Homoeopathic Principle in Medicine before Hahnemann



The author of the work De Morbis Popularibus, supposed to be the great Hippocrates, has the following homoeopathic formula: Dolor dolorem solvit,” equivalent to the popular saw that one pain cures another. The same maxim is repeated in the Aphorisms (aphorism ii. 46), where it is said, “Of two pains occurring together, not in the same part of the body, the stronger weakens the other.” A few more instances from Hippocrates may be cited to show the partial knowledge he had of this natural law. “The cold stomach,” he says, in the Aphorisms, “delights in cold things.” In the same book of Aphorisms (Aphorism v. 17), he states that cold water causes convulsions, tetanus, rigor, and stiffness; and in another, that affusion with cold water in tetanus will restore the natural warmth (Aphorism. v. 21). Again, cold things, such as snow and ice, cause hemorrhages (Aphorism v.24), and yet cold water is to be used for the cure of hemorrhages (Aphorism v.23). In the book De Internis Affectionibus, he says, when in summer, after a long walk, dropsy is produced by the hasty drinking of stagnant or rain water, the best remedy is for the patient to drink himself full of the same water, for that causes increased stools and urine. In the book De Morbo Sacro, he says of epilepsies, “Most of them are curable by the same means as those by which they were produced.” (Adams’s Hipp., 857.) The epistle of Democritus to Hippocrates, in the apocryphal collection called the Epistles of Hippocrates, contains a passage that recognises the homoeopathic principle. It is as follows:- “Hellebore given to the sane pours darkness on the mind, but it is wont greatly to benefit the insane.”

None of the schools of antiquity can show so many points of resemblance to the Hahnemannic doctrines as the so-called empirical school. As this was the school which most emphatically insisted on the observation of nature and discountenanced theorizing, we might naturally expect to find some analogy between their practice and that of Hahnemann, deduced, as the latter is, avowedly from the observation of nature. The empirical school recognised the necessity of instituting experiments to ascertain the pathogenetic powers of drugs, and actually act about doing so. Thus we find Erasistratos of Julis (304 B.C.) giving some account of the action of poisons, not very satisfactory it must be confessed, but still showing the importance he attached to such experiments. Heraclides of Tarentum wrote a treatise upon the effects of the bites of poisonous animals. Mithridates king of Pontus (124-64 B.C.) tries animal and vegetable poisons on himself and on animals, for the purpose of ascertaining their effects, and another royal medical dilettante, Attalos Philometer king of Pergamos, experimented with digitalis, hyoscyamus, veratrum, hemlock, etc. Nicander of Kolophon,(Kurtz Sprengel’s Geschichte der Arzneikunde, 4th edit., vol. i.p.595.) a poet as well as a physician, has recorded the physiological action of a great array of animal and vegetable substances in his two poems entitled Theriaca and Alexipharmica. Among other things, these poetical Materia Medicas or pathogenetic poems contain accounts of the effects of seven different kinds of serpents, four kinds of spiders, as many different species of scorpions, various kinds of beetles, salamanders, toads; besides the poisonous action of aconite, coriander, hemlock, solanum, henbane, opium, white lead, etc. etc. Nicander also recognises the homoeopathic, or, perhaps more correctly speaking, the isopathic principle; for he recommends for the dangerous effects of viper-bites, the liver or head of the reptile macerated in wine or river-water, and for poisoning by the toad called rana nubeta, the cooked flesh of frogs.

Another of the empirical school, Xenocrates of Aphrodisias, who flourished some ages before Galen, recommended the blood of young goats as the best remedy for haemoptysis; indeed, he anticipated the modern isopathists of the Hermann stamp, for he wrote a work commending the therapeutic virtues of excrementitious matters, such as bile, urine, menstrual blood, etc., when given on similar principle. Ecchymosis, especially of the eyes, was to be treated by the local application of pigeon’s blood, asthma of dried and pulverized fox’s lungs, affections of the liver by dried wolf’s liver, diseases of the spleen by roasted bullock’s spleen, hydrophobia by the saliva found under the tongue of the rabid dog, or by the internal use of its liver. (Pliny (xxiii.23) says that the hydrophobia produced by the bite of a rabid dog is immediately removed by putting a rag dipped in menstrual blood beneath the vessel the patient drinks out of, because dogs become rabid form swallowing such blood.) Another empiricist, Varro, advises those bitten by an asp to drink their own urine. It was a common practice to apply the entrails of a viper to the part bitten by one, and the internal use of the theriac, which contained viper’s flesh as a chief ingredient, was used for the same purpose. It was also generally believed that the poison of spiders, scorpions, lizards, etc., was most effectively antidoted by some portion of their bodies. Thus Quintus Serenus says :-

“Quae nocuit serpens fertur caput illius apte

Vulneribus jungi, sanat quae sauciat ipsa.

