The Proving of Medicines



The enrichment of the Materia Medica by the addition of new provings of medicines has occupied the attention of many of Hahnemann’s disciples, the various modes have been adopted for carrying out this important undertaking. Very different opinions have been expressed upon the mode of conducting such experiments, and as opinions have varied had also the practical performance of the operations.

Among those who have chiefly distinguished themselves for their extensive and valuable provings of new remedies, and to whom our Materia Medica stands indebted, next of Hahnemann, for the greatest amount of valuable medicinal agents, I may mention the names of Stapf, Gross, Hering, Wahle, Hartlaup, Trinks, Franz, Helbig, and the Vienna Society. The provings of many of the medicines which Hahnemann had incorporated into his Materia Medica and Chronic Diseases were originally conducted by some of the gentlemen whose names I have just mentioned. Thus platina, mezereum, anacardium, cuprum, antimonium, etc., originally appeared in Stapf’s Archiv. In like manner many of the medicines contained in Hartlaub and Trink’s Pure Materia Medica have been adopted by Hahnemann. Respecting Hahnemann’s own provings we have no details, except the bare results as they appear in his schemas; but others have presented us with the particulars of their provings, and it increases our confidence in a remedy to know that it has been proved in manner calculated to promote trustworthy results, which he cannot say it is case with many of those that figured in our compendiums of Materia Medica.

Dr. Hering (Arch., xill. 2, 8) of Philadelphia speaks very approvingly of Hahnemann’s recommendation to prove medicines in globules of the 30th dilution, and thinks that not only should all medicine be proved in the dilution, but that those medicines which have already been proved in other doses should be re-proved in globules of the 30th. He furnishes us with several substances proved in this manner. Thus, for instance, the following was the way he took to prove the Theridion curassivicum, or poisonous spider of Curacoa. From a bottle of rum, in which several of these insects had been put, and which had stood for a year, he took a drop and potentized it up to the 30th dilution. With this dilution he moistened some globules, and gave to the provers only one done of the drug, consisting of three to six globules. The results, as may readily be imagined, were not very great. Dr. Hering is also an advocate for proving medicines in persons not perfectly healthy. Latterly he proposed proving the medicines in the so-called high dilutions, 400, 800, 1000, 2500, etc.

In the Amerikanische Arzneiprufungen, lately published, Dr. Hering writes an article on our Materia Medica, the sources of which he says must be as follows:- A. From the literature of ancient and modern authors, all the histories of poisoning and cure, and everything else, whether it relates to toxicology or therapeutics, observations good and bad, true and false, we must first collect, and afterwards select. The tares must, he says, be gathered with the heat, nothing should be rejected till it is proved to be false. He bestows deserved praise on the laborious collection of such facts in Frank’s Magazine. B. The daily observation of what happens before our eyes. As examples, he states that Hahnemann had a painter in sepia to treat, in whom he did not observe the anticipated action of his remedies in spite of the most careful diet; he judged that sepia, which had hitherto been regarded as an innocuous substance, must be the cause of this; he proved it, and found it a powerful remedy. Weinhold observed that the workmen in a looking-glass manufactory rubbed scraped lead-pencil on their eruptions. He introduced graphites into the Materia, Medica, and Hahnemann, proved it. A divinity student, an acquaintance of Hahnemann’s played (Arch., xv. 1) with a branch of arbor vitae without knowing what it was; soon after he observed a wart on his glass. Hahnemann was led from this to prove it, and we all know what a valuable medicine thuja is. C. The third source is intentional proving on the living. Experiments on plants have a certain value, but not a very great one. Experiments on animals may teach us many things that we can learn in no other way, but not as they have mostly been hitherto conducted. Most such experiments are as if the experimenter should wish to ascertain if pressure caused corns, and should put the toe into a thumb-screw, and screw it up till the bore was crushed to pieces; the result would be not corns, but squashed flesh, blood, and bones. Experiments on human beings are the most important, and those on the healthy more important than those on the sick.

