Perhaps the best way to get an unprejudiced idea of the manner of man he was, is to read, in Dr. Dudgeon’s collection of his “Lesser Writings,” his earlier works on medical and allied topics. Of these I cannot now dwell, my present business is with the genesis in his mind of the thought which led him to Homoeopathy. It arose when, in 1790, he was rendering Cullen’s “Materia Medica” into German. He felt dissatisfied with the Scotch professor’s explanation of the febrifuge properties of Cinchona, and his consideration of the subject led him to the results which as was his wont in translating he expressed in a footnote. (See vol. II., p. 108.) “It will not” he writes, “be such an easy matter to discover the still lacking principle according to which its action may be explained. Nevertheless, let us reflect on the following.
Substances such as very strong Coffee, Pepper, Arnica, Ignatia and Arsenic, that are capable of exciting a kind of fever, will extinguish types of Ague. For the sake of experiment, I took for several days four QUENTSCHEN of good Cinchona twice a day. My feet, the tips of my fingers, etc. first became cold, and I felt tired and sleepy; then my heart began to beat, my pulse became hard and quick. I got an insufferable feeling of uneasiness, a trembling (but without rigor), a weariness in all my limbs, then a beating in my head, redness of the cheeks, thirst; in short, all the old symptoms with which I was familiar in Ague appeared one after the other. Also, those particularly characteristic symptoms which I was wont to observe in Agues obtuseness of the senses, a kind of stiffness in all the limbs, but especially that dull disagreeable feeling which seems to have its seat in the periosteum of all the bones of the body these all put in an appearance. This paroxysm lasted each time for two or three hours, and came again afresh whenever I repeated the dose, not otherwise. I left off, and became well.”
I have said in another place, when speaking of this experiment, that Hahnemann “proved Cinchona to discover on what principle it acted” in Intermittents. (Manual of Pharmacodynamics, p. 395. The references to this work are made to the Fourth and later Editions, the pagination of which is uniform). It would be better perhaps, to say “whether it, like the other febrifuges, excited a kind of fever.” But I must maintain that this is the true account of it, and not that which is put forward by the representatives of a certain school amongst us, who rather read into his doings their own later ideas.
Thus Dr. Adolf Lippe writes: “Hahnemann was sitting at leipzic, with his midnight lamp before him, translating Cullen’s `Materia Medica,’ which was then a standard work. He came to Cinchona officinalis, and found Cullen say that this bark possessed specific febrifugal actions, because it was both the most aromatic and bitter substance known. Hahnemann laid down his quill and exclaimed, `Preposterous!’There are more substances, more barks, possessing more, both bitter and aromatic properties, and Cinchona is not a specific for Ague. He argued, while it does cure some cases, it does not cure other cases. There must be a way to find out under what conditions the bark cured and did not cure.
It was at that moment that this good and benevolent man had an `Inspiration.” He concluded to take the drug himself, and whether light could not be brought into the prevailing darkness. Bright and early in the morning, Hahnemann went to the `Apotheke zum Goldenen Loewen’ on the market-place of leipzic, and there and then selected some fresh Cinchona bark, and obtained some vials and Alcohol. He prepared a tincture, took it, and behold, the symptoms he observed on himself showed a marked similarity to cases of Ague cured by him by the same drug, and it was then that a new light broke upon him! That light was this: A drug will cure such ailments as its sick-making power will produce similarity to.”
To do him full justice, I have given Dr. Lippe’s IPSISSIMA VERBA; and, as he expressly writes to correct the account I have presented of the matter, I must hold him to them. Contrast now his narrative with Hahnemann’s own; and it will be seen at a glance that the two are incompatible. The school Dr. Lippe represented are careless about similarity between disease itself and drug-action, so long as the “conditions” of the two correspond. To favour their view, therefore, Hahnemann must have proved Cinchona bark to ascertain under what conditions it cured Ague; whereas he himself tells us that he did so to find out whether, like other febrifuges, it was febrigenic at all, and that his result was to find it productive of all the symptoms, general and characteristic, of the Intermittent paroxysm.
