Is this health? It is not ague, that I readily, that I readily admit; but confess – and no one can deny it – it is certainly not health. It is rather another, but a worse, disease than ague. It is the china-disease, which must be more severe than the ague otherwise it could not overcome and suppress (suspend) the latter.
Should the organism, as it sometimes will, recover from this china disease after many weeks, then the ague, which has till now remained suspended by the superior force of the dissimilar china-disease, returns in an aggravated form, because the organism has been so much deteriorated by the improper treatment.
If the attack be now renewed in a still more energetic manner with cinchona bark, and continued for a longer time in order, as it is said, to ward off the fits, there then occurs a chronic china-cachexy, a faint picture of which will be found in the symptoms recorded below.
Such are most of the bark treatments of our physicians, because they know not what are the cases for which bark is suited. They are suppressions of the original affection by the production of a stronger china-disease, which is mistaken for a manifestation of the obstinacy of the original disease, the development of new symptoms being attributed to its peculiar malignity; because it is not known that these ailments are due to china, because it is not recognised what they are, namely, artificially induced china-disease.
The following symptoms caused solely by bark acting on the healthy body, will open the eyes of physicians on this subject, those of them at least who have not yet acquired the faculty of silencing their consciences, and in whose bosoms a warm heart for the welfare of their fellow creatures still beats.
Most intolerable and unjustifiable, however, is the monstrous abuse made by the dominant school of medicine, which plumes itself on being the only rational school, of this powerful drug in all kinds of debility.
There is no disease which is attended by weakness (as almost every one is naturally), or which physicians by their unsuitable allopathic medicinal mixtures have reduced to exhaustion of vital powers – where they did not consider it necessary to give this bark in large doses in order to strengthen as they call it; no patient prostrated, ruined and enfeebled by improper drugs to a condition of complicated cachexy whom they have not endevoured to set up and restore to a healthy condition by tonic potions of infusion, decoction, extract, electuary of china, or by the same drug in powder. He is stuffed and tortured with it for weeks and months under the pretence that it will do him good. Of the consequence of such treatment I would prefer to say nothing. If the death-rolls could speak, they would most eloquently speak the praises of this abuse of bark; and so also would the crowds of the living victims of asthmatic, dropsical, and icteric diseases, and those other unfortunates who remain affected with neuralgic os spasmodic maladie, or with malignant growths, abdominal sufferings or lingering fever, if they but knew what mischief had been done to them.
I would appeal to the common sense of these practitioners and ask them how, without being guilty of the most unpardonable slipshod practice, they can venture to administer bark in all those infinitely various diseases, which of themselves, as also especially in consequence of the traditional medical treatment, must necessarily medical be attended by weakness? How can they ever imagine that they can strengthen a sick person whilst he is still suffering from his disease, the source of his weakness? Have they ever seen a patient rapidly cured of his disease by appropriate remedies who failed to recover his strength in the very process of the removal of his disease? If, however, as is natural, it is only by the cure of the disease that the weakness of the patient can cease and give place to strength and activity, and if, on the other hand, there can be no question of a removal of the weakness as long as its source is not dried up, that is to say, as long as the disease on which it depends is not cured, what a perverse treatment must not that be, which seeks to make strong and active by the administration of china (and wine) a patient at whose vitals the disease is still gnawing! These practitioners cannot cure diseases, but they can attempt to strengthen these uncured patients with cinchona-bark. How can such a stupid idea ever enter their heads? If bark is to make all sick persons strong, active and cheerful, it must needs be the universal panacea which shall at once deliver all patients from all their maladies, from all morbid sensations and abnormal functions, that is to say, make them in all their ailments in every respect well and free from disease! For so long as the plague of disease deranges the whole man, consumes his forces and robs him of every feeling of well-being, it is a childish, foolish, self-contradictory undertaking to attempt to give such an uncured person strength and activity.
That cinchona-bark is no panacea for all diseases, we are taught by the sad experience of the ordinary practice; but its symptoms show that it can be an appropriate, real remedy for only a few cases of disease.
It is no doubt true that by the first doses of bark the strength of the patient, be he ever so ill, is increased for a few hours; he is able to raise himself up in bed all alone, as if by a miracle; he wants to get out of bed and put on his clothes; all at once he speaks in a stronger more resolute manner, venturing to walk alone, and grows animated, eagerly desires to eat this or that,- but a careful accurate observer easily sees that this excitation is only an unnatural tension (see below the note to § 895). A few hours pass and the patient sinks back, sinks deeper down into his disease, and the fatal result is often accelerated.