The proving of remedies in globules of the 30th dilution, seems to have likewise captivated the fancy of a society of homoeopathists in Thuringia, who formed themselves into a body of provers, adopting the following rule :- “That, in order to obtain pathogenetic symptoms, only the 30th dilution should be employed for conducting provings on the healthy.” No account has ever appeared of the labours of this bold society.

Among the Vienna provers, though as a rule they adopted the plan of proving with doses of considerable size, we find them occasionally testing the pathogenetic effects of the higher and even the highest dilutions, which is quite allowable and indeed commendable, as it is right to ascertain the powers of medicines in every form.

The remarks of Dr. Watzke, one of the most energetic of the Vienna Proving Society, on the actual condition of the homoeopathic Materia Medica, and on the necessity of its careful revision, are well worth a perusal, and, I may state, that they will be found in full in the second volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy. I think it may not be out of place to give a brief outline of them here.

Dr. Watzke says, that notwithstanding some homoeopathists, such as Gross and Goullon, have declared that Hahnemann’s Materia Medica is perfect work and requires no reform, he is decidedly of a contrary opinion. He is far from seeking to disparage the merits of Hahnemann’s work, or the conscientiousness of the provings; indeed he considers that the more these are studied the greater reverences and admiration shall we entertain for our founder, and the re-proving of medicines that have already been proved by him will serve to confirm still more our admiration of his labours. But he says, the duty of Hahnemann’s disciples is not lazily to repose on the cough that Hahnemann has spread for us, but energetically to follow on the same path as he pursued. But he says, the duty of Hahnemann’s disciples is not lazily to repose on the couch that Hahnemann has spread for us, but energetically to follow on the same path as he pursued. But the necessity for making a revision of the Materia Medica lies not so much in the matter that as been communicated by Hahnemann as the forma in which he has arranged the results of his observations and toil. The materials Hahnemann collected are unfortunately not arranged in their natural and physiological connection, but are arranged in a strained artificial schema, wherein the practitioner, unless he had himself assisted at the proving or unless he possessed Hahnemann’s own wisdom, is too frequently at a loss to perceive the exact meaning and value of the fragmentary and unconnected symptoms before him. In Hahnemann’s provings not only have we in most cases no clue to determine how many of the symptoms occurred in the same prover, but we have in most cases no knowledge of the age, sex, character, or temperament of the person, the dose of the drug he took, the sequential of the ingestion of the drug. It is then necessary to re-prove the very medicines that Hahnemann has left us, in order that we may acquire a knowledge of the exact value of what he has done, and find s it were the clue to the labyrinth of symptoms contained in his Materia Medica. In fine, Watzke hopes, by careful re- provings, to attain to a knowledge of the medicines equal to that possessed by Hahnemann him-self, and to acquire as it were an insight into the anatomy of the medicinal disease.

Dr. Drysdale, in a paper he wrote in the first volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, enters at length on the subject of the proving of medicines. He justly lays a stress upon the necessity of not taking too large doses of the medicine to be proved, as thereby we should run of the medicine to be proved, as thereby we should run the risk of producing its evacuant or chemical and not its specific effects, which are best developed by small doses. In his introduction to the Hahnemann Materia Medica he has very well illustrated the character of Hahnemann’s records of provings, and demonstrated the necessity that exists for re-provings, such as those under-taken by the Austrian Proving Society, when he compares the Hahnemannic schema to the symptoms of any disease dissevered from their natural connections, and arranged in a completely artificial manner, according to their anatomical seat, without any reference to their sequential order. He might have said not the symptoms of one disease, but those of many diseases thus arranged, for such is the case; and in consulting Hahnemann’s schema we are completely puzzled to determine the mutual relations of the various symptoms, in other words, the medicinal diseases they produce; and without this, without we are able to find in our pathogenetic records medicinal parallels to the natural diseases that we meet with at the bed-side, our practice can never attain to that mathematical certainly which the more fanatical among the homoeopathists would already seem to claim for it.

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.