, and that on this point all homoeopathists were agreed. Many substances, he says, only become efficacious from being triturated; they were thereby rendered less material and more spiritual.
Subsequently, (Ibid., xxvii. 157.) he penitently returned to his first love, and acknowledged that the dynamization-theory of Hahnemann was true; “that the power of the medicine increased and only became developed when it was potentized, i.e., when its volume was diminished, when nothing material was any longer discernible in it.
Having thus fairly got over his transitory defection from the theory, he began to show his increased affection for it by exalting it to an importance that would have astonished and confounded Hahnemann himself, had he still been in the land of the living, but, fortunately for his peace of mind, he was spared the pain of witnessing the extravagances to which his doctrine would lead. The episode of Jenichen’s high potencies and the enthusiasm with which Gross stool godfather to them, I alluded to in my last lecture. As nothing now could be too highly potentized for friend Gross, it is presumed he made the amende honorable to the apothecaries whom he had calumniated at the beginning of its career.
I have not alluded to all the vacillations of Gross’s mind on the subject of the dynamization of medicines, but I have said enough to show the precise value of his opinion on the subject, which you may deduce from his contradictory statements. It did not require any very great length of time to make him after his ideas completely. On one occasion, very shortly after stating that he quite agreed with Hahnemann that drosera shaken ten times was a highly dangerous medicine, and that he had experienced the same with respect to euphrasia, (Arch., 12, 2.) he coolly states (Allg. h Ztg., ii. 31.) that he is not of Hahnemann’s opinion that fluid medicines can be further potentized by being carried about in the pocket, though formerly he had alleged that the unavoidable shaking during the ordinary use of dilutions increased their potency to an enormous degree.
Dr. Rummel (Arch., vii. 2.) was originally a believer in the dynamization-theory of Hahnemann, and sought to explain the supposed increase of the potency of medicaments by the homoeopathic pharmaceutic processes by the known laws of the expansive powers of certain natural forces, particularly electricity, magnetism, light, heat, sound, odours. The laws of expansive force that regulate the phenomena of these natural forces he lays down as the following:-
1. The direction of the expansive power is centrifugal; it spreads, so to speak, in the mass.
2. Friction is the chief developer of its activity.
3. It can be propagated to another body that did not possess it.
4. It acts more or less beyond the limits of the body with which it was originally united.
5. The force of gravitation increases towards the central point. It is a question whether the expansive power increases in quadratic proportion with its distance from the central point, or whether it only increases in the celerity of its movements. All this, he says, we can only guess at, as we can only prove it with certainly as regards the action of medicinal powers upon the organism.
These laws Dr. Rummel very ingeniously attempts to impose upon the medicinal forces. He contends that Hahnemann’s discovery of the dynamization of medicines by rubbing and shaking, would alone have sufficed to render, him immortal, but I should be very sorry to ground his claims to immortality on any such questionable discovery.
From the first medicinal drop, he says, the medicinal power imparts itself to 100 drops of alcohol with which it is shaken up, uniformly an intimately, and any one drop of this dilution does the same with respect to another hundred drops of alcohol, and in this way it were possible to communicate the medicinal power of one drop of medicine to a whole ocean, but only in this way, and not by putting a drop into the Lake of Geneva, as has been sneeringly proposed. That friction is the chief or only method of awaking the slumbering powers is, says he, evident when we consider that many substances, which are perfectly inactive in their crude state, are rendered powerfully medicinal by its means. He cites gold, flint, charcoal. By this operation their medicinal power is transferred to the milk-sugar with which they are rubbed up; the milk-sugar is, as it were, infected by them. That rubbing and shaking are the means of developing the medicinal power shown by this, that homoeopaths have found they must limit their succussions to two for each dilution, otherwise the power of the medicine is enormously increased. He mentions on instance where two globules of calcarea 30 produced an itching eruption all over the body of an old woman, in consequence of each dilution of having been prepared with six successions in place of two! Credat Judoeus! He instances also the terrific power of drosera, when shaken too often, in cases of whooping- cough. Potentized dilutions is the term he considers should be applied to the homoeopathic preparations.
As my worthy friend Dr. Rummel is one of those homoeopathists who have alternately defended and refuted almost every novelty of theory and practice in homoeopathy, we should naturally expect that this doctrine of Hahnemann’s, whose importance is so great as, he tells us, of itself to render Hahnemann worthy of immortality, should be alternately advocated and condemned by him. Accordingly we find that at a later period he gave up the notion of any potentizing power of trituration and succussion. In the teeth of his original vies, he now says (Allg. h. Ztg., xxviii. 262.) that nature furnishes us with no instance of an increase of potency being obtained by friction and succussion. He sees nothing resulting from these operations but a development of the slumbering power; and now proposes, as the most appropriate term for the homoeopathic preparations, the word “refining” (Verfeinerung): formerly, (Ibid., xxi. 189.) to avoid all dubiety and to exclude all hypothesis, he had suggested the bare word No. (as No. 1, 3, 30, etc.) He sets his face against Gross’s last extravagant notions on the subject of dynamization, though the admits the efficacy of the 200th and 400th “Verfeinerung,” (Ibid., xxx. 41.) in which he has seen marvellous things by means of the solar microscope, as stated in last lecture.
Dr. Kampfer (Ibid., xxiv. 11.) alleges that the strength or energy of the medicines becomes diminished in the dilutions, but with extreme slowness. He will not, however, allow that this diminution takes place in the arithmetical ratio spoken of by Hahnemann. In spite, however, of this diminution of strength, the greater number of the dilutions of medicines are more rapid and more penetrating in their action on the organism; they display all the powers contained in them more completely and me extensively than undiluted medicines. In this way, the medicinal powers of silica, calcarea, carbon, sepia, etc., are increased by rubbing and diluting, whereas those of camphor, musk, etc., are diminished by the same processes. This peculiarity of medicinal dilutions he denominates “undeniable fact,” but he denounces the extravagant and fantastic absurdities which its over-stained extension has given rise to.
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.