Do not these gentlemen perceive that no one can become well (truly strong and active) as long as his disease lasts?
No! the always suspicious semblance of strength communicated to the patient for a few hours by bark is invariably attended by the saddest results, and this will ever be so, except in those rare cases where cinchona-bark is at the same time the right remedy for the disease on which the weakness depends. In such cases the patient’s weakness ceases immediately with the disease. But, as I have said, such cases are rare, for cinchona-bark is the true remedy (which relieves rapidly, permanently, and without after-ailments) for but few diseases. In all the many other cases bark, as a medicine and so-called tonic, must to harm, and the more so the stronger its medicinal power (injuring when given improperly) is. For all medicines, without exception, can do no good when unsuitable for the case of disease, and must inflict so much the more injury the greater their medicinal strength (and the larger the doses in which they are given).
Hence, physicians should first learn the peculiar power oaction of cinchona-bark, and exactly what particular alterations in the health of human beings it is capable of causing, before they presume to undertake the cure of diseases, and consequently the morbid weakness, with this powerful medicinal agent. They should first know the symptoms of china before attempting to determine for what collection of morbid symptoms, that is, for what case of disease it may be curative; it can be curative for none but those whose symptoms are to be found in similarity among the symptoms of china, he who falls to do this will always commit mistakes, and do infinitely more harm than good to the patient.
When china has been selected according to conscientious homoeopathic conviction (but not as hitherto, according to theoretical views, deceptive names of diseases, or the misleading authority of equally blind predecessors), and is consequently the truly appropriate remedy of the case of disease to be treated, in such a case, and for that very reason, it also the true strengthening remedy. It strengthens in as much as it removes the disease, for it is only the organism free from disease that restores the defective strength; strength cannot be materially poured into it by a decoction of china (or by wine).
There are no doubt cases where the disease itself consists of weakness, and in such cases bark is at once the most appropriate curative and strengthening remedy. Such a case is that where the sufferings of the patient are solely or chiefly owing to weakness from loss of humours, from great loss of blood (also from repeated venesections), great loss of milk in nursing women, loss of saliva, frequent seminal losses, profuse suppurations (profuse sweats), and weakening by frequent purgatives, where almost all the other ailments of the patient are wont to correspond in similarity with the china symptoms (see notes to 837 and 860). If, then, there is here no other disease in the background to produce dynamically or to keep up the loss of humours, then for the cure of this peculiar weakness (from loss of humours), which has here become the disease, one or two doses as small as those above mentioned, (Here as elsewhere I insist on the sufficiency and efficiency of such small doses. And yet the vulgar herd can never understand me, for they know nothing of the pure treatment with one single simple medicinal substance to the exclusion of all other sorts of medicinal irritants, and their thoughts are enchained in the mazes of their old routine. Even when the ordinary physicians now and then constrain themselves to give in some (acute) disease one single medicine, they never have the heart to refrain from using at the same time several other things possessing medicinal power, which, however, they regard as of no consequence, and to which they apply the trivial name of domestic remedies.) They must always use simultaneously either a poultice of so-called aromatic or solvent herbs applied to the most painful part(just as though these could have no effect on the patient through his olfactory nerves, nor act as a heterogeneous medicine through the skin!), or they must rub in some medicinal ointment, or give a medicinal vapour-bath, or a medicinal gargle, or apply a blister or sinapism, or prescribe several half, whole or foot-baths, or order clysters of valerian, camomile, &c. (just as though all these were a mere nothing and did not act on the human system as heterogeneous powerful medicine through the skin, the mouth, the rectum, the colon, &c.!), or they must administer simultaneously a tea of mint camomile, elder-flower, so-called pectoral herbs, &c. (Just as though a handful of such herbs or flowers infused in boiling water counted for nothing!). In such an onslaught with heterogeneous drugs, which, although ignorance looks upon them as innocuous domestic remedies, are to all intents and purposes medicines, and some of them very powerful medicines, in this accessory quackery, I say, even a large dose of medicine of another kind can, of a truth, never display its peculiar action, and such an uncommonly small dose as homoeopathy requires is completely powerless; it will be instaneously overpowered and aniihilated. No! in the language of rational men that