Dr. Cullen, who was born in 1710 and died in the year 1790, was an authority on Materia Medica. He was a good lecturer and an able chemist, and therefore an experienced and beloved teacher in Edinburgh. The first edition of his work appeared in London in 1773, the second followed — in two volumes — in the year 1789, under the title: “Treatise of the Materia Medica.” Hahnemann used these for his translation. In the second volume Cullen devotes twenty pages to Cinchona bark (Cortex Peruvianus). The researches of Cullen induced Hahnemann to make experiments upon himself with this remedy, in order to find out what effects it would produce on perfectly healthy person. We have here therefore the first case f self-observation on the effects of medicine and the first foreshadowing of the Law of Similars (more fully dealt with in Chapter VIII.)
Hahnemann’s remarks on Cullen’s work show already a great deal of practical experience, especially in dietetics had hygiene, for which reason they can be quoted in extracts. (See Chapter VII, and Supplement 34.)
Grapes certainly lose important constituents in the process of drying, which would be useful to the body. (page 278)
Does not this exception of Hahnemann sound like a foreshadowing of what science to-day terms “Vitamins”?
I often saw the poorer people of Transylvania and Banat eating large quantities of raw, ripe cucumbers, with salt and pepper and wheatmeal bread. They considered them great delicacies, highly extolled the flavour, and considered them very digestible. (Page 283)
A ripe melon eaten in the morning with moderation, is a mellow and easily digested fruit. I have even seen people in hot countries overeat themselves with it without experiencing any marked harmful results. Only it must not be eaten unripe, as is usually the case in the North of Europe. It then resembles in toughness our most indigestible cucumber salad (Page 284.)
Spinach, notch-weed, cauliflower, and other just as delicate vegetables of little taste, are not the most digestible, and are often quite the contrary, especially for a weak stomach which requires a stimulus to enable it to carry on its work. For this latter, more stimulating vegetables are required or spices must be added. Eaten by themselves they weaken the stomach more and more. ( Page 287)
Cullen is mistaken. Cabbage loses hardly any of its power of producing flatulence by long cooking. The same applies to peas, kohlrabi, dried beans and other similar vegetables, the reason being that the carbonic acid gas is not yet present (and cannot therefore be expelled by cooking) as it only develops after fermentation. (Page 290).
The Teltower of Markisch turnip is cultivated in many parts of Germany. It requires mild, sandy rather than heavy soil. Its nourishing properties are very considerable, consisting of starch and other farinaceous substances, which are easily digested and produce very little flatulence. It forms a dish that is not too sweat, yet is palatable (Page 297).
Flour eaten as a pap, and so forth, is far more nourishing than an equal quantity made into bread by fermentation. We have well experience this during this famine. (1771-1773). But i have found that delicate stomachs that are unable to digest bread without flatulence, will digest a flour pap much more easily, provided it is taken in moderate quantities and is not made from the darkest rye flour. We give flummery to debilitated patients with good results (Page 316.)
I have noticed an idiosyncrasy to attacks of colic after eating buck-wheat meal. This flour does not appear to be very m nourishing or palatable, but after ferments have been introduced, it undergoes very strong fermentation and then consists of many starch particles. (Page 317)
Over-feeding, one of the chief causes of ordinary ailments in children, has given flummery a bad reputation as a food for them. Of course, over-feeding with it is more harmful than if the pap were prepared with wheat bread and similar substances: but I have seem many instances where even the most delicate children will thrive on flummery, if it be given at regular intervals and with moderation. (Page 315).
Cream and milk can be kept fresh for several days, even during hot and thundery weather, if boiled once a day; by this process, I believe, the gases of fermentation are expelled each time (Page 382).
Here Hahnemann was on the way to the discovery of the “Pasteurising ” of milk.
On Page 385, Hahnemann gives an explanation why sheep and goat cheese are more digestible and agree better than ordinary cheese prepared from sour cows’ milk.
