Great discoveries foreshadowed
-Planetary motions
-The New World
– Gravitation
-Circulation of the blood
-The steam-engine
– Vaccination
-Anticipations of homoeopathy
-Hippocrates
-Democritus
– Empirical school
-Erasistratos, Heraclides, Mithridates, Attalos, Nicander, Xenocrates, Vero, Quintus Serenus, Celsus–Galen
– Fallopius
-Basil Valentine
-Paracelsus
-Many points of resemblance in the doctrines of Paracelsus and of Hahnemann
-Paracelsus’s ridicule of ordinary practice
– (Anecdote of Sylvius)
-His classification of physicians
-His hatred of the apothecaries
-His horror of hypothesis
-His ridicule of complex prescriptions
-His abhorrence of nosology
-His attacks on contraria contrariis. His defence of similia similibus
-His system a rude homoeopathy
-His partiality for small doses
-His employment of olfaction
-His belief in the separation of the medicinal spirit from the material drug
– Did Hahnemann borrow from Paracelsus?
Croll-Agricola-Tycho Brahe- Arndt-Ancient homoeopathic these-Milton
-Doctrine of signatures
– Partial acknowledgment of homoeopathy by Hahnemann’s immediate predecessors
-Boulduc-Detharding-Thoury-Storck-Stahl-Riviere
– French peasants-Sainte Marie
-Religious homoeopathy
-Leadam- Buchner
-Poetic homoeopathy
-Homer-Shakespeare-Rainund.
GREAT truths, universal laws of nature, important facts that must effect mighty revolutions in the arts or sciences, and exercise a powerful influence on man’s destinies, have generally foreshadowed their discovery by some more or less obscure hints or beliefs among the generations who were not destined to derive the full benefit of their revelation, but who now and then, by vague or distinct utterances, betrayed a semi-consciousness of their existence, and whose instincts perceived what their reason failed to discover.
The ancient king to whom the Ptolemaic system of the planetary movements was being explained, and who impatiently, and somewhat blasphemously as has been thought, exclaimed that the Maker was a bungler to produce such confusion, and that he would have arranged their motions much better, thereby showed his instinctive repugnance to the explanation offered and his shadowy conviction of a better.
The philosophic Seneca scouted the idea of the motions of any of the heavenly bodies being irregular, and he predicted that the day would come when the laws that guided the motions of the comets would be proved to be identical with those that regulated the course of the planets – prediction that was verified many centuries later by the by the discoveries of Newton; though event he sagacious Bacon accepted the common notion of the eccentric and irregular movements of comets (Nov. Org., lib. ii. 35).
A passage of Seneca is often quoted to prove that the ancients had a vague idea of the existence of a great continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules, that were commonly believed to mark the boundaries of the world; and it is thought that Christopher Columbus first imbibed the notion of his great discovery form the traditions of the Icelandic mariners whose shores he visited.
A suspicion of the laws of gravitation, the full revelation of which we owe to Newton, is observable in the writings of Bacon. “If there be”, says he, “any magnetic force which acts by sympathy between the globe of the earth and heavy bodies, or between that of the moon and the waters of the sea (as seems most probable from the particular floods and ebbs which occur twice in the month), or between the starry sphere and the planets, by which they are summoned and raised to their apologies, these must all operate at very great distances.” (Nov. Org., lib. ii. 45).
Many anatomists before Harvey’s time had inklings of the true character of the circulation of the blood; some indeed gave expositions remarkably near to the truth, especially the anatomist Realdus Columbus, who wrote twenty years before Harvey’s birth. In proof of this assertion, I may just quote what he says. “The blood,” he writes, “once it has entered the right ventricle form the vena cava, can in no way again get back; for the tricuspid valves are so place, that whilst they give a ready passage to the steam inwards they effectually oppose its return. The blood continuing to advance from the right ventricle into the vena arteriosa, or pulmonary artery, once there cannot flow back upon the ventricle, for it is opposed by the sigmoid valves situated at the root of the vessel.
