Isopathy



A modification of the doctrine was, however, revived by a Surgeon Herrmann, who in 1848 gave to the world an imposing work of 160 pages, entitled True Isopathy; or, on the Employment of the Organs of healthy Animals as Remedies in Diseases of the same Organs in the Human Subject.

This work had been preceded by several articles from Herrmann’s pen in the homoeopathic journals, introducing first one and then another of his isopathic preparations, until at length having constructed a complete pharmacopoeia of these wonderful substances, he thought it but right to give to the world his lucubrations in a separate form. Hence the book whose title I have just quoted.

Herrmann’s principle is to employ for the disease of any organ a tincture of the analogous organ in some inferior animal. Thus hepatine, or a tincture of the liver of a fox or dog, is the remedy for all diseases of the liver, including subacute inflammation, jaundice, constipation of the bowels, and hydrophobia, for in Herr Herrmann’s pathology hydrophobia is bought but a disease of the liver, and the hepatic we administer may be made indifferently from the liver of a healthy or a rabid fox or dog. I may remark that about a dozen years before the appearance of Herrmann’s book, a case was cited in favour of Lux’s isopathic doctrines, where a father and son, after having been bitten by a rabid dog, were wonderfully preserved from hydrophobia by eating the roasted lungs of the dog that bit them. Here it is the lungs to be sure, but Herrmann’s prescription of the liver is by no means original, for, as we have seen, Xenocrates, Dioscorides and Durey recommend roasted dog’s liver for those bitten by a rabid dog. But to return to Herrmann and his book. Lienine, or tincture of dog’s spleen, is stated to have cured within ten months two cases of enormous enlargement of the spleen. Renin, or tincture of kidney, was repeatedly found to be of wonderful service in spasmodic retention of urine. Pulmonine, or tincture of lungs, is stated to have proved useful in cases of pneumonia where phosphorus and carbo had failed: and to be a valuable resource in cases of haemoptysis. Dentine, or tincture of teeth, will spare us having recourse to the dentist, and so on with many more similar absurdities. The mode of preparation of these wonderful remedies is to cut the organ into small pieces and digest it in alcohol for a week. The dose is from the pure tincture up to the 12th dilution every six hours or oftener.

Although Gross, as usual, came forward to bear his valuable testimony to the efficacy of Herr Herrmann’s system, which might have been expected, for if ever anything extravagant or absurd was brought forward under the aegis of homoeopathy, Gross was always ready to step forward and put his seal to it, yet the reception it got from the homoeopathic world in general was anything but flattering to its author’s vanity. Dr. Genzke thought it worth while to show the absurdity and illogical character of Herrmann’s views, and to expose the shallowness of his arguments and the utter worthlessness of the cases brought forward in proof of his system. (Hyges, xxii.l.) It need scarcely be pointed out that Herrmann’s system, which he would represent as a perfectioning of homoeopathy, has nothing at all in common with Hahnemann’s system, that it wants altogether the basis of physiological experimentation so essential to homoeopathy, and that it is a mere clumsy attempt to revive the doctrine of signatures under a most irrational and repulsive form.

Recently, however, the isopathic preparations have again excited some attention, not only from their late defence by Hering already alluded to, but also by their having formed the subject of an essay read at the German Homoeopathic Congress (held at Frankfurt, August, 1852) by Dr. Brutzer of Riga.

This essay, which has since appeared in the Allg. hom. Ztg., 44, No. 13, contains some wonderful cures effected by isopathic remedies. Odontonecrosin, or the preparation of carious teeth, is said to be so efficacious in almost all cases of toothache as almost to supersede all homoeopathic remedies; this wonderful substance is used in the 12th, 18th, and 30th dilutions. A young man who had long been affected with condylomatous excrescences on the glans penis and prepuce, which had resisted all allopathic and homoeopathic remedies alike, was quickly cured by a dose or two of syphiline. I should have thought sycosine had been the proper isopathic remedy; still, seeing that Hering’s dilutions of certain pustules of a negro cured all manner of skin diseases of quite different pathological natures, it is not to be wondered at that Dr. Brutzer’s syphiline should cure sycosic excrescences; these isopathic preparations seem to accommodate themselves remarkably to the pathological views of those who administer them. A lady bad long suffered from peculiar headaches that would yield to no homoeopathic remedy, but her own blood duly potentized cured her readily. It is something to know from this case that blood is isopathic to a headache. A man of phthisical habit got a great humid and scabby eruption over the legs, which was quite cured in I don’t know how many months by frequent doses of his own potentized scabs and scales, alternated with the ordinary homoeopathic remedies. The latter of course went for nothing in the treatment, which is a brilliant illustration of isopathic practice. A lady had cancer of the breast, which was excised and she diligently plied with globules prepared from the secretion from her late cancerous tumour, and though the cancer returned, yet Dr. Brutzer has not a doubt her life was prolonged by the isopathic treatment she underwent. Another lady, who had carcinoma uteri, died not of though with that disease, but of nervous apoplexy. This result was brought about by giving her a course of auto-cancrine, though I am at a loss to see why a patient with carcinoma should not die of nervous apoplexy just as well as any other person, and I cannot see that death by nervous apoplexy was a highly desirable result to bring about, nor an illustration of a masterpiece of artistic skill. A lady who suffered from epileptic fits and in whom the catamenia were absent about three months, had the latter restored by a dose of the 8th dilution of healthy menstrual blood. The report does not say if any effect was produced on the epilepsy. I have laid before you an abstract of Dr. Brutzer’s cases to give you a specimen of the ineffable trash that is attempted to be palmed off upon us in justification of some of the extravagances of the isopathists.

In an essay (Hom. Vierteljahrsch., iv.p.11, et seq.) published this year (1853), Dr. Kasemann gives us his notions on the subject of isopathy. He considers that when we give to patients the actual substance that is capable of exciting the very disease they are suffering from, and still more if we give them as medicine the contagious morbid product of their own disease, it is a refinement of sophistry to call this homoeopathy or the cure by the simillimum; it is, he says, undoubtedly isopathy or the cure by the idem. Where, however, we give for the cure of a disease a contagious morbid product that cannot produce this disease, but only a similar disease, in this case we cure by homoeopathy and not by isopathy. He gives the histories of several such homoeopathic cures by means of anthracine. This substance could of course only be employed isopathically in the pustula maligna, but the cases he mentions as having benefited by its use are cases of carbuncle, abscesses, and gangrene.

In conformity with the object I proposed to myself at setting out, I shall now proceed to inquire respecting the isopathic doctrines, in how far they are to be viewed as consistent with theoretic probability, and how far the practice is borne out by experience; and at the outset of our inquiry we may at once set aside Herrmann’s theory of true isopathy as altogether unfounded in reason or nature, for no arguments having the slightest claim to validity are brought forward in its support, and no facts worth attention are adduced by its author to substantiate his views. It is obvious that, even if true, there is a practical difficulty attending the application of it which would be a serious objection to its employment. Thus it is necessary that we should in every case be enabled to fix beforehand on the organ or part whose disease is the cause of the symptoms present, before we could venture on the giving of a Herrmann’s isopathic remedy, a matter difficult in most and impossible in many cases. Again, there are no rules given to enable us to fix on the appropriate animal from which we are to obtain the healthy organ to be used for the cure of the patient, supposing we had discovered the organ primarily diseased in him, and accordingly we find in Herrmann’s book the organs of foxes, wolves, dogs, sheep, and swine arbitrarily selected for supplying the remedial agent. But I waste too much time on such a childish and flimsy system of practice.

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.