in this manner we magnify to the perception of the vital principle the picture of its enemy the disease, by homoeopathic medicines that produces an imitation of the original disease of illusive resemblance to it, we thereby, by degrees, cause and compel this instinctive vital force gradually to increase its energy, and to go on always increasing it more and more, until at length it becomes much stronger than the original disease was, so that it can again become the autocrat in its own organism, can again take the reins and direct the organism on the way to health; whilst in the meantime the apparent increase of the disease produced by the homoeopathic medicines disappears spontaneously, whenever we, witnessing the re-established preponderance of the vital power, that is to say, the re- established health, cease to administer these remedies. Incredibly great is the fund of the spiritual vital principle imparted to man by the infinitely benevolent Creator, if we physicians did but know how to keep it right is days of health by a properly regulated wholesome regimen, and in diseases to summon it forth and stimulate it up to the proper mark by pure homoeopathic treatment.” (Chronische Krankheiten, 2and edit., part iv., 1848; translated in my edition of the Organon, p. 129).
This, it must be apparent to all, is a more extravagant attempt to explain the curative process than any of his former ones; from first to last it is all conjecture, and has not even the credit of being ingenious. It is not true that acute disease are not cured without the assistance of are save by the sacrifice of portions of their fluids land solids. For, as is sufficiently well known to us all, a diarrhoea may cease, a catarrh go off, a pleurisy, an erysipelas, a fever, etc., terminate spontaneously without the occurrence of these so-called crises, which Hahnemann here terms sacrifices of a portion of the fluids and solids; and the health that is re-established after the natural termination of the disease is just as perfect in general as that which is brought about by the aid of art. According to this explanation, the vital force is insufficient of itself to overcome the disease, and it is homoeopathic medicine that is to add to its power-but now is it to this? Now by strengthening it directly-oh, no! but by going to the assistance of the disease and making it appear greater than it is in reality. To carry out Hahnemann’s simile it is as if one king should, in order to assist an ally whose dominions were invaded by an enemy, send over to the enemy’s army a reinforcement of several regiments of ‘men in buckram,” in order that the sight of this additional adverse force should stimulate the pluck of his ally’s troops to such an extends as to make them perform prodigies of valour so as to defeat the invading force, or else induce the beleaguered monarch to call out this reserves of military, national guards or land were, and thus present an overwhelming force to the enemy and drive him across the frontiers, whereupon the “buckram men,” their services being no longer required, would in continentally collapse.
This explanation, it will be seen, is of the crudest and most unfounded character, and on reading it we feel disposed to agree with the remark of one of Hahnemann’s disciples and critics, that though he was one of the best of observers he was one of the worst or theorizers. (I must, however, observe that Hahnemann evidently felt his explanation was open to criticism, and almost apologizes for offering it, as he affects to regard it as an indifferent matter whether or not an explanation can be given.
“As this natural law of cure”, he says “is verified by every pure experiment and observation in the world, and the fact is consequently established, it matters little respecting the scientific explanation of the manner in which it takes place, and I do not attach much importance to the attempts made to explain it”. Organon, aphorism XXXViii.) Accordingly Hahnemann’s explanations have satisfied none of his disciples, and numerous are the attempts that have been made to furnish a more satisfactory explanation of the curative process; indeed, I doubt if any subject or any part of the field of Homoeopathy has been so diligently cultivated as this, and merely to give an outline of the various explanations that have been proposed would occupy several lectures; I shall therefore limit myself to mentioning a few of the most remarkable attempts at explaining the curative process.
Rau of Giessen, (I deen zur wissenschaft. Begrundung, etc.) than whom a more learned or more clear-headed man has never appeared in the ranks of homoeopathists, endeavors in an especial treatise to explain the curative virtues of homoeopathic medicines by the alteration they are assumed to produce in the polarity of the diseased part. This I believe to be mere speculation insusceptible of proof as yet- the magnetoscope to the contrary not with standing.
