Isopathy



On the appearance of this book of Master Lux’s, Dr. Hering, the original suggestor of the heresy, wrote a counterblast against poor Lux, and contended that in all these remedial means there was no question of a deviation from the homoeopathic principle; that this was still homoeopathy and not isopathy, and that the most that could be said was that the curative agent was a simillimum, but certainly not an aequale or idem.

Stapf (Arch., xiv.2, 114) writes very sensibly on the subject. He says that he can understand the medicinal virtues of the miasmatic contagia of diseases of a constant character, like measles, scarlatina, variola, syphilis, sycosis, psora, anthrax, hydrophobia, and the like, and he thinks, from the testimony of many careful observers, that our Materia Medica has been advantaged by the introduction of morbilline, scarlatinine, varioline, syphiline, sycosine, psorine, anthracine, hydrophobine, and so forth; but he cannot imagine the utility, and deplores the introduction of the products of diseases of uncertain character, and consequently he condemns preparations like tineine, lachrymine, cysticine, phthisicine, herpetine, epilepticine, leucorrhoeine, gonorrhoeine, sudor pedum, etc., which being the products of diseases of no fixed character, and most of them not inoculable, he cannot see the propriety of their being put forward as medicinal agents. He recommends that morbid products, when used for the treatment of the diseases they are the products of, should, when possible, only be used for the patient from whom they are taken, which would certainly be a tedious operation, if we were to potentize each dose up to the 30th degree; but the trouble, says Stapf, is nothing in comparison with the prospect of curing our patient. Stapf cannot admit of the propriety of giving the morbid product of one person to another. He, like Hering, will not admit that the morbid product is an idem but only a simillimum, and therefore the practice with these remarkable medicaments is still homoeopathy and not isopathy.

A subject that occupied the attention and inflamed the zeal of so many of his disciples could not be passed over unnoticed by Hahnemann; accordingly we find that he alludes to isopathy on more than one occasion. His observations in the Organon are worth recalling to your recollection:-

“It is on such examples of domestic practice that Mr. M. Lux founds his so-called mode of cure by identicals and idea, which he calls isopathy, which some eccentric-minded persons have already adopted as the ne plus ultra of a healing art, without knowing how they can carry it out in practice. But if we examine these instances (the cure of frost-bites by snow frictions, of burns by heat, etc.) attentively, we find that they do not bear out these views. The purely physical powers differ in the nature of their action on the living organism from those of a dynamic medicinal kind. Heat or cold of the air that surrounds us, or of the water, or of our food and drink, occasion (as heat and cold) of themselves no absolute injury to a healthy body; heat and cold are in their alternations essential to the maintenance of healthy life, consequently they are not of themselves medicines. Heat and cold, therefore, act as curative agents in affections of the body, not by virtue of their essential nature (not, therefore, as heat and cold per se, not as things hurtful in themselves, as are the drugs rhubarb, china, etc., even in the smallest doses), but only by virtue of their greater or smaller quantity, that is, according to their degrees of temperature, just as (to take an example from mere physical powers) a great weight of lead will bruise my hand painfully, not by virtue of its essential nature as lead, for a thin plate of lead would not bruise me, but in consequence of its quantity and massive weight. If, then, cold and heat be serviceable in bodily ailments like frost-bites or burns, they are so solely on account of their degree of temperature, just as they only inflict injury on the healthy body by their extreme degree of temperature. Thus we find in these examples of successful domestic practice, that it is not the prolonged application of the degree of cold in which the limb was frozen that restores it isopathically (it would be thereby rendered quite lifeless and dead), but a degree of cold that only approximates to that (homoeopathy), and which gradually rises to a comfortable temperature, as frozen sour-krout laid upon the frost-bitten hand, in the temperature of the room, soon melts, gradually growing warmer, from 32*or 33* Fahr. to the temperature of the room, supposing that to be only 55*, and thus the limb is recovered by physical homoeopathy. In like manner, a hand scalded with boiling water would not be isopathically cured by the application of boiling water, but only by a somewhat lower temperature, as, for example, by holding it in a vessel containing a fluid heated to 160*, which becomes every minute less hot, and finally descends to the temperature of the room, whereupon the scalded, part is restored by homoeopathy. Water in the act of freezing cannot isopathically draw out the frost from potatoes and apples, but this is effected by water only near the freezing point. So, to give another example from physical action, the injury resulting from a blow on the forehead with a hard substances (a painful tumour) is soon diminished in pain and swelling by pressing on the spot for a considerable time with the ball of the thumb, strongly at first, and then gradually less forcibly, homoeopathically; but not by an equally hard blow with an equally hard body, which would increase the evil isopathically.

