MERCURIUS


Hahnemann’s proving symptoms of homeopathy remedy Mercurius from Materia Medica Pura, which Samuel Hahnemann wrote between 1811 to 1821…


(Quicksilver, Argentum vivum.)

In commerce this metal is often adulterated with an admixture of lead, sometimes also of bismuth. The best way to purify it is to put it in a porcelain saucer, pour over it a watery solution of nitrate of mercury, and let it boil for about an hour over a charcoal fire, always adding water to replace that lost by evaporation. The acid in this solution takes up the lead and bismuth and disengages its mercury which becomes added to the mercury to be purified.

Mercury in its fluid metallic state has but little dynamic action on man’s health, it is only its chemical compounds that cause great effects.

Among the salts of mercury those which for several centuries have been chiefly used in the treatment of diseases are those formed with a small proportion of muriatic acid (sweet mercury, miercurius dulcis, calomel, hydrargyrum muriuticum mite) and the complete muriatic mercurial salt (corrosive sublimate mercurius sublimatus corrosivus hydrargyrum muriaticum corrosivus) for internal use, and its combination with fatty substances (unguentu mercuriale s. neapolitanum, unguentum hydrargyri cincreum) for external inunction. I will pass over the innumerable other preparations of mercury, chiefly combinations with other acids or prepared with other substances, which have been used less frequently and have attained no lasting repute.

This is not the place to estimate the medicinal value of all these preparations. It would, indeed, be impossible to do this because even those of them in commonest use have been but little, and those more rarely employed not at all, tested as to their true peculiar action on the healthy human body. Consequently they cannot be homoepathically selected for particular morbid states with any certainty of a curative effect. Thus much only does careful proving enable me to express from experience, that they all display in their action a certain general similarity as mercurials; whilst, on the other hand, they differ greatly from one another in their peculiarities, and very much in the intensity of their action on the human health. Especially should it be observed, that all the saline preparations of mercury display a number of little known but generally very active accessory effects, according to the nature of their basic acid, which differ very much from the mild absolute effects of perfectly pure mercury, unaltered by any acid.

Even mercury merely united with fatty substances in the form of ointment excites peculiar effects on the human body,( John Bell complains that he has never succeeded in curing the venereal-chancre disease by merely rubbing in mercurial ointment, without being compelled to destory the chancre by the aid of external remedies. But by the internal use of a mercurial preparation uncombined with any acid, such as the mercurius solubilits (hydrargyrum oxydulatum nigrum), the whole disease, including the chancre, is cured, without any external remedy for the latter being required.) different from those produced by the internal administration of the mild, pure, semioxydized mercury (aethiops per se), probably because in the ointmet it is chemically combined with fatty acids.

Now, as the hornoeopathic method rejects all medicinal substances that produce heterogeneous accessory effects in consequence of being combined with something else, I have long endeavoured to obtain pure mercury in such a condition that it should be able to dispaly its ture, pure, peculiar effects on the human organism in a more powerfully curative manner than all other known preparations and saline combination.

What a long-continued, mechanical succession of fluid mercury, or as was practised in ancient times its trituration with crab’s eyes or solution of gum effected very imperfectly, viz, its change into semi-oxyde free from acids, this I sought to do in 1787 and 1788, by precipitating is from its solution in nitric acid made in cold, by means of caustic ammonia. This preparation of mercury, distinguished by its black colour, was, under the name of mercrius solubilis Hahn. (mercuriu oxydulatus niger), preferred in almost all countries to all other mercurials hhitherto in use, on account of its much milder, more efficacious antisyphilitic virtues. But a more careful investigation showe me that even this did not possess the highest degree of purity. In fact, its dark black colour was rather owing to an excess of the caustic ammonia required for the precipitation of the somewhat over-acid nitrate of mercury. But nitrate of mercury with excess of acid generally contains some muriate and sulphate of mercury (which even in very small quantities possess a deleterious acridity). These are concealed by the dark colour of the black oxyde, are precipitated along with it, and thus render it somewhat impure.

