I lay more stress on this faith of Hahnemann’s, from the contrast presented to it by the language of the only fair and calm examination (to my knowledge) which the “Organon,” has received in this country. I refer to the Address in Medicine delivered before the British Medical Association in the same year already referred to (1881) by the late Dr. Bristwoe. The able and candid physician asks “What grounds of reason and experience have we to justify the belief that for every disease an antidote or cure will sooner or later be discovered?” and going further still, declares it to be in his judgment “utopian to expect that disease generally shall become curable by therapeutical or any other treatment.” That this melancholy Pyrrhonism is of extensive prevalence appeared also that year at the International Congress in London, where according to the LANCET (Aug. 27, 1881.) “therapy” was conspicuous by its absence. It was not so at the Homoeopathic Convention which preceded it; and this just stamps the difference between the two attitudes of mind.
I cannot prove at any rate here that the faith of the founder of Homoeopathy was sound, and the scepticism of its critics otherwise; but it is evident which is the more fruitful. As a lover of my kind, and not a mere man of science, I can say MALO CUM HAHNEMANNO ERRARE QUAM CUM well, it would be personal, as well as difficult, to Latinise the rest, but my hearers will supply it.
IV. Hahnemann, whose heart was indeed bubbling up with his good matter, and whose tongue was certainly the pen of a ready writer, wrote a separate Preface for each edition of his work. I cannot give any account of them here, but they are all well worth reading. The Second especially deserves notice as a full statement in brief, of the author’s view of the existing state of medicine; nowhere does Bacon speak more clearly through him than in his emphatic statements here regarding the relation of reason to experience in the study of the subject.
I pass on to the Introduction which in every edition forms a considerable proportion of the whole volume. It has altered very much, however, between its earliest and latest appearance. In the first three editions, it consists of a series of unintentional Homoeopathic cures (so considered) taken from medical literature, with a few preparatory and concluding remarks. But in the Second and Third, Hahnemann had introduced into the body of the work a long section of destructive criticism on existing theories and modes of treatment; and this, when he issued the Fourth, seemed to him to find a more appropriate place in the Introduction.
Thither, accordingly, it was transferred, forming under the title “Survey of the Allopathy (So written in the Fourth Edition of the original, but in the Fifth more correctly given as “Allopathy,” which I think the translators should have reproduced. “A not is Hahnemann’s antithesis to and as the latter forms Homoeopathy, the former should be Allopathy.) of the hitherto-prevailing School of Medicine” a first part; while the “Instances of involuntary Homoeopathic Cures” took place as a second. In the Fifth Edition, these last disappeared altogether, being merely referred to in a note; and the Introduction became a continuous essay, its subject being the medicine of the author’s contemporaries and predecessors.
I think that no one who is acquainted with the state of medical thought and practice in Hahnemann’s day will question the general justice of the strictures he here makes upon it. The critic to whom I have referred admits, “the chaotic state of therapeutical theory and practice at that time prevalent”; but he hardly appreciates Hahnemann’s merits in prescribing and stigmatizing it as he did. Chaos itself, to the habitual dwellers in it, seems to be cosmos:” it can only be apprehended for what it is by those who have the cosmos in their souls.
Thus it was with Hahnemann’s. He saw all around him two things which he cites, Gregory Nazianzen as pronouncing ag——– and (Lesser Writings, p. 501. Hahnemann ascribes the phase to “Greg. Mag.” but surely Gregory the Great did not write in Greek.) On the one side were the men of note the Stahls and Hoffmanns and Browns and Cullens building up their ingenious and ambitious systems on hypothetical data; on the other were the mass of practitioners, quite unable to utilise these imaginings, and treating disease according to empirical maxims or the directions of the prescription-book. The physician’s art was the butt of every satirist, the dread of all who fell ill, the despair of the minds that formed a nobler ideal of it. Hahnemann himself, as you may read in his life, for a time gave himself up to such despair, till his experiment with Cinchona-bark proved the clue of Ariadne which suggested the true law of the phenomena and led the way to better things.
If we were going through the Introduction in detail, there would be many points on which criticism and correction would be necessary; but the general soundness of its attitude must be sufficient for us to-day. It bears to the body of the work the same relation as Bacon’s “De Augmentis” to his “Novum Organum” and the treatise on “Ancient Medicine” to the “Aphorisms” of Hippocrates. Before leaving it, I must say a few words about the instances of cure, which, though dropped by himself were inserted from the Fourth Edition in Dr. Dudgeon’s first version of the Fifth, and are therefore familiar to us all. (In the translation of 1849, Dr. Dudgeon, not having the original of the Fourth Edition at hand, transferred these instances from an older version (Devrient’s).
Several errors crept in accordingly, but these have of course been corrected in the revision of 1893, where the cases in question will be found in the Appendix). His critic has singled out the first and last of these, and has no difficulty in disposing of them as without bearing on the point to be proved. But a more thorough examination would show that “A DOUBUS DISCERE OMNES” was hardly a safe mode of proceeding. Of the forty-five references made (I speak from consultation of the original sources) six are indeed quite worthless, and fifteen more dubious; but the remaining twenty-four will stand the most searching scrutiny.
The cures were reported by the best observers of their time; the remedies employed were undoubtedly Homoeopathic to the disorders present, and have no other mode of action to which their benefits could by any plausibility be ascribed. We could multiply and perhaps improve upon them now; but such as they are, they do speak the language as utterers of which Hahnemann cited them.
V. We come now to the `Organon’ proper. It consists of a series of aphorisms in its latest form 294 in number, to which are appended numerous and often lengthy notes. This is a form of composition eminently suggestive and stimulating. It is endeared to many of us by Coleridge’s “Aids to Reflection”; but Hahnemann must have taken it from the `Novum Organum,’ perhaps also with a recollection of the father of Medicine which derives its name therefrom.
While each aphorism is complete in itself, and might be made the text of a medical discourse, the work they collectively constitute has a definite outline and structure, which remains unchanged through the successive editions, and is as evident in the first as in the last. This outline is given in the third aphorism, which with the exception of “rational” for “true” (practitioner) in the first is identical in all editions:
“If the physician clearly perceive what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease (KNOWLEDGE OF DISEASE, INDICATION); if he clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine (KNOWLEDGE OF MEDICINAL POWERS); and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly-defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient, so that recovery must ensue to adapt it as well in respect to the suitableness of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him (CHOICE OF THE REMEDY, THE MEDICINE INDICATED), as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper DOSE), and the proper period for repeating the dose, if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent: Then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing art.”
The three desiderata, then, are
1st. The knowledge of the morbid state which supplies the indication:
2nd. The knowledge of medicinal powers which gives the instrument.
3rd. The knowledge how to choose and administer the remedy which is the thing indicated.
The First Part of the Organon (down to aphorism 70) treats of these points doctrinally, by way of argument; (aphorism 5-18 discuss knowledge of disease, 9-21 knowledge of medicines, 22-27 knowledge of application of one to the other; and 28-69 are an explanation and defence of the mode of application by similarity) the Second practically, in the form of precept. The summing up of the doctrinal portion is contained in aphorism 70, in these words:-
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.