And Celsus, who flourished long after the period I am speaking of, says (lib. v. c.27): – “Nam scorpio sibi ipse pulcherrimum medicamentum est. Quidam contritum cum vino bibunt; quidam eodam modo contritum super vulnus imponunt; quidam, super prunam eo imposito, vulnus suffumigant, undique veste circumdata, ne is fumus dilabatur; tum carbonem ejus super vulnus deligant.” This belief in the self-curative power of the scorpion is entertained, I know not with what justice, to the present day in many countries. (E.g., Morocco (Jackson’s Morocco, p.188); and Italy (G.T. Wilhelm, Naturgeschichte, Thl. iii. p. 342).) Such facts or beliefs have evidently given rise to the proverb – “Venenum veneni est remedium,” a notion that has been seized upon by the author of Hudibras in the lines.

“As wounds by wider wounds are healed,

And poisons by themselves expelled”.

The examples just quoted from the empirical authors are certainly more within the domain of isopathy of homoeopathy, still they suffice to show the existence of a sort of instinctive notion that the remedy must act in the same sense as the morbific agent; and as the line of demarcation betwixt homoeopathy and isopathy is not very well marked, we may take them as a rough and rude expression of the principle similia similibus.

Galen himself, the father of allopathic physic, the champion of the motto contraria contrariis curantur, may be impressed into the service of homoeopathy from many a phrase in his writings, where he gives his testimony – truly with reservations mostly, – but still striking testimony to the occasional truth of the opposite maxim. I make no account of such phrases as this, “Similia efficere posse similia experti sumus,” (De Simpl. Medicam. Facultatib., lib. x.) which is merely a formula of the empirical or experimental doctrine; but the following passages are less doubtful acknowledgments of the homoeopathic principle: “Similia similibus Deus adjungit.” (De Theria. ad Pison.) “Simile ad sibi simile natura fertur.” (De Semine, ii.) “Simile ad suum simile tendit naturaliter.” (De Util. Resp.) (De Inaeq. Intemp.) These formulas do not, it is true, refer to the relation of drug and disease, but they are the acknowledgment of an attraction of likes to likes in nature, (Very similar to the principle by which Bacon attempted to account for some of the phenomena of what we now call gravitation. (Nov. Org., lib. i. ixvi.)) which, might be extended to therapeutics, and he does actually occasionally recognise the homoeopathic law in the treatment of disease. Thus we find him saying, “Nam sicuti humidiora natura humidiora, sicciora sicciora medicamenta exigebat: ita nunc calidior calidiora, frigidior frigidior requirere, contrariam scilicet semper iis, quae praeter naturam, et iis quae secundum naturam sunt, indicationem praestantibus: quippe, quae secundum naturam sunt, similia sibi indicativa sunt: quae praeter naturam, contrariorum, si modo illa servari, haec submoveri necesse est.” (Method. Medendi., lib. iii.) Again, speaking of the specific virtues of certain medicines, he says: “Pharmacum attrahit determinatum humorem similitudine, seu proprietate substantiae,” This passage certainly admits of different interpretations; but his commentator Fallopius attaches quite a homoeopathic meaning to the sentence. “Galenus,” he says, “per similitudinem substantiae intelligit naturam quandam corpoream, habentem tale temperamentum, quod parum distet a temperamento illius quod attrahitur;” and with this maxim Fallopius not only expresses his entire concurrence, but says, with still greater explicitness, “Supponendum a vobis est, quod dico adesse quidam similitudinem substantiae inter attrahens, et id quod attrahitur, non autem identitatem.” The meaning of which is that the quality (temperamentum) of the medicine must correspond in similarity to the quality of the disease, and also of its product, though they must not be identical.

R.E. Dudgeon
Robert Ellis Dudgeon 1820 – 1904 Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in 1839, Robert Ellis Dudgeon studied in Paris and Vienna before graduating as a doctor. Robert Ellis Dudgeon then became the editor of the British Journal of Homeopathy and he held this post for forty years.
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.