Numerous facts convince me that the Galenic formula contraria contrariis curantur cannot be this rule; for, apart from the impossibility of even conceiving the contrary state of many disease, I know that for instance the morbific effects of cold are aggravated a thousand-fold by the employment of heat, and that the application of cold is the very worst mode of treating a burn. My own experience shows me many instances of the opposite rule, or similia similibus curantur, being correct with respect to the cure of some maladies. Thus every experienced cook knows that the best way to cure a burn is to hold the burnt part near the fire, “to draw out the heat,” as is commonly stated; and Kentish has shown us that a similar mode of treatment of burns has been attended with the best results in his most extensive experience. The same is also alleged by the illustrious Sydenham, and recently by Benjamin Bell and John Hunter. Again, the common experience of inhabitants of cold climates teaches them to apply ice and snow to frost-bitten parts, for they well know that an incautious application of a higher temperature is followed by the destruction of the frost-bitten part. The professional dancer knows that when overheated with the dance, not cold water or ices are the best things to take, but warm tea or a small quantity of heating brandy. Now, here I have in cinchona bark a medicine whose curative power in ague is beyond dispute. Let me see if it can produce anything like ague in the healthy person, for if so, it will be an important addition to the evidence already before me in favour of a general law of cure founded on the similarity of the effects of the drug to the characteristic symptoms of the disease; and if I should find that this specific drug has actually the power of producing symptoms similar to those of the diseases it cures, I shall be encouraged to try the few other known specifics, to see if they do not act in like manner, and if I am right in my conjectures, shall I not have it in my power perhaps to add to our list of those most valuable and inexplicable of all remedies-specifics?.
Hahnemann accordingly, being at the time in vigorous health, took gradually four drachms of good cinchona bark, and he was gratified to find that for two successive days he was visited with febrile attacks exactly similar to those of the ague he had cured with a few drops of the tincture some short time previously; and in the addenda he made to a translation of Cullen’s Materia Medica he published in that year, after mentioning the fever-producing power of bark, he says it is probably by reason of this power that it cures intermittent fever. (L.W., p. 314.) Encouraged by this, his hopes of rendering the medical art more certain and simple were raised, and he set himself diligently to collect from the writings of ancient and modern medical authors all the cases of poisoning he cough lay hands on, and to institute experiments with different drugs on himself and various friends, and to compare their effects with the histories of the maladies recorded as having been cured by such drugs singly and alone.
The further he advanced in such investigations and inquiries, the more he became satisfied of the extensive application of his therapeutic law, until at length, after six years of patient observation and research, he felt himself in a position to come before the medical world with a statement of his views upon the matter. This he did in an essay in the journal of his friend Hufeland, entitled On a new principle for ascertaining the curative powers of drugs, (Lesser writings, p.295.) in which, after exposing in a masterly style the absurdities of the methods therefore adopted for this purpose, and showing the vanity of the search after the fundamental cause of disease and the inefficacy of the treatment by contraries, he points out that the only proper method for ascertaining the virtues of medicines is to test them carefully on persons in health; and from a vast array of instances, collected from the writings of various authors and his own experience, he demonstrates the value of the method of treating diseases with medicines that have the power of developing symptoms similar to those of the disease. In this essay he does not yet inculcate the universality of this law in the treatment of disease; he only points out the value of it when applied to the treatment of those chronic diseases which constitute the opprobrium medicine. For acute disease, the thinks the palliative or antipathic method the safest and the best, and accordingly he does not seek to apply his new method to them as yet. He does not yet talk about diminishing the dose, but insists on the necessity of administering but one medicine at a time. Subsequently, as we know, he discovered experimentally the applicability of his principle to acute diseases; and still later he urged the advantage of giving medicines in doses of such extreme exiguity that they have earned the title of infinitesimal.
In all these discoveries Hahnemann was guided by experience, to which he trusted solely, though it cannot be denied that we here and there detect some slight suspicion of a priori reasoning, but none sufficient to lead him astray. Indeed, his theorizing was at this period always subordinate to his observation of facts, and we may safely say that the following prostrations, which constitute the kernel of his doctrines, were legitimate deductions of experience:-
1. That the cure of a disease is effected most rapidly, safely, and pleasantly by a medicine which itself possesses the power of producing in the healthy individual a morbid state similar to that of the disease.
2. That in order to ascertain the morbid states producible by remedies for the purpose of enabling us to arrive as a knowledge of the disease for which they will be curative, we must test them singly on persons in health.
3. That medicines must be given for curative purposes singly and alone.
4. That they must be given in doses smaller than those employed for the development of morbid states in the healthy.
These propositions contain the essence of the homoeopathic system when first it was propounded by Hahnemann as applicable to the treatment of diseases in general; and they are likewise, as I have above shown, the inevitable therapeutic deductions from the pathological doctrines of which I have given a brief outline.
The forgoing propositions are far from constituting the sum- total of the doctrines of Hahnemann in their later development, and we shall find as we go along that some of them were modified, and that numerous additions were modified, and that numerous additions were made to them, and theoretic speculations engrafted on them; but these will from the subject of future lectures.
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.