In order to avoid this, in the preface to mercury in the second edition of this first part of the Materia Medica Pura, published in 1822, I directed the mode of preparing a perfectly pure precipitate of mercury, obtained by caustic ammonia acting on nitrate of mercury quite free from superfluous acid. This is of a dark grey colour; it is a perfectly pure oxyde of mercury, like the powder obtained by prolonged succussion of the metallic mercury, and called aethiops per se.

This preparation, being a perfectly pure mercurial medicine, was quite unobjectionable except that the process for making it required much care and labour.

But as one of the rules of homoeopathy, as also of common sense, enjoins that we should attain our aim the simplest and shortest way (quod fieri potest per pauca., non debet fieri per plura), so in this case the aim is attained in the speediest, easiest, and most perfect manner by acting according to the directions laid down in the second part of the Chronic Diseases , p, 5. One grain of perfectly pure mercury (such as is employed for making thermometers) is triturated as is done with other dry medicinal substances, with three times 100 grains of milk-sugar for three -hours, up to the million-fold powder-attenuation described in detail in the place referred to),( After the trituration of the grain of mercury with the first 100 grains of milk-sugar, there still remains on the smooth surface of the porcelain mortar, in spite the most diligent scraping, a considerable black discoloration, which is almost entirely taken up by the trituration of one grain of the first trituration with a second 100 grains of milk-sugar, and is completely effaced by the third trituration.) and one grain of the last is dissolved in diluted alcohol; this solution is twice succussed, and a drop of this solution is raised through 28 dilution phials to the decillionfold potency (hydrargyrum purum potentiatum X).

One small globule (300 of which weigh one grain), moistened with the last dilution, is the appropriate dose of this very medicinal metal for all suitable cases.

The following symptoms were produced by the administration or the black oxyde of mercury (mercurius solubilis), which was generally pure enough to develope mostly pure mercurial symptoms, whereby, as I hope, the knowledge of the peculiar powers of this metal has beep increased in no small degree.

They show that if we select mercury only for such morbid states, the totality of whose symptoms is met with among those of the drug in striking similarity;- when, moreover, we only employ it in the most perfect, pure and highly potentized preparation and in the above-named dilution; we shall find in it an indispensable, highly serviceable remedy for very many cases.

But mercury has been only too often improperly employed in all sorts of diseases in allopathic practice, in which either it was believed that benefit could not be obtained by milder remedies, or where it was taken for granted that induration and obstruction existed which had to be resolved by this metal which was held to be a universal solvent, or where in obstinate ailments, as so many are, a concealed. venereal infection was groundlessly imagined to lurk. When aggravation of the symptoms ensued from the daily repeated doses, the allopath did not ascribe this to the unsuitability of the medicine or the disease, but be usually attributed it to the dose being too small for such a great disease, and he then attacked the patient with larger and more frequently repeated doses of more-energetic mercurial preparations (if he wished to produce a very powerful effect he gave corrosive sublimate); he rubbed a quantity of mercurial ointment into the skin, and in this way destroyed life, or at least ruined the health beyond possibility of recovery, in innumerable cases.

But, as we now know, all chronic diseases, with but few exceptions (pure syphilis and sycosis being among, these), arise from more or less developed psora; and even where uneradicated syphilis or sycosis is complicated with developed psora, the latter is more and first to be attended to in the treatment. But mercury (and especially its impure but acrid preparations) can never serve for the radical cure of psora, must always make it more incurable. This will easily explain the disastrous results of the mercurial treatment of chronic diseases of all sorts.

Samuel Hahnemann
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) was the founder of Homoeopathy. He is called the Father of Experimental Pharmacology because he was the first physician to prepare medicines in a specialized way; proving them on healthy human beings, to determine how the medicines acted to cure diseases.

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.