Life and health, according to this author, consist in a continual attraction of the similar and rejection of the dissimilar. Disease is a dynamic- material operation, consisting in a formative faculty of an organ or system different from that originally assigned to it, produced by a new direction of the attraction of similar to similar. The mode of its production is this: -The morbific power or agent combines with the general or particular disposition to disease (Krankheiten- anlage), whereby a new product engendered in the organism arises, whose vital action or vitality is different from that of the organism itself. The disease plays the part of something generated, which finds its nutriment in some organ or system, and is itself capable of generating in tits turn. Dr. Koch’s “general disposition to disease” is the general liability of every organism to become deranged; his “particular disposition” corresponds to what we term the predisposing causes, and includes those of a congenital and hereditary character and those produced by age, sex, constitution, vaccination, and too large doses of medicine. Apropos of these causes he makes a number of very useful practical observations, which it would be out of place to dwell upon here.
Koch’s morbific agent (potential nocens) combines with the disposition to disease (krankheiten-anlage), to which it is a similar, and from the union of the two the disease is generated. the symptoms are produced, on the one hand, by the struggle of this so-produced disease to assimilated the organic matter according to its own peculiar type, and on the other, by the effort of the organism to resist this assimilative faculty.
The cure, according to Koch, is effected by the organism putting itself in the opposition of a similar as regards the diseased organ or system, and thus depriving the abnormal direction of the vitality of its nutriment. Then Dr. Koch enters into a detail of all the possible ways in which cure of and preservation from disease can be effected, but I need only allude to two of the. The artificial morbific cause to the disposition to disease existing in the organs, whereby an artificial medicinal disease is produced, which removes from the natural morbific cause the disposition (or susceptibility)to it, so that this natural cause finds nothing more in the organism to enable it to form a disease. This is done in the following way: a medicinal power is introduced into the organism which has an attraction for the disposition to disease, as like to like,. and this attraction must be stronger than that of the morbific cause for the same “disposition,” but must at the same time be capable of developing a less important (artificial) disease. Examples: Jenner’s vaccination, Hahnemann’s belladonna against scarlatina, AEgidi’s veratrum against cholera, Arnold’s sulphur against measles.
In order to understand the homoeopathic curative process, he considers the spontaneous curative process, that is, the process of natural cure in the case of disease that run a normal course and whose products are ejected or thrown off by means of what are called regular crises, to be as follows:-By the course of he disease all the disposable susceptibility or disposition to the formation of the disease is brought into action, and after it is completely saturated or acted on, the formative process must stop, and its products, when not too heterogeneous, are assimilated and ejected, and there upon the normal assimilative faculty is restored. In order to imitate this spontaneous curative process and thus promote the removal of the ideas, all we have to do is to convert the disposable susceptibility into another artificial morbid process which runs a course not dangerous to the organism, and by its artificial consumption to render a spontaneous curative process possible. And this is
effected by the homoeopathic remedy, which, though it produces a milder disease, has yet a great affinity for the disposition to disease in the organism.
From this explanation it will be observed that Koch’s formula for the homoeopathic cure is very similar to that of Hahnemann; if expressed in the aphoristic style of the latter it would stand thus; the cure is effected by substituting an artificial disease for that present in the organism. The difference is that Hahnemann says the medicinal disease is the stronger, whilst Koch states that it is the weaker, but the relatively greater power of the medicinal disease is owing to the medicinal powers having a greater affinity or similarity to that part of the organism where is seated the disposition to disease. Now, plausible and well argued as are. Dr. Koch’s theoretical views of the whole subject of life, health, disease and its cure, they are, I think, pervaded throughout by a fundamental error. And first we observe that, throughout, the word similar or like bears in Dr. Koch’s vocabulary a very over strained and out of the way meaning. In no sense that we usually or even unusually attach to the word can it be said that the ordinary vital operations consist in an attraction of the similar. Look at the act of nutrition; where is the similarity betwixt the potato, which will suffice for the nutriment of the body, a and the different organs and parts of which it is composed” Again, in medicine, where is the similarity betwixt the mercury and the liver; the skin, the bones and the mucous membranes on which it acts? Where the similarity betwixt the aconite and the arterial system and serious membranous? No doubt mercury has a special affinity for the one set of organs, aconite for the other, but the quality of similarity has nothing in the world to do with it. Dr. Koch has suffered himself to be led astry by a whimsical interpretation of a word and upon the text of similia similibus he would preach a new gospel to all the sciences of organic and inorganic life. Like to like is the grand shibboltch of his new creed, the “open sesame” that shall roll back upon their hinges those ponderous doors of obscurity that have hitherto kept us out from right views of the science of life under all its forms.
