The sources whence Hahnemann derived his Materia medica we may sum up according to their relative degrees of purity, as follows:-
1. Experiments on healthy individuals, undertaken expressly for that object by himself and disciples, and with attention to avoid all circumstances that could vitiate the results obtained, these experiments being conducted (a) with pretty large doses, (b) with the so-called infinitesimal, and latterly with globules of the thirtieth dilution.
2. Experiments undertaken by others, not adherents of the homoeopathic system, for the purpose of ascertaining their physiological effects, some of these even with the avowed design of refuting Hahnemann’s theory, such as those of Jorg. The more recent experiments of the Vienna Society of (allopathic) Physicians are of a similar character. These experiments were all conducted with medicines in palpable doses. Besides those I have just mentioned, I may refer to the experiments of Storck with several powerful medicinal substances, those of Alexander of Edinburgh, both of which Hahnemann has adopted; those of Professor Martin of Jena and his Proving Society, and those of the followers of Rademacher, which have been made since Hahnemann’s time.
3.The records of cases of poisoning scattered throughout medical and other literature, and these either (a) intentional for scientific purposes, like the experiments of Nicander of Colophon, and those of Matthioli, Richard, and others on condemned prisoners; (b) intentional for criminal purposes; and (c) accidental.
4. The observation of patients under the action of various medicinal substances, and that either (a) under homoeopathic treatment, in which case small doses were employed, or (b) under allopathic treatment, where large doses were used.
In Hahnemann’s earlier schemas we find the majority of the symptoms were collected from the first three sources I have enumerated, but in his later volumes it is highly probable that the fourth source was a very prolific one for the symptoms he records. It is to be remarked, however, that he seldom tells us the doses of the medicines that produced the symptoms recorded, but sometimes he dose; thus we find that Hahnemann’s first experiments with cinchona bark, were made by taking four drachms within two days. From a letter of his to Stapf, (N. Arch., i.) we find that he directed helleborus niger to be proved thus: a drop of the tincture was to be added to eight ounces of water and one drachm of alcohol, this well shaken and one ounce to be taken every hour and a half or two hours, until some violent effects were experienced. In the same letter he asks Stapf to prove camphor thus: two grains to be dissolved in a drachm of alcohol, this well shaken up with eight ounces of water, and taken in four to six doses during the day. We learn from the introduction to silver, in the Materia Medica that this mental was proved in the first trituration, and that the few symptoms obtained from the nitrate were produced by the 15th dilution. Calcarea acetica, we are informed, was proved in its saturated solution. The carbo vegetabilis was proved, we are told, in the third trituration. In the first edition of the Chronic Diseases he tells us that natrum mur. was proved in the 30th dilution, and he adds, “it is only in dilutions potentized up to this height that other medicines also display all their power to alter the health when tested on the healthy.”But it is perfectly evident that very few of the medicines, and certainly none of the earlier ones, were proved in such a preparation, for the dose he gave to the healthy to obtain pathogenetic effects was probably greater, at all events not smaller, than that he prescribed for the sick; and we find that in the Materia Medica he directs many substances to be given in disease in the pure substance, and in the first, second, and third attenuations, so that we may presume that these remedies were tested in pretty considerable quantities. In the later volumes of the Chronic Diseases he almost entirely omits to mention the sources whence the symptoms were obtained, which is a great pity, as we are thereby altogether debarred from forming an opinion as to their relative value or authenticity.
