I shall now proceed to a brief consideration of the pharmaceutical processes employed in. he preparation of the homoeopathic remedies, and we shall find that Hahnemann himself had not always a uniform mode of preparing the medicines, and that considerable variations in his methods have been proposed and practiced by his followers. At a very early period of his medical career, Hahnemann and distinguished himself by his pharmaceutical innovations on the metazoans hitherto used, more particularly in reference to the preparations of mercury for the cure of syphilis. The preparation that goes by the name of Hahnemann’s soluble mercury mercuries solubilis Hahnemann) to this day in Germany, was first described in his work On Syphilis, (Lesser Writings, p.8.) written in 1788, and during the two following years he wrote some short articles, (Neuen lit. Nachr. f. Aerzte, 4th quart. 1789; Baldinger’s n. Mag. f. Aerzte, xi. pt. 5, 1789; Crell’s Chem. Annal., ii. pt. 8,.1790) describing some modifications of his original process. I do not think this preparation of mercury was a great triumph of pharmaceutical skill, notwithstanding the celebrity of obtained in his native country; and Hahnemann himself latterly abandoned it, as he found it was not always a pure oxyde of mercury. In `1822 (R.A.M.L., vol.i., 2nd,., ar. Mercury) he proposed to substitute for it another form of the precipitated oxyde, and in 1830 (Ibid,3 rd edit., m, p.351) he rejected the oxydes altogether, and proposed for Homoeopathic purposes the employment of the pure liquid metal.
Up to the year 1799, we have no evidence that the medicines he used in the treatment of disease differed in their preparation from those in ordinary use. In that year, as we learn from his Essay on Scarlet Fever, (Lesser Writings p.438.) he had a very complicated way of making his medicinal preparations. Here is his receipt for preparing belladonna for medicinal use: -“Take a handful of the wild belladonna, at the season when the flowers are not yet blown, bruised them in a mortar to a pulp, and press the juice through linen, and immediately spread it out, scarcely as thick, as the back of a knife, on flat porcelain plates, and expose it to a drought of dry air, when it will be evaporated in the course of a few hours. Stir it about and spread it out again with the spatula, so that it may harden in a uniform manner, until it becomes so dry that it may be pulverized.:” For medicinal use, a grain of this powder is first dissolved in 400 drops of diluted alcohol; of theirs, one drops is moved with 300 drops of diluted alcohol, and drop of this second dilution is added to 200 drops of solitude alcohol. These two last dilutions are each to be shaken for a minute.
But that he had no uniform mode of preparing his medicines at his time, we find from the same essay where he directs his preparations of opium to be thus made. (Ibid., p.432.) a grain of finely pulverized crude opium is to be mixed with twenty pats of week. A drop of this tincture is to be mixed with 500 drops of diluted alcohol, and a drop of this last with other 500 drops of diluted alcohol. The tincture of ipecacuanha he prepared thus: one part of ipecacuanha was digested for some days in twenty parts of alcohol, and one drop of this tincture mixed with 100 drops of alcohol for medicinal use. Again, in the same essay, (Lesser WRitings, p. 442.) we find that he adopted a totally different method with his preparation of chamomilla. A grain of the dried inspissated juice was mixed with 1000 drops of diluted alcohol, and of this a drop was mixed with 800 more drops of diluted alcohol.
In another essay, (Ibid., p. 443) written in the same year, he talks of preparing a solution of belladonna, by mixing one grain of he extract with two ponds of water, and shaking it well for five minutes. One drop of his solution is two be mixed with six ounces of water, and a teaspoonful of his will, he alleges, contain a millionth part of a grain of the extract; that is to say, it will be equal to a drops of the 3rd centesimal dilution.
In the first edition of the Organon, published in 1810, he began to lay down rules for the preparation of all medicines on a uniform plan, analogous to the method he finally adopted, but even later than this, namely in 1814, we find him varying his process. In an essay published in that year, on Typhus or Hospital Fever, (Ibid., p.713) we observe that the following was his mode of preparing his tinctures of bryonia and rhus:-A drachm of the powder of the root of the first plant and of the leaves of the last was mixed with ten drachms of alcohol, and allowed to stand for six hours. Then six drachms of the strongest alcohol were poured into each of twelve bottles, into the first of which a single drop of the tincture, prepared as just stated, was put, and the mixture shaken strongly for three minutes. A drop of this solution was put into the second bottle and treated she same way, and so on through all the twelve bottles. The twelfth bottle contained the appropriate solution for administration. In this essay, he advises a tincture of hyoscyamus to be prepared in the same manner, but only with eight bottles. the 12th dilution prepared in this way should correspond to the 15th or 16th dilution of he centesimal scale, and the 8th would be nearly equal to the 10th dilution of that scale.