“The examples of cures by isopathy given in the book alluded to- muscular contractions in human beings and spinal paralysis in a dog, which had been caused by a chill, being rapidly cured by cold bathing-these events are falsely explained by isopathy. What are called sufferings from a chill, are only nominally connected with cold, and often arise, in the bodies of those predisposed to them, even from a draught of wind which was not at all cold. Moreover, the manifold effects of a cold bath on the living organism, in health and in disease, cannot be reduced to such a simple formula as to warrant the construction of a system of such pretensions. That serpent’s bites, as is there stated, are most certainly cured by portions of the serpents must remain a mere fable of a former age until such an improbable assertion is authenticated by indubitable observation and experience, which it certainly never will be. That, in fine, the saliva of a mad dog given to a patient labouring under hydrophobia (in Russia) is said to have cured him–that is said’ would not induce any conscientious physician to imitate such a hazardous experiment, to construct a so-called isopathic system so dangerous, and so highly improbable in its extended application, as has been done (not by the modest author of the pamphlet entitled The Isopathy of Contagions, but) by its eccentric supporters, especially Dr. Gross, who vaunts this isopathy (aequalia aequalibus) as the only proper therapeutic rule, and sees nothing in the similia similibus but an indifferent substitute for it; ungratefully enough, as he is entirely indebted to the similia similibus for all his fame and fortune. (Organon, introduction, p.100, note).

And again, speaking of the different modes of employing medicinal agents, he says:- “A fourth mode of employing medicines in diseases has been attempted to be created by means of isopathy, as it is called; that is to say, a method of curing a given disease by the same contagious principle that produces it. But even granting this could be done, which would certainly be a most valuable discovery, yet, after all, seeing that the miasm is given to the patient highly dynamized, and thereby, consequently, to a certain degree in an altered condition, the cure is effected only by opposing a simillimum to a simillimum.” (Organon, aphorism lvi., note).

From these passages it will be seen that, without denying the cures of certain maladies by their own contagious principles, the whole affair finds but little favour in Hahnemann’s eyes, and the harsh terms in which he speaks of his fidus Achates, Gross, seem to indicate that he does not half like the subject. He has a few words more about it in his Chronic Diseases, which I shall now read.

“The antipsoric medicines treated of in the following volumes,” he says, “contain among them no so-called isopathic medicines, because their pure effects–even those of potentized itch-matter (psorine)–are far from being adequately proved, so that a sure homoeopathic employment of them may be made. I say homoeopathic, for idem it is not, even though we give prepared itch-matter to the same patient that we took it from, because if it be able to do him good it can only do so in the potentized state, seeing that crude itch-matter, which he has already on his person, is as an idem without any action on him. The process of developing the potency (potentizing) alters and modifies it, just as leaf-gold, after being potentized, is no longer inactive crude leaf-gold in the human body, but is ever more and more modified and altered at every stage of its dynamization. Potentized and modified in this manner the itch-matter (psorine) to be administered is no longer idem with the crude original itch-matter, but is only a simillimum. For betwixt idem and simillimum there is, if we will only reflect, no intermediate thing, or in other words, betwixt idem and simile the only conceivable intermediate is simillimum. Isopathic and aequale are erroneous expressions, which if they express anything can only mean simillimum, because they are certainly not idem (tavtov).(Chronische Krankheiten, 2nd edit.i.p.188).

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.