This is a digression, to clear Hahnemann’s proceeding from misrepresentation on the part of his own followers. It is still more important to vindicate it from the objection made by opponents, that it is a wholly insufficient nay, a false basis of a curative method. This challenge is supported by the allegation, first, that bark has no real power of causing in the healthy such a fever as that imagined by Hahnemann: and, secondly, that it cures Ague by an action, not on the body of the patient, but on the minute organisms of which MALARIA consists, so that its therapeutic power is independent of any it may exert on the healthy frame.
In reply to these statements, I would ask you to suspend your judgment till we come to the treatment of the Malarious Fevers, when it will be fully discussed. In the meantime, however, I may be permitted to refer you to the article on Cinchona in my “Manual of Pharmacodynamics,” where you will find numerous instances of the febrigenic power of the drug and its alkaloid, ending with a description of the Cinchona-fever by Bretonneau, warranted by Trousseau and Pidoux, which quite corresponds to that of Hahnemann; you will also see it demonstrated that Ague may be cured by Quinine in doses far too small to affect the vitality of microzymes. But even were no such evidence forthcoming, no amount of doubt cast upon Hahnemann’s Cinchona-experiment and his inference therefrom would impeach SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURENTUR; for this was suggested by it, not built upon it.
It might have been found that Newton’s apple (to which it has been happily compared), fell to the ground for other reasons than because of gravitation, but that would not alter the fact, subsequently ascertained by him, that matter as such attracts matter in proportion to its mass. Following up the hint afforded him by his apple, Hahnemann (like Newton with moon’s motions) tested his hypothesis by application to all other congruous instances by seeing how far it would explain the recorded successes of the past and lead to fresh ones in the future. It is on a body of evidence of this kind that his method ultimately rests, and not on the single experiment which originally led him to it; and deductive verification is as good evidence of truth as the graduated induction urged by Bacon. Buckle has well-argued this in one of his essays; and has shown that, INTER ALIA, it was the way in which Kepler arrived at his great discoveries.
Hahnemann’s further procedure may best be related in his own words. “I now commenced to make a collection of the morbid phenomena which different observers had from time to time noticed as produced by medicines introduced into the stomachs of healthy individuals, and which they had casually recorded in their works. But as the number of these was not great, I set myself diligently to work to test several medicinal substance of the healthy body, and see! the carefully observed symptom they produced corresponded wonderfully with the symptoms of the morbid states they would easily and permanently cure.” (Lesser Writings (tr. Dudgeon), p. 586).
The first fruit of this task was the “Fragmenta de Viribus Medicamentorum Positivis,” published in 1805, and containing pathogeneses more or less complete of twenty seven medicines. This was, as its name implies, in Latin; but in 1811, Hahnemann began to issue in successive volumes his German “Reine Arzneimittellehre,” containing (in its First Edition) fifty-eight drugs, proved on a much larger scale. (The six volumes of the First Edition appeared at intervals from 1811 to 1821; those of the Second Edition from 1822 to 1827; and a Third Edition of the first two volumes saw the light in 1830 and 1833.) He continued to add to his old and take part in new provings for some time yet, and altogether furnished materials for the knowledge of at least ninety medicines; besides giving an impetous to the work of experimenting on the healthy body which has never lost its force, and has been and is most fruitful in results.
The provision for working the new method supplied in the “Fragmenta de Viribus” was followed up by an exposition of its theory and rules for its practical working. These first took the form of an essay in HUFELAND’S JOURNAL for 1806, entitled “The Medicine of Experience,” and finally, in 1810, of a separate treatise. the “Organon of Rational Medicine.” Of the latter work I hope to give some account in my next lecture. Suffice it now to say that in it Hahnemann leaves no point untouched which conduces to the working of the machine he has invented.
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.