Hahnemann latterly adopted certain general principles for the preparation of his medicines, which he lays down in the last edition of the organon, (Organon, Aphorism cclzvii. et seq) but from which he often departed, in what seems to me rather capricious manner.
I shall now give you a brief abstract of the directions he there gives. Plants that can be obtained fresh are to have their juice expressed, and mixed immediately with weak alcohol. This mixture is to stand twenty-four hours in a close-stoppered bottle, and then the supernatant fluid is to be decanted off. Some plants that contain much thick mucus (as symphytum officinale, viola tricolor, etc.) or albumen (as aethusa cynapium, solanum nigrum, etc.), require double this proportion of alcohol. Plants very deficient in juice (as oleander, buxus, taxus, ledum, sabina etc.) should first be pounded into moist mass in a mortar, and then mixed with a double quantity of alcohol; or they may be prepared by a way of trituration, to be described presently.
Exotic plants which cannot be obtained fresh may be reduced to a powder, and kept in well-stoppered bottles for use. Hahnemann gives valuable directions for drying thoroughly such powders in a water-bath, before storing them in bottles, without which they are apt to become mouldy, and lose their medicinal virtues.
In order to prepare the dilutions of he tinctures of the fresh plants, he directs two drops of the tincture, prepared as just described, to be mixed with ninety-eight drops of alcohol, and shaken twice. This is the 1st dilution. The 2nd dilution is prepared by taking a drop of the Ist, and adding it to ninety- nine drops of alcohol in the same way. This process is to be repeated through twenty-nine bottles, the last of which contains what is called the 3th dilution, the standard or normal dose.
All other substances employed in medicine, which as pure, oxidized, and sulphuretted metals, or other minerals. petroleum, phosphorus, parts and juices of plants that can only be obtained in the dry state, animal substances, neutral salts, etc., are to be triturated up- to the third attenuation in this way:- A grain of the medicine is to be mixed with 100 grains of milk-sugar, and triturated for an hour; of this trituration one grain is to be triturated for the same length of time with other 100 grains of milk sugar, and this process is to be repeated a third time. After this third trituration, the subsequent attentions are to be made in the fluid way. A grain of the third trituration, namely, is to be mixed with ninety-nine drops of diluted alcohol, and the subsequent attenuations are to be made with strong alcohol.
Although such are Hahnemann’s general directions, in the last edition of the Organon, we find that he did not constantly abide by them in this preparation of medicines. Thus, in the first volume of the Materia Medica, we find the following deviations from his own rules. He directs the tincture of cina to be made with one apart of the dry buds to twenty parts of alcohol, and allowed to stand for a week before it is decanted. The tincture of cocculus is to be made with one apart of the pulverized seeds to twenty parts of alcohol. The tincture of nux vomica is to be made with then grains of the powdered seeds and 1000 drops or alcohol., and allowed to macerate for a week; or it may, he says, he triturated with milk sugar up to the third attenuation. Opium is to be triturated. According to the directions in the Organon, these medicines ought all to be triturated up to the third attenuation.
A few years later, (Chr. Kr., 2nd edition, i. 182) probably with a few of carrying out in his pharmaceutical processes the principle of uniformity he had previously established in reference to the dose, he directed that all medicinal substances whatever, fluid or solid, moist or dry, should be “potentized, ” as he terms it, by being triturated with milk-sugar up to the third attention, and the subsequent attentions prepared in the fluid way. He gives most minute directions as to how this trituration is to be carried out. A grain (or a drop, if fluid) of the medicine is to be added, in an unglazed porcelain mortar, to a third part of 100 grains of milk sugar; this is to be mixed up for an instant with a porcelain spatula, and then rubbed with the pestle for six minutes then the powder is to be scraped up by means of the spatula from the bottom of the mortar for for minutes, and again rubbed for six minute; it is then to be scraped again for four minutes, and the second third of the milk- sugar added and mixed up with the spatula; two poundings of six minutes duration and two scraping of four minutes are next to be performed, and then the also third of the milk-sugar added, and the whole rubbed for six minutes, scraped for four minutes and again triturated fro six minutes. All that now remains to be done is to scrape cup the powder from the mortar and put it in well-stoppered bottle. Supposing the last scraping occupies four minutes, like the others, the whole time consumed in making the trituration will be exactly one hour. For the second trituration, a grain of the first is incorporated by the like tedious process with another 100 grains of milk-sugar; and a grain of this is treated in the same way with other 100 grains of milk-sugar, to form the third trituration.
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.