Ruta in a dose equal to ten drops of the 2nd dilution.
Squilla in the 1st dilution.
Guaiac and sarsaparilla in the mother tincture.
Camphor in doses of one-eighth of a grain, at short intervals.
The doses for hellebore, conium, and chelidonium are not indicated; probably the mother-tincture of these was employed.
In the fourth volume, published in 1826, thuja, spigelia, and staphysagria are directed to be used in the 30th dilution.
Phosphoric acid in the 9th dilution.
Cyclamen and muriatic acid in the 3rd dilution.
Euphrasia, menyanthes, calcarea acetica, and taraxacum in the mother-tincture.
In the sixth volume, published in 1827, manganese, cicuta, and drosera are directed to be given in the 30th dilution.
Colocynth in from the 24th to the 30th dilutions.
Asarum in the 12th and 15th dilutions.
Capsicum in the 9th.
Angustura in the 6th.
Ambra, carbo veg., carbo anim., and stannum in the 3rd trituration. Of carb. veg., he says it is not advisable to go beyond the 3rd, and of stannum, that he formerly used to employ the 6th, but he now finds the 3rd quite sufficient.
Bismuth in the 2nd trituration.
Verbascum in the mother-tincture.
Spongia for goitre, in doses of a drop several times diluted, and for other purposes, in the 30th dilution.
At this period of Hahnemann’s career then, viz., up to the year 1827, we find that the doses of the medicines he was in the habit of giving were very various, and that he did not show a constant tendency top diminish the dose, but occasionally went back to much more material quantities, guided in this either by experience or by the supposed character of the medicine, the disease, or the patient. Thus, whilst in 1814 we have seen him giving bryonia in the 15th attenuation for an epidemic typhus fever, in 1815 we find him prescribing the same medicine in the pure tincture for a gastric ailment. Whilst he advises aurum in the 6th dilution for suicidal mania in 1819, the following year he recommends the 1st trituration for the same diseases. Again, we find him in 1827 advising stannum in the 3rd trituration, which he had previously directed to be given in the 6th. It is evident, then, that up to this period, viz., the year 1827, Hahnemann had no fixed standard for the dose of the medicine. In his petition to the authorities relative to the apothecaries’ privileges, published in 1820, he attempts to fix a sort of standard, or rather maximum of the dose, when he says he does not acknowledge as his disciples any but those who give their medicines in such minute quantities that neither the senses nor chemical analysis shall be able to detect anything at all medicinal in them. (Lesser Writings. p. 789.) The doses of many of these substances, the list of which I have just read, which he recommended about, and for several years subsequent to, this date, do not, however, come under this category of undetectable quantities.
With the promulgation of the psora-theory, we notice a remarkable alteration in Hahnemann’s idea respecting posology. His former views relative to the necessity of giving different doses of medicines that differed from each other in point of strength, and of giving different doses to patients, the greater or less quantity of medicine proper for them being determined by the age, susceptibility, and disease of the patient — all these views are now lost sight of, and Hahnemann seeks to establish a uniform standard or regulation dose that shall be applicable to all diseases, all ages, and all susceptibilities.
Hahnemann now fixed upon the 30th dilution of the centesimal scale as the appropriate dilution for every remedy, and one globule, no bigger than a poppy-seed, imbibed with this dilution as the most appropriate dose. His object in selecting such a minute dose was partly founded on his notion that the smallest quantity of the medicine was more than a match for the disease, and partly, as he tell us in the fourth edition of the Organon, to diminish the action of the medicine as much as possible. He here losses sight altogether of the opinion elsewhere expressed, that by the diminution of the quantity the medicine is actually increased in potency;and in the first edition of the Chronic Diseases he remarks that thousands of warning experiments had at length convinced him that these very minute doses were the most appropriate, and at the same time he denies the utility of larger doses, and states that he never had obtained the true curative effect of the medicine until he arrived at this diminution of the dose. Nevertheless, in the same volume he states (Ch. Kr., second edition, vol. i., p. 130, note.) that though he had cured recent itch sometimes with one small dose of sulphur, yet he had once occasion to give half a grain of the 3rd trituration of carbo vegetabilis, in a family consisting of seven persons, and three times a similar preparation of sepia; these doses, he states, were “quite efficacious.” How curious it is to observe that Hahnemann continually contradicts himself on almost every point of his doctrines and practice, and still more curious is it to notice that the contradiction is generally side by side with the opposite statement.
In the last edition of the Organon, published in 1833, he is still more decided on the subject of the superior efficacy of the 30th dilution. “It holds good, “says he,” and will continue to hold good, as a homoeopathic therapeutic maxim, not to be refuted by any experience in the world, that the best dose of the properly selected remedy is always the very smallest one in one of the high dynamizations” (And he indicates in parenthesis the 30th dilution.),”as well for chronic as acute diseases. (“Org., p. 289, note.) The only difference he makes for acute diseases is that the dose may be repeated more frequently; but even for cholera he orders one globules of the 30th dilution of cuprum, veratrum, phosphorus, carbo, arsenic, etc. Likewise for typhus, where he had formerly obtained the most brilliant results with lower dilutions, he now says the 30th is the right dose. For syphilis also, no linger heeding the advice I have previously alluded to of giving the mercury in doses sufficient to excite the mercurial fever, and even despising his own preparation of the soluble mercury, one globule of the 30th of metallic mercury is the dose to be given;and for itch, in place of the very material doses which he stated he had found so efficacious, we are now ordered to give globules of the 30th of Sulphur, carbo, etc.
Perhaps the reason for thus fixing on one uniform dose for all medicines in all diseases is to be found in one of Hahnemann’s essays, entitled, Observations on the extreme Attenuation of Medicines, and in one of his letters to Dr. Schreter, where he says,” by laying it down as a rule that all homoeopathic remedies he attenuated up to the 30th dilution, we shall have a uniform mode of procedure in the treatment of all homoeopathists, and when they describe a cure we can repeat it, as they and we operate with the same tools…Thus our enemies will not be able to reproach us with having no fixed normal standard.” In the same letter he says, while disapproving of dilutions beyond 30, ” there must become end to the thing, it cannot go on to infinity; an opinion, somewhat at variances with his previously and subsequently expressed notions regarding the infinite subdivision of matter, the increase of potency by succussion and dilution, and the purely spiritual condition of dynamized medicines.
Hahnemann, however, did not always remain constant to his fixed standard of the 30th dilution, for in the last edition of the Organon even he speaks approvingly of the 60th, 150th, and 300th dilutions.
Still later, viz., in the preface to the third volume of the Chronic Diseases (edition of 1837), he says that when we repeat the medicine we should descend from the 30th to the 24th dilution; and in the history of two cases I have given at length in the collected Lesser Writings, which he treated shortly before his death, you will find that he gave some medicines, especially sulphur and mercuries, in doses greatly belows the 30th dilution, if I understand his directions aright, as low as the 2nd trituration.
An interesting letter recently appeared in the Homoeopathic Times, written by Dr. Chapman, giving an account of the contents of a pocket case used by Hahnemann shortly before his decease. The dilutions contained in this case were not all alike, still less were they all the regulation 30th; on the contrary, they ranged from 3 up to 30, showing that up to the latest period of his life Hahnemann employed all varieties of dilutions.
From what I have adduced respecting Hahnemann’s directions and practice relative to the dose, we may draw the following conclusions: —
1. Before he had any idea of the homoeopathic principle, he gave on medicine, mercury, in one disease, syphilis, in doses very mush less than those usually prescribed.
2. For some years after his discovery of the homoeopathic principle his doses did not differ from those used in ordinary practice.
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.