Johannes Agricola, who flourished shortly after Paracelsus, after accusing his contemporaries of their inability to cure either cancer, lupus, fistula, or leprosy, says: “But if the subject be viewed in the proper light, it must be confessed that a concealed poison must be of an arsenical character; this poison must therefore be expelled by means of the same or a similar poison.” He used arsenic for the cure of these disease. Here, then, is another testimony to the homoeopathic principle; for I do not imagine Agricola, in stating that the poison on which cancer, lupus, etc., depended was of an arsenical character meat to say that it was actually arsenic, but only that it was analogous to arsenic in its effects, and, on the Homoeopathic principle, arsenic was its proper curative agent. He goes on the observe: “:If a regular disease is present, it must be cured with a regularic remedy, and with none other.” That is to say, as I conceive it, if we have a case of disease before us resembling the pathogenetic effects of regular, we must treat it with that substance, and with none other, -a distinct declaration of the homoeopathic principle.
A very similar thought is thus expressed by the great Danish astronomer, Tycho de Brahe: “Habent enim morbus istud cum suphurea nature non parum commune, unde etiam per sulphur, terrestre excellenter depuratum exaltatumque, praesertim is in liquorem gratum reclinatur, expeditious solvitur, tanquam simile suo simili. Neque enim id Galenicorum semper verum est: Contraria contraries curari.” (Tycho, Epist Astron., p.162).
An ancient theologian, Johann Arndt, who died in the year 1621, thus gives testimony in one of his sermons, to the prevalence of a certain kind of homoeopathy among the physicians this contemporaries: – “And as the physicians sometimes cure contraria contraries, opposites with opposites, so, “etc.; “:but sometimes the doctors cure similia similibus, likes with likes, poison with poison (as in theriac, so,” etc. This passage proves that the occasional Homoeopathic practice and theory of the physicians was a matter of common notoriety, and was used as a familiar illustration by popular preachers; and that the relative value of the allopathic and Homoeopathic principles formed an occasional subject of discussion in those days, is evident from the following theses: J. Petri Angermanni, praes. K. Frank, de nobili illa question: an contraria countries vel similia similibus curentur: Upsala, 1641: and Dissert. de curatione per similia; Praeside M. Alberti, respond. F. A. La Brugniere: Halae, 1734, of which I regret I can only give the bare titles.
Our own Milton bears testimony to the truth of the homoeopathic principle, and proves that it was a well-recognized truth in his day, in the following passage from the preface to Samson Agonistes:-
“Tragedy, said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of these and such-like passions. Nor is nature wanting in her own efforts to make good his assertion, for so in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sours salt to remove salt humour, ” etc, etc.
I have thus brought before you a goodly array of authorities among the scientific and enlightened representatives of medicines, science, and literature of the remotest antiquity and of the middle ages, to show you that the principle Similia similibus was more or less recognised by them; by some of them even to the exclusion of all other therapeutic principles. I shall know call your attention to another testimony to the intuitive idea in favour of such a therapeutic principle which was chiefly prevalent among, but not entirely confined to, the more uneducated practitioners and popular empirics of the dark ages.
We find a curious doctrine, that seems to have asserted a certain claim to a curious doctrine that seems to have asserted a certain claim to attention throughout almost every age, to the effect that the outward and visible form, the taste or he smell or medicinal substances furnished us with the means of discovering their therapeutic powers. This doctrine was called the doctrine of signatures. The signature or physical properties of the vegetable or mineral medicine would, it was alleged, in many instances, give us the key to its remedial virtues. I shall enumerate a few examples illustrative of this doctrine of signatures which a sin high reputation in the middle ages, and traces of which are to be found among the people in our own times.
The flower of the little plant euphrasia bears no very remove resemblance to the iris of the eye, and this was held to indicate its usefulness in disease of the eye, especially dimness of vision. Its name in almost every European language indicates a virtue of this sort-eye-bright, augentrost, cause-lunettes- sufficiently demonstrate the honour in which it was held as an ophthalmic remedy by the inhabitants of the three countries, England, Germany, and France. Milton alludes to its popularly credited power to clear the dim eyes sight in his Paradise lost, where he makes the Archangel Michael give it to Adam to improve his vision-
“Then purged with euphrasy and rye
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.”
And Shenstone says-
“Yet euphrasy may not be left unsung,
that gives dim eyes to wander leagues around.”
Orchis -root bears some distant resemblance to the human testicles, which gained for it a celebrity in the treatment of impotence.
The color of turmeric and of berberis bark secured for them a reputation in jaundice, as did also the yellow juice of the chelidonium; rhubarb and aloes, for the same cause, were the antibilious medicines of our forefathers, and perhaps they perform the same duty for out contemporaries under he title of Cockle’s pills.
The hypericum perfoliatum, when crushed yields a blood-red juice, a certain sign that it must be a specific in hemorrhages. The powerful actions of the juice of the poppy on the head is pointed out to us by nature, who has fashioned the seed-receptacles of that plant into the shape of the human head, and, to obviate all dubiety, has placed an imperial crown upon the top. The ranunculus ficaria and the scrophularia nodosa have roots that resemble each other, and bear some distant likeness to haemorrhoidal protrusions, therefore both these plants were extensively used for the cure of piles. The red dye obtainable from madder was held to be not more useful for colouring cloth than indicative of a power in that vegetable to promote the similarly – coloured catamenial discharge. The saponaria enjoyed a considerable reputation as a solvent and detergent medicine, because, forsooth, the decoction of its root, who agitated, form a froth like soap-suds, the solvent and derangement qualities of which are well known to every washerwoman. Nay, from the purifying properties of soap itself on external objects its purifying and solvent effects upon the internal organism were logically inferred. The cassia fistula has a form not unlike a it of owed inflated, dried, and painted black, and this was sufficient to lead the auspices of medicine to pronounce it a valuable medicine for the bowels. He must be blind indeed who cannot see the striking resemblance of the lemon to the human hear, in spite of every different of colour, size and shape, and this resemblance sufficiently accounted for its presumed cardiac or cardial virtues. The bile tastes bitter to a proverb, so does gentian, therefore gentian is indicated to us by nature as the proper remedy for deranged bile. The mushrooms called phallus impudicus had an universal celebrity as an aphrodisiac and a promoter of fecundity, from some peculiarities in its stricture that need not be more particularly alluded to. The branches of the elder tree contain within them a pith which might be considered like the spinal marrow; nothing could therefore be more evident than that it was intended by nature as a remedial means for the disease of the spinal cord. Do we want a pectoral medicine? Let us search for one that bears the impress of nature’s hand upon it, indicative of its power over disease of the lungs. Here it is: the lichen pulmonarius, whose resemblance to the lungs of an animal cannot be gainsaid, and whose virtues in pulmonary defluxions and phthisis are universally acknowledged. The root of the cyclamen europium bears a remote resemblance in shape to the stomach of an animal, and hence it was presumed to have a peculiar efficacy in diseases of that organ. The seeds of the lithospermum-literally stone-seed,- could not, of course, possess that stony hardness without some object and hence from this quality their efficacy in cases of stone in the bladder was surmised. The saxifraga was famed for breaking up not only the stones among which it grows, but also those that infest the human kidneys. The mandrake, or atropa mandragora, when stripped of its leaves, bears a slight resemblance to a little human being. This likeness is thus alluded to by the poet Langhorne:-
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.