The blood therefore, agitated and mixed with air in the lungs, and having thus in some sort acquired the nature of spirit, is carried by the arteria venosa, or pulmonary vein, into the left ventricle, from whence being received into the aorta, it is, by the ramifications of this vessel, transmitted to all parts of the body.” So far his explanation is correct; but in his further explanation, Columbus gets into a maze of confusion, which shows us that his notions on the subject were not quite clear. Andreas Caesalpinus of Arezzo also, who wrote ten years after Columbus, gives a similar explanation of the circulation. Shakespeare himself has been quoted to show the popular idea of the circulation of the blood before Harvey’s time. Thus he makes Brutus say to Portia –
“You are my true and honourable wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart”.
And he makes Warwick thus apostrophize the murdered body of Gloster-
“See how the blood is settled in his face?
-Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,
Being all descended to the labouring heart;
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance ‘gainst the enemy;
Which with the heart there cools, and ne’er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again.
But, see, his face is black and full of blood”.
– HEN. VI., Pt.II.
Such anticipations, striking though they are, by no means derogate from Harvey’s merit, but prove that the crude and hardly formed idea of his immortal discovery floated vaguely in men’s minds before he gave it perfect utterance.
For many years before James Watt produced his marvellously perfect steam-engine, the application of steam to the movement of machinery had not only been proposed but actually carried out. Watt’s merit consisted in perfecting the crude efforts of his predecessors, and elucidating the true principles on which this powerful agent might be most effectually and economically applied.
The great prophylactic of small-pox, with which Jenner’s name is for ever bound up, was known to many as a thing of accidental occurrence, many years before his day, but he first thought of tracing it to its source, and employing artificially, for the weal of all mankind, an agent that had previously exercised its beneficial action on a limited number of individuals without their wish or will.
I might multiply instances of this sort, where the presentiment of a great truth existed long before it was clearly and distinctly enunciated; but the above examples will suffice to make us suspect that if the law of cure with which Hahnemann’s name is indissolubly connected be indeed a universal law of nature, some traces of it must exist in the records of the medical art, which now extend over a period of near 3000 years. And such is indeed the case; (Dr. Christison to the contrary notwithstanding. In the Inaugural Address of this eminent toxicologist and professor of Materia Medica, for 1851, we find the following remarks in relation to homoeopathy:-“It is undeniable,” says he, “that all important discoveries in science at large are preceded by a period of incubation as it were, during which the world is gradually prepared to receive them.
There has been no shadow cast before the coming event, (homoeopathy), no antecedent approximation, no universal adoption, no intruding claimant.” My object in this lecture is to show that the great truth, revealed in its full splendour by Hahnemann, did cast its shadow before it in antiquity, and that there was an antecedent approximation to it in remote as well as more recent times, and I may further add, that intruding claimants are not wanting, though the universal adoption has not yet occurred.) for not only do we find vague presentiments of this one general therapeutic principle scattered throughout the writings of the great medical authorities of almost every age, and in some of them prominently set forth, but we find hints of it in the popular and domestic physic of almost all times and countries. In some cases it is adduced side by side with other and false therapeutic laws; in others a kind of universality is claimed for it; and again we shall detect it decked out in some fantastic disguise, or buried beneath mystic obscure phraseology.
In one of the works attributed to Hippocrates, but commonly believed to be spurious, though of nearly equal antiquity, I mean the treatise On the Places in Man, the author makes the important admission, that though the general rule of treatment be contraria contrariis, the opposite rule also hold good in some cases, viz., Similia Similibus curantur. In illustration of the latter, he states that the same substances that cause strangury, cough, vomiting, and diarrhoea, will cure these diseases. Warm water, he says, which, when drunk, generally excites vomiting, will also sometimes put a stop to it by removing its cause. The treatment he advises for suicidal mania is a further illustration of the homoeopathic principle. “Give the patient,” says he, “a draught made form the root of mandrake, in a smaller dose than will induce mania.” Curiously enough, in some of his pathological views, this writer also anticipated what has been specially insisted on by Hahnemann, namely, that there can be no such thing as a local disease, but if the very smallest part of the body suffer, it will impart its suffering to the whole frame.
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.