It is a pity that so much learning and industry have been expended in pursing a whim to the death; for if we can forget Dr. Koch’s fixed idea, and translate his tortured expression of like into the various meanings it stands for indifferent parts of his work, we shall find much to admire and many excellent ideas an beautiful reflections on the phenomena of health and disease, illustrated by many valuable practical deductions. Apart from this fallacy, that pursues us everywhere throughout Koch’s work, I must admit that his physiological and pathological views accord very much with what I deem to be the correct ones, and I only marvel that a man whom I consider so sound in his real views should have so spoilt his enunciation of them by such a glaring misuse of words. the is also another feature that strikes us throughout the whole of Koch’s theoretical explanation, and that is his tendency to substantialize or personify mere qualities of matter. Thus the susceptibility for disease, in place of being a state of being or quality of the organ or system, is something super added to it; and in the same way, the morbific influence is a material substance that forms an alliance with the susceptibility, and by their union the disease (also something material) is produced. the same is the case with the medicinal action and the combination of this with the susceptibility-the
resultant medicinal disease. He gravely talks about the assimilation or the ejection of he causa proxima. These modes of speech are certainly very inaccurate, and have a great tendency to give rise to erroneous notions. To consider these qualities of the organism in health and disease as something independent and self-subsistent is as though we were to do the same by the qualities of other substances; it is just as if we were to consider as self-existent and independent entities the qualities of hardness, elasticity, density, roundness, and opacity in an ivory ball.
But I think I have sufficiently shown that Koch’s theory or explanation is untenable, but before dismissing him I may observe that the views he promulgates in the large work from high I have quoted differ some what from those he expressed some years previously. His explanation used to be as nearly as possible as follows:-The susceptibility combined with or morbific influence and caused the disease, which in its turn formed a susceptibility for medicinal action, and these two latter in union formed the medicinal disease, which was easily expelled by he organism., and the harmony of the affected organ or system with the general organism, which had been interrupted by its presence, was restored by its ejection. The same objections which I have made to his later theory apply with double force to this his former one, so I need not enter into a detailed exposure of its fallacy.
I have already mentioned the points of similarity of Koch’s explanation to Hahnemann’s, and also shown where they differ. I next come to consider an explanation which occupies a middle place betwixt these two. According to Widenmann (Ueber das Wesen der Natur und die homoeopathie; also Hygea, xviii., p.457- 475) the homoeopathic cure takes place in the following way:- to the substratum or maternal soil in which the disease unfolds its action another power is presented, which is more greedily attracted by the said soil than the first morbific agency, and thus the proximate cause of the disease present is dispossessed and its activity put a stop to. He shows that medicinal agents and poisons must be reckoned among morbific agents that in virtue of their peculiar quality do not require the presence of any peculiar disposition on the part of the organism in order to produce a disease, and he considers in particular homoeopathic medicines as agents having an overpowering affinity to the substratum of the diease, because they, by the force of their noxious influence and without any particular special susceptibility on the apart of the organism, are able to develop in the body a disease extremely like that which arises from the action of the morbific influence where the disposition for it exists.
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.