The teaching of Pythagoras — to limit the consumption of meat as much as possible has many points in its favour. This sentence loses much of its general applicability if we consider how many races live almost entirely on animal food, suffering from few illness and enjoying as long a life as other nations living almost entirely on vegetable food. In this respect we must take into consideration the temperament; choleric people have little desire for meat, whilst phlegmatic ones can hardly discard it without injury to their health (Page 402)
I recall here that no meat partakes so much of the animal nature as pork, or contains more unmixed animal bodies that so easily putrify. In every case where there is an inflammatory tendency in the blood, as in intermittent and hectic fevers, in suppuration, tendency to erysipelas, disturbances of the bile, in skin diseases, and even in some forms of hysteria, it has proved harmful. It often aggravates the affection visibly or produces a recurrence. It is a very nourishing food for healthy people if eaten with great moderation, and when good deal of physical exercise is taken it is quite harmless and easily digested. Any excess, however, has injurious consequences even for healthy people to a greater extent than any other kind of meat.
The hunting of hare and deer produces in these animals a form of heated fever, and their flesh is then much nearer decomposition and therefore much easier to digest than that of animals who have been slaughtered in the ordinary way. That this tenderness of game can be brought about in another way by hanging in the air, steeping in vinegar and so forth, I leave to the kindly disposition of the cook to suggest to his employer (Page 409.)
The preponderance of animal properties in the flesh of the duck brings it very near to that of pork. It owes its palatable and nourishing qualities to this, and also harmfulness similar to that existing in pork. This harmfulness arises from the exhalations of the already disintegrating animal particles which are injurious to the human body. The flesh of the duck approaches very near to that of the goose, yet there is a different.
People who habitually eat little meat feel very well during Lent. Those who use meat continually, especially beef, for their sustenance become flabby and sickly during Lent, owing to the abrupt adoption of a fish and vegetable diet. (Page 424.)
The transaction of Monro’s Materia Medica was announced in Crell’s Chem. Annals (1792, Vol..II, page 138) as follows:
The translation of this work was very desirable. Dr. Hahnemann has amplified, verified and corrected it. This gives the translation many advantages over the original work. Through his careful corrections, Hahnemann has earned new honour from readers of this class of literature.
Hahnemann also made numerous annotations and corrections in this work based on his own researches and observations. Thus he quotes on pages 388 and 389 ” On the efficacy of moderate doses in intermittent fever “.
Patients must not be over-dosed, as the same end will be attained, in the case of intermittent fever, if one or two good doses are given shortly before the expected attack, that is, an hour or so before the paroxysm starts, each time 12 or 2 drams or more of reliable bark.
John Grigg’s “Rules of Conduct for the Female Sex, especially during Pregnancy and Child-birth,” was translated by Hahnemann from the English without additions or remarks. In addition to the twenty-one chapters which comprise 225 pages, an appendix is added ” on the treatment of children in the first period of life” (59 pages). Here Hahnemann confines himself entirely to the translation of the original without additions or annotations.
The “Contributions” in Crell’s Annals, Vol.I, part 3, page 256, deals with the preparation of loaf sugar from saccharic acid, 0.02, heated with brown syrup; a process for heating with slack; a preparation of carbonic acid, mercury and pure mercury for Syphilis; and the preparation of an alcoholic solution of spirits of sal ammoniac.
In Vol.II, part 7, page 52, Hahnemann deals with the dark grey chalk of mercury, its preparation and its properties. The complete preparation of Mercurious Solubilis represents, as Hahnemann expressly declares, a completion and correction of the instructions given in his book “Instructions for Surgeons on Venereal Diseases” (1789), for the production of the best mercurial preparations. In this book he had indicated spirits of wine as a solvent for nitrate of mercury, which is a mistake as this salt not only does not dissolve in alcohol, but even when triturated with it loss entirely its solubility in water. Hahnemann then gives full details of the best method of preparing this preparation “after this frequent repetition of the process.”
Richard Haehl was also an editor and publisher of the homeopathic journal Allgemcine, and other homeopathic publications.
Haehl was responsible for saving many of the valuable artifacts of Samuel Hahnemann and retrieving the 6th edition of the Organon and publishing it in 1921.
Richard Haehl was the author of - Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann