In the year 1834 Hahnemann wrote to Dr. Dunsford, the physician inordinary to Lord Anglesea, whom he himself was treating:
It is never necessary or useful to diminish the amount of blood, which always means a lowering of the life-force and vitality, the reaction of which is all the more wholesome the less it has been interfered with.
The passage in this letter coincides exactly, almost word for word, with what Dr. Johann Josef Roth, of Munich, has remembered and jotted down in his “Leaves of Remembrance,” of a conversation with the Master when he visited Hahnemann in Paris in 1836:
Hahnemann says: It is life-force which cures diseases; because a dead man needs no more medicines. If we accept this we must preserve the life-force, we must not shed blood-not deplete the patient; because in the blood lies the vital force.
SUPPLEMENT 216
HAHNEMANN’S PROTEST AGAINST VENESECTION AND SETONS.
In the Introduction to the “Organon,” page 78, we read:
We cannot expect a cure by depressing the body to the point of death, in a scientific manner, and yet the old school knows not what else to do with patients suffering from chronic diseases, than to attack the sufferers with means that do nothing but torture them waste their strength and fluids and shorten their lives! Can that be said to save, which destroys? Does it deserve any other name than that of an evil art? It acts, lege artis, in the most purposeless manner, and it does (it would almost seem purposely) that is to say, the very opposite from what it should do. Can this be commended? Can it be further tolerated?
And on page 59 he condemns thoughtless imitations of nature through “antagonistic and deviating methods of treatment” and the lack of purpose in their procedures.
And on page 144, 59 we read:
By venesection they intended to remove the chronic congestion of blood to the head and other parts, for instance, palpitations, but the result it always a larger accumulation of blood in these organs, fuller and more frequent heart-beat, etc.
On the value of setons, he states on page 59, annotation:
What good results have ever ensued from those foetid artificial ulcers, so much in vogue, called issues. If even, during the first week or two, whilst they still cause pain, they appear somewhat to check, by antagonism, a chronic disease, nevertheless, when the body has been accustomed to the pain, they have no other effect than that of weakening the patient and giving still greater scope to the chronic affection. Does anyone imagine in this nineteenth century, that they serve as an outlet for the escape of the materia peccans? It almost appears as if this were the case!
Partly in letters and partly by long annotations in the “Organon” Hahnemann explains his opinion of Broussais method of treatment. For instance, we read in a letter to Constantine Hering of October 3rd, 1836, among other things (see Supplement 177):
This ancient body of science (the Royal Academy of Medicine of Paris- R.H.) which consists of a co-called committee of allopaths will in time only play a miserable part in the history of medicine. Its members are almost without exception barbaric venesectors. They practice, teach and know of nothing else than than venesection and the application of leeches. Broussais false doctrine has during the last twenty years, made shameless murderers of them, while Broussais himself is beginning to rejection his own doctrine and to incline towards homoeopathy. Through the institution of this terrible venesecting method he has destroyed the whole system of prescription of medicine, and now the apothecaries here play only a very poor part. On pages 146 and 147 of the “Organon,” Hahnemann describes: In proportion to the maintenance of the patient’s strength will his ailments be apparent, and the more intensely will he feel his pains. He moans and groans and cries out and calls for help more and more vociferously, so that the physician cannot give relief quick enough. Broussais needed only to depress the vital force, to lessen it more and more and behold! the more frequently the patient was bled, the more were leeches and cupping-glasses used to suck out the vital fluid (for the innocent, irreplaceable blood was, according to him, responsible for almost all ailments).
In the same proportion the patient lost the power to feel pain or to express his aggravated condition by violent complaint and gestures. The patient appears more quiet in proportion as he grows weaker, the bystanders rejoice in his apparent improvement, they are ready for the repetition of the same measure on the renewal of his suffering-be they spasms, suffocations, fears or pains-for these had calmed him so well before and gave promise of further ease. In diseases of long duration and when the patient still retained some strength he was deprived of food, put on a “hunger diet” in order to depress life more successfully and inhibits the restless states. The debilitated patient feels unable to protest against further similar measures of blood- letting, leeches, vesication, warm baths and so forth, or to refuse their employment. That death must follow such frequently repeated reduction and exhaustion of the vital energy is not observed by the patient, who has already been robbed of all consciousness, and the relatives, blinded by the alleviations of the last sufferings of the patient by means of blood-letting and warm baths, cannot understand and are surprised when the patient quietly silps away… The physicians in Europe and elsewhere accepted this convenient treatment of all diseases according to a single rule, since it saved them from all further thinking (the most laborious of all work under the sun). In this way many thousand physicians were miserably misled to shed callously the warm blood of patients who were capable of cure, and thereby to gradually rob millions of men of their lives according to Broussais method- more even than fell on the battlefields of Napoleon.
And again he says against Broussais, on page 163, annotation to 74:
But from venesection, healthy common sense can expect nothing more than certain lessening and shortening of life.
Hahnemann related about the French King, Louis Phillipe (1838, Supplement 176), that he was a “strong supporter of allopathy and always carries with him the spring lancet for venesection when residing in the country, and applied it himself on his personnel if they had a sudden attack.”
SUPPLEMENT 217.
HAHNEMANN AGAINST THE VENESECTION OF THE “PSEUDO- HOMOEOPATHS.” In an annotation to 148 of the “Organon” page 215 he describes the “gentlemen of the mongrel-sect,” as people who when the unsuitable remedy does not immediately give relief, instead of blaming their own unpardonable ignorance and laxity in the performance of the most important and serious of human duties, ascribe their lack of success to homoeopathy, which they accuse of great imperfection if the truth be told, its imperfection consists in this, that the most suitable homoeopathic remedy for each morbid condition does not spontaneously fly into their mouths like roasted pigeons, without any trouble on their part., They know, however, from frequent practice, how to supplement the barely semi-homoeopathic remedy by reverting to allopathic means, which are more familiar to them; amongst these is the application of one or more dozen leeches to the affected part, or little harmless venesections to the extent of eight ounces, and so forth, play an important part and should the patient in spite of all this recover, they extol their venesections, leeches, etc., alleging that, had it not been for these the patient would not have pulled through and they give us to understand, in no uncertain language, that these operations, derived without much exercise of thought from the pernicious routine of the old school, in reality contributed the principal share of the cure. But if the patient died under the treatment as not infrequently happened, they sought to console the friends by saying that “they themselves, had seen that everything conceivable had been done for the lamented deceased.” Who would honour this frivolous and pernicious tribe by acknowledging them as practitioners of the very difficult but salutary art, as homoeopathic physicians? May they reap their just reward and when taken ill may they themselves be treated similarly.
SUPPLEMENT 218
THE PARTISANS OF VENESECTION AGAINST HAHNEMANN.
Professor Heinroth wrote in his “Anti-Organon” in 1825 (page 99):
“How beneficial are leeches, cuppings, vesicatories, etc! Where does Mr. Hahnemann ever mention these remedies? And as for venesection! Is not Mr. Hahnemann a sworn enemy of this great remedy?
Prof. Wedekind of Darmstadt, “Enquiry into the Homoeopathic System,” 1825.
But now I ask: does not the generally recognised indispensability of evacuating medicines and of venesection give the most obvious proof of the uselessness of the Hahnemannian doctrine in practical medicine? Elias’ “Homoopathische Gurkenmonate,” Halle, 1827: It would not be a brilliant proof of the harmlessness of homoeopathy if it lets patients, suffering from inflammation, suffocate in their own blood.
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