Attomyr (Archiv, xiii) wrote an interesting and thoughtful paper, entitled The Theory of Homoeopathy, based on the laws of Natural Philosophy. In this he takes as a text Fed. Jahn’s admission, in a work (Anhungen einer allg. Naturgeschichte der Krank. Bisenach, 1828) of his, that diseases are analogous to the growth of plants. Attomyr follows the subject up in a masterly manner, and though I cannot here enter fully into the details of the subject,, I may state the principal points brought forward by our author. Disease arising from a specific miasm he compares to plants that are produced from seeds: those which are otherwise excited to those organized beings that are produced by a concourse of external circumstances (generation aquivoca); and he mentions the fact stated by Gruithausen, that he had observed upwards of 1000 different species of influsoria produced from different substances, and from the same substances, under different circumstances. The infinite variety of diseases occurring in different individuals, and in the same individual under different circumstances, is cited as analogous to this fact of Gruit hausen’s. Diseases, he continuous, resemble plants in this also, that they have their period of germination, their growth, their flowering, their fructification, and their death; and that what we ought to do is to promote their flowering and fructification as rapidly as we can, and their natural death will, follow. To cut of the blossom i,.e., to repress the external signs, as the chancre in syphilis, the eruption in the exanthemata, etc. would not hasten the death of he disease, and more than cutting off the flowers of a plant would kill it. Our object should be to promote the flowering and fructification, by supplying it with an agent that produces a similar state, and this is the homoeopathic medicine, whereby we make it live faster, so to speak, and thus hasten its death-cause it to die prematurely. Now, apart from the circumstance that the analogy is very slightly or not at all applicable to may diseases, this explanation is very unsatisfactory, even with regard to those disease which do present the analogy in its greatest force. For, after all, it is a very poetical idea to consider diseases as organisms within an organism, as parasites as it were; and even of the miasmatic disease, to which this idea is along applicable, there are many which do not at all resemble those plants that begin to wither and die after their blossoming; such are syphilis, many skin disease, tumours malignant and other, which show no signs of dying after they have borne blossoms, but which, if unchecked, persist to the end of the life of the organism in which they flourish; so that, with respect to such perennial diseases at lest, the homoeopathic agent would only, if Attomyr’s views be right, promote the growth, but by no means the death of the disease. Again, as regards the acute exanthemata, to which the views developed by Attomyr best apply, it is not at all obvious how the Homoeopathic medicine, which is an agent altogether different from the miasms that caused the disease, should had the power of promoting its growth; for there is no analogy in nature to make us suppose that the growth of a plant would be promoted or hastened by supplying it with the seeds of a similar plant. Altogether Attomyr’s theory rest upon nothing more solid than a somewhat far-fetched analogy is more worthy of a poet than of a natural philosopher.
I find that the same idea pervades the recent work of Attomyr On the Natural History of Disease, (Primordien der Naturgeschichte der Krankheiten, p.35.) where he nutters the following paradox which should from the basis of treatment, viz., that: the cure of diseases depends on the promotion or continuation of disease.
Professor Eschenmeyer of Tubingen wrote an essay s (Die Alloopathie and homoeopathic vergliehen in ihren Principien. Tubingen, 1836) in which he shows himself quite a latitudiarian in respect to the opposing schools. His views strike me as giving such a droll idea of the medical art, that I cannot refrain giving you an extract from his work. “In medicine,” says he, “two fundamental views prevail that determine the method of treatment to be pursued. Either-1. the morbid symptoms are the product of the vital force reacting in the various organs and systems attacked by the inimical agencies; or 2, the morbid symptoms are the product of the inimical agencies in the organs and systems, that obstruct the healthy opticians of the vital force. The method of treatment we adopt will depend upon which of these two theoretic views we select. If we select the first, then the array of symptoms, as the expression of the reaction, must be promoted by the remedy, that is, they must by rather increased than diminished, in order that the curative power may attain that height in which it may be able to conquer the inimical agencies. Such is the Homoeopathic method of treatment, which may be termed the immediate or direct method. If, however, we prefer the second view, then the array of symptoms is the expression of the inimical agencies, which must be subdued and gradually extirpated by oppositely acting remedies Such is the allopathic or old method of treatment, which may be termed the mediate or indirect method.”: Now, it is useless to remark that both of the above theories can by no possibility be true: if one is true the other is false, and it is the height of naivete in Dr. Eschenmeyer to suppose, as the above passage implies, that the particular therapeutic tenets of he physician can make the one or the other theory correct at random, as it were. If the first theory be correct, and if it require the homoeopathic employment of medicines, then it is evident the
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.