Specific Medicine and attempts at a Theory of Cure



Here the medicinal agent is stated to be a stronger irritation than that of the disease, and this statement is repeated a little further on in the same essay, where Hahnemann talks about the homoeopathic aggravation, a subject which is so intimately connected with Hahnemann’s views of the modus operandi of remedial agents that we cannot altogether separate it from this subject, However, in this place I shall do no more than state that an aggravation of the symptoms was presumed by Hahnemann to occur at first after the administration of every remedy homoeopathic to the disease. This aggravation he explained to the nothing more than a manifestation of the primary symptoms of the medicine, “which are somewhat superior in intensity to the disease, and which ought to resemble the original malady so closely,” as to seem like an increase of the disease. However, he states a little further on that such aggravations is owing to the dose of the medicine being too large, and will be got rid of by reducing the dose.

Hahnemann then brings forward as in illustration of homoeopathic treatment the case of the overheated labourer curing himself by a small quantity of spirits. Passing over the gradual development of this theory, as we find it in the successive writings of Hahnemann, left us pass on the more complete statement of in the last edition of the Organon, and there we find the homoeopathic law thus explained (Aphorism xxvi.):-

“A weaker dynamic affections is permanently extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differing in kin) is similar to the former in its manifestations.

The mode in which this operation is attempted to be explained we find detailed as follows:-

“As very disease (not strictly surgical) depends only on a peculiar derangement of our vital force in sensations and functions, when a homoeopathic cure of the vital force deranged by the natural disease is accomplished by the administration of a medicinal agent selected on account of an accurate similarity of symptoms, a somewhat stronger but similar artificial morbid affections is brought into contact with and, as it were, pushed into the place of the weaker, similar, natural morbid irritation, against which the instinctive vital force, now merely (though in a stronger degree) medicinally diseased, is then compelled to direct an increased amount or energy; but, on account of the shorter duration of the action of the medicinal agent that now morbidly affects it, the vital force soon overcomes this, and as it was in the first instance relieved from the natural morbid affection, so it is now at last freed from the artificial (the medicinal) one, and hence is enabled again to carry on healthily the vital operations of the organism”.

And he adds in a note to this paragraph: “The short duration of the action of the agents that excite artificial diseases, which we term medicines, makes it possible that, although they are at the same time stronger than the natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the vital force than can the weaker natural diseases, which solely in consequence of the longer, generally life-long, duration of their action (psora, syphilis, sycosis) can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone, until the physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent that produces a disease very similar but stronger (to wit, a homoeopathic medicine), which, when taken (or smelt), is, as it were, forced upon the unconscious, instinctive vital force,

and substituted in the place of the former natural morbid affection, by which means the vital force then remains merely medicinally, ill, but only for a short time, because the action of the medicine (the time in which the medicinal disease excited by it runs its course) does not last long. The curse of diseases of many years’ duration by the occurrence of small-pox and measles (both of which run a course of only a few weeks) are processes of a similar character”.

He then lays down the following as a justification of the explanation just given:-

“The human body appears to admit of being much more powerfully affected in its health by medicines (partly because we have the regulation of the dose in our own power) than by natural) morbific irritations-for natural disease are cured and overcome by suitable medicines.

“The inimical agencies, whether of a physical or a physical character, to which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed morbid noxious agents, do not possess the power of morbidly deranging the health of man unconditionally; but we are made ill by them only when our organism is sufficiently disposed and susceptible to the attack of the morbific cause that may be present, and to be altered in its health, deranged, and made to underage abnormal sensations and functions-hence they do not produce disease in every one, nor at all times.

“But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific agents which we term medicines. Every real medicine, namely, acts at all times, under all circumstances, on every living human being, and produces in him the symptoms peculiar to it (distinctly perceptible, if the dose be large enough), so that evidently every living human organism is liable to be affected, and, as if were, inoculated with the medicinal disease at any time, and absolutely (unconditionally), which, as before said, is by no means the case with its natural diseases.

