The dynamization-process, we are told in the Organon of Medicine, (Organon, p. 331, note.) may carried up to 60, 150, 300, and higher, without impairing the strength of the medicine much; in such high potencies the medicine seems to act more rapidly and penetratingly, but at the same time the action appears to last a shorter time.
From this sketch of Hahnemann’s doctrines respecting the dynamization of medicines, it will be apparent to you that his views were constantly undergoing alteration, and this last period of the theory is replete with contradictions.
Whilst in the earlier periods of the growth of his system he merely tells us to shake the bottle, to shake it strongly-to shake it for a minute or longer-he afterwards tells us that much shaking increases the power of the medicine to a dangerous extent, and therefore only two shakes must be used for each dilution. Latterly, however, he again loses his dread of shaking, and after once more appointing ten shakes for each dilution as the standard, he becomes more liberal allows twenty, fifty, or more shakes, and half a dozen shakes to the bottle before each dose of the medicinal solution.
Again, whereas in one place he says that the shaking is the only agent in the dynamization, and a strong medicinal solution, if shaken long enough, will become like the 30th potency, in another he alleges that dilution, is essential to the dynamizing effect of succussion, and that all the rubbing or shaking in the world will not dynamize an undiluted substance.
The dynamization-theory involves another contradiction. Hahnemann says, for instance, that the weakest possible dose is sufficient to overcome the disease, and the dose can scarcely be made weak enough to avoid aggravation. At the same time he directs us to dynamize our medicines up to the 30th degree of potency, whilst he tells us that by the processes used in this operation the power of the medicine is not diminished but increased; and we even find that a number of succussions, which at one time he told us would make the remedy endanger the life of a patient by increasing the potency of the drug, is latterly advised by him to be employed for the preparation of all medicines.
Having thus given you a brief resume of Hahnemann’s deeds and thoughts on the subject of the subject of the dynamization of medicines, I shall now proceed to lay before you the substance of the principal lucubrations on this subject that have been indulged in by Hahnemann’s followers.
You will not have failed remark in my previous lectures that every idea and suggestive hint thrown out by Hahnemann, and still more everything bearing the semblance of a new hypothesis, has been greedily caught up by some of his disciples and worked out to that frequently desiderated termination of a mathematical problem, the reductio ad absurdum. As it was with the other theories I have spoken of to you before, so it is with this one of the dynamization of medicines.
You will recollect that Hahnemann speaks of the effect produced by the processes of succussion and trituration as a dematerialization of the medicines, a transmutation of the material medicinal substance into immaterial medicinal spirit. This is an idea Hahnemann is very fond of reiterating, though of course it is not difficult to show from his own writings refutation and implied of any such transmutation; for Hahnemann, as I have frequently shown you, always argues on both sides of the question, and seems to take a pleasure in refuting his own views. Thus he observes-I quote from the last edition of the Organon (Organon, p. 324, note.) “A substance divided into ever so many parts must contain in its smallest conceivable parts still some of this substance, and the smallest conceivable part does not cease to be some of this substance.”
However, this suggestion concerning the spiritualization of the medicinal substance by the homoeopathic pharmaceutic processes fascinated the imagination of a Sarmatian nobleman, an enthusiastic disciple of Hahnemann’s, a certain Count von Korsakoff, who favoured the homoeopathic medical world with his opinion and advice, which have gained a fictitious importance by the notice Hahnemann took of them, and the certain amount of deference he paid to the excursive imaginings of his northern ally. (Archiv, xi., xii.)
Korsakoff was the real original inventor of the high potencies, for he first conceived and executed the idea of diluting medicines up as high as 1500. Sulphur, he said, acted better at that degree of potency. But what he prided himself most on was his brilliant notion of communicating medicinal power to a multitude of nonmedicated globules by means of introducing among them a single medicated one. Hahnemann’s assertion that one globule would continue to give off medicinal power unimpaired for twenty years or more, and at the end of that time be never a bit the worse of its long labours, had apparently suggested his new and original notion to our worthy Count, who evidently thought that this medicinal power given off so continuously by the medicated globule might be turned to turned to some useful purpose. He accordingly placed in a bottle 1000 sugar-globules unmedicated, and added to them one globule imbibed with sulphur 100, and shook the whole for a minute, when, of course, he found that any one of these globules thus infected by the medicated one acted just as well as if it had been imbibed with the tincture at first hand. Emboldened by his success, our adventurous Count proceeded to medicated in the same manner 13,500 plain sugar-globules, by shaking them for five minutes with one globule of sulphur 30. He prepared a case containing bottles filled with non-medicated globules, and into each bottle he dropped a medicated one, and after a little shaking all became medicated. What Hahnemann had done in regard to fluid medicines, that did friend Korsakoff in regard to dry globules, he warned against carrying the bottles about with us in our pockets, for fear their power should be enormously increased by rubbing against each other. Korsakoff believes that the dilution, and that thereafter the medicinal power is communicated by a process analogous to infection and altogether immaterial. Hahnemann, who, as I have just said, took the trouble to trouble to reply to our dilettante’s puerilities, denies that the material subdivision ceases at the 6th dilution. He admits the probability of one dry medicated globule infecting several thousands of unmedicated ones, and repeats his previous assertion as to a globule, this time of staphysagria 30, giving off medicinal power continuously for twenty years; but he shakes his head at the idea of dry medicated globules being further dynamized by being shaken together in the pocket. He looks upon Korsakoff’s experiments with dynamizing medicines up to 1500 as curious, in showing the almost illimitable extent to which the homoeopathic processes may be carried be carried without destroying the medicinal properties, but as useless in a practical point of view. The 30th potency, says he, is the standard by which we should all abide in order to obtain uniform results. Hahnemann had previously, in a letter to Dr. Schreter, expressed his disapproval of dynamizing medicines beyond 30; though, as we shall afterwards see, he subsequently deviated in both directions from this normal standard.
