Dr. Hering goes on in this paper to give an explanation of the supposed mode of action of morbid products, which he calls nosodes. For fear of mutilation, by attempting to abridge it, I shall quote it entire. “Every disorder,” he says, “is necessarily accompanied by chemical change in the body. We see that it is so at least, in all those cases which we can investigate, and we think it reasonable to conclude that it is always so. The same phenomenon now appears as when a bar of steel is magnetised, or electricity is excited by friction or otherwise; when one end of the bar is magnetised, the other is found so too, but opposite in quality; if one end is north the other will be south, and vice versa. Positive electricity excites the negative, etc. I have always observed the same thing in disease. If the external skin is alkaline, the mucous membranes will be found acid, and vice versa.
If this is not the case with these surfaces it will be found so with other organs; and if the affection does not appear in the shape of acidity and alkalinity, it takes some other form. But the products of the separate poles mutually neutralize each other. When a disease arises in one organ, the opposite or neutralizing state is excited in another. Up to this time these nosodes have only been so far employed as they were soluble in alcohol, that is, only the soluble parts, the salts; they have also been always administered internally, although they appear externally. When the external product acts to neutralize the internal, it may in many cases be the chemical antidote. One follows the other. The existence of both constitutes the disease; the removal of one removes the other, and may also remove the disease. The jars are discharged by the connecting rod, the external is admitted into the interior, and the equilibrium is restored.”
This is all the promised explanation, or law of the action of the nosodes in curing diseases. It is, as must be plain to you all, merely a vague conjecture, and by no means a happy one; for in the chemical and electrical phenomena he has put forward as analogies, there is always some proportion between the amount of the acid and the alkali, of the positive and the negative electricity; there is, however, none betwixt the 30th dilution (that usually administered by Dr. Hering) and the deranged secretion it is to restore. The remark as to the opposite character of the secretions of different parts in disease is certainly of importance if confirmed, but we should like to know the facts that have led Dr. Hering to this conclusion.
Gross, whose homoeopathic career has been distinguished by a marked propensity for novelty-hunting, seems to have become at once deeply enamoured of the isopathic theory. He says (Allg.h.Ztg., 2, No.9.) the simile is not exactly the right thing, and that for some time he has been convinced that aequalia aequalibus or the isopathic principle is the correct one, and that similia similibus or the homoeopathic principle is only a makeshift or indifferent apology for the other. Gross’s isopathy consists mainly in giving vaccinine in natural small-pox, and in recommending it as a prophylactic against the small-pox in place of cow-pox inoculation. He also recounts how that one day, having inflicted on himself a small wound, the idea occurred to him to potentize his blood. He accordingly proceeded to do this in the following manner. He moistened a globule with his blood, and put it into a bottle with 10,000 other globules, and shook all together for a quarter of an hour. One of these globules he then added to 10,000 fresh globules, and likewise shook them together energetically for a quarter of an hour. A globule of this second bottle he administered to a lady who suffered from congestion to the head and chest, and it had the effect of curing her. The same curative result he obtained from this medicine in the case of a young man troubled with haemoptysis, with similar symptoms of congestion to the head and chest.
Dr. Gross is not the originator of this sanguinary medication. Previous to this, a certain (or rather uncertain) Mr. K. detailed in one of the homoeopathic journals how he too had potentized his own blood, and found that it had a direct action on the circulation, and was useful when administered by olfaction in plethoric states and in metrorrhagias; and about the same time another anonymous individual pledges his anonymous veracity that he had seen good effects from blood in two cases of great congestion of blood to the head, with oppression of the chest.