alone can be called giving a single medicine in a disease, when, excepting this one, all other medicinal influences aer excluded from the patient and carefully kept away from the patient and carefully kept away from him. But he who will do this must know what things brought in contact with the human body act medicinally on it. So long as he does not know this it must be ascribed to his ignorance that he considers as nothing, as not at all medicinal, such things as herb-teas and clysters, poultices and baths of herbs and salts, and the other things just mentioned, and continues to use them thoughtlessly under the name of domestic remedies during the employment of medicine internally. Still more heedlessly in this respect is the treatment of chronic maladies conducted; for, in addition to what the patient takes from medicine chests and bottles, and the external applications and so-called domestic remedies that are usually administered to the patient, lots of superfluous hurtful things are allowed, and even prescribed, which are also regarded as indifferent matters in spite of the disturbing effects they may exercise on the patient’s health, and of the confusion they may cause in the treatment. Besides the internal and external use of medicines the patient is allowed, for example, to take (fro breakfast) mulled beer, vanilla chocolate, also (even several times a day) strong coffee or black and green tea, not unfrequently – to strengthen the stomach (?) – claret-cup, liqueurs containing strong spices, seasonings of all sorts in the food, and especially in sauces (made of soy, cayenne pepper, mustard, &c.) – these things are supposed merely to increase the appetite and promote digestion, but to possess no hurtful medicinal quality! – moreover, quantities of uncooked herbs cut small and sprinkled over the soup – which are regarded as supremely wholesome, but are really medicinal – also various sorts of wine – one of the main reliances of ordinary practice – must not be forgotten. Besides all these there are tooth-powders, tooth-tinctures, and tooth-washes – also composed of medicinal ingredients, and yet considered innocuous because for-sooth they are not swallowed; just as though medicines only taken into the mouth or their exhalations drawn into the nose did not as surely act on the whole organism through its living sensitive fibres as when they are swallowed! And then the various kinds of perfumes and washes (musk, ambergris peppermint drops, oil of bergamot and cedar, neroli, eau-de-Cologne, eau-de-luce, lavender water, &c.), besides perfumed sachets, smelling bottles, scented soaps, powders and pomades, pot-pouri, and any other noxious articles de luxe the patient may desire. In such an ocean of medicinal influences the otherwise adequate homoeopathic dose of medicine would be drowned and extinguished. But is such a medley of medicinal luxury necessary and useful for the life and well-being or compatible with the recovery of the patient? It is injurious; and yet, perhaps, it has been invented by physicians themselves for the upper classes in order to please, to stimulate and to keep them ill.but even though physicians may not directly recommend it, it is sufficiently sad that they not know the medicinal noxiousness of all this luxury, and that they do not prohibit it to their chronic patients, This hotch-potch of noxious influences, due partly to the luxurious habits of the patient himself, partly to the simultaneous use of domestic remedies ordered or permitted by the doctor, is so much the rule, so universally pervalent, that the ordinary practitioner cannot think of treatment without such a simultaneous medical confusion, and hence, under these circumstances, he is unable to promise any decided effect from the internal administration of a single medicinal substance in a disease, even when it is given in a large dose, far less from a very small dose of medihomeopathically employed! CONRADI was acquainted with no other treatment than such as is constructed amid such a confused medley of medicinal influences, as is evident when he says (Grunariss der Pathologie and therapie, Marburg, 1801, p. 335), that the action ascribed by me to such small doses is beyond all belief. Here, not to dwell upon the trifling circumstance that the determination of the action of medicinal doses is hardly a matter of belief, but rather of experience, he seems no more than other ordinary practitioners to have either the slightest conception or the slightest experience of the action of a small dose of appropriate medicine in a patient completely excluded from the simultaneous irritation of all other kinds of medicinal substances, otherwise he would have spoken in a different manner. A pure treatment with a single homoeopathic medicine, all counter-acting medicinal contaminations being removed (for it is only of such I speak and only such I teach), never is seen or dreamt os in routine practice. But the difference is enormous and incredible.
Hahnemann's three major publications chart the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine, we see the fundamentals laid out. Materia Medica Pura records the exact symptoms of the remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he showed us how natural diseases become chronic in nature when suppressed by improper treatment.