As every novel idea in Homoeopathy, no matter whence it came, has its adherents, so this infecting notion of Korsakoff’s was no sooner enunciated than it was adopted by some of the homoeopathic gobemouches. Dr. Gross of course instantly gave in his adhesion to the Korsakoffian notion, and gravely notified that he had communicated blood-power to ever so many sugar-globules by adding to them one globule imbibed with a dilution of his own blood, and with this wonderful medicine he had cured congestions of various sorts. (Arch., xiv. 2.) Dr. Plauble (Griesselich’s Skizzen,23.) of Gotha said it did not matter if the globules fell out of the powder in which they had been placed, the milk sugar in the powder was already infected by them and contained all their medicinal virtues.
Pursuing another idea of Hahnemann’s, that, namely which led him to assert that further attenuation is not necessary to the dynamization of a medicine, but that continuous succussion without dilution is sufficient, such seems to have been the plan adopted by another dilettante admirer of Hahnemann’s, this time not an aristocratic landed proprietor, but a democratic horse- trainer. (DR. Hering will have it (see Allg. hom. Ztg., 68) that we in England knowingly insult the memory of this hero by calling him a horse-trainer, and that the English equivalent of his title of Stallmeister is Master of the Horse, an office of high trust and dignity. But even were it the case that the situation he held under the Duke of Gotha was equivalent to that the present Duke of Wellington holds in our Court, that would not make him a greater medical authority, nor would it affect the question of the accuracy of our denomination; for it was the boast of himself and friends that his herculean strength had been developed in the training and subjugation of the wildest horses, which occupation might certainly not be incompatible with the office of Stallmeister (properly Equerry, not Master of the Horse) to a German prince, but would hardly consist with the dignity of its alleged English equivalent.) Herr Stallmeister Jenichen of Wismar, an enthusiast and a mystery-monger, who during his life kept his manipulations a profound secret, whether for the sake of making more money by it, as his opponents allege, and as his having to do with horses would render quite likely enough, or for the sake of ensuring the genuineness of the preparation he introduced, as his friends assert, it is impossible now to tell; suffice it to say, he introduce into homoeopathic practice those preparations termed high potencies, which have for some years back been disturbing the harmony of the happy family of homoeopaths. I have, in the tenth volume of the British Journal of Homoeopathy, given an account of his mode of preparing his medicines, as far as that could be learned from the writings he left behind him as a legacy to his successor and apologist, Dr. Rentsch. From these documents and certain letters our horse-breaking friend sent to various medical men, wherein bits of the mighty secret ooze out, it would seem that the chief peculiarities of Herr Jenichen’s mode of preparation were these :that he allowed the dilution with which he started on his transcendental dynamizing excursion to evaporate to dryness; that he used comparatively large bottles, and held them Brother- Jonathan would call a slantindicular direction while shaking them;that he reckoned the number of potencies by the number of shakes he gave the bottle, ten shakes being equivalent to one degree of potency; that he sometimes started from the 29th dilution, sometimes from a much lower one, but as his potencies were only reckoned by the number of shakes he gave the bottle, it did not much matter to him where he started from; that it is probable that he diluted the medicine after every two hundred and fifty shakes, or 25 degrees of potency, but this point is not quite clear; that his degrees of potency, consequently, have nothing in common with what Hahnemann understands by that term. Being a man of extraordinary muscular power, and shaking with all his might and main, he made, as he says, the fluid in the bottle ring “like silver coin,” a prophetic echo of the sound his wonderful discovery afterwards occasioned in his pocket by the afflux of thalers it brought him. (Dr. Hering of Philadelphia, the sole depository, as he secret, of the secret of the exact mode adopted by Jenichen in the preparation of his high potencies, in reply to public invitation from Rummel to reveal what he knows of this vexatious subject, has published a letter in the Allg. hom. Ztg. (xlvi., No.5), very characteristic of its author, but certainly not very satisfactory to those who expected a full revelation of the mystery. He says it is not yet time to publish the whole secret, and he only gives the miserable installment contained in the following sentences : “In Jenichen’s preparations-1, the quantity of the vehicle is much greater in proportion to the medicine; 2, the shaking was much more powerful and longer continued; 3, the numbers express the degrees, and that an exact proportion; 4, it would be hard to find any one who could imitate Jenichen’s method of preparing the high potencies; 5, Jenichen left behind him a sufficient quantity of his preparations to serve us and our children’s children.” Nothing very satisfactory in this information certainly. Hering, however, promises further revelations all in good time. Most of us will be content to wait till the Greek – Calends for the promised disclosures.)
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.