These few instances are, however, the first appearances of human blood as a medicinal agent in our homoeopathic literature; its last appearance is of very recent date, as you shall hereafter hear. Elsewhere it has to my knowledge only been recommended for the purpose of transfusion into the veins of anaemic individuals; but the blood of various animals was a favourite prescription of ancient medical men, and we learn from Galen that it was prescribed after what we might consider a homoeopathic or isopathic fashion. Thus he says the blood of common pigeons, wood-pigeons, and turtle-doves is recommended to be injected into the eyes to remove extravasated blood caused by a blow. He further alleges that the blood of domestic fowls stops hemorrhages of the membranes of the brain, and that the blood of kids mingled with vinegar cures haemoptysis. We have seen that a similar employment of blood was recommended by Xenocrates of Aphrodisias, who in addition employed menstrual blood as a remedial agent. Different kinds of blood were employed by the ancients for other affections; but it was reserved for homoeopathists to devise the ingenious project of employing healthy human blood as a therapeutic agent.
The plan of preparing and administering the morbid products of diseases, thus happily initiated under the auspices of Drs. Hering and Gross, was not long of finding a champion to systematize the practice. A certain Herr Lux, a veterinary surgeon in leipzic, published in 1833 a work entitled The Isopathy of Contagions, in which he enunciates the following propositions:-“All infectious diseases contain in their infectious matters the remedies capable of curing themselves.” The principle upon which these remedial agents act he contends to be aequalia aequalibus, and the system he denominates Isopathy. Examples of this isopathic principle he asserts are presented by the well-known facts of the cure of frost-bites by snow, of burns by heat, and the restoration of frozen apples by sousing them in ice-cold water. For the cure of the malignant pustule in cattle he recommends a drop of the matter of the pustule to be potentized to the 30th dilution, and a globule of this to be administered; for the rot he advises a drop of the nasal mucus to be treated in the same way, and the same dose given. He cites as further proofs of the correctness of his views the preservative power of the inoculation of cattle with the nasal mucus of animals affected with the rot, and the prophylactic effects of the inoculation of the matter of the plague-bubo against that pestilence. He advises that every species of contagium should be potentized and preserved for use in its respective disease, for, says he, unless it be potentized it is of no use. Among the contagious matters he enumerates are the sheep-pox, the cow-pox, the grease of cattle and horses, the itch of men, the matter of malignant pustule, the pus of chancres, the contagious matter of hydrophobia contained in the vesicle of Marochetti, the lymph of the plague-bubo, even the contagium of cholera (if we can find it–I need scarcely remark that it has not yet been discovered; indeed Lux admits that it has not yet been found, but says that its discovery is the province of those who are experienced in the observation of pestilential diseases). He states that the cachectic states caused by the abuse of sulphur, mercury, and cinchona bark are best cured by means of sulphur, mercury, and bark; and finally he cites Hering’s experiments with psorine in proof of his doctrine. As is usual with persons who once mount a hobby, Herr Lux rides his to death, and not content with potentizing the contagious matters of really contagious maladies, he goes the length of advising the same thing to be done with all the secretions and excretions of men and animals. His advice being asked for the cure of a lapdog which had a nasty propensity to eat the human faeces it found by the wayside–and indeed in leipzic or any other German town it would have plenty of opportunity to indulge its depraved tastes, for the worthy Germans have rather a fashion of relieving themselves a la belle etoile–Lux naturally proceeded to potentize some human faeces and solemnly administered it–in place of a sound whipping–to the nasty ear, with what result we are left to guess. This delicate preparation he denominated humanine. He likewise potentized vesical calculi, the matter of glanders, the foetid sweat of the feet, the saliva of epileptics, and many other similar singular substances. Some of his disciples went to still greater extravangances. I remember meeting an enthusiastic isopathic in Germany who carried about with him a pocket-case filled with every possible excretion from men and animals, healthy and diseased, and not only with such, but other kingdoms of nature were ransacked to furnish the so-called isopathic preparations. Thus he had a medicament entitled tonitru–a thunderbolt–which excited my astonishment. I requested to be informed how he had obtained such a formidable medicine, and he informed me that when a flash of lightning struck a stone building it produced a sort of vitrification of the stone; a grain of this was carefully scraped off and potentized as usual up to 30, and this preparation was supposed to contain the healing virtues of the thunderbolt, an excellent remedy, he assured me, in contusions resulting from violent blows; for, he complacently observed, a thunderbolt gives the most violent blow of anything in nature–a fact I readily assented to.
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.