“In accordance with this fact, it is undeniably shown by all experience that the living human organism is much more disposed and has a greater tendency to be excited and to have its health deranged by medicinal powers, than by morbific noxious agents and infections miasms, or, in other words, that the morbific noxious, agents possess a power of morbidly deranging man’s health that is subordinate and conditional, often very conditional, whilst medicinal agents have an absolute unconditional power, greatly superior to the former.” (Organon, Aphorism xxx., xxxi., xxxii., xxxiii).

Now, I believe a fallacy will be found to pervade all these attempts at explanation, and the premises on which they are founded are in my judgment untenable.

There is no proof offered of the affection excited by the medicine being stronger than the natural disease, beyond the fact of the medicine curing the disease. The fact stated in Aphorism xxxii., which I have just read, that the medicine is capable of acting “at all times under all circumstances, on every living human being.” whilst the disease acts very conditionally, would not, if true, prove the greater strength of the medicine, but only that the organism is more susceptible to the medicinal that to the morbific irritation. A vessel of unannealed glass will resist a powerful blow from a wooden hammer, but will fly into a thousand shivers if a grain of sand be but dropped into it from the height of a foot, yet no one would say that the strength of the low in the latter case was greater than in the former.

Besides, it is not true that medicines act at all times, under all circumstances, and on every human being as here stated, for we know that many people are in the habit of consuming daily certain substances that belong to the cases of medicinal agents, such as pepper, mustard, vinegar, tea, coffee, tobacco, cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices, without experiencing any medicinal effects; indeed, that is here stated of all all medicinal substances is only partially true with regard to the more active poisons. (And not always so with regard to them even; witness the enormous quantities of opium required by a habitual opium- eater to produce any effect, and the still more wonderful instances of the modern arsenic-eaters, for an account of whom see Brit. Jour. of Hom., vol. xi. Jan., 1853. I may further allude to some historical examples of immunity from the effects of poisonous substances. One of the most remarkable of these is the case of Mithridates, king of Pontus, who had so accustomed himself to the ingestion of poisons that when, after being conquered by Pompey, the wished to put an end to himself by poison, he was unable to do so. (Pliny, lib, xxv. c. 2.) Racine, in his beautiful tragedy of Mithridate, thus describes this circumstances:-

” Iln’a plus aspire qu’a s’ouvrir does chemins

Pour eviter l’affront de tomber dans leurs mains.

D’abord il a tente les atteintes mortelles

Des poisons que lui-meme a crus les plus fideles;

Il les a trouves tous sans forces et sans vertu.

` Vain secours, a-t-il dit, que j’ai trop combattu!

Contre tous les poisons soigneux de me defendre,

J’ai perdu tout le fruit que j’en pouvois attendre.

Essayons maintenant des secours plus certains.

Et cherchons un trepa plus funeste aux Romains”.

Galen relates that an old Athenian woman had so habituated herself to take aconite, that she was able to swallow large quantities of it without injury. (Simpl. Medic. lib. iii. c. 8.) A still more remarkable case is mentioned by Camerarius in his Medit. Hist., cap., 69: “Cum victor Alexander magnus Indian debellaret, a rege quodam missa sit virgo pulcherrima venenis ita cabita, ut appropinquantes saliva sua posset interficere, ut ejus forma captus, cum hac concumbens, interiret: fraudem suspicatus Aristoteles Regi consuluit, ut prius jungi cum illa sulicum mandaret, qui simul ac eam impudice attigit, veneno exanimatus est.” A similar story is related of the Sultan of Cambaya, who by the daily use of poisons is said to have not only rendered his body invulnerable, but so impregnated with them that he could kill a man by spitting on him, and his embrace was followed by instant death, so that he was compelled to have no fever than 40000 concubines. (Fletcher’s Pathology, p. 115.)) and the less active medicinal substances in large doses. Indeed, it may be stated as a rule that the action of medicines on the healthy human organism is not absolute but conditional, being dependent in a great degree upon the dose in which they are given. But in disease, as experience teaches, us, the susceptibility to the specific irritation is so enormously increased that the same dose which can be borne in health without particular inconvenience, will in disease produce the most violent action, and the very smallest doses act.

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.