I must also exclude entirely from having any claim to isopathic practice the proposal of Hering and others to give the morbid products of non-contagious diseases and the morbid matters excreted by some contagious diseases, which do not, however, contain the contagious principle of the disease; for it is self- evident and has been proved by numerous experiments that these matters are not capable of producing the disease in healthy individuals. The stools and vomited matters of cholera patients, the black vomit of yellow fever, the buboes of plague, are among the morbid products of contagious diseases, of which we have not the slightest evidence that they are capable of producing the diseases whence they are derived. The matter of leucorrhoea, the ichor of carious bones, the sputa of phthisical patients, the pus from various ulcers, the scrapings of erysipelatous parts, and so forth, are quite incapable of propagating their respective diseases, and having no pathogenetic can also have no therapeutic powers. All these and the like must therefore be removed entirely out of consideration, as they do not bear out the isopathic doctrine, and there is no evidence that their ingestion is of the slightest use; rather does their use seem to be the offspring of a prurient imagination or a most perverted pathological creed, and let it be said to the credit of the good sense of homoeopathists that their use has never extended beyond a few whimsical and fantastic individuals, and the sooner they are consigned to the limbo of forgotten things the better; none will regret their absence from our Materia Medica.
The only possible isopathic agents properly so called are the actual infecting agents of contagious diseases, and these infecting agents we find to reside in sundry morbid products differing in different diseases. Thus in small-pox the infecting principle resides in the matter contained in the pustules peculiar to that diseases. The infecting principle of measles is contained in the blood, as the experiments of Home prove; the purulent discharge of acute gonorrhoea is undoubtedly infectious, the pus of the chancre is so likewise; the matter of ophthalmia neonatorum, contains undoubtedly a contagious principle, the nasal mucous secretion in glanders is contagious, and so is the matter of malignant pustule; and so forth. Therefore it is with respect to these and similar matters only that the isopathic principle can be applied, for they alone are capable of inducing in the healthy the disease to which they owe their origin. But the question now falls to be considered, can we admit the truth of the isopathic principle as a rule of cure? Theoretically and by analogy I have no difficulty in doing so. For the part suffering from preternaturally depressed vitality, the consequence of over-stimulation by some agent, as I have shown disease to consist in, there cannot theoretically be a more appropriate stimulant than the very agent capable of producing the same state, given in regulated doses; as in the case of the cure of burns by heat and frost-bites by cold.
Thus there is nothing inconsistent with the views I have expressed respecting the curative process in admitting the possibility of cure by an agent capable of producing the same disease. Let us see, then, if there are any undoubted instances of such cures being effected. I have already instanced heat and cold as the curative agents for diseases produced by the same agencies respectively. In searching through the homoeopathic records, I find a good many cases of measles which apparently recovered very quickly under the use of morbilline; but measles is a disease of that nature that we should not be surprised to see nine cases out of ten recover perfectly and rapidly, without any medicinal treatment. It is otherwise with the treatment of variola with varioline and vaccinine. Not to mention several other pretty well-marked cases, we have the evidence of Schnappauf, backed by Trinks, (Brit. Journ. of Hom., ix.p 470.) relative to the great modifying action of varioline in numerous cases of small-pox. In these cases there could be apparently no question as to the decidedly beneficial influence by the remedy on the course of the disease, and I myself have had an opportunity of verifying this remedial action of varioline in the case of a pretty smart attack of natural small-pox in the Hahnemann Hospital, where the modifying influence of the varioline, the only remedy used, was very apparent upon the development of the pustules and the prevention of any suppurative fever. (This case is recorded at length in the Brit, Journ. of Hom., vol. x. p. 262.)
I find also in the pages of an allopathic journal (The New York Journal of Medicine) an account of the treatment of several cases of very severe small-pox by means of vaccine lymph dissolved in a large proportion of water.The physician, DR. Nogueira of Porto-Alegre, in Brazil, speaks highly of the efficacy of this treatment, and says he was led to the practice by reflecting that belladonna, so efficacious in the treatment of scarlatina, was also a preventive of it; and reasoning from analogy, he thought that vaccine matter, as it was a preventive, might also be a remedy for the small-pox. The result justified his expectations, and his patients made very rapid recoveries without any other treatment whatsoever, and the usual disfigurement was not produced.
The curious observations of Drs. Auzias and Sperino with regard to that method of cure for syphilis which they term syphilization, whereby they imply the repeated inoculation of the patient with chancrous pus until the inoculation will no longer produce any effect, if authenticated as to its pretended curative results, may be taken as a genuine specimen of isopathic treatment.
A few years since I met in Germany an extensive landed proprietor, who had many sheep and oxen under his care. On one occasion the rot or some similar disease broke out among his sheep, and as he was a bit of a homoeopathist, being in fact a retired homoeopathic practitioner, he commenced treating the animals homoeopathically. but finding his success but small, he bethought himself of isopathy, and accordingly he collected a few drops of the highly infectious morbid that was developed in the course of the disease, and with milk-sugar he prepared a first trituration of this, and the sheep that after wards feel ill he treated with this remedy alone, and all recovered. Lux in his book mentions similar cures by means of the matter of glandered horses and of the malignant pustule.
Many cases are on record of the aggravation or production of cutaneous disease by the administration of psorine, or the supposed infectious matter of psora or itch. But the remedy administered in many of these cases was not what its name indicated, but the morbid product of the patient’s cutaneous disease, dynamized as it is called- what Hering has denominated auto-psorine. It is very possible that in many cases the cutaneous affections whence this so-called psorine was procured were contagious forms of exanthema, and probably many different varieties of cutaneous diseases were used for its preparation. I have carefully looked through the records of many of these cases, and amid a mass of cases that show actually no result whatever from the administration of the remedy, some are certainly to be met with here and there, where an effect seemed to follow its administration, generally an aggravation or even the development of a cutaneous eruption. Although I am very much disposed to doubt that the contents of the true scabious vesicles contain any infectious or morbific agent whatever, yet it is quite possible that the acarus which propagates the disease contains some venomous substance which causes that peculiar itching so disproportionate to the apparent exciting cause. It is therefore perfectly consistent with may ideas that the triturated acarus, like the triturated bug or the triturated meloe, may be capable not only of producing pathogenetic effects but of curing certain maladies; but we have absolutely no evidence whatever to prove that the disease scabies, properly so called, can be cured at all by the dynamized acarus, or indeed by any other method than one that effects the destruction of the acarus itself. The psorine, I may observe, that has been prepared from cases of alleged scabies has never, that I am aware of, been prepared from the insect, but always from the contents of the vesicular eruption present, and whence taken we are not informed (except indeed in Dr. Hering’s case, which was a very doubtful case of scabies), though that is a point of importance, for it is now well known that the peculiar itch-vesicles are confined to distinct portions of the body, such as the fingers, wrists, and ankles, and that the eruptions on other parts are the result of the patient’s own scratching. (See papers by Hebra, in OEst. Jahrb., 1844.) An attempt has been made by Stapf to prove psorine, but the symptoms obtained are insignificant, and are very little attended to by psorine-givers in the administration of their favourite remedy.
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.