Before proceeding to a consideration of the labours and opinions of Hahnemann’s own disciples in reference to the proving of medicine, we may turn aside one moment to consider what has been done in this way by the adherents of the old school, and we shall be surprised to find how little has been done or said respecting physiological provings by them. Among the ancients it is only in the school of the Empiricists that we find experiments undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the pathogenetic effects of drugs and poisons, and their writings alone contain any records of these effects. Thus Heraclides of Tarentum wrote a special book on the symptoms caused by the bites of poisonous serpents. Mithridates, king of Pontus, instituted experiments on himself and on criminals for the purpose of learning the action of various poisons. Attalos Philometer, king of Pergamos, tested the antidotal powers of aconite, hyoscyamus, veratrum, hemlock, etc. But it was chiefly the poetical physician, Nicander of Colophon, who lived under the last-mentioned toxicological monarch, to whom we are indebted for an account of the action of various poisons in his two medical poems, onplaka and A/\EElOapuaka. He gives an account of the different effects of the poisons of various kinds of serpents, scorpions, spiders, beetles, and poisonous plants, but I need to detain you by repeating what he says, for though some of his descriptions are petty accurate, others partake of the imaginative or fictitious character we are in the habit of expecting to meet with in poetical works. It is remarkable, however, that these poetical records of Nicander’s have been pretty closely copied by most of the ancient writers on toxicology, even to the most absurd errors of the poet doctor, and very little else of a positive character as regards the pathogenetic action of medicines is to be met with in the records of ancient medicine. In later times some virulent poisons were administered by enterprising physicians, such as Matthioli, Richard, etc., by the special leave of philosophical monarchs, to condemned criminals; but these experiments were instituted less for the sake of ascertaining the action of the poison than for testing the value of some ridiculous putative antidotes, such as the bezoar stone, the Armenian bole, and the like.
The great Albrecht von Haller, in his preface to his Swiss Pharmacopoeia, has, it is true, the following decided and remarkable words on this subject:- “Nempe premium in cropore sano medela tentanda est, sine peregrina ulla miscela; odoreque et sapore ejus exploratis, exigua illius dosis ingerenda et ad omnes quae inde contingunt affectiones, quis pulsus, quis calor, quae respiratio, quaenam excertiones, attendendum. Inde adductum phenomenorum in sano obvirum, transeas ad experimenta in corpore aegroto,” etc. Notwithstanding this very explicit recommendation to test medicines on the healthy body, and notwithstanding the immense celebrity of Haller, neither he himself nor any of his contemporaries thought of practically carrying out his advice. Dr.William Alexander of Edinburgh made some experiments on the healthy, chiefly with camphor, which nearly resulted in his own death, and published an essay on the subject; but this excited very little attention, and had it not been for Hahnemann, who raised them up from oblivion, they would probably have remained altogether unknown. The experiments of the toxicologists, and notably those of Wibmer, Orfila, Majendie, and others, were undertaken chiefly with a view of ascertain structural alternations produced by the various poisons, and wee almost exclusively confined to the lower animals, a source that Hahnemann altogether rejects, except in certain rare cases; thus he says:- “In order to try if a substance can develop, very violent or dangerous effects, this may in general be readily ascertained by experiments on several animals at once, as likewise any general manifest action on the motions of the limbs, variations of temperature, evacuations upwards and downwards, and the like, but never anything connected or decisive that may influence our conclusions with regard to the proper curative virtues of the agent on the human subject. For this, such experiments are too obscure, too rude, and, if I may be allowed the expression, too awkward.” (Lesser Writings, p. 299).
Professor Jorg (Mater, zu einer kunft. Heilmittellehre. Leipzic, 1825.) of Leipzic, some twenty years ago, founded a society for the purpose of proving medicines. He confessed that the actual state of the ordinary Materia Medica was decidedly very wretched, and he proposed by instituting experiments on the healthy of endeavour to ascertain where and how medicines acted; he also wished to show that the experiments of Hahnemann were false, and his therapeutic rule a delusion. How far he succeeded in this will be apparent from this circumstances, that his provings, which were conducted with great carefulness and ability, were immediately incorporated by Hahnemann in his pathogeneses; and Jorg, however he may seek to repudiate the distinction, has been most useful and extensive contributor to the homoeopathic Materia Medica. Jorg sought to obtain from his provings indications for the employment of medicines agreeably to the principle contraria contrariis, and finding, for example, that nitre was a powerful irritant, he said that it was decidedly wrong medicine to use in pneumonia, though the experience of his own school was entirely in favour of its utility in that disease.
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.